My father had invested everything he had made from hustling, numbers and everything into this party because that was his dream. Everything was at state and to lose it like that and one night that was just like devastating because people thought he was responsible. Everybody thought my dad set that party up. You're having a party two or three days in a row. On that last day, the robberts could
have been at the previous parties the nights before. And the fellow came into video what you were, and he took the lord of cocaine. And that's where you who you are. Some of the richest me into discut some of the toughest being in this guys not hesitate to throw your head off, you know, because you stepped on the shoes from my Heart radio and doghouse pictures. This is fight Night. I'm Jeff Keating. As we mentioned in episode five, we believe Richard Wheeler was the mastermind of
the heist. Wheeler had flown back to New York as an alibi, but his top enforcer, a man named fast Eddie Parker, had his crew masked, armed and ready to hit the after party. I tracked down the house where the robbery occurred and the current owner, Chicken Man's nephew, invited me in. So we're standing here with the robbery took place almost fifty years ago. It's just unbelievable to be at the spot where this all took place. After
doing so many years of research. I'm imagining where the robbers would have been stationed as all of the partygoers were coming up to the house, How they would have been communicating on their walkie talkies, How they would have been basically figuring out how to stay hidden while crowds of people were coming up to the house. It's a cul de sac. There's no way out. My name is James Martin. I'm the owner of the house, also the
nephew of Chicken Man, Gordon Williams. So somewhere down on Handy Drive, I'm guessing maybe a football field or less. You've got a car parked with one or two of the robbers inside on walkie talkies, and they're basically communicating to one or two of the gentlemen at the front door of your house, letting them know that more cars and partygoers are coming up and preparing to come in. So they've got to look out Somewhere down there telling them what's about to happen as they enter the house.
We also think that there's somebody parked on Old No on the other side of this that is letting that lookout car No that cars are about to turn as well. But I'm really imagining what's going on in the house right now, so I'm just inside the door where the robbery took place. Fast. Eddie Parker would have been one of the gunmen at the front door, holding a three fifty seven with a silencer. The other gunmen would have been McKinley Rogers holding a sawed off shotgun. William Knox
is the first person that greets the party goers. We found out, and as soon as William let's in these three guys, a party is over and things are about to change. This is from one of my interviews with Chicken Man, as he reflected on that night. Barbara was getting ready in her bedroom when one of the masked gunmen came in while she was taking a blow of cocaine. This is the moment the robbery really began. The robbers came and planned themselves early in the house. Lived in
the house. Yeah, she had some cocaine arobbit and she told me that she was in the making up in her bedroom and the fellow came into bed room where she were, and he took the blow of the cocaine and that's what he explaining her who you were, So they kept her there under under gone, the after party never gets going because the robbers came in during the time while everybody was leaving the Muhammad Ali fight and
got set up before they arrived. James and I concluded how they entered Barbara's bedroom At some point there is one of the robbers that comes into the room, either through this front door leading into the bedroom or through the Jack and Jill bathroom, sneaking in this way, and as she's dressing, he basically pulls out a gun and
lets her know that the robbery is on. And sense to me is that if you're having a party two or three days in a row, on that last day, the robbers could have been at the previous parties the nights before they were. They absolutely were casing the place out. Meanwhile, after Ali's victory, Chicken Man left the municipal auditorium and headed to the Regency Hotel. He was so excited from the victory he wasn't even thinking about what was going
down at his house. I go find it. Fight to the regions so I see Frank all the people I had Frank Frank Morden ring with the number. Chicken Man is speaking about Frank Molten, one of the key characters in our story. Frank started out running numbers in Atlanta in the nineteen fifties and sixties and eventually moved to New York. There he worked his way up and became a major drug dealer and distributor. Frank was known as the Black Godfather and supposedly one of the leaders of
the Council of Twelve. This was a group of high level decision makers for black organized crime. The Council of Twelve was known to be responsible for drug dealing, prostitution, racketeering, and other illegal activities around the country. We found out that Frank Molten would eventually be indicted and charged with twenty five years to life for participating in a narcotics ring that had sold over two hundred million dollars worth
of cocaine and heroin. Frank was a serious gangster, but he was also Chicken Man's friend, and Frank was the one who went to Fireball and told him to ask Chicken Man to host the after party in Atlanta. Here's Chicken Man telling j D where he went after the fight. I ain't ated the reading to for why. Talking to JB as a fish, he said, I might come out there, but he didn't really want to be where the gowls
was because he was in the gownlin. I remember, Sen, you re bro back down when you back nine and came in and the people impressed and everybody, well, I was there, yeah, I remember seeing you. Now, at about one am, Chicken Man and Fireball leave the Regency, heading to the house where the robbery was already in full effect. Chicken Man is so hyped up from the celebration he's not even thinking about why Barbara Smith never showed up
at the fight. They've never done on mean, why she didn't come, But God didn't matter that the fact was over nine. He's on the way home. So I tell a friend of Man don DNSA, the death's something to go. I go in good time. I go. I had no idea. I mean, they everything was up in there, back where the robbery took place. I continued my tour with James Martin. That's Chicken man's nephew and the current owner of the house. It was looking like a place where you were gonna
go gamble. In part. The curtains were drawn, but there's music blaring from inside of the house and specifically the front room they had lights going, and that behind the curtains they had people dancing and partying. So even it looked like with the shadows and movement, like people were celebrating inside. So as you're walking towards the house, you
feel like you're walking into a celebration. And people are walking up this stone walkway with grass on either side of it to the front door, probably drunk, probably high, and definitely completely excited and full of celebration after the Muhammad Ali fight, and many of them carrying stacks of
cash and covered in jewelry. I'm thinking that the first thing your experiences is shock that you are celebrating about ten to twenty minutes earlier, and now you've got a shotgun or a three fifty seven with a silencer to your head. I'm thinking that you're scared. I'm thinking that you're trying to figure out what happened. Here's an interview between J. D. Hudson and Chicken Man That was recorded several years after the heist. Chicken Man is explaining what
happened when he first arrived out at the house. I'm linking them to the park. But when I do show up, I mean the causes lying all around the play, you understand. I mean, I said, what do you people gonna think we have up in here? I had a special way I would come to that and this house handing to be where it waters. It was. It was you had to know where you were going. Yeah, to go down. There's no way you could have him up to get to go down and train and then train and then side.
And when I came in that second drive as a Cadillac park ground, I don't know who's Kadak World? And I looked at my period cor to Lightning Place, New York. Actually play the causes lying all around the place, you understand. I mean, I said, what do you people gonna think we have up in here? All these cars, the Roles, Rows and Andrasine, and I don't know who's Kodak World. I come to find out it was them, the robberts. I fired to get me a little place on the corner,
and I found about running out the way. They was doing the edge and it was the fake set up in the little room, and they had the music loud. And when I came to the door, by me having the key, everybody else knocked on the door where I can't. So the guy said, you must be the house man. Chicken Man came in the house jiggling his keys with fireball right behind him. The robbers thought, oh, he must be the house man. He's got the keys to the house.
Here's what Chicken Man walked in on. When I came in, the robbery was in pri so he got a shotgun and he said it ain't nothing but a robber. And that reading he said it was number the robbery because it wasn't the police. You know that, because the robber could take the runy and go with it to put at least dad. We're gonna end back. The robbers announced the Chicken Man, the house man, this ain't nothing but
a robbery. Chicken Man interprets this that losing their cash and jewelry isn't as bad as going to jail, which is what would have happened if the cops showed up. Our research shows that Chicken Man and every partygoer who stepped into the house had a three fifty seven magnum pushed up against their head by fast Eddie Parker, or, as was the case with Fireball, had assault off shotgun pressed against their back by McKinley Rogers. Tobe, the guest of honor, and a few partygoers were used as decoys
in the front room of the house. Just imagine the extended horror on their faces as they were forced to fake party with the gunmen in the room for the past few hours. The tension in this scene must have been overwhelming. The gunmen had to manage every new guest as they walk through the door, and then forced them through the front room and the kitchen to the basement stairs. Here I am with James in the house at the
top of the staircase. So just to be clear, is this always been the way that is down to the basement. These stairs are the original corponness. You've always had to come through the kitchen and gone down into the basement. So if we're talking a tight squeeze getting through this little thing, you got someone behind you. Oh my goodness, out, oh my goodness, and look at look at how why I mean you're talking. You can't even get two people
necessarily side by side on this thing. Oh my goodness, here's Chicken Man telling J. D. Hudson what it was like being forced down into the basement. Will they take me downstre behind me? So so they hit him when they're coming in. They was a full basement in the house. So they took the people's down the steps into the basement and they were making to lay down, and men undressed so they could sist the pockets in that kind of thing. They were talking on the walker, talking, talking
to the people in the car on the outside. Every time they see a car car, so they would follow him up and when they get out of coming to the house, they would tell the people in the house, how many people are coming to approaching. We know that this basement would have been decorated like a casino in Vegas, and Chicken Man wanted this to look just like Vegas. So the craps tables could have been over here. You could have had a blackjack table that was over here.
You could have had another card table over here. There was supposedly a bar that was set up in this area right here, with maybe seven or eight bar stools for the ladies to say that. I mean it literally was supposed to look like a casino. Oh wow, okay, it's hard to imagine that. Now this would have been like decked out to the nines. Here's j D asking Chicken Man if he remembers a woman being involved. They had to be about six of them and a level
was there. Remember he has them he goes quick. Yeah. They said some of them had on high and they kept on getting ars quick and she was taking she had put in in the in the uh good looking. Some of the victims claimed they did hear high heels clicking on the basement floor, and so that gave them the idea that there may have been a woman involved
in the robbery. Plus, one of the women who reported the robbery said she saw a thin female hand reaching towards one of the garbage cans where she had thrown her diamond necklace to try to hide it, and so that only increased their suspicions that a female was involved. That female robber may have been Lillian Dabney, and she could have been assisted by Bookie Brown. We think he was forcing people down into the basement with the help of James Henry Hall, Charles Lee was probably in the
house somewhere as well, and maybe even Houston Hammond's. All of these names will continue to come up when j D begins his investigation into the robbery. Let's go back to the house where I explained to James what happened to his uncle. So, James, your uncle Gordon. Chicken Man comes in as the robbery is in full effect. Okay, Chicken Man walks in the door. He's got a shotgun that greets him in the face. They escorted him down here,
they strip him out of his clothes. Supposedly, they robbed him of nine d seventy one dollars plus some jewelry. But what was interesting about Chicken Man is underneath his suit and stuff that he had for the Muhammad Ali fight, he had on long underwear. Now it's October and it may be kind of cold, but everybody else supposedly had kind of like skimpy underwear of just normal under Wherever a few of the hustlers who saw Chicken Man in his long underwear thought that he was prepared to be
stripped and that meant he was implicated. But Chicken Man felt he was a victim, just like everyone else here he is remembering one woman named Gladys who did not want to give up her ring the same thing. Well, you can hear him. It was briefing that they were smoking, and you bet him. I know the man glad from New York and she said, you want to range, Yeah, I want a big rain. You gotta get that right,
which one said, Zach cut that they wouldn't drive. Here's how j D described it to me back in two thousand and two when we had our first interview together the Robins the preseason in math. They bought masks and saw a shot and stuff, and they pre seeded the bag. When they got bad, they gleeded, okay. And as each one came into a bad say, they run dressed for women and men that jury and many let's say, big shoes.
They didn't take any means. And those out of gatto shoes they didn't take any They took cash and you okay, right, um, okay. So I'm still trying to get this in my heade. If people were down in the basements, you know, some of them are already there. Some of them were pulling up in there's roll or their big cars or their limousine and they can't tell anything that is going on as far as the robbery. There's no screaming going on, there's no gunshots going on. They don't know what's going on.
I got shopped us. You know, we have guys who told us they went into the house of ten fifteen twenty thirty thousands in the pockets. A lot of people would we in that house. And that was when fifteen thousand novel is a lot of many, like having one point five million the US today, that's kind of many of those guys carried That was a hustler who always had three bodyguards. Anytime you went into a building to
went inside with him. Once they within where it was on a building, oven stayed near the door, another one stayed outside in the car, never got out the car. And he was the last guy that came in. James, and I imagine what happened to Frank Mo, the Black Godfather and his bodyguards when they walked into shotguns pointed at their faces. A man they would have known Tobe, we found out was the honored birthday guest, and he was sitting with a ghastly look on his face, greeting
the guests as they walked through the front door. James then asked me an important question. Were they able to get the guns from them as they were coming through the door. They did get the guns from them. As soon as they walked in the door. One of the guys supposedly not Frank's bodyguard on the back of the head or his back and basically pushed him down these stairs. As soon as you walk off the stairs here, you
are probably forced into one corner of this basement. You've got one of those guns, either either a sawed off shotgun or a three seven with a silencer to your head. You are forced to undress down to your underwear. I'm imagining as a one when you're completely embarrassed and pissed and scared of what these men with guns might do
to you outside of making you undress. Listen to how J. D. Hudson described these gangsters like Frank Moten to Chicken Man when I interviewed them on camera for the first time ever in two thousand and three. Some of the richest men in this guy, some of the toughest men in this country. Guys who were not hesitate to blow your head off, you know, because you stepped on that shoot, you're gonna take that money. And that was not impart
of for them. What was the part of They made those goddess beautiful men with the meat coats and all the doubt be undressed down to their panics. Now that was then, so I can't protect my woman day. This is what it's crazy change. You have some of the biggest gangsters in the country, from Philadelphia, from d C, from Chicago, from New York. Some of them are killers. If they're not, they are tough hustlers from the streets.
They all are packing heat and not a shot was fired that night, James, I still cannot figure that out. That to me is the most shocking part of this whole robbery. Now, I understand when you've got guns pointed to your head and when you've got sawed off shotguns at your back, that you know that if you make a move you could be killed. But there's so many of these gangsters that are being robbed. I just don't know how they don't pull off some type of retaliation
during this whole thing. So with all this, I'm assuming that Chicken Man had been thinking, okay with everyone becoming from me at some point unless I've definitely proved that I had nothing to do with this, because they would think that he would have something to do with them with him being the owner of the home and having
online Johns. So I definitely understand that even though not a shot is fired that night, you have to think that the gangsters who got robbed, who were embarrassed, who couldn't protect their women, had one thing on their minds. Payback Fight Night is a joint production from I Heart Radio, Will Packer Media and Doghouse Pictures in association with Psychopia Pictures.
Produced and hosted by Jeff Keating. Executive producers are Will Packer, James Lopez, Kenny Burns, Dan Bush, Lars Jacobson, and Noel Brown. Supervising producer is Taylor Hickoyne. Story editors are Noel Brown and Dan Bush. Written by Jeff Keating and Jim Roberts. Edited by Matt Owen. Mixing and sound designed by Jeremiah Kolanni Prescott. Music written and performed by the Diamond Street Players.
Additional music by Ben Lovett. Audio archives courtesy of WSB News Film and Video Tape Collection, Brown Media Archives, University of Georgia Libraries. Special thanks to Dr Maurice Hobson and David Davis. Fight Night is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, check out the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.