Whiskey Women by Fred Minnick

Author:Fred Minnick
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Potomac Books Inc.
Published: 2013-10-10T16:00:00+00:00

11

Post-Prohibition Women Bootleggers

The end of Prohibition changed nothing for criminal-minded women evading taxes and living their illicit American dream. Why go legit after Prohibition showed them how to make a successful living without getting caught? Bootleggers used all the skills they learned during Prohibition, including violence and court sympathy.

Women received lighter sentences than men, using the tried-and-true “I did it for my kids” excuse. When Decatur, Georgia, police arrested a woman, they learned her son suffered from leukemia and she bootlegged whiskey to finance the treatment. The officers decided they did not have sufficient evidence to convict, so they let her go. Minnie Emmons, a renowned Oklahoma bootlegger, was caught in 1955 with illegal liquor. When they apprehended her for her seventh arrest, they learned the forty-three-year-old mother was pregnant. Instead of pressing charges, the county attorney opted not to jeopardizing motherhood. “I know when I’m licked,” the Oklahoma attorney said.1

After Prohibition, bootlegging meant something different in most parts of America. People still transported moonshine across county and state lines, but much of the bootlegging just meant they were selling legitimate product in dry counties. They purchased a case of whiskey legally in a wet county and sold it in a dry county. Local police would get tips that women were selling from their homes and search their premises, often without a warrant.

In 1953, sixty-year-old Callie Dixon received a six-month sentence after Adeline, Texas, cops found eight cases of malt liquor, two cases of canned beer, sixteen half-pint whiskey bottles, and gin. When her attorney made a motion to dismiss, showing the products were legitimate with duty paid, the judge dismissed the plea on account of the 1902 county dry law that allowed police to search her premises based on the bootlegging complaint.2

The most common arrest for a woman bootlegger was selling to minors. When Lena Fucaloro boozed up a boy and several of his friends in Des Moines, the father took the drunken boy to the cops to rat out the bootlegger. She was immediately arrested.3

In Cleveland, a city notorious for law-breaking ladies, Ludmila M. Fretch, a.k.a. Lillian Stancel Poles, a.k.a. Lillian Marie Poles, ran the city’s largest illegal liquor racket in the 1960s. She spent every morning hitting the street corners supplying her bootleggers with hooch. On June 19, 1963, agents in the Northern District of Ohio suspected she was selling whiskey at 6112 Kinsman Avenue. Ludmila had been arrested several times over thirty years, so local and federal officers likely kept a close eye on her activities. They sent an undercover buyer to her apartment building and purchased liquor with marked bills. Authorities later raided her premises and found twenty gallons of distilled spirits in gallon jugs, pint bottles, and other containers, all without tax stamps. Ludmila was arrested and made bail the same day for $500, the modern equivalent to $3,000.

In her bond paperwork, Ludmila claimed her net worth was $12,000 and most of that was tied up in property. She pled not guilty initially, but

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