Gambling Was No Gamble

Chapter VII-Gambling Was No Gamble
ONE REMARKABLE FACT STANDS OUT in the story of Phenix City. Nobody ever gambled there. Its famous old Dillingham Street has been misnamed the "Gamblingest Street in the World." While it's true that a dozen places along a single block of this street annually took in sums from dice tables and slot machines that would rival the operating budget of a city like Birmingham or Miami, nevertheless if gambling is defined as the staking of money on the hope of a return of more money, the Phenix City brand couldn't qualify. The sucker who entered a gambling house had almost no chance at all of coming out with his roll intact, much less of carrying away any house money

There seemed to be only one exception to that rule in Phenix. Old time gambling figures say that a straight dice game could be had at the Bama Club when it was operated by J. Hoyt Shepherd and Jimmy Matthews, partners in the old S & M Amusement Company.

It was in the Bama Club that the biggest games were held. Witnesses report seeing over one hundred thousand dollars cross the dice tables in a single evening. One of the co-authors of this book has seen thousands of dollars on the dice tables there at one time. After Shepherd and Matthews became established as the gambling kingpins of the city, having amassed fortunes, they apparently decided that honesty was the best business policy for a gambling house. They knew, at least, that in order to attract the big money from the north and east, they would have to give the customers a fair shake for their money.

Riding with only the regular house odds. Shepherd and Matthews operated "no limit" games of crap and high dice. The "pallet" or bank which they put up as a target sometimes amounted to fifty thousand dollars, with an almost unlimited reserve fund behind it. The house sometimes won huge sums, as on VJ night in 1945 when a gambler from nearby Columbus, Georgia, dropped his roll of sixty-four thousand dollars within a few hours.

On the other hand, the house was hit for large sums on occasion, dropping about thirty-five thousand one slow afternoon when there were only three persons at the dice table.

The Bama Club attracted big-time gamblers from New York, Chicago, Miami, Birmingham, Boston and other major cities. After the place was closed by National Guardsmen following the murder of Patterson, General Hanna checked air traffic from the major cities to Columbus and found that it was off by about fifty per cent. Many of the big gambling figures flying down for the lush pickings in Miami during the winter season, would stop off in Phenix for a warm-up at the Bama. Many of them got no further, having been picked clean on the green dice fields of the club on Dillingham.

The Bama offered gambling in almost any form the customer might choose. It had slot machines, roulette, blackjack and poker, as well as a modem horse-room where you could bet on the nags or buy a parlay on football or baseball. Drinks and food were on the house to good customers, and for their entertainment while they gambled, a big-time orchestra and floor show were offered.

About two years before Patterson was killed, Shepherd and Matthews announced with much fanfare that they were quitting the rackets. They surrendered more than five hundred thousand dollars worth of slot machines, and turned the management of the Bama Club over to new hands.

The new operators were Stewart McCollister, a protege' of Shepherd and Matthews, J. D. Abney, Clyde Yarbrough and J. D. (Frog) Jones. The new management did not hold strictly to the idea of giving the customer an even break, and there was a substantial decline in the business coming in from the north and east. But they still offered gambling of every type, including lottery, and sold fireworks as a sideline. All types of fireworks are illegal in Alabama.

But outside The Bama Club, there was no true "gambling," in the sense of wagering, in Phenix City. Slot machines were set to pay off only about five cents on the dollar; poker and black-jack cards were marked, deals were crooked, cards were stacked, dice either were loaded or shaved, and lottery drawings were often rigged.

In addition to cutting to a minimum any chance for the sucker to win, many of the low-class gambling joints resorted to muggings or robbery when it appeared that a customer who didn't gamble was about to leave with any substantial part of his roll intact.

If your pocketbook couldn't stand the gaff at The Bama, you could find a smaller, but still substantial game at Bennie's Club, just on the other side of Dillingham Street. If dice was not your wish, there was blackjack or poker at almost any one of the score of joints on Dillingham Street within spittin' distance of each other. You could hear the click of the roulette wheel at The Bama, The Ritz, The Old Original, Bennie's or The Bridge Grocery. From 1942 until 1950, there were more than a thousand slot machines in operation in Phenix City and Russell County at all times.

The number was greatly reduced after Shepherd and Matthews left the field in 1951, to become political fixers and landlords of gambling.

Just the week before Patterson was murdered, he had joined with Hugh Bentley and others in requesting Governor Gordon Persons to order an all-out gambling raid in Russell County. The raid had first been planned for the night of June 18-the exact time that Patterson met his executioner in an alley outside the Coulter Building. But because of the detail necessary in planning such an operation, the raid had been postponed until the following week.

The gambling clan seem gifted with a peculiarly valuable faculty. Things said behind closed doors in Montgomery, the capital, could be heard clearly in Phenix. Consequently, on the night that Patterson had his teeth knocked out by bullets, gamblers were busy hauling slot machines from dives along Fourteenth Street and Dillingham, and storing them in warehouses, homes, cellars and under improvised tents in the thick woods that surround the city.

Patterson's death brought on an immediate "cleanup" drive by the local authorities, assisted by a few members of the Alabama Highway Patrol The raids netted nearly one hundred slot machines, horse race machines and similar devices, is well as a number of moth-eaten gambling tables. It was the type of "cleanup" that citizens knew so well. Several of them slyly pointed out that most of the machines seized were old and inoperative. Some of them were junked machines that were being dismantled for parts. The dice tables brought in from this series of raids bore about as much resemblance to the tables used at Bennie's or The Bama Club as a race horse does to a plow mule.

Citizens knew from experience that it was neither desirable nor effective to report matters concerning gambling to local authorities. But many people did seek out newspaper men and "tip" them on locations of operating slot machines, dice tables and other gambling devices. A few more raids were made as a result of these tips, with reporters and photographers standing by to see the job done.

Showing his utter contempt of the cleanup, "Red" Cook had stored a large number of his machines in a warehouse on Fourteenth Street, right in the heart of the city's residential and business section. It was the same warehouse where he had always put his machines when the heat was on temporarily.

This citadel fell before the Guardsmen while Cook fussed, fumed and found fault—all to no avail.

The gambling raids staged by the Guard were well planned and executed. As gambling devices were pulled from one of the clip houses, a CID man would tag it for later identification, and list the names of witnesses present.

It was on this information that nearly five hundred gambling indictments have been brought by the Grand Jury, with almost all of the defendants entering pleas of guilty as their cases came up for trial.

Intensive raiding by Guardsmen went on for three days following the kickoff on July 24. During this entire time. Special Solicitor George C. Johnson personally supervised the gathering of evidence. In this he displayed the same methodical procedure that was to prove so successful before the Grand Jury and in subsequent prosecutions of the Phenix City mobsters.

Evidence gathered in the raids was sufficient to bring charges against almost every gambling figure in Phenix City, big and little. Where warning devices were found in gambling houses, special care was taken in preserving the evidence for felony indictments,

Alabama law makes it a felony to install and operate a warning device in a gambling house. All other types of gambling charges are misdemeanors.

Bur Solicitor Johnson was not pleased or happy about the results of the raids. The fiery prosecutor from North Alabama was disappointed on examining the evidence to find that the two biggest fish, Shepherd and Matthews, were not in the net. He confided to friends that he would consider the entire operation a failure unless Shepherd and Matthews could be brought to law.

Weeks passed and the list of indictments grew with each new session of the Grand jury. Johnson and his associate, Conrad Fowler, of Columbiana, worked long hours over evidence and before the Grand Jury aided by Highway Patrolmen Louis Phillips and John Williams. The temperature in August hit one hundred degrees and inched above. Johnson and Fowler loosened their collars, rolled their sleeves higher and continued to dig in.

Then one night in mid-August Johnson obtained records showing ownership of some of the gambling establishments and Johnson confided that he thought he could at last hook Shepherd and Matthews.

To do this he used an old Alabama "Gypsy Law" passed about 1873 and inactive on the statute books since before the turn of the century.

The law makes it a misdemeanor for any person to rent or lease any property with the knowledge that it will be used for gambling. The law was designed as a method of preventing persons from allowing roving Gipsy bands or river boat gamblers to ply their trade in the rural communities of Alabama in the early frontier days.

This was war, and it was necessary to use any ammunition available. Armed with the old statute, plus proof that Shepherd and Matthews had rented places for gambling, Johnson went back before the Grand Jury. This time he came out with four indictments against each of the kingpins.

Both Shepherd and Matthews served ninety day hard labor sentences. They entered pleas of guilty to two of the counts and the remaining two counts against each of them were dropped.

Mention was made earlier in this chapter of the marked cards and loaded dice used in the gambling houses. These were strictly home products, and were distributed by Horace Webster, alias "Pat" Webster, who operated a small factory down on Long Street. Webster studied his trade in Portland, Oregon, and New York City in 1953. His wares were shipped to the Mississippi gold coast and Savannah, Georgia, as well as being distributed in Phenix City.

When Guardsmen raided his establishment they found all kinds of equipment for loading dice or shaving them. The marked cards and other crooked devices were ordered from a wholesale house in Chicago and one in Los Angeles. Webster maintained a list of customers, which included most of the Phenix City establishments and gambling casinos throughout Alabama and several surrounding states.

An Army corporal stationed at Fort Benning, but living in Phenix City, was on the customer list. He was found to operate a dice and card game on the post where he regularly fleeced his buddies.

Webster readily admitted that he handled "expert" equipment, but said he only recently had gone into the manufacturing field.

Seized along with his customer lists were catalogues, showing illustrations and price lists. Since there were no statutes in the state code dealing with the manufacture or sale of crooked gambling equipment, Webster was charged with possession of gambling paraphernalia.

Slot machines, particularly the roscoe type, a lever-operated device sometimes called "one-armed bandit," offer the gambling operator the surest return of any gambling device. They can be set to pay off any percentage the operator wishes, and that figure is based upon what he thinks the players will stand for. In Las Vegas, Nevada, for instance, machines are said to pay off from sixty to eighty percent of the amount taken in. This is good advertising and increases the volume of business.

In Phenix City most of the machines paid off ten percent, or less. The house men didn't figure it was necessary to advertise, since customers were usually lined up to put their money in the machines anyway.

Before turning in their slot machines in 1951, the Shepherd-Matthews Syndicate had machines in most of the better locations in the city, as well as in scores of filling stations, grocery stores, cafes and night spots in Russell County.

Their chief mechanic, who looked after the machines and fixed the percentages, was C. W. Franklin. Franklin was the foreman of the Russell County Grand Jury at the time Albert Patterson was killed, and, under ordinary circumstances, this gambler would have been one of the eighteen men to have considered any evidence that might have been brought before a Grand Jury at that time. However, the entire body, along with the Jury Commission that put their names in the jury box, was superseded by a special Grand Jury organized from a new jury box to hear all cases growing out of the cleanup.

After the Kefauver Senate Committee hearings in 1950, certain teeth were put into the federal gambling laws. Gamblers were required to buy federal stamps each year, and to pay ten percent of their net proceeds to the government. Another law made it a federal offense for slot machines to be carried across a state line, or for slot machine parts and other gambling devices to be handled in interstate commerce.

These restrictions were the most serious blow struck at organized gambling up to that time. Then the Alabama Legislature made the owning of a gambling stamp prima facie evidence of guilt. The Shepherd-Matthews combine exited from the active gambling field.

Most of the Phenix City "sportsmen" rallied quickly and bought gambling stamps for business as usual. They obviously were not worried about prosecutions in Russell County.

The special Grand Jury was ordered by Special Judge Walter B. Jones, as one of his official acts after being appointed by the Alabama Supreme Court to preside over legal phases of the clean-up. This put Franklin and his Grand Jury out of business.

Franklin was discovered to have been owner of a federal gambling stamp at the same time he was Grand Jury foreman. He was caught in the gambling dragnet, indicted and pleaded guilty. His sentence, in two cases, was originally fixed at two years, the heaviest term imposed on any gambler. It was later reduced to one year, which he began serving in December, 1954.

But none of the mob relished the idea of tangling with Uncle Whiskers, by shipping slot machines or parts across state lines. The price of a nickel slot machine— around $300 in Chicago— suddenly jumped to $1,000 in Phenix City. To meet the new emergency, it was necessary to have facilities at home to reproduce parts for the machines when they wore out.

A few selected mechanics were sent off for factory training. One of the men who became expert in machining parts for slot machines was Felton Cobb, nephew of the late Homer Cobb, strong man mayor of Phenix City.

Felton Cobb operated a radio shop in the rear of his modest home. Neighbors knew that he was always swamped with work even when business was slow for others. One day Military Police Chief, Colonel James N. Brown took a crew of Guardsmen to investigate the shop. Inside the concrete block structure they found a modern slot machine factory with nearly a score of slot machines and large quantities of parts. They also found a reel of eight millimeter movie film of the type shown at stag smokers.

Cobb was indicted for possession of gambling equipment and obscene film, although the latter charge was dropped after he entered a plea of guilty to the gambling charges.

The return from slot machines added up to an enormous figure. At one time, before Shepherd and Matthews quit the business, the machines averaged $9,000 weekly in the Phenix City Pool Room, owned by Shepherd and Matthews, and an almost unbelievable $12,000 weekly from the Ritz Cafe, where tottery drawings were held daily.

Over-anxiety to learn about slot machine operations at The Ritz and other places, nearly resulted in serious consequences for one of the authors of this book. This episode is related as it happened, to the individual writer.

It was about two weeks after the Patterson murder and before the National Guard had been given real authority to police the city. The writer had made contact through a third person to learn about gambling operations from an inside source. The meeting was arranged for about 10:30 P.M. in a thickly wooded area about three miles from Phenix City, and near the Lee County line.

The meeting was made without mishap, and the author's automobile was concealed, a mile off the main highway, and a few yards off a little-used dirt road.

The dome light of the car was turned on while the informant explained the gambling layout of various places, and drew diagrams. He also furnished details of slot machine locations and the approximate take from each place.

While the conference was underway, an automobile passed back and forth within a few yards of where the author and his informant were concealed, the car engine laboring through the deep sandbeds. The meeting was hastily adjourned, the lights turned off, and hiding places selected in the nearby bushes.

While both the writer and his companion were armed, neither relished the idea of a showdown in that lonely pine thicket.

When the car had gone, the conference was hurriedly finished and the writer and his companion parted company for the trip back to Phenix City.

Once on the highway, the author checked carefully for car lights and saw none until his car had traveled a few hundred yards past the new National Guard Armory.

At that point a car, traveling at high speed, approached from the rear. When this writer's car slowed for a railroad crossing, the approaching vehicle came on with a sudden burst of speed and swerved toward the lead car, forcing it into a shallow, sand-filled ditch and up the side of a clay bank. The other car slowed momentarily, then whipped quickly back on the road and raced away toward Phenix,

After regaining control of his car, the author gave chase in an effort to get the license number of the other vehicle. It was a Georgia tag, but bent upwards in such a manner as to be unreadable.

After losing the car near the railroad station, a call was placed to Guard Headquarters and jeep patrols were put on the search. The vehicle, by then, had a two-mile start and very likely was across the river in Columbus before Guardsmen reached the scene.

An examination of the point where the car had left the road revealed that it was but thirty yards from a steel bridge abutment. Below was a rocky gorge ten feet deep.

The scare technique employed by the gamblers is outlined here to emphasize the desperate measures the hard-pushed mobsters were prepared to take to protect their threatened vice empire.

The maneuver of running people off the road was to be repeated several times. Among those forced from the road was an agent for the Alabama Alcoholic Beverage Control Board, and L. B. Sullivan, director of the Alabama Department of Public Safety. Threats of death or bodily harm were made against several persons identified with the clean-up, including Governor Persons, Mrs. MacDonald Gallion, who was the wife of the governor's personal representative, this author, and others.

Governor Persons said there had been four such death threats made against him or members of his family. For a while he toted a .38-caliber revolver, with which he was an expert, and had an armed guard stationed at his door. He had the executive mansion guarded by four armed watchmen and the grounds swept with floodlights.

The governor confided to the authors that four times during a single week he had his private telephone line changed because it had been tapped by parties unknown.

Gallion learned of the threat against his wife when he received a telephone call from Mrs. Gallion in Montgomery. Mrs. Gallion had just left a hotel in Columbus, Georgia, two hours earlier, where she had been visiting her husband.

Obviously frightened, Mrs. Gallion told of answering her telephone that was ringing as she entered her Montgomery home, about eighty miles from Columbus. The man's voice, she said, outlined her every movement after leaving Columbus, and warned her that everyone connected with the clean-up was being watched. She was told to get her husband off the case.

"If we can't get to him," the caller warned, "we can get to you or the children."

Gallion hastily arranged for his wife and two children to go away to a safe place in Florida, and continued on the job.

These were hopeful signs to all those involved In the operation of cleaning up the gambling empire. It showed that the mobsters had their backs to the wall and were fighting back with the only weapons they knew— force and fear.