Infamous America - DIXIE MAFIA: GEORGIA Ep. 4 | “The Assassination”

Episode Date: July 17, 2024

A leak inside law enforcement keeps kingpin Cliff Park’s bootleggers, car thieves and cop killers a step ahead of prosecutor Floyd Hoard and the GBI. Outrun but not outsmarted, Hoard employs aggressive new tactics to clean up Jackson County. Tactics that ignite Park’s short and volatile fuse. Join Black Barrel+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: blackbarrel.supportingcast.fm/join   Apple users join Black Barrel+ for ad-free episodes, bingeable seasons and bonus episodes. Click the Black Barrel+ banner on Apple to get started with a 3-day free trial.   On YouTube, subscribe to INFAMOUS+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: hit “Join” on the Legends YouTube homepage.   For more details, visit our website www.blackbarrelmedia.com and check out our social media pages. We’re @OldWestPodcast on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For 10 years, there had been a noticeable escalation of crime in and around Jackson County, Georgia. Jackson County is about 40 miles northeast of Atlanta, and all the counties that led out of Atlanta were experiencing similar problems. As in Phoenix City, Alabama, and many other places, there was corruption at all levels of local government, law enforcement, politicians, lawyers, and judges. Some were good and on the level, but many others accepted bribes from bootleggers, illegal gambling operators, and now car thieves. The new bane of existence along Interstate 85 in the 1960s was car theft.

There was a network of connected auto theft groups that ran from Florida to Virginia. They worked independently and together in various combinations. And then there were just your run-of-the-mill, car thieves, who probably knew of the network but weren't really associated with it. Between bootlegging and auto-eague. theft, violent crime was on the rise in northeast Georgia. In 1956, 66-year-old Charlie Drake was shot and killed in his home by an intruder. The man who eventually confessed to the crime said he had been told by a Jackson County bootlegger that Charlie kept lots of money in his house and he would be easy to

rob. The bootleggar was A. D. Allen, who was more well known for running the ring of car thieves in Jackson County. Alan's name was a. would figure prominently into events in the region in the 1960s and 70s. In 1964, three police officers were handcuffed and executed by car thieves in the woods about 20 miles down the road from Jackson County. Around the same time, A.D. Allen's nephew died in a car accident while he was doing an illegal liquor run from Athens, Georgia to Jefferson, Georgia. Allen's nephew, who was 20 years old, was being chased by lawmen and lost control of his vehicle. It was an accidental death, but the young man was another

casualty of the moonshine business in Jackson County. In 1965, 27-year-old Donald Marlowe was found murdered in his car. His parents owned the most popular cafe in the town of Jefferson, and he had been, quote, shotgun to death. Two years later, despite crackdowns by a crusading lawyer named Floyd Horde and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, a wild car chase played out on Interstate 85 and the backroads of Jackson County. By 1967, the GBI was so intent on stopping the flow of stolen cars through the counties along Interstate 85 that they posted agents at every exit off the interstate in two counties. On May 30, 1967, a man in what was called a high-powered Corvette, blew through a GBI blockade near the town of Jefferson, and led agents on a chase

through the hills of Jackson County. When he hit a dead-end road, he jumped out of the car and ran into the woods. He made it to a house and asked the owners to use the phone. He called two of his contacts, and they showed up to rescue him. But GBI agents had tracked the driver through the woods using dogs, and they arrested all three men. That case was one of many that Floyd Horde planned to prosecute later in the fall of 1967. He was the Solicitor General of a judicial district that included Barrow County, Banks County, and Jackson County. Floyd Horde had been on a mission to clean up the area for two and a half years. A.D. Allen's car theft operation had been largely dismantled by the GBI, but Horde was still

responsible for putting the operators on trial. And with Allen's operation mostly in tatters, Horde focused his efforts on bootleggers and gamblers. In the spring of 1967, three weeks before the car chase near Jefferson, Horde and the GBI conducted sweeping raids against the bootlegging kingpin of Jackson County, Cliff Park. In the space of one night, Horde made a mortal enemy of Park. That night set the stage for one of the darkest days in the history of Jackson County. Georgia. From Black Barrel Media, this is infamous America. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer, and this season we're going back to the story of the Dixie Mafia. Georgia is ground zero for stories of bootlegging,

car theft, bank robbery, and murder. This is episode four, the assassination. Floyd Horde was elected Solicitor General of his district in September 1964. The position of Solicitor General is more commonly called district attorney today, but solicitor general does still exist in some places, like Georgia. Horde's job was to prosecute criminals in his district, which comprised three counties. The largest was Jackson County, with its county seat at Jefferson, which is where he lived. As soon as he was elected, he started working with the GBI to coordinate raids on local bootleggers and illegal gambling operators. Starting in the summer of 1965, Horde and the GBI put nonstop pressure on criminal outfits in the district.

Horde worked closely with the GBI because he couldn't trust some of the local lawmen. His brother-in-law was the chief of police in Jefferson, so he was reliable. But the Jackson County Sheriff's Department was another matter. Right after Horde had been elected, Sheriff John Brooks had been forced to resign after 23 years in service. Brooks had been tried and convicted of auto theft, and he began serving a five-year prison sentence in June of 1965. Sheriff L.G. Perry took over for Sheriff Brooks, and he proved to be just as problematic as Brooks toward the end of the raids. The raids in 1965 and 1966 produced lots of fireworks, but few consequences. GBI agents destroyed hundreds of moonshine whiskey stills in the hills of North and,

Georgia and arrested nearly 2,000 operators. But Floyd Horde was only able to prosecute 130 of the 2,000 people who were arrested, and only a handful of them were convicted. It was a disappointing start. The cleanup was doing short-term damage, but not achieving long-term results. Floyd Horde realized that to make real changes in Jackson County and the rest of his district, he needed to cut the head off the snake. He was getting no way. by targeting the guys who made and transported the illegal liquor. He needed to take down the man who ran the operation. So in 1967, he targeted the kingpin, Cliff Park.

By that time, Cliff Park was 76 years old, and as such, he was nicknamed the old man. He'd been in the moonshine business to one extent or another for nearly 50 years. And like all kingpins, he spread his money around so that he could secure favorable treatment from sheriffs, politicians, lawyers, and judges. He was unassuming, genial and cordial, more of a grandfatherly supervisor type than a hands-on practitioner like A.D. Allen. Allen always seemed to be in the middle of the action, whether it was his bootlegging business

or his burglary business or his car theft business. And despite several stints in federal and state prisons, he would be right in the middle of the action for his finale a few years after the events of 1967. But in March of 1967, Floyd Horde and the GBI started their concerted effort to take down Cliff Park. GBI agent Ron Angel and others went undercover to buy illegal alcohol from Parks Men. Park owned and operated at least two well-known establishments in Jackson County. The businesses don't seem to have formal names.

they just went by informal labels in the way that's common in rural America. One was referred to as the Yellow House, because it was literally a yellow house. The other was called the supermarket. It was basically Cliff Park's garage at his home in Jackson County. At both locations, alcohol was sold openly and freely. A GBI agent later testified, You just walked in there and asked him for some liquor, and he sold it to you. and it was more or less generally known it was carried out that way.

For two months, the GBI under Floyd Horde's supervision conducted the investigation without telling Jackson County Sheriff L.G. Perry. Horde scheduled sweeping raids against Parks businesses for Saturday afternoon, May 6, 1967. But on Friday evening, the day before the raid, Horde learned that Parks men were trying to move large quantities of inventory out of the locations. Horde later told his brother-in-law, the chief of police in Jefferson, that somebody inside the operation was talking. Given the timing of the leak, Horde probably had a good idea who was responsible,

but he immediately changed his plan and coordinated with the GBI to conduct raids that night. After dark, they went in. On the night of May 5, 1967, the GBI raided the Yellow House, the supermarket, and other locations in Cliff Park's empire. The agents seized more than $20,000 worth of beer and whiskey, and they arrested 14 men, including Cliff Park. Park posted bail almost immediately and paid more than $6,000 in fines for some of the smallest charges related to illegal liquor. But for the first time in Cliff Park's life, serious punishment loomed. Park had never once faced trial in nearly 50 years of criminal activity. But with Floyd Horde now running the show, the prospect of a trial and possible prison time was very real.

Two weeks after the raids, a judge ordered the yellow house and the supermarket to be padlocked and the alcohol inside them to be confiscated. That order was not carried out. and the lack of follow-through revealed the most likely suspect of the leaked information about the raids. But that part of the story wouldn't play out for another three months, and it would be prompted, in large part, by the violence to come. In June, 1967, one month after the raids, Douglas Pinyon met with Lloyd C. about a murder-for-hire job. Lloyd was the 23-year-old grandson of legendary stock car racer and moonshine runner Carl Lightning Lloyd C. Lawman and early NASCAR organizers alike called Lightning Lloyd

the best driver they'd ever seen, and he was only 21 years old. He made a name for himself roaring over the country roads around his hometown of Dawsonville, Georgia, 45 miles north of Atlanta in the late 1930s. When organized stock car races that would become NASCAR started in 1936, Carl Lloyd C. was one of the first all-stars, and his short life could be summed up by a single day, his last day. On September 1st, 1941, he won a race at Lakewood Speedway in Atlanta. He drove 45 miles home to Dawsonville, and the next morning, he got into an argument with one of his cousins about a load of sugar that was meant for a batch of moonshine. The cousin shot and killed Carl Lloyd C. on the spot.

26 years later, Carl Lloyd's grandson, Lloyd George C, was meeting with Douglas Pinyon about a contract killing. Pinyon offered $5,000, but Lloyd said he wasn't interested, though he did offer to find someone to help. Lloyd told George Worley,

a 40-year-old criminal from Commerce, Georgia, in the northern part of Jackson County. Warley said he wanted $7,500 for the job. Lloyd reported the news to Douglas Pinyon, but Pinyon said he could only go as high as 5,500. And at that price, the deal was done, and Lloyd agreed to participate. He still didn't want to, but now he was worried that he would be the next target if he didn't go along. Lloyd and George Worley recruited 23-year-old John Blackwell with a promised payment of $1,500 to help buy supplies and act as the lookout.

On Thursday, August 3, 1967, Lloyd C., George Warley, and John Blackwell met at a roadside restaurant and then drove up to South Carolina to buy supplies for the job. Two days later, on Saturday, George Worley demonstrated the use of the supplies. With that, the three men were set. On Sunday night, August 6th, they loaded into a car and headed for the destination. Douglas Pinyon, the Money Man, had given specific instructions that the job had to be done by Monday morning August 7th. The conspirators verified the address of the target and agreed that the plan was a go. Just before midnight on August 6, 1967, John Blackwell hurried through an empty field on the outskirts of Jefferson, Georgia. He was dressed in dark clothes and wore black leather gloves and did his best to creep up to the front of a

one-story house on the other side of the field. Lloyd C. and George Worley waited in the car down the road, which must have seemed a little unfair to Blackwell. He had originally agreed to be the lookout, but now he was doing the heavy lifting, the dangerous heavy lifting, while Lloyd and George sat in the car. Blackwell hustled up to the house and knelt in front of the green Ford Galaxy in the driveway. He was able to pop open the hood of the car. or the bonnet, depending on where you live, without waking anyone in the house. He wired a bundle of ten sticks of dynamite to the engine, exactly the way George Worley had done during their practice sessions.

Blackwell gently lowered the hood, crept away from the house and back through the field, and jogged to the car where Lloyd and George waited. The three men drove two and a half hours south to the home of Blackwell's girlfriend in Ritesville, Georgia. Along the way, they drove across the bridge over the North O'Conney River, and Blackwell threw away his gloves and shoes. At his girlfriend's house, the men changed clothes, ate something, rested for a few hours,

and then started the drive back to Jackson County. While they drove, they heard a radio report about the success of their mission. On Monday morning, August 7th, Solicitor General Floyd Horde had a packed schedule. He was going to present evidence to a grand jury in the case of the car thief who had led GBI agents on a chase through Jackson County three months earlier. Also on the docket was the case against bootleger Cliff Park. Horde was excited about taking the cases to the next step, but he was also nervous. Everyone around him had noticed, and he had been debating whether or not he should start carrying a gun for protection. As he walked through the kitchen on the way to the front door, he kissed his wife Imogene goodbye. Horde's two youngest

daughters were visiting relatives, but his eldest daughter, Peggy Jean, was there eating breakfast. Peggy Jean was a high school sophomore who had just turned 16 and wanted to be a doctor. Now that she was 16, she could get her driver's license. She talked to her father about borrowing his new Ford Galaxy, which was parked in the driveway, to take the test. Floyd asked about his 14-year-old son, Richard. Peggy Jean said Richard was still in bed. He had gone to a late movie in town the night before, The Dirty Dozen, starring Lee Marvin. Floyd walked out the front door and down the front porch steps. He opened the door of his green Ford Galaxy and slid into the driver's seat.

He put the key in the ignition and turned it. The charge from the car battery activated the blasting cap on the 10 sticks of dynamite in the engine, and the explosion blew the car's hood 10 feet into the air. The blast drove the steering wheel into Horde's chest. and partially impaled him. Somehow he didn't die instantly. The concussion from the bomb shook the house, and Horde's wife and daughter rushed out onto the front porch.

Imogene surveyed the scene and then ran back to check on Richard. Peggy Jean, who had been taking first aid courses at school, ran to her father and desperately started CPR. Floyd Horde weased a few last breaths, but the trauma of his injuries was devastating. He died in his daughter's arms. Floyd Horde's car was a shredded, mangled mess. Photographs show the damage that can be done by ten sticks of dynamite.

Neighbors drifted to the Horde family home to see what had happened. Authorities rushed to the scene and talked to the family, but Imogene, Peggy Jean, and Richard hadn't seen or heard anything useful. Jackson County Sheriff L.G. Perry told reporters that the sheriff's office and the GBI had made plenty of arrests for car theft and bootlegging lately, but he couldn't imagine anyone hating Floyd Horde enough to assassinate him. Upcoming investigations would show that Perry was either very wrong or he was lying. When Georgia Governor Lester Maddox heard the news, he offered a $2,000 reward for any information that led to an arrest, one thousand of which

he would pay out of his own pocket. He also said he would change the regulations regarding the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Up to that point, the GBI could only get involved in investigations if local authorities requested help. But Maddox authorized the GBI to work in Jackson County without needing an invitation. Of the 159 counties in Georgia, Jackson County is the only one in which the GBI can work without an invitation from local authorities. The GBI went to work, but the process was slow and difficult. The first few weeks of the investigation were packed with controversy and empty leads. It was clear to law enforcement that the murder was retaliation for the recent raids,

but they had no witnesses and no evidence. GBI agents interviewed an inmate at a Florida prison who had used a bomb to kill a man who was in a car theft ring, but the interview led nowhere. In Danville, Virginia, agents shared notes with lawmen who had investigated the bombing of the home of the city attorney. The attorney and his wife survived, thankfully, but no correlation between the crimes was found. The investigation ran into bigger problems when accusations arose that Jackson County Sheriff L. G. Perry had been jeopardizing and possibly sabotaging Floyd Horde's efforts against Cliff Park. Three months earlier, Cliff Park had been tipped off that raids were coming. After the raids,

a judge had ordered Parks' warehouses to be padlocked, and the alcohol inside them confiscated. Two weeks after Floyd Horde was killed, everyone learned that Sheriff Perry had never carried out the judge's order, and thousands of dollars' worth of alcohol had been removed by Park's men. Not only that, but some of the beer that was removed from the Yellow House had been stored at the farm of Sheriff Perry's father. Perry claimed the county didn't have adequate facilities to store the alcohol. which was why he had used his family's property. But by then, most people believed Sheriff Perry was just as corrupt as his predecessor, Sheriff Brooks. They believed Perry had warned Cliff Park about the raids, and Perry was removed from the murder

investigation, though not from office. Governor Lester Maddox traveled to Jackson County to meet privately with Perry. Maddox scheduled a hearing to determine if he needed to remove Perry by executive. order. It was three months to the day after Floyd Horde had been killed. GBI agent Ron Angel testified to Horde's concerns about Sheriff Perry's trustworthiness. The hearing was damning to the point that Perry agreed to resign from office, as long as no criminal charges were filed against him. So now, it was four months after the murder, the sheriff was gone, and there were no leads. And that was when bombers John Blackwell and Lloyd C. stepped up to inadvertently help the investigation.

120 miles away in Johnson County, a whiskey still exploded in the basement of a house. Blackwell and C had constructed the still at the home of Blackwell's girlfriend. The still exploded and the flames engulfed the home. C. was there at the time and he was arrested. Blackwell's girlfriend gave Blackwell's name to the police, and he turned himself in. The Johnson County Sheriff interrogated the two men about their fledgling operation and soon learned details that connected them to the murder of Floyd Horde. Blackwell and C knew they could go down for murder,

and by the time they were transported to Jackson County, they were ready to turn state's evidence and give up the other conspirators. John Blackwell and Lloyd C. negotiated deals in which they agreed to plead guilty, name their co-conspirators, and testify against them. In return, they would receive life sentences rather than face execution. They named George Warley, the third man on the bombing crew, and Douglas Pinyon, the money man who had coordinated the hit. Pinion turned himself in and accepted the same deal as Blackwell and C to avoid the electric chair. In his deal, he named the man who had paid him to organize the murder, Cliff Park. On December 4, 1967, 76-year-old Cliff Park was indicted for the murder of Floyd Horde.

Park was taken into custody without incident, and now four of the five men in the conspiracy were caught. But George Worley had fled Jackson County when he learned that he'd been named, and he was still on the run. The wheels of justice spun much faster back then, and Cliff Park went on trial early in the new year of 1968. John Blackwell, Lloyd C., and Doug Pynion all testified against Cliff Park. Their information was somewhat compartmentalized, but it got the job done. Blackwell hadn't known the identity of the target, the identity of the person who ordered the hit, or the reason for the hit, but the other two could fill in the blanks. Lloyd C. and Doug Pynion both knew that they had been contracted to kill Floyd Horde, and they had a pretty good idea why. Pynion had never used Cliff Park's name when talking to the bombers,

but he had repeatedly referred to the old man as the person who wanted Floyd Horde dead. In the criminal circles of Jackson County, the nickname the old man could only refer to one person. And, of course, Pinyon had dealt directly with Park to coordinate the hit. He'd been working for Park for about three years, and he knew all the details of the contract killing. Between the testimony of the conspirators, the GBI agents who had led the investigation, and the emotional testimony of Floyd Horde's daughter, Peggy Jean, it didn't take the jury long to find Cliff Park guilty. He was sentenced to die in the electric chair. He appealed his conviction and won a new trial, but the second ended the same as the first. Park appealed his

death sentence, and a higher court ruled that he should receive the same sentence as the other conspirators, life in prison. It turned out that George Worley didn't run very far. He was hiding up the road in Banks County. When he heard of Park's conviction and sentence, he turned himself in. By the end of 1968, all five men were in prison for life, which actually meant they only had to serve seven years before they were eligible for parole. Jackson County bootlegging Kingpin Andrew Clifford Park spent the final 10 years of his life in prison where he died at the age of 87. The other four were paroled after serving less than 20 years, and three seemed to have died unpleasant deaths. Their lives are hard to track, but from the scant information that has been

published, George Warley apparently lived a crime-free life after he was released, and he died in 2007 at the age of 80. John Blackwell died in 2004 at the age of 60. His body was reportedly found in the, quote, burned out Hulk of a car. Lloyd C. settled in Cobb County, and he was 47 years old when he was shot six times and killed. Doug Pinyon died in 1987,

in, of all things, a car explosion. He had extra gas cans in the car, which added more fuel to the fire in the most literal way. But there still seems to be some mystery about exactly why the car exploded. Adjacent to the murder of Floyd Horde, A.D. Allen's criminal career ended in similar fashion to that of Cliff Park. Allen had run the car theft ring in Jackson County at about the time Horde was elected. He was in and out of prison in the 1960s, and then in 1973 he and two others robbed a bank and held the family of a bank official hostage. Alan and the other robbers were caught,

and they received life sentences, plus an additional 87 years each. Longtime GBI agent Ron Angel made headlines seven years after he helped Floyd Horde investigate and then raid the operations of Cliff Park. In December 1974, Agent Angel and Sheriff Earl Lee of Douglas County were transporting a notorious serial killer named Paul John Knowles. Starting in July 1974, Knowles had terrorized the southeast. He's believed to have killed 18 people and maybe as many as 35. He was finally caught in November 1974, and a month later, he was in a car with Sheriff Lee and Agent Angel. During the car ride, Knowles picked the locks of his handcuffs. He reached forward and tried to grab Sheriff Lee's gun out of its holster. Lee was driving the car and struggling with Knowles for control of the

weapon when Agent Ron Angel pulled his gun and shot Knowles three times. Few tears were shed for Paul John Knowles, who was nicknamed the Casanova killer. But as bad as he was, his attributed murders may have paled in comparison to the man whom some have called the deadliest man in Georgia. That man was Billy Sunday Bert. He was the chief enemy of Sheriff Earl Lee before the two men experienced an interesting reconciliation much later in life. Bert was headquartered in the small town of Winder, about 20 minutes down the road from Jefferson, where the Floyd Horde Cliff Park saga played out. And in one of those what-if moments where a person could wonder about alternative history,

when Cliff Park decided he wanted to kill Floyd Horde, the first person he approached about the hit was Billy Sunday Bert. Bert was a wild man who was brash and ruthless and had no trouble killing, but he passed on the job. He thought it would bring too much heat, and he was right. But Billy Sunday Bert also had no trouble bringing the heat down on himself. If Floyd Horde had lived, he probably would have been prosecuting Billy Sunday Bert

a few years after he took down Cliff Park. Next time on Infamous America, it's the beginning of the story of Billy Sunday Bert. Bert was a drug dealer, a bootleger, an armed robber, and a stone-cold killer. By the time he was caught, law enforcement officials believed they could tie him to 28 murders, and they thought he was responsible for more than 50. His story starts next week on Infamous America. Members of our Black Barrel Plus program don't have to wait week to week for new episodes. They receive the entire season to binge all at once with no commercials, and they also receive exclusive bonus episodes.

Sign up now through the link in the show notes or on our website, blackbarrelmedia.com. Memberships are just $5 per month. Original research and writing by Jamie Lyko. Additional research and writing by myself with story editing by Jordana Houchins. Original music by Rob Valier. I'm your host and producer, Chris Wimmer. Find us at our website, blackbarrelmedia.com, or on our social media channels. We're Black Barrel Media on Facebook and Instagram and B-Barrell Media on Twitter.

And you can stream all of our episodes on YouTube. Just search for Infamous America Podcast. Thanks for listening.