LIVING HISTORY
In 1955, Chillingworth and his wife were themselves the
victims of a double murder and though three men were convicted
of the crime, the bodies were never found.
UNWANTED HELP
During the trial Cora Leigh had some unwanted “help”
from her mother. Cora Leigh was living in Nevada with Sue
Henderson Carter, who had divorced Cora Leigh’s father,
Joe Bartow Henderson in Georgia and had married Joseph J.
Carter in Duval County by 1939. Mrs. Carter admitted later
that she had responded in Cora Leigh’s name to a request for
information from the Palm Beach Post-Times.
In this initial response, she, in her daughter’s name, denied
an intimate relationship between Cora Leigh and Powell and
claimed there was a history of domestic difficulties with Burt.
In another statement made earlier under her own name of
Sue Henderson, she called her son-in-law an “animal.” She
said he tried to kill her, threw gasoline and acid on Cora
Leigh and ruined his wife’s health with beatings. There was
no indication from any other source that any of these claims
were true.
In the retraction in the newspaper of Sept. 9, 1939, Sue
Carter declared herself “fully aware of an incurable affliction”
and “desirous of re-ordering her life in full knowledge
of approaching death.” Carter’s affidavit in the paper said
she was convinced Burt was trying to have her committed
to an “asylum for the mentally deficient at Chattahoochee,
Florida, and the authorities at Chattahoochee after such commitment
found she was not mentally deficient or insane.”
In spite of her premonition of “approaching death,” Cora
Burt Pruitt apparently owned land along much of the river, but the actual
fishing camp was located approximately as shown
Leigh’s mother was to live eight more years until the fatal night
in 1947 in the fishing camp on the North Fork riverbank. By
that time, she had returned to calling herself Mrs. Henderson.
Reports of a second trial could not be found, but a later
news story says it was May 31 and was also a mistrial. It
appears Pruitt remained in jail the six months until the third
trial that started on Nov. 1, 1939, again with Judge Chilling-
36 Port St. Lucie Magazine
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A spider
weaves its
web on the
bank of
river that
was once
home to the
fish camp.
MARY DODGE