Infamous America - DIXIE MAFIA: PHENIX CITY Ep. 6 | “The Revolution”

Episode Date: August 23, 2023

In the wake of the Albert Patterson assassination, the Alabama governor declares martial law in Russell County. National guard troops swarm Phenix City. They dismantle the illegal operations and remove corrupt officials from office, and a new Phenix City rises from the ashes of the old. 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

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there's a drab two-story brick building that looks like it could be vacant. There's no sign out front. By looking closely, there's only a vague suggestion of a small business that might be inside. The front of the building, which faces the street, features bricks that are almost orange on the first floor and pale yellow on the second floor. There's an alley next to the building that separates it from a block of small

businesses. In the summer of 1954, the two-toned brick building looked very different. It was called the Coulter building, and on the ground floor next to the alley, there was a women's clothing store. Elsewhere in the building, there was office space. On the other side of the alley was the Elite Cafe. The Elite Cafe was a classic one-story red brick building. The words Elite Cafe were molded into the brickwork above the front door, and they're still there. The building remains, but the old red bricks have been painted white and gray, and the business inside the building has changed over the years.

On their own, there's not much that's noteworthy about the cafe building or the Coulter building. The significance begins with the Alabama State Historical Marker that stands in front of the two-toned brick building, the old Coulter building. It was erected in 2006 to memorialize an event that was critical to Phoenix City's history. And directly across the street from the marker and the building, there's a larger memorial. In a grassy field, there are two more commemorative signs and a metal statue. The statue is of a man with a fedora hat. big ears, and a wide smile. He sits on a bench, with a cane resting against his extended leg. The statue was erected just a couple years ago in June 2020 as a memorial to the man who died

66 years earlier in the summer of 1954. That man was Albert Patterson, the newly elected Attorney General of the state of Alabama. On the night of June 18, 1954, Patterson walked out of his law office in the Coulter building and stepped into the alley where he had parked his car. A gunman strode up behind him and shot him twice. The gunman ran and Patterson staggered up the alley between the women's clothing store and the elite cafe. He collapsed to the ground on the corner in front of the clothing store, near the spot where the historical marker now stands and directly across the street from where his statue sits on its bench. Patrons rushed out of the cafe, and discovered Patterson on the sidewalk.

They called the police, but by the time an ambulance rushed Patterson to Cobb Hospital, there was nothing surgeons could do. Albert Patterson was declared dead on arrival. And that was the final straw for the people of Phoenix City and the leadership at the state level. Crime of every description had been institutionalized by local lawmen and city officials for decades.

The town was sometimes called the wickedest city in America, and the Alabama governor decided he had only one choice of action to clean it up. 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 6, The Revolution. Witnesses from the elite cafe said Albert Patterson was still alive when they found him. He weased and spit blood. One witness said Patterson tried to speak before he passed out. Those first few people recognized him instantly. Word spread and a crowd formed. More than a hundred people were on the street by the time the police arrived and attempted to control the mob, secure the crime scene,

and provide medical attention to Patterson. As an ambulance rushed Patterson to the hospital, officers at the crime scene made only a middling effort to gather evidence in and around Patterson's car. They were led by Deputy Sheriff Albert Fuller, a man who was suspected of bribery, assault, racketeering, and various roles related to election fraud. Fuller reported to the press that there was only one witness. A cook from the elite cafe who had been in the alley, heard the shots and saw a man in a tan suit run away from Patterson's car. Fuller also informed reporters that there were no signs of a struggle, so the shooting was likely not the result of a heated dispute.

Additionally, Patterson died with his wallet in his pocket and his watch on his wrist. Therefore, it did not appear that the shooting was part of an attempted robbery. That left one obvious theory. The crime was a calculated, cold-blooded murder. Deputy Sheriff Fuller was not quoted as using the word assassination, but that was the logical conclusion. And it didn't take any imagination to guess the possible motive. For the last few years, Albert Patterson had been deep in the crusade

to clean up Phoenix City and the surrounding Russell County. He was a local lawyer and a state senator who had joined the reform movement at the request of Hugh Bentley, one of the leaders of the movement. Bentley had created the Russell County Betterment Association to clean up the county, and Patterson was the group's lawyer. Bentley spearheaded Patterson's campaign for state attorney general, a position from which Patterson could enact real reform. Just a few days before Patterson was killed,

he won the Democratic primary for Attorney General. It was a narrow, somewhat controversial win, but a win nonetheless. There was no Republican candidate running against him in the general election, so in November 1954, he would become the state attorney general automatically. The local boy had won,

and the reformers were jubilant. But Albert Patterson knew there was a long time between his win in the primary in June and his automatic win in the general election in November. He had made a darkly funny joke about it in a speech. And a couple days later, the joke became reality. To the criminal establishment, it was simply too dangerous to allow Patterson to live. The morning after the shooting, the Columbus Ledger published a rooftop photo from across the street of the murder scene.

It showed the mob outside the elite cafe and Patterson's car in the alley. An editorial called for vengeance. The article declared, The state of Alabama must marshal all its force. to upturn the evil, slimy mess in Phoenix City from which this assassination undoubtedly stemmed. At the state capital in Montgomery, Governor Gordon Persons agreed with the idea,

regardless of whether or not he read the article. His duly elected, soon-to-be Attorney General had been murdered in an alley in Phoenix City. For decades, crime had run rampant. For decades, attempts to clean it up had been half-hearted. Governor Persons needed to send some help to the reformers in Phoenix City. General Walter Hanna, known as Crack Hanna to those who served with him, had tried to talk his way into the army at the age of 15.

He was rejected, but finally joined the Alabama National Guard when he was old enough. When called to serve, he did so bravely in the Pacific Theater of World War II, earning the rank of Brigadier General by the time the Japanese surrendered. Hannah served again in the Korean War and then returned to his home state where he was appointed a general in the National Guard. Hannah had been a junior champion boxer. He was an elite, decorated marksman, and for three decades, he trained and led soldiers. He was the perfect man for the job when Governor Persons decided to mobilize his state's military. Persons sent Hannah and a few dozen National Guardsmen to Phoenix City. Their orders were to enforce. a curfew, maintain security, and prevent any additional civil unrest so that the investigation

into Albert Patterson's death could proceed. Within 24 hours, clubs in Phoenix City were shuttered. The brass at Fort Benning across the Chattahoochee River ordered soldiers to stay out of Phoenix City. Military personnel constructed roadblocks and the two bridges that spanned the river. Governor Persons and General Hanna said the National Guard was not there to participate in the investigation, but only to keep the peace and provide backup to Russell County authorities when they conducted raids. But upon arrival, it became apparent to Hannah that the investigation was not in good hands. The crime scene was a mess. The chain of evidence was compromised, and there was little to no communication between investigators, the heads of law enforcement,

and the city attorney. The Columbus ledger ran a headline in the late edition, the evening after Patterson's murder that read, chances dim for quick arrest. As hours became days and days became weeks, the predictions seemed to come true. Local authorities, supported by the National Guard, conducted raids on gambling halls and other businesses, but the raids accomplished little in the way of finding a killer. Initially, the public viewed the raids as positive steps. Any action was better than no action. But soon people viewed the raids as just hollow distractions from the fact that there had been no progress in the murder investigation. Albert Patterson was eulogized, buried and mourned by his family in a heartbroken community. General Hannah reported back to

the governor that more needed to be done in Phoenix City. And as governor, as governor, governor persons started exploring additional or more drastic options, he and the rest of the state received more shocking news. Simultaneous to the murder investigation, there were two ongoing investigations into voting irregularities. Now, a grand jury produced indictments, and two of those indictments were headline news. One was for the current Attorney General, Silas Garrett, and the other was for the city attorney of Phoenix City, Arch Farrell. Garrett was the top prosecutor in the state. Farrell was the top prosecutor in Phoenix City.

Together, they were responsible for supervising the investigation into Albert Patterson's murder, and now they were openly accused of corruption. They were suspected of using their offices to help Patterson's opponent for state attorney general, Lee Porter. Porter was supported by the criminal machine in Phoenix City, so it seemed like there was a solid link between the criminal. and Garrett and Farrell. Garrett and Farrell were arrested, processed, and released on bonds of $1,000 each.

And on the ground in Phoenix City, General Hanna sent reports to the governor about the incompetence of the Phoenix City Police and Russell County Sheriff Ralph Matthews. Governor Persons started to understand that he might have to take more forceful steps in his cleanup effort. The county sheriff's office was under particular scrutiny. Sheriff Matthews was already on thin ice for his failure to make arrests in several high-profile cases, the most notable of which, before Albert Patterson's murder, was the bombing of Hugh Bentley's house. And while Matthews was examined for his lack of action, his deputy, Albert Fuller, was called out for his extracurricular actions.

Local newspapers editorialized about accusations that Fuller extorted club owners, changed ballots to rig elections. and intimidated people on behalf of Cini Attorney Arch Farrell. Deputy Fuller had a reputation for squeezing information out of people when he wanted it, and yet neither he nor his boss had any leads on the gunmen who killed Albert Patterson. As state investigators examined the inner workings of Russell County from top to bottom, they gained possession of more than 200 hours of recorded phone calls between government officials and Phoenix City gambling czar, Hoyt Shepard. Shepard was clearly in cahoots with local law enforcement

and did not want Albert Patterson to become Attorney General. It was ironic because Shepard was only free to make those calls because Patterson had kept him out of prison on murder charges. Patterson was Shepard's defense attorney when Shepard was accused of killing rival crime boss, Fayette Lieburn. Shepard was guilty, but Patterson and his team convinced a jury otherwise. That was eight years ago, and now, in early July 1954, Patterson's son John spoke out against the Russell County government.

He plainly stated that local officials, ranging from city police to county judges, were complicit in the unsolved murder of his father. John Patterson was 32 years old, and he announced his plans to enter a runoff, election to replace his father as state attorney general. The mission was to continue his father's work to clean up Phoenix City. A couple weeks later, Governor Persons made the decision to take a monumental step in the cleanup process. On July 22nd, 1954, the governor declared limited martial law in

Russell County, Alabama. In the month between Albert Patterson's murder and the declaration, Governor Persons had consulted with F. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Persons determined that the only course of action was to almost literally clean out Phoenix City. General Hannah and the National Guard had been in a supporting role for the past month. Now they were going to take over the city. They voided all gun permits in the county and began confiscating firearms. They turned over every stone in Phoenix City and arrested anyone for any crime on the books. They destroyed whiskey stills, dismantled cockfighting rings, and burned gambling machines on 14th Street.

The governor ordered the State Alcohol Bureau to tear up the liquor license of every club, saloon, brothel, and dive bar in Russell County. Agents flooded the county and arrested everyone who continued to pour even a drop of alcohol. From the low-level street operators to the High Society casino owners, agents, officers, and guardsmen went after them all. The ones who could afford expensive lawyers got out of jail quickly, but it was a clear sign that the times were changing. And the change wasn't limited to the operators.

Governor Personsmen went after the local lawmen and elected officials, too. Russell County Sheriff Ralph Matthews was stripped of his badge and his duties, as was his deputy Albert Fuller. Both would soon be wrapped up in the widespread investigations into voter tampering and intimidation. General Hannah's men raided the home of Albert Fuller, who was bedridden after a fall from a horse on the 4th of July. He was questioned about everything from ballot stuffing to accusations that he accepted bribes for police protection, to a cash of unlicensed firearms he had stockpiled in his apartment. When the apartment was tossed,

guardsmen also found lists of names with dollar amounts and addresses written next to to them. The addresses correlated to ballot box locations. The documents were thought to be evidence of bribes for votes. State Attorney General Silas Garrett was stripped of his powers, and a temporary AG was appointed. In late August 1954, more than 500 indictments were doled out for the criminals who had run the town for the last decade and beyond. Hoyt Shepard and Jimmy Matthews were arrested and charged with a variety of crimes, one of which was buying votes to keep Albert Patterson out of the Attorney General's office. The two crime bosses ended up getting off easy. They each paid a $2,000 fine and spent 90 days doing hard labor, but they would suffer larger losses soon.

The Red Light District around the 14th Street Bridge was demolished. The heart of crime was gone. It didn't stamp out crime altogether, of course, but it was a good. good step. It was physical proof of the cleanup that Hugh Bentley had worked for and Albert Patterson had sacrificed for. But as the cleanup continued that fall of 1954, there was still no word about the murder of Albert Patterson. The people of Phoenix City had to wait until December for the first real news, and when it dropped, it was another bombshell. Attorney General Silas Garrett, city attorney Arch Farrell, and Deputy Sheriff Albert Fuller, were charged with conspiracy and the murder of Albert Patterson. But despite the reform that was

sweeping the area, Phoenix City still had a bit of the old Phoenix City left in it. Justice was a tricky word to define. John Patterson, Albert's son, won the race to take his father's place in the state attorney general's office, and he helped prosecute the men who were believed to be responsible for his father's murder, though he might not have believed that the results fit the definition of justice. Former Attorney General Silas Garrett, thought to be the mastermind of the murder, avoided trial. After a serious car accident, Garrett was admitted to a mental institution and deemed unfit to stand trial. He remained institutionalized for many years, and the charges against him were dropped in the early 1960s. City Attorney Arch Farrell, who had allegedly spent decades conspiring

with the criminal machine to maintain its stranglehold on Phoenix City, was exonerated. The prosecution could not convict him on a conspiracy charge, nor was he ever convicted on any of the charges related to election tampering. He was stripped of his law licensed by the Alabama Bar Association, but it was reinstated less than 10 years later. The only one of the three who served any time in prison was Deputy Sheriff Albert Fuller. The jury believed he pulled the trigger, and he was sentenced to life in prison for murder. He received an additional seven-year sentence for election tampering, though that should have been an afterthought compared to the life sentence.

But it turned out to be far more accurate than anyone could have imagined. Fuller was paroled after just seven years in prison. He died a few years later in 1969 from injuries sustained from falling off a ladder. Phoenix City had been slowly building toward the reckoning of 1954-1955 for at least two generations. And if you wanted to go all the way back to the beginning, it had been brewing for more than 140 years. The declaration of martial law in Russell County was a stunning move. But those who could remember back to 1916 might have seen it before. Alabama outlawed alcohol back in 1914, six years before the nationwide banned.

took effect in 1920. In 1916, two years after Alabama's law, the first whiskey raids swept through the town of Girard. A newspaper article in the Phoenix Girard Journal from May 18, 1916, detailed the events. State agents, supported by soldiers from what was called a militia company, stormed at least 13 locations and destroyed illegal liquor. During the raid, an officer in the militia company, stood on a street corner and shouted through a megaphone that martial law had been declared in Girard. That night, and apparently for many to come, armed guards patrolled the streets to crack down on all the illegal activity. The condition reportedly lasted two months, though many operators knew about the initial raids ahead of time,

and they came right back after martial law was lifted. It was just one of many business-as-usual cycles that lasted right up until 1954. Crime didn't completely disappear, of course. It never will. But Phoenix City never went back to the days of institutional crime and corruption. John Patterson, Albert Patterson's son, spent four years as Attorney General of Alabama and then parlayed his success into four years as governor. Patterson was replaced in 1963 by George Wallace, who earned everlasting infamy as an ardent

segregationalist. Hoyt Shepard remained a bit of a mystery until the time of his death at the age of 80. In the early 1950s, he swore he would go straight and leave his life of crime behind. He had almost certainly murdered a man in 1946 and then survived three attempts on his life afterward. He certainly would have had the motivation to make a major change. But he was also implicated in all the fraud that swirled around Albert Patterson's election, so it's hard to tell. There seems to be evidence for at least some change. His old adversary, Hugh Bentley,

seemed to be able to look back and smile at some of the wild old days. Bentley told reporters that Shepard had once offered to move all of his gambling operations to the edge of town, because, as Shepard noted, every town has its garbage cans. You just don't put him on your front lawn.

Hugh Bentley continued to work for the betterment of Phoenix City and his efforts led to national recognition. In 1955, Phoenix City received the All-American City Award from the National Civic League. Phoenix City was the first community in Alabama to be honored with what has been referred to as the Nobel Prize for Constructive Citizenship. Three years later, Hugh Bentley was featured on the TV program, This Is Your Life. He died in 1984 at the age of 75. Many in Phoenix City didn't feel that Albert Patterson got the justice he deserved. The reformer, lawyer, teacher, state senator, and would-be attorney general became a sort of martyr.

He now has monuments in his honor on Fifth Avenue, though it's easy to see how many people would think true justice was denied. But his sacrifice wasn't in vain. Afterward, the old crime and vice in Phoenix City was swept away, never to return as it had once existed. But if you widened the scope, similar crimes and similar criminals were rising in cities all over the south. Phoenix City may have been the earliest, and it may have had its revolution, but other states and cities were just starting to experience the types of things Phoenix City had been through. loosely organized and loosely connected crime groups would spring up in Georgia, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas. They would go beyond illegal gambling and liquor and get into safe cracking, high-end robbery, and hard drugs.

They bribed and threatened public officials, and they resorted to murder, just like they did in Phoenix City. If there was a singular entity called the Dixie Mafia, its story began in Phoenix City. one of the wickedest cities in America. But the Dixie Mafia's most violent and outrageous chapters were to be written elsewhere and in the future. There's much, much more to the story. Next time on Infamous America, it's the story that I promised last time.

It's really happening this time. We'll go to Hollywood for one of the most enduring murder mysteries in American history, the story of the Black Dahlia. 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 Fowler. I'm your host and producer, Chris Warrick. swimmer. 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 our episodes on YouTube. Just search for Infamous America podcast. Thanks for listening.