Opinion ID: 353818
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Stolen Hormel Meat:

Text: 11 On March 30, 1972, a truckload of approximately 33,000 pounds of Hormel meat packed in cardboard boxes left the packing plant in Fremont, Nebraska, consigned to the Alterman Food Company in Atlanta, Georgia. The trailer carrying the shipment arrived in Smyrna, Georgia, late that night and was parked at the South Cobb Service Station to be picked up by another driver, Byron Moseley, for ultimate delivery on April 2. At 3:00 p. m. on April 1, Moseley observed the tractor-trailer parked at the service station. By 9:00 that evening, it had been stolen. 3 The abandoned tractor was found beside a highway south of Atlanta the following day. About one month later, the empty trailer was recovered in Warner Robbins, Georgia. 12 On the night of April 1, 1972, J. C. Hawkins visited Rudolph Flanders at Flanders' grocery store, the Pick and Carry. J. C. asked if he could store boxes of Hormel Meat in the cooler of the Pick and Carry, and Flanders consented. Over the next few days, J. C. stored 40 to 50 boxes of meat which he sold with some assistance from Flanders. At some point that month, J. C. offered to sell a semi-trailer truck of meat to Larry Sykes for $7,000. Sykes contacted his brother, who was in the meat packing business, and was advised to pass up the deal because the meat was just too low priced. T. 769. At about the same time, codefendant James Alford Elliott, Jr., sold a 50 pound piece of Hormel meat to Joe Fuchs, then a pharmacist in Macon. Fuchs returned the meat after he learned from a butcher friend that it was not legitimate. 4 A year later, shortly before Rudolph Flanders was tried in federal court for possession of the stolen Hormel meat, J. C. told James Gunnells that it was his (J. C.'s) load of meat, that he had purchased it for approximately $10,000, and that Recea Hawkins was also involved in the transaction. 13