Sunday, March 3, 2024

Case Against Mrs. Candler, Keeling Dismissed After Police Make Raid at Request of Mr. Candler, March 3, 1924

Case Against Mrs. Candler Dismissed. . . Police Chief Says He Made Raid at Request of Husband of Woman

Atlanta, March 3—The case against Mrs. Asa G. Candler Sr. and G.W. Keeling was dismissed and W.J. Stoddard was bound over for another trial under a bond of $300 here today when given a hearing in police court on charges of having been in a place where intoxicants were being consumed.

The original charges against Stoddard also were dismissed, but he was found over under a new charge of violating the State prohibition law when he assumed responsibility for the partly filled bottle of liquor fund by the police on a table when Mrs. Candler and two men were arrested.

Police Chief Jas. J. Beavers testified that he raided an apartment at Juniper street on the afternoon upon complaint of Asa G. Candler Sr., the aged millionaire husband of the young woman. There he found Candler and the two men seated around a table on which sat a bottle partly filled with whiskey, he testified.

Chief Beavers said that Thomas Pitts, an employee of the Adair Realty Company, who he said was working for Mr. Candler, asked him to make the raid, saying that he had been shadowing Mrs. Candler for some time. Beavers said he called in Pitts in to identify Mrs. Candler, and that Pitts asked that Mrs. Candler be taken to the police station.

Pitts on the witness stand said he had been shadowing Mrs. Candler.

After asserting that Asa G. Candler Sr. had made the complaint and that “Mr. Forrest Adair told me to make the raid” the chief of police in answering to further questioning by defense attorneys, denied that he was under instructions from any one to make the raid, shouting "no one instructed me, and they never will in such a case.”

From the front page of the Concord Times, Monday, March 3, 1924. Stoddard was a prominent dry cleaner and Keeling a brick manufacturer.

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