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PAGE 4A
MAINSTREET NEWSPAPERS
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 2, 2017
We Remember 50 Years Ago:
The Floyd Hoard Assassination
PART 1:
Bootleggers, car thieves dominated the
1960s
' Jt)—■*- ~ - '
„ I.-, (.r. We« Smith (right) takes it easy as revenue agents begin collecting
ING QUIETLY WITH AN UNHAPPY LOOK on his ace • confiscated liquor. Smith was arrested and made bond
al alcohol at Pendergrass house. Agent Walt Dodd stands by some (Gainesville Daily Times Photo),
in the hour. (See story above.)
This clip from a 1962 issue of The Jackson Herald shows some of the booze confiscated in a large raid
of local bootleggers that year. The photo was given to The Herald by the Gainesville Times and shows a
revenue agent wearing a gun and the frowning bootlegger who was arrested in the raid.
(EDITOR’S NOTE: Fifty years ago next Monday,
Jackson County was changed forever.
The bombing assassination of solicitor general
— now district attorney — Floyd “Fuzzy” Hoard
on Aug. 7, 1967, shook the county to its core. In
an era where local lawlessness was widespread
— and often excused or accepted — the murder
of Hoard began a long process of reform.
Those who lived in Jackson County at the time
will never forget it. From the bombing, to the
manhunt, to the trials, the Hoard assassination
has echoed across the decades.
Over the next five weeks, we remember the
events surrounding the murder and the sacrifice
Hoard made to bring down what had become a
nest of corruption in Jackson County.)
In the 1950s and 1960s, Northeast Georgia was
known as a hotbed of open criminal activity and public
corruption. It was the center of the state’s bootlegging and
car theft rings.
Jackson County was especially involved in illegal activi
ties and corruption:
In the 1950s, the county had more bootlegging cases
than any other Georgia county.
In 1959, a county audit implicated a number of county
elected officials in a public corruption scandal.
In 1961, a Jackson County Superior Court Judge was dis
barred after being convicted on public corruption charges.
In 1963, Jackson County’s sheriff was arrested and
charged with being part of a car theft ring.
“It was a ‘wild west’ show back in the 1960s, ” recalled
former Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent Ronnie
Angel about Jackson County’s atmosphere of lawlessness.
Jackson County wasn’t alone in the “rackets” reputation.
Barrow County was the home of the Birt and Chancey
gangs and many of the mountain counties to the north
were home to moonshine operations.
In fact, lawlessness that revolved around bootlegging,
gambling, prostitution and car thefts was rampant in a lot
of hamlets all across the South.
Phenix City, Ala., just across the Georgia line, was noto
rious in the 1950s for its organized crime. An Alabama
attorney general who ran on a platform to clean up the
town was murdered there in 1954.
Just a week after Hoard’s murder in 1967, Pauline Pusser,
wife of crusading sheriff Buford Pusser in McNairy County,
Tenn., was slain in an ambush by the State Line Mob that
ruled the area. That killing was a central part of the famous
1973 movie, “Walking Tall.”
And Biloxi, Miss, was a hotbed for the “Dixie Mafia”
starting in the 1960s and wasn’t cleaned up until after the
1987 murder of a judge and his wife.
SOME HUMOR IN DEADLY BUSINESS
While the illegal operations were sometimes deadly seri
ous, there were also some humorous moments.
In 1963, a Jefferson policeman noticed a suspicious
truck and car driving through town late at night. He gave
chase, at one point trying to shoot out the tires of the truck.
The truck went into Hall County where its driver stopped
and fled the scene. The Jefferson cop called for help, and
eventually, the truck was brought back to Jefferson where
officers, the mayor and other citizens “gleefully” poured
out 990 gallons of untaxpaid liquor into the street in front
of Jefferson City Hall.
Agent Angel recalled an incident in the early 1960s when
he was working as a state trooper and chased a car in
Banks County down to Commerce:
“He (the driver) ran into Dot’s Drive-In — that was the
hangout for all the car thieves, open 24-hours day. I went
wheeling into Dot’s after he’d went in. I bailed out and
went inside right behind him. There was a lot of people
inside. I went in there, a big shot you know — I pulled up
and adjusted my belt and everything- and said, 7 don’t
know who you are, but you're going to have to leave
sooner or later and when you leave, I’ll be waiting on
you. ’ I turned around and went back outside — all four
tires on my car had been cut. I took my tail and went
bloop, bloop, bloop down the road. ”
CAR THEFTS BECOME BIG BUSINESS
Bootlegging and gambling machines had a long history
in Jackson County. But in 1962, a new criminal enterprise
emerged: car thefts.
It began with the theft of a 1961 Oldsmobile from the
Jefferson Mills parking lot one Sunday morning in April,
1962. That car was found off of Waterworks Road near
Commerce, partially stripped.
By the end of 1962, a front-page commentary in The
Jackson Herald predicted that the illegal bootlegging in
the county would be pushed out by the booming car theft
rackets.
That proved to be wrong, but the car theft operations did
continue to grow in the coming years.
In early 1963, a slew of Jackson County car thefts made
headlines:
A dumping ground of car parts was discovered in some
woods near Roger’s Cemetery in Commerce; Commerce
police found two stolen cars at the city’s trash dump; a
new 1963 Chevrolet was stolen from a Commerce auto
dealer and found stripped; a stolen car was found near
BJC Hospital after thieves abandoned it when it ran out
of gas; a stolen 1958 Chevrolet was found in the Brockton
community near Jefferson by hunters who exchanged gun
fire with the thieves; two cars were found in a barn on the
Ed Kelly farm near Jefferson where they had cut one end
out of the barn to drive the cars inside and used torches to
cut them up; Commerce police had a wild chase through
town early one Sunday morning with car thieves that
ended when one of the cars rolled over; and state and
federal authorities found three stolen cars in a Hoschton
barn rented by a local bootlegger.
And all of that was just in January.
In February 1963, state and federal agents raided the
A.D. Allen garage in Commerce where they found an
assembly line for stripping cars and thousands of stolen
auto parts scattered over three chicken houses.
Agent Angel said each chicken house had its specific
kinds of stripped parts.
“The first house had front end sections and doors; one
of them was full of dashboards and bucket seats; and the
other one full of tires, motors and transmissions, ” he said.
Across the road, behind Allen’s home, state and federal
law enforcement officers found over 150 stolen car “hulls”
that had been stripped for parts. Agents brought some
20 people from Atlanta who had their cars stolen to help
identify the vehicles.
The case was begun after two youths were arrested in
College Park. They admitted they had stolen over 250 cars
and taken them to Allen’s garage.
The week after the raid, officers discovered some of the
stolen auto parts being burned behind Allen’s house. No
court order to protect the evidence had been done.
Fulton County indicted 18 people from Jackson, Banks,
Gwinnett and Madison counties related to the Allen thefts
in late February 1963. In May, Allen pled guilty at a Fulton
County court hearing. News reports called the hearing a
“great comedy” — some 14 other car theft defendants got
the court to continue their cases for a variety of question
able reasons.
After the hearing, Allen and the others were reported to
have milled around in the courtroom “laughing” and jok
ing with the various law enforcement officials.
Later in 1963, Fulton County also indicted Jackson
County’s sheriff, John B. Brooks, on auto theft charges in
an unrelated case.
CONTINUED ON THE FOLLOWING PAGE
This clip from a 1963 issue of The Jackson Herald shows some of the cars that were stolen and brought to Jackson County to be stripped for parts.