State

Believe It Or Not Hi|»l«\v\s ama/.iiiK «lory «ilioul Kobe- soil County, as lolcl on оно of Ills broadcasts some time ago. is vouchee! for by residents of that section. DID you happen to hear Rip¬ ley’s "Believe-It-or-Not" over the radio some time ago? He told one of the most remark¬ able tales that he has put on the air thus far and inasmuch as the locale was in North Carolina, we made some investigation of the case and discovered that the facts as brought out in the broadcast were essentially correct. It has been about eight or ten years since the occurrence took place. Several officers, under the leadership of Deputy Sheriff Char¬ lie Cox. were trying to round up some moonshiners in the woods near Rowland. Robeson County. The raid occurred at night. Knowing the location of the still, Cox and his party approached it cautiously. The men operating the still were known to be desperate characters. Cox directed his men to spread out and try to approach the still in absolute silence. "Re¬ member." he told them, "if they hear us. they’ll be sure to shoot, so be careful." The men obeyed his instructions. Tom Bullock was one of the party. He had proceeded only a short dis¬ tance from Cox when suddenly, a short distance in front of him. he saw the flash of a gun. It was ac¬ companied by a terrific roar and Bullock fell to the ground. The other men ran to the scene of the shooting. Bullock was bleed¬ ing profusely and they saw that unless he was given medical at¬ tention immediately, he would die from loss of blood. So they bound up his wounds as best they could and rushed him to the hospital at Lumberton. The next day Cox and one or two others revisited the scene of the shooting. Among other things, they wanted to find Bullock’s gun. which he had dropped and which they had forgotten to take along with them. After a little search, they dis¬ covered the weapon. At the same moment, one member of the party happened to see something that brought him to a startled halt. It was a man sitting on a log. The THE STATE. June 5. 1948 officer recognized him as Sam Hunt, a notorious moonshiner of that section. He whipped out his revolver and aimed at Hunt. "Throw 'em up!" he shouted. The man didn't move. Cox and the others approached cautiously, and as they got close to him. they saw that Hunt was dead. He had fallen to a sitting position on the log. his shotgun lying by his side. They examined the weapon and found that the shell had been exploded. There was no question but that it was the same gun that had been used in felling Bullock. And then one of the men in the party happened to observe that the hammer on Bullock’s revolver had not fallen: that it was still raised. He examined the cartridges and discovered that they were all in¬ tact. So the question then arose as to who had killed the moon¬ shiner. Cox "broke" the revolver and discovered that the cartridge in the barrel of the weapon had been dis¬ charged. But how could it have been discharged without the ham¬ mer having come down upon it! They looked at the discharged cartridge carefully and saw that it contained no mark whatsoever to indicate that the hammer had come in contact with it. Who. then, was responsible for Hunt's death and how could that cartridge have been exploded? That's where the miraculous part of the story comes in. It was finally decided that when Hunt shot at Bullock, one of the shot entered the barrel of the lat- ler's revolver and fired the bullet. Bullock had the weapon pointed in Hunt's direction at the time. The bullet sped through the air and hit Hunt between the eyes, killing him instantly. And so. in wounding the deputy. Hunt had also been responsible for his own death. An autopsy performed on the moonshiner revealed the fact that the bullet in his head had un¬ questionably come from Bullock’s revolver. Ripley presented Bullock to his Scene at a typical North Carolina still. There are plenty of them still in operation in various parts of the state. radio audience in person Sunday night. The man from Robeson County said that he had had about 125 shots in his body and that the doctors had been able to dig out only about 25 of them, so the other 100 were still inside him some¬ where. We proceeded to get in touch with officers at Lumberton Monday afternoon and talked to Captain McLean and R. J. Williamson in the sheriffs office down there. The captain said that the facts as dram¬ atized by Ripley and as told by Bullock were absolutely correct. "I visited the scene of the shooting myself the very next day after it happened." he explained. "How- far were Hunt and Bullock apart when the shooting took place?" we asked him. "Oh, I should say about twelve or fifteen steps apart.” he replied. “You see, the raid occurred at night, so Cox and Bullock and the other fellows didn’t realize that Hunt had been shot down. They figured out that he had run away immediately after the shooting. When he fired and exploded Bul¬ lock's gun. the two sounds were practically simultaneous, so no¬ body thought that Bullock had fired at all.” We also made some inquiries about Bullock and learned that he hadn't returned from his trip to New York. Ripley paid his ex¬ penses up there and back again 15