Johnny Cash was an outlaw in the public mind, but he had a touch of detective in him too. Here, in his own voice, is a story of how he used land records to bust a thieving accountant. And true to type as a historical storyteller, Cash added a historical whodunit as a bonus; it went a little bit like this:
“My farmhouse is an old simple two-story structure built in 1847 out of poplar logs by a retired soldier of the Mexican War, Captain Joseph Weems. (He was sitting on the porch of the house) in 1862 on the day just after the surrender of Nashville to the Yankees, when two Union cavalrymen rode up into the yard.
Captain Weems had a cow out in his pasture, and the Yankees wanted it …. they didn’t ask politely, the story goes – they must have been feeling their oats – and neither did they take kindly to the fact Captain Weems was wearing his full Mexican War uniform. He was a military-minded man.
He spoke sharply. “You’re not taking my cow. I’ve got babies who have to have that milk.”
“Well, we’re taking it anyway,” said one Yankee.
“Are you armed?” asked the other.
“You’d just about have to search me to find that out, now wouldn’t you?” was the captain’s reply.
“Well,” said one, “If you’ve got a gun, we’re going to take it from you, ‘cause we’re not going to let you people keep your guns either.”
He started toward the porch. Captain Weems didn’t hesitate. He pulled out his pistol and killed both those horse soldiers right there. They died in the front yard.
Their comrades never found out what happened to them. Captain Weems and his family chased away their horses, burned their gear, and buried them in unmarked graves in the family cemetery up the hill. They’re still there today, though nobody knows exactly where. Captain Weems is there, too, his gravesite plainly marked.
The Yankees sure tried to get the truth, coming back through here day after day, but nobody breathed a word, and in the end the had to give up and go away. The whole affair remained a family secret for a long time; now it’s a local legend.”
Then Cash took his story in a different direction.
“It was odd how I acquired this place. Sad, really. It came to me as a result of a crime by a man I trusted.”
(Cash then explained his wife June Carter wanted to write a check for a lot of expensive furniture, so he called his accountant to see how much money he had in that account. The accountant hemmed and hawed and told him he owed a lot of money for bills even though Cash knew he had deposited scores of thousands of dollars in the bank from tour receipts. Cash swung by his office, looked at the bills, and discovered his accountant had not been paying bills for some time.)
“The man had been stealing our money, taking it for himself and buying properties with it. His wife had been using it to buy jewelry.
That was a hard lesson – harder for him than for me, because all I had to do was never again choose an accountant by driving down the main street where I lived and looking for a sign saying “Accountant,” which is how I found Uncle Pete. Then I’d just have to keep periodic tabs on where the money was going, whoever was actually putting it there.
Pete, on the other hand, had to give the money back and face the threat of prosecution. As it turned out, we decided not to prosecute – he had a lot of tragedy in his family around that time, and besides, he really was a nice man, well loved in the community. What we did was search out the properties he’d bought with our money and make him sign them over to us. We were doing that when it occurred to us we should investigate his farm, where Carlene and Rosie had spent many a happy weekend playing with his kids. And sure enough, there it was: he’d paid cash for it, our cash.
We sold all the other properties, but this one I just had to keep.”
Maybe Johnny remembered all the second chances he got. Cash got his money back, but he cut the thief a huge break, which saved him from prison and from losing his license and livelihood. Would you expect different from The Man In Black?
What Johnny left out in this account (from CASH – The Autobiography) was he had real estate records checked in several Tennessee counties (and maybe even a couple of counties in Kentucky and Florida also) to see if his accountant or his accountant’s wife turned up as a property owner in the property deeds records.
Maybe Cash had those counties’ county assessor records searched as well. When you own property, there is property tax. Which means there is a public record. Some people might put someone else’s name on a property deed to hide the real owner of the property, but the property tax bills usually go to a mailing address associated with the real owner to make sure the tax gets paid.
Government people never keep their hands in their own pockets; they put ‘em in most of ours. And they generate public records in the process. Keep this in mind if you have to do some of your own detective work on property.
SHERLOCK JUSTICE
WE CAN SHOW YOU HOW TO BE YOUR OWN DETECTIVE.
