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WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 16, 2017
MAINSTREET NEWSPAPERS
PAGE 5A
We Remember 50 Years Ago:
The Floyd Hoard Assassination
This was what was left of Hoard’s Ford Galaxy after the 10 sticks of dynamite were set off when Hoard
turned the ignition switch on the morning of August 7, 1967. An unidentified man puts water on the
car.
The left front area of the car took the brunt of the blast that killed solicitor general Floyd Hoard on
Aug. 7, 1967. The 10 sticks of dynamite had been placed on the driver’s side of the car near the steer
ing column.
sheriff’s office and asked that the three men be stopped
and questioned. One of them had told Hoard, “Your wife
will come home someday and see you nailed to the front
door. ”
kkk
On the morning of August 7, 1967, the 40-year-old Hoard
was slated to go to the Jackson County Courthouse where
Superior Court was to begin and the grand jury was also
meeting.
At home on that Monday morning was Hoard’s wife,
Imogene, 14-year-old son “Dickey” and 16-year-old daugh
ter, Peggy Jean.
The other two daughters, Claudine and Vivian, were visit
ing an aunt for the weekend.
“Where are my girls?” Hoard had asked Imogene about
the two younger kids the Friday before.
Told they were spending the weekend away, he said,
“Oh, I didn’t get to tell them bye. ”
Officially, Hoard’s agenda for that Monday was relatively
routine, but some later speculated that he might have had
a secret agenda to take to the grand jury. The May padlock
order against Park’s operations had not been carried out
by Sheriff L.G. “Snuffy” Perry and some thought Hoard
might have planned to take that to the grand jury for action.
During the night of August 6, the Hoards’ dogs barked
some, family members later recalled, but that wasn’t too
unusual. A neighbor later said her dogs barked that night,
too.
The events of that morning could have been different,
too. Peggy Jean and her mother had discussed swapping
vehicles that Monday so that Peggy Jean could use her
dad’s car to take a driving license test rather than in the
family station wagon. Her dad’s car had an automatic
transmission while the other car didn’t.
But Imogene said her husband’s car had a police radio
in it and that he might need it for work. And he had his
paperwork for court in the car for that morning’s court.
They decided they would meet later in the day in town to
swap cars for the driving test.
kkk
As Hoard prepared to leave home for the courthouse, he
stopped in the house’s foyer.
“He hugged me. He kissed me. He said, ‘Don't ever for
get how much I love you, ’” Imogene recalled. 7 lived on
that (memory) for a long time. ”
At 7:25 a.m., Hoard walked out the door of his green,
wood frame house, which stood about 100 yards from the
road on a hill amid a grove of hardwood trees. His car was
parked facing the front door of the house, about 50 ft. away.
He put the key in the ignition of his green 1966 Ford
Galaxy and turned the switch.
The explosion was immediate. It shattered the front win
dows of the Hoard home and was heard in Jefferson three
miles away and in Nicholson to the east. Pieces of the car
were blown 70 ft. away.
“We found some pieces of the vehicle on the opposite
side of the house, ” recalled former Georgia Bureau of
Investigation agent Cecil Calloway about the power of the
blast.
The force of the explosion hit the driver’s side hardest,
blowing Hoard out of the driver’s seat into the backseat.
His shattered legs were draped over the front seat and a
large piece of the dashboard lay across the midsection of
his body.
Peggy Jean jumped out of bed. Her room was on the
front of the house, closest to the blast, and two large win
dows were shattered.
“You could hear glass, or you heard the front windows
to the house just collapse, ” she said in court later. “It was
just a frightening experience. ”
She ran to the smoking car where she tried to save her
father’s life with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
“He mumbled and he breathed a few times, ” she was
quoted in that week’s Jackson Herald. “I tried to bring
him back. ”
The car itself was a mass of twisted metal. Bits of glass
and metal became shrapnel, ripping into fabric on the
inside. The roof of the car was bowed upward by the force
of the blast. The left front fender and tire were destroyed
as the large motor had focused the blast out that side of
the vehicle.
One of the Hoards’ dogs, along with a neighbor’s dog,
ran away, only to return a few days later after the crowds at
the scene of the crime had left.
WESTMORELAND REMEMBERS
A1 Westmoreland was just 19 years old when he got the
call from Imogene Hoard that tragic morning telling him to
“get out to the house fast.”
7 remember it like it was yesterday, ” he said. A1 was the
son of Jefferson’s police chief, Albert Westmoreland and
Imogene’s nephew.
The younger Westmoreland was taking summer classes
in Gainesville in between his freshman and sophomore
years of college. On August 7, 1967, his classes didn’t start
until late morning and he waited at his parents’ house in
Jefferson, about three miles from the Hoard’s house.
He was sitting in the living room when he heard the
explosion.
“Back then, it was pretty common to have sonic
booms...and I thought that’s what it was. I thought it was
a jet, ” he said.
Westmoreland continued lying on the sofa until the
phone rang. Imogene was on the other end of the phone.
Westmoreland first thought it was a prankster.
“My first reaction was that someone was playing a trick
on us, ” he said. Westmoreland said it was common for the
family to receive prank calls.
7 almost hung up and then I realized that it was my
Aunt Imogene, ” he said. “She was just screaming. ”
Westmoreland calmed Imogene down and she instruct
ed him: “Get Horace (Jackson) and get out to the house
fast. ”
Westmoreland called Jackson, the local funeral home
director and ambulance driver, and told him he wasn’t
sure what was going on, but it was “something bad.”
He then called city hall and told them to get in touch
with his father.
The younger Westmoreland met Jackson and the two
traveled to Hoard’s house with the ambulance sirens and
lights on. They were traveling about 70-miles-per-hour,
which Westmoreland said was “about as fast as those old
ambulances would go.” Chief Westmoreland passed them
on the road.
When they made it to Hoard’s house, A1 remembers see
ing a large amount of solid, white smoke.
“My first reaction was that the house was on fire, ” he
said.
As they pulled up closer, he saw the car. Hoard’s body
was in the backseat. His cousin, Peggy Jean, was in the
backseat trying to do CPR. Cousin Dickey was standing
in front of the car with a hose putting water on the motor
area. Westmoreland said much of the flame was gone, but
smoke remained.
Imogene was standing in the door of the house “hysteri
cal.”
Westmoreland’s father was trying to get Peggy Jean out of
the vehicle. It was an emotional scene, even for the police
chief, who was an ex-Marine and a “tough” man.
“It was the first time I ever saw my father cry, ”
Westmoreland said.
Jackson took over shortly after that and they covered
Hoard’s body with a white sheet.
Other law enforcement officers, crime lab representa
tives and neighbors soon made their way to the scene.
It was around lunchtime when they removed Hoard’s
body from the car, Westmoreland recalled. Officers
remained at the residence, searching the car for clues.
“They were there all day, ” he said.
At one point, Westmoreland said they brought in a
wrecker, raised the car and shook it. Crime lab workers
used sifters in search of evidence.
“They did end up finding part of the blasting cap and a
portion of the serial number, ” he said.
Westmoreland can’t remember how he got back to town
later in the day. Many of those details have faded over the
past 50 years.
Still, some are impossible to forget.
“It was a tough time. It really was, ” he said.
SON REMEMBERS
THAT MORNING
In his book about the murder, “Alone Among the
Living, ” G. Richard “Dickey” Hoard, Floyd’s 14-year-old
son, recalled the minutes after the blast:
“Dickey!” my mother screamed, coming into sight
around the corner of the house. “Hurry! Come quick!"
Suddenly she bolted toward me, weeping, turning to
look at the front yard, as if running in a circle, turning
completely around again to face me, grabbing at her hair.
“I think your daddy has just been killed. ”
...I walked to the corner of the front yard to see that the
Galaxy had been demolished, flames were leaping from
the engine and Daddy was inside the car. “God, ” / said
aloud and sprinted to the faucet in the back yard where
Mama was already filling up a pail. I grabbed another of
the plastic buckets and waited while the meager stream
fell, Mama halfway filling one pail before carrying it
toward the front yard, water sloshing with her every step.
With my bucket only half full, I ran with it to the front yard,
reeling at the sight of my father sprawled where the back
seat should have been. I poured the water on the flames
which hissed in reply but continued to leap from the
engine. I ran for more water, stopping this time at a nearer
faucet, then returning to the car to extinguish the fire.
Peggy Jean now stood where the door to the car should
have been, stooping over Daddy, patting his cheek.
“Daddy, listen Daddy. You’re gonna be alright now. We’re
getting some help. Horace is coming. Everything is gonna
be alright. ”
One hand at my heart, the other to my throat, I assessed
the destruction; my father's face splintered by the frag
ments of windshield, pants to his scorched suit shredded
at one shin, flesh sliced to bone, torso impaled to car
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