Newspaper Page Text
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 9, 2017
MAINSTREET NEWSPAPERS
PAGE 5A
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We Remember 50 Years Ago:
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Eight More Raids Conducted Here
A total of eight more raids
ivere conducted in Jackson Coun
ty during the past week by F'loyd
g. Hoard, new Solicitor General
0 f the Piedmont Judicial Circuit,
and State agents.
Seven establishments were check
ed last Wednesday night, and il
legal merchandise was turned up
at two of these places. David Earl
•owning of Pendergrass was ar
rested and charged with possess
ing an excessive amount of tax
paid liquor and possessing beer
for the purpose of sale. Willie
Gilstrap of Highway 11 southwest
of Jefferson was charged with
possessing non-tax-paid liquor (30
gals.). Cooperating in these raids
were GBI agents and State Reve
nue agents.
Yesterday, authorities went to
CENE outside Elrod's Garage on Highway 441 south of Commerce,
authorities impounded a truckload of auto parts at the garage yester-
ay. According to officers, the serial numbers on the parts had been
Itercd.—(Herald Staff photo)
Elrod’s Garage on Highway 441
south of Commerce and impound
ed a truckload of automobile
parts. Mr. Hoard said the parts
had altered serial numbers. No
arrests have yet been made, but
warrants are presently being is
sued. According to Mr. Hoard, a
variety of charges will be made
resulting from the incident. GBI
Agent R. J. Cleghorn and Agents
Melton and Vandiver of the State
Auto Theft Squad took part in
this occurrence.
In connection with the raids, an
order was issued throughout the
circuit last Thursday giving per
sons possessing pin-ball machines
and other illegal gambling devices
until Friday to remove the devices
from their establishments. Under
State law, any device which awards
a free game or money for winning
is illegal.
Mr. Hoard said that the order
is obviously being complied with,
because he hasn’t been able to
find any illegal gambling devices
since the order was issued. “If
any are found in the Piedmont
Judicial Circuit,” he said, “they
will be confiscated as contraband
and I will attempt to obtain a
court order to have them de
stroyed.”
The day after being sworn into office as solicitor in late November 1964, Floyd Hoard began carrying
out a series of raids on area car thieves and bootlegging operations. For two weeks in early December
1965, he hit a number of places in the circuit.
N COUNTY. GEORGIA 30549
ioc per copy Wednesday, February 16, 1966
ED ON AUTO
ON TRIAL
J Tl-iiil :i 15-vimi'iiIiI Jsffacstin
This kind of headline was not uncommon as Hoard brought charges against local bootleggers and car
thieves. Juries in the county were often reluctant to convict those charged.
Hoard quickly tried to make up for that lack of aggressive
ness. In the February 1965 grand jury term, just two months
after he took office, Hoard got 76 indictments on auto theft
charges, a move that shook the county’s establishment.
Hoard and newly-elected Judge Dunahoo had also rattled
the county’s establishment in January when they upended
the grand jury list. A grand jury had been appointed in
December 1964 for the February 1965 court term by the
group of jury commissioners.
But Hoard and Dunahoo threw out that list, forced the
resignation of the existing jury commissioners, named a
new group, which then purged the grand jury and “petit
jury” lists.
Some of those purged were “leading citizens” in the coun
ty. In his court order, Dunahoo said there had been “irregu
larities” in the December drawing of grand jury members.
But it was one thing to get indictments, another to actually
convict. When it came time for court in 1965, most of those
charged were no-shows. The court asked the public to help
find six of the defendants and Judge Dunahoo issued 27
bench warrants.
Another tactic crooks used to avoid trial would be to show
up without a lawyer and ask for a continuance multiple
times.
Still, Hoard and Dunahoo persisted. Usually there were
just two terms of court — February and August. But Dunahoo
added extra weeks in February, April, August, September
and October in 1965 in a bid to try all the car theft cases
Hoard was making.
But the going was slow. There were also a number of
murder cases to try that year and by August, only 10 of the
76 auto theft cases had been tried.
Part of the problem, Hoard told the August grand jury, was
a lack of funds to pay for jurors and other costs associated
with so many cases.
CAR THEFTS CONTINUE
Despite Hoard’s efforts, the car thefts continued.
By early 1966, following a “lull” in the fall of 1965, there
was an uptick in car theft activity.
In January 1966, two stripped cars were found, one stolen
from UGA that was owned by a man in Boston, Mass. It was
found with bullet holes in it. Other cars were stolen that
week, too, but not recovered.
In response, a group of Jackson and Banks County citizens
organized “Citizens for Better Government” to address the
crime issues. It partnered with the Commerce Kiwanis Club
and 26 people from the group met with Gov. Carl Sanders
to press for state help in cleaning up Northeast Georgia.
The president of Roper Pump Company in Commerce also
petitioned the governor for help in a letter.
But even as Hoard pressed his prosecutions, there were
setbacks.
In trials in February 1966, two men charged with auto
thefts were found not guilty by juries. Judge Dunahoo issued
a strong rebuke to jurors in comments from the bench.
“We have the very practical need to convict the guilty felon
and not permit him to be freed on trivial technicalities. The
people need to be protected from these criminals, ” he said.
In July, a routine road check in Jackson County found a
car filled with parts from a car stolen in Madison County.
Also that summer, six people, including some teens, were
charged with auto theft in Banks County. Four pled guilty.
More stolen cars were found in Pendergrass that summer
and a car owned by a local soldier was stolen from the park
ing lot of Maysville Baptist Church.
In September 1966, two teens were charged with stealing a
car from the Jefferson Mills parking lot. It was found stripped
and burned off the Brockton Road.
In October, a 1965 GTO was stolen from the Halloween
Carnival at Jackson County High School in Braselton. It was
found stripped off 1-85. Among those arrested was the car
owner’s grandson.
Another car stolen from a UGA student was found
rammed into an embankment off Sandy Creek Road.
Even with Hoard’s push and some help from citizens
pressing for more state assistance, car thefts and bootleg
ging continued almost unabated.
APATHY RULES COUNTY
Silence and apathy from the area’s decent citizens was
something that frustrated Hoard as he began to prosecute
local rackets.
In 1965, soon after taking office, he issued a report to
the grand jury that said he had to fight both the “criminal
element” and the “respectable element” in his bid to close
down bootleggers and car thieves.
Hoard was particularly upset that 259 people, some who
were county officials, had petitioned the court to suspend
the sentence of former Sheriff Brooks, who had been con
victed in Fulton County for car theft.
“The respectable people who signed this request did not
realize the implications of their conduct, that they were
actually endorsing, indirectly, the criminal element in our
county and state, ” Hoard said.
An editorial in The Jackson Herald in March 1965 asked,
“Do the citizens want this county ‘cleaned up ’ or do they
really care?”
That sentiment was also expressed by another local editor
after Hoard was killed.
“The people just haven’t done a damn thing about it,
that’s the trouble, ” Albert Hardy, editor and owner of The
Commerce News told the Associated Press in 1967.
Hardy also knew the danger of focusing on local crime. In
1963, after The News had reported about car thefts, eight of
the newspaper’s office windows were broken — an old car
spring had been thrown through one of them.
And members of the Commerce City Council received
phone calls threatening to burn their houses down.
The message was clear — silence was best.
Politics was also a problem. The area’s illegal operations
had become big business. To protect that, criminal ring
leaders donated a lot of money to local candidates who
would pledge to turn a blind eye to their operations.
In a 1967 interview with the Associated Press shortly after
Hoard’s murder, Pendergrass bootlegger A.C “Cliff” Park
admitted he got involved in local political races by support
ing certain candidates.
Speaking about one local office holder, Park told the AP,
7 helped him when he ran and he knows it. ”
The AP also spoke to an unnamed local car thief who told
the reporter he had put $10,000 into one local campaign.
Liquor, bribery and stuffed ballot boxes to protect the
“rackets” were not uncommon in that era.
FINES JUST COST OF DOING BUSINESS
While there were some small-time bootleggers, much of
what existed in Jackson County was connected in a loose
web making for a larger criminal enterprise. That also meant
a lot of money was involved.
Hoard found that punishing bootleggers wasn’t easy.
While a conviction on auto theft might mean jail time for
a criminal, bootlegging only carried a small fine, unless it
involved moonshine and the feds were involved.
“Most of the people on the bootlegging circuit in the
county expected to be caught and they paid a fine then
they went back into business again, ” said retired GBI agent
Angel. “The expectation of being caught was just the cost
of doing business. ”
Often, bootlegging cases would be dismissed, or not
called for trial. Even if it was called for trial, juries would
often not convict a bootlegger. Many citizens believed
bootlegging to be harmless, just a necessary part of life in
a “dry” county.
But it was a big business in Northeast Georgia. Over a
six-month period in 1966, state revenue agents found 1,735
moonshine stills and arrested 1,877 people. That was state
wide, but much of it was concentrated in Northeast Georgia.
Millions of dollars were involved in illegal bootlegging in the
state.
At the time of his death, Hoard had made 130 cases
against area bootleggers.
THE “OLD MAN”
In the spring of 1967, Hoard began to make a major push
on Park’s Pendergrass bootlegging operations. It was known
as the area’s largest bootlegging organization, one that was
connected to a number of smaller bootleggers in the area.
Park, known by that time as the “old man” in bootlegging
circles, was the area’s “kingpin” bootlegger.
Andrew Clifford Park was born in Pendergrass on August
17, 1891, the son of Junius and Eula Park. He was apparently
named for an uncle, also “Andrew Clifford Park” and per
haps his grandfather, Andrew M. Park.
His parents divorced when he was young and Park grew
up with his mother, a school teacher, in the home of his
maternal grandmother, Sarah Gilbert. Despite having a
school teacher mom, Park only went to the 8th grade.
Both of Park’s parents remarried, his mother moving to
Gillsville and eventually to Atlanta. His father was a bar
tender who plyed his trade in towns around the Southeast
— Jacksonville, Atlanta and Greenville.
Just after his 27th birthday in 1918, Park was drafted into
the military. He was single at the time, of medium build with
blue eyes, according to his military records. He listed his
occupation as “farmer” and that he was self-employed.
Park served overseas in WWI as a private in a medical unit
from September 1918 to March 1919.
On returning to the states, he lived in Pendergrass with
one of his aunts. In 1921 at age 29, he married Mae Lou
Hartly and settled in Pendergrass into the house where he
was born.
At some point later, he and his wife ran a general store
in the small town. They didn’t have children, but adopted
a daughter.
Park was known as a leading figure in the community,
but in 1959 when he ran for a seat on the Pendergrass City
Council, he got the second-lowest number of votes, coming
in seventh out of eight candidates.
By the time Hoard decided to take him on, Park was an
elderly 76-years-old with the appearance of a kindly grand
father.
“He was very quiet, vety reserved, old country gentle
man, ” said agent Angel about Park’s demeanor. “He was
very cordial. ”
A ‘SUPERMARKET’ OPERATION
Hoard’s decision to take on Park’s operations was a big
deal. By 1958, Park was recognized in the press as the area’s
“king-pin of the moonshine whiskey empire. ”
In early 1958, Park was tried in Federal Court in Athens
on liquor conspiracy charges involving moonshine that
revenue agents claimed was an “air-tight” case. But the jury
acquitted him.
In 1962, federal charges for selling moonshine sent him to
the federal prison in Atlanta for a year. He didn’t personally
sell moonshine anymore after that, leaving that part of his
business to associates.
For a time in the early 1960s, Park had gotten his beer
from Arcade where beer was legally sold, but at some point
Arcade was “cut off” as his supplier.
He then began buying beer from the Negro American
Legion Club in Commerce, which had a federal license
to buy beer. An employee of Park’s bootlegging operation
would use a 1.5-ton truck to haul about 200 cases at a time
from Commerce to Pendergrass, where it would be resold at
one of Park’s establishments. The Legion would make about
25 cents per case.
Park’s bootlegging operation was wide open — no secret
passwords were necessary to enter the bootlegging garage
at his house, which was on Hwy. 129 in Pendergrass in full
view of passersby.
Agent Angel testified in court in 1968 that “this was an
open operation and there was nothing hidden about the
thing. ”
It was a “supermarket” operation. Park’s bootlegging
garage was filled with large coolers, neon signs and had
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