DEADLY CONSEQUENCES
Part 7 of 10
SHOOTOUT AT THE STILL
As tensions heat up between the Ashleys and lawmen, Joe Ashley’s moonshine still is raided with deadly consequences for both sides
BY GREGORY ENNS
After nearly two more years in prison, John Ashley made his fifth and final escape from custody on Sept. 27, 1923.
He and fellow prisoner Wayne C. Cobb were being held in a stockade at a state road camp near Westville in the Panhandle when they forced the bars out of a cell and then escaped in broad daylight.
Because of his multiple prison escapes, John had been shackled, but in July 1923 Commissioner of Agriculture William Allen McRae, whose department apparently oversaw the prison road crew, ordered that they be removed. Once again, John had exhibited good behavior during imprisonment, earning privileges such as working on a road crew, where security measures were more lax in than inside prison, and would facilitate an eventual escape.
Cobb, a Navy deserter from West Virginia serving a three-year sentence for grand larceny, himself was a three-time prison escapee. The two parted company after their escape, with Cobb heading north — he would be captured in February 1924 in College Station, Pennsylvania, after robbing a fraternity at Penn State — and John fleeing back to the freedom of the Everglades.
QUIET RETURN
John’s return to the Everglades in 1923 wouldn’t be a big reunion of the gang. Kid Lowe, who assisted in the first Bank of Stuart robbery and was the first outsider to join the gang, had departed company in 1915, shortly before John’s brother Bob was killed in a shootout after trying to break John out of the Miami jail. Brothers Ed and Frank Ashley were lost at sea during a rum-running mission in the Bahamas in 1921. Clarence Middleton, confederate in the second Bank of Stuart robbery in 1922, remained in prison. His partners, Hanford Mobley and Roy Matthews, who also used the name Robert Young Matthews, remained free after escaping from the Broward County Jail in late 1922, with Matthews dropping off the map. The volatile Hanford, now 18, returned to the Everglades after his escape, though he would later travel to Germany and California.
For the most part, on his return John kept a low profile, reuniting with Laura Upthegrove and focusing more on helping his father Joe and brother Bill with their lucrative rum-running business, which had been given a big boost by Prohibition. Besides John, Joe and Bill were the only two male Ashleys from the original family of 11 left living. Though often discovered in the periphery of some of the gang’s major crimes, they were never directly implicated or charged, with their greatest recorded offenses being moonshining and rum-running.
EXPLOSIVE START TO YEAR
Despite the relative calm as 1923 closed, 1924 would open explosively, marking the beginning of the end of the Ashley Gang with the shooting death of family patriarch Joe.
The following account is based on news accounts of the time and Stuart Marshal Hix Stuart’s book The Notorious Ashley Gang, which includes a transcript of an interview with John Ashley.
After breaking out of prison, John returned to Fruita and began working in his dad’s bootlegging business again. After his return, John said he retrieved one of his .45s from his family’s home, buckled it on and went to do some target practice with his rifle, which he said his father had kept cleaned and oiled for him while he was in prison. “I found the eagle eye as good as ever,’’ he said.
But shortly after John’s return, Joe was arrested for having a moonshine still. Also charged was 19-year-old Albert Miller, who was described as the owner of a store near the Ashley home in Fruita but who was likely the front man for a store Joe owned. Soon, Joe, John and Miller were living at a still site about a mile and a half southwest of the Ashley home in Fruita.
Their camp was hidden in the woods where tree cover hid their activities but afforded them a panoramic view of the low-lying thicket of Florida scrub and any possible intruders. Their camp had three tents, one for Joe and Albert, one for John and a third for their supplies. They were running a 100-gallon still.
Feeling he could venture out quietly in public, John had a vehicle that needed repairs and took it to Salerno. John said he got in a fight with the garage owner, a man he identified as “Seymour,’’ over the bill, which prompted the garage owner to call town authorities, telling them “something had to be done about me.’’
Sheriff Bob Baker was notified, and subsequently sent deputies Fred Baker, his cousin, and H.L. Stubbs to search the woods near Fruita.
After several days, Baker and Stubbs discovered one of Joe Ashley’s stills and camp. In his interview with Hix Stuart, John described the camp as being a mile and a half south of the Ashley homestead while Hix Stuart and other lawmen described it as two miles west southwest of his parents home. Amateur archaeologist Steve Carr, who has surveyed several still sites and researched the Ashleys for the past three decades, puts the site just a quarter mile south of the Ashley homestead.
After the discovery of the site, six more deputies Sim Jackson, Elmer Padgett, Joe Padgett, Oley Bonar, Grover Pass and Ernest Malphurs were summoned to the scene, with Fred Baker serving as the head of the posse.
SHOOTOUT AT DAWN
Before dawn the morning of Jan. 9, 1924, four of the deputies were stationed at the edge of the swamp while Fred Baker, Elmer Padgett, Sim Jackson and H.L. Stubbs crawled toward the camp, with Fred Baker up front. Another deputy headed to Stuart for reinforcements. Sheriff Baker told reporters he was also present, though Hix’s book did not include him as one of the members of the party approaching the camp. If true, once again Bob Baker was out of harm’s way while his men engaged the Ashley Gang.
As daylight broke, the deputies were about 50 feet away from the camp and could hear men and a woman talking. Apparently hearing the deputies, a mongrel dog named Old Bob belonging to Laura Upthegrove barked but was shot and killed by Baker.
Said John in his interview with Hix Stuart:
I grabbed my rifle and got behind a forked tree. I didn’t even have time to dress and was in my underclothes. They poured enough lead at me to kill ten men but fate seemed against them. With a hail of bullets around me I noticed a palmetto move and I let fly a bullet in short order. A man toppled from the palmetto and fell prone on his face. I knew I had killed a man. The firing ceased.
The man behind the palmettos was 35-year-old Fred Baker. His fellow deputies’ version of the story was that as Baker fell, he shot 18 rounds from his shotgun and revolvers into the camp, killing 63-year-old Joe Ashley.
Running back to the camp, John said he found his father dead and Albert Miller severely wounded. Miller had been shot above the elbow, causing a compound fracture and his arm to dangle loosely. Another bullet shattered bones and tore muscles in his right hip.
“Dad was lying on the bed — dead — shot to death while he was putting on his shoes,’’ John told Stuart. “Poor old dad — he didn’t have a chance.’’
Also injured was John’s girlfriend, Laura Upthegrove, who was hit with about six shotgun pellets in the head and leg that were not life-threatening.
Deputies later carried Baker to safety behind trees. “There he shook hands with them, said good-bye with a smile playing over his face, and a few minutes before he expired in the arms of Deputy Sheriff H.L. Stubbs he said: “Well, boys, I did my best.’’
Initial news reports in the days after the shooting apparently confused the actions of John for Albert Miller, saying Miller was the lookout who shot and killed Baker. But John in his statement to Stuart said he had fired off the fatal shot.
OPPORTUNITY FOR EXIT
Hix Stuart said Laura screamed throughout the ordeal, prompting law officers to cease fire. The calm gave John and Miller time to escape, but not without Miller being shot again.
In his interview with Stuart, John said he initially thought he could steal one of the patrol cars for a getaway but reconsidered.
“I could have bumped every one of them off but I didn’t,’’ John told Stuart. “I went to mother’s house and got some clothes.’’
Meanwhile, the deputies held their positions for several hours, waiting for the reinforcements to arrive from Stuart. Thirty men were deputized back in town, supplemented with 2,000 rounds of ammunition and 20 rifles provided by the National Guard unit of West Palm Beach.
At about noon, the 30 men who had been deputized arrived and then stormed the camp, finding only Laura and Mary Mobley sitting beside Joe’s dead body, which had been pierced with five bullets.
SCORCHED EARTH CAMPAIGN
The deputies then set about destroying the still and whiskey at the camp and burning the hammock. They also rounded up of all Ashley family members, mostly women and children, jailing them and then setting upon a scorched earth campaign.
They immediately jailed Upthegrove, Wesley and Mary Mobley; their daughter, Laeto, with infant; and another 3-year-old, described as a Mobley child; Lugenia Ashley and her daughters Lola and Daisy. Stuart said also taken into custody were Lola’s husband, George Mario, and Ashley daughter Eva and her husband F.N. Jenkins. Law officers, meanwhile, began a search for Bill Ashley.
After the shooting, deputies began searching for John around the home of his mother. They set that house on fire as well as the home of his daughter, Lola, and son-in-law George Mario, who had recently been shot in the leg by a deputy sheriff on a charge of resisting arrest. Garages with cars in them were also burned, as were the grocery store Albert Miller and J.N. Jenkins, husband of Joe’s daughter Eva, ran. A packinghouse was also partially burned. The Stuart Messenger reported that the home of George and Mary Mobley, parents of Hanford, was also burned.
After retrieving his clothes from his mother’s home before it was burned, John said he walked about 4 miles toward Stuart. He said encountered another confederate, whom he identified using the alias Jack, and asked him to go get him more rifle cartridges, since he only had five left. Jack returned more than three hours later, saying the storekeeper was only allowed to sell cartridges to posse members who were looking for John.
ENCOUNTERING ALBERT
As John and Jack were walking, they heard a whistle. John cocked his rifle, brought it to his shoulder and saw Albert Miller in his sights coming out of the brush, “dragging his leg and his arm swung loose like.’’ John said Jack found a tomato crate, which was busted up to use for splints.
John said he then left Jack and Miller and walked several miles south and east. When he approached a road, he saw a car but hid behind a palmetto. But as he rounded a turn he came upon a dozen armed lawmen, some of them scattering into the brush on either side of the road. Farther ahead was a car on the side of the road, with two men in it and one telling John, “You’re under arrest.’’ John then swung his rifle around, and the same officer told him, “Come on John, we’ve got you.’’
John said he then heard a rifle shot, prompting him to drop to his knees and return fire until he couldn’t find anyone to shoot at. He said when he found one hiding behind a tree stump, “I thought I would give him a scare and fired, making chips fly from the stump just about where his head would be.’’
No one seemed to be very anxious to get me so I turned and started to run, zig-zagging from one side to another to fool the dogs. I heard later they put the dogs on my trail about a half hour after I beat it.’
John said he got enraged that he was being pursued and ran back, “intending to kill every one of them.’’ He said they had left, so he went back where he had left Albert and Jack but couldn’t find them. Rain fell throughout much of the evening and night, and John ended up sleeping in the barn of John Rogers that night and at the home of preacher Parson Yancy Lundy, past of the African American church in New Monrovia, the next night. According to Stuart, John’s brother Bill first arrived at his home followed by John. John asked for food and Lundy’s wife prepared a meal, John eating it with a rifle across his lap. When they left, Stuart said John told Mrs. Lundy, “Auntie, if they crow me I’ll kill another sheriff.’’
HEADING WEST
From Lundy’s, John went to a shack on the southwest side of Lake Okeechobee used to store nets and tackle, where he met Lynn and Middleton and other members of the gang, according to Stuart’s account. From a second story of the shack, two machine guns were ready to be fired at intruders. The shack was also equipped with a trap walkway over the lake into the front door that would drop anyone who stepped on it 15 feet in the water.
Deputies closed a 12-mile section of the Dixie Highway from Jupiter to Stuart and lawmen searched for John. Attempting to chase him to the east, they also patrolled waters in the area and removed all boats along the shore except those used by deputies.
Jack had taken Albert Miller to the home of Bill Ashley, which was near Jupiter and about five miles from the Ashley homestead. He was arrested the next evening, Jan. 10, at the home of A.D. Blanchard, 10 miles west of Jupiter, where officers saw a car back into the woods, with Miller attempting to limp into a nearby shed. where he was seen leaving a vehicle. Blanchard was accused of aiding Miller and was also arrested. Despite his injuries, Albert Miller had managed to cover some 12 miles of ground during his escape.
Two days after the shooting at the still, law officers arrested Bill Ashley at the Godfrey Grocery in Olympia. According to a Miami Herald account, Bill called Bob Baker’s wife and asked her to come pick him up and take him to the sheriff, which she did.
Suspected of driving John away from the scene, Bill also had his Ford coupe confiscated by deputies. Bill said he was hunting in Fort Lauderdale when the shootout occurred and claimed that he had not helped his brother flee.
LAID TO REST
The funeral for Fred Baker, married and father of three, was held Jan. 13 at the Congregational church in West Palm Beach. For days, Joe’s body lay unclaimed as there were no relatives who could claim it because they were all in jail.
Finally, Sheriff Baker allowed Lugenia Ashley and Bill Ashley to set up a service and temporarily released them to attend it. Except for Laura, who was accused of being an accomplice in the murder of Deputy Baker, all those jailed were released a week after their arrest and charges dropped.
JOHN STAYS NEAR
During Laura’s time in jail in the following months, John stayed hidden further in the Everglades, awaiting her release. But her confinement dragged on. She was unable to meet a $5,000 bail and by September was still being held in the jail after the bail had been reduced to $2,500.
About two months after the death of his father, he took off for California, where he had also fled after the killing of DeSoto Tiger. But he said he was jaunted by the death moans of his father. Eager to avenge the death of Joe, John returned home, hiding deeper into the Everglades. At regular intervals, he said he’d climb trees and survey the area with his binoculars. Once he fell from a tree, injuring his back.
Where Hanford Mobley was at this time is in dispute. News reports at the time of the still shooting said he had left the camp several days for a rum-running expedition to the Bahamas.
On Feb. 28, Hanford was recognized as being one of four men who conducted a holdup of the Plantation Inn at Arch Creek in Dade County. The other three were not identified.
Another report of Hanford surfaced in March, when a gruff demand was made to stop a FEC passenger train as it traveled near Stuart. When the man making the demand was asked to identify himself, he replied “Hanford Mobley,’’ and the train stopped to allow him to exit.
Hanford also was reported west of Miami on July 21 by an acquaintance who gave him a ride.
But these sightings may have been all apocrypha. Family members said Hanford had been out of state or out of the country until returning in late 1924. Hix Stuart wrote that after Hanford’s escape in late 1922, he had made three trips to Germany and then went to California, where he got a good-paying job. Stuart said Hanford was in California during the shootout at the still and returned to Florida after reading about it in the newspaper.
When Lugenia returned to Fruita after being released from jail, she found her home scorched, all her possessions destroyed. Soon, though, she was living in a new home a distance away from her burned home and closer to the family cemetery. The four-room structure had been built without cost to her by Joe’s African American moonshine workers and members of Yancy Lundy’s church in New Monrovia. Joe provided jobs for much of the African American community nearby, built a rooming house for still workers and helped fund construction of Lundy’s church.
NEXT IN THE SERIES (Part 8 of 10)
Part 8, Wednesday, Oct. 30
BANK OF POMPANO ROBBERY — The gang makes an easy target of the Bank of Pompano and remains at large after a hefty take.
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