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No federal charges were ever filled against Sheriff Sim Banks, yet the FBI maintained an investigation into the man for three years during the height of WWII. The records from the files were kept in a confidential room due to the âobsceneâ nature of their content. These files investigated from the Knoxville FBI office from 1942-1945 were held six and a half decades until being released in 2010. The Times
has obtained the files originally reported at the time by Chattanoogaâs Channel 3 Eyewitness News.Â
This is the first in a two part series.
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A collection of recently obtained historic FBI case files paint a picture of the Coffee County Jail in the mid-1940s with a narrative that reads like tawdry B-budget drive-in double feature. Â Â Â