Opinion ID: 353818
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 8

Heading: Stolen Career Club Shirts:

Text: 31 On November 7, 1973, a trailer load of Career Club shirts consigned to an interstate shipment and valued in excess of $56,000 was stolen from the Roadway Express Terminal in Macon. The trailer, on which the name Roadway was painted in tall, bold letters along each side, wound up in an Atlanta warehouse built and owned by Foster. 32 The lessons of the stolen meat experience the month before apparently were not lost on Foster. Two years earlier he had entered into a business venture with Kenneth Lamar Keyes, a glass installer, to construct a warehouse-type building for Keyes to rent for use as a glass processing plant. The building, located in Atlanta, was completed during the summer of 1973 and had doors large enough for semi-trucks and trailers to pass through. As of November, 1973, no equipment had been installed. That month, Foster asked Keyes if he could rent the building to someone for two or three months, ostensibly to help defray interest payments on the money borrowed to finance the building. Keyes consented. A few days after he was contacted by Foster, Keyes, along with his stepson, Kenneth Horace Johnson, witnessed J. C. and two other men drive up to the warehouse, pry the locks off the surrounding gate with a crowbar, and replace them with new locks. Several days later Keyes and Johnson looked inside the warehouse and found the 40 foot Roadway trailer. Within a week the trailer was gone, a pile of U-Haul blankets left in its stead. 33 Gunnells, by his account, was unwittingly drawn into the stolen shirt episode by Foster. First, as a Christmas present, Foster gave Gunnells approximately 25 of the stolen shirts. 9 When Gunnells later learned that the shirts were stolen, he returned all but one to J. C. and Recea Hawkins. The one remaining shirt, which he turned over to the Bibb County Police, was introduced into evidence in the instant case and was identified as a part of the stolen shipment. Second, Foster asked Gunnells to take some polaroid photographs of the outside of his Atlanta warehouse. Gunnells travelled to Atlanta with J. C. and Recea for this purpose. At the warehouse, J. C. unlocked the gate and the office door, showed Gunnells the trailer and its contents, and offered to sell him shirts for one dollar apiece. As they were leaving the warehouse, Gunnells noticed a police car parked across the street but was told by J. C. not to worry. On his return to Macon, Gunnells approached Foster to register his concern over what had happened in Atlanta. Foster explained that there wasn't nothing to worry about, that he had a lease drawed up showing that he had leased it to somebody if anything ever happened. T. 307. 34 Like the meat and dairy products the month before, the stolen shirts were eventually disposed of through Leon Averett and Paul Moose, Jr. in Charlotte, North Carolina. In connection with the sale of the shirts, Averett told Moose that they had a warehouse in Atlanta big enough to handle several tractor-trailers. Some of the shirts sold by Averett and Moose were recovered and identified as part of the stolen shipment.