THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, July 13, 1996 TAG: 9607120059
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Larry Maddry
LENGTH: 83 lines
JOHN F. ESTES SR., who died Sunday at age 95, was probably the bravest cop ever to wear a badge in Hampton Roads.
In his youth he had the strong handsomeness of a movie star, and he retained his wiry physique and strong jaw until well into his 80s. Even then he seemed capable of cutting down a criminal as easily as he chopped weeds in the garden behind his Virginia Beach apartment.
Estes was a Norfolk police officer for 35 years. He earned much of his fame during a decade of that time, when he worked in cooperation with the Alcohol Tax Unit of the federal government. He wore badge number 165. And he usually rode a motorcycle.
Sgt. Estes made headlines regularly during the 1930s and 1940s. Here's a typical quote from a newspaper story about him:
``A flying leap from his motorcycle speeding at forty miles per hour put motorcycle officer J.F. Estes on the running board of a fleeing, liquor-laden auto yesterday and ended a spectacular chase.''
He jumped from his motorcycle to the running boards of booze-running cars so often that fellow officers nicknamed him ``Tom Mix'' - for the cowboy movie star who toppled badmen from their saddles by jumping from his horse.
Estes raided a vegetable truck and found 32 cases of booze boxed with the vegetables. He blew out the tires of a car carrying whiskey in a 90-mph chase, firing his .44-caliber revolver with his free hand.
One headline said he helped rescue two men who were drowning in the Elizabeth River; another told of Estes' arresting a bank robber.
In another time and place, John Estes might have become a rich man, the hero of a television series or film based on his guts-and-guns career.
In fact, he didn't escape national attention. Stories about his heroics were published in Reader's Digest and Look magazine.
I once asked him why he was so diligent in his pursuit of boot-leggers.
``I just couldn't see how it was right for a big shot to make so much money illegally when honest people were struggling to get by,'' he said.
An officer long on courage and short on words, Estes had a reputation that inspired envy. He was never one to smooth-talk the police brass, and he remained a relatively poor but honest cop at a time when quite a few of Norfolk's finest were on the take from bootleggers.
The bootleggers had plenty of money to spread around. A 5-gallon jug of corn whiskey was bringing almost $60.
``A bootlegger once told me he would pay me $75 a week just to let him know what time I was going to supper,'' Estes recalled after his retirement. ``That was a big offer. I was only making $125 a month at the time.''
Estes turned the offer down, naturally.
His most dangerous adventure took place on a lonely stretch of highway between Moyock and Portsmouth on the night of March 9, 1939.
Estes and William Jackson, an Alcohol Tax Unit investigator, had driven to that forlorn and dark location with an informant. They were following the taillights of a Buick believed to be making a booze run.
Estes, behind the wheel of a Ford, sounded the siren as they approached the Buick, which had turned off the road.
Jackson opened a door of the Ford and was emerging when Estes saw the glint of a shotgun inside the bootleggers' car.
``They're hot!'' he yelled.
It was too late. Almost immediately a shotgun and a pistol thundered inside the Buick. Jackson slumped back into the seat beside Estes, dead.
``It was so dark that I didn't realize what had happened,'' Estes recalled. ``I reached out and felt Jackson's face. Most of it had been blown away.''
The Buick with the murderers inside sped into the night with Estes in hot pursuit. Shotgun blasts from the Buick sprayed the windshield of his Ford. But he drove on at 60 mph, firing at the Buick with one hand and driving with the other, shouting at the informant to fire his shotgun at the fleeing car.
Just as the Ford was gaining on the other car, a shotgun blast from the Buick tore into the radiator of the Ford, spewing water. The Buick then pulled away rapidly in the dark and disappeared.
Estes nevertheless managed to coax the steaming car to a gas station that had a phone. He called local police and federal tax officers, who eventually stopped the Buick. The men inside it were later convicted of murder.
Estes was stumped for an answer when asked how he had escaped death so often.
``The good Lord must be saving me for something,'' he guessed.
A photo of William Jackson - whom he called ``a good man'' - occupied a prominent place in Estes' home until his death. ILLUSTRATION: FILE PHOTO
John F. Estes Sr., in a 1939 photo points to his bullet-sprayed Ford
after the murder of his partner. by CNB