LIFE ON THE RUN

John Ashley spent much of his career as a criminal on the run, hiding out in the Everglades while in frequent communication with his family in Fruita

BY GREGORY ENNS

While on the run for much of his 13 years as a criminal, John Ashley had a secret weapon more powerful than his marksmanship, good looks, intelligence, charm or even the undying loyalty of his family.

It was the Everglades.

After killing Seminole fur trader DeSoto Tiger on Dec. 29, 1911, he had fled Florida and roamed the country. Homesick, he returned after two years to hide out where he felt most comfortable: the Everglades.

In the years after John killed Tiger and had been on the run, John’s parents, Joe and Lugenia, had moved from West Palm Beach north to Fruita, part of an undeveloped region called Gomez. It was named after Don Eusebio Gomez, who was granted 12,000 acres in 1815 by the king and queen of Spain when Florida was a Spanish territory.

The modest house the Ashleys built at Fruita would become known as Twin Oaks. In 1916, Joe Ashley would claim 80 acres under the 1862 Homestead Act, which gave him ownership of the land for a minimal filing fee and five years of continuous residence. Son Bill would claim another 160 acres in 1920.

Fruita was a perfect hideaway for John because it had multiple options for a quick get away. It was also ideal for the clandestine bootlegging activities the family would pursue.

A train could be hopped on Henry Flagler’s Florida East Coast Railway, which ran through Fruita, or a car could be driven on the nearby Dixie Highway, the region’s main north-south artery of the time.

Despite such access, Fruita was a dense thicket of Florida backwoods — remote from both Stuart, 10 miles to the north, or West Palm Beach, 35 miles to the south. To the east, it was less than a mile from the part of the Intracoastal Waterway known as Peck Lake, providing quick access to the St. Lucie Inlet to the north or Jupiter Inlet to the south — giving them the run of the Atlantic Ocean. To the west were Florida’s untamed backwoods and access to the vast Everglades, where John felt most at home.

Everglades, in the 1910s, was a term used to refer to much of interior Florida around and south of Lake Okeechobee. Thus, the piney flatwoods of Fruita were like an entrance to the Everglades.

With occasional visits by lawmen to Fruita, John had to be careful about when he visited the Ashley home to see family and get resupplied for life in the ‘glades. When law enforcement pressure was off, he stayed in the woods near Twin Oaks, perhaps visiting for his mother’s dinners. When it was on, he would take off for the Everglades.

ASHLEYS VS. BAKERS
Fruita and nearby Stuart would not become part of Martin County until the county’s creation in 1925. During the 1910s and early 1920s, they were part of Palm Beach County, where George Baker had been sheriff since 1909. He had spent much of that time on a frustrating search to find John and bring him to justice.

The sheriff had previously spent a career working on the railroads. Employment on Henry Flagler’s Florida East Coast Railway brought him to West Palm Beach in 1901 from Jacksonville. Behind the scenes, Baker was active in the Ku Klux Klan. Palm Beach County chapter, George B. Baker Klan No. 70, was named for him. In his 11 years as sheriff, he was addressed as Capt. Baker. It was never publicly disclosed whether he earned the title in the
Klan or the railway.

On the public stage, Baker quickly immersed himself in West Palm Beach politics, serving as an alderman, mayor and the Dade County commissioner representing West Palm Beach. When Palm Beach County was carved out of Dade in 1909, Baker was appointed Palm Beach’s first sheriff, even though he apparently had little law enforcement experience. Baker’s railway background — mostly overseeing construction with some security work — was hardly a match for John’s criminality.

Because of John’s ability with a rifle and experience hiding in the woods, he could easily ambush those coming after him. Thus, Baker was reluctant to send his few deputies into the woods around Fruita or to go after John himself. Chasing John Ashley in the Everglades was simply engaging in a type of guerrilla warfare you couldn’t win and could end up getting you killed.

RETURNING TO FACE JUSTICE

Being so close to his family, it was natural that John couldn’t be away from them long. After killing DeSoto Tiger at the end of 1911, he spent two years outside Florida. On his return, he spent at least four months in the woods and Everglades near Fruita, before surrendering himself at his parents’ home on April 27, 1914. John thought he could get an acquittal if he could get a sympathetic jury of his peers, drawn from southern Palm Beach County. Surely, he thought, they would not convict him for killing a Native American.

When John was first tried, two months after his surrender, he didn’t get the acquittal he wanted. He did get a mistrial, with nine jurors voting to convict and three voting to acquit him in the murder of DeSoto Tiger. The mistrial meant prosecutors could try him again, which they did — but he would also have to remain in the Palm Beach County Jail.

Located in West Palm Beach, the jail was part of a modest two-story wooden building that both served as a prison for inmates and as a home for its jailer, Bob Baker, George Baker’s son and chief deputy. Bob’s wife, Annie, cooked for the inmates.

Bob Baker was the oldest of eight children of George and his wife, Julia. After George was appointed sheriff, he made his 20-year-old son chief deputy. While capturing a suspect in 1910, the suspect shot the young Baker’s foot off. The injury required the amputation of his right leg above the knee, forcing Bob to continue his law enforcement career wearing a prosthetic leg.

Because of their proximity living in the jail and daily — if not hourly — interaction, the accused and jailer developed a friendly relationship, despite the fact that John had made a laughingstock of Bob’s father. George Baker was persistently ridiculed in newspapers because of his inability to capture John.

During his hideout in the Everglades, John also openly ridiculed George Baker. When the sheriff sent two of his deputies to arrest John in the Everglades, the outlaw turned the tables on the lawmen. He took their firearms and gave them a message for their boss: “Tell Baker not to send any more chicken-hearted men with rifles or they are apt to be hurt.”

During John’s time in jail, Bob also got to know John’s parents and siblings. They frequently visited, sometimes bringing plates of food cooked by Lugenia. Despite his notoriety, the family remained loyal to John, believing that he killed DeSoto Tiger in self-defense and that a grave misjustice was being carried out.

Sandra Mario Provence, grandniece of John Ashley and granddaughter of his sister, Lola Ashley Mario, said all eight of John’s siblings aligned with him. “They did because it started off as a kid that shot an Indian, got scared and was afraid of what would happen to him,’’ she said. “Then it all turned to hell and he had the attitude, ‘I’m not going to do good anymore.’ ’’

BROKEN TRUST
While John was at the Palm Beach County Jail, the bond between jailer and the accused had grown to a point that, when Bob Baker was returning John to the jail from a court hearing the night of Nov. 14, 1914, he didn’t feel the need to place John in handcuffs, considering him a model prisoner. The prosecutor had just argued that John’s trial should be moved to Dade County, a motion the judge was likely to approve. John and his family were outraged by the move, knowing that a Dade jury wouldn’t be as sympathetic to John.

When Baker walked John to his cell and and gave him the plate of food Lugenia had sent for to him, John threw it down and escaped. He was once again free from the law.

This latest escape so rattled George Baker that the Nov. 20, 1914, edition of the New Smyrna Daily News reported, “Sheriff Baker is prostrated over the affair and under a physician’s care.” But now he faced the additional shame of John escaping from the Palm Beach County Jail overseen by his son, Deputy Sheriff Bob Baker.

“The fact that he is at large is due to the negligence of the officers who had him in charge when he was once in captivity,” the Orlando Evening Star said in a Feb. 25 editorial. “This should be a lesson to all other jailers and sheriffs.”

Now, both Bakers had personal vendettas against John, and a blood feud was on.

ELUSIVE FUGITIVE
In the first months after the Palm Beach County jail escape, John’s whereabouts were unknown — or perhaps merely undisclosed by the Bakers. But on Feb. 1, 1915, a report surfaced that he was in the woods, 9 miles west of what’s now known as Boynton Beach.

He was accused of shooting at two hunters, C.A. Steel and F.W. Bischoff, visiting from Pomeroy, Iowa, and injuring their guide. He had apparently mistaken them for law officers.
“The hunters were sitting around the campfire in front of their tent, in company with their guide Claven Myers, when the gang appeared on the canal bank,” wrote a Feb. 17 account attributed to the St. Augustine Record. “Ashley, evidently mistaking the hunting party for officers of the law, called out: “Build up your fire a bit if you want to see blood; business is picking up.” Then, a fusillade of bullets from high-powered rifles came whizzing around the hunters and their guide, Myers, who suffered minor injuries. It was yet another statement apparently meant for George Baker.

Neither the hunters nor Myers, known as an expert marksman, were near their weapons. The shots riddled their tent with bullets, piercing bedding, and pots and pans. Myers was hit three times; three bullet holes pierced Bischoff’s coat, though apparently did not injure him. The hunters’ touring car received six bullets to the radiator and was disabled. The Orlando Evening Star report said that Myers had recognized John’s voice. John and those accompanying him then fled north, while Steel and Bischoff persuaded a nearby farmer to use his mule team to drive to Boynton to notify authorities.

Deputy Sheriff C.E. McIntosh, along with “several fearless citizens of Delray and Boynton, drove to the scene and searched the camp site and area where the shooters stood, recovering empty .32-, .35- and .40-caliber shells. Meanwhile, Myers was taken to a physician in Delray for treatment of non-life-threatening injuries.

It didn’t take long for other crimes in the region to be blamed on John, no matter how improbable. Wrote the Stuart Times in March 1915: “It seems in these days of strife that every time a gun is discharged, or somebody is shot the crime is fastened on John Ashley.”

With the search for him intensifying, John moved deeper into the Everglades. He was spending part of his exile with his brother Bob, whom he described as his best friend, and another man identified as Kid Lowe, a husky criminal described as a train and bank robber from the West. Lowe apparently was drawn in by John’s national notoriety, perhaps meeting with the family in Fruita to connect with him in the Everglades.

NOT-SO-GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY
Hiding out in the Everglades, John, Bob, and Lowe were running out of provisions and were growing desperate. They needed money and they needed it fast.

The three and another man were suspects in the fumbling robbery of a Florida East Coast Railway train on Feb. 17, 1915.

Southbound No. 33, known as the Palm Beach Limited, had just made a stop in Stuart when four men boarded the rear of the train. They leveled guns at the flagman and four people in the rear compartment: Mr. And Mrs. F.L. Schrew and daughter, Emilie Schrew, and Dorothy Weirr, all of Chattaway, West Virginia.

The action prompted Weirr to run screaming through the car: “Help, robbers are holding up the train.” When she reached the next car with her news, one of the porters quickly stepped onto the platform linking the last car and, apparently without the robbers knowing, locked the door.

The four men robbed the Schrew family. Then they enlisted the rear car flagman B.A. Collins to carry a sack and lead them into the next car. But Collins found the door locked. The robbers demanded that he open it with a key, but he told them he did not have one. Realizing their plan had been thwarted, they directed Collins to stop the train — which he was able to do — and the four jumped off the train, a mile south of Stuart. They ran to the west.

After chasing down a false lead in Jensen Beach, Sheriff Baker and a posse went to the home of Joe Ashley. They placed him and his son-in-law, George Wesley Mobley, and a third man under arrest on the suspicion that they knew something about the holdup. But all three were soon released and charges never pursued.

A GANG IS BORN
While John and Bob Ashley and Kid Lowe became the robbery’s prime suspects, the identity of the fourth man involved was never uncovered. Some newspaper accounts speculated that Joe was involved — unlikely since he was not a fugitive and would have been at Fruita, enjoying the resources of his homestead.

Wrote the Miami Herald in its Feb. 9 edition: “It is said that Ashley, his father, one brother and another man have been living in the woods several miles out from Palm Beach, and it is also said that their means for obtaining the necessities of life have been almost exhausted of late, hence the belief that through desperation to secure money they set out Sunday night with the purpose in mind of holding up the train, and securing sufficient money to enable them to continue their life of exile.”

The article was headlined “Did Ashley’s Gang Hold Up FEC Ry. Train?” The headline represented the first reference to the Ashley Gang. John Ashley was no longer known as a solo criminal but as the leader of a group. Henceforth, lawmen and newspapers would refer to John and his confederates as the Ashley Gang.

FIRST BANK ROBBERY
Without much of a take from the train robbery, John, Bob, and Kid Lowe robbed the Bank of Stuart on Tuesday, Feb. 23, 1915 — just six days after the holdup of the train. The bank caper would end up costing John his eye.

The three entered the bank at 10:30 a.m. and demanded, from an employee identified as cashier A.R Wallace, all cash that was not in the vault. Three other employees — J. Taylor, K.H. Bentell and bookkeeper Theodore Tyndall — were also identified as being in the bank.
“With guns in each hand leveled at Mr. Wallace he was compelled to turn over all the money lying on the desk and in the drawer and then was asked if that was all the money he had, and he replied that it was,” the Stuart Times reported.

Reported the Miami Herald: “Commanding them to turn their faces to the wall, John ordered cashier Wallace to turn over the money. Four thousand and five hundred dollars was taken, and so disappointed was Ashley at this ‘insignificant’ amount that he cursed the men saying ‘that ain’t enough money to fool with.’”

While the vault was being gone through, bank employee John Taylor said the man, identified later as Lowe, said: “I’ll tell you, boy, it is a case where we need the money, and we have just got to have it.” Then, in an apparent reference to the train robbery, he said, “We were disappointed two weeks ago.”

PLANNED GETAWAY
The bandits then headed toward the exit, following the four bank employees, and poking them with their guns. When they reached the outdoors, the employees were directed to face a wall.

The bandits got away in a car driven by Frank Coventry, proprietor of the Coventry Hotel, who encountered Bob Ashley as he crossed the street at the St. Lucie Hotel. The two knew each other. “Bob asked him where he was going and he said to the bank,” said the Feb. 26 Fort Pierce News. “Once inside John Ashley shoved a gun in his face and told him to put up his hands. Coventry thought he was fooling but Ashley said he meant it and told him to get busy and take them out of town in his automobile,” directing him to drive them to Point Sewall, now called Sewall’s Point.

Once inside Coventry’s Ford, a gun held by Kid Lowe discharged, with a bullet going through John Ashley’s left jaw and lodging at the rear of his right eye. Whether the shooting was an accident was never resolved. John would later say that the shooting occurred because Lowe “was so mad that there was such a small amount of money in the bank that he got sore and wanted to shoot up the town.”

Regardless, the wound was not so debilitating as to keep John from fleeing with the others, and Coventry continued driving as blood dripped on his brown coat and on the floor of his car.

Once they arrived at Point Sewall, where their horses were tied, they gave Coventry a $5 bill and told him to return to Stuart or face death. The robbers exited the vehicle and mounted horses that had been waiting for them.

“Here the gang had their horses tethered and, at the point of a gun, commanded Coventry to stop the car and after alighting bade him return to Stuart,” the Miami Herald reported Feb. 24. “They climbed into their saddles and started in a westerly direction. The desperadoes are armed to the teeth, having in their possession about fifteen guns and a large quantity of ammunition.”

SEEKING MEDICAL HELP
Sheriff Baker was notified of the robbery by railway telegraph operator S.C. Smith in Stuart, and a search was begun for the suspects. The Miami Herald reported that one of the gang was discovered at dusk the day of the robbery but escaped in the darkness. Another gang member traveled by horseback to Hobe Sound, in an effort to get a physician to treat John Ashley, but the physician refused. Though considerable blood had been found in Coventry’s automobile, authorities did not believe John’s injuries to be life threatening.

The Herald said law authorities surveilled the Ashley home in Fruita throughout the night, “but the female members of the Ashley family were the only inhabitants of the house.”

Three posses were organized — in West Palm Beach, Jupiter and Stuart — and met in Stuart that night. Meanwhile, several men Baker had engaged to find the whereabouts of the gang met with the sheriff that afternoon in Hobe Sound and alerted him that the gang was in a dense hammock in Gomez, near the Ashley family home.

Lucien Spencer, a federal Indian agent assigned to the case, said in an interview with the Miami Herald that Baker reduced the three groups to two posses, appointing West Palm Beach Police Chief Felix Whidden to head one and Secret Service agent T.E. Brent to head the other. Brent, a member of the Sioux tribe, had been key to the surrender of John on April 27, 1914, for the killing of Tiger. Two of Tiger’s brothers, Naha and Tom Tiger, joined Brent’s posse.

Felix Whidden was a nephew of Tillet Whidden, the man tried but acquitted of the murder of Joe Ashley’s brother, John, his son’s namesake. Some newspaper accounts concluded that the Ashleys’ move to Florida’s East Coast after the turn of the century was made after a truce had been made with the Whiddens. Therefore, the Ashleys viewed Felix Whidden’s leadership in the hunt for John as breaking that truce.

SUSPECT SURRENDERS
Spencer, also in Brent’s posse, said Brent had directed his men not to smoke cigars or cigarettes because the smoke could tip off the gang members and “disaster would result.” They eventually found the hideout 8 miles from Gomez.

Recalled Spencer:

We then secured two large wagons and left Stuart at 11:50 o’clock Wednesday night, and every man of the thirty-five or forty in the two squads carried a high-powered rifle and revolvers in addition. We drove about thirteen miles, leaving the teams and struck out into the hammocks where Ashley’s crowd had been reported in hiding. It was a walk of eight miles before we reached a thick growth, which the men supposed to be the rendezvous for the robbers. However, it was so dark that the men [who tipped off Sheriff Baker on Ashley’s whereabouts] became confused and declared that they were in doubt as to where the place was. It was open country on both sides of the hammock and we couldn’t get near without being seen.

Spencer said the group decided to rest and then charge the hammock in the morning. When they did, they encountered Bill Ashley, John’s brother. They then directed him to call out to John.

Said Spencer:

To illustrate the denseness of the forests and underbrush, briars and trees, one of our men was standing within five feet of [John] Ashley without seeing him. Bill finally called for John and the wounded man came forward, hands up. He gave himself up, without parley, but when he was asked where the other members of his gang were, he replied that they had gone off the night before. The first thing he asked for was a cigarette, which one of the men composing the posses handed him. He was not so weakened by the exposure to prevent him walking, and loss of blood as a result of his wound did not hamper conversation.

A Stuart Times account also said a member of the posse had called out, “Come on out, John. You may get one or two of us, but we will sure get you.”

Spencer said that many of the posse members believed that Joe Ashley — recently released from Palm Beach County Jail after his arrest earlier in the month on a charge of aiding his son’s jail escape the previous November — was also in the woods with his sons, but the law officers could not locate him. “Then at 9 o’clock, to make certain that we were not overlooking anything, the hammock was set on fire, and we watched every nook and corner, but Ashley Sr. did not appear,” Spencer said.

Officers left the hammock with John at 3 p.m. and took him to the office of Dr. L.A. Peek, where his wound was dressed. At 5:30 p.m., he was placed in the Palm Beach County Jail, with two other prisoners who had “taken great interest in him and are serving as his nurses,” the Miami Metropolis reported.

Peek was later quoted in the News as saying that he did not believe John’s wound would prove fatal. The bullet entered John’s jaw below the left ear and traveled through his skull, resting behind his right eye.

In another statement, Spencer disclosed that John’s hiding place had actually been ascertained by Sheriff Baker, who was hiding in a store in Hobe Sound when Bill Ashley telephoned a West Palm Beach doctor, in an attempt to get him to take care of John. “After [Bill] was through with the telephone, Baker followed him to the hammock where his brother was hiding.”

Spencer said the lawmen found $1 on John and Bill, and The Miami Herald reported that “it was gleaned from this that Kid Lowe … and Bob Ashley had taken the $4,500 obtained from the bank and departed the night before.”

The Miami Metropolis reported March 1 that Coventry was arrested but later released, after signing an affidavit apparently proclaiming his innocence.

JOHN TALKS
A Herald account of the robbery carried a statement that John was purported to have given Sheriff Baker. In the statement, John said hunger drove him to rob the bank.

I and the other members of the family were getting hungry, and we had to have money to procure something to eat. I was just as nervous as I possibly could be when I held up the bank, but I believed my ‘blue’ [gun] would have its effect on those in the bank and so we took a chance. If it hadn’t been for my accident, we would have been many miles away in the Everglades before now and our capture would have been almost impossible. But so weakened did I become over loss of blood that I had to have a doctor to take care of me, and so I bade the others to leave me behind and decided to give myself up.

In the end, only John Ashley, his brother, Bob, and Kid Lowe were indicted by a grand jury in the robbery.

Some news reports were also grouping Bill as part of a gang, with one wire report describing John as “leading the alleged gang.” Said the Miami Herald: “Bill Ashley, however, was not arrested as the law officers could not fasten anything on him. It was at first reported that he had taken part in holding up the bank, but Sheriff Baker is convinced that he had nothing to do with it.”

NATIONAL CELEBRITY
The morning after his apprehension, John complained of fever and pain in his right temple but was able to pose for newspaper photographers from New York and elsewhere. His escapes, train and bank robberies, and killing of Tiger had brought him national celebrity, and Baker readily accommodated media requests.

Over the next few days, John’s escapades became the subject of a silent film — apparently never aired to the public — by Irvin V. Willat of the Dyreda Art Film Corporation of New York City, featuring John Ashley as himself.

“The first of the pictures was taken at the county jail when John Ashley was brought forth from his cell to the front door,” the Orlando Evening Reporter-Star reported March 4. “He was a willing actor and smiled the best he could, with his face wreathed in bandages, while the motion picture man turned the crank of the machine.”

The following Saturday, John was operated on. News reports proclaimed the bullet had been removed but John later said in an interview that it was still lodged in his eye. In any event, the injury caused him to lose sight in his right eye.

The robbery made the front-page of papers, even outside Florida, with many of them apparently feeling free to play loose with the facts. In a Page 1 story in the Feb. 24 New York Tribune, it was reported, erroneously, that John had robbed the bank alone and that he lives on a “fortified island with his father and no one dare goes after him.”

Meanwhile, as John sat in the Palm Beach County Jail, his confederates —brother Bob and Kid Lowe — remained at large, hiding out in the Everglades.

RETRIAL IN DESOTO TIGER CASE
As weeks went by, preparations began to retry John for DeSoto Tiger’s murder, with Judge H. Pierre Branning hearing the case. State Attorney John Gramling argued that the state could not secure a fair trial because the people of Palm Beach County were so fearful of the Ashley Gang that they would not vote for conviction, believing that John’s confederates would hunt down those who found John guilty.

At first, Branning denied a motion to move the trial to Miami but, on March 23, after spending an unsuccessful two days trying to secure a jury in Palm Beach County, he ordered the trial be moved to Miami — after just two jurors out of a venire of 112 men could be seated in Palm Beach.

During the days of jury selection in the packed courtroom in West Palm Beach, John had fired his attorney, W.D. Carmichael. Branning then appointed lawyers Mitchell D. Price and Miami city attorney Crate D. Bowen to represent him. Price requested that he be relieved of such a duty, and Branning appointed A.J. Rose to replace him. Assisting Bowen and Rose was attorney E.C. Thompson of West Palm Beach, who defended John in his first trial and in the aborted second trial.

John was taken to the Miami jail on March 24. Jury selection began in Dade County five days later, with a venire of one hundred men. A jury was seated within two days, with the state exhausting four of its challenges while the defense had not used any challenges.

The Miami Metropolis reported that Judge Branning had stipulated that jurors needed to meet these qualifications: ”no prejudice against the Indian race, ability to take an Indian’s testimony as a white man’s would be taken,” no opposition to capital punishment and no opinion yet formed on the case before them.

The jurors were identified as A.C. Franklin, Louis Anderson, C.M. Robinson, A. Overall, A. Campbell, Oscar Thomas, Charles Lindstrom, C.H. VanAucken, J.F. Sayler, R.J. Peck, F.M. Goss and J.W. Williams.

During jury selection in both West Palm Beach and Miami, John’s head was swathed in bandages. Newspaper reports said John often showed signs of fatigue as the day progressed.

John’s physician had informed the court that John was still suffering from the effects of the gun wound that shattered his jaw and destroyed the sight in his right eye. He said his patient wasn’t out of danger yet and was unable to eat solid food and was on a liquid diet. He said even a cold could prove fatal to John.

Though known for the photo taken when he appeared in a white linen suit, John was sometimes unshaven and wore more casual clothes during his trial. “If dressed in tailored clothes and well barbered, Ashley would be good looking at least, if not handsome,” opined the March 27 Miami Herald. As the trial progressed, John indeed made himself more presentable, with the Miami Herald once describing him as “faultlessly attired in a Palm Beach suit and bright tan shoes.”

The newspaper would also later weigh in on the gravity of the trial: “In view of the importance and the amount of interest displayed in the case, this is believed unprecedented in court annals in this section of the country.”

The state’s case centered on its contention that John, seated in the canoe, shot Tiger while Tiger was standing to pole the boat along the canal. They alleged that John then took Tiger’s otter pelts and fled to Miami to sell them.

After G.A. Worley, a former judge assisting the prosecution, gave an opening statement to a packed courtroom, including many people from Palm Beach County, he called his first witness: the dredge captain Milton Forrey. He recalled discovering DeSoto Tiger’s body, Dec. 31, 1911, in the drainage canal. He said he pulled the body out and laid it on the canal bank and returned to the dredge to get others to assist him in retrieving the body.

Forrey said he and his companions took the body by boat 5 or 6 miles north of the dredge, where they buried it in a spoil bank of the canal. No Seminoles were present for the burial, he testified. Forrey said he saw bullet holes through Tiger’s hand and his forehead between the eyebrows and hairline, exiting in the back of his head.

During the second day of testimony, dredge worker Stafford Power said that he saw John and DeSoto Tiger sitting in a boat near the Seminoles’ camp as he passed on down the canal in another boat. Farther down the canal, he said he later heard two shots and saw something fall from the boat, which later came down the canal carrying only John.

One of the more compelling witnesses was Homer Tyndall, a trapper at whose camp John had stayed before staying with the Seminoles. Tyndall, described as the state’s star witness, told jurors that John had told him while at his camp on Dec. 19 that, “If I could find an Indian with a large number of hides I wouldn’t any more mind killing him than I would of shooting a buzzard.”

The defense’s star — and only witness — was John Ashley, who delivered his testimony as if an objective witness to the events and often appealing directly to the jurors, addressing them as “gentlemen.”

John said he bought the hides from DeSoto on Dec. 28, with the Seminoles loading the furs onto DeSoto’s boat on Dec. 29. John said he borrowed DeSoto’s canoe for his trip to Fort Lauderdale because it had a sail and could reach his destination more quickly than his canoe, which did not have a sail. He said DeSoto joined him for a ride to the dredge, with the intention of checking on his traps on the way back.

John claimed that he was paddling in the bow of the boat while DeSoto was poling in the stern, with DeSoto’s gun next to him and John’s rifle close to him. He said he had stuffed two bottles of whiskey in some clothes instead of giving them to the Seminoles. When they rolled out of some clothes in the canoe, Tiger demanded a drink, John said, and “sooner than be unpleasant I gave it to him, and he started to abuse me right away because I had not given it to the other Indians and also at the camp, why I had taken it away and not said anything about it.”

Playing to the women attending the trial, but who were not allowed by state law at the time to serve as jurors, John said he couldn’t say all Tiger had expressed to him. “Gentlemen of the jury, the language he used I would hate to repeat in the presence of my fellow men, especially in the presence of women.”

He further testified:
As we were going down the canal the boat, which was small and naturally shaking some, caused the two bottles of whiskey to roll out of the place where I had concealed them. DeSoto saw the whiskey and wanted a drink. I gave it to him. He started to abuse me because I had not given the whiskey to the others. I told him if he would wait till he got to where he wanted to get out, I would give him both bottles. He still asked for a drink. I was paddling in front, DeSoto poling. I felt him quit poling and the canoe went into the bank. I noticed around and saw him down in a crouch [position]. He said, “You [expletive]. I am going to kill you.” He had his pistol in his hand pointing it at me and I, hearing the click of the pistol, grabbed my gun and started shooting as fast as I could. He fell over the gunwale into the water. I saw someone down the canal and, thinking it was an Indian and not wanting to tell an Indian that I had shot DeSoto, I went around through the ‘glades and got to Fort Lauderdale. I had the furs and took the first train to Miami.

As for Homer Tyndall’s testimony, John said, “Gentlemen, that boy sat here on the stand and lied for a few little dollars. I never made such a statement to him or to anyone else and never said I’d as [soon] shoot an Indian as a buzzard.”

John said he didn’t want to tell the other Seminoles that he had killed their relative, so he started poling through the canal system to reach Fort Lauderdale, arriving that night, and then taking a train to Miami, where he sold the furs. He said he later fled Florida, spending three weeks in New Orleans, and then traveling to San Francisco and then Spokane, Washington, and Oregon, where he worked on a wheat farm for a year before coming back to Florida.

As he concluded his testimony, John stood up and approached the jury box, telling the jury. “There are always two sides to everything. I just want to be heard in the case, gentlemen.”

An April 1 Miami Metropolis article detailed how John observed the witnesses with one eye. “The good eye never wavers from the features of the witnesses on the stand, and frequently the accused man smiles at some statement of the Seminoles. For the most part, he sits grim and silent, thin lips pressed tightly together — always watching the witness.”

STATE SUMMARIZES ITS CASE
The trial concluded with prosecutor Worley taking up the entire morning to summarize the state’s case. “Every act of John Ashley points to him being the slayer of DeSoto Tiger — and the motive that prompted it — robbery,” Worley told jurors. “Yesterday’s crowd of spectators was the largest of the entire trial,” The Miami Herald reported April 4. “Hundreds listened to the oratorical battle, many coming from out of town to see the near windup of the famous case.”

Worley also referred to John’s apparent testimony that he stayed at the Seminoles camp so long because they “were drunk and couldn’t trade with them.” He said John had only returned from Fort Lauderdale with a gallon and a half of whiskey. “He wants you to believe that for four days a crowd of Indians and white men were kept in a continuous state of intoxication on the small amount of liquor,” Worley said. “Ashley’s statement is wrong. The Indians were not drunk for all that time.”

Worley also attacked John’s statement that the shooting was in self defense, noting that Tiger would have had multiple opportunities to shoot John after the gun clicked because of the time it would have taken John to raise his rifle. “Why, the Indian could have shot him half a dozen times,” Worley said. “That statement won’t do.”

He said the murder of Tiger was premeditated and warranted a first-degree murder conviction because John planned killing Tiger so he could take the hides. “The Indians were afraid of Ashley,” he said. “The moment the hides left the camp, Ashley went with them. He kept with the hides and knew that if they ever got to the safekeeping of the dredge his chances to get them were poorer.”

He also said a bullet wound in Tiger’s hand was an indication that the Seminole was trying to defend himself. “How could it have got there if he was clutching a pistol?” Worley asked. “The truth is that the Indian had his hand thrown up in surrender when Ashley started to shoot — the bullet went through his hand and struck him in the head.”

Worley said John went on a spending spree after selling the furs in Miami. With the $584, he said John bought a new suit, got drunk, hired an auto to go to Palm Beach and repaid his brother, Bill, $200 he owed him. As for John’s claim that he had purchased the hides from Tiger for $400, Worley said the money was never found on Tiger.

“History teaches us that all guilty men travel,” he said. “It is what a man does after a crime that gives him away. “

Later, State Attorney John Gramling noted that Tiger’s revolver was found in the canoe. He said if Tiger had been holding it while he was shot it would have gone over the gunwale of the canoe.

Defense attorney Bowen summarized the defense ’s position in 2 hours, 10 minutes, at one point taking the chair from the witness stand and converting it into a canoe to illustrate John’s self-defense argument. “If you convict John Ashley, it will be because he’s a ‘bad’ man and in that case, you will not convict him for the murder of DeSoto Tiger.”

Defense attorney Rose also argued that the case was only circumstantial and there was no evidence to prove that John killed Tiger. “What are the circumstances?” he asked. “There has not been shown by the state any circumstances to how he was killed. Not one bit of evidence has been introduced by the state to show how he met his death.”

VERDICT IN
It took the jury less than four hours of deliberations on the night of April 5 to find John guilty, with foreman Charles Lindstrom announcing the verdict about 8 p.m. No clemency was recommended. “The prisoner was probably the coolest man in the room,” the Miami Herald reported. “Sitting at the end of the defense attorney’s table he smiled faintly and then his features took on their previous turn of solemnity.”

John’s father, Joe, was seated to the left of him when the verdict was announced. His mother, who had attended every session since the trial’s start, often wearing black, was not present for the verdict. “What is to be will be, whether it is or not,” John said after the verdict. A notice of appeal was immediately filed in the case.

Later it was revealed that all but one juror initially stood for conviction, with the holdout eventually joining the majority.

John’s sentencing took place April 9, with Judge Branning declaring, “And that you, John Ashley shall be hanged by the neck until you are dead.”

Reporters and others marveled at John’s indifference to his fate. “I have seen many a hardened criminal, many an outlaw and bandit, but John Ashley has them all backed off the boards for nerve,” said Ben J. Shephard, clerk of the criminal court of record.

Defense attorneys Crate D. Bowen and A.J. Rose sought a new trial, but Branning denied the motion. Rose and other defense attorneys appealed the case to the Florida Supreme Court, submitting 109 counts for their motion for a new trial. John’s appeal mostly centered around whether Judge Branning had made an error in moving the trial from Palm Beach to Dade County.

Post-trial, Branning declared John insolvent, requiring the state to pay his court costs. During the hearing for a new motion, John was reported in good spirits, joking with his attorneys, the sheriff and the clerk of court. When prosecutor Gramling passed John’s chair, John grabbed the lawyer’s hand and chatted with him for a few minutes.

Bowen and Rose received no payment for their defense and would also get no compensation for the appeals.

ESCAPE PLAN LEADS TO TRAGEDY
By late May, John had been settling into the Dade County Jail while waiting for the Florida Supreme Court to review his appeal. John was one of three white prisoners convicted of murder, including another one sentenced to death, and another prisoner charged with rape.

Meanwhile, 16 African American prisoners were held in a section of the jail that the Miami Herald referred to as “the negro cage,” including a convicted murderer and two men accused of murder. Attention was focused on the small jail when one of the accused murder suspects, Ed Michael, tried to break out by knocking down jailer Wilbur W. Hendrickson, seizing his keys and handguns. But the escape was thwarted when the jailer’s wife came to his aid with a short-barreled shotgun after he yelled that a prisoner was trying to escape.

The escape attempt proved the vulnerability of the small jail. This certainly piqued the interest of John Ashley, who had made a successful escape from the Palm Beach County jail a half year earlier and was under a sentence of death, as well as at least one member of his family. Fearing another attempt at escape, Dade Sheriff Dan Hardie directed a blacksmith to make two heavy chains, placing them over the two doors of the jail, to deter any attempt to break through the jail from the outside. Hardie also employed an additional deputy to keep watch on the jail.

In those days, the jailer typically lived in a space adjoining the jail, with his wife providing meals to inmates. Hendrickson, a Dade County deputy for six years and former marshal of West Palm Beach, only the day before had lost the primary for Miami chief of police. He had told Justice of the Peace J.J. Combs that he had planned to retire as deputy sheriff and jailer if he lost the election and turn to farming.

One of the biggest campaign issues that he raised was the security of the jail, which apparently never gained traction with the voters.

Hendrickson on May 21 had denounced the safety of the jail, saying in a signed letter to the Metropolis that “the way the county jail is arranged, the jailor takes his life in his hands every time he enters within the walls.”

A grand jury report had recently criticized conditions of the jail, in part blaming Hendrickson. He said the jail was not secure enough for the seven prisoners under sentence of death. He also advocated creating a death cell for prisoners, carrying out hangings inside the prison instead of outside. “Perhaps some day we will become civilized enough to have an electric chair,” he said.

Hendrickson was the jailer hit May 29 by Ed Michael during his escape attempt.

“I want to say that the present condition of the jail is a disgrace to the county, and should be attended to at once, and not wait for another year to roll by before we have funds enough to make the necessary improvements,” Hendrickson wrote in his letter to the Metropolis.

Hendrickson specifically advocated the creation of a death cell chamber for prisoners under sentence of death such as John Ashley.

After his defeat, Hendrickson planned to quit his deputy job and move to interior Florida to farm. The morning of June 2, Hendrickson removed the chains from the front door to the jail, believing that a jailbreak would not be attempted at night.

Hendrickson was just days away from leaving his jailer job, when Bob Ashley knocked on the door, June 2, 1915. Bob carried what looked like a small package wrapped in blue paper. With a $1,000 bounty on his head, he was still at large in the Bank of Stuart robbery — law officers had been unsuccessful at capturing him or Kid Lowe. After hiding out in the Everglades, they had eventually parted ways, splitting the $4,500 taken in the Bank of Stuart robbery.

Lean and sinewy, the 24-year-old Bob dyed his black hair red and made his way back to civilization. He undoubtedly had been in contact with the family because of the words that came out of his mouth as Hendrickson opened the door.

Hendrickson’s wife, Marion, had just served him lunch in their living quarters, and he was just about to get his pipe for a smoke when they heard a knock at the door. Hendrickson opened it to find Bob Ashley, whom he’d never met.

“Are you Hendrickson?” Bob asked the jailer. When Hendrickson replied affirmatively, Bob fired a shot from his Savage .380 revolver, striking Hendrickson in the heart and mortally wounding him. The Stuart Times reported that he then took Hendrickson’s keys to the jail and started toward it but lost his nerve because of the attention drawn by the noise from the shooting.

When Marion heard the commotion and gunfire, she began yelling for help, picked up a rifle and attempted to shoot at Bob, but her unloaded rifle only clicked. It was one of two her husband had left for her, saying one didn’t fire. She had picked up the wrong one.
Marion said she saw Bob Ashley reach over her husband’s body, apparently taking his sidearm. Then she said Bob Ashley leisurely walked across the street to Jones Garage.

ATTEMPTED JAILBREAK
Bob was John’s little brother — just three years younger. They were the closest in age of all the five Ashley brothers. Bob idolized John, and John would later say in an interview that they were best friends. Could it have been that Hendrickson mistreated John, and that word got to Bob, who decided to exact revenge while also breaking his big brother out of jail?

Bob crossed the street to Jones Garage when Hendrickson’s wife yelled out. Still concealing an object wrapped in blue paper, Bob ran across the railway tracks to Tenth Street, near Avenue H. He was pursued by several passersby, including G.H. Spelman, who had been in the vicinity of the jail when Hendrickson was shot. The unarmed Spelman turned back, after Bob dug into his blue paper package to reveal a rifle.

Meanwhile, a Marvin Bakery delivery driver, T.F. Duckett, had been following Bob in his small open-air vehicle known as a cycle car. When Duckett caught up, Bob pointed his rifle at him and demanded that he stop. Duckett let his car coast, with the ignition turned off, for half a block. “Then he got on the running board and told me to take him to the county road or he would kill me,” Duckett told a Miami Herald reporter. “I didn’t know who he was, but I knew he had killed Hendrickson, and the officers were after him. I could see them coming, so I played for time.”

Duckett, knowing officers were in pursuit, told Bob he did not know where the county road was “You take the car and drive to the county road,” Duckett told him. “I don’t know where it is.”

Meanwhile, Desk Sgt. E.V. Stevens and Patrolman John Rhinehart “Bob” Riblet were sitting at city hall when they heard the shot that hit Hendrickson. They ran to the jail and were told by Hendrickson’s 9-year-old son, Wilbur Jr., that “they’ve shot papa.”

The boy then pointed toward the direction where Bob Ashley fled. The two officers then loaded into a vehicle driven by motorist Will Flowers, whom they persuaded to pursue Bob. They caught up with the vehicle driven by Duckett, with Bob on the running board.

“Bob Ashley was standing on the running board of an automobile when we approached and Officer Riblet at once started in his direction,” Sgt. Stevens told the Miami Herald. Instead of shooting Bob in the back, Riblet grasped at Bob’s Winchester rifle, saying “Consider yourself under arrest.”

Two conflicting versions were given about what happened next. One said Bob backed away six feet and shot Riblet in the jaw, the bullet passing through his cheek. Another said Bob raised his rifle and Riblet began grappling with him, with Bob managing to turn his rifle up, firing it and hitting Riblet in the jaw.

Severely injured, Riblet continued to struggle with Bob, but Bob pulled an automatic handgun, firing into Riblet’s body. Still alive, Riblet was able to fire three shots from his revolver. Two bullets hit Bob, one in his cheek and jaw, and another close to his heart.

Sgt. Stevens said he was about 20 feet away from the scuffle and did not shoot for fear of hitting Riblet.

Bob Ashley then fell to the street, writhing in a pool of blood. Witnesses James Orr and Frank Henry said Bob’s lips foamed, his eyes rolled, and he grasped at the collar of his shirt, trying to catch a breath. Found on his person were a .380 Savage, two Smith and Wesson specials, a Colt automatic and a pocket revolver called a Bulldog.

Riblet, 31, married and the father of a small child, did not fall but was caught by his fellow officers and taken to a nearby hospital, where he died of a gunshot wound to the lung, half an hour after arriving. He was the first City of Miami police officer to die in the line of duty.
Jailer Hendrickson, 44, who had also been transported to the hospital, died upon arrival.

Bob also was taken to the hospital but was placed on a stretcher and moved to the county jail two hours later after it was determined he had no chance for recovery. Dade Sheriff Dan Hardie said he made the decision to move him to protect him from mob violence. Bob died 30 minutes after arriving at the jail.

Interviewed in his jail cell while Bob Ashley was still living, John Ashley insisted that he knew nothing of his brother’s plans to free him. “I am shocked and pained to learn this,” Hardie quoted him as saying. John then agreed to see his brother but as handcuffs were ordered to fasten John Ashley’s hands a deputy approached with the news that Bob Ashley had just died.

A PANICKED PUBLIC
Meanwhile, angry crowds began to gather around the hospital, jail and other places, with rumors circulating of a lynching and other violence toward the Ashleys. There were claims that other members of the Ashley Gang, including Joe Ashley and fellow bank robber, Kid Lowe, were in the city. Author Hix Stuart said that, to calm the crowd, Bob Ashley’s body was brought outside and a shroud covering it removed. “This tended to appease the crowd, and it soon dispersed,” he wrote.

In the end, Hardie’s investigation concluded that Bob Ashley acted alone, saying that Joe Ashley was working at George Lainhart’s orange grove near Jupiter on the day of the killings. Joe Ashley acknowledged he had considered going to Miami after the shooting. He said he boarded a train in Jupiter but got off in Pompano, after reconsidering.

Fearful that the rumors would spread throughout the state of the Ashley Gang being on a rampage, Sheriff Hardie wired Gov. Park Trammell, advising him to “Pay no attention to requests for militia, as I can take care of the situation arising from the triple killing here today.”

The mob scene seemed to move from the hospital to the jail to the W.H. Combs Funeral Home, where the bodies of Bob Ashley and the two officers he killed were taken. “Thousands of people congregated and demanded a look at Ashley,” the Miami Metropolis reported. Eventually, it was decided to allow adults but not children to view Bob’s remains, so the body was placed in a room by itself. “A long line formed in front of the undertaking parlors and the people continued coming until a late hour, about 4,000 viewing the body.” Another long line formed the next morning.

As the days after the shootings went by, rumors continued to stoke fear among citizenry along Florida’s East Coast. Newspapers reported rumors that the Ashley Gang remained in Miami and that Joe Ashley had shown up in disguise at the Combs Funeral Home. Sheriff Hardie also received a letter purported to have been sent by a member of the Ashley Gang, saying they would soon “shoot up the whole town,” if John Ashley was not fairly dealt with.

Gang members were also reported seen in Hobe Sound, where they stole a large supply of groceries, telling the grocer to charge them “and they would pay for them whenever they pleased.”

RELATIVE WEIGHS IN

Bob Ashley’s body was claimed by Ed Rodgers of Hobe Sound, the father-in-law of his brother, Bill. The Miami Metropolis quoted Rodgers as saying that Bob Ashley had been crazy for several weeks and had been drinking heavily.

Rodgers said Bob had fallen out with Kid Lowe two months earlier, they divided the money and parted ways — a story that paralleled Bob’s deathbed confession to Hardie.

“Bob has been killed,’’ Rodgers said. “John will pay the penalty for his crime on the gallows and that will be the last of it. There will be no further trouble from the Ashleys.’’

“Rodgers said that the mother was a good Christian woman and that although it was reported that the family had plenty of the money that was taken from the Stuart Bank there was no truth in it and that “Mrs. Ashley would starve before she would touch a cent of it.’’

Rodgers said Bob had fallen out with Kid Lowe two months earlier, divided the bank money and parted ways — a story that paralleled Bob’s deathbed confession to Hardie. “Bob Ashley told me that he could not feel safe with Kid Lowe when they lie down in the swamplands at night, and that finally he told Lowe to go his way, while Ashley went his.” Hardie also said that Bob Ashley told him that he believed Lowe intended to kill John Ashley during the Bank of Stuart robbery.

Hardie said Bob told him that his plan to spring his brother from jail began with the purchase of liquor in Hobe Sound, where he got on a train to Miami. He said he slept in a box car in Miami that night, bought some food at Baker & Holmes grocery store the next morning, and hung around briefly at the train depot.

“When I got ready to do the job I come to Miami for, I went to the door of the jail, and knocked, and when Hendrickson come to the door, I asked him if it was Hendrickson. When he said, ‘yes’ then I pulled the trigger and went away.”

The published interview did not reveal why Bob Ashley asked for Hendrickson and seemed to target him for death. According to Alfred and Kathryn Hanna, in the book Lake Okeechobee, the family was worried about John’s health. As often as she could, Lugenia tried to get home-cooked meals to him at the jail and to get him a tonic that Dr. Anna Darrow of Okeechobee had prescribed for him. When the Ashley sisters saw the jailer, presumably Hendrickson, throw out a meal of fried chicken that they had prepared for him, it greatly alarmed the family.

Hardie said he also was an intended target of Bob, and the sheriff added that, despite repeated questioning, Bob Ashley steadfastly insisted that he acted alone. Hardie also said deputies could find no trace of other gang members in Dade County. “I have tramped everywhere, almost, and haven’t found hide nor hair of them,” he said.

DIFFERING VERSIONS
Hardie’s conclusion ran counter to testimony given by Hendrickson’s widow and to an account that appeared in the Miami Metropolis, the feisty rival newspaper to the establishment-aligned Miami Herald.

In her testimony, Marion Hendrickson said that 20 minutes before the shooting, a Ford drove up in front of the jail, and Bob Ashley and two other men got out. She said the car was then driven to Jones Garage and backed in.

The Metropolis echoed Mrs. Hendrickson’s version of the statement that others were involved. The paper had a detailed account, by named witnesses, of three men hanging out at the garage across from the county jail before Bob Ashley killed Hendrickson. The newspaper said, “It is believed by some that these three men may be Ashley’s father, another brother and Kid Lowe, the confederate in the Bank of Stuart robbery.”

The story said a jailbreak had been plotted: Bob Ashley would break his brother out of jail and then join the other three waiting in their automobile. But Bob Ashley, who had been drinking, approached the jail earlier than the set time while the three others were still on the second floor of the building across the street, spending several hours “on one pretext or the other, roaming about the garage.” The car had been positioned in the garage, as if for a quick getaway.

Another Metropolis story quoted George R. Davis, a bookkeeper at Baker & Holmes warehouse near the jail, who reported seeing Bob Ashley on the morning of the attempted jail break, gesturing to someone in the county jail. Davis said he saw Bob standing by a fence for some time making motions with his hands, forming letters of the deaf alphabet.

Davis also said Bob Ashley had spent some time that morning at the Baker & Holmes warehouse, across from the jail, sitting on a platform holding an object wrapped in blue paper. Davis told the Miami Metropolis that he appeared agitated and frequently looked at his watch, muttering to himself. Davis said he overheard Bob say to himself, “I’ve got plenty of time.”

Davis was a reputable witness, though his statement never seemed to be taken seriously by Sheriff Hardie. Davis, who was African American, had worked at Baker & Holmes for five years and had been managing the Miami branch, for the past year. Davis died in November 1917 in what was first to be investigated a suicide but was later ruled an accidental death. He and his wife had been active in the civic affairs of Miami. His boss, J.D. Holmes, in a letter to the Miami Metropolis extolling Davis’s virtues, commended him for his “honesty and faithful performance,” as a bookkeeper. “I wish the public and his friends to know that Mr. Davis had many thousands of dollars pas through his hands, and every cent has been honestly and accurately accounted for,” Holmes wrote. “His reputation and character were above reproach.”

Davis’ statement was also credible because of the Ashley family’s familiarity with sign language. Their sister Lola, who was legally blind, had learned sign language at the school for the blind and deaf in St. Augustine.

Other witnesses, including the owner, L.A. Jones, of Jones Garage and his employee, E.T. Wells, said that two men — an older one and a younger one — waited in the garage for hours on the morning of the jail break. They had brought the car, a Ford, to the garage some time before noon, and bought some batteries. Wells said the men seemed nervous, with one frequently looking out the doors and windows.

He said one of the men went upstairs in the garage to inquire about getting his car painted with employee F.E. Fry. “He talked about painting the car and told Mr. Fry he was from Pompano,” Wells said. “Pretty soon the old man came upstairs.”

The car was parked in the center of the garage, positioned to exit without any obstructions in front of it. “It is quite evident to me that they planned a quick getaway,” Wells told the Metropolis.

After Bob Ashley shot jailer Hendrickson, he went across 11th Street into the garage, headed straight for the Ford and demanded at gunpoint that bystander M.G. Tracy drive the car. When Tracy told him he couldn’t drive a Ford, Bob demanded that Jones employee John Bordes drive it. Bordes also told Bob he couldn’t drive a Ford. “He asked me the second and third time, but I told him I could not drive a Ford,” Bordes told the Miami Metropolis.

Finally, Bob appealed to a third man, L.L. Coffin, directing him at gunpoint to drive the car. But Coffin was hard of hearing and when he cupped his hand behind his ear to clarify what Bob was saying, he ran out the back door and across railroad tracks

But in the end, both the coroner’s jury and Hardie concluded that only Bob Ashley was responsible, for the attempted jail break and the death of the lawmen.

THREE FUNERALS
After Bob Ashley’s body was claimed by Rodgers, he became the first of three Ashleys to be killed by the bullets of lawmen and to be buried at what would become the Ashley family cemetery at Gomez.

Hendrickson’s funeral was held to an overflowing crowd at the First Methodist Church of Miami, with burial in the city cemetery.

“Words are inadequate to express the deep combined sense of indignation, outrage and sadness felt by our citizenship in the unprovoked murder of two of our most valuable citizens while engaged in the faithful and fearless discharge of their official duties,” the Rev. J.R. Cason, pastor of the church, told funeral-goers.

With the Woodman’s band playing a funeral dirge and various dignitaries attending, Riblet’s body was loaded on a train on June 3 and was shipped for services at the First Baptist church in Fort Pierce, home of his in-laws, J.S. Bell and Emily Lagow Bell. Four Miami officers and six members of the Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen accompanied the body on the train. He was buried in the Fort Pierce Cemetery, now known as Riverview Memorial Park. He and his wife, Madge Emily, were the parents of a 2-year-old son.

An effort began to have Gov. Trammell pay his widow the $1,000 reward offered for the capture of Bob Ashley “dead or alive,” since Riblet fired the fatal shot. In the end she only received a $100 reward from the Bank of Stuart. The Miami City Council also agreed, for the time being, to continue paying his widow his salary.

APPEAL OF DEATH SENTENCE
As John Ashley’s death-penalty appeal to the Florida Supreme Court lagged on, the family feared he would be hanged on his original June 18 execution date. An anguished Lugenia Ashley arrived the day before to exchange parting words with her son.

But the execution never happened, as the Supreme Court continued to consider the issue. Joe Ashley made arrangements to visit his son in late June. Hee also visited the funeral parlor where Bob was prepared for burial and the circuit court, where he asked Judge Branning for the Savage automatic revolver, Smith and Wesson revolver and Winchester rifle that Bob Ashley had when he killed Hendrickson and Riblet. The weapons had been held by the Miami chief of police and the judge ordered that they be handed over to the sheriff for safe keeping, until it could be determined whether they should be confiscated or turned over to the heirs of Bob Ashley.

The Herald, apparently speaking briefly to Joe, quoted him as saying that Bob had been “a little off’ the last time he had seen him, about three weeks before the shootings. Joe was also quoted as saying that, had he known Bob contemplated the shooting of Hendrickson, he would have tried to prevent his son’s visit to Miami.

Walking through the streets of Miami, Joe attracted attention. According to the June 26 edition of the Herald: “The well-knit figure of the head of the Ashley family, his dark hair despite the fifty odd years of his existence, erect poise, and easy carriage attracted considerable attention among the people who recognized him as he walked through the streets.”

EXECUTION WAIT GETS WEIRDER
If John Ashley was enjoying his celebrity as he awaited the death penalty in the summer of 1915 — so was his jailer, W.A. Hicks, who had replaced Wilbur Hendrickson. The media-loving Hicks was eager to oblige requests for access to John, including one to produce a story on John’s life. Hicks even planned to help John with an autobiography, “knowing that a lack of amusement made prisoners morose and dangerous,” the Herald reported. Hicks planned to act as editor, while fellow murder convict Herbert E. Fine took dictation from John. The Herald said arrangements had already been made with a publishing house in St. Louis to create and market the book.

“Deputy Hicks declares the story, as far as the writers have proceeded with it, makes intensely interesting reading, and some of its chapters read like a tale of the Wild West in its wildest days,” the Herald wrote.

While the Herald endorsed the action, the Fort Lauderdale paper decried the undertaking, saying the adventures of an outlaw would be a bad example for young boys who read such a book. It was never published.

Jailer Hicks seemed to revel in the limelight and catering to John Ashley. In July, it was reported that Hicks was playing a Victrola for the jail’s 21 inmates, including John and two others convicted of murder.

Hicks also boasted of improvements he made to the jail, since Bob Ashley’s attempted break-in, including the placement of light bulbs in each jail cell so inmates could read at night.

A reporter who visited the jail in early August reported seeing John “faultlessly attired in a neat Palm Beach suit” and playing solitaire. John invited the reporter into the cell to see how impossible it would have been for him to signal through a window to his brother, Bob, outside the jail. John also told the reporter that he did not know his brother was in Miami that day.

John said Bob was his best friend. “We two boys, Bob and I, were always ‘paling’ together,” he said. “We have only been separated for about three years of our lives. I feel that the sooner I’m dead the better off I’ll be. Bob’s gone, and he was my best pal. I am anxious to go, too.”

John said he continued to suffer considerable pain from the shooting that hit his jaw and eye. He complained that a doctor had removed his eye prematurely. He alleged that he had been pressured to agree to the operation, under the belief that it had to be done to remove the bullet. “But the eye is gone and the bullet’s still there, and I think they gave me a rotten deal,” he said.

The reporter marveled at John’s deportment. “Contrary to the belief of many that Ashley is uneducated, he has a large vocabulary, this fact, being demonstrated during the conversation. He talks as intelligently as the average citizen, and notwithstanding his many wild escapades, he is as pleasing a conversationalist as one would meet in a day’s travel.”

At the time, John’s death sentence was still under appeal, with John’s execution being stayed until the state Supreme Court reconvened in October. The court eventually set Jan. 27, 1916, to consider his case.

Meanwhile, John was being labeled “the Jesse James of Florida,” with the Court Theatre in Fort Myers presenting a character based on John in a production about the hold up of a train.

NO WORD ON KID LOWE
Eight months after the Bank of Stuart robbery, Kid Lowe remained at large. His silence prompted some newspapers to speculate whether Bob Ashley had killed him in their days hiding out in the Everglades after the bank robbery. If Bob would attempt to spring big brother John out of jail, he certainly would have sought revenge if he thought Lowe purposely shot his brother.

In a Nov. 10, 1915, Miami Herald article, J.E. Burgess, a detective representing the American Fidelity Bond Company, which had to pay the $4,500 taken in the Bank of Stuart robbery, said Kid Lowe was also known as Kid Lowery. Burgess said Lowe hailed from Oklahoma, where he was alleged to have held up and robbed several trains, blown a few safes in banks and taken an active part in similar deeds. Burgess also said he was investigating a report that Indians in Oklahoma had paid Lowe/Lowery to go to Florida to bring about John’s conviction. Most newspaper reports had described him as a gangster from Chicago. It wasn’t until August 1917 that Lowe was captured in Alabama.

ANOTHER ESCAPE ATTEMPT
While things were relatively quiet for several months, John brought himself to the headlines again in November 1915 when it was revealed he had spent five weeks trying to dig his way out of his ground-floor cell in the county jail with a spoon. He had thrown dirt and rock in a closet in his cell and later flushed it down the toilet, in small quantities. He had dug through a three-inch concrete floor and was within two feet of being outside when he was stopped on Nov. 5.

Sheriff Hardie said jail officials had first discovered John trying to tunnel his way out five weeks previously but allowed him to proceed, to determine whether other inmates were doing the same. John blamed another convicted murderer, Floriah Reuben Crawford, for giving him away to the sheriff.

As John awaited his hearing, which was pushed back to Feb. 20 and then April 12, he took time to get involved in the cases of fellow inmates. In the trial of Floriah Reuben Crawford, he testified for the defense, saying that the daughter of the murder victim had visited him at the county jail and told him that she had been forced to falsely testify against Crawford. In subsequent testimony, during a May 16 hearing, John said in passing that he no longer kept track of the days of the week save for one. “I never know what day it is except when Saturday comes, for we always scrub up on Saturdays.”

As the months of John’s unresolved appeal ticked by, so did the monthly bills to keep him at the Dade County jail, instead of the state prison. The Feb. 1, 1916, disbursements for the county show Dr. E.K. Jandon received $1 for John’s medical care, J.H. Nepper received $77.50 as a special guard for John and Sheriff Hardie received $15.50 for John’s board. At the time, the jailer or sheriff typically lived at the jail, with his wife providing meals for the inmates. Because the killing occurred in Palm Beach County, it was responsible for reimbursing Dade for John’s incarceration and expenses. The Palm Beach Post estimated in August 1916 that the trials and John’s care had cost the county $10,000 — about $290,000 in today’s dollars. Palm Beach paid Dade $1,142 for keeping John.

One pastime John partook of in jail was playing cards. A reporter who entered the jail in March 1916 noted that John and other inmates played by putting their hands outside of the cells. John was ministered to by Ensign W.F. Brown and his wife of the Salvation Army. During a farewell ceremony for the Browns, who were moving to Atlanta, it was reported that John’s voice could be heard above others during the singing of hymns.

Mrs. Brown said in an interview that John had told her that he had thought about God more than anyone would suppose, and he warmly thanked her for the interest that she and her husband had shown in him. John said that he never knew who God was before he came to Miami. “I just grew up,” he said.

SUPREME COURT FINALLY RULES

Though the appeals process was expected to take just months, it took more than a year before the Florida Supreme Court finally ruled in August 1916 that John should be granted a new trial. The court agreed that the prosecution had failed to show that it was impossible for John to receive a fair and impartial trial in Palm Beach County. The ruling said that, at the time, some 1,500 people were available for jury duty but only 125 had been interviewed as potential jurors. The court also ruled that John’s other offenses, not connected with Tiger’s killing, should not have been presented to the jury. When asked for a comment on the ruling, John was quoted as saying, “Well, Hardie won’t get a chance to hang me after all.”

John was then returned to Palm Beach County. There was some discussion about whether he should be moved to the newly created Broward County, in whose jurisdiction it was established that Tiger was killed. But the case remained in Palm Beach County, since the site was part of that county at the time the killing occurred.

The ruling for the new trial left John confident, and he agreed to an interview with a Miami Herald reporter on Aug. 12. In the interview, John said he could have continued living out West but decided to return to Florida because he “wanted to prove myself innocent of the crime that was charged against me.”

The reporter noted that he had become thin and pale. John said he was in poor health and continued to suffer pain in his eye, but that he had been assured by a physician that the bullet could be removed.

John said he didn’t think he would be convicted again for Tiger’s murder but showed willingness to serve time for other crimes. He said that he had spent most of his time reading in jail but that his remaining eye had gotten so bad that he could only read a few hours at a time. He also spoke well of his treatment at the Dade jail, saying he had received every consideration from the sheriff and his deputies.

Branning was on vacation when the ruling for the new trial was issued, but on his return, Sept. 7, he ordered John returned to Palm Beach County. Sheriff Baker drove to Miami that day to get him, accompanied by John’s attorney, Judge Thompson, and a Palm Beach Post reporter.

“Ashley was sitting on his bunk, writing a letter in the dim light that filtered through the bars of his cell,” the reporter wrote. “He was scantily garbed in the nether portion of a suit of BVDs — his emaciated torso glistening with sweat. “Upon being told of his good fortune Ashley commenced dressing and packing up his few belongings for the trip to West Palm Beach. A few bits of clothing, shaving materials, letters, and a small testament comprising the lot. They were hastily thrown together and Ashley announced that he was ‘ready to ride.’”

During the ride to Palm Beach County, John said that 18 months in jail had played havoc with his memory. He acknowledged that he made a mistake in escaping during his trial in Palm Beach County. He said that if he was lucky enough to escape the gallows, he intended to go to South America to engage in cattle-raising.

During the ride, he marveled at seeing trees, saying he could only see two pine trees on one side of his cell and a box car on the other. When he asked Baker to travel by way of the ocean, the sheriff acceded to his wishes. When locked in a cell in West Palm Beach, John commented, “Well, I’m glad to be back in Palm Beach County.”

John’s return to Palm Beach County worked in his favor, as a grand jury, in November recommended that the murder charge in the killing of DeSoto Tiger be dropped but the Bank of Stuart robbery charge be prosecuted.

Prosecutor Gramling indeed dropped the murder charge and John on Nov. 14 entered a plea agreement in which Branning sentenced him to 17 years for the bank robbery, less than the 20-year maximum.

When he heard the decision, John is quoted as saying, “Well, you might as well have given me the limit judge, for I’ll get to feeling at home up there at that time.”

In the form of a grand jury’s recommendation, the people of Palm Beach County had saved him from hanging. It was just another move in John Ashley’s game of life. Said the Stuart Times: “Ashley was attired in a trim Palm Beach suit, white canvas shoes and a shirt of the newest pattern. He appears more like a prosperous young businessman instead of the leader of one of the most desperate gangs the state has ever known.”

Surprisingly, little outrage was shown in South Florida regarding the dropping of the murder charge in Tiger’s death. Joe Ashley and son Will, attending the sentencing, appeared pleased by the verdict, “as are the people of the county generally,” reported the Palm Beach Post.

But the Ocala Evening Star declared that dropping the murder charge in Tiger’s death was “one of the great misfits of justice ever dealt out in the state. No wonder the Florida Indians are suspicious of white men.”