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table in such poor shape. My boys could have this fine table restored to its original beauty in no time.”
     
    Amanda had never paid much attention to the old table and was embarrassed to hear Jim criticize its condition, so she let Jim restore it. When the table reached Jim’s workshop, it was restored with great care and a perfect reproduction was made. The original antique table was shipped to another city and possibly overseas for sale, and the attractive reproduction was given to Amanda. Amanda was pleased with the table that looked exactly like the original, minus the scratches and stains. The risk to Jim was low. Amanda was selected for this fraud because she knew nothing about antiques and had enough money that she would not in her lifetime need to sell her antiques to make ends meet. The fraud may never have been discovered. Her heirs, if they paid any attention whatsoever, probably assumed that the handsome table was not one of her antiques.
     
    Independently, I happened to interview another friend of Jim’s who told me he had offered a trip to Europe in exchange for bringing in an expensive painting for him. The friend knew the arrangement was not on the up-and-up and refused to take him up on his offer.
     
    In the midst of my delightful talks with Joe Goodman and his wife, he said, unprompted, “You know, Williams was involved in a few shady deals.” Back in the 1968-69 timeframe, Joe and Jim took Jim’s old pickup truck and drove up U.S. Route 321 to a big old house around Garnett in Hampton County, South Carolina, where Jim had visited a couple times before to impress the owners and win their trust.
     
    The house belonged to two sweet old wealthy spinsters who offered them milk and cocoa. Jim laid on the charm very heavily. “Made them feel like queen bees,” Joe recalled.
     
    Evidently, on an earlier trip, Jim had set up the kind of fraud that was later perpetrated on “Amanda.” The old ladies had an enormous antique mahogany table and 14 valuable Chippendale chairs with round-ball claw feet, made for some English duke. The chairs were badly scratched up and the finish darkened and damaged. Jim had offered to buy the chairs, but the ladies had refused, so he offered to restore them because Jim told them “he hated to see them in such bad shape.”
     
    Joe and Jim loaded the chairs into the pickup truck and drove back to Savannah, where Jim was going to have them crated and sent to a cabinetmaker in Philadelphia to have them reproduced. The unsuspecting old ladies would get back 14 chairs that were actually replicas of their original Chippendales, which Jim would then sell. When the 28 Chippendale chairs were returned from the Philadelphia craftsman, I was told by an eyewitness that only an expert could tell the originals from the replicas.
     
    Jim engaged in this particular brand of fraud, theft and illegal trading of stolen goods over a period of time, and the fraud appeared to be independent of his cash-flow needs. The “Amanda” type incidents, according to Mike Hawk, occurred in the 1970s and 1980s. It is not clear how much, if anything, Jim’s craftsmen, knew about the fraud. It’s entirely possible that the only employee in the shop that knew was Doug Seyle, who was not one of the restorers. Most of Jim’s former restorers have died and the only one that I was able to locate refused to speak with me.
     
    One night, when Joe Goodman was at Mercer House with Jim, a stranger came to the back door very late with a Tiffany lamp. After examining the lamp, Jim paid him $15,000 cash at the door. The man left without a bill of sale. Jim explained to Joe that frequent back-door transactions like that one were one of the reasons that he kept so much cash in the house. One can surmise that the Tiffany lamp was probably stolen, although it was possible that some Savannah “blueblood” was down on his luck and was selling the family heirlooms this way to avoid embarrassment.
     

     
    Tombee