LIVING HISTORY
19
WHAT HAPPENED THAT NIGHT?
Ada Coats Williams, a teacher turned
unwilling historian to the Ashley legend,
believes she knows the ultimate truth of
what happened on the bridge that night.
Her truth, she says, comes from a deputy
who was party to the killings and who told
her he killed John Ashley.
Williams was hosting a radio show for
Padrick Chevrolet on WARN radio in the
late 1950s on early St. Lucie settlers when
she was urged by the station’s management
to feature a story on the Ashley Gang
because of demand for the topic by listeners.
A local attorney, Thad Carlton, heard
Williams was planning the show and told
her he knew one of the deputies who was
on the Sebastian Bridge that night.
Williams visited the deputy and eventually
coaxed the story out of him. But he
extracted a promise. “He said I’m going to
tell you what happened on the bridge that
night but you have to promise me that
you’ll not repeat what I’m telling you until
after the last deputy dies.”
For years, Williams carried the secret,
never writing about it. Then, in 1983, she
was urged to speak about the Ashley Gang
for the annual meeting of the Florida
Historical Society. The topic? “Florida’s
Bad Boys.” The meeting’s organizers had
known about her radio show on the Ashley
Gang.
After giving the talk, she was urged by
two publishers to write a book. The result
was “Florida’s Ashley Gang,” published by
the Florida Classics Library in Hobe
Sound. The year she gave the talk and published
the book coincided with the death of
former St. Lucie County Deputy O.E.
“Three-Fingers” Wiggins in a Bartow nursing
home. He was the last of the living
deputies on the bridge that night.
Before her involvement in the Ashley
story, Williams was perhaps best
known for “Along These Waters,”
a series of outdoor dramas
about St. Lucie’s more lawabiding
settlers.
John Ashley was romantically linked with Laura Upthegrove, who participated in activities of the
gang, from scouting for robberies to directing liquor deliveries. Known as the Queen of the
Everglades, she was once described by a reporter as “a large woman” with dark hair and a
deep suntan who wore a .38-caliber revolver strapped to her waist. Below, one of two
Thompson sub-machine guns said to have been confiscated from the Ashley Gang the night of
the shootings. The guns are now in the armory of the St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Office.
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