Cause of death Execution by hanging Years active 1907–1927 | Occupation Alcohol smuggler Name James Alderman | |
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Died August 17, 1929(1929-08-17) (aged 45)Fort Lauderdale, Florida | ||
James Horace Alderman (in some sources Aldermon) (June 24, 1884 – August 17, 1929) was an alcohol smuggler during the Prohibition era in the United States. He became known in the press by names like the "King of the Rum Runners" and the "Gulf Stream Pirate."
Alderman was born in 1884 near Tampa, Florida. He spent several years in the Ten Thousand Islands area of southwest Florida as a farmer, fisherman, and field guide. With his wife Pearl and three daughters, Bessie, Ruby, and Wilma, Alderman lived variously in Chokoloskee, Caxambas, Palmetto, and Tarracia Island before settling in Fort Meyers around 1911. After World War I and the passing of the National Prohibition Act, Alderman began smuggling illegal immigrants and alcohol from Cuba and the Bahamas to Florida. In the 1920s, he set up a base of operations in Miami.
On the afternoon of August 7, 1927, Alderman and his associate Robert Weech were intercepted by a Coast Guard cutter in the waters between Florida and Bimini. After a series of events, Alderman killed U.S. Coast Guardsman Sidney C. Sanderlin and Secret Service agent Robert K. Webster. The cutter's machinist, Victor A. Lamby, was seriously wounded and later died.
Alderman was tried under Sections 272, 273, 275 of the U.S. Criminal Code. In January, 1928, he was sentenced to death by U.S. District Judge Henry D. Clayton. President Herbert Hoover declined clemency. Alderman was hanged on August 17, 1929, on newly erected gallows in a metal hangar at Coast Guard Base Six near Fort Lauderdale, the site of Bahia Mar Marina today. Media witnesses were barred from watching the execution. It was the only hanging ever carried out by the Coast Guard, the first hanging in Fort Lauderdale, and the only legal execution in Broward County.
Alderman's execution had initially been scheduled to be carried out in the Broward County jail, but the County Commissioners declined, insisting that a federal hanging should occur on U.S. property (from 1924 all executions by the state of Florida were carried out by electric chair).