The same rumors also ran rampant about the elder Boulware, a peer of former S.C. fourteenth circuit solicitor Randolph “Buster” Murdaugh Jr. In fact, the elder Boulware’s father – a lawyer named Thomas McCullough Boulware – tried cases with Murdaugh in the late 1940s.
These drug-running rumors were not randomly pulled out of the thick, humid Lowcountry air, either.
The possibility the Boulwares were engaged in something other than fishing on their maritime voyages first hit the public consciousness more than forty years ago when a 95-foot U.S. Coast Guard cutter called the Cape Knox was patrolling the St. Helena Sound off the South Carolina coast on the evening of Thursday, January 24, 1980.
In between the 1980 sinking incident and the Operation Cancer arrests, the long arm of the law did reach out and touch the Boulwares, though. On February 5, 1983, the Ute – a 205-foot USCG cutter – encountered the Jeannine Ann, another “shrimper” owned by Boulware, while on patrol in the Bahamas. A total of 854 bales of marijuana were discovered aboard the vessel at the time it was boarded. Authorities allowed the vessel to proceed to its destination – Beaufort, S.C. – where numerous arrests were made among those co-conspirators awaiting its arrival.
According to an article (.jpg) from The Associated Press published in the February 15, 1983 print edition of The (Columbia, S.C.) Record, Barrett Boulware the elder was among those who turned himself into authorities in connection with this sting – but both he and his son, who was 27 years old at the time, wound up facing charges in its aftermath.
According to an April 18, 1983 news brief (.jpg) in The Tallahassee Democrat, Branch was “making his way to the Wonder Bar in St. Joe Beach” when he “walked into the path of an oncoming vehicle.”
“Branch was one of nine people arrested in February when authorities seized about 17 tons of marijuana from a shrimp boat in Beaufort, S.C.,” the Florida paper noted.
A Florida trooper noted Branch was “scheduled to testify in a drug trial” at the time of his death.
Without his testimony, the feds were forced to abandon the case they were pursuing against the Boulwares. And according to a June 3, 1983 news brief (.jpg) published in The (Columbia, S.C.) State newspaper, charges against both Boulwares were dropped by the U.S. attorney’s office.
Murdaugh Murders Saga: Alex Murdaugh’s Ties To Alleged Drug Smuggler Uncovered
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https://www.fitsnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/The_State_Sat__Jan_26__1980_-scaled.jpeg
Property owned by murdaugh/boulware
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The connection the two families had went back generations.
Jmo
Why didn’t AM sell property for money?