Crosby and fellow Lakeside members posted Moore’s bail and engaged the best attorneys money could buy for a highly publicized trial that for several weeks in October of 1937 made Elizabethtown, New York, the media epicenter of the nation.
There seemed to be a plethora of damning evidence: one of the masked bandits had addressed another as “Verne,” and Moore’s golf clubs were found in the wreckage of one of the two getaway cars. (One co-conspirator died in that car crash; the survivor fingered Moore.) And a policeman who later that night stopped a car driven by another subsequently convicted member of the robbery team testified that Moore had been a passenger in the second getaway car.
In the face of all this, and to the evident consternation of the presiding judge, Moore was acquitted by a jury of his peers. Freed from the shackles of his past, he attempted to capitalize on his reputation, but nearly three years away from competitive golf and his undisciplined penchant for food and drink had taken their toll.
John Montague — he had by then legally changed his name — was still a very good amateur, but he wasn’t even close to what Grantland Rice had touted as “the best golfer in the world.” (In an exhibition match he couldn’t even beat Babe Ruth.) He failed in his attempt to qualify for the 1939 US Open, and a year later, playing in the nation’s most prestigious tournament for the first and only time in his life, he shot 80-82 and missed the cut. His star, which had briefly burned brightly, was quickly eclipsed. When he posed for photographs later in his life, it was often with a shovel or a rake.
Although he lived until 1972 and never ran afoul of the law again, Montague, for a few years one of the most celebrated figures in the country, had become a completely forgotten man. He might have remained so had Montville not resurrected his quintessentially American tale. It’s an intriguing story, and a well-told one. Even LaVerne Moore would have approved.
