Did you catch the PBS series on Prohibition this week? As the “King of the Puget Sound Bootleggers,” Seattle's legendary Roy Olmstead made an appearance in the second episode of the three-part series. I’m writing to add more to his story after he was arrested and convicted of bootlegging.
When Olmstead was sent to prison in 1928, he used his time in confinement to improve himself. According to Philip Metcalfe, author of “Whispering Wires: The tragic Tale of an American Bootlegger,” “the man who arrived in 1928 was not the man who departed three years later.”
Metcalfe further writes, “Olmstead first sought relief in books on psychology and philosophy, but was not satisfied until a cellmate lent him a copy of Science and Health [with Key to the Scriptures] by Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science...Slowly, over time, he became a devout Christian Scientist, customarily rising every morning at 5:00 to read and reflect.”
Once out of prison, Olmstead and his family lived modestly, turning down lucrative offers to work in the liquor industry. He gave up smoking and drinking, but always maintained his sense of humor. He sought out the friendship of Judge Jeremiah Neterer, who had sent him to prison. They would joke occasionally, but mostly Olmstead wanted to talk seriously about the nature of man and the world.
He gave lectures against drinking and began visiting prisons ministering to inmates—a practice he began soon after his release from McNeil Island Federal Penitentiary in 1931.
Olmstead never really lost his celebrity status in Seattle and was asked throughout his life if he was the famed bootlegger from Prohibition days. He was usually quoted as saying, “The old Roy Olmstead is dead. He no longer exists.”
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