How a great N.C. firearms innovator escaped execution

David Marshall Williams was so good at hiding his moonshine stills and keeping his illegal business under wraps, even his wife didn’t know about it.

However, on a fateful day in 1921, that secret came to light and almost cost Williams his life. Sheriff’s deputies raided his Cumberland County operation near Godwin where Williams and some of his crew were working. Shots rang out and when the smoke cleared, Deputy Sheriff Al Pate was dead and Williams was charged with first-degree murder.

The trial ended in a hung jury, but rather than risk another trial which could result in the death penalty, Williams plead guilty to second degree murder and was sentenced to 20 to 30 years at Caledonia Prison in Halifax County.

The story is like many North Carolina bootlegger tales that ended behind bars. However, Williams had a unique way with machines and making things with his hands. He’d made a working wooden pistol when he was a child and once in prison, he used scrap iron to make daggers for self-defense. He also drew designs for guns.

Superintendent H.T. Peoples took note and assigned Williams to work in the prison machine shop. Inmates worked on repairs to guards’ guns. Williams showed remarkable skill and used his spare time to take scraps and make gun parts. Here’s where it got strange: instead of stopping his prisoner and confiscating the work, Peoples allowed him to continue (at risk if his personal safety and job), even when Williams had complete, workable weapons, which he hid in the wall. Williams got his mother to obtain firearm designs and send them to him.

Williams ended up inventing the short-stroke piston and floating chamber that would eventually revolutionize firearm building. In 1928, representatives from Colt visited.

And then the story takes another strange turn. Many people — including the Cumberland County sheriff and the widow of Deputy Pate started campaigning for Williams to have his sentence commuted. Governor Angus McLean agreed in 1929.

When he got home, Williams continued his work and two years later visited Washington to show his ideas to the War Department. His inventions ended up in machine guns, rifles, and pistols. Perhaps his most famous invention was developing the M-1 Carbine, which got him his nickname, “Carbine” Williams. General Douglas MacArthur credited the weapon as a key to American victory in the Pacific during World War II.

He lived in Connecticut for some time and became wealthy as a consultant for gun manufacturers, although he spent most of it. He eventually moved back to North Carolina and a simple life, living with his wife in a home without a telephone or television.

Jimmy Stewart played Williams in Carbine Williams, a 1952 movie. Williams became an honorary member of various law enforcement groups. He denied ever firing the shot that killed Pate, saying he took the blame because he was the leader of the group.

In the 1970s, at the urging of Governor Robert Scott, Williams donated his machine shop — building, tools, everything — to the North Carolina Museum of History. It is on display as it was when Williams occupied the work bench. He died in 1975.

Source:

NCPedia