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Georgia Focus - Notorious GA · Georgia Focus

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  Speaker 1: Welcome to Georgia Focus. I'm John Clark on the Georgia
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  Speaker 1: News Network. Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts
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  Speaker 1: of men and women? Georgia may be the peach state,
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  Speaker 1: but behind the sweetness is a darker edge of crime, corruption,
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  Speaker 1: and violence. And it's all spelled out in the book,
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  Speaker 1: Notorious Georgia, by Neely Young. Neely Young is my guest today.
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  Speaker 1: How'd you get into it?
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  Speaker 2: Well, I was about, of course, I've been a journalist
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  Speaker 2: for 50 years. I don't want to tell you how
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  Speaker 2: old I am, but I'm over there. And about seven,
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  Speaker 2: eight years ago, I had a brain tumor. Oh, really?
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  Speaker 2: And mainly the result of that was aphasia, which means
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  Speaker 2: that your brain is working fine, but you can't speak
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  Speaker 2: or you have a lot of difficulty writing. And so
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  Speaker 2: I had to have some therapy to get this done.
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  Speaker 2: And you can tell I have a little bit of health.
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  Speaker 2: Sometimes I can't pronounce some words. So I had to
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  Speaker 2: get some therapy to get this corrected, which was successful.
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  Speaker 2: But the therapist said, why don't you, let me tell
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  Speaker 2: you what we'd like you to do. You write a
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  Speaker 2: piece of something and then give it to me and
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  Speaker 2: then I'll call it back to you, and then I'm
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  Speaker 2: going to give it to you and let you call
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  Speaker 2: it back to me. Okay. So through the periods of four, five,
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  Speaker 2: six months, I learned how to speak again and to write,
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  Speaker 2: though I can't speak very big, monophonical syllable words very well. Right. Well,
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  Speaker 2: that worked great for me because I was AP style anyway.
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  Speaker 2: Don't use a lot of periods. Don't have big words.
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  Speaker 2: The idea for that is to be clear, and then
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  Speaker 2: maybe a high school student can read it and understand it.
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  Speaker 2: Ernest Hemingway used that style.
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  Speaker 1: Oh, man. So as a result, you started writing these stories,
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  Speaker 1: and now you got the book.
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  Speaker 2: That's right. Well, my Georgia Trend magazine had, we had
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  Speaker 2: in January of every year, we did the most influential Georgians.
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  Speaker 2: And so we picked 100 people, 100. And so I said, well,
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  Speaker 2: I'll just write about influential Georgians in the 20th century.
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  Speaker 2: So that's how my first book happened. And so I had,
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  Speaker 2: that went real well. And so a year and a
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  Speaker 2: half ago, I was getting kind of bored. So I
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  Speaker 2: called a publisher and I said, you got any ideas?
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  Speaker 2: And they said, well, here's an idea. So I kind
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  Speaker 2: of took that from the publisher. And John, I was
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  Speaker 2: a cub reporter back, you know, when I first started my,
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  Speaker 2: Valdosta Times. That was my family newspaper. Really? I don't
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  Speaker 2: want to tell you how old that was.
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  Speaker 1: I went to college in Valdosta. I love Valdosta. Valdosta
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  Speaker 1: Daily Times.
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  Speaker 2: Valdosta Daily Times. I was a cub reporter doing that
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  Speaker 2: and had the police beat. I've always been fascinated by...
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  Speaker 2: crime and that sort of thing and what makes criminals tick.
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  Speaker 2: The main thing doing this book John is I wanted
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  Speaker 2: to highlight the police and the cops who brought these
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  Speaker 2: people to justice and the legal system. So that's kind
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  Speaker 2: of what I that was kind of the motive that
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  Speaker 2: I wanted to do that for.
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  Speaker 1: Notorious Georgia is what it's called, and I read some
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  Speaker 1: of it. I've heard of some of these before, but
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  Speaker 1: some I never knew about. But one thing I did
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  Speaker 1: know is that one thing you start out with is
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  Speaker 1: the all-day murders. And I remember that vaguely. I mean, vividly,
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  Speaker 1: because I was in southwest Georgia. I'm from southwest Georgia,
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  Speaker 1: and that's where it happened.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, where are you from again?
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  Speaker 1: I'm from Dawson. I'm from Dawson, Georgia.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, okay. Well, you know where all this happened then. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: So what happened there?
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  Speaker 2: Well, the headline is six in a family were slain
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  Speaker 2: in a Seminole County execution. And this was a little
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  Speaker 2: bit of background. I was publishing an editor of a
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  Speaker 2: newspaper up in Canton, Clayton County, and I knew all
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  Speaker 2: these people. I didn't know the who was killed, but
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  Speaker 2: I knew the media people. Right. And Bo McLeod, Donald Flores,
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  Speaker 2: and Albany, Jimmy Gray, Albany Herald. So they covered all
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  Speaker 2: this crime. But it was just a horrible story. This
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  Speaker 2: nice family outside of Bainbridge, Georgia, where the small town is,
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  Speaker 2: they were just doing their crop. They were harvesting their crops,
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  Speaker 2: and they had a little trailer. So these fugitives from
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  Speaker 2: up north, they were running from the law. So they
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  Speaker 2: were coming down, getting south and going down to Panama City,
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  Speaker 2: and they didn't have any gas, they didn't have any money,
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  Speaker 2: and they were starving. So they just pulled off the
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  Speaker 2: road and saw a trailer over there. So they came
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  Speaker 2: into that trailer and the people were out in the field.
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  Speaker 2: Some of them were in the field and some of
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  Speaker 2: them were not. So they just broke into the trailer
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  Speaker 2: and there were two people in there and they just
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  Speaker 2: shot them. Execution style. And then waited on the others
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  Speaker 2: to come. And so then they shot the other There
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  Speaker 2: were six in all, including one of them's wife. And
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  Speaker 2: these were really fine people. They were, you know, church people,
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  Speaker 2: you know. And so they raped the woman and then
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  Speaker 2: shot her, too. And then they tried to get out
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  Speaker 2: of town. And then, of course, they stole as much
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  Speaker 2: money as they could get in there. And they were caught.
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  Speaker 2: and brought back up to Seminole County and were tried.
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  Speaker 2: And they were found guilty. One of them turned state addict.
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  Speaker 2: And here's the real terrible thing about this. I think
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  Speaker 2: this part, everybody has their day in court. But all
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  Speaker 2: these people, it started in 1973, and then in 74,
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  Speaker 2: they were tried and found guilty. Then they appealed it
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  Speaker 2: 10 years later, 1988, and the Supreme Court came back
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  Speaker 2: and said, well, there was too much pretrial publicity, and
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  Speaker 2: they didn't get a fair trial. The courts didn't say
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  Speaker 2: that they were guilty or innocent. They just said they
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  Speaker 2: should have a retry. Right. So they retried them, and
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  Speaker 2: they pretty much found them. I think they went up
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  Speaker 2: to another pair of Georgians. It was not in Seminole County.
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  Speaker 2: And they found them all guilty again. But one of them,
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  Speaker 2: they found like he was mentally retarded, and so, you know,
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  Speaker 2: And another one, this Wayne Coleman, I think it was,
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  Speaker 2: they said that they didn't sentence him to death, but
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  Speaker 2: they sent him to life in prison. And then they
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  Speaker 2: sentenced Carl Isaac to the electric chair. And so I
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  Speaker 2: was shocked, really. So this was almost... In 2003, he
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  Speaker 2: was executed. Look how long that took. 1973 to 2003.
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  Speaker 2: But he was executed finally. It was kind of how
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  Speaker 2: the court system works. And I'm just not even knocking
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  Speaker 2: that because every man's guilty and innocent until he's proven guilty.
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  Speaker 2: That's the most horrible, I think, of all the stories.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, you start out with that, and you're like, wow,
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  Speaker 1: because I remember it very well. And then you go
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  Speaker 1: on to others I didn't know about, like the resurgence
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  Speaker 1: of the Ku Klux Klan. I didn't know about that story,
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  Speaker 1: and that was interesting to read.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, there was, let's see, William Sammons went up. That
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  Speaker 2: was the first the Klan was done after the Civil War.
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  Speaker 2: It was kind of people just trying to protect themselves
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  Speaker 2: from carpetbaggers and that sort of thing. But 1915, William Simons,
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  Speaker 2: he decided he was going to change, get it revived.
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  Speaker 2: And it was all on race, basically. He thought that
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: burning a cross on Stone Mountain, he brought a big
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  Speaker 2: crowd up there to do that. And it was over.
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  Speaker 2: That started, and his goal was to promote white supremacy
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  Speaker 2: and protect the rights of white Americans against blacks. That's
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  Speaker 2: the whole thing. And it was over a number of years,
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  Speaker 2: the Klan membership had 5 million nationwide people by the 1920s.
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  Speaker 2: And 150,000 were those in Georgia. So that's unbelievable, isn't it?
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  Speaker 1: That's unbelievable.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. They just did terrible. I mean, they were terrible.
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  Speaker 2: burning crosses and killing people. You couldn't have all these
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  Speaker 2: laws if a black man even looked at a white woman.
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  Speaker 2: He'd be dead the next day. I guess the only
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  Speaker 2: good thing about it is after And most of these people,
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  Speaker 2: believe it or not, the five million were up in
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  Speaker 2: the Midwest.
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  Speaker 1: Oh, really?
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  Speaker 2: Oh, I didn't know that. It wasn't just in the South.
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  Speaker 2: It was Illinois and all up in that area. And
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  Speaker 2: there were a lot of people who didn't like Catholics
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  Speaker 2: up there. It wasn't just blacks, but mainly it was blacks.
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  Speaker 2: But by the 1940s, the membership and everything had dropped
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  Speaker 2: and gone way down. And we had 1,400 members by then.
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  Speaker 2: So that's the good thing. But then when the 1954
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  Speaker 2: Brown v. Board of Education law was passed, all of
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  Speaker 2: a sudden a lot of these people came out of
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  Speaker 2: the woodwork. How old are you, John? 62. Okay, well,
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  Speaker 2: you might remember, you know, Lester Maddox and Tavage and
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  Speaker 2: all that. Okay, well, you and I are very close.
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  Speaker 2: It's the same age. So that was an interesting part
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  Speaker 2: of the story and what happened with that. And finally,
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  Speaker 2: Martin Luther King came into the late 60s and mid-60s
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  Speaker 2: and changed the laws and all that. So that's a
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  Speaker 2: good part of the story.
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  Speaker 1: You also write about, you mentioned Lester Maddox, but you
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  Speaker 1: mentioned various politicians in the book. And one is Eugene Talmadge.
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  Speaker 1: And I've read so many stories about him, and I'm
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  Speaker 1: just shocked by some of them. But he was really,
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  Speaker 1: he was quite a guy. I mean, I don't know
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  Speaker 1: to say that, right?
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  Speaker 2: Well, you know, he was a dictator in the 40s.
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  Speaker 2: And he was big... His whole stick was race, you know. Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: And he had, and he was, the funniest story about him,
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  Speaker 2: he did some good things. But basically he was, you
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  Speaker 2: remember Huey Long? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, he was a
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  Speaker 2: Huey Long, you know, for that, for Georgia. And the
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  Speaker 2: funniest story is he, they caught him just red-handed stealing
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  Speaker 2: state funds. So he went out all over the state saying,
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  Speaker 2: I did this. Yes, I stole for you. But I
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  Speaker 2: stole for the people of Georgia. And so he fermented
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  Speaker 2: a lot of racial tension. You can see through some
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  Speaker 2: of these stories. It's kind of a background of him.
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  Speaker 1: One story you mentioned has to have some favor with
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  Speaker 1: you being Valdosta's Doc Holliday. That has to be an
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  Speaker 1: interesting story.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, so he was, his dad was a
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  Speaker 2: pharmacist and he came to Valdosta. This is right after
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  Speaker 2: the Civil War. And he went to dental school. And
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  Speaker 2: he was a tough bird. And one thing they did,
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  Speaker 2: the Yankees, as I say, took over a lot of
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: them south. And they took over the courthouse and the law.
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  Speaker 2: And so he and about four other guys, they wanted
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: to go and dynamite the courthouse. during court season. And
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: they tried to put some dynamite in the courtroom and
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: set it and everything and blow up the courthouse. Well,
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: that didn't work. He didn't get caught with that. But
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  Speaker 2: then there was a swimming hole right outside of Valdosta.
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  Speaker 2: He was over there and some black police officers and
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  Speaker 2: officials were swimming in the stream. So he didn't like that.
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  Speaker 2: He came along with them. So one of them, he
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  Speaker 2: pulled out a gun and told them to get out.
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  Speaker 2: So one of the men went over to get his gun,
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  Speaker 2: and they were trying to get out of the water.
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  Speaker 2: He shot, I think there were six of them. He
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  Speaker 2: shot all six of them.
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  Speaker 1: Oh, man.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah. And they called it the Swimming Hole Incident. Okay.
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  Speaker 2: So he was kind of, you know, left Valdosta under
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  Speaker 2: a cloud, let's just say that.
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  Speaker 1: Is that when he go to Griffin from there, from Valdosta,
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  Speaker 1: and then on to Arizona? How'd he go on to Arizona?
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  Speaker 2: Well, he was born in Griffin. Oh, okay. They moved
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  Speaker 2: to Valdosta.
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  Speaker 1: Okay.
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  Speaker 2: He spent most of his life there. So, you know,
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  Speaker 2: he left and went out west and became famous, you know. Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: And they, you know, you ever see it, you ever
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: buy it, so you know the movie. Oh, yes. Oh, yeah.
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  Speaker 1: I'm a big Doc Holliday fan. I just like him.
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  Speaker 2: That's right. That's right. He had, that was, let's see, his,
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: he was, he came to Tombstone, and that's where O.K.
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: Corral was. Yeah. And Kurt Douglas was... was Holliday. And
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: if you remember, he had tuberculosis. Right, he did, yeah.
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: I can't pronounce it.
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he did. Tuberculosis.
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  Speaker 2: And Kirk Duck was played him, and then Wyatt Earp
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  Speaker 2: was played by Burt Lancaster. Isn't that great?
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's great. That's great. Yeah, Doc Holliday, he's quite
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  Speaker 1: a legend, George, I tell you what.
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  Speaker 2: He really is.
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  Speaker 1: You also have Lynn Turner. That was a case in
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  Speaker 1: Cobb County? Was part of it Cobb County?
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  Speaker 2: That was in Marietta. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: That was interesting. I remember where that went on.
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  Speaker 2: She had two husbands. It's almost humorous, you know, because
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  Speaker 2: she was kind of a tough gal. I think she
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: went to Marietta High School. She met this fellow that
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: was a police officer and married him. And she had
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: somehow taken a pet or dog to a veterinarian. And
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: so they said, ma'am, we're going to have to put
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: this dog down. And she said, well, what do you
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: use to kill the dog? So they told her that
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: the best thing was antifreeze. And so she came back
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: home and she convinced her husband to take out a $ 200, 000
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: life insurance policy. And they were having a lot of
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: marital problems, but all of a sudden she became very
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: nice to him. And they kind of patched things up.
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: So he liked Jell-O, so she fixed him a dessert
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: of Jell-O. And unknown to him, the next morning he
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: was just throwing up and sick, you know, and she
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: called the ambulance and came and he, he next, that
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: afternoon he died. Yeah. And so she told the coroner that, uh, well,
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: he had a lot of heart problems. And so the
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: coroner just said, okay, and that's what he put on
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: his debt on the death certificate. Yeah. Well, during the
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: same whole time, she was having an affair with a, uh,
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: a fireman. Okay. So when he died, when the first
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: husband died, she, uh, She got connected with a fireman
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: and she took out, she said, honey, why don't you
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: take out a life insurance policy? It just might be,
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: I feel comfortable. So he took out another one. $ 200, 000
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: life insurance policy, naming her as the beneficiary. Well, two
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: or three days later, you know, she fixed him a
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: nice little Jell-O dessert.
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  Speaker 1: Oh my gosh.
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  Speaker 2: And he thought that was great, you know. And the
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: next day he was dead. So she told the coroner,
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: you know, well, you know, he had heart problems. So
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: the coroner said, okay, you know, death certificate said he
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: died of a heart attack. Well, the first husband's mother
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: saw in the obituary that the second, the fireman's, had
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: the similar circumstances as her son. So she called the
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: cops and said, look, this is too, we need to
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: look into this. So they, they redid the body, took
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: the bodies out and found out that they had, they
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: were poisoned. Yeah. And so she went from, went from,
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: you know, they called her the Jell-O murderer.
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  Speaker 1: Oh man. And she, is she still in, she's in
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: prison now or did she die?
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: Well, she went to prison and came, you know, and
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: she took her own life, is what we think. Oh, okay.
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: But she died. So, John, you're a journalist, and I am.
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: So most of these people, being important, you know, making
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: sure you've got documentation, I believe most, 90% of these
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: people are dead. Yeah, yeah.
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: They are.
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  Speaker 1: But you write about them. You write the whole story.
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: And you write, I mean, there's so many others. The
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: Mancini murders. There's so many different ones. Story after story,
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: there's too many to go into at this point, but
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: they are great. They're just really great. Now, do you
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: think there, like others, so many, as a journalist, you
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: see things, you hear things that people say and do,
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: and you think, I've got to put that in a book.
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: Do you plan on doing any more books?
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: Well, I wanted to see how this goes, and I
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: thought I'd cover the publisher. It's the History Press, and they...
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: They specialize, of course, in that, but they do other
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: big outfits. Arcadia is the company, and they do. So
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: I could do two or three more books.
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: I know.
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  Speaker 2: Easy.
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  Speaker 1: It's amazing, too. And these are all stories. These are
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: all really good stories that have been documented. Some of
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: them I haven't heard of, but some of them I had.
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: And they're really good stories. They're great stories to read.
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: I appreciate that.
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: And it's a short book, too. It's not a long book.
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: You just read it and go. Everybody get this book.
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: It's fun. It's a fun book to read. Notorious Georgia.
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: Do you still use writing as your therapy?
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: Yes, I do. I'm a lot better, and I'll give
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: book signings and speeches and things. So I've been doing that. So, yeah, amazingly,
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: I can get up and talk. But again, I have
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: to be real careful. And I've had some, for instance,
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: I did this Button Gwinnett story. That's a great story.
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: So I was given to talk to some Revolutionary War soldiers.
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: folks that were interested in that because it was our
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: 250th anniversary. So I said, so I had one of
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: the men join the battalion. And I said, I didn't
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: say battalion, I said a brassiere. So everybody got a
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: kick out of that. I'm like, well, I.
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: Don't mean that. That was an interesting story on Button Garnett, too.
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: I didn't know, people didn't like him. Is that what
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: you were saying? The people didn't like him very much?
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, boy, he was a jerk.
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: I didn't understand. I thought everybody liked him.
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: John, I don't think I can go. I can't give
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: a book signing up in Gwinnett County.
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: Well, his name is on the Declaration of Independence.
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, Declaration of Independence. And he was always under
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: a cloud. He would bankrupt these businesses, and people were
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: always after him. So he didn't document it. He used
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: his signature very much. So it's a very rare signature.
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: And people that collect multimillionaires, that collect the names and
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: the signatures of the people who signed the Declaration of Independence.
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: And his is one that, his is very hard to find.
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: Because he just didn't do that many documents. You know
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: what his signature is worth now?
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: How much?
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: A million dollars. Oh.
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: If you can find it, you got a million dollars.
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: That's right. That's right.
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's a fascinating story. All these stores are great.
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: And I want to encourage people to pick up this book.
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: You can board it online, I guess, or pick it
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: up at your local bookstore, wherever it's available.
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the bookstore and, you know, Amazon. A lot of
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: people go that route.
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: That's Neely Young. author of Notorious Georgia, From Backroom Deals
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: to Mob Rule, When the Power Bent the Law in Georgia.
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: It's a fantastic book. I encourage you to get it
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: online or at your favorite bookstore. If you have questions
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: or comments on today's show, you can email me, johnclark
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: at georgianewsnetwork.com. Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you next
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: week right here on your local radio station on Georgia Focus.
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: you