Charley Rakes (died 1931) was a US Marshal and special deputy of the Franklin County sheriff's office during Prohibition. In 1931, he was sent to rural Franklin County, Virginia, a major center of American moonshining, and, while he pressured most of the county's bootleggers to pay him protection money, the Bondurant brothers resisted him. He was killed in a shootout with Bondurant and several other bootleggers at the bridge at Rocky Mount that same year.
Biography[]
Charley Rakes was born in Chicago, Illinois, and he joined the US Marshals and was sent to rural Franklin County, Virginia in 1931 to crack down on the illegal moonshining industry there. He was condescending towards the locals, whom he saw as "country boys" and "mountain boys" tainted with Cherokee and Native American "savage" blood, and Forrest Bondurant of the bootlegging Bondurant brothers refused to give Rakes a cut of his bootlegging income after Rakes acted rudely towards him and eyed his employee Maggie Mae Harris (Forrest's future wife). Most of the county's other bootleggers caved in and agreed to pay protection money to Rakes, who sent two employees to attack Forrest at his restaurant. They slit Forrest's throat and raped Maggie, but Forrest and his brother Howard Bondurant later found the two men and tortured them, sending their testicles to Rakes. Rakes later captured the brothers' associate Cricket Pate and Jack Bondurant's girlfriend Bertha Minnix, taking Bertha home and murdering Cricket. He and his men then blockaded the bridge out of Rocky Mount as Commonwealth's Attorney Mason Wardell called in Bureau of Prohibition agents to shut down the county's moonshine business. The Bondurants and a convoy of bootleggers engaged in a shootout with the Prohis at the bridge, and Rakes was prevented from executing Forrest when Sheriff Pete Hodges shot him in the leg, as he was sympathetic to the Bondurants. Rakes then ran into the covered bridge, where Howard stabbed him in the back and killed him.
Gallery[]
