College for Safe-Crackers

CHAPTER XII

COLLEGE FOR SAFE-CRACKERS

EXPERIENCE IS THE BEST TEACHER.

It was this predicate on which C. O. (Head) Revel organized his college for safe-crackers and set up Johnnie Benefield as his Number One, magna cum laude, professor. Revel had the brashness, the tongue, the force that some people consider important to a successful college president. Benefield had the background of experience and know-how.

Benefield possessed another attribute. He didn't teach his trade to outsiders. To inquisitive busy-bodies he maintained an attitude of dignified shut-mouth.

Between the president and the professor, safe-cracking became a fine art in the States of Alabama and Georgia; sometimes even leaking over into Florida, Mississippi, and Tennessee. Naturally many loners and gangs operated independently of Revel, but he directed a number of the safe-cracking expeditions which sallied forth in the great Southeast.

While Revel spent a goodly portion of his time masterminding lotteries, he was never too busy to devote his talents to the safe-cracking which he loved so well. His crew would spot a likely looking business and draw up plans on the best method of busting in the store and opening the safe. Once the feat was accomplished, much of the stolen funds would land in Revel's gambling emporium. This was his private means of financing his illegal operations,

A strong right arm for Revel was Joe Allred, a gent who ran a filling station on the highway to Opelika. Across from his station was a barn-like building whose ownership to this day hasn't been finally determined but it was convenient to Allred as well as to the rest of the gang. It was a storehouse and workshop where all forms of tools were on hand. Not only did employees repair gambling equipment there, but they manufactured their own burglar's tools, sometimes built to specifications for a given job.

Benefield had in his possession a set of the best burglar tools some police officers had ever seen. This gear was found in a revved-up Hudson, one of the fastest cars in Alabama, when Guardsmen raided Benefield*s home in mid-summer of 1954. He had not one but three high-powered cars sitting in his yard. The Hudson was confiscated and put in the county jail yard while Benefield was given a nice suite in the jail itself.

Benefield claimed he was a carpenter. Better to do his job, he carried in the trunk of the Hudson a crowbar, a long-handled sledge hammer, a thirty-foot, one-inch thick piece of manila rope, soft-soled shoes, two saws, a pair of coveralls, a tarpaulin, an electric drill, two Z-shaped pieces of heavy cast iron, and other such oddments. Nowhere was there a nail or a hammer.

For the uninitiated, the "carpentry" tools which Benefield had could be put to other uses. The rope, for instance, was handy when a second story man chose to let himself down through a skylight. The soft-soled shoes would make a marauder catlike on his feet as well as deaden the sound of the creep as he worked his way across a wooden floor. The tarpaulin was thrown over windows so a nosy individual would not wonder at a glare coming from a darkened room at 2 A.M. Such items as the drill, the crowbar, the Z-shaped metal, and others all played their part in peeling, punching, or blowing a safe.

A good safe-cracker can bore a small hole alongside the combination to the safe. With a light on his forehead, similar to, but smaller than those on miners' caps, he can peer intorhe tumblers to watch them fall as he twirls the dial. This form of safe-busting also requires a sharp ear.

This was a tedious way of getting inside the depository and sometimes tiresome if the combination did not respond quickly. Benefield, as well as the students who studied in Revel's college, carried equipment with which they could crack the safe violently rather than by the gentle method.

Not always but occasionally the crew found it expedient to remove the safe from the building and complete the task in wide open spaces or in a secluded rendezvous where the danger of outside interference was reduced to a minimum. One mark common among all safe-crackers is that they never return the safe. This is a safety precaution, as it were.

Benefield's home contained a number of other items which the average carpenter finds unnecessary in his work. There was, for example, a .38 caliber pistol.

Now some people do reverse pistols and use them as clubs. Carpenters, though, find this an unsound manner of hammering and, unimaginative though it might seem, they prefer a hammer to a pistol for driving nails. A drawback to the pistol, also, is that it has no claws with which to extract a badly-driven nail.

In Benefield's home were dice, dice table covers, and thousands of chips. While an unhappy home-owner here and there may complain of being held up by a carpenter, few of them ever recall a carpenter offering to roll them high dice, double or nothing, for the woodwork job.

Benefield got his start in the underworld, and drew his first rave notices, when he was arrested in Carrollton, Georgia, for a murder attempt. After that, he began leaving the rough stuff to the other boys. He was a man small of stature who preferred the quieter, more studious aspects of life, although the opportunity and chance for advancement in the safe-cracking field strongly appealed to him. Like all boys who wish to get ahead in their chosen profession, Benefield determined to be a good safe-cracker.

He was. His reputation was established throughout the Southeast.

Benefield must have been a success. Without any visible means of support, he possessed the three high powered, late-model automobiles and was a family man to boot.

The way Benefield claimed to have acquired the Hudson, which got him into so much trouble, throws a highlight on the manner in which President Revel's college operated. Benefield's story was that he loaned fifty dollars to a Negro named Charlie Little, took the Hudson as security and had never looked into the trunk. Little said he had picked up the car from another Negro, Robert Johnson, who no longer needed the vehicle for Johnson had pleaded guilty to participating in the safe-cracking of a hardware store in Fitzgerald, Georgia, on October 31, 1953. He was given a prison sentence of from three to five years.

The Fitzgerald job turned out to be a real bamboozler. As much as $123,000 was said to have been stolen in that job while an additional $100,000 in jewels, in a cigar box within the same safe, was overlooked. The store owner, J. H. Dorminy, Jr„ said the figure was way too high.

The Dorminy job was planned by the underworld, in one of Revel's several headquarters, and the assignment was awarded to a minor Phenix City figure named James Bush.

Missions were parceled out on the basis of competitive bidding. The outfit which promised to cut Revel in with the biggest commission would get his blueprints on the place he had cased. So Bush was high bidder and the chore was his.

Bush had been in the process of making a name for himself.

In 1936, he had been convicted of second degree burglary and given three to four years. Ten years later he was arrested in connection with a $14,000 bond theft from a motorcycle company in Columbus, Georgia.

His most famous feat did not occur until May 9, 1950. Bush at that time, ran a joint known as the Spider Web, He employed a nineteen-year-old boy who, earlier that day, had been the subject of a warrant sworn out by Lester Davis, a former Florida club operator, on a charge of attempted auto theft. The accusation maddened Bush.

That night he and the youth waited for Davis to get into his own car. When Davis did, Bush gunned after him, down the main street of Phenix City, Careening through the area at eighty miles per hour. Bush opened fire on the fleeing Davis and while he missed the target he did manage to hit two houses which happened to get in his way, and almost scared the occupants to death.

They hadn't heard shooting like that since the last two attempts had been made on Hoyt Shepherd's life in similar automobile races.

Bush and his companion were arrested and charged with assault with attempt to murder. Bond originally was set at $10,000 each and later reduced, in keeping with Bush's reputation of being able to talk himself out of a straitjacket

A fun-loving fellow who always was ready to crack a skull or a safe, or play a prank. Bush was a handsome chap, the comedian of the mob. He generally was well liked even by those who opposed the racket rulers of the city.

Once Bush climbed atop the Manhattan Cafe on Fourteenth Street, hauling an air gun with him. As soldiers from Fort Benning legged it across the bridge spanning the Chattahoochee, Bush gleefully watched their pained expressions as they grabbed for the seat of their pants when the air gun pellets struck true.

This continued for half an hour on the warm Spring night, but discovery was inevitable as more and more habitues of the sin dives drifted our to watch the fun.

When a pellet slapped like the sting of a wasp against the thigh of a husky paratrooper, the soldier turned quickly enough to glimpse Bush ducking behind a ledge of the building. The GI swng to the top of a filling station and thence to the roof of the Manhattan after his tormentor. Ever ready for a fight. Bush cracked his rifle across the soldier's head, but it didn't faze the enraged trooper.

As the throng in the street watched the roof top battle-royal, it appeared Bush was about to suffer one of his few defeats in hand-to-hand combat. The soldier knocked him down. They rolled over and over until Bush grabbed a loose brick. He swung it viciously at his assailant's head, but as the dogface squirmed away from the blow that would have brained him, the brick slipped from Bush's hand and crashed through a skylight into the "Hawk" Howard Poker Room.

Howard, wearing a hat he probably never removes except to have a haircut, was in the process of dealing. The brick breezed past his hat brim, knocking it from his head, through his arms, and bounced off his chair onto the floor. Without taking his eyes off his stack of chips, Howard whipped his pistol from his holster, pointed it skyward and emptied it through the roof, forcing Bush and the soldier to jump for their lives. Howard never changed expression and never took his cigar from his mouth during the entire episode.

Bush, himself, on another occasion, used the poker room with a buddy to outwit Blink Roberts, one of the area's shrewdest poker masters.

Bush tied a string around his toe, ran the string through a wall and fastened the end of it to his partner's pants leg. He took up a position behind the wall from which he could see the hand held by Roberts and some of the other players. By jerking the string with his toe, Bush informed his friend when to bet and when to fold. The skullduggery was discovered and Bush and his cohort were lucky to escape with their hides intact.

This was the man selected to take charge of the Fitzgerald enterprise. Before he could move in, however, word of the impending burglary ticked out over the underworld grapevine. Henry Crawford heard about it while he was in Columbus and the size of the plum appealed to his love of the finer things in life. Crawford figured the task too important to be trusted to Bush and organized his own brotherhood to bust into the score ahead of Bush,

With three Negroes, Crawford made his coup d'etat on Halloween night. The safe was six feet by four feet and required three hours to open. Crawford's outfit first knocked off the combination and tried to punch their way inside. When they were unable to make headway, they used a crowbar to force a crack at the upper edge of the righthand door, then inserted a lever bar from a metal cutting machine.

As they pried the door, a vial of tear gas broke. One of the men fell prostrate to the floor but the others continued their task.

After successfully peeling the safe, in a manner which would have done credit to one of Revel's students, Crawford and the Negroes took the loot to a garage in Fitzgerald wliere Belmont Denniston and his wife, Mary McCollum Denniston, awaited them. Here a division of the spoils was made. The Dennistons both were to receive $10,000; two of the Negroes were to get $9,000 each and the third was to pick up $2,300. Crawford, as the brains, was to keep what was left.

News of the safe-cracking hit the front pages the next morning. Bush, in Phenix City, learned who was behind it almost immediately when one of Crawford's Negroes bought Bush*s Cadillac with twenty $100 bills. In this way Bush found out who had beaten him to the punch— or, the peel.

Man of action that he was. Bush telephoned Crawford time after time at the latter's home in Blakely, Georgia. He demanded a share of the plunder, threatening Crawford with death if he wasn't cut in on the swag. Crawford refused to budge. Bush, tired of the conversation, told Crawford on November 14 that he was coming to Blakely to get his divvy or kill Crawford. Not one to take a threat lightly, Crawford notified the Blakely police that his life was in danger.

Bush arrived after dark with two unidentified men who remained in the car while Bush went inside. Crawford sat in a chair with a .38 pistol in his lap. Bush gave him no time to use it.

He strode angrily up to Crawford, grabbed him by the neck and began shaking. Out from behind a door, where he had hidden for just such an emergency, stepped Harold Griggs. His first shot struck Bush in the back of the head and the Phenix City rough man fell bleeding to the floor. Standing over him, Griggs emptied his revolver into Bush's neck and head.

Police swarmed into the house. Crawford had asked them to wait outside in the belief that if Bush saw them he would act the part of just another nice fellow calling on a friend. Crawford and Griggs both were arrested and later sentenced to life imprisonment.

The Dennistons were given time as were the three Negroes who had helped pull the job. Members of this gang, it was learned later, had been wanted in Columbus and Russell County for burglaries of a restaurant, a finance company, a peanut company and other business houses.

Pallbearers and honorary pallbearers for Bush were, among others, *'Head" Revel, Wayne Revel, Frank Gullatt, Horace Webster, Ernest Youngblood, Ernest Allen, W. T. Thurmond, Jr., and France Knighton. These gallants were, for the most, night club owners in Phenix.

At Harold Griggs' trial, his defense attorney asked a witness, "Don't you know Revel is the head of a gang of burglars, dope peddlers and various other things like that?"

"I never heard of it," replied the witness.

A portion of the Fitzgerald cabbage found its way to Revel's gambling house on Dillingham Street. There, Charlie Ltttle won himself a portion of it. Little and Revel appeared to be good friends. The Negro owed Revel $1,600 and the only security he put up was his word as a gambler, while for the fifty dollars he owed Johnnie Benefield, he had to fork over a Hudson with a souped-up motor, a siren, and a trunk flull of "carpentry*' tools.

At Benefield's trial for possessing burglary tools in 1954, Solicitor George C. Johnson of Athens labeled Revel the "grand cyclops and chairman of the board of a crowd of burglars."

There was no doubt that he ran many institutions, not the least among them being his college for safe-cracking, A pupil was never too young to be enrolled. The fifteen-year-old son of a member of the faculty was arrested for stealing eighty-two dollars and then given probation. Within a few weeks he had taken a twelve-year-old accomplice on a mission where they stole an automobile battery. They returned to the same house the next day to lift several other pieces of equipment which had appealed to them.

Alabama National Guardsmen tracked the boys down at their school. They instantly admitted their wrong-doing. The younger was put in the custody of his patents while the fifteen-year-old boy had to spend a couple of nights in jail while authorities decided what to do with him. When he was released, he strutted out of the jail smiling broadly and shook hands with his grinning father.

It was almost like millions of other fathers meeting millions of other sons coming home from college. Only this time, the father probably was taking his son to college—the college for safe-cracking.

Revel's students now and again failed in their examinations and those who did ended up serving time. Johnnie Lee Vann and Willie Pope, both Negroes, and Thomas H. Smith flunked at crucial times. Revel and his bosom companion, Chief Deputy Sheriff Albert Fuller, went to Uniontown during Pope's trouble and interceded for him but were unsuccessful. When Smith went to trial in Barbour County, Professor Benefield was at his side and advised him to plead guilty.

For tuition^ Revel would accept automobiles. They were actually taken in lieu of gambling debts and stored in an underground lot beneath the Bridge Grocery, which had room for eight to ten cars.

So widespread was the Revel notoriety that people knew where to look when their property was burglarized. When the Carpenter Tobacco Company was busted into by thieves on December 13, 1952, the owner contacted Revel to find out who was responsible. Revel advised him to see Chief Fuller.

Carpenter not only saw Fuller but demanded full payment for the $800 worth of merchandise stolen. Fuller paid him at the rate of $200 monthly which he in turn had obtained from E. L. (Red) Cook,

If '' Head" Revel ever is jailed, authorities had better seal him into a room on which no locks are required. Otherwise, one of his former pupils is likely to come around with a hairpin or a shoelace or sensitive fingertips and open the gateway to freedom for his ex-boss. Revel would know just what to do with such an opportunity.

Chapter XII-The Information Line
CHAPTER XII

THE INFORMATION LINE 

THE MORNING MAIL ON July 3, 1954, brought four small, plastic discs to Russell Betterment Association Leader Hugh Bentley, and thereby touched of the most sensational developments ever to rock Phenix City's underworld.

The reverberations were felt in Georgia, as well as in Alabama, and were to start a Grand Jury in Columbus, Georgia, on a probe that ended with a blistering report of censure for a city commissioner.

The plain manila envelope which Bentley fished from his mailbox at the Columbus Post Office, contained recordings of telephone conversations between Gambler J. Hoyt Shepherd and a host of political figures, gambles and assorted hoodlums.

Bentley had been alerted by an anonymous telephone call the day before, and told that he would receive evidence bearing on the fight against crime. Bentley informed MacDonald Gallion, the personal representative of Governor Persons, of the call.

When the mail arrived, Bentley again called Gallion before he opened the package. Along with the discs were instructions to the effect that these recordings should be played before investigators and newspaper reporters.

In the backroom of Bentley's sporting goods store in Columbus, a record was put on the player as those gathered around waited impatiently. The first voice was that of Shepherd. He was talking with Jesse Binns, a member of the City Commission of Columbus.

For two hours the small group gathered in Bentley 's store listened to the telephone conversation which had been preserved for almost five years. While everyone agreed it was a highly interesting development, no one seemed to know how it should be handled.

The “phantom wire tapper" had promised that if the records were played and publicized, there would be others forthcoming.

Five days later, on July 8, Bentley got another telephone call. It was "the phantom" again.

This time the caller suggested that Bentley walk down the street a few steps and look in a telephone booth for a package. The delivery details are disclosed here for the first time:

When Bentley entered the small restaurant where he was to pick up the package, he saw a man inside the telephone booth. The man was dressed in coveralls and carried the tools of a telephone repairman. He seemed to be tinkering with the telephone.

Bentley hesitated for a moment, then walked toward the booth. The man glanced up from his work then turned quickly away. The RBA leader remarked that he had left something in the booth, and picked up a paper-wrapped package from the man's feet. As Bentley walked away, the "repairman" left the booth and hurried off.

The wire tapper had kept his word. Inside the package were two hundred and six more green, plastic discs.

For the next four weeks reporters listened for an average of eight hours daily to the recording sessions. Day after day headlines screamed out the secrets of fixed juries, corrupted  public officials, details of murders, safe crackings, narcotics and gambling operations.

The secret of the wire taps and the phantom wire tapper became the chief subject of conversation in Alabama and a large part of Georgia.

The first of the records played disclosed that a Columbus City Commissioner had promised Shepherd to fire the chief of police, whom Shepherd disliked. The Commissioner, Jesse Binns, discussed slot machines and gambling at length with the Phenix City slot machine king. He also sought political advice from the politico-gambler.

On another record Shepherd promised Godwin Davis, the gambling figure, to go to the Courthouse and "steady things," when it appeared that trouble might be brewing in the gamblers' paradise.

The recordings left no doubt that Shepherd was "Mr. Big" in Phenix City. To one caller, who wanted special information, Shepherd gave complete results of an election which was yet to be held.

Always master of the situation. Shepherd advised calm, when the wife of C. O. Revel shot the wife of another racket figure, Clyde Yarbrough. Shepherd said that the newspapers probably would not cause much trouble over the shooting because only women were involved.

Nora Revel, who taught a class of "Sunshine Girls" in a local church, fired three shots into Mrs. Yarbrough when she found the woman parked in a car with Nora's husband. Mrs. Yarbrough did not die, but she caused a few anxious hours among the gamblers who were afraid that it might direct public attention on the Phenix City vice operation.

Shepherd, as usual, took complete command. He quickly restored confidence to the gambling fraternity, and then turned to his more pressing business of lining up a Chicago liquor dealer to handle slot machines for him in three counties in Maryland, including the county abutting on the nation's capital.

Gamblers from many parts of the country were frequent telephone callers, and inter-state gambling was discussed. Shepherd expressed an interest in Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Maryland. He talked freely of the Phenix City operation, and on one occasion told Commissioner Binns, of Columbus, that he had his house "full of slot machines/'

The Bama Club, which he operated, was booking horse bets as well as running dice tables and many other forms of gambling, and he discussed all this with certain of his callers.

As the little green plastic discs continued to spin, Shepherd talked of gambling payoffs, of attempts on his life, and of the Johnny Frank Stringfellow murder. He tried hard to insure the conviction of Revel, Godwin Davis and Joe Allred in that case, and discussed evidence against them with law enforcement officers both in Georgia and Alabama.

On one occasion, he said that he had been told Davis and Revel were behind one of the attempts on his life, and added that if he knew that to be true he would leave the country.

But whether or not he believed his gambling cohorts had attempted to kill him with a shotgun blast fired into his car, he pulled every trick to insure their conviction of murder.

Later he was to deny to the two racketeers that he had urged their conviction in the Stringfellow case, and accused newsmen of a deliberate plot to split the gambling fraternity.

The recordings revealed that the wily Shepherd was well versed in gambling laws of all states, and that he was sought out for political advice by politicians and political hopefuls in many parts of Georgia,

On one occasion he told Phenix City Commissioner, Elmer Reese, that if he didn't stop taking "them pills" he would wind up on the needle.

Reese remarked that he had taken some tablets one night the week before on Dillingham Street, and wound up in Miami, adding that he was "through."

Reese was later to become mayor. After the cleanup started, he was charged with willful neglect of duty, and told that unless he resigned his office, impeachment proceedings would be started. Reese later pleaded guilty to the charge of neglect of duty and was fined. On that same day he tearfully handed his resignation in to his fellow commissioners.

Reese, a druggist, who beat the machine in 1939 on a reform ticket, later became one of the principal cogs in the political setup of the city. On one occasion he pleaded guilty in Federal Court at Opelika to a charge of selling barbiturates without a prescription. He was fined but not required to serve a prison term.

Shepherd often expressed concern over the drinking habits of Reese, and discussed this behavior with friends on the telephone. On one occasion, a friend told Shepherd of hauling Reese in a drunken condition from one of the night spots.

Shepherd suggested that the friend employ stem measure to keep the City Commissioner on the wagon in the future.

The gambling operations and political maneuvers were fully discussed on the recording discs. No doubt remained that Shepherd was the political, as well as the gambling boss of Phenix City and Russell County, holding the fate of office holders in his hands. He was only slightly less influential in Columbus.

The recordings disclosed, too, that Shepherd suspected a Russell County deputy sheriff in one of the four attempts to kill him. On one occasion, he told a caller that he thought a recent attempt on his life was made by "that girl; a freckled-faced boy or a deputy sheriff."

He offered a large reward for information on his would-be slayers, at the same time expressing doubt that he would be willing to prosecute in event he found out their identity.

Shepherd knew that his telephone line was tapped, having received four of the recordings through the mail in 1949. He often discussed the tapping of his telephone, and sometimes warned callers that their conversations might be recorded. He offered a reward of $25,000 for information leading to the identity of the wire tapper.

But knowing that his line was tapped, and that his conversations might be overheard by unfriendly ears, did not deter Shepherd from talking at great length to anyone who called. He was a confirmed blabber-mouth, a fact which often caused concern and discomfort among his associates.

The recorded conversations could roughly be divided into four categories: Personal family matters; business calls dealing with gambling or politics; top-level strategy matters with Shepherd's partner, Jimmy Matthews, Sheriff Ralph Mathews, Commissioner Binns, or other political figures; conversations dealing with the Stringfellow murder or with attempts on Shepherd's life.

Listening reporters skipped through the personal conversations and little of these reached the newspapers. They often concerned Shepherd's first wife, a confirmed alcoholic, who talked drunkenly about divorce.

Odd though it seemed, it was Mrs. Shepherd who wanted the divorce and Hoyt who kept putting it off. On several occasions he promised to sign the divorce papers the first time she called him when sober.

She pointed out that this meant never, as she had no intention of ever being sober.

Josephine, whom Shepherd later married, answered many of these calls, and sometimes the verbal exchange would become heated with harsh name-calling. But Josephine seemed tolerant of Mrs. Shepherd, and on many occasions would obtain medical aid for her without mentioning it to Shepherd himself.

Perhaps she felt she was in a position to be charitable toward the woman she had superseded in the affections of the gambling man. Her new position lent prestige and enchantment to the former high dice girl, and she wore the new mantle with grace and forbearance.

At home, Shepherd was a frugal man who wanted every buck spent to bring a full dollar value. The man who thought nothing of wagering $25,000 on a gambling table complained about the price of a movie.

He would regularly question Josephine about the price of things she purchased, even groceries and drug store items. He had a second-hand tractor in use on his farm located ten miles from Phenix, and he spent much time shopping around for used parts to keep it running.

Under the heading of business, however, he spoke of money as a mere commodity that was necessary in the building and running of a huge political and gambling empire. He was always open to a good business tip and could analyze it quickly, figuring from his own vast store of experience the mathematical probabilities of success. On one occasion he told a caller that a commercial swimming pool was the poorest type of investment, and listed facts and figures to prove his point.

As a business man, Shepherd knew that dollars poured into the right political channels could return a flood of profits, directly or indirectly. He and his associates were never miserly in contributions to political candidates who met their qualifications. Shepherd talked of putting money into a city race in Columbus, as well as all kinds of elections in Russell County and the state of Alabama.

On one of the records he discussed with Matthews the amount they should contribute in a Congressional race in their district, and in the same conversation, decided to give "twenty-five" to the campaigns of Alabama's junior senator, John Sparkman, and Georgia's senior senator, Walter George,

It is to be supposed neither of the two senators knew that they numbered Shepherd and Matthews among their financial supporters at campaign time. On at least one occasion, however, the suave Matthews was received in Washington's highest political circles, and had his picture taken in a group which included Senators Sparkman and Lister Hill, of Alabama, and several House members, including then-Representative Laurie C. Battle, whose district included Birmingham.

The "twenty-five," which the gambling duet decided to contribute to Sparkman and George, was not further identified or explained. To those who knew best the political operations of Shepherd and Matthews, however, the figure mentioned did not mean twenty five dollars, but could have meant any multiple of that amount.

The recordings revealed how agile Shepherd could be on his political feet when he had backed the wrong man— which didn't happen often.

He once agreed with a friend that the election of James E. Folsom as Alabama's Governor in 1946 was an "awful thing," but he wasn't long in getting his political fences in repair.

A candid conversation between Shepherd and Commissioner Binns began with the gambler saying that he had an engagement to meet one of Governor Folsom 's brothers, who had just come into town.

Binns: "That's an awful thing Alabama has done."

Shepherd: "Awful."

Binns: "Oh, it is. You'll agree with that, won't you? "

Shepherd: "You just don't know. You don't know."

Binns: "What do you mean by that?"

Shepherd: "Some time you come over here and I'll tell you confidential some stuff I know is going on."

Binns: * 'Well, I'll run over some night now,"

Shepherd: "There is an old boy over here fixing to get $100,000 worth of insurance and one of them whisky accounts."

Binns: "Yeah?"

Shepherd: "They came over here and sold four or five thousand worth of those Forums." (Folsom's Forum, a political magazine.)

Binns: "Is that right?"

Shepherd: "Hell, yeah. I paid S200 worth on buying them papers for voters to be sent around here. I get two a week. This is the damndest administration that ever was ..." Shepherd cautioned Binns not to repeat anything he had said about the Governor, and Bums replied, "Yeah."

Shepherd said Folsom "is all right in my book. He said he's got Russell County in his vest pocket." He quoted the Governor as remarking, "You know what I like about them fellows down there? They can produce."

Binns: "Well, he's a pistol, ain't he?"

The talk shifted to the race for delegate to the national Democratic Convention, and Shepherd told Binns that Folsom wanted them to support "those other fellows over there instead of Hill and Sparkman." He said that Mayor Homer D. Cobb had told Folsom he wasn't going to do it. (Cobb was mayor and machine boss at that time.)

Binns: "Cobb is a good man."

Shepherd: "They can't make him change it. He said he can't leave his old friends. He said, now, if it was Big Jim running it would be something else, but he's asking me to take his friends against my lifelong friends and he said “I can't do it." Folsom later became a candidate for delegate and announced also that he would accept the nomination for President, if offered to him. He was not elected delegate and his presidential aspirations— for the time being— were crushed.

Binns: "Well, I don't blame him for that."

Shepherd: "Weil, we ain't going to do it. We may get in bad, but I think we can settle any bad situation we get into,"

Binns: "You do?"

Shepherd: "Yeah."

Binns: "I don't doubt you can. You were against him to begin with and you settled that."

Shepherd: ** Yeah, we're his first love now."

Binns: "That . . . sonuvabitch's getting it everywhere, ain't he?"

Shepherd: "I don't know if he is or not, but it's all around him." The buzzer at the door announced the arrival of Shepherd's expected guest, ending the conversation.

As the commander-in-chief of the gambling fraternity, Shepherd always was alert for possible danger, and met every threat in his own decisive way before it got started.

He left nothing to chance. He placed carefully selected members on every Grand Jury which sat in Russell County for many years, and was always sure of having enough friends on the Grand Jury to beat down any adverse report or indictment. When necessary the entire force of the syndicate would be turned loose on rebellious jurors.

The boss man maintained constant contact with the local officials. In one conversation with Sheriff Ralph Matthews, the sheriff told Shepherd that his chief deputy, Albert Fuller, was making "a little drive" because too many slot machines were being pushed into the city area where they were "piling up."

Shepherd thought that was a good idea, but wanted to be sure they didn't bother some machines he had loaned to City Clerk Jimmie Putnam. He said he was just trying "to make an operator out of Jimmie."

Sheriff Matthews said he would tell Fuller to handle the matter in the way Shepherd suggested. Shepherd told the sheriff not to mention this conversation to Putnam. Shepherd said he would absorb Putnam's losses if the machines were picked up.

Shepherd did call Putnam, and assured him it was all right for him to operate. He warned Putnam in another conversation that the machines loaned him by Shepherd made liberal payoffs, and if they paid too much he should call C. C. Griggs "and have him come out and block it out for you. But don't tell anybody what you're doing."

Shepherd talked of many things to many people. To Sheriff Earnest Howell of Muscogee County, Georgia, he frequently talked about murders, especially the sensational Stringfellow murder already mentioned. Sheriff Howell, who has since been cleared by a Grand Jury investigation of any improper trafficking with Phenix City's gamblers, told Shepherd that he knew who was responsible for one of the attempts on Shepherd's life. Sheriff Howell asserted that the men who tried to kill Shepherd were supposed to be his friends. This upset Shepherd, who remarked that if he knew this to be true, he would leave the country. His children, he said, had been urging him to leave. Howell said it would be impossible to prove a case against the attackers, since nobody would appear in court to testify.

"They know it would be death if they do," the Sheriff said.

Shepherd brought up the subject of a body that had floated up out of the Chattahoochee, and asked the Sheriff if he knew anything about that. The body had been weighted down, but came untied and floated to the surface. The victim never was positively identified.

The Sheriff said he had some information on that but didn't know the man's identity.

Shepherd said the man might be "old Turk Hall that I told you about once." He said Hall was the man who first was believed to have done the Stringfellow job.

The conjecture of whose the floating body might be turned to Willie Pittman, the tax assessor's son, who had dropped from sight mysteriously a couple of years before. Even today the disappearance remains shrouded in mystery like a score of other murders and disappearances of local citizens.

Next on the Shepherd information line was a Columbus lawyer Shepherd wanted to represent him in a slot machine case there. The talk turned to politics and Shepherd, the master politician, analyzed the coming election. He said

Columbus was "pretty much an enforcement town," and added that the people would vote for the men in office if they didn't get too far out of line.

"I'm setting over here and looking at that town," Shepherd said, '*and I see how those people vote.'*

The lawyer agreed that Shepherd could sit on the Alabama side of the river and '*tell more about our politics than we can over here."

Shepherd complained that he was always being approached by candidates for financial support, and often contributed to all sides just to play it safe. *'They expect the sugar out of me," he said, "and I can't go in there and give them both too much." He noted that such contributions were not deductible on income tax.

Shepherd returned again and again to a discussion of the attempt on his life in which he and Josephine both were wounded. Shepherd said the people who did it were local, despite the fact he had put out the word they were out-of- town professionals.

"If they had been professionals," Shepherd said, "I'd be kicking up daisies."

He said one of the men had used a tommy gun, and that he could have gotten the federal government in on the case from that angle. He hadn't, he said, '^because my shirt tails ain't so clean now,"

Shepherd had a wry sense of humor, and liked to refer to himself sometimes as a "hoodlum." With a political race coming up, Shepherd talked with State Representative Ben Cole about lining up the candidates.

"Ben, don't you think that we should take Pittman (tax collector), Roberts (tax assessor), Shannon (probate judge), the Sheriff, you, your brother, Dudley, Uncle Joe, four of the city commissioners and two or three of us hoodlums and have us a meeting and decide on these people? If we do it might keep a lot of them people from coming out and running."

A one sentence telephone call from an unidentified person informed Shepherd that "that fellow is back in town." This set off a chain reaction, with Shepherd and Matthews discussing information received to the effect that Head Revel and Godwin Davis were planning to hold up the Ritz Cafe, to get the $30,000 in the safe. Davis and Revel had a simple plan, Matthews said, of throwing the night watchman in the river before pulling the job.

"They're no good bastards," Shepherd said.

The talk turned to a murder and Shepherd theorized that a man had killed his own brother while under the influence of dope, or to get money for dope. "They'd kill a baby for that stuff," he said.

Binns was back on the line, and Shepherd told him he was not going to keep any large amount of money at his home any more because he didn't want "folks coming out here burning my toes to make me tell where it is,"

Lum Griggs, one of Shepherd's gambling house employees, called next to say a "Mr. Folsom from Montgomery” was there and wanted to see Shepherd. Griggs said he didn't know which Folsom it was "but he looks just like Big Foot." That was the nickname for Alabama's towering Governor.

Shepherd invited the visitor to come out to his home and the offer was accepted.

A woman known as "Goldie" died in bed with Shepherd's estranged wife, and it looked for a time that trouble might be brewing. Goldie was the daughter of "Ma" Beachie, operator of the famous "Beachie's Swing Club." Goldie was a dope addict and died from an overdose.

The recorded talk between Shepherd and Matthews revealed that Goldie, shortly before her death, had been drinking with a man " 'Snooks' (Grady Shepherd) had sent to have a good time."

Shepherd was worried about why the details of Goldie's death had been withheld from the press.

"There ain't no point in that," he said, "unless they are trying to find out who that fellow was she was with. . . . Them waiting like that, seems like they might be trying to jiggle it around someway."

That call was followed by one from a woman who said Shepherd's wife had just called for aid. She quoted Mrs. Shepherd as saying "they could give me twenty-five years, and now I don't know what to do."

The gambling boss seemed little concerned with that bit of information, but in another call he dispatched one of his house men, known as "Fats," to scout around Columbus as if looking for a job, and see what was going on there.

In quick succession, Shepherd discussed City Clerk Putnam; a meeting of the League of Women Voters in Columbus; a petition which he and a Columbus lawyer were having circulated; referred to two other Columbus lawyers as "the brains" and "fixers" and revealed that there was danger that some of Phenix City's spots might be placed off-limits by Fort Benning authorities.

Shepherd said Putnam would be after the probate judge job "hot and heavy if he knew he did not have to be a lawyer to qualify for the post."

The lawyer Shepherd talked to promised that he would have his wife propose a political resolution at a meeting of the League of Women Voters that afternoon. They talked about progress of the political petition they had "fourteen citizens" circulating, and gloated over the fact that they had a powerful labor organization lined up for the election.

Suddenly, the busy line brought news of more trouble brewing at home. This time it grew out of an argument in the Sheriff's office, which was discussed at length by Shepherd and his partner. Matthews said a man he identified as Dalton, had told "J. D." (Mayor J. D. Harris) that Chief Deputy Fuller had told him he could open up and operate.

Shepherd received this bit of news with something less than enthusiasm, and turned to a fight between James Bush and Lester Davis, over some lOU's. They discussed Fuller at some length, and were distressed that the swashbuckling law officer seemed to be taking sides.

Shepherd asked Jimmy Matthews whether he had told Sheriff Mathews the latest about his Chief Deputy. Matthews said he didn't know what his partner meant.

"About Fuller propping Bush?" Shepherd said.

Matthews: 'I’m not talking about that."

Shepherd; "I'm talking about Fuller propositioning Bush to go into business with him."

The partners got into a heated argument at this point, with Matthews saying "I didn’t tell the man anything about that."

It soon simmered down to a discussion about Fuller's arrest of some girl, sweetheart of an Army lieutenant, and the threat that had been posed by that. Shepherd said Buck Billingsley (later to be operator of The Ritz) got all the girl's money and an $85 wrist watch for making her bond.

Shepherd was worried about a threat from the girl's boyfriend that he was going to tell the Alabama Attorney General about the case.

The bitter rivalry between the Phenix City gamblers and the Columbus, Georgia, groups led by Fayette Leebern and his son, Donald, and the subsequent killing of the elder Leebern, became the subject of much discussion on the Shepherd telephone.

As related elsewhere in this book, Leebern was killed at a political victory celebration at the Southern Manor Club, in Phenix, and Hoyt Shepherd was one of the three charged with the murder. The other two were Jimmy Matthews and Grady Shepherd.

After all had been cleared, Hoyt Shepherd laid the actual killing on Grady. He also told James Carpenter of an offer he said the eider Leebern had once made to Grady to kill Godwin Davis.

It was right after a store which Leebern owned in Phenix City was burned to the ground, and Davis was suspected as the arsonist.

Shepherd said his brother told him about Leebern's offer of $3,000 to kill Davis. He related the conversation, as it had been repeated to him:

Grady: "Do you mean kill him?*'

Leebern: "Yeah, dammit, i want that bastard killed, and you'll never regret it."

Grady: "Hell, man, I ain't in the killing business.”

Shepherd said Grady had assured Leebern that he "wouldn't let Davis run over him" and that Grady added he would kill Davis or any other person who tried to run over him.

Carpenter: "There wasn't nothing that Leebern wouldn't hire done."

A new officer of the Alabama Beverage Control Board arrived in Phenix, and the racket fraternity set about quickly to see whether he would cause trouble.

Fuller called Shepherd and told him about the new man, and Shepherd told the Deputy to tell the Sheriff that the number of special investigators from the state were "going to be cut to zero."

Fuller said that was a good idea, as there were too many people running around.

The new man, according to Fuller, was assigned by Folsom as a special investigator to work with ABC Agent Ben Scroggins. He said the man never had taken a civil service examination but that the Governor had wanted to put him on, so he "just stuck him on something,"

Shepherd: "Special investigator in his office?"

Fuller; "That's what he said. But he's just an ABC agent."

Shepherd: "What's his name?"

Fuller; "Brantley. From down in Pike County, Troy. Old country boy. Seems like a pretty good fellow. First time he policed at all. We let him stay down in jail to see what kind of fellow he is."

Shepherd: "He's liable to put a fire under the whole works before election time,"

Fuller: "I don't think so, I talked to Walter Hendricks yesterday (ABC license inspector), and he told me that Ralph Suttles, his supervisor, told all of them license men, like Walter, that he had orders not to bother no music or nothing beer parlors, unless cities had exercised an option right to machines, nothing. (At that time a state law forbade music authorize it by special election.) It was strictly up to the local authorities. Didn't want none of these state men picking up or bothering or molesting any of these places at all. So they must be fixing to loosen up all over the state— more than they are,"

Shepherd: "I talked to the people over there last night and they said if any son-of-a-hitch comes around saying they want this or that, tell them to go to hell."

Fuller; "They're just coming from too many angles, Hoyt."

Shepherd: "Bucking them ain't been doing nothing but popping.”

Fuller: "That's what I say. Too many riding."

Shepherd; "We haven't been hit so hard yet, but we're not getting any benefit out of it. I think we finally got it straightened out."

Fuller: "Good."

Shepherd: "I don't think we're going to have much of that either. I’m going to tell Big Jim to send me an order. I'm going to tell them the goddam man to see. Ain't nothing to them people."

Fuller: "Aw, hell, they can't do nothing. They ain't going to do nothing without he tells them to."

Shepherd: * 'They do, they'll lose their jobs. I look for the whole state to open up. myself."

So it was that the recordings made by the phantom wire tapper revealed many things that had before been matters only of whispered gossip— indicating that the state administration, from the lowest ABC agent right up to the Governor's mansion was deeply indebted to, if not controlled, by the underworld of Phenix City,

These revelations were made little more than two months after the voters of Alabama had voted Big Jim Folsom into the Governor*s office for a second term, which began January 18, 1955,

Will Phenix City again rise and flourish under the influence of a friendly administration? Folsom has promised that he will keep it clean. The people of Alabama, and especially Phenix City, are anxiously awaiting developments of the next four years.

*                                              *                                                    *

The mystery of the phantom wire tapper may never be solved. But this much is known. The man did not make the recordings for blackmail purposes. If he had been interested in a profitable transaction, Shepherd would have provided a ready market. When the first stories on the recordings hit the street, Shepherd paid a call to Acting Attorney General Bernard F. Sykes. He offered a "deal" if Sykes would stop the playing of the records.

Shepherd said he would bring to Sykes the signed resignations of Sheriff Matthews, Mayor Reese, and Solicitor Ferrell. On that occasion. Shepherd evidenced much distress about the recordings, and even talked about trying to obtain a federal court injunction to halt publication of the contents.

Many attempts were made by newspaper men and the RBA to contact the wire tapper, but all failed. Reporters did learn the identity of the man Shepherd had accused of making the recordings. He was Pat Patterson (no relation to the slain Attorney General nominee) who operated a drive-in restaurant in Columbus. Patterson was interviewed and denied making the recordings. He did confirm the information that Shepherd had accused him of tapping his telephone.

Patterson, a close friend of Donald Leebern and Fayette Leebern, the man Shepherd was tried for killing, told the reporters that he had tapped his own telephone in order to learn what his wife was doing. He said the electrician who attached a tap on his line, later told Shepherd that he, Patterson, was the one who had made the recordings of Shepherds telephone conversation.

Shepherd, Patterson said, called him up and asked him to come to Phenix City to discuss the matter. He told the gambler, he said, that he wasn't fool enough to come over the river "after what you did to Leebern."

Shepherd also suspected Patterson of being behind one of the attempts on his life, though Patterson said he was registered in a hotel in Miami Beach at the time, and told Shepherd of that fact.

Today, Patterson, a sick man, lies in a back room of his drive-in with a pistol beside his medicine bottles. He is not scared— just cautious.

The recordings were sent to at least two persons, other than Bentley. Shepherd received four, which referred to the attempt to kill him.

At about the same time, a small packer of the recordings saved the job of Police Chief John Newberry, of Columbus. In the recordings received by the RBA, Police Commissioner Jesse Binns, of Columbus, was on record as telling Shepherd that, if he didn't like the chief, "he's dead."

Binns apparently was promising to fire the police chiefs should Shepherd give the word.

On the day before Newberry was scheduled to get the axe, he received in the mail, recordings of talks between Binns and Shepherd. Newberry was never fired.

Binns was at the meeting the next day, but did not propose the firing of Newberry.

The man whose job was saved by the timely arrival of just the right recording was one of the closest friends of the man whom Shepherd accused of making those recordings- Pat Patterson.

Chapter XIV-Murder in the Rogues' Morgue
CHAPTER XIV  

'''MURDER IN THE ROGUES MORGUE '''

A DEAD MAN TELLS NO TALES. Neither does he serve as a witness in the court trial of his murderer. If the man who shot him has an observer who swears the killer fired in self- defense, what can a poor corpse do but turn over in his grave? Unless, of course, he was shot in self-defense.

What a turning over in graves must be going on in Phenix City!

A reason always exists for a killing- jealousy, rage, ambition, frustration, greed, self-defense, temptation. There was no lack of motives for Phenix City's wholesale slaughter. Most of the victims were not pure as the driven snow. Phenix City butchering was done in gangland style and the man who pulled the trigger as often as not might be a cop "in line of duty,"

In this chapter are outlined three of the murders which still are talked of in Phenix City. A number of odd circumstances surrounds each. At this writing, no one has been punished for two of the homicides. In the third, justice was delayed four years because nobody could be found to fit the description of the missing man’s corpus delicti.

When retribution did triumph, it managed to win only two-fifths of a victory. The three men who hired the killers got away scot free. The two actual triggermen have been given life time social security In a federal pen in Georgia,

The first execution goes like this:

Once upon a time there was a soldier named John Frank Stringfellow. John Frank was no angel and he was placed in the federal detention barracks for violation of the military code. There the government could and did keep an eye on him, until, as it happened, they concluded that John Frank would be able to help them in a liquor conspiracy case. They told him what he was to do and turned him loose. The year was 1944.

Pretty soon they got to missing John Frank. He had got around somewhat but where he was now nobody knew. At least, those who knew weren't saying.

It was known that John Frank had made contact with two men named Dave Walden and Johnny McVeigh, and that the three had been scouting around in Georgia. This was in performance of John Frank's duty but while Walden and McVeigh still were roaming the countryside, John Frank had disappeared completely.

On a clear day in 1948, bones were found near the surface of the ground ten miles from St. Augustine, Florida. Now this was not normal. Especially since the bones appeared to be human. The sheriff was told. He recognized foul play and went to work.

The trail led into Georgia and soon it began to look as though John Frank finally had turned up at this late date. Walden and McVeigh were apprehended for the murder. Shown the error of his ways, McVeigh confessed to his part in the crime and said that he and Walden had killed John Frank Stringfellow on September 21, 1944. His confession was introduced at his trial. A condensed version of it follows:

"We, Dave Walden and I, went to the Manhattan Bar in Phenix City, and there we had a conversation with Joe Allred, "Head" Revel, and Godwin Davis, and there they agreed to give us $1,000 to do away with John Frank Stringfellow, who was a witness against the three for a violation of the alcoholic tax law.

"Dave and I got John Frank Stringfellow down at Brunswick, Georgia. Around seven o'clock in the evening Dave and I started to give ourselves a shot of morphine and John asked me for one too. I fixed his shot. I melted this by putting a match under the hypo gun. He shot himself in the main line and in a few seconds he said a cuss word and fell over on the bed. He lay there on the bed about one and a half hours, then we put him in the car and drove slowly to Rebecca, and by the time we got to Rebecca, he was dead.”

"We then drove to about ten miles out of St. Augustine to what is known as Ponte Vedra, We then took John Stringfellow's body out of the car, then we shot him with a .22 pistol. We then went to St. Augustine and called up Mr. 'Head' Revel. He told us to come to his home.

"We went and told him what we had. 'Head' Revel got a shovel and we put it in our car. We then went to the body. Revel looked the body over and then returned in about an hour with some lime. We stayed there and dug the hole while he was going for the lime. I saw Reve! hand Dave the money— $1,000 in one hundred dollar bills."

That, according to Brother McVeigh, was how John Frank came to no good end. McVeigh later repudiated the confession but he was up against some stiff evidence by that time.

John D. Dorminy, foreman of the Grand Jury which indicted him, testified that McVeigh had described to the Jury how John Frank was killed, McVeigh, said Dorminy, told of putting a glass over John's Frank's mouth to see if he made moisture on the inside. John Frank didn't, being dead to this world.

Sheriff E, L. Howell of Muscogee County in Columbus, Georgia, said McVeigh admitted to him that John Frank had been given two grains of morphine and four tablets of H.M.C, which stands for hyoscine morphine cactus, a tablet containing narcotic. The sheriff said McVeigh claimed Revel had paid them the $1,000 and that $500 of it came from Davis and $250 each from Revel and Allred.

In stepped the federal men to tell how John Frank was supposed to have been helping them. C. W. Peets, of the United States Treasury Department, said John Frank was to have been a witness against Davis, Revel, and Allred in a liquor case. McVeigh, said Peets, had told him that was why John Frank was killed. The liquor case against Davis, Revel, and Allred fell to pieces without Stringfellow's testimony.

What actually killed John Frank either was the shot he gave himself in Georgia or the shot with the .22 Walden gave him in Florida. A fine point arose, with Georgia authorities insisting death had occurred in their state. Georgians feared that should Walden and McVeigh be tried in certain parts of Florida, they would be freed because their employer, "Head" Revel, was known thereabouts as "Mr. Head Revel."

Walden had done the actual trigger work after McVeigh chickened out. McVeigh had the pistol and was aiming it at John Frank's head when he broke down.

"I can't do it," he said. "Johnnie served time for me at Kilby without ratting. He's sort of a friend."

"Gimme th' damned gun," Walden said, and fired the bullet into John Frank's head. The body didn't even twitch.

McVeigh wasn't as squeamish later when he was in the back seat of the car with Walden's wife. Some sort of to-do took place and Mrs. Walden became unruly just as the car was going past a policeman. McVeigh put his hands over her mouth and then her throat to keep her quiet.

When they were at a safe enough distance from the officer, McVeigh loosened his hold. He took one look at Mrs. Walden, gulped, and punched his buddy on the shoulder.

"Dave," he said. "I've killed your wife."

They buried her in Florida, too, in the Okefenokee Swamp.

At McVeigh's trial for John Frank's death, no witnesses came to his aid, although he denied any knowledge of the killing. It seems the jury did not believe him, McVeigh was sentenced to life imprisonment. He appealed to the Georgia Supreme Court which upheld the jury verdict. Walden pleaded guilty.

Here, then, was a cute little drama. The triggermen were in cold storage but the paymasters were on the outside, doing business as usual. Davis, Revel, and Allred were arrested for complicity, but the cases against them were dismissed when McVeigh and Walden repudiated their confessions and refused to testify against the other three. In Georgia, a statement can be used against the person who makes it, but not against someone else without supporting witnesses.

There have been reports that McVeigh and Walden are ready to spill once more. Maybe so, maybe not. Perhaps they feel that a life in prison is better than a dirk in the dark. For, as they have reason to know, a dead witness gets so little out of life these days.

It is quite possible that Walden and McVeigh are going to do some singing yet. Now safely in prison, they feel they have been double-crossed. Lawyers for Davis, Revel, and Allred visited the two shortly after their terms began. The attorneys urged them not to talk. The lawyers said they would support the families of Walden and McVeigh and would get to work at once on a parole as soon as one was possible. This bargain, if made, appears not to have been kept.

Walden and McVeigh insist that the arrangement was agreed to but has not been fulfilled. Each day that passes should make their bitterness grow worse until the time does come when they figure the part of the nobleman doesn't become them.

On that day, no doubt, they will confess once more.

*                          *                           *

Can a man fire a pistol in a closed house without leaving a bullet mark somewhere on the inside? Witnesses, for the state, who were present in the home of Pete and Guy Hargett on the eve of March 3, 1949, claim that's exactly what happened. None of them say that the bullet went out the window. According to their versions, the bullet struck neither a wall or ceiling.

The man who pulled the trigger, if a trigger was pulled, was Guy Wilson Hargett. He was in no position to argue with the official findings. He was dead, you see, shot five times by the Chief Deputy Sheriff, Albert Fuller. Five bullets lined Hargett from belt buckle to forehead. It was Albert Fuller's first killing. From it dated Fuller's new swagger, his importance in Russell County as a quick man with a gun. The feeling it gave Fuller was one of power, but in his whining, sissified voice, he professed deep remorse.

"It was him or me," he said, "I saw him draw a gun from his belt when we went in the room where he was, and he fired, I hate it. Why, I’ve never even wounded a man before in tine of duty."

The shooting took place, according to what Sheriff H. Ralph Matthews, Jr., told the papers the next day, because Federal Alcohol Tax Agent Grady C Cook had visited the Hargett home with F. R. Williams and Jasper B. Merk, Georgia alcohol agents. Hargett's house was in Phenix City, Alabama. The agents wanted to determine if Hargett was transporting and selling illegal whisky.

As the agents arrived, a friend of the Hargett brothers, Sam Beck, backed his auto into the road, blocking the officers. Beck and the two Hargetts all pulled guns on the officials who decided that discretion was the better part of valor. They reversed their field and departed.

Agent Cook reported the unfriendly greeting to Sheriff Matthews. Chief Fuller and Deputy Ben Scroggins were sent back to the Hargetts', with the alcohol tax men. This time the lawmen got into the house. To the right, in the hallway, was a door standing slightly ajar.

Thus far in this narrative, there seems to be no conflict in testimony. From here on, there are choices to be made.

The sheriff said that when Fuller spotted the half open door he pushed it open wide. There was Guy Hargett with a gun and quick as a flash he fired at Fuller. The bullet missed. Fuller drew and pumped five bullets into Hargett before the man could fire another shot. After filling Guy Hargett full of hot lead, Fuller slapped a gun from the hand of Pete Hargett, thus heroically preventing further bloodshed.

Deputy Scroggins was not in entire agreement with Sheriff Matthews' version— it neglected to describe Scroggins' own mammoth feats under duress.

"I went in just ahead of Fuller," Scroggins declared. "Guy Hargett was seated and I saw a gun sticking from his belt. He cursed us and pulled his gun. I grabbed for him and he jumped up. I hit his gun hand, and he fired into the air. Then Fuller shot him."

So there you had Scroggins saying that Hargett's bullet went into the air, where it would have hit the ceiling, and Sheriff Matthews saying the shot whistled past Fuller, in which case it would have had to go into the wall.

At times of quick action, it would be entirely possible- and, in fact, happens all the time— for people on the scene to have different impressions of an event. But under no conditions could a bullet hit a ceiling or wall without leaving some kind of mark, providing it did not fly through an already existing hole.

Arch B. Ferrell, then circuit solicitor, and Coroner Ralph B. Thornell investigated before Hargett's body was removed. They both ruled justifiable homicide. They said Fuller fired in line of duty.

Two women who were in the house at the time of the shooting said Guy Hargett was asleep in his chair when he was shot. His gun was not fired, they added.

In 1954 when Coroner Thornell was asked about the killing, he remembered that when he arrived Hargett had been sprawled in a chair. He remembered one bullet had been fired from Hargett's weapon, but, he admitted, no bullet hole ever was found. He had no explanation for this phenomenon.

Sheriff Matthews said a large number of lottery tickets were found in the house along with several stacks of money. The Hargetts had been in the lottery business for a year and a half before the shooting. Here was the crux of the matter. Their operations were interfering with those of the boys in the syndicate. This interference ceased the night of March 3, 1949.

*                        *                            *

Eighteen months later, Billy Kent, a bartender, stood behind the rail at the Manhattan Cafe, ready, willing, and able to satisfy the wishes of his customers. In came Clarence Franklin Johns, and what he desired was not something served out of bottles. He wanted all the cash in the joint. With his pistol drawn, he didn't get much opposition from anyone present on that September 2, 1950. With the cash in hand, he turned and fled.

Kent grabbed his own pistol and blasted at the fugitive, hitting Johns twice, but Johns made the getaway car and roared away with a man later identified as Clyde Gordon behind the wheel, Gordon drove to a Negro cemetery where Johns got out, and once again Gordon gunned the motor and careened down the road.

He didn't get far. Seven miles west of Phenix City, Gordon's car swerved across the road, striking another vehicle. Both Gordon and the woman driver of the other auto were killed.

In the cemetery. Chief Deputy Fuller showed up with Deputy Scroggins. They said they had received a tip that Johns was hiding there. In a few moments they flushed him and blazed away. Besides the two non-fatal holes placed in Johns by Kent, he now had thirteen fresh ones, a baker's dozen, one more than two full guns can hold.

Self-defense, said Fuller. Johns had pointed his gun at Scroggins first and then had turned it towards Fuller. It was Fuller or Johns, Fuller said, and from thirty feet away Fuller began firing, advancing as he shot, with each bullet apparently hitting Johns.

With both bandits dead, one might think the cash they had stolen from the Manhattan Cafe would be returned. Well, it wasn't. No trace of it ever was found. Nobody would say how much cash was involved. The Manhattan Cafe, incidentally, was owned by Godwin Davis, one of the threesome who had John Frank Stringfellow eliminated. The word spread that anywhere from $3,000 to $30,000 had been stolen. Davis encouraged belief in the lower figure, not wanting the income tax crew to think he had too much dough.

The story which made the rounds was that the holdup men hid the money before they were killed. Davis did not believe the money was either lost or hidden. He made it plain that he was of the opinion that Fuller, and perhaps Scroggins, could tell him where every cent was. Of course they never did.

National Guard investigators, during their stay in Phenix City, had the bodies of Hargett and Johns exhumed. Guardsmen never explained their purpose in doing so.

But to outsiders it became clear that Fuller was a quick man with a pistol when he could hide a gutless heart behind a tin badge which offered him the full protection of the corrupt political machine that valued a cracked blue chip more than a human life.