As it turned out, Riblet was the first City of Miami police
officer to be killed in the line of duty.
John’s verdict in the Tiger case was eventually reversed.
Avoiding another death sentence, he pleaded guilty and
received a 17-year sentence at Raiford Prison.
While John was in prison, his nephew, Handford Mobley,
and Roy Mattthews took turns leading the gang. With
Mobley dressed as a woman, the gang robbed the Bank of
Stuart again. Also during John’s imprisonment, two of his
brothers, Julius and Frank Ashley, disappeared, presumably
lost at sea, while on a rum-running mission to the Bahamas
in 1921.
Placed on a road gang for good behavior, John escaped
and spent three years running stills in Palm Beach. But he
was imprisoned again when caught in Wauchula while on a
rum-running mission. He is put on a road gang again and
escapes for the last time.
Through escapes and prison releases, the gang – John
Ashley, Mathews, Mobley and Clarence Middleton – reunite.
And their clash with the law escalates.
In one of their last bold crimes, gang members in 1923 rob
LIVING HISTORY
Bank of $5,000 in cash and $18,000 in securities.
Perturbed at the defiance of the gang, Palm Beach
County sheriff’s lawmen descend upon the Ashley’s
Everglades moonshine camp and kill family patriarch
Joe Ashley. John Ashley then killed deputy Fred
Baker, cousin of the sheriff, and flees into the
Everglades.
The Ashley Gang, perhaps feeling the pressure
placed on lawmen to capture them, apparently were
heading north to hide out when they met their fate
that night on the Sebastian Bridge. John Ashley’s
mother would later say they intended to begin lives
free of being on the run from the law.
ASHLEY LANDMARKS
Of all the Ashley landmarks along the Treasure
Coast, perhaps the most visited is the site once occupied
by the Bank of Stuart. Now occupied by the
Ashley Restaurant, the business is a celebration of all
things Ashley, from photos hanging on the walls to
tabletops that sport news clippings of the Ashley
days, to reproductions of bank windows that separate
dining areas.
Travel just a few miles north on U.S. 1, and
motorists who can get through the guard gate at
Mariner Sands Country Club can visit the Ashley
Family Cemetery, between the club’s 18th hole and
the community’s chapel near the old Ashley home
site. There, headstones mark the resting places of
John Ashley, Ray Lynn and Handford Mobley.
It is is some 60 miles north, on Dixie Highway
crossing the Sebastian River, that the Ashley Gang
met their literal dead-end. Today, the old highway is
grown over with grass, though sabal palms still
mark its pathway. The old wooden bridge where the
shooting occurred is gone now, replaced by a concrete
bridge in another location.
Edwin ‘Happy’ Merritt lived with his grandfather until the age of 11, when J.R.
Merritt died. A former monument engraver, Edwin Merritt carved this slab for his
grandfather, who also became a county commissioner.
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