Newspaper Page Text
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 23, 2017
MAINSTREET NEWSPAPERS
PAGE 5A
PECIAL ELECTION
Dste Set; Perry
Lys Victim Of
[power Structure'
R. H Griffelh i, IZJA
L <o ' nter,m perhaps Thur„J„f
pw jerve unl11 a special election can be
ffc date of the special election has not
^ibul the election will be “soon,” accord
.{fcff ordinary’, perhaps in 30 days.
Ve perry, accompanied
natjon was transmitted to the
governor by the GUI this
morning, it was understood
!. ordin ary was awaiting of-
Hcial acceptance or denial by
EYED AS SHERIFF RESIGNS
the
Kovernor before proceed-
l ;a tear-old son, Greg.
5 tj resignation to the
n i: 9 25 am. today in
pi-.s office Mr Grif-
pi tie sheriff seemed
f cter fcis decision.
r pti he was a victim
fcj itr.fr.
BULLETIN!
Ordinary R. H . Griffeth
*aid thi* afternoon he will
not appoint an interim
sheriff until tomorrow and
that he will not appoint
flllYfiflff who it n | 1B .;.. a.
>ng with calling the election
a»'d naming an interim sher-
in. There seemed little doubt
the governor would accept the
resignation.
In a press conference this
morning, the governor said he
had been informed of the
resignation and that there
would be no further need for
a hearing. The governor had
set a hearing for Nov. 6 on
the sheriff's alleged neglect
of duties as charged by a
Jackson County grand jury
last week.
The Sheriff’s statement to
the ordinary also was given
to the chairman of the Jack-
son County Board of Commis
sioners and Sol. Gen G. Wes-
icy Channell.
It said:
"I hereby submit to you my
sophomore.
The son said his father plans
a vacation, having had only
three days vacation in three
years as sheriff He has no
further plans, Greg said. Mr.
Perry, who is 42. was a snuff
salesman for 10 years before
seeking public office for the
first time and being elected
sheriff in 11)04
Sol. Gen. G. Wesley Chan
nell of Winder, who had prev
iously stated he would like to
sec l’crry resign, said today
“I'm glad he chose to do it.
It saved the taxpayers a lot of
money and me and a number
of other people quite a bit of
work. Had he chosen to go
ahead into the hearing, he
also would probably have liti
gated the constitutionality oi
the law. I could foresee per
haps a year of litigation which
would be quite expensive to
the public."
Sol. Channell said he did
not yet know whether there
would be any criminal prose-
II the sheriff had eone into
a hearing before the gover
nor. it would have been tho
first such occurrence in the
state
were most concerned with T
KsrSSr^WhoWUl Be Next Sheriff?
C„um>. u*, M « wh e „ , Wh0 wiI1 bc the next sheri{{ o{ JacV .
Text Of
Perry's
Statement
Here is the text of the state
ment issued this morning by
Jackson County Sheriff L. G.
Perry.
“When a person is placed
in public office, he immedi
atcly becomes a target for po
litical criticism. It is generally
known by the citizens of Jack-
son County, that my election
to the sheriff’s office was nev
er accepted by the political
power structure Because of
my election. I was immediate
ly faced with the fact of being
on the opposite side of the
took office in 1965.
“The record of arrests dur
ing my term of office is a
public one. Arrests for all
criminal activity, including hq-
uor and beer violations, far
exceeds those of any other
county of comparable size.
"I know of no rural sheriff
that can perform all the dut
ies that are required of him
without the assistance of state
agents. I do not feel free to
call upon them for help as
things now stand.
“I cannot perform my job
as Sheriff as it should be done
without the aid and coopera
tion of the court officials. It
is apparent to everyone who
has read the newspapers or
listened to the news reports,
that no such cooperation will
bc forthcoming. 1 have no one
to turn to for assistance or ad-
son County?
This is the question being avidly dis
cussed throughout Jackson County this
week in the wake of the resignation of Sher
iff L. G. Jerry.
Several names ate being discussed . . .
Byrd Bruce, I. \V. liavis, Lauren (Bubba)
McDonald Jr., Curtis Spence and others.
Bruce, McDonald and Spence al", told
The Herald today they were considering
the matter. Davis could not be reached for
comment.
BULLETIN!
Lauren (Bubba) McDonald Jr. of Com
merce said this afternoon be bad definitely
decided not to run for sheriff. Mr. McDon
ald, who had been expected to be one ot the
leading contenders, said his business ties
were such that he could not seek the post
at this time.
McDonald said a decision would be
As the hunt for Hoard’s killers continued in the fall of 1967, another drama was making news as Jackson County Sheriff L.G. “Snuffy” Perry came under fire
from state officials. In October, a Jackson County grand jury accused Perry of having tipped off bootlegger A.C. “Cliff” Park to the May raids, among other
allegations. Perry resigned at the end of October 1967. Criminal charges were later filed against Perry, but he was found innocent by a jury trial in 1968.
that reportedly took 12 hours.
PERRY PUSHES BACK
Despite being ousted from the Hoard case, Perry
announced that he would lead his own investigation into
the murder. In late August 1967, he and a local state rev
enue agent raided several bootlegging places in the county,
arresting nine people.
Perry also intensified his criticism of the GBI as the weeks
dragged on. After the GBI recaptured two Jackson County
escapees, they were returned to Perry. But Perry claimed
that one of the escapees had hidden a gun in some cloth
ing and blasted the GBI for not having searched the escap
ees thoroughly.
Part of that tension was a turf fight. At the time, the GBI
couldn’t go into a county to investigate without being invit
ed by the sheriff — except for Jackson County where a gov
ernor’s order allowed the GBI to come in unannounced.
By mid-October, Perry was under mounting pressure to
resign. Channell, the interim solicitor, said he would “wel
come that eventuality. It would save everybody a lot of
trouble and expense. ”
GBI officials also said that Perry’s resignation would be
“favorable. ”
Perry’s biggest problem was the county grand jury.
Meeting in October, the grand jury accused Perry of “col
luding with and conspiring with” Park and others in the
illegal liquor and beer business.
Over a two-day period, the grand jury interviewed a num
ber of people, including Perry, about lax law enforcement
in the county. Perry said in a public statement that he had
“done no wrong.”
But the grand jury said otherwise. Among other things,
it accused Perry of having tipped off Park to Hoard’s May
raids; of failing to padlock the Park operations after a court
order to do so; and of harassing bootleggers who didn’t buy
supplies from the Park operations.
The grand jury didn’t press any criminal charges on
Perry, however, and tossed the matter into the lap of Gov.
Maddox, who set a hearing date in November.
But the governor booting Perry wasn’t necessary. On
October 25, 1967, Perry announced his resignation. That
resignation led to a historic election to fill his seat. In a
runoff vote in early December 1967, Curtis Spence won
the sheriff’s seat by just one vote — 2,758 to 2,757 over I.W.
Davis.
ARRESTS AND INDICTMENTS
All through the fall of 1967, the hunt for Hoard’s killer had
continued, but with little new information, it became sec
ondary to the sheriff’s drama and special election.
By late October, the special task force for the investiga
tion was closed down and the probe office moved from
the Crawford W. Long Inn in Jefferson to the Georgia State
Patrol and GBI office in Gainesville. The number of full-time
investigators was cut to four.
A bombing in North Carolina that killed a fire department
captain was probed by Georgia officials in the fall of 1967.
But again, that led to a dead-end for the Hoard murder.
During late November, the governor named a suspect in
the Hoard killing, a Cumming night club operator who had
warrants out of Banks County. But again, it turned out to
be wrong after a polygraph test cleared the man of being
involved.
Then as the holidays approached, the hunt for Hoard’s
killers was over just as suddenly as the murder had hap
pened.
After a weekend of law enforcement activity in early
December, four of the five men who conspired to murder
Hoard were in custody and a nation-wide lookout was
posted for the fifth, who was on the run.
Both Lloyd Seay and John H. Blackwell were already in
jail on other charges. GBI agents went to Park’s house in
Pendergrass and arrested him without incident.
GBI agent Angel was one of those who went to arrest
Park. He recalled they told Park they had a warrant for his
arrest for the murder of Floyd Hoard and that he needed
to come with them.
“Ok,” was Park’s only comment, Angel said.
Douglas Pinion, Park’s associate, was picked up in
Jefferson at about the same time. Only George Worley was
missing, having gone on the run.
Former GBI agent Cecil Calloway recalled that he and
another agent had been assigned to bring Worley in follow
ing the December indictments.
“We sat in Commerce forever across from where George
lived and come to find out, he was at a car sale in Macon;
someone had tipped him off and he didn I come back
home, ” Calloway said.
The four men in custody were sent out to four different,
undisclosed jails to await trial.
On Monday, December 4, 1967, all five were indicted by
the Jackson County grand jury for conspiring to murder
Hoard.
HOW THE CASE WAS SOLVED
Agent Angel said that despite the lack of hard evidence,
Park and his associates were suspects all along. There was
an internal debate among agents about whether bootleg
gers or car thieves were responsible for the murder, but
Angel said he always felt like it was the bootleggers.
“I admit, my initial reaction (to Hoard’s murder) was
liquor people because I’d been so involved in the under
cover buys and all of that, ” Angel said.
Angel had interviewed Pinion, Park’s right hand man, as
far back as September 5, 1967, less than a month after the
murder.
“He (Park) was on the radar from day one because
of the (recent) raids, ” Angel recalled. “That padlocking
thing really busted his bubble. That really took him aside
because that wasn ’t supposed to happen. There was sup
posed to be a fine then go on back in business. ”
Following Hoard’s murder, Seay and Blackwell went to
Wrightsville in Johnson County to check out setting up
a liquor operation with two bootlegging brothers. They
returned to Dawson County following day.
Two days later, they returned to Wrightsville and set up a
still to make moonshine in the basement of a brick house, a
still large enough to produce 70 cases a day of moonshine.
Blackwell and his girlfriend lived in the house while Seay
and his wife lived in a mobile home nearby. Friends and
family came around to help man the moonshine operation.
On September 21, 1967, a leaking gas-line led to an
explosion at the house and officials discovered the illegal
operation.
Seay was arrested in Laurens County a few days later and
a warrant was issued for Blackwell, who was later picked
up and held in an Atlanta jail. Seay’s wife and Blackwell’s
girlfriend were also charged in the explosion and arrested.
All four were in and out of various jails over the next few
weeks.
Meanwhile, Johnson County Sheriff Ronald Attaway got a
tip from the bootlegging brothers Seay and Blackwell had
been working with. The brothers had overheard the two
talking about the Hoard murder.
Attaway contacted the governor and offered to cut a deal
— he’d tell state officials what he knew about the Hoard
case in return for the governor giving him political support
in the upcoming 1968 elections. Attaway also demanded to
get a copy of all the GBI’s investigative files in the case going
forward. Much to the dismay of the GBI, he was allowed to
get their investigative notes, a situation that would later cre
ate a lot of friction between Attaway and GBI.
The GBI had already begun to focus on Seay and
Blackwell, interviewing both multiple times. To get to
Blackwell, they interviewed his girlfriend, “Tillie.” Angel
said they interviewed her several times at a motel in
Manchester. They found conflicts with her statements and
Blackwell’s, then went back to Blackwell and Seay and
used that to pressure them.
Angel said that one of the key breaking points was when
he showed Blackwell photos of Hoard’s body.
“He started talking when I showed him a picture of Floyd
in that car, ” Angel said. 7 showed him what they had
accomplished what they did. He started talking after that. ”
Tillie also pressured Blackwell to tell what he knew about
the murder. On November 27, 1967, Sheriff Attaway took
Tillie (who was described in media reports at the time as
a “shapely redhead”) to Atlanta where she was allowed
to spend an hour alone with Blackwell in a “bedroom-
lounge” room at the Fulton County Jail. During that time,
she encouraged him to tell everything he knew about the
murder.
Blackwell soon confessed to the Hoard murder, at first
saying that Seay had planted the bomb. A few days later,
he gave another confession saying he had put the dynamite
in Hoard’s car.
Seay then confessed after Blackwell gave his statement.
After those two confessions, it was a short line to connect
the dots back to Worley, Pinion and Park.
Following the December indictments, the trials of the five
men accused in the murder were set for January 1968.
NEXT WEEK PART 5:
THE TRIALS AND AFTERMATH
of the- five men indirtr..i »»
of Sol. Gen. Floyd Hn ^ ond «y for
and a federal warno.
him ~ iti ' «»?:?.
meantime. arraign
!t c defendants has
f jr 10 a m. Friday.
yfere Judge .Mark
fi the courthouse in
fit defendants are
be present. Sol.
Channell said,
charged in the
style killing are
Park. 76 • year-
bootlegger of
George Douglas
Jefferson. Lloyd
23. Dawsonvjiie.
Blackwell. 24.
in Pickens Coun-
fcrley Sol Gen
aid he understands
yimir.al records
probably start
18. the date
are tc appear
special session of
Court. The
were drawn a(■
paid jury indicted
Monday AJ-
IruJ uiJJ probably
that time it could
by motions
may not come
--
Iras Worley. 40 C
ought, talked witi, hi,°w? e r Ce - ,he
n, H didV h £ Said he'd*'''*'
I d.dn t ask.” she ,„id
not
said.
leJ h mf nnd iury
botor h , '“ 0 hours Monday
c 12, Un "" 8 * ">or
• or indictment again*
rive men.
Major Barney Ragsdale
head of the GBI. Capt j E *
Carnes, who led the invest!*
nation for the GBI. and John-
•-on County Sheriff Rowland
Attaway. who claims credit
for the break in the case,
were all in the courtroom
when the indictment was
read.
The grand jurors left their
closed door session at mid-
afternoon to march solemn-
Iv into the courtroom and ap
pear before Judge Dunahoo.
It was the same grand jury
with which the late solicitor
was to have met on August
7. the day he was killed. And
it was the same grand jury
which in October charged the
former Jackson County sher
iff. L. G. Perry, with conspir-
with Park to create a
mg
bootleg monopoly in Jackson
County Allen Phillips. Com
merce banker, was grand jury
Judge Dunahoo speaking in
a barely audible voice, read
the indictment to the sparsley
filled room. The quintet, it
was charged, did “unlawfully,
feloniously and with malice
aforethought kill and murder
Floyd G Hoard with, and by
use of and by explosion of
dynamite, powder, nitrogly
cerine and other explosive
FLOYD HOARD
.substance, compound and like
device, thereby inflicting up
on Floyd G. Hoard a mortal
wound and mortal wounds
from which the said Floyd G.
Hoard then and there died.”
Witnesses listed on the in-
Robert E.
Ronald E.
dictment were
Hightower. GBI
CONTINUED PAGE 14
Sheriff 135 Miles Away
Spurs Case Break
Dramatically enough, it was apparent
ly a South Georgia sheriff who pointed the
way toward indictment of five men on the
Floyd Hoard murder.
Johnson County Sheriff Rowland At
taway of Wrightsville had been working on
the case several weeks but he said in Jef
ferson Monday that it really began to
“break" only a week before the indictment.
He makes no secret of the fact he
thinks he is the one who should have pri
mary credit for the crack in the four -
months - old case.
The sheriff came to Jefferson during
the week-end, bringing one of the defend
ants, Lloyd George Seay.
When pressed as to the time when the
case broke, Sheriff Attaway said it was
during the week-end. “All weekend" said
one of the GBI officials standing nearby.
How did a sheriff 125 miles from Jack-
son County become involved in the investi
gation?
Here is the story as related by the
sheriff, a 46 - year - old man who has been
in office since 1961:
Seay and Blackwell came to Wrights
ville briefly on the day of Floyd Hoard’s
death, checking into the possibility of set
ting up a liquor operation in that county.
They left but came back two days later and
t i e i j_l i i—i i
JOHNSON SHERIFF, GBI OFFICIALS-Johnson County
Sheriff Ronald Attaway (center), one ol the persons said
most responsible for the arrest of five men on the Floyd
Hoad murder case, is shown with two GBI officials. Capt. J
E. Carnes (left) who led the Hoard investigation and Major
Barney Ragsdale (right) head of the GBI. The trio was pho
tographed in Jefferson Monday shortly after the five men
were indicted by a Jackson County Grand jury.
Wrightsville. Here, in the basement, they
set up a moonshine operation with a still
capable of turning out some 70 cases a day.
The night of Sept. 21 the house caught
fire apparently from a leaking gas explo
sion. The still was found in the ashes and a
hole was discovered in the backyard for
disposal of used mash. Seat was arrested in
Laurens County a few days later and charg
ed in the case.
After four months of investigation, the killers of solicitor Floyd Hoard were arrested and indicted in early December 1967.