DESTINED FOR DAISY’S

As Hanford returned, heat had reached a point that as November approached John decided to head to his kid sister Daisy’s in Jacksonville. Daisy, 20, had been dating 26-year-old Otis D. Kirkland of Jacksonville, whom she would marry in January 1925.

Daisy was John’s favorite sister, and he was especially close to her, as was her nephew, Hanford, who was just one year younger. As the youngest of the Ashleys, she was the fun-loving favorite and even ran or owned a speak-easy for a while in Fruita.

Taking Middleton and Lynn with them, John and Hanford planned to drive at night up to Jacksonville, stay at Daisy’s during the day and then hit the road at night. But to make the trip, they needed a car. John knew just the right one.

His brother-in-law, George Mario, also known as Carlo, had just bought a 1924 Ford touring sedan. Mario, 30, had married John’s younger sister, Lola, 26, in October 1922. She was pregnant with their first child.

FINDING A CAR

Born blind, Lola, at the age of 12, had gone away to the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind in St. Augustine. When she returned, she continued to live with her parents in Fruita until marrying Mario and establishing their own home nearby.

Mario had never been directly associated with the Ashley Gang, though he had brushes with the law of his own. In 1923 he received a revolver wound while fleeing from a deputy sheriff in Salerno.

Mario had come to the United States at a young age with his father from Salerno, Italy, said Sandra Mario Provence of West Palm Beach, George’s granddaughter. “He had asked someone if they needed farm help, and Joe Ashley hired him to plant tomatoes on the Ashley property. The tomatoes went bust, but he married my grandmother, and that’s the story I know.”

As November 1924 approached, Lola was pregnant with their first child. Their new automobile gave George and Lola the comfort of knowing that a ride to seek medical help was available if Lola had complications during delivery.

“My grandfather told him, ‘You can’t take my car,’” Provence said. “He said, ‘Your sister’s going to have a baby, and we won’t have any way to go to the hospital.’ That wasn’t John’s concern. John’s concern was getting out.”

Mario’s plea didn’t deter John from requisitioning the car for his needs. Before taking the car on his journey, John apparently directed Mario to drive to downtown Stuart to fill it with supplies for the gang’s trip. When you get a directive from John Ashley, you don’t say no.

Meanwhile, Sheriff Bob Baker received a tip that the Ashley Gang was planning to go to Jacksonville. Instead of leading an effort to trap the outlaws himself, he relayed the tip to St. Lucie County Sheriff J.R. Merritt and dispatched deputies Elmer Padgett, Henry Stubbs and Lem Thomas, along with Stuart police Chief O.B. Padgett, to Fort Pierce, where they met Merritt at the Silver Palace Pharmacy around 5 p.m. Merritt said it was then that he was alerted that members of the Ashley Gang were going to pass through St. Lucie County by automobile that night.

Merritt said he agreed to help on the condition that they work with his plans, and they agreed to do so. Then the lawmen headed north, with Merritt taking along St. Lucie County Deputy O.E. “Three Fingers” Wiggins and Fort Pierce police Chief J.M. Smith.

A LIGHT RAIN FALLS

Four members of the gang — John, Hanford, Clarence Middleton and Ray Lynn — did indeed head north, piling in Mario’s car. They stopped in Fort Pierce, where John got a haircut and shave and played a game of pool. If the town seemed absent lawmen to John and his confederates, it was because Merritt and the police chief had already arrived at their destination north of Vero on Dixie Highway, the U.S. 1 of its time.

From downtown Fort Pierce, the four outlaws loaded back up — Hanford driving, Middleton at shotgun with John behind Middleton and Lynn behind Hanford — and headed for their doom.

Merritt’s plan was to capture the four outlaws at the wooden two-lane bridge that extends 300 yards over the Sebastian River, which at that time was part of St. Lucie County. Baker would later tell reporters that the ambush plan at the bridge was his idea.

The bridge was the only way to go north for miles, with the only other option going through the middle of the state to get to Jacksonville. At the time, the bridge served as a dividing line between St. Lucie County to the south and Brevard County to the north. Indian River County wouldn’t be created until 1925. Earlier in the day, the lawmen from Palm Beach County dispatched by Baker considered setting up the ambush at the bridge over the nearby St. Lucie River but quashed the idea for fear that setting it up so close to the Ashley Gang may alert them and prompt them to delay the trip or take another route.

TRAP IS SET

At the Sebastian River bridge, the deputies pulled a chain across the south end of the bridge and hung a red lantern in the middle of the chain. Then they hid in mangroves at the side of the road, awaiting the arrival of the outlaws. It was dark and late and raining intermittently.

Around 10:45 p.m., a car carrying Sebastian youths Ted R. Miller, 20, and Shadrick O. Davis , 21, approached the bridge and stopped their vehicle at the hanging chain. The Ashley Gang in their Ford was not far behind and pulled up behind, according to a written statement released by Sheriff Merritt the next day. Said the statement:

We waited until they stopped then came up from behind [out of the mangroves] and covered them with our guns. They were caught unawares, being interested in seeing why the automobile ahead had stopped.

When we came alongside, John Ashley saw me first and grabbed for his rifle. I pushed a shotgun in his face and Deputy Wiggins pushed a gun into his ribs at the same time, telling him to throw up his hands or he would blow his head off. Wiggins reached in and got Ashley’s rifle, while Chief of Police Smith got Lynn’s rifle. We then made all four of them get out of the motor car with their hands up and walk around in front of it, where the lights would shine on them.

I then got in Miller’s automobile, telling my men to search the outlaws carefully as I was going for my motor car and handcuffs. When I returned, I stopped my automobile with the lights shining on the party. I got out and went to the side door of my motor car to get the handcuffs. The first pair I got I did not have a key for. I asked Deputy Wiggins if he had a key to fit them and was getting more handcuffs out of the pocket of the door when Ashley gave a signal and all of the outlaws grabbed for their six-shooters. They had not been searched for them.

Right then and there the shooting began and when the smoke cleared away all four of the desperadoes lay on the ground dead. When the shooting began we were between 10 and 15 feet from the desperadoes.

With headlights glaring from cars aimed in both directions, there on the bridge lay the bodies of John Ashley, 36; Hanford Mobley, 19; Clarence Middleton, 24; and Ray Lynn, 25. Of the four, John Ashley was the only killer, having shot to death DeSoto Tiger on Dec. 29, 1911, and Deputy Fred Baker on Jan. 9, 1924. Hanford, Middleton and Lynn had never been accused of killing anyone.

Inside the car, deputies found guns, several hundred rounds of ammunition, a small amount of food and some clothing. Deputies said John had a rifle and two revolvers, Lynn had a rifle and revolver, Hanford had two revolvers and Middleton, one revolver.

They outlaws didn’t have much loot. Deputies found $100 on John, $85.85 on Hanford, and nothing on Middleton. Lynn was the best off with $363.

A PUBLIC DISPLAY

The News-Tribune reported that Judge Angus Sumner was summoned to the bridge to inspect the bodies. Sheriff Baker also rushed to the scene, and a coroner’s jury was impaneled. In the early morning of Sunday, Nov. 2, the coroner’s jury viewed the bodies at the scene of the killing.

Before loading the bodies in the car in which they came — Mario’s Ford  — Palm Beach Deputy Elmer Padgett scooped John’s glass eye out of his head to give to Sheriff Baker. During the Bank of Pompano robbery, John had twice left bullets, telling the recipients to give them to Baker and meet him in the Everglades. In response, Baker predicted he would wear John’s glass eye as his watch fob.

The bodies of the four were then taken to Fee & Stewart hardware and mortuary in downtown Fort Pierce. There, they were laid out along the storefront on Pine Street, now Second Street.

“Sunday, from early morning until the bodies had been removed, there was a crowd congregated in front of the undertaking parlors,” the Fort Pierce News-Tribune reported. “People from every section of the county and many from Palm Beach County came here hoping to get a glimpse of the dead men. Relatives and friends of the men were also present.”

It must have been a gruesome scene. John’s body was riddled with seven buckshot pellets and his right hand, his shooting hand, was blown off. Mobley’s body was shot through the left side with buckshot. Buckshot was scattered over Middleton’s body. Ray Lynn had his jaw shot away and other wounds to his head and body.

Why were the bodies publicly displayed like quarry from a hunt?

“This incident was instantly infamous because John was in the news for almost 15 years,” said Chessy Ricca, who has spent four years researching the Ashley Gang and helped prepare the permanent Ashley exhibit for the Elliott Museum in Stuart. “The chase was a sensation. Could it have been to prove to the public that they were in fact deceased? No more fear or threat of robbery or violence? Did it put the public at ease knowing they were dead?”

Despite the hundreds perhaps thousands of people who visited the scene, surprisingly no photos of the bodies laid out on the sidewalk are publicly available today. Perhaps because the bodies were so mutilated, no newspapers published photos of them. Steve Carr, who donated his Ashley Gang memorabilia to the Elliott, said recently that such a photo would be the “holy grail” of Ashley collectibles.

‘SCARED THE TAR’

Walking downtown and seeing a crowd around the hardware store, Ed Register remembered his dad taking him there to see what was happening. The image remained seared in his memory for more than eight decades.

“I wish my father never brought me there,” Register, 90 at the time, told Indian River Magazine, in 2007.  “I was only 7 years old, but I remember seeing those dead bodies laid out on the sidewalk.”

The image of the body of the youngest of the outlaws, Hanford Mobley, especially remained with him.

“I can picture one [of the bodies] in particular,” said Register, who died in 2010. “He was very young, late teens or early 20s, out on the cement sidewalk, uncovered and looking pale because all his blood had settled. They were all uncovered, lying on their backs with their arms at their sides. It scared the tar out of me.”

CLAIMING THE BODIES

The Palm Beach Post reported that Lugenia Ashley and Mary Mobley visited the undertaker’s parlor on Sunday, and then “burial robes were placed on the bodies of their sons.” The bodies were then shipped by train to Fruita and taken to the home of John’s sister and brother-in-law, Eva and Pete Jenkins, for viewing.

Boxer Jack Middleton claimed his brother Clarence’s body, which was shipped to Jacksonville and buried in Evergreen Cemetery. Nobody initially claimed Lynn’s body.

“From a young age his father had disowned him and had no interest in continuing a relationship with him,” Ray’s great-great-grandson, Austin Alderman of Fort Pierce, said recently. “The reason he’s buried in the Ashley family plot is that his own family said he was dead to him. They had no interest in claiming him.”

But the Ashleys believed they owed it to Lynn to give him a decent burial.

“Lynn lived and fought and died with them, and I couldn’t let them send him to a potter’s field,” said Bill Ashley, John’s brother. Bill was in jail when his brother and the other three were killed, serving a 30-day sentence on the moonshine possession charge. Sheriff Baker released him from Palm Beach County jail in West Palm Beach for 24 hours so he could attend his brother’s funeral.

ELECTION, FUNERAL SAME DAY

The funerals for John Ashley, Hanford Mobley and Ray Lynn took place at the family cemetery in Fruita on Tuesday, Nov. 4, Election Day, the same day Baker would learn whether he won re-election. Merritt ran unopposed.

At a rally for Democrat candidates the night before the election, Baker defended himself against charges of cowardice for not accompanying his deputies to confront the Ashley Gang. “I had political speeches to make that night and moreover expected any minute to have to begin the distribution of the ballot boxes, so I sent my four deputies,” he said.

“I want Merritt to have all the credit due him. I got the information and sent my deputies to the scene. Personally, I have spent $6,500 on the Ashley Gang since that escape from the Lauderdale jail. My opponents say, ‘Why wasn’t the fearless sheriff there?’ Pershing was in France, but did you see him in the ditches?”

Baker said over the years he had given rewards of $5 to $500 of his own money for information about the Ashleys, but he denied that he had given any reward money for the tip he received about them going to Jacksonville.

Despite the controversy over whether Baker should have been at the Sebastian River bridge, he would win re-election, defeating opponent Calvin Campbell by more than 300 votes. Baker would remain Palm Beach County sheriff until his death by heart attack in 1933 at the age of 46.

SOLEMN BURIAL

Lugenia allowed newspaper reporters and a photographer to attend the funeral.

At the grave site, she told Miami Herald reporter Bradley “Here they are — three of them. They killed them for not a thing in the world.”

Then she turned to Joe Ashley’s grave, dug 10 months earlier after the shootout at his moonshine still. “He never wanted to harm a hair on anybody’s head.”

Interjected her son, Bill Ashley, the last of her sons, the other four lost by gang activities. “Forget it, Ma, it doesn’t do any good to talk about it. He wanted to die anyway.”

Lugenia agreed. “Yes, he wanted to die, but they didn’t have to kill him.” Lugenia blamed the family’s troubles on Sheriff Baker. “It’s Bob Baker’s work. We never did anything to him. I hope he’s paralyzed tomorrow, and they have to feed him out of a spoon for the rest of his life. Gang? Gang? We don’t belong to no gang.”

When another relative comforted her that she would see them in the afterlife, Lugenia agreed. “Yes, it won’t be long ‘till we meet them again.”

All three of the dead lay in what the reporter described as “cheap gray coffins.” One by one they were lowered into the vault. John Ashley first, then Hanford Mobley and then Ray Lynn, who was unrelated but had no relative to claim his body. Middleton’s brother, the boxer, had claimed his body, with burial to be in Jacksonville.

The bodies had been held at the Mobley home/store in Gomez, since Monday, Nov. 3. The funeral was held the next day.

The Ashley-Mobleys have a code. Once a friend always a friend; a good turn for a good turn. Cold blood flows through their veins for the enemy, but not for one who was true to their cause. Ray Lynn fought and died with their boys, and they would not see him buried in a potter’s field.

Some 50 people attended along with a small group of them from the Salvation Army, which conducted the service. A woman from the Army sang a hymn and then Commander John Bourterse of Miami gave a short service.

“That was all,” the Herald reporter wrote. “The funeral was over. John Ashley, fastest man on the trigger in Florida, and his body had been consigned back to the Everglade soil that was once their stomping ground. The Ashley Gang was to be feared no more.”

INQUEST BEGINS

Meanwhile, Sheriff Merritt was flooded with congratulatory telegrams, and he said he was most proud of the one from Gov. John W. Martin: “Please accept my heartfelt congratulations on the splendid work that you and your deputies have done for Florida.” He also received a few threats, including one that said, “You got four of them, but they are not all gone yet.”

Nevertheless, Merritt would have to defend his actions at a coroner’s jury inquest — a formal inquiry into the killings — on Nov. 5, the day after the Ashley funerals.

The Indian River Press Journal reported that testimony by Miller and Davis, the young Sebastian men who stopped on the bridge before the Ashley Gang car arrived, “tended to show that the four desperadoes might have been shot down while handcuffed and defenseless.”

Miller, the driver, said that when he stopped at the bridge, he could see men with guns surrounding the car behind them and then ordering those in the car to stick up their hands. Then, Miller said, one of the men outside struck one of the men in the car in the face with his gun.

Miller said he thought a holdup was taking place, so he and Davis took off their watches and hid their money under a seat. He briefly stepped out of his car, walking on the bridge, but Davis told him to return to the car. He said Merritt soon came up to them and told them they had captured the Ashley Gang and asked Miller if he would give Merritt a ride to the other side of the bridge. The sheriff got on the floorboard of the car.

As they headed across the bridge, Miller said he and Davis saw the four prisoners standing in the road with their hands in the air, with the deputies’ guns trained on them. He said three of the prisoners were handcuffed together while John Ashley was standing on the side with a pair of handcuffs on his wrists.

On the way over the bridge, Miller testified, the sheriff showed them a pearl-handled revolver that he said had been taken from John Ashley.

HANDCUFFS SEEN ON OUTLAWS

When they returned to the south end of the bridge after taking Merritt to his car, Miller said they clearly saw the handcuffs on the prisoners. Miller said he then left the scene, heading into Sebastian. There, he told three men — Albert Schuman and two others, S.A. Braswell and George Badger — that the Ashley Gang had been captured. Having last seen them alive, Miller learned that they had been killed when Sheriff Merritt arrived in Sebastian shortly thereafter to make calls reporting that the Ashley Gang had been killed. All three men later arrived at the scene and became members of the coroner’s jury.

The packed hearing was heavily guarded by deputies. The gang’s weapons — rifles and revolvers, and its store of ammunition — had been placed on a table in the packed courtroom of several hundred spectators. Among those attending was Lugenia Ashley, “surrounded by a small party of friends.”

Attorneys C.D. Abbott and Edgar C. Thompson and prosecutor H.J. Dame argued on behalf of Merritt and the deputies.

Countering the testimony of Miller and Davis, undertaker Will Fee, who prepared the bodies for burial, took the stand and testified that he had heard rumors that the men had been handcuffed. But he said he found no marks on the arms of the dead men that might have been caused by them.

After hearing three hours of testimony and then meeting outside the courtroom, the coroner’s jury hearing the case returned from its conference and Judge Sumner discharged them and ordered that a new jury be impaneled because some of the jurors had been at the bridge scene and may be called as witnesses.

Sumner soon halted the hearing and later agreed to impanel a new coroner’s jury because Schuman, Braswell and Badger might be needed as witnesses if a trial were held. The new inquest was held Nov. 10.

ASHLEY FAMILY REPRESENTATION

For both hearings, the Ashley and Mobley families had hired a young attorney who had just arrived in Fort Pierce, Alto Lee Adams, to represent them. Adams 15 years later would be appointed to the Florida Supreme Court. But in this matter of dealing with the South Florida legal system, Adams, a new arrival from the Panhandle, admitted to being a greenhorn against established lawyers in the region.

Adams had argued that he could produce additional witnesses from Palm Beach County who would testify regarding marks on the arms of Hanford and John.

Adams had seen the mutilated bodies when they were laid out on the sidewalk in front of the Fee and Stewart mortuary. During the hearing, Adams said he had evidence that the four men were shot down with handcuffs on them and moved that the bodies be exhumed and examined for the prints of handcuffs. Judge Sumner denied Adams’ motion. “I was virtually an unknown and did not make any headway,” Adams wrote in his memoir, The Fourth Quarter.

Testimony from Miller and Davis was also heard at the second inquest.

Miller said he later returned — without Davis — to the scene and looked at the bodies as they lay on the ground and saw marks on the arms of two of them that he believed were caused by the handcuffs.

Their testimony was bolstered by other witnesses from Sebastian who visited the scene the night of Nov. 1 and morning of Nov. 2 who also said they saw marks on their arms. Three men who were notified by Miller and Davis that the Ashley Gang had been captured also backed up their statements.

Albert Schuman, who was later asked by Sheriff Merritt to gather a coroner’s jury, also testified that when he went to the scene, he checked their wrists and said he saw marks on the wrists of two of them. Schuman also said he searched the bodies and found no weapons on them, a contradiction of Merritt’s statement that the four still had their weapons on them.

S.A. Braswell testified that he saw marks on the left hand of Lynn and the right hand of Hanford. George Badger said he saw marks on the right wrist of one man and the left wrist of the other. D.J. Rhea also said he saw marks on two of the men’s wrists.

SHERIFF, UNDERTAKER CHALLENGE ACCOUNT

Undertaker Will Fee also testified in person at the second hearing and once again repeated his testimony that, after hearing rumors that the men had been shot while handcuffed, he carefully examined their arms and could find no mark indicating the rumor was true.

Merritt’s testimony Nov. 10 was in keeping with the type-written statement he released Nov. 2, the day after the shooting. After returning from the other side of the bridge to retrieve his car, he exited the car. He testified that the shooting occurred while he was getting the handcuffs, and he did not fire a shot. “He emphatically denied the men were handcuffed,” said a report in the Fort Pierce News-Tribune.

The deputies appearing at the hearing all testified that the men were not in handcuffs, including Deputy Wiggins of St. Lucie County, Chief Smith of Fort Pierce and deputies Stubbs, Thomas and Elmer Padgett of Palm Beach County. Another law enforcement officer on the bridge that night, Stuart police Chief O.B. Padgett, had been struck with an acute case of indigestion and did not testify at either hearing.

Wiggins, Stubbs, Thomas and Padgett all testified that John Ashley had given a signal and reached for his revolver. Wiggins testified he then shot Ashley’s right hand off and his pistol dropped to the ground. Smith testified he picked up two pistols after the shooting was over.

Before adjourning, Judge Sumner asked if anyone had voluntary statements to make. John’s mother, Lugenia, and sister, Mary Mobley, then testified that they had seen marks on the wrists of the dead men.

After the hearing, the jury — comprised of J.T. Lisk, J.W. Ergle, Arch Taylor, T.S. Kirby, H.J. Tindall and another identified as “Mr. McGuigan” — retired to discuss the case. They rendered a verdict of justifiable homicide, apparently on the strength of the testimony from the lawmen that they would have taken the four Ashley Gang members alive if it had been possible.

QUESTIONS REMAIN

Despite the verdict, the court of public opinion was never fully satisfied with the answers given at the inquests, and a debate has raged in the century after their deaths of the four Ashley Gang members over whether they were executed by the law officers. Also at issue was who and how Baker got tipped off that the Ashley Gang would be heading north that night to Jacksonville. Could it have been Laura Upthegrove, perhaps upset that John didn’t bring her with him?

St. Lucie historian Ada Coats Williams, in the late 1950s, interviewed one of the deputies on the bridge that night who told her the lawmen summarily executed all four members of the Ashley Gang. The deputy said Sheriff Merritt knew the tiny Fort Pierce jail would never hold them. Three law officers had already been killed — one by John and two by his brother Bob — and they didn’t plan a fourth.

Williams’ informant exacted a promise from her. “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,’” she told Indian River Magazine in 2007.

Williams never identified her source, but retired detective Warren Sonne, who wrote the story for Indian River Magazine, concluded that the informant was Palm Beach sheriff’s Deputy Elmer Padgett, who was at the bridge and the still shooting and who had been threatened directly by John Ashley.

After the last deputy on the bridge that night died in 1983, Williams delivered a speech on the Ashley Gang to the Florida Historical Society, which she later expanded into the book, Florida’s Ashley Gang, published by the Florida Classics Library in Hobe Sound in 1996.

In her book, the deputy Sonne identified as Padgett gave the same account of the handcuffs as Miller and Davis, with three of the outlaws handcuffed together and John Ashley handcuffed separately. “The deputy was afraid John might have had a gun hidden, and he was known to be a sharpshooter and quick actor,” Williams said. “He had warned [John] not to drop his hands and said that if he did, he’d shoot him.

“Suddenly John Ashley took a quick step forward and started to drop his handcuffed hands, and the deputy guarding him fired. He said that he supposed the other prisoners tried to break, or that the deputies feared that John had fired on him, for suddenly there was a lot of shooting, and they were all killed.”

Of Padgett, Williams wrote: “He did not credit Sheriff Merritt with any of the shooting. He also did not apologize for his act. He made good a threat to John Ashley and said that John had promised to kill all of them if he had a chance.”

“It was them or us at that point,” Williams quotes the deputy as telling her. Elmer Padgett then deputy then scooped John’s glass eye out.

Williams’ account was bolstered with the publication in 2014 of O.B. Padgett: A Florida Native Son, a book by Alice L. Luckhardt, which contains written reminiscences of the former Stuart police chief.

O.B. Padgett was Elmer Padgett’s brother and one of the lawmen on the Sebastian Bridge during the shooting. In the book, Padgett contradicts the testimony the law officers gave at the inquests and concedes the outlaws were handcuffed. Because he was suffering from an acute case of indigestion, he did not testify at the 1924 inquests and said he was surprised he was never questioned afterward. But in his written account he gave a step-by-step description of what happened.

Padgett said that on the way to the Sebastian River bridge deputies did not discuss killing the gang once captured. Padgett said that after the Ford carrying the outlaws stopped at the bridge, six deputies surrounded them and poked their automatic shotguns to the side of their heads. Deputy Lem Thomas, who was made part of the posse because he knew Ashley and could identify him, approached the right side of the vehicle, pointed his flashlight inside the car and exclaimed, “There’s John Ashley sitting there; look at his one eye, that’s him.”

Sheriff Merritt then approached the right side of the car, opened the door and ordered Clarence Middleton out of the car. Thomas searched him and handcuffed him and walked him to the front of the Ford. Then Thomas reached into the car, pulled out two pistols and a Winchester rifle and handed them to O.B. Padgett, who stuck the pistols in his belt and held the rifle.

Then John Ashley, sitting in the back seat behind Middleton, was ordered out of the car, with Thomas retrieving a .38 revolver John kept in a home-made deerskin holster he was wearing. Padgett said John was the only one who had a gun on his person. Then he was searched and handcuffed. Hanford and Lynn then exited the car and were searched and handcuffed to Middleton, “all the while as four deputies had their weapons trained on the outlaws’ every move.”

Then Merritt left to retrieve his vehicle from the other side of the bridge and returned, parking so that his car was directly in front of the Ashley Ford and both cars were facing each other with their headlights on. Merritt then asked O.B. Padgett to bring over the confiscated weapons to his car. As he was doing so, O.B. Padgett said he then heard Deputy Henry Stubbs ask Elmer Padgett, “Elmer, do you want to kill John?” O.B. said Elmer replied, “Might as well and get it all over with.”

Wrote Padgett of what happened next:

John Ashley then spoke up and said, ‘If you are going to kill me, how about a drink before you do?’ Elmer said, ‘What kind of drink do you mean, a drink?’ He said, ‘A drink of water, liquor, anything, just give me a drink before you kill me,’ and has he reached up to take his hat off, apparently all four deputies fired at the same time at the bandits; they were all shot down — five loads of 12 gauge buckshot in each bandit. They were all handcuffed as they all lay there on the ground.

Concluded witness Padgett:

The men were killed in cold blood while handcuffed and unarmed. They very meekly gave themselves up. They never argued; they never attempted to escape; there was no talking between them. John was the only one who had anything to say, and that was when they were going to kill him. It has often worried me — about a man being as brave as John Ashley was — standing there and asking for a drink. When he asked them to let him take his hat off … they were all killed.

The four firing weapons were Palm Beach deputies Elmer Padgett and Stubbs, Fort Pierce police chief Smith and St. Lucie deputy Wiggins. According to O.B. Padgett’s version, neither he nor Sheriff Merritt nor Lem Thomas, who was unarmed, fired weapons.

Padgett said that after the shooting and things had settled down, Merritt looked around and said, ‘Well, I guess that takes care of this.’

Wrote Padgett:

When the deputies started loading the bodies of the bandits, they picked one of them up and threw him in the back of their car about like throwing in a dead dog. John Ashley was thrown in next, right on top of the first one. Hanford Mobley was picked up and tossed in right on top of the others and then the last bandits. Elmer Padgett drove them to Fort Pierce in their own automobile.

Padgett also revealed who provided the tip about the Ashley Gang’s planned trip to Jacksonville the night of Nov. 1, 1924. He said he received it from George Mario, John Ashley’s brother-in-law, and then relayed the information to Sheriff Baker.

Wrote Padgett:

I was walking down the sideway about mid-morning this Saturday. It was a beautiful morning; the sun was shining, and it was warm; the birds were singing and everything was just beautiful. I walked by a grocery store where George F. Mario [brother-in-law of John Ashley] had just walked out and was putting some supplies in his car. I stopped and spoke to George, and we started talking and passing the time of day. I asked him if he had anything new at all, he looked all around and saw that there was nobody nearby to hear what he said. He said, “Yes, they are leaving tonight, and they are going to California. They are going as far as Jacksonville tonight and will lay up there tomorrow at John Ashley’s sister, Daisy’s, house and they will continue traveling at night until they get to California. They will be traveling in this automobile that I am putting these supplies in. They’re going to leave later today and there will be four of them.

Padgett continued:

I thought the situation over very carefully, pondered it in my mind a little bit, went on down to my office, sat around and talked a while to some of the boys. Then I went out and rode around a little, trying to figure out just what to do, if anything. I decided to call Sheriff Bob Baker of Palm Beach County, of which Stuart was a part of that time. For fear that somebody might overhear me talking on the telephone in my office, I went to my home and called Bob Baker on my private telephone. And in talking to him, I did not want to give the name of my informer — I did not want to tell him of the information and how I got it. One of his first reactions was, “Padgett, you better watch this kind of information — if they can get you out of town this afternoon, they’ll rob that bank again.” It was then that I assured him that my information was correct.

PERSONAL EFFECTS TELL STORY

Padgett said that some of the supplies he had seen in the car earlier in the day remained in it after the shooting. “There were a couple of clean shirts in the car,” he wrote. “Hanford Mobley had a small overnight bag with a couple of changes of underwear, a shirt and a bunch of letters and pictures.”

When the bodies were taken to the undertaker’s, Padgett said he was given Mobley’s overnight bag. He said Merritt had promised him Ashley’s Winchester rifle but never gave it to him. When he got to his office on Monday, Padgett said he went through Hanford’s overnight bag.

“When I went through it, I saw what was in it — mostly a lot of pictures and letters. He had letters from a young girl in California and a lot of her pictures. Apparently, from her letters, they had intended being married when he got back to California.”

Padgett said he wrote the woman on his office stationery, telling her that Mobley had been killed. But he said the woman wrote back, saying Hanford was using him “to inform her that there would be no marriage between them.”

He said he sent another letter to the woman that included newspaper clippings. “I wished her the best of luck in her future life and never heard from her again.”

Padgett said he gave the overnight bag and the rest of the photos and letters to Hanford’s mother, Mary. “She seemed to be very surprised but appreciated what I did,” he said.

Before the shootings, Padgett said he had occasionally stopped at Mary Mobley’s store in Fruita but only did so one time after giving her the photos. He said George Mario had advised him to look out for the Mobleys “and to be careful and not go where they were, the Mobley part of the family was planning to do me harm.” Padgett said he once was called by George Mobley to come help them with a disturbance at their store at Gomez. Thinking it was a trap, he decided not to make the call.

REASON TO BE CAUTIOUS

George Mario also had reason to be on the lookout himself. Elzie Prevatt, a friend of both the Ashleys and the law officers who was interviewed in 1990 by Billie Holt, said the family suspected it was Mario who had tipped off law enforcement. “This fellow Mario, he was the one. There was only one Ashley man left, Bill Ashley. And the Ashley girls. They were all left and the old lady was left. They figured that Mario was the one that told the law.”

Nevertheless, for eight years, George Mario participated in Ashley family functions, living next-door to his in-laws in Fruita. In 1925, the Marios and Ashleys celebrated the birth of Mario, Lola and George’s only child.

MYSTERIOUS DROWNING

But then came that fateful day on Dec. 2, 1932, when Mario went for a boat ride with his brother-in-law, Bill, the last of the Ashley men. The two had been hired to work on construction of a new bridge across the St. Lucie River and were looking for green timber that could be used for pilings.

As Bill Ashley reported it, their small rowboat filled with water and foundered with Mario, 40,  drowning. Bill claimed Mario, who had been crippled by a shooting 10 years before, could not swim. He said he twice tried to pull him into the boat, with the boat capsizing the second time and Mario drowning. Bill said he then swam ashore to save himself.

A search was conducted that included dragging the canal and placing a screen across the canal locks in case the body passed through it. The body was found 11 days later on a sand island in the South Fork of the St. Lucie River by 12-year-old Claude Sides Jr. The body was badly decomposed, but in the end the death was ruled accidental.

Prevatt said Bill Ashley later admitted to Elmer Padgett that he had killed Mario for his betrayal of the Ashley Gang for tipping off law enforcement. “He had to wait all them years to get to do it,” Prevatt said. “He knocked him overboard and just turned the boat over and let it float on down.”

OPPORTUNE TIME

George Mario’s granddaughter, Sandra Provence, said Bill had waited several years to seek revenge so that young Carlo Mario was old enough to take care of himself and would not be a burden on his blind mother, Lola, Bill’s sister. She said her grandfather knew how to swim, having traveled several times across the Atlantic from his native Italy.

Provence said Zeb Crews, who had married her cousin, Lugenia, daughter of Eva Ashley, one of the four Ashley sisters, told her at her father’s funeral in 1992 that Bill was responsible for her grandfather’s murder.

“Uncle Zeb said to my brother and me, ‘You know, Uncle Bill killed your dad’s father over the fact that he ratted on them about the car,” Provence said. “They got killed at the bridge because it was George’s fault for ratting them out.”

If Bill killed George Mario, it would be the last act of vengeance practiced by the Ashley men. Joe and his sons had a long history of retribution going back to 1881, when Joe Ashley sought to avenge the death of his uncle, John, after whom he would name the leader of the Ashley Gang. Bill Ashley, the last of the original Ashley brothers, died  of a heart attack in 1940.

Mario, who had recently been released from an Alabama prison after serving a sentence for grand larceny, wasn’t the only person associated with the Ashleys who would meet a tragic end after the 1924 shootings at the Sebastian River Bridge.

DAISY DIES

Daisy Ashley died in 1928 of what was described as an accidental poisoning or suicide after the recent breakup with a lover.

BAD END FOR LAURA

Heartbroken after the death of John and drinking heavily, Laura Upthegrove would live a tumultuous life of drink after John. One day she was so stewed that she went to the Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office to demand that Sheriff Bob Baker return John Ashley’s glass eye to her. He complied.

From Salerno, Laura moved to Okeechobee but was arrested several times for public drunkenness. She married Leon Lawrence in 1926 in Martin County but divorced him in 1927 in Palm Beach County.

She wandered about and was arrested in Jacksonville in March 1927 for public drunkenness and sentenced to 30 days. After her release she returned to Canal Point on Lake Okeechobee and worked at a gas station owned by her mother. She married yet another time, to 34-year-old Charles Swindal, on Aug. 11, 1927.

Seven days later, while working at the Upthegrove gas station, she got into a fight with a customer over the quality of an illegal bottle of whiskey she had sold him. Deputies Elmer Padgett and Archibald Brownlee had stopped to see Laura and witnessed her chasing the man with a gun and running him out of the store.

Back in the station, Laura’s mother took the gun away from her. Upset, Laura was reported to have taken a bottle of disinfectant, swallowed its contents and collapsed. Within minutes, the 30-year-old Laura was dead.

The bridge shooting had all but ended the Ashley Gang, though a few associated with Laura, some by blood, would continue to operate. They included Laura’s brother, Earl Upthegrove, and Joe Tracy, the original Ashley Gang member who turned himself in on a murder charge in Osceola County just a month before the shooting at the Sebastian River Drive, an arrest that likely saved his life.

GEORGE IS KILLED

George Mobley, Hanford’s father, would be killed in Melbourne in 1956 at the age of 79. Mobley, who had divorced Mary Ashley Mobley in 1927, had gotten a ride from a bar on A1A when an argument ensued after he spat tobacco on the floor of his ride’s car. The two in the car left but returned, with Mobley telling them to get their guns “we’re going to shoot it out and I’m going to kill you.”

Mobley then fired his shotgun into the house where the men had gone, with one of them, Jack Raymond, returning shots with a .22 rifle that killed Mobley.

DEATHS OF LUGENIA, DAUGHTERS

Having buried her husband, all five sons and a daughter, Lugenia Ashley died in 1946 at the age of 84 and was buried at the family cemetery in Fruita.

Among the three daughters who survived their mother, Mary died in 1979 at the age of 93, Lola died in 1983 at the age of 89 and Eva, the last surviving child of Joe and Lugenia Ashley, died in 1986 at the age of 89.

CLOSING THE CHAPTER

The last chapter in the history of the Joe and Lugenia Ashley family was closed. For those keeping score, a total of 12 people had died during the dozen years of John Ashley’s public criminal career.  On the side of the public and law enforcement, the deaths included Desoto Tiger in 1911, jailer Wilbur Hendrickson and Officer John Riblet in 1915 and Deputy Fred Baker in 1924. The deaths suffered by the Ashley Gang and family included brother Bob killed in the Miami attempted jail break in 1915, brothers Ed and Frank Ashley lost at sea while rum-running in 1921, patriarch Joe Ashley killed at the still in 1924, and John Ashley, nephew Hanford Mobley and Ray Lynn and Clarence Middleton killed on the Sebastian River bridge in 1924.

Dozens of bank robberies were blamed on the Ashley Gang over the years. The latest entry on John Ashley in Wikipedia, for example, says he and the Ashley Gang were responsible for robbing nearly $1 million from 40 banks.

But in reality, only three bank robberies — the 1915 Bank of Stuart robbery of $4,500; the 1922 second Bank of Stuart robbery of $8,133.14; and the 1924 Bank of Pompano robbery of $9,000 — could squarely be blamed on them. Total take: $21,633.14, or about $400,000 in today’s money.