CHASING the WHITE DOG by MAX WATMAN

Author:MAX WATMAN
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2010-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

Sheriff Overton was quoted in a newspaper: “I know Mr. Stanley. I know him real well. I know his boys, too. What I don’t know is where they make their whiskey.”

I don’t mean to suggest anything untoward in regard to Mr. Overton when I suggest that he was one of the few lawmen who never tripped over a Stanley still or pulled over a truckload of their sugar jack. The Stanleys weren’t subtle, and they got busted a lot. Ralph Hale drove to church, they drove at breakneck speeds up Interstate 81, drinking from a case of beer on the floor of the new Econoline 250, loaded with 400 gallons of liquor, pot smoke rolling out the windows as if the seats were on fire.

Lucky for them, the whole family was Teflon-coated and charges would not stick. They were reckless outlaws, and they got away with it for years.

In 1989, for instance. According to the Washington Post :

A squad of Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents watched two still-hands jug some fresh moonshine, load it into Dee’s truck, drive the truck to Dee’s house and park it in Dee’s driveway. The still-hands left in another car and were arrested. Dee climbed into the truck and drove off and he was arrested, too. At his trial, he testified that he had lent the truck to some friends and had no idea there were 246 gallons of moonshine in it when they brought it back.

He got off.

Karen Peters, who prosecuted the case, called the proceedings “crazy” and said: “He’s a very good liar. He gets on the witness stand and he looks so decent and polite. He’s a chubby-cheeked kind of good ol’ boy and he doesn’t look like a criminal. He looks you straight in the eye and he says he got in trouble with liquor years ago but he wouldn’t go near it again.”

The very next year, 1990, Jimmy Beheler found two 800-gallon stills in William Gray “Dee” Stanley’s garage, 1,600 gallons of mash, 43 gallons of moonshine, and 193 empty jugs. Dee was acquitted.

He didn’t always walk; he saw the inside of the jail twice, once in 1992 and once in 1995. It doesn’t sound like hard time. It was Dee Stanley who was allowed to go home once a day to feed his cows.

Then came a luckless two weeks in 1996, the beginning of a serious spiral.

ABC agents have told me that bootleggers are the best counter-surveillance drivers in the world. They take roundabout routes, they stop for no reason, they pull over and go back the way they came. They drive slow. The Stanleys, it seems, were an exception to this rule.

On February 21, a Wednesday, Dee Stanley’s sons, Jason and Scott, were drunk, they had a bag of marijuana, and they were on the move. They got pulled over on Interstate 81, in Winchester, Virginia, three and a half hours or so north of their house on Scuffling Hill Road in Rocky Mount.

The officers had Jason on driving under the influence and Scott on public intoxication and possession of marijuana.

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