Phenix City Tourists' Guide

CHAPTER X

TOURISTS' GUIDE

AS A SPECIAL SERVICE TO READERS, herewith is recorded the official blue-ribbon, almost all-inclusive, Alabama National Guard listing of Phenix City's houses of fun and frolic. You could enter them, before the clean-up, at your own risk. Get on the roller coaster now and take a trip through what was the "business" district of America's wickedest city.

North side of Fourteenth Street, as though crossing from Columbus:

RIVERSIDE CAFÉ : Owned and operated by Glenn Youngblood. Soldiers were rolled and drugged. B-girls were bought off for prostitution. B-Girls were instructed to take drunk GIs to the Oyster Bar for gambling.

OYSTER BAR: Downstairs under the Phenix Finance Company. Owned and operated by Glenn Youngblood.

YARBROUGH’S CAFÉ: Owned and operated by Clyde Yarbrough and Stewart McCollister who also had interests in the Bama Club. Plenty much gambling.

BOONE’S CAFÉ: High knocker was E. V. Boone. Specialized in knockout drinks, rolling dogfaces, and running the B-girl pawn racket, Unconsumed beer was re-bottled and re-sold. B-girls could be bought for whoring.

HAYSTACK: Glenn Youngblood was proprietor. Customers were drugged. B-girls could be hired for other purposes.

COFFEE POT: E. V. Boone and Glenn Youngblood were joint owners.

GOLDEN RULE CAFÉ: France Knighton, a gent whose motto was Do Unto Others Before They Do Unto You. This "cafe" actually was around the comer from Fourteenth Street on Fourth Avenue.

South side of Fourteenth Street, as though crossing from Columbus again:

DAVIS SPORTING GOODS AND PAWN SHOP: William (Bubba) Davis was commander in chief.

MANHATTAN CAFÉ: Owned by the Davis' Enterprises.

SILVER SLIPPER: Owned by Davis' Enterprises, it was no place for a queen, offering gambling and prostitution.

MANHATTAN CLUB: Upstairs over Manhattan Cafe and Silver Slipper. Here was headquarters for the National Lottery.

SILVER DOLLAR: Rudene Smith and H. C. Edwards served tasty dishes of bed-bouncing, dice, and poker.

CURT’S CAFÉ: Operated by Curt Daugherty, who ran slot machines, poker, dice, lottery, prostitution, and rolled soldiers. (Not much left to do, was there?)

BLUE BONNET CAFE: Gambling, prostitution and tattooing while you wait. Your genial host: Frank Gullatt.

Now let's jump down to the Dillingham Street Bridge and start across from Columbus once more and look at the North side of the street:

BAMA CLUB AND CORRAL: This was big-time stuff, it was widely advertised and attracted suckers from distant points. Reservations in advance often were necessary. Almost every type of gambling known to man (and Phenix City) which included poker, lottery, slots, blackjack, and parlays on football, baseball and basketball. Maintained a large stock of fireworks. Clip joint specialists were Stewart McCollister, J. D. Abney, Clyde Yarbrough, and J, D (Frog) Jones.

YELLOW FRONT CAFÉ: Run by W. C. Roney and his son, Lawrence, who also operated the 514 Club. Both houses contained slot machines, dice tables, and were lottery headquarters. The buildings were owned by State Legislator Ben L. Cole, a silent partner to the Roneys for years.

Next door was GIRARD CLEANERS  which served as a pickup station for lottery.

Crossing over to the South side:

BRIDGE GROCERY: Headquarters for C. O. (Head) Revel and George T, Davis Sr- of the Metropolitan Lottery. Inside were roulette wheels, lottery equipment, business machines and an elaborate inside warning device.

NEW BRIDGE CAFÉ: Gambling under the sponsorship of David Griggs.

RITZ CAFÉ: Fat A. B. (Buck) Billingsley gypped the customers here with lottery and gambling.

602 CLUB: This was behind the Ritz. Andy Cook was in charge of gambling,

ABC STORE: Building leased to the state by Hoyt Shepherd and Jimmy Matthews.

ORIGINAL BARBECUE: Assorted gambling and command post for K. L. (Red) Cook's lottery.

BENNIE’S CLUB: Dice tables, slots, lottery records.

Hit Highway 431 and 80 for more festivities:

DIAMOND HORSESHOE: This pickup station for prostitutes was owned by Ernest Youngblood.

JACK’S CAFÉ: Jack Hunt ran a dice table and slot machines.

SUNNY LANE CAFÉ: Nobody was really "sunny" here except R. M. Lane, the big cheese of the joint.

241 CLUB: Gambling and prostitution for sale by "Buck" Bush.

HILLBILLY CLUB: Prostitution.

VETO’S TRAILER PARK: Prostitution on wheels.

SKYLINE CLUB: More bedroom enjoyment as well as gambling under the baleful eye of H, C. Hardin, Jr.

ELDORADO CLUB: William Henry Clark was in charge of gambling and fornication.

BAMBOO CLUB: A nice atmosphere in which to lose at gambling. W. T. (Bud) Thurmond, Jr„ major domo.

RED TOP CAFÉ: Gambling.

SQUARE DANCE CLUB: Names and numbers of each and every whore posted on outside walls with semi-nude pictures.

CLIFF’S FISH CAMP: Should have been called a "cat" house, or possibly "catfish" house. Cliff Entrekin in charge of entertainment.

Time now to roll along Seale Road:

PHENIX CITY CARD COMPANY: Dice loaded, cards marked by the expert, Horace T. Webster,

401 CLUB and THE CIRCLE MOTEL AND CAFÉ  were field headquarters for Rudene Smith's prostitution racket.

CLUB AVALON: J. D. Abney furnished gambling for Negro customers.

NEW YORK CLUB: This was two blocks west on Stevens Street in the Negro section. It was owned by those merry men of make-believe, Stewart McCollister and J. D. Abney.

COTTON CLUB: For Negro trade, reached by dirt street south of exclusive residential section. Fanny Green, "The Queen of Hearts," MC'd the gambling and other activities.

Numerous other houses of ill repute, entertainment and gambling, such as "Ma" Beachie's, existed throughout the area but you have taken only the quick tour through the most heavily settled section of the county.

Chapter XI-Babies for Sale: Abortions While You Wait
CHAPTER XI

BABIES FOR SALE; ABORTIONS WHILE YOU WAIT

WAYWARD GIRLS WHO FOUND themselves about to be stuck with the fruits of their mistakes betook themselves to a rabbit farm on the outskirts of Phenix City, just across the Russell  County line.

There, for a nominal fee, they received the services of an ex-madam by the name of Louise Malinoski. This forty-five year old rum-swigging rabbit raiser, is now serving a prison sentence, after pleading guilty to inducing illegal abortions.

To investigators she admitted "about twenty five abortions" in the past three years, but the total is believed by National Guardsmen to be many times that figure.

In a city where so many girls of loose morals sold their bodies to any man with the price, the abortion business was always flourishing. Louise met the demand, unbeknown, she said, to her fifty-six-year-old husband, Joe Malinoski, a motorcycle mechanic.

If her activities were unknown to her husband, he must have been a modern Rip Van Winkle, because the harlots and enterprising B-girls literally beat a path to her door.

But not all of the unmarried mothers-to-be wanted abortions, nor, on the other hand, did they cotton to the idea of having a tiny tax exemption. For them, there was still another route. They could visit a prominent Phenix City woman and all arrangements would be made for a normal birth and a subsequent "adoption," with the mother serving as only the party of the third part in the deal.

The identity of this woman, and her equally prominent husband, is known to Guard investigators and to most of the residents of Phenix City, Their names cannot be used here because Guardsmen are still trying to find witnesses willing to testify against them.

The abortion racket and the baby sale enterprise operated in close conjunction. When a girl sought an abortion, she would be told of the "adoption service" and often urged to follow the latter course.

If she chose to have her baby, she would be sent where she could get a medical examination, and told to report regularly during the period of pregnancy. She never received any medical bills, and often would be provided with taxi fare and spending money.

When the labor pains starred, the girl would be taken to Cobb Memorial Hospital by the woman who had arranged all details in advance, and admitted, usually, under an assumed name.

The foster parents would be on hand when the child was about five days old, and the baby would be handed over at a restaurant two blocks from the hospital.

The real mother went her way after a brief look at the child to whom she had given birth. The hospital records showed that the child was born to the foster mother, rather than the real mother.

Investigators have the sworn statements of a number of the mothers, and know the identity of many of the foster parents. They are scattered through many states and cities from South Carolina to Texas, and From Tennessee to Miami,

This practice has been going on for a number of years; many of the children are approaching high school age, not knowing that the people they call mother and dad are really no blood relation.

Some of the children are members of prominent Russell County families, and others carry the family name of some of the underworld figures who helped to make the town a resort for cutthroats.

Guardsmen found that the society woman sometimes charged as much as $1,500 for arranging an adoption. Whether that included hospital bills is not a matter of record.

The mothers, themselves, could offer little information in this respect. None of them received any pay beyond an occasional handout for taxi fare or a pair of hose. They knew only that their benefactor took care of all expenses in exchange for receiving the baby.

Some of the mothers know where their children are, and even visit them on occasion. That's a matter strictly between the mother and the parents-by-purchase. Others say they never knew the names of the people who received their babies.

State welfare agencies long have known of the existence of the baby racket in Phenix City, but either were unable or unwilling to stop it.

The laws dealing with such back door adoptions are uncertain and indefinite. Some prosecutors say that in order to get any type of conviction, they would have to go a roundabout way of charging the operator with contributing to the delinquency of a minor, or some charge equally vague and remote from the point.

The woman who headed the racket was known to have a waiting list for babies as they became available, and some childless couples had to wait two years for their order to be filled.

Perhaps much could be said in defense of such a system, which took babies from unfit mothers and placed them, as often as not, in homes where they would be cherished and loved. But the sale of human flesh, like pigs at the stockyard, is not the most ideal method of accomplishing the goal.

Like everything else in Phenix City, babies had price tags. A couple with an unlimited budget could become parents of a large family with practically no effort at all. But here, babies definitely were not cheaper by the dozen.

Investigators working on the baby sale racket found that foster parents were reluctant to talk— understandably under the circumstances, since most of them have kept the facts of parentage from the children involved.

The investigators did not face the same difficulties in putting the arm on Louise, one of the most active abortionists in the territory. Plenty of her patients were willing to talk when Guardsmen turned on the heat. Much additional information was obtained by a blond strip artist whom the Guardsmen employed to get the facts first hand. She visited the rabbit ranch on the pretext of wanting an abortion, and discussed such drab matters as prices and methods, over midafternoon cocktails.

The stripper learned that Mrs. Malinoski performed her operations in the dining room of her home, and kept her rubber tubes, probes and accessories spread about on a table.

Capt. Richard A. Peacock, a Birmingham News reporter in civilian life and aide to General Hanna in the Alabama National Guard, headed the investigation which smashed the case and sent the abortionist to women's prison at Wetumpka.

After her arrest, the Malinoski woman protested her innocence, even while the evidence against her mounted. Guard Sergeant Johnnie L. Rancont, Birmingham, decided to devote a night to talking to the suspect. At 5 a.m., on August 30, 1954, Louise decided to talk. First she called her husband to tell him she was going to tell the truth, and to inform him of her activity in the past few years. Then she began her story.

She performed abortions, she said, because she was "big hearted" and hated to see girls in trouble. She could remember about twenty five instances on which she passed out her particular brand of charity and acts of kindness.

The squat, hard-faced woman had learned her trade, she said, from a woman who had had three abortions herself. She had gone into the business about three years before her arrest, she added.

The teacher had an ulterior motive for imparting the learning which she had acquired the hard way. Mrs. Malinoski agreed to perform her next abortion for free.

The teacher's first abortions had been performed "by a woman down on Sixth Street," she told her new pupil.

How Louise got into the commercial side of the abortion racket was a bit vague, as related by the accused woman. Somehow the word got around. "It spread just like the wind getting under a fire and whipping it in all directions," she explained.

Soon she found her home besieged by young unmarried girls and married women, "I saw lots of girls but turned most of them away," she said. She didn't explain why her charitable impulses extended to certain girls in trouble, but not to others.

"I did it more on young girls because I felt sorry for their mothers ... a lot of them were school girls and others were married women with their husbands overseas.

"I guess I did it twenty-five times, but there were not that many people," she recalled. "An ex-policeman's wife was my first visitor and she came back three more times."

She said that most of the girls "were only five or six weeks gone and it was fairly simple to do the trick. They paid me whatever they had. The last one gave me only $10, but I have got as much as $75."

Nobody, least of all the investigators who probed into the messy facts of criminal abortions in the Phenix City area, believe they have broken the back of the abortion business with the arrest and conviction of one operator. In the shadow of the huge military installations at Fort Benning and Lawson Air Force Base, the demands for the services of an abortionist are high among the thousands of camp followers and the teen-age set who fall too hard and too completely for the glamor of a uniform.

The investigators picked up many trails, some of them leading to doctors in Phenix City and Columbus, who didn't hesitate to perform an abortion for fees of $250 and upward.

Mrs. Malinoski said she spent more than half the money she made on whisky and in paying fines for drunkenness. She admitted she had a long record of arrests for drunkenness, and said she always paid off without standing trial.

In her trade, Louise must have been pretty good. Investigators could find no cases, traced to her, in which the patient had died following the illegal operation.

Her method was simple. By the use of a rubber tube inserted into the womb, she caused a miscarriage. The tube was left in place for several hours, and if all went well, the patient took things easy for a few days then resumed her normal activities.

An innately shrewd woman, Louise had two great faults. She loved whisky and conversation. Both contributed to her downfall when investigators got on the trail of the abortion racket. After her decision to make a clean breast of her past activities, she talked freely to anyone who would listen.

She was pleased to find, she said, that the food served in the Russell County Jail by the National Guard, was of a much better quality, and cleaner, than what she had been used to there in the past. Charges against her were first brought in Russell County, but the cases were later made on new warrants sworn out in Lee County, where she lived when the abortions were performed. Five cases were made against her to which she pleaded guilty.

Her hopes of obtaining probation were shattered when the judge ordered her to serve her time behind the grim walls of the prison. She broke down, declaring that she would become a church member when she got our and would attempt to make it up to her husband and to the grandson she was raising.

"I'm through," she sobbed. "I'll never be big-hearted again."