was a major investor in the Nashville investment banking firm of Caldwell & Company, due in part to his friendship with its founder Rogers Caldwell. When accusations of corruption were subsequently made about the bank, Lea and his associates became the subject of rumor that they too were corrupt. Conviction and imprisonment Lea was indicted in North Carolina with others, including his eldest son, for bank fraud resulting from the 1930 collapse of the Central Bank and Trust Company of Asheville, North Carolina, a bank with which he had become affiliated through his connection with Caldwell & Company. Both Lea and his son were tried in North Carolina in 1931. L. E. Gwinn, a prominent Memphis attorney whose specialty was criminal law, was brought in along with other attorneys, and the detailed preparation of the North Carolina case was entrusted to him. The Leas were convicted on three of seven counts. After the Leas’ appeals were exhausted and after the U.S. Supreme Court denied their petition for a writ of certiorari, both Leas reported for imprisonment at Raleigh in May 1934. Lea received a parole in April 1936, and he received a full pardon in June 1937. Through the end of his life, Lea maintained that he and his son were wrongly prosecuted and convicted and that the prosecution was political in nature, with Lea being made the scapegoat for the Central Bank and Trust’s failure by his Republican foes in North Carolina and Tennessee. Death and burial Lea died on November 18, 1945 at the Vanderbilt University Hospital in Nashville, at the age of 66. He was buried at Mount Olivet Cemetery in Nashville. Family Lea married Mary Louise Warner in 1906. They were the parents of Luke Lea Jr. and Percy Warner Lea. Mary Lea died while Luke Lea was en route to France during World War I. Lea married Percy Warner in 1920; she was the sister of his first wife. Luke and Percy Lea were the parents of Mary Louise, Laura, and Overton. Legacy They resided at 3700 Whitland Avenue in Nashville, Tennessee. The house, known as Washington Hall, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as a contributing property to the Whitland Area Neighborhood. Lea Heights in Nashville's Percy Warner Park, a place offering an excellent view of the downtown Nashville skyline, is named in his honor. The original land grant establishing Percy