Murder in St. Augustine: The Mysterious Death of Athalia Ponsell Lindsley

by Elizabeth Randall

Overview

More than four decades after it occurred, the murder of Athalia Ponsell Lindsley remains notorious… and unsolved.

The only eyewitness said a man attacked Lindsley with a machete in broad daylight on the front steps of her white mansion. Gossip swirled that neighbor Frances Bemis knew who killed Lindsley and would notify authorities. Bemis was later murdered on her nightly walk. Author Elizabeth Randall puts the rumors to rest through research culled from over one thousand pages of depositions, records, official county documentation and interviews.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781467118811
Publisher:	Arcadia Publishing SC
Publication date:	10/24/2016
Series:	True Crime
Pages:	176
Sales rank:	663,856
Product dimensions:	8.90(w) x 6.00(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Elizabeth Randall is a widely published freelance writer and a high school English teacher. She is the author of four books. Her most recent publication was a book about history and folklore titled Women in White: The Haunting of Northeast Florida. She and her husband, Bob, who is a freelance photographer and who contributed many of the pictures in this book, divide their time between two homes: one in Lake Mary and one in Crystal River on the island of Ozello.

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CHAPTER 1

DEATH BEFORE DUSK

I kissed her and said, "I'll see you in an hour."

–James "Jinx" Lindsley

Note: The reader will note that the times recorded for events are inconsistent, but these are based on the original documentation.

On January 23, 1974, it was a Wednesday, under the astrological sign of Aquarius. Richard Nixon was president, and he moved to enhance oil production in the United States by giving tax breaks to American oil companies and by scaling back clean air laws. The national headlines were full of news about Watergate, the energy crisis, the Kissinger-negotiated Israeli troop pullback from Cairo and space exploration vis-à-vis Apollo 14. A new movie with Robert Redford, The Sting, was out, and the top two songs in the United States were Streisand's "The Way We Were" and Miller's "The Joker."

On January 23, 1974, news in the St. Augustine Record (masthead motto: "Serving St. Johns County and the nation's oldest city since 1894") focused on continuing efforts of Flagler College to receive accreditation and on the formation of the Historic Architectural Review Board to oversee new construction governing historic districts. Local news focused on the recent county commission meeting. Frank Upchurch Jr., a lawyer, was honored by the Kiwanis. Two high school students, Hunter Barnett and James McAdams, were honored by the Elks Lodge. In a letter to the editor titled "A Certain Spirit of Care," Merri Vale Ormond wrote, "What a wonderful town St. Augustine is."

On January 23, 1974, in St. Augustine, Florida, the barometric pressure was 30.18, with a relative humidity of 70 percent. It was foggy that morning and cool, but by 6:00 p.m., the temperature was a perfect seventy-two degrees. The sun wouldn't set until 6:55 p.m. since Florida skipped daylight savings time that year, and full dark would not descend until 8:17 p.m. Fog was likely.

The view from the house on 124 Marine Street faced the Matanzas Bay, but it did not provide a full sunset because it did not face the west. However, the woman lying sprawled on the front steps of her white mansion was beyond caring. Her head, attached by a single sinewy thread to the rest of her body, rested on the bottom step of the front porch. She stared at nothing with wide-open eyes and an almost benign expression, which belied the sprawled, "broken doll" appearance of the rest of her body. And the blood. Blood pooled everywhere, as it does when the carotid artery is severed. Blood was also splattered all over the east wall of the home.

The woman's blue and white dress was hiked up, and she'd lost a shoe. Her pearls were scattered on the sidewalk. Some of her fingers were severed, and there were defensive wounds on her arms. For the moment, she was alone, but heads were starting to turn in her direction, just as they always had throughout her life. Athalia Ponsell Lindsley was not a woman to ignore. And now, for one last time, she was the complete center of attention.

Marine Street was near Flagler Hospital, and it was a busy road even on its best days. At 5:59 p.m. (documented time), Mr. Quentin Odell was on his way to Flagler Hospital to pick up his daughter. He passed a yellow car on Marine Street coming the other way, driving slowly past the Lindsley home, driving the way people do when there's been an accident, as though the people in the car were looking at something.

The Meirs, a local couple, drove right by the house and then doubled back when they realized what they'd seen. What they didn't see was anyone else walking down the street.

But Mr. B.O. Brunson of 101 Marine Street reported sitting on the front steps of his house at 5:50 p.m. (documented time) when a man drove up in a white Volkswagen. "Call an ambulance and the police department," the man said. "A woman has fallen out of a window, there's blood all over the place."

A few minutes earlier, Patti Stanford of 126 Marine Street was at the sink rinsing dishes. She looked out the window and then hustled her daughter Patricia into the hall of the home and handed her the baby of the family, three-year-old Annette. Patti said, "You take the baby and do something with her." At that moment, they both heard their neighbor Rosemary McCormick screaming, "Alan, Patti, come here quick!"

Neighbors to the north and south of 124 Marine Street, Rosemary McCormick and Patti Stanford, met briefly at the wrought-iron link fence on the edge of the lawn of 124 Marine Street, holding their hands to their mouths. "I wish I hadn't looked," Patti said.

By 6:08 p.m. (documented time), Rosemary's son, Locke, had called the police and an ambulance. Approximately thirty seconds later, an ambulance drove by heading toward the accident/crime scene. A few minutes later, Patti Stanford's daughter Patricia took her baby sister, Annette, upstairs. Patricia stared out her bedroom window. Annette played at Patricia's feet.

Patricia had a view into the part of the National Guard Cemetery where children played hide-and-seek among the tombstones on sunny winter days like that one. In the other direction, she could see into the McCormicks' yard. Short of that and right next door, she could see the front stoop of the Lindsley house. She saw "Mrs. Lindsley laying on the front steps." Mrs. Lindsley was covered with blood.

Athalia's husband, James Lindsley, arrived at his home on Lew Street a few minutes before 6:00 p.m. He and Athalia were still newlyweds, and they'd had trouble selling her house on Marine Street. As they were both seasoned real estate agents, they'd taken it off the market for a while and planned to try again in the spring. In the meantime, Athalia's pets still lived there, and she spent time there, too, tending to them and guarding thirty years of possessions.

So, at 5:30 p.m., James kissed Athalia outside his real estate office on St. George Street and said, "I'll see you in an hour." When he arrived home, he took the groceries inside that he and Athalia had picked up during their leisurely day together in Jacksonville. James and Athalia were celebrating the Chinese New Year that night, and the groceries were snow peas, water chestnuts and bamboo shoots, items unavailable in St. Augustine grocery stores and items James would be eating alone in the days to come.

Earlier that day, during lunch, Athalia warned her husband, whose nickname was "Jinx," that according to an old Chinese custom it was bad luck to use knives on the Chinese New Year. She cut her fish with her fork.

After he unpacked the groceries, James "got some clothes off," changed into jeans, took off his shirt and called Athalia's number on the phone. She'd said she'd be right over after she unpacked her half of the groceries and took care of the pets. His newspaper hadn't come that day, so he wanted her to bring one so he could check on any news about Athalia's appearance the day before at a commission meeting. He called again and received no answer. He wasn't alarmed. "I thought she was out in the yard," he said.

James went outside because he had "two hoses dribbling all the time." He moved them to different shrubberies. When he came in, he watched the news. At about 6:30 p.m., the phone rang. It was Esther Stucky from Riberia Street. She said, "Jim, get over to Athalia's, something awful has happened. There are police all around the house."

"What is it?" asked James.

"Just get over there." Mrs. Stucky rang off.

James changed his pants, put his shirt on and started out the door. The phone rang again. It was Jean Troemel, a local artist and one of Athalia's neighbors. She said, "Jim, you better get over there, there is a big crowd around Athalia's. I don't know what happened, but it must be something bad." James never admitted that he made one phone call before he left home. Yet his lawyer, Robbie Andreu, was there by the time James arrived at the Marine Street house.

Over on Chapel Street, Sergeant Dominic Nicklo, a detective for the City of St. Augustine, had just gotten off work and walked into his home at 6:35 p.m. (documented time). The telephone began ringing. It was the police station dispatcher summoning him to the crime scene.

And so, one by one, in groups, in pairs, on foot and in vehicles, St. Augustine residents, ambulance attendants, police and detectives gathered to stare, gawk, investigate, surmise, speculate and, for some, grieve. Athalia's dull eyes, her broken body, her life's blood lay under the drifting clouds of a blue sky. Chief of Police Virgil Stuart declared that Athalia's murder was "a crime of just pure hate. ... She was dead when we got there. ... She had been badly butchered. Her head was almost cut off."

Forty years later, a study by Cardiff University in Wales determined that January 23, for one reason or another, is the saddest day of the year.

THE CRIME SCENE

My wife had no enemies — except one.

–James "Jinx" Lindsley

It was reported as a "domestic going on." Officers Larrow and Janson were the first police representatives on the scene at 124 Marine Street. Associated Ambulance attendants James Rousseau and Ron Nabors met them on the front steps. Athalia Ponsell Lindsley's body was still on the sidewalk covered with a reddening sheet. It was reported that death was "probably caused by a sharp instrument, which struck the victim a number of times about the head, face, arms, and hands." No murder weapon was found.

Officer Francis O'Loughlin arrived, and he and Officer Joe Larrow walked into the house, where they left at least one bloody footprint. No one was in the house, and nothing seemed to be disturbed. They found Athalia's bag of groceries, upright and unspilled, on the kitchen floor. The back door, which led through the kitchen, was closed, but Athalia's keys still dangled from the lock. Her niece, Patricia Tilson from Virginia, would say later that her aunt "was very precise in keeping her doors and windows locked. She would not have gone outside to talk to a stranger."

The men went back outside. Rousseau and Nabors said they hadn't seen anyone in the area when they arrived. Officer Larrow decided to go next door to interview Locke McCormick, who'd called the police and the ambulance. Locke, Athalia's eighteen-year-old next-door neighbor, was home from his Daytona Beach college to help with a local high school play.

Locke grew up in St. Augustine on Marine Street. His grandmother Mrs. Claude Smith lived across the street, and before Athalia's mother bought the house, Locke's best friend lived right next door. He was a happy kid who rode his bike all summer long, liked to play poker and took advanced classes at St. Augustine High School. Locke was a quintessential local boy whom former classmates described as "the nicest kid ever." He was, as it turned out, the only eyewitness to come forward regarding Athalia's murder.

Locke told the officers that around 6:10 p.m. (documented time), his mother was in the kitchen, and he was sitting on the couch in the den of his house, watching TV, when he heard "loud snapping sounds" like "hands clapping." He got up and looked out the window, which faced the Lindsley home. He saw a white man wearing a white dress shirt and dark pants standing with his back to the McCormick home in front of the steps of the Lindsley home. The man's hair was brown, gray and closely trimmed. Locke yelled something to his mother and ran outside.

About eight to ten feet from the doorstep, he saw the man's shoulder moving up and down as though he were "swinging an object out of Locke's view." The clapping sounds stopped. Then the man began walking slowly south from the Lindsley home and "angle[d] off" in a southwesterly direction out of his sight. Locke took a few steps forward. He saw Athalia's body. He ran into his house and yelled, "Call the police! No! Call an ambulance first!"

The police asked him if the man held anything in his hands. Locke said, "I didn't notice." That may have been because he was still distracted. Locke didn't mention the initial screams, but Patti Stanford, standing at her sink rinsing supper dishes, heard them. At first she thought, "Somebody got run over. We have such a busy street; the cars go so fast out there." Her eighteen-year-old daughter, Patricia, thought the screams were "little kids down the street that are always screaming." They were both wrong.

Athalia died "almost instantly" according to the autopsy performed later by coroner Dr. Albert Schwartz in Daytona Beach. So, after her death throes, the consequent screams were from her neighbors Rosemary McCormick and Patti Stanford. Patti remained "hysterical" then and for far into the evening, according to a neighbor, Mrs. Genie Dodds, from Charlotte Street.

Meanwhile, at least six other police officers arrived, including Sergeant Nicklo, who traced a trail of blood "going from the body over to the wall separating the Lindsley house from the Stanford house."

The St. Augustine Record's chief photographer, Philip Whitley, "got the call" and was taking pictures. "People were walking through the yard and climbing over hedges," he said. "The whole thing was a screwed up mess from beginning to end. They were destroying the crime scene." He, too, saw blood in the grass, "leading all around the south side of the house." At one point, he said, one of the police officers ordered the ambulance attendants to hose down the blood "where it was concentrated to the left of the front door and at the bottom of the steps."

There was gossip later that washing away some of the blood evidence was deliberate and that it was done to protect James Lindsley, who was immediately one of the main suspects. James was a good ol' boy, a former mayor and a county commissioner, born and bred in St. Augustine. Dudley Garrett, whom James supported in a successful run for sheriff, was called, although the city police were already there.

Meanwhile, Whitley went over to the McCormicks' to see his good friend, Assistant State Attorney Richard O. Watson, who would later work for the prosecution of the murder case. Colonel Connie McCormick was away in Mexico on a hunting trip, so Watson was talking to Rosemary and Locke and just generally seething. "Watson," Whitley said, "was a smart man, fair as he could be and a good person. But he was having a fit about how the police were handling the case. But they'd never had anything like that. Just shootings, stabbings in bars."

Sergeant Nicklo independently concurred. "Law enforcement then," he said, "is not what it is today. There is so much forensic evidence now. Then we didn't even have our own crime scene unit. You had to call Jacksonville FDLE [Florida Department of Law Enforcement], which is what the sheriff did, to bring their crime scene unit down."

Around 7:00 p.m., Mr. Alan G. Stanford Jr., Athalia's next-door neighbor on the south side, pulled up into the driveway of his home. He was in a 1970 Chevy Impala, a car with a county seal, a perk he was entitled to as county manager of St. Johns County. His office was in a huge corrugated tin structure called the Road and Bridge Building off County Road 16. When St. Augustine city police told him his neighbor was dead, Stanford asked, "Was she shot or was she cut?"

Left out of the police report was what Locke screamed to his mother as he witnessed Athalia's death. Later, he told Hoopie Tebault, editor of the St. Augustine Record, the same thing: "Mr. Stanford was hitting Mrs. Ponsell."

THE UNUSUAL AND THE USUAL SUSPECTS

The trail is cold. I doubt we'll ever catch the killer.

–St. Augustine police chief Virgil Stuart

It is likely that no one felt safe in St. Augustine after the event of January 23, 1974. However, St. Johns County citizens kept up a brave front. Frances Bemis, a resident on Marine Street and an acquaintance of Athalia's quoted in the Record, said, "I think St. Augustine is the safest place I've ever lived in. The people here are wonderful. I go out walking at night and will continue to do so. I went out walking the same night the murder took place. I see people walking their dogs every night."

This laissez-faire attitude did not extend to local law enforcement. One of the complaints of Walter Arnold, the attorney in charge of defense in the consequent murder trial, was that the police settled on one suspect and did not look hard enough for the true culprit. He complained, "We received nothing as to any other investigation other than as it reflects directly on my client." However, extensive police records, which exist to this day, prove that Arnold's accusation was incorrect, that there was plenty of follow-up and plenty of documentation and that it was no secret.

The police made many mistakes in pursing Athalia's murderer: at the crime scene, with the search warrant, during the collection of evidence and in providing pivotal law enforcement officials to testify at the trial. But they also did many things right in spite of their inexperience with capital murder offenses. There are close to one thousand pages of interviews, depositions, evidence and notes regarding their keen pursuit of justice in Athalia's murder case — justice they were under no community pressure to provide.

In life, Athalia could be intimidating, aggressive and single minded — qualities that were abhorred in women, especially in southern society in the 1970s. Many citizens of the city thought that she was "a troublemaker" and were not sorry that she was permanently gone. Francis O'Loughlin, one of the first officers on the scene, said, "I will always remember the remarks made by some that the woman had earned her own death."

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Murder in St. Augustine"
by .
Copyright © 2016 Elizabeth Randall.
Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Preface 11

Acknowledgements 17

Introduction: A Brief History of St. Augustine 19

Death Before Dusk 27

The Crime Scene 32

The Unusual and the Usual Suspects 37

The Dispute 44

What Athalia Knew 48

What Alan Knew 57

The Timeline 62

Where Was Alan? 72

Alibis 76

The Evidence 80

The Arrest and the Indictment 93

The Defense 100

Frances Bemis 106

The Trial 116

Epilogue: 2015 137

Bibliography 155

Index 167

About the Author 173

Editorial Reviews

"The author gets into detail, temperature, barometric pressure, high tide, low tide and headlines. All in order to le the reader know what exactly was going on in and around St. Augustine. This book is a page turner. - Monica Garcia" First Coast Living

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