Sometimes what somebody carries in their pocket can make all the difference, or at least it did for Chattanooga police officer Logan Stroud on the night of Aug. 14, 1942, in an incident that would have reverberations four years later and more than 2,000 miles away.
The ordeal began when Stroud, a traffic officer, pulled over a car on McBrien Road that caught his attention because he thought it was missing a required sticker, according to the Aug. 15, 1942, edition of the Chattanooga News-Free Press, then the city’s afternoon newspaper.
Stroud had no way of knowing that inside the vehicle was bad news — three armed escapees from a federal prison in Alabama. The trio of trouble included Kenneth Jackson of Jackson, Mississippi, who had been awaiting trial for the alleged robbery of a post office; George K. Matthews of Marion, Kentucky, who was being held for an alleged violation of the Dyer Act; and Marvin Franklin Hubbard of Boaz, Alabama, who was awaiting trial on charges of kidnapping, impersonating a federal officer and violating the Dyer Act.
The Dyer Act dates to 1919. Proposed by U.S. Rep. Leonidas C. Dyer, R-Mo., it made transporting stolen automobiles across state lines a federal crime, according to a U.S. government website.