Newspaper Page Text
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 2, 2017
MAINSTREET NEWSPAPERS
PAGE 5A
We Remember 50 Years Ago:
The Floyd Hoard Assassination
This clip from a 1963 issue of The Jackson Herald shows some of the stolen auto parts found during a mas
sive raid of the A.D. Allen car theft ring in Commerce. Some 150 car “hulls” were found during the raid
along with a massive number of auto parts taken from the stolen vehicles.
POURING OUT "moonshine" taken in Thursday raids are (from left) Revenue Agent Dave Ayers, Depu
ty Sheriff Ben Dalton and Revenue Agent John Pardue.
This clip from a March 1965 issue of The Jackson Herald shows agents pouring out moonshine following
a raid of two places south of Jefferson. Some 204 gallons of moonshine were confiscated from one of the
locations.
“It was wild and wooly back then, ” recalled agent Angel.
“You couldn’t drive down an old dirt road in Jackson
County without finding a stolen car. It was all over — bad,
bad. ”
One reason car thefts were so easy back then, Angel
said, is that the state didn’t have car titles.
“You could get the serial number ground off of it (a car)
and they couldn ’t identify it and you were home free, ” he
said.
As time went on, the auto theft gangs became more ruth
less.
In Gwinnett County in 1964, three cops stumbled across a
group of thieves stripping a stolen car. The cops were tied
together and their bodies riddled with bullets.
In 1966, car thieves attempted to blow up a South
Carolina auto parts dealer who had become a law enforce
ment informant. Two of those connected with that incident
were originally from Jackson County.
BOOTLEGGING WAS WIDE OPEN
While Jackson County was being transformed into a
car theft capital, bootlegging also continued to be a major
criminal enterprise.
Although the rural county was legally “dry,” beer, wine
and liquor were easily available at any of the many bootleg
ging “houses” that dotted the area.
In 1954, The Jackson Herald took a strong postion against
bootlegging, making it one of the paper’s top priorities of
the year.
There was a lot of debate at the time about “going wet”
since so much illegal booze was available anyway. In 1960,
the City of Jefferson held a referendum on the matter — it
was defeated by just 2 votes.
A subsequent editorial in The Jackson Herald about the
vote was titled, “Do we stagger to the polls to vote dry. ”
The small town of Arcade started legally selling beer and
wine in the early 1960s and some thought that might curtail
the county’s bootlegging operations.
It didn’t
Bootleggers around the county catered to local custom
ers; sold booze on Sundays; and sold to underage teens.
In 1962, a massive state and federal law enforcement
raid on bootlegging and moonshine was conducted at 12
locations across the county and in several nearby counties.
But someone had tipped off the bootleggers and officials
said they missed about 75 percent of those they intended
to arrest.
The raid did catch a large operation in Pendergrass with
300 cases of beer and other illegal booze. But a few days
after the raid, the place was open and running again.
The only time bootleggers weren’t in business, according
to published reports from the 1950s and 1960s, was when
court was in session.
SHERIFF ‘CAN’T FIND’ DEFENDANTS
There were many other local raids in the 1950s and early
1960s, but there was a problem: Sheriff Brooks “couldn’t
find” many of the defendants to bring them to court.
Essentially, Brooks refused to enforce laws against bootleg
ging, saying that was a state and federal responsibility.
“It seems ridiculous that undercover revenue agents can
come to Jackson County time after time and make pur
chases at dozens of establishments, yet local law enforce
ment agencies cannot find anyone to arrest for selling beer
without a license, ” said an editorial in The Jackson Herald
in June 1962.
At one point, Superior Court Judge Richard B. Russell
III threatened to ask the governor for help if Brooks didn’t
bring in the defendants.
Sheriff Brooks also had other ways to help out bootleg
gers. In one big case in 1962, authorities raided and sought
a padlock order for an Amvets Club bootlegging operation
south of Jefferson.
But Brooks played what The Jackson Herald called “Legal
Leap Frog”: The sheriff pulled the case from superior
court where the padlock order was pending and gave it
to the “city court,” now named the county’s “state court.”
Bootlegging was a misdemeanor and most misdemeanor
cases went to the city court, but could be moved into supe
rior court. Padlock orders generally came from superior
court.
On the Saturday morning after the raid, city court Judge
Early Stark called the cases, fined the two men charged
in the operation $350 each, and dismissed the rest of the
charges. The operation remained open, having avoided the
threat of a superior court padlock order.
The city court had long been a conduit to let bootleggers
go free.
In 1958, Superior Court Judge Maylon Clinkscales ordered
a series of raids on local bootleggers. Eight people were
arrested in the raids across the county on Friday night,
August 1, 1958. Judge Clinkscales ordered all of the defen
dants held for 72 hours, without a bond, and to appear in
his courtroom Monday morning.
But the following day, city court Judge Stark signed
orders letting all eight defendants out of jail.
Judge Clinkscales was furious and when court opened
that Monday, he blasted the city court while appealing to
the grand jury to move forward with indicting the eight
bootleggers. But the grand jury refused after Judge Stark
made an unusual appearance before it.
CITY COURT UNDER FIRE
It wasn’t the first time the city court had been contro
versial for its light fines. In 1951, a grand jury called for
the court to be abolished, saying the court’s “fines and
punishments are entirely too small in a great proportion
of cases and not in keeping with the seriousness of the
offense. ” Earlier grand juries had called for the city court
to be abolished as well.
When the editor of The Jackson Herald wrote an editorial
critical of the 1958 court mess, he got death threats.
“Threats made on the life and property of The Herald
are not new, ” wrote editor Tom Williams. “We have had
hundreds over the years — just about any time we mention
a bootlegger in the news columns or write an editorial
against bootlegging. ”
That wasn’t the last time the newspaper complained
about the lack of resolve in prosecuting bootleggers. In
1962, Herald reporters went to several of the bootlegging
establishments and purchased beer, then reported on the
purchases with directions to the establishments in a move
to embarrass lax law enforcement officials.
And on occasion, citizens would also speak out in public
about the bootlegging problems in the county. Local minis
ters often railed against bootlegging.
In 1965, a group of Pendergrass citizens connected with
North Jackson Elementary School appeared before the
grand jury to ask that a bootlegging joint near the school
be declared a “public nuisance” and padlocked. The
place was described as a “trailer with one room attached”
located within 500 yards of the school.
But that kind of citizen pushback was rare and muted
by other citizens who didn’t speak out, or who refused to
convict those who had been charged.
A lot of people knew what was going on with both the
bootlegging and car thefts, but were scared.
Fear ruled as people warned each other to stay quiet, or
face getting “burned out.”
NEXT WEEK PART 2:
FLOYD HOARD ENTERS THE SCENE
This clip from a 1963 issue of The Jackson Herald shows what was left of a 1962 Ford Galaxie that was found
stripped near Hoschton by federal agents. The information with the photo noted that it was not torched,
but wrenches had been used to take it apart for its parts.
