Roy Olmstead

Roy Olmstead (1886–1966) was one of the most successful and best-known bootleggers in the Pacific Northwest region of the U.S.. A former lieutenant in the Seattle, Washington, police department, he began to bootleg part-time. Following his arrest for that crime, he lost his job in law enforcement and turned to illegally importing and distributing alcohol from Canada as a full-time and highly profitable occupation.

Bootlegging operations

Known on the West Coast as "the Good Bootlegger", Olmstead did not engage in the practice of diluting his contraband with toxic industrial grade chemicals in order to increase his profits. To most other bootleggers, smuggling alcohol was but one facet of their criminal organization. The other facets included prostitution, gambling, gunrunning, and narcotics trafficking. Olmstead did not engage in these activities, and as a result many in his area did not regard him as a "true criminal".

Olmstead v. United States

Largely on the basis of evidence obtained through police wiretapping of his telephone, Olmstead was arrested and convicted for violating the National Prohibition Act and for conspiracy. He appealed his case, arguing that the wiretapping evidence used against him constituted a violation of his constitutional rights to privacy and against self-incrimination. However, in 1928 the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the conviction in the landmark case of Olmstead v. United States.

Prison and later life

Olmstead spent his four-year prison sentence at the McNeil Island Correctional Institute. He then became a carpenter. On 25 December 1935, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt granted him a full presidential pardon. Besides restoring his constitutional rights, the pardon remitted him $10,300.00 in costs. Eventually, Mr. Olmstead became a well-known, full-time Christian Science practitioner, who also worked with prison inmates on an anti-alcoholism agenda for decades until his death in 1966 at the age of 79.