ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, July 14, 1996 TAG: 9607150083
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: TODD JACKSON STAFF WRITER
NOTE: Strip
CLYDE BRYANT IS THE TALK of the mid-Atlantic antique community. The question on everybody's mind: Where is he now?
Clyde Bryant lived rich: He played blackjack in Atlantic City with such celebrities as actor Bruce Willis and boxer Larry Holmes.
Caesar's Palace would fly Bryant to Atlantic City in its Lear jet and put him up in a $900-a-night room for free.
This year, Bryant and his family flew to the Super Bowl in Phoenix and sat in a skybox courtesy of the casino.
Wherever he traveled, Bryant ate at expensive restaurants, coaxing maitre d's with $100 bills for seats at hard-to-get tables.
His shirts were custom-fitted by Italian tailors, and his sweaters cost $400 each.
Now, people say the former Franklin County jail inmate turned antique dealer is on the run.
Over the past few years, Bryant parlayed his charm and zest into millions of dollars in loans. Some he paid back with interest. Some he didn't pay back at all, creditors say.
In May - with debts, criminal charges and lawsuits mounting - Bryant stuck a closed sign in the window of his Franklin County antique shop and disappeared, leaving his wife and adopted son behind.
Franklin County Sheriff's Office investigators say he and his wife, Wanda, owe a long list of people more than $6 million.
The list includes Warner Dalhouse, retired chairman of First Union National Bank of Virginia, and William Pannill of the Pannill Knitting Co. family in Martinsville.
Until his disappearance, Bryant, 51, was living the comfortable life in Franklin County.
He and his wife lived in a spacious condominium at Smith Mountain Lake and owned an 83-acre horse farm minutes away.
Bryant spent many hours negotiating deals by phone from his office in his antique shop on U.S. 220 near Rocky Mount.
"If he was in the office for eight hours, he'd be on the phone for six. I'm not kidding," said Eric Maus, who worked for Bryant.
Maus said he would buy his boss two six-packs of Heineken beer and three packs of Merit cigarettes almost every day.
Bryant also spent a lot of time in Atlantic City.
Maus and another Franklin County man, Mike Tuccori, helped set up booths for Bryant at antique shows along the East Coast.
Many of the shows were in New York City. Bryant, Maus and others on the New York trips would often stop off in Atlantic City before coming home.
Maus said Bryant gambled - and partied - hard.
Bryant has his own reserved blackjack table at the casino, and an assigned hostess would meet him at the door when he arrived, Maus said.
There were cocktail parties, too.
Maus, 22, would tag along to the parties, which were often attended by celebrities.
"It was all glamorous," Maus said. "I'd have on a coat and tie and Clyde would be wearing something casual for him, but everything I had on didn't cost as much as his boxers."
In April, the lawsuits began to pour in, and Bryant's high rolling came to a halt.
A federal fugitive warrant for Bryant was issued June 11. The FBI - as well as others representing various interests - is looking for him.
Lots of people in Franklin County and beyond are awaiting his capture while they try to figure out how he was able to win their confidence so easily.
For years, though, people have marveled at Bryant's persuasive powers.
Bryant grew up in Roanoke County. He was captain of the football team at William Byrd High School in the early 1960s and became an honor court justice at Emory & Henry College.
In 1979, he was working as a self-employed gold dealer when he was convicted for his part in bilking $75,000 from a Roanoke bank.
Bryant cashed a series of bad checks and persuaded the bank's manager to cover them, according to an FBI agent who testified during the trial.
Bryant was placed on federal probation for three years.
A year later, Bryant was convicted of selling cocaine to an undercover state trooper and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
He began pulling his time in the Roanoke County Jail.
He was so personable that several Roanoke County jailers complained that he received preferential treatment from the jail's top officers.
The complaining correctional officers said the situation created morale problems.
O.S. Foster, the county sheriff at the time, was quoted as saying: "I don't think there was ever a morale problem there. I think there was a problem with this guy conning some people."
It was apparent, however, that Bryant had gained the friendship of many Roanoke County jailers.
One, Jerome DeLong, wrote a letter to U.S. District Judge James Turk in February 1982 asking that Bryant's drug sentence be reduced.
Halfway through the letter, DeLong wrote:
"To me, Clyde Bryant Jr. is not a criminal in the conventional sense of the word. He is a man, who in a moment of desperation, made a grave error in judgment and he has been paying for that error every day since. Beyond that one moment of poor judgment there exists an extremely talented individual with a head for business and an ability to make things happen in a way that most of us just dream about. It is my humble opinion that justice cannot be further served by the continued incarceration of this man."
Bryant would later be transferred to work as a jail cook in Franklin County.
Bob Strickler, a captain with the Franklin County Sheriff's Office, recalls a day when Bryant was on work duty with other inmates, cleaning up trash on U.S. 220 near Boones Mill. Strickler said Bryant kept as far away from the road as possible, and tried to keep his back turned to motorists at all times.
"He didn't want anybody to see him," Strickler said. "He was afraid somebody would find out he was in the system. But you never had to ask him twice to do something."
Franklin County Sheriff W.Q. "Quint" Overton remembers searching the courthouse for Bryant one evening while he was an inmate at the jail.
He had made a good impression on the Sheriff's Office and had been given work privileges as a trusty, serving as a cook in the jail and a janitor in the courthouse, making friends with county officials as he cleaned it.
On the night Overton recalls, the sheriff walked through the courthouse, calling out the inmate's name.
There was no reply.
Finally, the sheriff stuck his head inside the door to the Circuit Court clerk's office and saw a slit of light coming from the office of Clerk Bill Walker.
Overton walked over and pushed open the door.
There, on the floor, sat Bryant.
Walker, a deeply religious man, was praying for him.
Now, more than a decade later, the scene makes Overton shake his head.
"That's Clyde," he said.
The day Bryant got out of jail in 1984, he sent flower arrangements to most of the county's departments.
Investigators say Bryant, who knew furniture because his late father worked in the business for years, began buying antiques through an acquaintance before he got out of jail.
Soon after his release, he met Wanda Morris
Bryant opened Franklin Antiques on U.S. 220 near Boones Mill. He married Wanda and adopted her son.
Things seemed to be going well.
LENGTH: Long : 140 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: PHILIP HOLMAN Staff. 1. Clyde Bryant's business,by CNBFranklin Antiques, sits vacant on U.S. 220 in Franklin County. In
May, Bryant stuck a closed sign in the window and disappeared.
color. 2. (headshot) Bryant. Graphic.