Funny, Funny Stories From my days at Eden, P.D.
By Michael D. Martin, E.C.P.D. Retired
About the author...Michael Martin (pictured front row, far right in the 1981 photo) is a retired veteran of 25 years on the Eden City Police Department, and has penned a number of anecdotal writings recalling his experiences
XIV. Hugh Wyatt
I honestly can not tell you the occasion when I met Hugh Wyatt. I know I was a detective with Eden PD and when you meet Hugh Wyatt....you do not ever forget him. Detective Hugh Wyatt was a Danville, Virginia City Police Detective and I know when we met, we liked each other, We both recognized cop's cops. Hugh was about 250 lbs and wore his hair long and had a moustache that made him look like a walrus in a business suit, Hugh had a voice that would have made him a great replacement for the bass singer for "The Oak Ridge boys" He had the sense of humor that most closely reminded you of Groucho Marx.
Hugh and I got on the phone regularly, He knew his drug people and I knew mine and we shared information. Hugh had raided one of his worst and the boy had thrown a cigar-box full of high powered dope out the window as the Danville officers had come thru the door. Danville found the cigar-box, but could not prove the box was the property of the suspect. Hugh called me and said that he thought my guys had bought dope from his man just before the raid. License numbers I had provided had been seen there in the hours before the Danville raid.
Hugh told me his man, I do not remember his name after the passage of all these years, I will call him "billy" had been injured in the rollover of his car, which was a Fiat......for god's sake. a Fiat!
I drew a search warrant for a place off Martinwood Road, not in the city but in Rockingham County and we asked Chief Deputy Melvin Channey to assist us, which he did. We raided this house and caught a bunch of fellas with some dope and arrested them. We were transporting these boys to the Rockingham County jail and I asked them how Billy was doing...last time I talked to Billy, he was hurting from wrecking his Fiat....somehow or other, this fixed in the minds of these fellas that I had talked to Billy a few hours before the raid on their place.......and Billy had set them up for the raid.....next thing that happened was that all these fellas testified in court in Virginia that they had bought drugs from Billy and he took the drugs out of the cigar box that Danville, PD had recovered on the raid and Billy got thirty years.....Hugh and I were fast friends after that........Billy never saw us coming!!!Michael D. Martin