[Josh] When these moonshiners were bootlegging,
they had souped up cars
and they'd leave the cops in the dust.
[narrator] The centuries-old conflict in the American South
between moonshiners and revenuers
spawned fast cars, daring drivers,
and countless criminal exploits.
[Mark] Police had factories show 'em stock cars
in which to chase these bootleggers.
Bootleggers had a little bit of expendable mining.
[narrator] But one crime stands out
in the history of these dangerous back roads.
[Tim] The thing is, when you're in an illegal liquor business,
anytime you start dealing with money and family,
more than unlikely,
you're gonna have some problems.
[narrator] In 1941,
moonshiner Lloyd Seay
was one of the fastest outlaws the South had ever seen...
[announcer] Spike drop, they're off.
[narrator] ...and on the cusp of becoming a national racing champion.
Until he was murdered in cold blood
over a few bags of sugar.
[Josh] How awful to die at 21 years old
and be one of the most promising race car drivers
that's ever walked the face of the planet.
It just don't even seem real.
[narrator] The shocking tragedy would cement Lloyd's legacy
as the founding martyr of American stock car racing,
and serve as a warning to others on the dangers
of the outlaw life in the Appalachian backwoods.
The fact that Lloyd was shot over a bag or two of sugar,
it makes me feel that there was a conflict
that went much deeper than some sugar.
Here we are in downtown Dawsonville, Georgia.
Lived here all my life, changed very little.
Nearly like it was.
This was the moonshine capital of the world.
The moonshining era has become popular again,
and the moonshine stories is on TV now.
Well, it was authentic here.
There was no story. It was a way of life.
I was a star race car driver,
and my dad was Gober Sosebee,
one of the early stock car pioneers.
And he ran moonshine.
That's where he honed in his driving skills.
[narrator] The skills these moonshine runners learn hauling liquor
contributed directly to Dawsonville's other claim to fame.
Dawsonville has a lot of titles,
and one of them is the birthplace of stock car racing.
People said, " Well, there's never been a racetrack in Dawsonville."
We had Highway 9
that the moonshine runners ran down to Atlanta.
The curves were treacherous.
That's a pretty good racetrack.
[narrator] As early as the 1920s,
bootleggers souped up stock cars to outrun the law
and deliver illegal liquor to thirsty drinkers
first on back country roads
then for prize money on oval tracks.
[commentator] And they're off.
It's a sight to thrill to any race man.
[narrator] After prohibition ended in the 1930s,
the sport of stock car racing exploded in popularity
with hard-charging former outlaws
like Red Byron, the Flock Brothers and Gober Sosebee,
who wowed fans with the daredevil driving skills
they learned from hauling liquor.
But one of the fastest drivers
to ever compete with these legends
never got his chance to become a household name.
[Daniel] Most people today have never heard of Lloyd Seay.
And he is really the first superstar
of stock car racing.
[David] Lloyd Seay's nickname was Lightning Lloyd,
because of his fast driving skills.
[narrator] And as a gifted race car driver,
Lloyd Seay grew up in the perfect time and place.
[Mark] Lloyd Seay was born in 1919 in Dawsonville, Georgia.
You know, Lloyd grew up poor,
grabbing at whatever straws he could, I'm sure,
to try to make a living.
[Cody] In Dawsonville,
we had a lot of big families
that were all connected to each other somehow.
And so he had a lot of cousins and two brothers.
Fifty miles out of Atlanta,
I mean, we were in the sticks up here.
[Cody] This area right here,
we're between Dawsonville and Dahlonega.
This is where Lloyd Seay would have grew up,
where he would've resided at with different family members
and things like that.
And it's where he lived and where--
it's where he died.
[Daniel] Dawson County was this rural county
where it's very difficult to make a living as a farmer.
There's just a long history in the South
of the decline of agriculture and the rise of industry.
But there's a certain class of people
that the last thing they wanted
was to leave their farms and lose their land.
[Mark] You know, Dawsonville, Georgia
is about the size of a little town I grew up in,
Newport, Tennessee.
Back in the 20s, you know, things were very shy.
Not anything for people to do to earn an honest living.
So, you know, naturally,
it drove 'em into the moonshine business.
[Cody] Like most people, Lloyd grew up very poor.
And here in Dawsonville,
everybody was involved with moonshine.
[Tim] Well, you know, when you're part of a moonshine family,
everyone chips in and at all ages.
I mean, even if you was a kid, they call it squirrel hunting.
You know, you can go out and be on the lookout,
you can be helping mashing in,
you can carry raw goods in,
you can carry finished product out.
Everyone in the whole family plays a part.
But particularly young men like Lloyd Seay,
their role was driving liquor to market.
[narrator] Up until the 1930s,
transporting liquor to market in Dawson County
was mostly a local endeavor.
Access to cars was limited.
So, a moonshiner's customer base was small.
But 1932 marked a major moment
for the automotive industry and moonshiners.
[Mark] The flathead Ford engine that came along in 1932
was a game changer for the bootleggers.
Now, this right here is the go-to car
back in the day for moonshiners.
Pretty affordable for the average family.
It had the powerful Ford V8 flathead.
Right off the bat,
they were much more powerful than the previous engine.
They started out originally, I think, at 60 horsepower,
which was more than any model by far.
By '39, they was up to 85 horsepower.
'40, they was up to 100.
Of course, it wouldn't have been a '53 Mercury engine in it.
But you know, everything was basically the same.
This is just more power.
[narrator] The introduction of cheap speed to the masses
transformed bootlegging by connecting the backwoods to the city.
Demand for homemade liquor was sky high
and showed no signs of slowing down,
even with the repeal of prohibition in 1933.
[Cody] I think back in the day,
a lot of people sought out moonshine
from this part of Georgia.
They knew it was quality made.
You know, a lot of people took pride in what they did
and it sold very well down in Atlanta.
[David] At one time,
7000 gallons a week was going from Dawsonville to Atlanta.
That's unheard of
when you're making moonshine
on just a copper still up here.
Who consumed all of it?
It, it's hard for me to imagine that today.
[Daniel] So, this is the environment where Lloyd Seay grew up.
And so, as a very young man, he started hauling liquor.
[Cody] About the age of 13
is when Lloyd Seay ran his first load of moonshine.
And it's hard to imagine a 13-year-old kid
driving this bulky V8 Ford, but he did it.
The bootleggers would make at least one load a night.
You know, you could make 200 bucks on a load of liquor.
And so, it was very lucrative for the bootleggers.
[David] Some of 'em even tried to make two trips a night to Atlanta.
[chuckles] That was pushing it.
Because if you wrecked,
you could lose your life like any other wreck.
Most of these roads, they got bootleg turns in 'em.
Windy, treacherous,
back and forth through the mountains.
Crashing the car during a bootleg run,
that was always a big risk.
[Mark] Every trip these guys made, they had very high stakes.
That was the dangerous part of the business.
[Cody] I think Lloyd got involved
with the moonshine trade in the first place
just because of the money that he could make from it.
Lloyd may have made more money in one night
hauling in bootleg liquor
than he made all week farming or in a factory.
But then, on the other hand,
if you get caught, you know,
you're probably going to the penitentiary for a little while.
And if you're not willing to accept that risk,
they got in another line of work.
Everybody can't haul liquor.
[narrator] For some like Lloyd Seay,
the danger of hauling liquor
was a gamble they were willing to take
-in order to escape poverty... -[police siren wailing]
...despite the clear and present threat of the law in Dawsonville.
[David] Let me tell you something.
This right here is the jail that Lloyd Seay
and all the other moonshiners had been rounded up.
This is where they bring 'em right here.
The sheriff and his wife were the people
that actually fed the prisoners.
So, you better be pretty good once they get you locked up,
'cause that's where your meals came from.
[Tim] Lloyd Seay, he was laying his life on the line,
doing what he was doing, hauling liquor
against the cops chasing him.
But it was almost, like, preparing him
to be the best stock car driver
that the state of Georgia has ever had.
[Tim] Back in the day, uh,
Lloyd Seay getting an automobile,
I mean, it'd be like me today, getting a jet airplane.
They jumped from a horse to a car.
I mean, God, this is day and night.
I can travel further and faster and deliver moonshine.
If you make more and sell more,
you get more money.
I mean, I probably would never sleep.
[narrator] Once bootleggers like Lloyd Seay
gained access to faster cars in the early 1930s,
their moonshine customer base expanded rapidly.
And the town of Dawsonville expanded as well.
Dawsonville hasn't really changed much
since when Lloyd was alive and driving these kinda cars.
So, we're coming into the old Harben Brothers Service Station,
the first place in Dawsonville
to have public telephone service.
And the big reason for that was for the moonshiners.
They'd wait on calls for a load of moonshine.
Sometimes they'd use, um, code words
like, "order a bushel of apples,"
or, or something to that effect.
And then they would leave out of Harben Station.
It was right here on Highway 9,
and we could come down to Atlanta.
[narrator] Harben Station opened in 1932
and was one of the first 24-hour gas stations in the country,
playing an integral role for bootleggers
moving moonshine at all hours of the night.
[David] This right here is the gathering place
for the moonshiners and the trippers.
This hasn't changed a whole lot.
Back in the day
when Lloyd Seay was still alive,
if you can imagine all the Fords
that were sitting in the area at that time
were getting ready to go, to head to Atlanta.
[David] You wouldn't wanna say
moonshine money built Dawsonville,
but it probably did. [laughs]
It probably even started the first banks here.
I'll be in trouble now sure enough, won't I?
But it's the truth. So, what you gonna do?
[Cody] Lloyd, he was driving for his cousin, Raymond Parks,
one of the kingpins of Atlanta during the 1930s,
when it came to the moonshine trade.
Parks early on had recruited
both Lloyd and his cousin, Roy Hall
to transport the moonshine
from the mountains down to Atlanta.
[David] Raymond was a tall, lanky guy.
Didn't say that much.
Always wore his business suit and hat.
My dad and Raymond was within one year of each other's age,
and my dad still called him Mr. Parks.
He was looked up highly.
What Lloyd Seay did for Raymond Parks,
taking a car, filling it up with illegal liquor,
and then going down Highway 9 from Dawson County,
which is mountainous.
And so, it is very curvy and hilly.
[Cody] We're now on, uh, Georgia Highway 9,
which is more commonly referred to as the old Thunder Road.
[Mark] There's thunder roads all over the South.
Thunder Road was any road that was a main route
for bootleggers and trippers
transporting moonshine to the big cities.
The thunder being the roar of their engines.
At night, you could just lay in bed
and hear all these moonshine cars,
these trip cars just blaring through the mountains.
And so, it was kinda like thunder coming.
[Mark] These cars had four headlights on 'em.
I could just imagine what it would've been like
flying down Thunder Road
with the cops chasing you after dark,
running off the side of one of these roads.
They've got the opportunity to die.
A lot of moonshine haulers and trippers
were actually killed in the process.
You know, you don't hear a lot about that
because there's nothing romantic about somebody being killed.
But, uh, it happened.
It was a very dangerous job.
[David] Thunder Road.
That's where it really made the drivers.
'Cause that was treacherous road
and they were loaded
and they had to make sure they didn't get caught.
Brakes were small,
so you had to learn how to maneuver the curves with little brakes.
Once you thought you had it made,
there'd be another curve down there.
And that's where everybody had to watch out.
'Cause a lot of the bad curves,
the law could be even sitting there.
Thunder Road.
That's where Lloyd Seay'd go
with his load of liquor for his runs.
That's where his driving ability grew.
And his maneuverability with his driving skills,
that's what made him Lloyd Seay.
[Cody] When Lloyd was hauling moonshine,
he was absolutely fearless.
He wouldn't really slow down for the turns.
He'd accelerate through the turns,
whereas a lot of people, they would break.
And once you do that, you lose all your momentum.
So, Lloyd bashed the gas,
and this is how he would lose people. that would be chasing him.
[Josh] I can only imagine what it felt like
being 13 years old, hauling a load of moonshine
and making a pile of money doing it.
Lloyd Seay must've felt untouchable.
[Mark] You know, bootleggers employed a lot of means
to get their liquor from point A to point B.
Back in the day, speed was the ultimate factor.
[Josh] Cops didn't have the technology that we do today.
If you got away, you got away.
[Mark] There was no two-way radios.
They couldn't call ahead
and get roadblocks established.
Uh, there was no traffic cameras.
Speed was their key to escape.
[narrator] When it came to outrunning the law,
bootleggers relied on daredevil driving skills
and a willingness to live on the edge.
But they also got creative under the hood,
and transformed their stock cars
into supercharged machines.
[Daniel] Bootleggers bored out the engines,
they added additional carburetors.
[Mark] The V8 flatheads were very easy to modify.
A lot of speed parts were made for 'em.
You know, it was a moonshiner's dream.
Red Vogt was the chief mechanic on Raymond Parks' cars.
He had a shop in downtown Atlanta,
and he was just a wizard with the Ford flathead.
In fact, Henry Ford himself even came down to visit
just to see what he was doing with these engines.
Red Vogt was asked one time, who gets the best car,
and he said the bootleggers because they pay in cash.
[Cody] "Money equals speed" was one of his sayings.
And the more money you paid, the faster your car can go.
[Mark] Police had factory showroom stock cars
in which to chase these bootleggers.
Bootleggers had a little bit of, uh, expendable money.
[Daniel] Lloyd Seay had an incredibly well-prepared car
not only with a high speed engine,
but with the suspension modified
to handle the curves and hills of the roads
that he hauled liquor on.
[Josh] When these moonshiners were bootlegging,
they had souped up cars
and they'd leave the cops in the dust.
[Cody] One of my favorite Lloyd Seay stories,
just south of the courthouse in Dawsonville,
he was pulled over for speeding.
And the officer said, "Fine, for speeding it's $5."
And Lloyd hands a $10 bill.
Lloyd said, "Keep the change.
I'm paying it in advance 'cause next time I come back through,
I'm not gonna be willing to stop."
[Daniel] It was one thing to outrun the police or law enforcement.
For the most part, that wasn't a great challenge.
But when the guy down the road
thought he had a better car than you did,
you know, them's fighting words in many ways.
And so, you gotta get out and see who's fastest.
More than anything,
they wanted to show their competitors what their cars could do
and what they could do with their cars.
Before racing become a thing and they raced on tracks,
bootleggers would race on old country roads
and open fields,
anywhere they got the opportunity.
[Cody] And in a roundabout sort of way,
that is directly what started stock car racing
in this part of the country.
That's what propelled it
to the first organized stock car race in the Southeast.
It's history from there.
[Daniel] The buildup was huge in the Atlanta papers.
20,000 people showed up.
[David] You had all kinds of avenue of people
to see what this was,
never heard of such [bleep] before.
[Cody] Lloyd was only 18 years old at the time,
and he convinced his cousin Raymond Parks,
who he worked for moonshining, to enter a race car for him.
He had a broken arm,
and a lot of the competitors wanted to ban him,
saying that he was unsafe to drive
because his arm was in a sling.
And he said, "I don't use that arm to drive anyway."
And, uh, he went out
and he drove a 1934 Ford Roadster.
When Lloyd Seay came on the scene of stock car racing,
no one had really heard of him at all.
[David] Lloyd had a unique driving style.
Where most people wrapped their hands around the steering wheel,
he drove it open handed.
I don't know how he's doing it,
because there was no power steering back then.
[Daniel] And then, Lloyd Seay shocks everyone.
[Cody] He went out and he won the race
with his left arm in a sling.
He was just a natural born driver.
[David] The word of that went out everywhere.
[Daniel] The next day, The Atlanta Constitution
has a major article on Lloyd Seay,
and it said the racing community did not know Lloyd Seay,
never heard of him.
But the Atlanta police sure did.
Bootleggers back in the day, they was unstoppable.
I mean, they was fearless and it was aggressive.
This is how they made their money for their families.
And Lloyd Seay was right in the heart of this.
And I think because of his background
of moonshining and driving a fast car,
made him so great at stock car racing.
[Daniel] In 1938 at the age of 18,
Lloyd Seay shocks the racing community
and wins a major stock car race.
[Cody] After Lloyd won his first race at Lakewood,
his cousin Raymond Parks
dove into stock car racing headfirst.
He bought two brand new 1939 Fords.
One for Lloyd Seay and one for Roy Hall,
and they started a racing team.
[Daniel] Raymond Parks,
he hires Red Vogt to prepare the cars
and then having these liquor-hauling drivers
to finance on his business of bootleg.
[narrator] Lloyd Seay and other moonshiners
saw racing as a way to escape the dangers of their outlaw life
by harnessing the skills they learned bootlegging liquor.
But it wasn't easy leaving their high-risk past behind.
[Mark] Well, you know, even after Lloyd
began having a lot of success racing,
he continued to bootleg and haul moonshine.
And it's absolutely because of the money.
Racing did not support racers.
You know, if you grow up in the moonshining business...
it was really treacherous.
Especially in the mountainous areas of the South.
But it seems like once you get it in your blood,
it's hard to shake it.
You know, you know it's a dangerous job.
There's just something about it
that keeps winding you back in.
[narrator] Stock-car racing spread quickly through moonshine country
following Lloyd's win,
and the lines between moonshine, bootlegging and racing were blurred.
Not only were the drivers primarily bootleggers,
but the car owners, the fans and even the tracks
were all closely tied into moonshine culture.
[Daniel] We're in Hillsborough, North Carolina,
at the Occoneechee Speedway.
We're in the grandstands here.
This is one of the great historic tracks
in stock-car racing history.
The Occoneechee Speedway was formerly a horse track, which was a common thing
in the early days of stock-car racing.
Many Hall of Famers raced on this track up until 1968.
You could put 8,000 or more people, and then all around the track,
people would have been standing.
So, there's just tremendous excitement
generated in a place like this.
And people would be drinking moonshine,
perhaps a fight would break out.
There might be some disreputable behavior involving women.
You know, anything goes, pretty much.
It's kind of an unusual track for those days
because it was a mile, and you can see
very long straightaways, which allowed the drivers
to get to over 100 miles an hour.
But very tight turns.
We're heading down the track here at Occoneechee Speedway.
This type of track was perfect for the skills
that a lot of these bootleggers perfected
trying to outrun law enforcement on dirt roads.
-[tires screeching] -[engine accelerating]
[Daniel] They understood how to slide through turns.
[commentator] Look at that dust.
Here's where air cleaners come in handy.
[Daniel] They understood how to drive at high speed.
[commentator] How would you like to loan your car to one of those fellas?
And they had the courage to drive side by side.
[commentator] Both are driving Fords, and how they are driving it!
[Daniel] To be really good,
you had to be able to push it to the very edge.
I mean, it goes without saying,
if you make a good bootlegger,
you're gonna make a great race car driver.
[Daniel] When the race starts, the cars would come
two by two down by the flag stand,
and they'd throw the green flag,
and they hammer those accelerators.
And then off they would go down the track.
The cars freaking rumbling like hell.
The smell in the air, it was the best part,
that burning racing fuel, oh, my gosh, I love it.
You got these cars that are souped up and they're loud,
you can feel them all the way through your freaking soul.
The whole experience is just amazing.
[Cody] The people that ran the moonshine
were local folk legends, you know?
And so they brought fans to the stands.
[Daniel] In those early days of racing,
Lloyd Seay was the guy.
He was this hard-charger,
working-class Dawson County bootlegger.
Just a compelling story for so many people.
[Cody] People like Lloyd Seay and Roy Hall were looked at
as local legends and local heroes.
They just had these Hollywood good looks.
They had a cool job, they drove cool cars.
They were not the overall-wearing hillbillies from the sticks.
I mean, they played the part very well.
The roots of stock-car racing are in the Piedmont South.
They're working-class people
who'd become very tied into car culture.
You can imagine the passion of these fans,
as they're watching drivers that they see as one of their own,
who have, in some ways, made it in a world that's very difficult
for people in the working class.
And so you see this intersection
in a powerful way in this place
between the world of moonshining and bootlegging
and early stock-car racing.
Even the track itself was built by a group
of what we're refer to in the newspapers as "sportsmen"
from Wilkes County, North Carolina.
And all of these individuals were involved
in the illegal liquor business.
And so this was a track that was built by moonshine.
[narrator] While many tracks in the South
were built by moonshine,
stock car's most famous track of the era
was defined by speed.
[Cody] Daytona is known as The Birthplace of Speed.
[Daniel] By the 1930s, you started getting vehicles
that were specifically made
to try and break the land speed record.
In 1936, Daytona held its first stock-car race.
[commentator] The hard-packed sands of Daytona Beach Speedway
for the stock-car races.
Marking the golden jubilee of automobile progress.
Ooh! My aching tires.
Daytona was the biggest race of the year anywhere.
Up until 1958, races were ran on Daytona Beach itself.
They would run two miles right on the sandy shores,
and they'd make a sharp turn
and run two miles up Highway A1A.
The crowd at Daytona loved Lloyd Seay's driving
because he was such a showman.
He would put his car up on two wheels,
and he would bicycle his car through the turn of the racetrack.
And in July of 1941, there's a very famous picture
of him doing this at Daytona Beach,
where his car is completely up on two wheels,
like it was a movie stunt.
[Daniel] He would go through the North Turn on two wheels.
I mean, it's just crazy.
And people just loved it.
He just showed no fear.
That's just something that he wanted to do
'cause he could do it and he wanted to show off.
[narrator] Lloyd's previous performances at Daytona
had wowed the crowd,
but he entered yet another race
at the famed track on August 24, 1941,
still looking for his first win.
[Cody] In 1941,
Lloyd's biggest goal was to win at Daytona.
He had raced there several times before,
and he always had some bad luck.
He flipped his car or had mechanical troubles.
He just couldn't seem to finish a race in the front.
In August of 1941, he qualified 15th.
[commentator] These jalopy jockeys are in
for a jarring, jolting time, and they know it.
He's flying blind.
One thing you could do at Daytona,
because the beach was wide,
if you're daring enough to get down close to the water,
you can really make up a lot of ground.
So that's what Lloyd Seay was able to do in this race.
[Cody] By the end of the first lap, he was in first
and never gave up the lead again.
[David] It was his day.
He was the star of the show. And it wasn't even a sport,
it was just the birth of a sport then.
[Mark] I think Lloyd would have been loving it.
He is so young, and he's proven hisself
over and over again as a bootlegger and a race driver.
[Tim] Lloyd is on his way
to becoming the best bootlegger-turned- stock-car-driver
that the South has ever seen.
But the thing is, when you're in the illegal liquor business,
it's hard to leave.
And Lloyd could never outrun his past.
[Cody] Lloyd Seay just won at Daytona,
and he had won at High Point, North Carolina,
so he was on a hot streak.
[David] He won major stock-car races back to back,
and then came back to Lakewood for the famed Labor Day race.
[Daniel] Lakewood Speedway, it's in Atlanta,
so you have a huge population of fans.
And they had the largest crowds,
particularly for the Labor Day race.
That was one of the few days
working-class people would have off,
and so that was a big deal.
[Cody] Lloyd showed up to Atlanta late,
and he had to start dead last...
because he missed qualifying
because he was racing the day before.
So, he started last.
And by the midway point, he had taken the lead over from Bob Flock.
And he went on to win the race.
Lloyd Seay, coming from being dirt poor
to being a moonshining, hell-raising champion,
he probably felt like he was on top of the world.
[Cody] After Lloyd Seay got the checkered flag at Lakewood,
he was very celebrated by his fans, by the press.
And after it was all said and done,
he collected his winnings
and headed home to Dawsonville.
He was heading home on Highway 9.
He decided to stop at his brother's house
to spend the night.
[narrator] The following morning,
just hours after Lloyd won $1,000 at Lakewood Speedway,
valued at nearly $22,000 today,
his cousin, Woodrow Anderson, arrived at the house,
claiming Lloyd owed him money.
[Daniel] Woodrow came after him
because he'd just won this race
and he had the prize money, and so he thought
this would be the time to approach him.
[Cody] Woodrow was a business partner in the moonshine still
with Lloyd and his brother,
although Lloyd was more as an investor.
[Mark] You know, moonshining is a family business.
There's nothing out of the unusual
for them to share a still or a still site
and be partners in the business.
Lloyd had charged a few 50-pound bags of sugar
on Woodrow's store account.
Now, why this took place, who knows.
But, uh, Woodrow took exception with it,
and he came and was ready to settle up.
[Tim] This sugar was used to make moonshine back then,
and it was a hot commodity.
So, anytime someone was dealing with moonshine,
you know, they was dealing with sugar.
[Cody] So, Woodrow, Lloyd and Lloyd's brother, Jim,
all got in Woodrow's car,
and he said, "We're gonna go to our aunt's house
so she could do the figuring."
You know, neither one of them was really educated,
so they were gonna go down to, uh, Dawsonville,
and let their aunt kind of figure out how much it was that...
each owed what.
Along the way, Woodrow asked,
"So, do you think that number 13 was lucky for you?"
Lloyd had drove number seven for most of his career,
and on the last race, he actually drove number 13.
Mostly because all of his competitors said
that was the only reason he was winning,
was 'cause of lucky number seven.
And so Lloyd basically said, "I'll show you,"
and he took some paint, crossed out the number seven
and put number 13.
They set off to Dawsonville through the aunt's house.
But Woodrow Anderson pulled the car over at his father's house.
He said, "I need to get some water for the radiator."
He pulled the car up, he opened the hood,
acting like he was going to fill the radiator.
I... I guess something snapped in him.
And as he was uncapping the radiator...
Woodrow pulled a pistol out of his pocket,
come over to the door.
Shot Lloyd's brother in the neck.
And then he turned to Lloyd...
and shot him right in the heart.
And he was killed almost instantly.
Lloyd Seay died not even 24 hours after standing in victory lane in Lakewood.
[Josh] It's really hard to believe that one of the most promising
race car drivers that's ever walked the face of the planet
was killed over a few bags of sugar.
Crazy.
The first thing that Woodrow did after Lloyd was killed,
he told his brother, Jim,
to get the money out of his pocket
and give Woodrow $120 of it
because that's how much he felt like he had owed him.
So, he collected $120 and a silver dollar from his pocket
and went about his day.
[Mark] You know, it's sad for a young man
to lose his life over a bag or two of sugar.
It makes me feel that there was a deeper conflict between him and his cousin
and went much deeper than some sugar.
[Tim] You know, it sounds pretty rough to shoot someone
over a bag of sugar.
But, I mean, this is the way it was back then.
I can tell you that back in the day,
people were cut from a different cloth.
Like, my grandpa cut a man's throat over $20,
and it was over the principle, not over the money.
So, that may have been the same thing
that was going on back in the day.
We don't really know where it was,
but, you know, somewhere in this area is where Lloyd got shot,
and it's where he, uh, would have lost his life,
would have took his last few breaths.
The last words that Lloyd spoke was, "Tell Raymond."
And that was it.
Raymond being Raymond Parks, his cousin and car owner.
I wish I could know what that meant.
Like, what did he need to tell Raymond
in those last few moments? What could it have been?
There's... there's no telling.
[Tim] The moonshine background
that Lloyd Seay was dealing with,
you know, it just caught up with him.
His life was cut short before he could achieve his full potential
and become a stock-car legend.
When you're in an illegal business,
anytime you start dealing with money and family,
more than likely you're gonna have some problems.
You know, it was just a matter of time.
[Mark] You know, driving these old Fords,
I mean, there ain't nothing like it.
You know, they're not like modern cars.
There's nothing easy to drive about 'em,
but I love 'em.
Yeah, they rattle, they shake, they be.
But, I mean, I'm as happy as I can be
behind the wheel of a '39 or a '44.
I mean, this is Mark's happy place.
You know, I mean, just look at the hood on this thing.
Ooh! Damn.
It's just like you're following an arrow.
I can just imagine what it would've been like
flying down Thunder Road, hauling liquor,
cops chasing you.
You know, for me, that would have been the ultimate high,
and I think it was for the bootleggers back in the day.
These cars, you know, they're not for everybody,
but they're for Mark Ramsey.
[Tim] Lloyd Seay's cousin, Woodrow Anderson,
shot him in the chest over a bag of sugar for some moonshine.
I know it was just a bag of sugar,
but, you know, you could just see how times was hard.
And if you had did something wrong,
even if it was family,
it was time to pay up.
And when Woodrow come a-calling, Seay took the bullet.
[Cody] When Lloyd Seay died in 1941,
I mean, it was a big deal.
You know, one of the sport's biggest racing stars
was killed a day after he won the biggest race of his career.
[Josh] How awful to die at 21 years old
and be one of the most promising race car drivers that's ever walked
the face of the planet.
It just don't even seem real.
[Daniel] There was a lot of shock in the racing community
and in that working-class community,
where Lloyd Seay was a hero.
[Mark] And I think it probably shocked
the racing world as well as his family.
How can something this tragic happen?
Lloyd's funeral was a very big deal
for the people of Dawsonville.
Their hometown boy was killed.
Lloyd's Silver Bullet race car
led the hearse to the cemetery.
And still today, Lloyd's grave
is one of the tallest
monuments out in the city cemetery.
[David] This right here is the Dawsonville Cemetery,
where the moonshiners didn't wanna wind up.
Look at this largest tombstone in the cemetery, Lloyd Seay,
one of the greatest trippers, moonshine haulers,
a stock-car driver in the pioneer days.
No telling what he could have been.
And Raymond Parks put this here for him
in commemorance of what a great person he was.
Looky here, got a picture of a '39 Ford
with his name and his number seven,
and even a porcelain inset put in that in 1941,
at his death, when the headstone was put up.
Most people never even start today racing at 21,
and he had done done it all by that time.
[narrator] Nearly six weeks after Lloyd's death,
Woodrow Anderson stood trial for murder.
[Cody] Lloyd Seay's brother, Jim Seay,
recovered from his injuries and he stood on trial
to convict Woodrow Anderson.
At the trial, there were two versions of the story.
Woodrow's story was that he was jumped by the Seay brothers...
and he run inside the house...
to grab a pistol.
And shot in self-defense.
But the jury convicted Woodrow of his crimes
for killing Lloyd Seay.
[narrator] The trial lasted one day.
Jurors convicted Anderson of his cousin's murder
and sentenced him to life in prison.
Justice had been served,
but Seay's tragic passing left a huge hole in the community.
Lloyd Seay was an icon here in the city,
doing things that most people only wish or wondered about.
He was like an OG.
I feel like I might be kin to Lloyd Seay
from somewhere down the line because race cars,
moonshining, bootlegging, going fast, pretty girls,
all of it, yep, we're probably long-lost cousins.
[David] Well, he's a folk hero.
Excuse me.
[sniffles]
Well, it's just, uh...
[voice shaking]
[sniffles]
[in normal voice] My dad went to Lakewood
and saw Lloyd run his first race,
he said, "I'll not be back till I'm in it."
He didn't go to the second race and the third race,
he bought a brand-new '40 Ford.
That's when they built 'em over there in Atlanta,
out from Sears, Roebuck, off of Ponce de Leon.
My dad started 18th out of 24 cars
and ran third that day to Lloyd Seay and Roy Hall.
And that set my dad on his career in racing.
That's how much it means to me.
[Jim] Lloyd Seay's legacy, from my standpoint,
the guy did what he loved doing.
And, you know, even though he died at a young age,
he started at a young age.
I mean, think about it. The guy started at 13 years old,
and he was making money, picking up his end
of the family deal here.
And he found the best way
he could get in was to drive cars.
I think he went out on top.
[Mark] Who knows what he would have brought to the racing world.
His skill was definitely there,
but sadly, it wasn't meant to be.
Lloyd Seay's legacy is an incredibly talented driver,
a pioneer in the sport of stock-car racing
and largely responsible for the growth and popularity
of stock-car racing in the pre-World War II era.
[Mark] I think the time has passed for moonshiners
to get their due from their contribution to stock-car racing
because most of the ones that had any part of it are no longer with us.
However, their legacy should never be forgotten.
As the moonshine run out of the mountains here
at the Appalachian foothills
as freely as water runs from Amicalola Falls...
here lies a person that will never be matched.
Lloyd Seay, may you rest in peace.