Sunday Favorites: Crime and Punishment

Today we will look into the crimes and punishments of the past. Florida cow hunters were to the South what cowboys were to the Wild West–with disagreements often ending in shootouts.

 

By the 1880s, after the Reconstruction Period had ended, Florida started to become a more popular destination for visitors and settlers. As the population grew, the vast size of the county (remember Manatee County was around 5,000 square miles back then) became an issue. With a single Sheriff tasked with serving the entire area, an influx of criminal acts and vigilante justice began to take over.

The chaos that surrounded the county was largely due to logistics. If you remember from last week’s column, 19^th Century Manatee County was made up of present day Manatee, Sarasota, Desoto, Hardee, Glades, Lee and Charlotte counties - stretching north and south from the Little Manatee River to Boca Grande and east and west from Lake Okeechobee to the Gulf of Mexico. This excerpt from Manatee County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO) 150^th Anniversary and Pictorial, describes the situation:

”The Sheriff was located in Manatee, some 16 miles from the north of the Bay community of Sarasota, more than 20 miles from Osprey, 50 miles from Charlotte Harbor and 35 miles from Horse and Chaise, all growing settlement areas.“

The book goes on to describe how the an acting judge might reside in the Village of Manatee (present-day East Bradenton) and be forced to travel all the way to Pine Level (the county seat at the time where the jail and courthouse were located) for a trial. In one such instance acting judge Ezekiel Glazier couldn’t find a hired horse to return home to Osprey so he had to walk the entire way – at age 60.

Because of the limitations of the law enforcement, many residents became law-less. To add to the chaos, there were also political tensions that lingered from Reconstruction limitations imparted on sympathizers of the south’s succession as well as the stolen presidential election of 1876. Additionally, increased agriculture in the area was depleting Florida’s free range and cow hunters and farmers often quarreled over property rights.

The MCSO history says that in 1883, ”Shootings, knifings and rustlings occurred across the countryside. Judicial records listed five murders and assorted instances of ambush and shotgun justice in a single year. A Bee Ridge man had his throat slit and had been shot during the summer; no one bothered to investigate.“

The MCSO history goes on to quote a resident who moved to the area in 1885.

”(I) will only say that Sarasota was as bad as a village of its size could be. Occasionally, a bunch of cowboys would get lit up on sugar cane skimmings’ and ride up and down the street shooting pistols from their galloping horses, using all kinds of foul language.“

The situation came to a tipping point when a secret society formed with the sole purpose of killing people who had wronged its members. Members of the Sarasota Vigilance Committee were sworn to secrecy and forced to swear an oath not to reveal secrets of the fraternal order under penalty of death, and a painful one at that. The society was a glorified gang of 20 men also known as the Sarasota Thugs or the Sarasota Vigilantes. They carried out the murders of two of five targets

The homicide that brought the whole thing to light was the killing of Sarasota postmaster Charles Abbe.

The vigilantes harassed Abbe and his family, once breaking into his house during the night and leaving a knife sticking in the dining room table. They also would circle the house at in the dark and fire their guns at close range, leaving the smell of gunpowder lingering in the air. They destroyed crops and even burned one of the structures on the Abbe property.

Charles Abbe was shot to death on the beach of his property two days after Christmas while working on a boat in front of an eyewitness who had to run for cover to save his own life. Abbe’s body was placed inside a boat, taken three miles offshore and dumped in the sea.

It took only hours for others to inform the Sheriff at the time, Sandy Watson, of the homicide. Watson issued six warrants and set out to find the perpetrator with a posse of 26 men. Watson arrested Thug leaders Alfred Bidwell, Dr. Adam Hunter and Joseph Anderson and charged them with murder in the first degree. They were taken to jail at Pine Level (located in present day Desoto County). The manhunt for the final conspirator spanned eight days, finally culminating in the woods near Charlotte Harbor where mastermind Charlie Willard was discovered sleeping.

To watch the prisoners while he was away, Watson hired several deputies. Their purpose was not only to keep the men from escaping, but to protect them if a lynch mob formed by irate area residents who were discouraged by lengthy legal process.

It was while they were in jail at Pine Level that another hole in system was revealed. The structure, a two story wood-frame building with a removable ladder to access the second story, had been very poorly constructed. Despite having three guards stationed outside, the Sarasota Thugs escaped! While Bidwell and Anderson took off, Hunter had a change of heart and decided to go back and turn himself in, however, because of the way the jail was enclosed with a high board fence, he could not get back in. Apparently you could jump over the fence from the second story of the jail.

Through Hunter’s confession the details of the secret society discovered. Watson arrested Bidwell and Anderson again, personally riding 10 miles to apprehend him. By now residents were in an uproar at the gross negligence on the part of the deputies. The men had to be hidden in a warehouse over water overnight to protect them from a lynch mob that formed by citizens. In the morning, the prisoners were taken back to Pine Level in irons inside horse-drawn carriage with under the guard of four armed men. During the ride, Bidwell attempted suicide by taking poison.

The details of the case went national, with a story appearing in the New York Times with the headline ”An Assassination Society, The Bloody Work of Band of Southern Murders.“

The more details that came out, the more people were arrested for coercion. In the days before the trial eight people were contained in the Pine Level jail, with three confined in ten foot square cages made of iron bars.

Willard and Anderson were found guilty and sentenced for life. Another trial was held for the second victim, Harrison ”Tip“ Riley who had also been killed, shot and knifed by members of the society. In that case Andrews, Bidwell, and another were found guilty of accessory to murder while another society member, Edmund Bacon, was found guilty of murder in the first and all three were sentenced to be hanged.

The MCSO history describes the conclusion of the case:

”In all, nine vigilantes were indicated for the two murder, eight were tried, three sentenced to death, four to life and one acquitted.“

Andrews and Bacon escaped from Pine Level jail a year later and, according to the MCSO history, were never heard from again. Bidwell was never hanged; his sentence was reduced to life in prison.

The case brought light to the flaws in the system and law enforcement improved dramatically after that. The following year Manatee County reported a reduction in crime and a few years later, the county seat was changed back to Manatee were a more adequate jail was constructed. It wasn’t long before areas of Manatee County began to incorporate, eventually becoming towns and cities with their own law enforcement.