Murder in St. Augustine Read online

  Published by The History Press

  Charleston, SC

  www.historypress.net

  Copyright © 2016 by Elizabeth Randall

  All rights reserved

  Cover collage by Bob Randall.

  First published 2016

  e-book edition 2016

  ISBN 978.1.62585.714.9

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2016939312

  print edition ISBN 978.1.46711.881.1

  Notice: The information in this book is true and complete to the best of our knowledge. It is offered without guarantee on the part of the author or The History Press. The author and The History Press disclaim all liability in connection with the use of this book.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form whatsoever without prior written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  For my father, Robert Harry Barkan, and, of course, for Athalia and Frances.

  CONTENTS

  Preface

  Acknowledgements

  Introduction: A Brief History of St. Augustine

  Death Before Dusk

  The Crime Scene

  The Unusual and the Usual Suspects

  The Dispute

  What Athalia Knew

  What Alan Knew

  The Timeline

  Where Was Alan?

  Alibis

  The Evidence

  The Arrest and the Indictment

  The Defense

  Frances Bemis

  The Trial

  Epilogue: 2015

  Bibliography

  About the Author

  From pacifist to terrorist, each person condemns violence—and then adds one cherished case in which it may be justified.

  –Gloria Steinem

  PREFACE

  Around 10:00 p.m. on February 24, 1975, in Winter Park, Florida, a shotgun blast shattered the calm of a Monday evening. If the surrounding suburban residents in Winter Park Pines heard anything, they kept it to themselves. The following morning, when a carpet cleaning truck rolled into the driveway of 2911 Montfichet Lane, the result of the ominous noise from the night before was discovered.

  The crew of workers came early to pick up invoices from Robert Harry Barkan, a self-employed man who ran his business from the ranch-style house built in the early 1960s. An early riser, Barkan usually greeted the small fleet of trucks and the men spilling out of them, but that morning, the front door remained closed and locked. The carpet cleaning crew heard dogs barking. Something was wrong with the front window, the kitchen window that faced the driveway. The men looked inside. They tried to break down the door. Then they called the police.

  The police couldn’t get through the front door either, so they went through the window. There they found a gruesome sight: Barkan had been shot in the face through the kitchen window, and he lay dead on his back on the linoleum floor. Beyond him, in the family room, the TV was still on, and a glass of soda, its carbonated bubbles flat, sat beside the recliner.

  That moment—a quiet evening at home interrupted, a bloody corpse lying on the floor of a suburban home—became frozen in time; it became, unfortunately, the moment that defined the man. Robert Barkan was a father, a grandfather and a man who served on a navy gunboat during World War II. He saw the invasion of Leyte in the Philippines at the age of nineteen. Yet to the people who lived after him, Barkan’s ignominious death overshadowed every memory of his life, every picture ever taken of him, his beginning, his end and everything in between. Murder has a way of doing that.

  Robert Barkan was my father, and when people ask me how he died, I usually say it was an accident. The facts are too complicated to explain. No one was ever charged with his death, and his cold case is still under investigation with the Orange County Sheriff’s Department in Orlando, Florida.

  I’ve opened his case from time to time in the ensuing forty years. Once I hired a private detective. The police are pretty sure they know who killed him, but they have no proof. They have no proof because in those days, there were no crime scene units in cities like Winter Park, no DNA testing and no fiber analysis. In the case of my father’s murder, police destroyed forensic evidence when they climbed through the kitchen window. The neighbors heard nothing, or so they said. At any rate, no one was talking.

  Aside from the shock of losing a parent to such violence, I was stunned by the incongruous nature of the crime. My father lived in a nice house in a nice neighborhood. He was careful to lock up day or night, and he was especially wary at the time of his death because of an attempted robbery in his home two weeks before.

  Because of my frustration with the deficiency of evidence and the futility of ever bringing anyone to justice for the crime committed against my father, I became interested in the history of similar homicides. My grandfather Robert Harry Barkan Sr. had been the dean of city police reporters for the New York Daily Mirror in the ’30s and ’40s, and he also freelanced, writing up murder cases for detective magazines. It seemed that I shared a similar aptitude.

  I wrote a cover story for an alternative newspaper about local houses where murders had occurred, including 2911 Montfichet Lane. Then I covered the trial of the “X-Box Murders” in Deland for the same newspaper and had several interviews with Troy Victorino, the accused ringleader of the crime. If I couldn’t find the criminal who killed my father, I wanted very much to know how a murderer thinks.

  What I found out is that a murderer doesn’t think differently from anyone else. A murderer is, more likely than not, as sane as you and I. David M. Buss, author of The Murderer Next Door, theorizes that murder is an evolutionary adaptation employed most often in matters of pride, greed or lust. What I found out is that murderers and potential murderers swim through society largely unrecognized. Almost everyone has the potential to kill, and labeling this primal urge as “mental illness” misses the point. Perhaps a person who refrains from violence or who seeks alternatives to deadly conflict is the one who is different. I do not believe that people who place little value on human life are unusual or that they can be changed. When they reveal themselves, they can only be caught and put away so they can no longer harm others.

  Revenge was not the force that drove me. I don’t believe in capital punishment, although I don’t judge people who do. However, it seems to me that if I condemn the act of murder, capital punishment is just a ritualized form of the same violence. When people who disagree say to me, “Oh, just put yourself in the victim’s place,” or, “You’d feel differently if it was someone you knew,” all I can say is, “I know. I know.”

  In 2012, I was in northeast Florida a lot, researching a book about ghost lore and southern history. In a tourist shop on King Street, in St. Augustine, I picked up a copy of a paperback book. On the front cover, a picture of a young woman with her head tilted back, obviously a model from the 1950s, smiled at some long-forgotten camera. The ominous backdrop of the ancient city glowered in the distance. The title was Bloody Sunset in St. Augustine.

  Bloody Sunset is a book based on the true story of Athalia Ponsell Lindsley’s murder, written and published by people in the newspaper trade. Since they lived in St. Augustine, the authors had access to information that couldn’t exactly be proven but definitely added an interesting perspective to the crime. There was no index or bibliography, no personal interviews or documented quotes. But the book did give an insider’s account of the atmosphere of St. Augustine, the gist of the case and the lives of the people involved.

  Many people who head for the Sunshine State are unaware that murder is not unusual in Florida. It is a fact that murder rates in the South are higher than in any other region of the United States. Florida, in particular, has many cold case homicides.

  There were similarities between Athalia’s gruesome end and my own father’s murder. Athalia’s death occurred one year, one month and one day before my own father’s demise. Both victims were murdered in a suburban neighborhood, toward the front of the house closest to the street. The houses in each neighborhood were close in proximity, yet most neighbors heard nothing. Both murders were disorderly and risky crimes of passion executed in the throes of uncontrollable rage. In both cases, local Florida police with no experience in crime scenes handled the initial discovery. And although police were certain they knew who was responsible, no one was ever convicted of either crime. Committed in the heat of passion, these crimes are cold cases relegated to obscure case files, or their evidence is lost, thrown out or scattered.

  I do not mean to imply that the same person committed both crimes. Of course, there is no question that my father’s murder and Athalia’s murder were carried out by different people in different cities. Yet the similarity in the time frame, the circumstances, the crime scene and the outcome speaks of a certain pattern. I began to believe that I might gain insight about murder by investigating the crime against Athalia Ponsell Lindsley. In addition, an unknown assailant murdered Frances Bemis, Athalia’s neighbor, in November 1974. Her case was unsolved as well. Were the crimes related?

  I wrote a chapter in my book Haunted St. Augustine and St. Johns County, about Athalia. During my book talks at libraries in St. Johns County, the most animated discussions occurred when the image of her house on Marine Street was displayed on the screen. Everyone knew about the murder and wanted to speculate about it.

  Athalia’s death had evolved from a private tragedy into public history.
Public history is real-life drama. The story was provocative. Plenty of St. Augustine residents remembered the murder of Athalia Ponsell Lindsley. It received full news coverage from the St. Augustine Record and Jacksonville’s Florida Times-Union newspapers. On the Internet, there were still message boards, a Facebook site and numerous articles and blogs dedicated to Athalia’s memory. Even a local television show, City Confidential, featured a program about the crime in 2000 called “The Politician and the Socialite.” That was the most polite title from the headlines written about her death, which included this gem in the St. Augustine Record: “Obnoxious Victim Had No Shortage of Possible Killers.”

  It is clear that an indifferent or a negative public perception of the murder victim has a great deal to do with apprehending and convicting the murderer. In Athalia’s murder, there was a clear element of misogyny in the crime itself. American justice for murder victims, and for women in particular, is problematic then and now. In Athalia’s case, the main suspect was a respected and well-liked member of the community, a city manager and her next-door neighbor. Athalia, on the other hand, was considered a “Yankee” in St. Augustine, even though she’d lived in Jacksonville for two decades. She was also a forthright, opinionated and outspoken woman in an era when such qualities were mainly the province of men.

  Justice is largely a matter of control and influence. Serving justice often depends on the perceived character and the social status of the victim. Penalties, charges, testimonies and trial procedures hinge on cultural protocol, gender and racial stereotypes and media slant. When a woman attempts to apply equitable social standards to her daily actions, as Athalia did, she may be punished. J.C. Campbell in her 2003 paper for the American Journal of Public Health stated, “Femicide, the homicide of women, is…the seventh leading cause of premature death among women overall.” In the 1970s, when Athalia was murdered and traditional expectations of women were much more prevalent, such statistics were not even measured.

  Last, when I read Bloody Sunset, I was struck by the epilogue. Authors Mast and Powell wrote, “The story of the grisly hacking death of Athalia Lindsley remains unfinished because those who know the truth have remained silent all these years. One purpose of this book has been to present all the known pieces to the puzzle in a fashion that would stimulate interest in helping to find the missing parts.”

  “The missing parts.” When someone is murdered, the bonds between remaining family members are rent and splintered, and often the familial relationship can never be put back together. Memories are tainted by horror. Athalia had no surviving children, her family was scattered and she had yet to reach her professional prime, despite the way the media characterized her as a washed-up showgirl. Didn’t Athalia deserve to be remembered as the woman she really was?

  Number 124 Marine Street. Photo by Bob Randall.

  A personal tragedy shaped my own life. It occurred to me that a fact-based book written about Athalia’s death would be of benefit in understanding how murder—how all murders—evolve from a seemingly senseless pattern of prior events. So, over a period of several months, I read through more than one thousand pages of depositions, police reports and evidence. I traveled to St. Augustine, Florida; Charleston, South Carolina; and Northampton, Massachusetts, to pursue evidence, interviews and background. And I believe I came to understand how Athalia’s murder happened, why it happened and what happened at about 6:00 p.m. on January 23, 1974, on the front steps of 124 Marine Street.

  For me, and for others like me, understanding is the only road to peace.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Many people graciously assisted with filling in the gaps between 1974 and 2015, in many cases offering their valuable perspective. These good citizens include Dominic Nicklo, retired sergeant and first-class detective of the St. Augustine City Police; Carlton Moore, St. Johns County director of records; Sergeant Robert Dean of the St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office and cold cases; Adrean King, St. Johns County evidence clerk; Stephanie Eliot, St. Johns County crime scene technician; Lieutenant Becky Clark, St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office special projects manager at the Neil J. Perry Criminal Justice Facility; Kathleen Banks Nutter, archivist at the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College; Anne Heymen, retired reporter at the St. Augustine Record; Philip Whitley, retired photographer at the St. Augustine Record; Delinda Fogel, publisher of the St. Augustine Record; Robert Duncan, operations manager at the Charleston County Clerk of Court; Sally Boyles, widow of State Attorney Stephen Boyles; Jim Mast, coauthor of Bloody Sunset; and Jean Troemel, former neighbor of Frances Bemis.

  As always, thanks to my loving husband, Bob; to my daughter, Courtney; and to my granddaughter, Cassidy.

  Introduction

  A BRIEF HISTORY OF ST. AUGUSTINE

  The nature of history is to synthesize. Told from a variety of perspectives, it is the historian’s job to nail down facts and to provide context. Athalia Ponsell Lindsley’s murder did not occur randomly, nor did it occupy a figurative vacuum in time. For this reason, perspective and a brief history of the city of St. Augustine is warranted, not only as a record of human behavior but also to quantify human nature, if such a thing is possible.

  One common characteristic that all human beings share are our stories—stories we tell ourselves and stories we tell about one another. Narratives are how people understand their environments. Joseph Campbell, author of The Hero with a Thousand Faces, wrote, “Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths.” Like many prominent cities, the history of St. Augustine begins with a myth. Students learn that Juan Ponce de León landed in 1513 on the coast of St. Augustine and bequeathed the name La Florida to this veritable land of flowers. In truth, Ponce de León’s famous discovery of Florida probably did not occur in St. Augustine. It is more likely that the diminutive explorer, lauded in a statue near the Bridge of Lions, landed nearer to Melbourne, Florida. His search for the Fountain of Youth was a myth as well. Yet even without Ponce de León’s presence, St. Augustine does enjoy status as America’s oldest continuously occupied European settlement. It had been around for twenty years when the English colonists of Roanoke settled in Virginia. It was there forty-two years before Jamestown and fifty-five years before the Pilgrims landed in Plymouth.

  Historic illustration of Ponce de Leon. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

  The true origins of the city began with an order by King Phillip II to secure the coastal property he had already claimed from the heathen French Huguenots. Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, the Spanish king’s admiral, first sighted land on August 28, 1565, the feast day of St. Augustine. He named the city after his saintly mentor and dispatched the French Huguenots near the Matanzas River (the Spanish word for slaughter is matanzas) in a bloody execution after they were shipwrecked during a hurricane. Tourists can see the approximate spot of the Huguenot massacre from the nature trail at Fort Matanzas National Park. There’s a stone marker that reads, in all caps, “MASSACRE BY MENENDEZ OF RIBAULT AND HIS MEN, SEPTEMBER 1565.” Near that date, the admiral also attended a holy mass at what is now the shrine of La Leche. Since 1965, St. Augustine celebrates this event every fifty years with fireworks, entertainment, foreign dignitaries and tourist currency flowing into city coffers.

  In keeping with its bloody origin, St. Augustine’s history, like most American settlements, was marked by disease, conflict and peril. It was little more than a fortress for many years and used as a base for far-flung Catholic missions. It burned to the ground more than once. The sovereign flag of St. Augustine switched back and forth between Spain and England and back again to Spain before the United States hoisted the Stars and Stripes in 1821. That year, St. Augustine suffered the worst outbreak of yellow fever in its history. A “public” cemetery was opened to accommodate all the victims. According to Florence S. Mitchell’s book A History of the Huguenot Cemetery, thirteen or fourteen people, including soldiers, were dying every day.

  Marker on Fort Matanzas of Huguenot slaughter by Pedro Menéndez. Photo by Bob Randall.