Tabor City Tribune

Farmer Confesses To Extortion Try

Eleven agonizing months of sheer terror have ended for the family of a Loris businessman with the confession of a respected farmer that it was he who demanded $10,000.00 to let the family live.

Rufus Boyd of the Daisy section of upper Horry was taken into custody last Friday, admitted Sunday night that he attempted extortion by phone threats of death by dynamiting, and Tuesday was taken to the State Mental Hospital in Columbia for observation after relatives opined that he was insane.

Objects of the anonymous telephoned threats that came irregularly for almost a year were Mr. and Mrs. Douglas Bailey and their son, Singleton, who live on the east end of Main St. Bailey owns and operates Loris Drug Store. Target of the phone calls was Mrs. Bailey who during the eleven months of taut nerves moved progressively from states of panic to terror, to reasoning fear and finally to something more than mild apprehension.

Loris Police Chief Paul Ray Jones, who headed investigation efforts of town, county and state police (SLED), said that Boyd signed a statement Sunday night admitting that it was he who attempted to extort $10,000.00 from the druggist and his family.

The threatening phone calls began Dec. 2, 1960 when Mrs. Bailey, at home, received a call from a man who refused to identify himself but demanded $10,000.00, threatening to dynamite her home if it were not paid.

The caller reminded Mrs. Bailey of the dynamiting in 1947 that demolished the Willoughby home near Finklea, west of Loris, dismembering a girl fatally and seriously injuring her father. That dynamiting was one Horry folks will not soon forget because of the horror involved.

Since the first call, Chief Jones said, there have been 18 to 22 more, some made from Myrtle Beach, Red Hill just outside Conway, from Conway, Marion, Tabor City, N. C., and through the Loris exchange of the Horry Telephone Co-Op.

During one call in January the man demanded that $10,000.00 in bills be placed in a tile drain in front of the Daisy school at 4 p. m. Friday.

At noon that Friday police began to drift into that area inconspicuously. They kept watch over the dummy package of money all afternoon and (Continued On Page 3)
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Rufus Boyd

all night and no one showed to pick it up.

However, Chief Jones and County Policeman Willis Gause made phone calls to their homes that night in which the caller asked that a message be relayed to them saying that the caller was sorry they had sent "on a wild goose chase."

Chief Jones said the first inkling as to the identity of the threatening caller came from a tape recording was made of one of the calls but both Mr. and Mrs. Bailey said they felt sure the caller could not be Boyd, with whom Mrs. Bailey had gone to school and with whom both were friends.

Twenty days after the calls began, there was a reunion of the Class of 1930 of Long High School which Mrs. Bailey and Boyd attended, along with 18 other classmates.

Chief Jones said the threatening caller time and again sounded irritated in the extreme that the money had not been paid and warned that he would not wait forever.

Last week he called the Bailey residence and told the cook to tell Mrs. Bailey that he would not call but the next Thursday night he called-- and Friday morning suddenly into custody.

Chief Jones said that Boyd offered no reason for attempting extortion other than to say that he was laboring under a nervous compulsion and that he would make a phone call to Mrs. Bailey, the chief quoted him as saying, "I would tell himself that he would make no more such calls but then he would "get mad" and feel forced to call.

"I must be a real relief to know its all over." newsman commented to Mrs. Bailey.

"Yes and no," she said, "Its good to know there won't be any more calls but its no relief knowing who it is I had hoped all along that when we found out who it was, it would be someone from way far away down here, someone we didn't know But to think it was someone I went to school with, someone I have been friendly with I hope to never let him out. I'm afraid he would call me while what I told him kill me and then kill him all."

"I'll sooner know what he has done to us to all of us its Daughter and Singleton and me-- hew metsots Smgkten t beenl what a sirai we hae been undier Ivin in bed a' night, tying to think who ait miuht b wondermg when the mes cll might come. It wonnblo p we will o long timo yting ov lt."

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