Mike Hawk was good friends with Douglas Seyle, who worked for Jim in his restoration shop for a number of years. Doug spoke at great length to Mike about some of the restoration activities that Jim had initiated. The workshop had some exceptionally talented craftsmen, like Barry Thomas, who could create excellent reproductions of antique furniture. Unfortunately, Jim employed the skills of these craftsmen to defraud some of his clients. These clients were typically clueless about the value of the antiques in their homes and were very impressed with Jim's expertise when it came to antiques. Here is how the fraud evolved with a hypothetical client.
"Amanda, this table is a disgrace," Jim told the wealthy matron who had a home full of valuable antique furniture that had been in her family for generations. "Look how scratched the top is and how stained the marble inlays are. I just hate to see this wonderful table in such poor shape. My boys could have this fine table restored to its original beauty in no time."
Amanda had never paid much attention to the old table and was embarrassed to hear Jim criticize its condition, so she let Jim restore it. When the table reached Jim's workshop, it was restored with great care and a perfect reproduction was made. The original antique table was shipped to another city and possibly overseas for sale, and the attractive reproduction was given to Amanda. Amanda was pleased with the table that looked exactly like the original, minus the scratches and stains. The risk to Jim was low. Amanda was selected for this fraud because she knew nothing about antiques and had enough money that she would not in her lifetime need to sell her antiques to make ends meet. The fraud may never have been discovered. Her heirs, if they paid any attention whatsoever, probably assumed that the handsome table was not one of her antiques.
Independently, I happened to interview another friend of Jim's who told me he had offered a trip to Europe in exchange for bringing through customs an expensive painting for him. The friend knew the arrangement was not on the up-and-up and refused to take him up on his offer.
I interviewed Joe Goodman, the man closest to Jim. Joe's wife, Nancy, also knew Jim well. While they knew each other for decades, Joe worked for Jim for eight or nine years doing odd jobs. Jim was best man at Joe's first wedding. Jim trusted Joe completely and told him all the places where he hid large sums of cash in Mercer House. Jim was like a father to Joe, and Joe never forgot it.
In the midst of my long talk with Joe Goodman and his wife, he said, unprompted, "You know, Williams was involved in a few shady deals." Back in the 1968-69 timeframe, Joe and Jim took Jim's old pickup truck and drove up U.S. Route 321 to a big old house around Garnett in Hampton County, South Carolina, where Jim had visited a couple times before to impress the owners and win their trust.
The house belonged to two sweet old wealthy spinsters who offered them milk and cocoa. Jim laid on the charm very heavily. "Made them feel like queen bees," Joe recalled.
Evidently, on an earlier trip, Jim had set up the kind of fraud that was later perpetrated on "Amanda." The old ladies had an enormous antique mahogany table and 14 valuable Chippendale chairs with round-ball claw feet, made for some English duke. The chairs were badly scratched up and the finish darkened and damaged. Jim had offered to buy the chairs, but the ladies had refused, so he offered to restore them because Jim told them "he hated to see them in such bad shape."
Joe and Jim loaded the chairs into the pickup truck and drove back to Savannah, where Jim was going to have them crated and sent to a cabinetmaker in Philadelphia to have them reproduced. The unsuspecting old ladies would get back 14 chairs that were actually replicas of their original Chippendales, which Jim would then sell. When the 28 Chippendale chairs were returned from the Philadelphia craftsman, I was told by an eyewitness that only an expert could tell the originals from the replicas.
Jim engaged in this kind of trickery over a long period of time, The "Amanda" type incidents, according to Mike Hawk, occurred throughout the 1970s and 1980s. It is not clear how much, if anything, Jim's craftsmen, knew about the fraud. It's entirely possible that the only employee in the shop that knew was Doug Seyle, who was not one of the restorers. Most of Jim's former restorers have died and the only one that I was able to locate refused to speak with me.
One night, when Joe Goodman was at Mercer House with Jim, a stranger came to the back door very late with a Tiffany lamp. After examining the lamp, Jim paid him $15,000 cash at the door. The man left without a bill of sale. Jim explained to Joe that frequent back-door transactions like that were one of the reasons he kept so much cash in the house. One can surmise that the Tiffany lamp was probably stolen, although some cash-strapped Savannah "blueblood" may have sold the family heirlooms this way to avoid embarrassment.
In the mid-1970s, Jim restored two homes in Beaufort County, South Carolina. One was Barnwell House and the other was Tombee, a plantation house on St. Helena's Island, nicknamed after its original owner, Thomas B. Chaplin. The restoration of Barnwell House was much more costly than Jim had anticipated. The fall of 1975 was particularly difficult as he struggled to complete the work so he could put the house on the market the following spring.
Mercer House was burglarized twice in 1975. Jim was at Tombee when the first burglary occurred. His entire collection of jade and silver was stolen. Over time, Savannah police were able to recover some of the items. In December, while Jim slept upstairs, a thief stole 13 guns, mostly antiques, and 650 rounds of ammunition, according to the police report.
"The burglar stole only weapons," Jim said, "and he obviously knew where they were because the only drawers that were open in the house were where the weapons were and I always thought it was an inside job, which made me very nervous."
Fortunately for Jim, the stolen property was insured, and he was able to use the insurance money to cover some of the Barnwell House restoration costs. Unfortunately, he sold Barnwell House at a loss in 1976.
A fascinating story came up repeatedly, although there is no way to confirm it. One of Jim's friends, Albert "Bert" Adams, was an art teacher with a master's degree at who taught at Savannah's Country Day School. Bert, who was tall and stocky, was nicknamed "The Viking." Allegedly, Jim had Bert stage the first burglary of the silver and jade pieces, and possibly the second burglary of guns and ammunition as well. Bert was to find places faraway from Savannah to sell the silver. It was important that the distinct silver and jade pieces did not show up in antique shops in the Savannah area. If they did, the insurance fraud could be traced back to Bert and Jim. However, the plan supposedly hit some snags, and some of the silver and jade eventually showed up in the Savannah area, which is how Savannah police recovered them. This snag created a liability for Jim and Bert. Bert Adams died of carbon monoxide poisoning in 1979.
Among the insiders who shared the silver theft story, Bert's death caused alarm. They could not understand how Bert, who worked on cars and motorcycles all his life, would have had his garage door down on a hot, humid mid-September day while he was working on his car with the engine running. No autopsy was performed, and Bert was buried the next day.
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