William Zantzinger; Infamous After Dylan Song 'Hattie Carroll'

The court case of Mr. Zantzinger, who died Jan. 3 at age 69, received national attention at a volatile moment in the civil rights movement. Bob Dylan immortalized Mr. Zantzinger and Carroll in a protest song about race and class, "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll," which appeared on his 1964 album "The Times They Are A-Changin'." Dylan used an incorrect spelling of Mr. Zantzinger's surname in the song lyrics.

Time magazine called Mr. Zantzinger a "rural aristocrat" because he was the son of a politically connected Washington real estate developer. After graduating from the Sidwell Friends School in 1957, the younger Mr. Zantzinger married and settled into the family's colonnaded mansion while overseeing its tobacco operation on a farm called West Hatton.

Mr. Zantzinger was freed during sentencing to finish harvesting his tobacco crop. He served six months in jail and was fined $500.

After his imprisonment, Mr. Zantzinger returned to Charles and lived quietly. He and his first wife, the former Jane Duvall, had three children before divorcing. He married again, to a woman named Suzanne.

He operated a nightclub for a while in La Plata, the county seat, dabbled in antiques and went into real estate, and he owned a Mercedes with the vanity plate "SOLD 2U." He was known as a charitable giver to his church and held annual pig-and-oyster roasts. He belonged to a country club and the local chamber of commerce and was seen by many of his friends as a local "character."

"He's a regular old Southern Maryland boy," his friend Mike Sprague, then a delegate to the Maryland legislature, told The Washington Post in 1991. "Nicest guy you'd ever want to meet." The Rev. Arnold Taylor, Mr. Zantzinger's pastor at the time, told the newspaper, "Socially, he's a hale fellow well met."

Outside his circle of friends, Mr. Zantzinger did not like to draw attention. But he did in 1991 when he was indicted for collecting more than $64,000 in rent on properties he had not owned for more than five years. He lost the homes, described as rural shacks in the county's Patuxent Woods subdivision, because of failure to pay taxes.

Nevertheless, Mr. Zantzinger continued to collect rent, suing some when they did not pay and evicting others. He also raised the rent on the properties. The homes were off a dirt road and lacked indoor plumbing.

In November 1991, Mr. Zantzinger pleaded guilty to 50 misdemeanor counts of unfair and deceptive trade practices. He was sentenced to 18 months in the county jail and fined $50,000. The judge also sentenced Mr. Zantzinger to 2,400 hours of community service and directed him to help groups that advocate low-cost housing.

"I never intended to hurt anyone, ever, ever. It's not my nature," Mr. Zantzinger said at his sentencing. "I got into this hole, dug it. It was my mistake. It got deeper and deeper. I've learned my lesson, believe me."

Mr. Zantzinger did not have a comment for the media. He stayed away from them after being stung during the 1963 trial for his remarks about segregation. "Hell, you wouldn't want to go to school with Negroes any more than you would with French people," he had said.

He spent his later years working in relative quiet as a foreclosure auctioneer. A spokeswoman for the Brinsfield-Echols Funeral Home in Charlotte Hall confirmed Mr. Zantzinger's death but provided no further details, at the family's request. A woman answering the phone at the family's home in Chaptico declined to comment.

Perhaps predictably, Mr. Zantzinger was no fan of the Dylan song or its composer, whom he called a "no-account [expletive]" who had distorted the facts of the case. He told Dylan biographer Howard Sounes, "I should have sued him and put him in jail."