My Greatest Genealogical Mysteries - Sentenced to Prison, but for What?

Crime of Franklin E. Zaring Sr.  My maternal grandfather apparently was not a very nice guy - at least when he was drinking.  When he was 21, got my grandmother pregnant, married her in 1920 when she was only 15, and my mother was born about 5 months later.  Now I know people got married at a young age in the early 20th century, but there's a big difference between a 21 year old man and a girl of 15.  My grandmother also discovered he was an abusive alcoholic.  In fact the only thing I remember her telling me about him was "he got really mean when he was drunk."  He abandoned my grandmother and her two small children in the early 1920s and disappeared (both in real life and in government documents) on and off throughout the years.  For a long time I had nothing on this man between his 1937 application for a social security number and his death in 1964, but I soon learned more about him than I really wanted to know (not really...I want to know everything, but what I did learned was a shocker.)

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While browsing the Colorado State Archives website one day, I found an index of prisoners who spent time in the Colorado State Penitentiary.   As I usually do whenever I find a new index of some kind, I look for all  of my main family names just to see if luck will shine on me.  In this case I found a name strikingly similar to my grandfather's - the name I found was Franklin Earl Zarling with a prisoner number 28869.  I figured there was little to lose so I ordered up the record.  I knew this was a long shot, but I had to check it out.  A couple of weeks later I received a big manila envelop in the mail with a couple of pages copied out of a ledger used to record when I prisoner arrived and when he/she left prison...AND a CD with mugshots!

The first thing I did was put that CD into my computer and when I clicked on one of the files, up came a mugshot of my grandfather Franklin Earl Zaring - this was pretty exciting stuff!  I pulled out the prison ledger and learned quite a bit of new information about my grandfather.  I learned he was in the Navy for a year during World War 1; joined the Army in 1942 and was discharged in 1943; joined the Navy again in 1943 and was discharged in 1944; he was convicted of his crime in February 1955 and sentenced to 2-8 years; he was released on parole in June 1956; and when he left prison, the ledger page listed where he was going to live.  Oh, the ledger page also stated what his crime was.

The big mystery:  When the possibility arose, before I ordered the record, that this was my grandfather I began imagining what the crime was.  I was hoping it was robbing a bank, or maybe involved in organized crime - something cool.  Unfortunately my grandfather was not in the "cool" class of criminal.  The ledger says his crime was "attempting to take indecent liberties" with no additional explanation.  This is the big mystery...just what the heck does this mean?  What "indecent liberties" did my grandfather attempt to take getting himself sentenced to 2-8 years in prison?  When I searched for "attempting to take indecent liberties" in Google the word following the phrase was either child or minor, but the prison ledger page makes no distinction between an adult or child.  Since he was a drunk, I can picture him in a bar trying to push himself onto a woman and taking it way too far, but I can't imaging him doing this with a child.  How was this phrase "attempting to take indecent liberties" used in the mid 1950s?  So far I've had no luck locating the court records associated with his trial, but I would sure like to know exactly what he did.    

 

Comments

[tim agazio]

Carol,

Thanks for the great comment. I agree...sometimes we find things we sometimes wished we didn't know, but I find those juicy little tidbits interesting and they actually show our ancestors as 3 dimensional humans rather than people we just see in documents.

Thanks again for your comment!

Tim

[Carol Hutchison]

What you might find out about your family can be a little scary. I found a news article about the grandfather and grandmother I never knew. They both died a few years before I was born. The article told of my grandfather beating my grandmother on Christmas eve. His WWI draft registration says he had a bullet wound in his right leg. A later article had him pleading for his wife and family to return to him. It appears that the family did reconcile, but they changed their surname from Beese to Haugens. I guess this was their way of avoiding scandal. This very rocky situation when my mother was only five years old explains a lot about her later behavior. I'm wondering if manic depression runs in my family. Many people who suffer from this condition try to self-treat with alcohol. My mother put up with a lot from her third husband. Was this a learned behavior?

[Tim Agazio]

Kim,

A flasher?? Now that sounds more in line with what my grandfather might have been capable of. That's an interesting thought about what the term "indecent liberties" was used for. It was a different time, but it really does make sense when you put it into a 1950s context.

I really appreciate your effort to research this for me! Thanks for your comment and for visiting!

Tim

[Tim Agazio]

David,

A pimp...wouldn't that be interesting? I have looked for news articles, but no luck as of yet. According to the prison record he was convicted in the City and County of Denver...Next time I' in Denver I'm planning on visiting the library to search the two Denver newspapers.

I appreciate your advice and comment!

Tim

[Tim Agazio]

Mimi, it is interesting to know the rest of the story. Actually I never knew this guy...didn't even know he existed until my mother went to his funeral in 1964.

Thanks for your comment and for visiting!

Tim

[Kim]

I asked a law librarian friend of mine to flesh this out a bit with me. From what we can tell - not being lawyers, but curious - "indecent liberties" referred to any sexual act attempted with a person other than a spouse (apparently, once you were married you could take all the indecent liberties you wanted). It was used to "soften" sexually explicit language that might offend the general public and those women that filled the many clerical positions within the legal system circa 1950. There is some indication that "indecent liberties" could also refer to any behavior that had sexual connotations that was witnessed by a minor - such as exposing private parts.
That's the best we could do! Hope that helps.

Kim

[David T. Robertson - Professional Genealogist - APG]

There are two crimes I can think of that would have resulted in "attempting to take indecent liberties. " The first would be prostitution. But if he was a "john" eight years would have been a harsh sentence. Serving one year of a two year sentence would be possible. The second would be pandering for prostitution. This would be an appropriate sentence for a pimp.

Now that you know the date search newspapers for news on the trial. Remember to go back several months as trials take a long time. Your grandfather doesn't appear to be Jesse James so look for small news stories.

[mimi]

wow, what a story; and complete with pictures. Considering what life was like for bar girls back then he really must have done something sexually inappropriate for him to end up in jail over it.
Sorry that you found your grandpa that way; but in a sense, it's really interesting to know "the rest" of the story