Infamous America - DIXIE MAFIA: PHENIX CITY Ep. 2 | “Wicked Town”

Episode Date: July 26, 2023

America’s 13-year ban on alcohol doesn’t stop saloon owners and whiskey makers in Phenix City. After Prohibition ends, gambling takes center stage in town. Hoyt Shepherd and Jimmie Matthews run the most prominent gambling rackets in Phenix City, but their reign is threatened by a tragedy at one of their clubs. Join Black Barrel+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: blackbarrel.supportingcast.fm/join Apple users join Noiser+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons. Click the Noiser+ banner on Apple or go to noiser.com/subscriptions to get started with a 7-day free trial. On YouTube, subscribe to INFAMOUS+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons. Hit “JOIN” on the Infamous America YouTube homepage.  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm4V_wVD7N1gEB045t7-V0w/featured For more details, please visit www.blackbarrelmedia.com. Our social media pages are: @blackbarrelmedia on Facebook and Instagram, and @bbarrelmedia on Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

By 1923, when the town of Girard in east-central Alabama was absorbed into Phoenix City, Gerard had survived as a good-time town known for any and all vices since the Creek War more than 100 years earlier. It remained a haven of vice through the Civil War and the Great War. Attempts by honest government officials and zealous temperance groups to curtail the city's rampant illegality had been inconsistent and largely unsuccessful. The continued growth of Columbus, Georgia, just across the Chattahoochee River, provided an indirect economy for Phoenix City.

The area outside Phoenix City was mostly farmland, but across the river in Columbus, there were mills and the army base of Fort Benning. They were workers and young servicemen, and many of them spent a lot of money having fun in Phoenix City. During the prohibition era from 1920 to 1933, Phoenix City continued to do what it did best, even as crackdowns on the production, sale, and distribution of alcohol ramped up. Even with the crackdowns, if a person couldn't find a drink in Phoenix City,

he or she just wasn't trying hard enough. And that wasn't to say that a good time couldn't be found in Columbus or on the base at Fort Benning. It was just that the good time was usually a little more whole. like playing sports or going to a show at a theater. Columbus didn't have quite the abundance of illegal moonshine and watermelon beer, dancing girls and prostitution, and gambling rooms with poker, pharaoh, and dice games. In Phoenix City, places like the High Low Club, the Blue Goose, and the Bama Club became local legends. Phoenix City's notoriety would grow throughout the region.

gambling, liquor, and sex, and oftentimes incredible violence, became Phoenix City's calling cards. Stories of Phoenix City were typically dwarfed in the national headlines by the ongoing organized crime wars in cities like New York and Chicago, where men like Lucky Luciano and Al Capone reigned. Names like Hoyt Shepard and Jimmy Matthews would never rank with those of the legendary mobsters, but in Phoenix City, Shepard and Matthews were the equivalent. of Luciano and Capone. For more than three decades, from the 1920s to the mid-1950s, Phoenix City was one of the most crooked, wild, and wicked cities in the United States. Men like Shepard and Matthews were at the forefront, but they were just two of many.

No one person or collection of people was bigger than the city itself. Phoenix City took on a life of its own. It was the star. Everyone else was just living in. From Black Barrel Media, this is infamous America. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer, and this season we're beginning the long and complex story of the Dixie Mafia. If you had to point to a place of origin, that place is one of America's original sin cities, Phoenix City, Alabama. This is Phoenix City Episode 2, Wicked Town. In early January, 1930, Alabama State Authorities, accompanied by local law enforcement, made their way into the woods near Phoenix City. They had received a tip that they would find

a series of makeshift distilleries deep in the timber. America was more than three years away from the end of prohibition, and Alabama state regulators believe that these backcountry operations were supplying beer and corn liquor to the entire southeast. And those authorities almost certainly believed something else, that local lawmen in Phoenix City could not be trusted. After all, state revenue agents had raided the city in 1916, but Phoenix City's nefarious businesses barely missed a beat before they were all serving illegal alcohol again. Alabama had banned alcohol a full five years before it was banned nationwide,

so whiskey raids were nothing new to the state when prohibition went into effect. Agents had returned to toss the city again in 1923, three years after the national law against alcohol reinforced the state law. There was just as much work to do in 1923 as there had been in 1916. Authorities conducted raids in 1925 and 1927, but the song remained the same. Whatever the agents tore down in Phoenix City, the proprietors built back up. So in 1930, when the state authorities tromped into a clearing in the woods and found rampant, shackle wooden sheds that housed massive whiskey stills, they were not surprised. They destroyed a 500

gallon still and a 2,000 gallon still and poured out 7,000 gallons of alcohol. The agents also couldn't have been surprised that no one was there. No one guarded thousands of dollars in equipment and product, which made it pretty clear that the distillers had been tipped off. In fact, one of the largest raids in Alabama resulted in just one arrest. An African-American farmer who had been drinking by a creek wandered out of the woods when he heard the commotion. He was arrested for having less than two gallons of alcohol in his possession. At the time in 1930, lawmen and officials wouldn't have been able to make this comparison, but Phoenix City was a smaller, earlier version of Las Vegas. Phoenix City had very little industry of its own. For generations, people had been coming to

town just to have a good time, no matter what the laws said. Entertainment was the industry of Phoenix City. So a spoken and unspoken alliance developed between the city's entertainment peddlers and the city's elected or appointed officials. If the city was going to survive prohibition and then the Great Depression, it had to get creative. City leaders and local law enforcement would allow illegal activity, or at least turn a blind eye, in exchange for fines and illegal license fees. Illegal businesses, or legit businesses that dabbled in some illegal things, paid the illegal license fees.

And then the local legal system established a very lenient stance on certain lawbreakers. People who were caught gambling or drinking or involved in prostitution would be arrested and sent to court. They might avoid jail time, but they wouldn't avoid a fine. More often than not, people got arrested, paid their fines, and then went back out to continue their merriment. That cycle brought in revenue to the city, and the city became dependent on the cycle, especially when the Great Depression hit hard. Many of the legitimate jobs in Phoenix City disappeared. People who traveled across the Chattahoochee River to work in Columbus, saw their jobs disappear as businesses shuttered.

Some left the area and headed north to larger cities. Sadly, they rarely found greater opportunity. Most found only soup kitchens and overcrowded shelters. During the dark days of the Depression, Phoenix City's population still hovered around 15,000 people. Columbus's population had doubled since 1910 and was more than 53,000 by 1940. And of course, Columbus benefited from the ever-expanding infantry school at Fort Benning,

whose population would soon spike as the specter of another World War grew in Europe. And in that narrow time span, as the country slowly moved out of the Depression and slowly moved into another war, two men emerged in Phoenix City, who would be Kingpins for 20 years. The 21st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is the only amendment that overturned a previous amendment. The 18th Amendment established the prohibition on alcohol, and the 21st Amendment ended it. On December 5, 1933, after 13 long, dry years, it again became legal to produce, transport, sell, and consume, intoxicating liquids. By that point, it was crystal clear that prohibition had failed to achieve any of its goals.

It didn't reduce crime. In many places, it raised crime. worse, it jump-started organized crime syndicates from coast to coast the way nothing else could. With no regulation on price and no tax on the product, gangsters made fortunes. They used their money to establish their power, and they dug their roots so deep that many of their groups still exist today. To keep their power, they needed to protect their territories and their supply lines, and that led to near-open warfare on the streets of major cities. Several gangsters would become household names, but two who didn't were Hoyt Shepard and Jimmy Matthews.

Most Americans at the time had never heard of them, and most since haven't heard of them either. But they were the big dogs for 20 years in Phoenix City. While federal agencies like the FBI monitored the big cities and the big names like Capone, Dillinger, Floyd, Nelson, Luciano, and Machine Gun Kelly, they ignored smaller places like Phoenix City, and in Phoenix City, over a poker game in a back room, an organized crime outfit was born. James Matthews, known to most as Jimmy, was an Englishman by birth and a card sharp by trade.

He had a day job working in the laundry room at Fort Benning, but mostly that was to spot soldiers who would make good marks across the river in Phoenix City. By 1932, Matthews had amassed a bankroll of more than $11,000 from the outclassed infantrymen whom he convinced to sit down at the poker tables in the Girard neighborhood of Phoenix City. That same year at one of those tables, Matthews met an ambitious but unemployed mill worker by the name of Hoyt Shepard. Shepard was a hustler with big ideas, and his eagerness to score big and score fast, was tempered by Matthews shrewdness. Shepard and Matthews first began to accumulate

wealth by trading and gambling equipment, specifically the kind that favored the proprietor. Supplying weighted dice and rigged slot machines became a lucrative business for the pair in Phoenix City. Soon, they had their own underworld nickname, the S&M syndicate. Their wealth took another step forward when they opened their own clubs. The Bama Club and the Ritz Cafe featured gambling rooms which featured their weighted dice and rigged slot machines, as well as every other way to make money. As the bank accounts of Shepard and Matthews grew, they gained power. As they gained power, they followed in the footsteps of the purveyors who came before them. They bribed local officials and lawmen. They were living proof of the perfect quote from the movie Scarface starring Al Pacino.

In the film, Pacino's character succinctly laid out the path to ultimate success when he said, In this country, first you get the money. Then when you get the money, you get the power. As the Great Depression eased and the United States found itself on the brink of another world war, Shepard and Matthews had both money and power. To increase both, they were keen to adopt a new version of an age-old illegal game. The game has had many names. over the years, but it's generally called the numbers game. As early as the 1860s, a form of

gambling known as numbers games became hugely popular. Sadly, most players were the unfortunate and the impoverished who hoped to win big and change their circumstances. But of course they never did. In the western United States, that time period was what we now call the Old West era. and if you're listening to our series about Old West con artists, you'll hear the story of a man who used numbers games to his advantage. At that time, a common nickname was Policy Games. The game was a lottery. A betting parlor called a policy house used one of a variety of systems

to pick a three-digit number seemingly at random. People placed bets on what the number would be, and they didn't have to physically go to the policy house to place the bet. The house used runners to collect the numbers and the bets and distribute the winnings. Those couriers were called numbers runners. So if you think back to all the movies you've seen where a criminal is accused of running numbers, that's what it means and that's where the phrase comes from. A policy house could be anything. It could be a saloon or a barbershop or a local men's club. The house generated a three-digit number every day by using balls and

in a hopper or a roulette wheel or whatever they had handy. The number was posted and the winner was paid. But it quickly became apparent to even the dumbest gambler that it was easy for the house to manipulate the drawing. Still, that tried and true method stayed intact in many places. In cities like New York, the game was so prevalent in mob syndicates that it became known as the Italian lottery or the mafia lottery.

But a few organizers started to be in the mob syndicates. started using more creative ways to choose the numbers. A popular new method came from the results of horse races or dog races. The winning number was the time that was run by a horse or a dog in an agreed-upon race. For instance, if the second place finisher in a race had a time of one minute 36 seconds, the winning number was 136. By the 1930s, the games were so popular and so profitable, that shutting them down became a focus of the director of the new Federal Bureau of Investigation.

In 1936, J. Edgar Hoover called numbers games, quote, the nation's greatest racket, and alleged that the infamous Dutch Schultz had made an estimated $6 million on his New York numbers game. That year, organizers in Atlanta developed a new method for choosing the winning number. According to newspaper articles of the time, the winning numbers came from the published daily sales of bonds on Wall Street. The Atlanta variation became wildly popular, and it spread across Georgia to the Alabama line. And by that time, playing the game was called Playing the Bug, and the game itself was called simply The Bug. The Bug was illegal and immensely profitable.

In the old Girard neighborhood of Phoenix City, one of the most popular spots to play was called the Old Reliable Bug Company. It was the numbers game gambling operation that was housed within the Ritz Cafe, which was owned by Hoyt Shepard and Jimmy Matthews. The game was so popular that people hurried from one side of the Chattahoochee River to the other to place their bets. The Columbus Inquirer newspaper described the lunchtime rush from Columbus' Georgia to Phoenix City, Alabama as a daily exodus across the Dillingham Street Bridge. By 1938, the bug was so popular in Phoenix City that Hoyt Shepard and Jimmy Matthews needed

more space in the Ritz Cafe to handle all the gamblers who wanted to play. They built an additional gambling hall onto the building. The new room could hold 100 people, but the construction was done as cheaply as possible. The city building inspector warned the owners of the dangers, but the warnings fell on deaf ears. Three months after the construction of the new hall, the dangers became real. On Wednesday, April 20, 1938, a piece of the roof of the Ritz Cafe buckled and partially collapsed onto the gamblers inside. Ten people suffered injuries. Shepherd and Matthews ordered a quick patch of the roof, and the business was back open

the next day. That day, April 21st, the joint was packed with people who were waiting to hear the result of the bug lottery number. A little after 1 p.m., one hour before everyone hoped to get lucky with the lottery, the worst case scenario happened. Passers-by heard a horrible sound, like a thousand sets of breaks screeching at the same time. Then there was a thunderous crash. The Ritz Cafe imploded. steel beam had twisted, that was the screech, and it pulled down the wall that separated the cafe from the newly added gambling hall. The roof followed, and a waterfall of bricks and beams spilled out into the street. People who were able to move rushed toward the exits, but dozens of

people never had a chance. The entire building collapsed in a matter of seconds. The screams and moans of trapped patrons could be heard up and down the street. Immediately, Phoenix City citizens began risking their lives to try to move the debris. They were soon joined by Phoenix City Police and Fire Departments. Within a half an hour, two fire companies from Columbus sped across the bridge to assist. Shortly thereafter, a regiment from Fort Benning joined the frantic search for survivors, which was quickly becoming a recovery operation rather than a rescue effort. Local doctors and pharmacists administered morphine to trapped people who were clearly not going to make it. When workers were finally able to lift the twisted steel beam that had caused a collapse,

they found the bodies of three people who had been nearly cut in half. The death toll after a few hours was 16. Some died instantly. Some died in local hospitals, none of which were equipped to deal with the influx of trauma patients. Days later, when the rubble was cleared, the final death toll was 24, and more than 80 people had been seriously injured. Lastly, the Columbus Ledger made sure to report that the winning number for the bug that day would have been 229. Neither Hoyt Shepard nor Jimmy Matthews were at the Ritz Club when the tragedy occurred. Matthews told reporters that he had just left and was across the river in Columbus.

An investigation into the tragedy was announced immediately, and private citizens quickly filed lawsuits against the club's operators. Shepard and Matthews were blocked from attempting to sell the property in the weeks following the collapse, but the investigation did not produce charges against either man. Although newspapers didn't report it, there was widespread suspicion. that race played a role in the cursory investigation. Nearly all of the 24 victims were black. If they had been white,

civic leaders would have howled for the punishment of Shepard and Matthews. But the S&M Syndicate successfully weathered the storm of the collapse of the Ritz Cafe and the deaths of 24 people. In fact, the power of Hoyt Shepard and Jimmy Matthews was still growing. The reality was, Phoenix City needed the bug and the bird. the gambling and the dance halls to keep the economy afloat. The money collected from licenses and taxes on businesses was enough for City Hall to turn a blind

eye toward the illegal nature of lots of that very money. The city had spent most of the Great Depression and several years after in bankruptcy. No one wanted to live like that again, so the town continued to embrace its illicit revenue streams. And that's not to say that the money just went straight into the pockets of city officials. It also kept downtown roads paved and schools heated and lit. If illegal gambling produced the money that was needed for civic improvements, it was a price that many leaders were willing to pay, even if there was a tragedy along the way. While men like Hoyt Shepard and Jimmy Matthews focused on gambling and others focused on the

sale of liquor, still others focused on the third leg of the Trinity, prostitution. brothels such as the infamous Maugh Beachies lined the streets of the Girard neighborhood. At these clubs, winners and losers from casinos, students from a nearby technical college, and soldiers from Fort Benning could get a watered-down drink from a waitress known as a bee girl, watch a strip-tees stage show, and retire to a barely private room for other festivities. Phoenix City became such a source of contention regarding soldiers, and dereliction of duty that it drew the ire of general George S. Patton. In 1940, Patton, who would become an American hero in a couple years, threatened to roll tanks out of Fort Benning and flatten

the clubs that lined the streets of the wicked city. And legend had it that soldiers didn't even need to go to a club to get what they wanted. A long-held story said that the club owners employed drivers to cruise the streets of Columbus on payday at Fort Benning. The cars acted as mobile prostitution venues. The driver would pick up a soldier who was ready and willing, and there was already a girl inside the car, and they would conduct their business behind blacked-out windows while the driver drove for a few blocks. Following the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, an America's subsequent entrance

into World War II, the population soared at Fort Benning. Nearly 95,000 enlisted men were billeted there at the height of the war. That made Fort Benning the third largest city in Georgia, behind only Atlanta and Savannah. It also meant hordes of young men descended on Phoenix City every night. The sharp rise in prostitution arrests, on both sides of the equation, troubled anti-vice groups similar to the ones that had crusaded against liquor. So-called hygiene groups urged for community cleanup, law enforcement,

and for arrested parties to be given medical exams. Officials at Fort Benning were the biggest allies of hygiene groups. The U.S. military spent hundreds of thousands of dollars educating soldiers about sexually transmitted diseases. Few things infuriated officers more than cases of soldiers who were unfit for duty because of their extracurricular activities. But as with liquor and with gambling, prostitution was big business in Phoenix City, and no amount of community outreach was going to stop it.

Likewise, the U.S. Army could do as much educating as it wanted, but soldiers were still going to find their way across the Chattahoochee and into trouble. And as bad as that trouble might be for the soldiers, it was worse for the girls. Prostitutes were rarely subject to any kind of age verification. Girls who were barely teenagers could easily find work in the seedier clubs of Phoenix City, and if they were turned away by club owners, there were plenty of scumbag pimps in town. Women who experienced violence or contracted diseases or became pregnant had very few choices. And according to one author, there was a human trafficking element to prostitution in Phoenix City.

In her book, Wicked Phoenix City, author Faith Serafin described a racket where women who were new to town and who may have been looking for honest work might get picked up by the police for a minor or fabricated infraction. The woman would appear before a judge and she would be given a choice. She could be dropped off at a club and take a job, or she could be dropped off at the women's prison. If she took the job and she was lucky, she would only be forced to work as a job. waitress, but more often than not, she was forced to do far more. On the whole, the women's concerns were rarely addressed. They and their stories were quickly forgotten, at least until Phoenix City experienced its renaissance. But crime in the wickedest city in America was going to get

much worse before it got better. The 10 years following World War II were the peak of corruption and violence. And at the heart of nearly all of it were Hoyt Shepard and Jimmy Matthews. Next time on Infamous America, a murder case creates chaos for Hoyt Shepard and Jimmy Matthews. The ripple effects reach all levels of government and infect the community for 10 years. It should be an open and shut case, but in Phoenix City, nothing is that clean and easy. That's next time 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 begin at just $5 per month. This series was researched and written by Jamie Lyko, original music by Rob Filleer. I'm your host and producer Chris Wimmer. Find us at our website, blackbarrelmedia.com, or on our social media channels. We're BlackBarrel Media on Facebook and Instagram and B-Barrell Media on Twitter.

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