08-02-2025
HIGH POINT CONFIDENTIAL: The blind bootlegger Mysterious slaying baffled authorities in 1944
EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the first story in a three-part High Point Confidential series.
HIGH POINT
In the summer of 1944, as young U.S. servicemen were fighting a war overseas, local law enforcement authorities were engaged in a battle of their own here in High Point.
That April, a pretty young woman named Alice May had been found brutally murdered, her half-nude body carelessly hidden beneath a pile of brush in a patch of woods on the outskirts of town. According to the county coroner, the 19-year-old brunette had been choked, struck in the mouth with a blunt object, and her throat had been slashed so violently that it severed her windpipe. She also had what appeared to be fingernail scratches across her throat.
May's murder (which we wrote about in a four-part High Point Confidential series three years ago) understandably shocked the community. Equally shocking, however, was the city police department's inability to solve the slaying — despite what seemed to be a wealth of clues and potential leads — further frustrating and frightening city residents.
As the unsolved case dragged into the summer months, local journalists bemoaned the police department's futility. The High Point Enterprise, for example, openly questioned whether the department was in over its head and might need some assistance from the State Bureau of Investigation.
Two months after the slaying, with public confidence continuing to erode, the last thing the authorities needed was another unsolved murder in High Point ... but that's exactly what they got. This time, though, it was the Guilford County Sheriff's Department that would be stumped by the mysterious killing.
It happened after dark on the evening of June 9, 1944. The victim was Robert Lee 'Bob' Beck, a 47-year-old Davidson County native who had spent most of his life living in or near High Point. At the time, Beck — who was blind — and his wife lived on the old Greensboro Highway, just north of High Point.
Around 10 p.m., Beck was listening to the radio when he heard a knock at the front door. His wife, who was lying down in a rear bedroom, heard the knock, too, but it was her husband who went to the door.
'Don't move or I'll shoot you!' she heard a man yell.
'Don't shoot him!' another man shouted.
The next sound she heard was the firing of a .45-caliber pistol. She ran to the front of the house just in time to see her wounded husband stumbling away from the door. She helped him to the bathroom, where he collapsed, and she immediately called for an ambulance.
Meanwhile, the shooter and his sidekick retreated to their vehicle and sped away. The darkness prevented Beck's wife from getting a good look at either of the two men or their car.
An ambulance rushed Beck to the Washington Street branch of High Point Memorial Hospital, but doctors held little hope for his survival. The bullet had ripped through his left arm and lower abdomen, nearly exiting on his right side. There was little the doctors could do to save him.
As Beck lay feebly on his deathbed, Sheriff John C. Story and his deputies tried to extract whatever information they could from him. The officers suspected Beck recognized his killers' voices, but if he knew the identity of the two assailants, he wasn't saying.
Around 4 a.m., Beck — who may have been the most important witness in his own shooting — died. He was laid to rest in his family's burial plot at Oakwood Cemetery.
Sheriff Story and his deputies were baffled by the mysterious killing. Their only working theory seemed to be that Beck, a known bootlegger, might've been offed by a couple of business rivals, but who were they? They had slipped away from Beck's house in darkness, and the only witness who might've been able to identify them was dead.
Would the authorities somehow crack the case and nab the two killers, or would Bob Beck join Alice May in the 'Unsolved' file?
EDITOR'S NOTE: Part two of 'The Blind Bootlegger' will be published in Tuesday's High Point Enterprise.
