There are scandals, and then there's a former mayor and police chief going to jail.
That's what happened in Wilmington nearly a century ago in what remains one of the biggest political scandals in Port City history.
The names involved are still well-known today, mainly that of the intended victim: Jessie Hargrave Kenan Wise (1870-1968), whose former mansion at 1713 Market St. now hosts the University of North Carolina Wilmington's Wise Alumni House.
Wise's parents were Mary Hargrave and William Rand Kenan (1845-1903), a prosperous Wilmington merchant who helped lead the white supremacist coup and massacre of 1898.
By the early 1930s Wise was a well-known,
and wealthy, Wilmington widow who became the target of an extortion plot.
According to past StarNews reporting, on June 22, 1932, in the midst of the Great Depression, former Wilmington Mayor Parker Quince Moore and former Police Chief John J. Furlong were arrested and charged with trying to extort money from Wise. Suffice to say it was front-page news.
Moore and Furlong were charged with writing anonymous letters demanding $25,000 (more than $6 million today) from Wise "on pain of bodily harm." The money was supposed to be left in a bag at a gas station on the old New Bern Road, roughly along where U.S. 17 is today.
Local reaction was surprise to say the least. Moore, who was born in 1876, was part of a well-to-do Wilmington family and served as mayor from 1913 to 1920. Furlong had served as both police chief and as superintendent of the city's streets. Their trial lasted about a week.
Furlong turned state's evidence, testifying for the prosecution and saying Moore had tricked him into taking part in the plot. Under cross-examination from Moore's lawyers, Furlong admitted to being indicted for voting fraud and to being accused of collecting the wages of fake employees he'd supposedly added to the city payroll.
Both were convicted on Sept. 22, 1932, with Moore sentenced to three years in prison and Furlong to two. Moore was released after 18 months, whereupon he moved to Florida. He was buried in Wilmington's Oakdale Cemetery after his death in 1943.
As for Wise, she continued to live in her Market Street mansion for more than 35 years until her death in 1968 at the age of 97.
Her house was originally the home of Edwin C. Holt, president of Delgado Cotton Mills. Wise bought it in 1916, later living next door to her sister, Sarah Graham Kenan, whose 7,500-square-foot mansion is now the official residence of the UNCW chancellor.
Both houses were deeded to UNCW in 1968, but while the Kenan house became the chancellor's residence in 1969, the Wise house fell into disrepair.
In 1993, the UNCW Alumni Association took out a $400,000 loan to restore and renovate the Wise House and its gardens, and the site remains home to the alumni association to this day.
John Staton is the arts and culture reporter for the StarNews. You can reach him at jstaton@usatodayco.com.
This article originally appeared on Wilmington StarNews: How a 1930s scandal jailed the Wilmington mayor and police chief
