Family Business

The end of the Ashley Gang came the night of Nov. 1, 1924, when John Ashley, his nephew Hanford Mobley and Ray Lynn and Clarence Middleton were gunned down on the Sebastian River bridge.
The end of the Ashley Gang came the night of Nov. 1, 1924, when John Ashley, his nephew Hanford Mobley and Ray Lynn and Clarence Middleton were gunned down on the Sebastian River bridge. ELLIOTT MUSEUM

The criminal life and violent times of the Ashley Gang

The Ashley Gang was Florida’s most notorious crime family of the 20th century, using a tiny community now in Martin County as its base of operations.

Joe Ashley and his wife, Lugenia, and their growing family of nine had moved from the west coast of Florida around 1901. Their middle son, John, had captured national headlines when he was accused of killing Seminole trapper DeSoto Tiger on Dec. 29, 1911, and stealing his valuable otter pelts while the two were traveling in a canoe on a canal south of Lake Okeechobee.

At the time, John was living with his family in West Palm Beach but soon fled the state and remained on the lam for more than two years. With John gone, the Ashley family moved about 1914 to Fruita, a remote wilderness of hard Florida scrub and sand 10 miles south of Stuart and 30 miles north of Palm Beach. While father Joe tried his hand at tomato farming initially, he soon turned to moonshining and bootlegging, an enterprise all five of his sons would join.

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