Wicked Asheville by Marla Hardee Milling

Author:Marla Hardee Milling
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing Inc.
Published: 2018-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Asheville mayor Gallatin Roberts killed himself after Asheville banks collapsed in November 1930. North Carolina Collection, Pack Memorial Library, Asheville, North Carolina.

Roberts’s suicide was the second related to Asheville’s banking difficulties. The first took place on February 17, when Arthur E. Rankin, a former president of the American National Bank and former vice president of the Haywood Street branch of Central Bank and Trust Company, shot and killed himself at his home on West Avon Parkway in Lakeview Park. Officers found him lying about one hundred feet from the kitchen door clutching an obsolete .38-caliber Iver Johnson revolver. A published report of his death said, “He was considered one of the best informed men in this section on credits, and was constantly sought for advice by investment and banking houses.” He was an Asheville native and son of James Eugene Rankin, who served as Asheville’s mayor for several terms. Like Roberts, he was well respected in the Asheville community and was a member of the Biltmore Forest County Club, Trinity Episcopal Church and the Knights of Pythias. He left behind a wife, Nancy, and two children.

A cashier at the failed Central Bank, J. Charles Bradford, attempted suicide. He slashed his throat with a razor blade but survived.

HEADED TO JAIL

Wallace B. Davis, the former president of the failed Central Bank and Trust Company, lived to see his day in court, and he wound up behind prison bars. In June 1931, a judge sentenced him to serve five to seven years for violating banking laws in connection with the bank failure. Then, in August 1931, he earned an additional four to six years in prison for his part in a conspiracy involving a former U.S. senator and his son. The trio was convicted of conspiring to violate the North Carolina banking laws following the collapse of Central Bank and Trust Company.

Colonel Luke Lea, a Tennessee newspaper publisher and former senator, was sentenced to serve from six to ten years in NC State Prison for defrauding Central Bank and Trust of $1,136,000. His son, Luke Lea Jr., was also convicted, but attorneys petitioned the court to let the younger Lea off with a $25,000 fine because he was twenty-three and simply doing as his father told him to do. Colonel Lea had a distinguished career—he commanded the First Tennessee Field Artillery as a lieutenant colonel until October 18, 1917, when he rose to the rank of colonel. He was honorably discharged on April 19, 1919, and received the Distinguished Service Medal. He went home to Tennessee to regain control of his newspaper interests and then won election to the U.S. Senate at the age of thirty-one.

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