SOUTHERN WHITE LIGHTNING BLUES

Operation Lightning Strike Has Left A Sour Taste In The Mouths Of The
Virginia And North Carolina Moonshine Communities

DUNN, N.C. - It was the distillery secreted in the barn at Shelton Davis'
gated compound that burned Vance Jackson up.

As a longtime alcohol law enforcement officer here, Jackson has spent years
shivering in the brambles, sniffing for the tang of mash from stills hidden
in rusted-out tobacco barns. He regularly crisscrossed the triangle where
Johnston, Harnett, and Sampson counties meet here to challenge the claim of
Virginia's Franklin County to the title of "Moonshine Capital of the World."

But Davis' operation was no black pot still hidden in the hedgerows. When
Jackson and other law enforcement officers raided Davis' property in 1996,
they busted one of the area's biggest illegal liquor operations, Jackson
said. When Davis was charged along with his brothers-in-law, Douglas and
Michael Tart, Jackson knew he had strong evidence to bring to trial.

But that evidence never came to light. The day Davis and the Tart brothers
were to stand trial on moonshining charges in Johnston County District
Court, the original copy of the warrant Jackson used to search the property
disappeared from the court file.

It wasn't unheard of for warrants to vanish from case files, but it hadn't
happened in some time, Jackson said.

Though Jackson presented Judge Yates Dobson a copy of the warrant, the
judge dismissed the case.

Two weeks later, the original warrant mysteriously reappeared in the in-box
of the court clerk, Jackson said.

"It's kind of flaunting it in your face when the search warrant comes
back," Jackson said. The judge did not reopen the case.

Hamstrung at the state level, Jackson called the feds.

He talked to federal authorities in Raleigh and in Roanoke. He learned
agents were already investigating Ramsey Helms, who at the time owned
Farmers Exchange, a country store in Rocky Mount, Va., suspected of
supplying moonshiners.

But Jackson's evidence from the failed state case helped establish links
between the foothills of Virginia and Johnston, Harnett, and Sampson
counties in North Carolina, a 2 1/2 -hour drive from Franklin County.

As they have roughly every decade since the notorious moonshine conspiracy
trial of 1935, when 34 Franklin County residents were indicted, federal
agents joined with state agents to crack down on the illegal liquor pipeline.

The latest investigation, dubbed Operation Lightning Strike, took nearly
two years and resulted in the indictment of 28 people. Charges against the
Lightning Strike defendants included conspiracy, money laundering,
obstruction of justice and assorted illegal liquor violations. Five of the
original defendants hailed from North Carolina. Davis and Douglas Tart were
not charged in this case, though they were eventually convicted on federal
charges in a separate case.

Making untaxed liquor is not a charming artifact of rural lore but an
organized criminal enterprise, federal authorities contend.

Three moonshine-making rings - two centered in Franklin County, one in
Burlington, N.C. - yielded almost 500,000 gallons of untaxed liquor, law
enforcement authorities allege. These untaxed liquor operations cost
federal and state governments at least $11.5 million in tax revenue,
authorities said.

"It's like what they call the Dixie Mafia," Jackson said.

The "moonshine capitals" of Virginia and North Carolina were linked to each
other in several ways, law enforcement authorities said.

Moonshiners from both states bought supplies such as sugar and jugs from
Farmers Exchange, authorities say. The Rocky Mount store allegedly sold
more than 12 million pounds of sugar to moonshiners from both states from
1992 to 1999.

An elderly man from Burlington, N.C., was the middleman who linked the
North Carolina counties with Franklin County, law enforcement officials
said. Ralph Woodrow Wilson, now 88, was charged with leading one of the
moonshine rings. His operation produced 149,424 gallons of illegal liquor
from 1992 to 1999, at a tax cost of $3.9 million, law enforcement
authorities said.

Wilson coordinated a pipeline of sugar and jugs from Farmers Exchange to
North Carolina, authorities said. He also supervised men who hauled jugs of
North Carolina moonshine back to Virginia. From there, the illegal liquor
fed another pipeline to inner city speak-easies in Philadelphia, law
enforcement officials said.

Jackson said he'd heard a North Carolina moonshiner talk years ago about
driving to Rocky Mount, and assumed he meant the town of the same name in
North Carolina, not Virginia.

The Virginia-North Carolina connection might have begun when Wilson spent
time in federal prison in the late 1960s with people from Virginia and
North Carolina who are involved in the Operation Lightning Strike case.

"Ralph served time with a lot of these people's relatives," Jackson said.

Wilson faced a conspiracy charge and seven counts of money laundering as a
result of Operation Lightning Strike. Charges against him were dismissed in
February because of his poor health. Now living at a Burlington, N.C.,
nursing home, Wilson conceded, "I used to make a little, sell a little."

Shelton Davis and Douglas and Michael Tart were also linked to Franklin
County. Federal authorities said they bought enough sugar from Farmers
Exchange to produce more than 50,000 gallons of liquor from 1993 to 1995.

Fabled Franklin County moonshiner William Gray "Dee" Stanley was another
alleged North Carolina-Virginia connection. As ringleader of a Rocky
Mount-based illegal liquor operation, Stanley along with Kenny Cobler
pumped out 118,440 gallons of moonshine, costing $2.7 million in tax loss,
law enforcement authorities say.

Stanley and his sons Jason and Scott allegedly would drive to Dunn to pick
up illegal liquor and take it up to Philadelphia. Between March 1998 and
September 1998, Dee and Jason Stanley allegedly drove to Dunn about once a
week or so to buy between 100 and 175 cases of moonshine from Douglas
Bethune, a Johnston County moonshiner who is serving time on an illegal
liquor conviction. That same year, Scott Stanley was killed by his brother,
Jason, after an alcohol-fueled row.

Four other North Carolina men, all of Harnett County, were indicted as a
result of Operation Lightning Strike. Graylon McLamb, 56, and his neighbor,
46-year-old Ricky James Barefoot, with the help of two Spring Lake men,
Delmon "Junior" Lee and Larry Fitch Clarke, allegedly produced more than
42,000 gallons of illegal liquor in 1997 and 1998 with Wilson's supplies.

Barefoot is accused of making an additional 11,100 gallons of illegal
liquor from November 1998 to January 1999.

All four have made plea agreements with the prosecution. Lee and Clarke
have agreed to cooperate with the prosecution, Jackson said, while McLamb
and Barefoot have not.

Three other defendants, William Hale and Benjamin Gearhart, both of Ferrum;
and William Curtis Mosley, have scheduled guilty pleas for this week,
according to the court docket.

Should they go through with pleading guilty, 12 defendants remain to stand
trial April 23. They include Stanley and Ralph Hale Sr. of Ferrum, who law
enforcement authorities said was leader of the third moonshine ring.

The crackdown on illegal liquor left a sour taste in the mouths of the
moonshining communities of Virginia and North Carolina.

The case against Shelton Davis and Douglas Tart amounted to "a vendetta,"
said a family member who declined to be identified further.

"The way it went was, [Douglas Tart] got caught for moonshining," the
family member said. "I've been caught myself. We went to state court and
they throwed it out. Some kind of paperwork wasn't right. Then the federal
people picked up on the same charge and they worked it right on through."

"I went in there and pled guilty and paid a $500 fine, and that was the
end," the family member said.

The family member describes prior involvement in making white liquor this way:

"If you went fishing all the time with your Momma and Daddy, that's what
you do," the family member said.

The Tarts' late father, who was known as Snag, was a potato farmer who made
liquor all his life and was convicted for it, Jackson said.

But "even George Washington made liquor," the family member said.
Washington ran a distillery in Mount Vernon that produced 11,000 gallons of
corn and rye whiskey. He reportedly earned $7,500 from the venture.

Davis and Tart were not charged as a result of Operation Lightning Strike,
though they were convicted on federal moonshine charges in a separate case
in the Eastern District of North Carolina. They pleaded guilty in January
respectively to aiding and abetting the making of moonshine and
manufacturing it. Both men were sentenced to one year in jail.

"They had to plead guilty," the family member said. "When you're in federal
... they had no other choice. It's their way or no way."

If the warrant hadn't disappeared, Jackson said, "the irony of the whole
thing was they probably would have gotten a $500 fine and six-month
suspended sentence."