DEADLY CONSEQUENCES

A 10-Day Digital series from Oct. 23 to Nov. 1, 2024, the 100th anniversary of the end of the Ashley Gang

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Ashley Gang descendants not fond of ancestor

Austin Alderman stands at the spot in downtown Fort Pierce where his great-great grandfather, Ray Lynn, and three other members of the Ashley Gang were laid out and displayed after the shooting on the Sebastian River Bridge on Nov. 1, 1924. The 100th anniversary of the shooting approaches Friday. Alderman says Lynn was estranged from his wife and had been disowned by his parents when he was killed. No family members wanted to claim his body. “He was nothing but trouble,’’ Alderman says. GREGORY ENNS

Then and now, the family of Ashley outlaw Ray Lynn has kept a distance

BY GREGORY ENNS

Ray Lynn had only been a member of the Ashley Gang for three months before he was killed at the Sebastian River bridge.

As the daughter of Ashley Gang outlaw Ray Lynn, Inez Lynn Hamilton had an unusual —and intentionally misleading — story that she would share with her grandchildren about her father’s death.

“She told us her father died when she was a child and had fallen off the Sebastian River bridge and had hit a rock,’’ said Hamilton’s granddaughter, Lee Ann Alderman of Fort Pierce.

Hamilton’s father was Jerold Ray “Shorty’’ Lynn, 25, who had just joined the notorious Ashley Gang after escaping from a state prison road crew in Marianna, Florida, on Aug. 11, 1924. Barely 90 days later, he and three others — fellow escapee Clarence Middleton, gang leader John Ashley, and Ashley’s 19-year-old nephew Hanford Mobley — would be shot to death in an ambush set up by lawmen at the Sebastian River bridge exactly 100 years ago on Nov. 1, 2024.