Documents

Note: A listing for SLED was included in the SC Legislative Manual for the first time in 1944.

In 1953, Governor James F. Byrnes began referring to the S. C. Law Enforcement Division without the parenthetical (State Constabulary), below.

In 1975 SLED was removed from the Office of the Governor and set up as a stand-alone state agency. In that same year, during the tenure of Chief J. P. Strom, the history of SLED was changed without explanation. The new version gives credit to Chief Strom's cousin, former Governor Strom Thurmond, for the creation of SLED by Executive Order in 1947. Prior state government documents, going back for decades, state that SLED was created in 1935 by Act 232 of the S.C. General Assembly. Prior to the revision, Chief Strom himself wrote that SLED was created in 1935.

Despite extensive research, the curator of this website has been unable to determine the basis for this revised (created in 1947) version of history. Since 1975 SLED has promoted the 1947 Executive Order as SLED's birth certificate. However, in a letter to the curator of this website, dated January 23, 2015, SLED stated that the agency does not possess the Executive Order. Likewise, the South Carolina Department of History and Archives is not in possession of the document. The Strom Thurmond Institute at Clemson University is the official repository for documents relating to Thurmond's long political career. The Institute does not possess the Executive Order, and went further to state the following in a letter dated January 21, 2015: "SLED was not created by a 1947 Executive Order by Governor Strom Thurmond."

The following Governors listed SLED as being created in 1935:

Olin D. Johnston

Ransome Judson Williams

Strom Thurmond

James Francis Byrnes

George Bell Timmerman, Jr.

Ernest F. Hollings

Donald Stuart Russell

Robert Evander McNair

John C. West

The 1975 entry for the S. C. Legislative manual is shown below.

Below, the 1941 death certificate of J. Henry Jeanes, the first Chief of SLED. Note that his occupation is listed as "Chief, S.C. Law Enforcement Division."

Below, the concurrent resolution of the SC General Assembly that moved the Identification Unit of the S. C. Highway Patrol to SLED in 1947. The ID Bureau was comprised of highly skilled criminal investigators as well as experts in forensics and fingerprints. Newspaper accounts show that this elite unit had participated in virtually every high-profile criminal case in the state for over ten years. The head of the ID Bureau, Lt. Joel Townsend, was the protege of the Bureau's founder, Lt. Leo Jenkins, who died in 1941. Lt. Townsend was appointed as the Chief of SLED when the merger occurred.