Today we are taking a look at the Florida machete murder of Athalia Lindsley.
Athalia Ponsell Lindsley was a former Broadway actress, model, inventor, real estate agent and author. She was described as a sharp-tongued, aggressive woman. In 1970, Athalia ran for Florida Legislature and lost.
In 1973, Athalia married James Lindsley a real estate agent and former mayor of St. Augustine, Florida. While they were married in September, by the next January the two still lived in separate homes. Athalia was trying to sell the house she was living in and didn’t want to leave it unoccupied.
Athalia Lindsley was murdered in 1974
She never got the opportunity. On January 23, 1974 between 6:00 and 6:15 p.m., the 56-year-old Athalia went outside to walk her pet bluejay, Clementine. On her porch, she encountered a man wielding a machete who proceeded to hack her to death.
By the time police arrived, Athalia had been nearly decapitated. Police Chief Virgil Stuart said “she was dead when we got there. She had been badly butchered. Her head was almost cut off.”
A neighbor, 19-year-old Locke McCormick said he could hear Athalia’s screams from his house. When he went to check on her, he discovered her butchered body. He told police he saw a 40-to-60 year old man wearing a white shirt and dark pants walking away from the house.
A witness reported that there was blood in the grass. At one point, a police officer ordered the ambulance attendants to hose down the blood. Doesn’t that fly in the face of crime scene investigation?
The Florida Sheriff put up a $500 reward for information
The sheriff offered a $500 reward to anyone with information on the case. On February 17, 1974, a county mechanic named Dewey Lee said he’d searched the marshes one mile from Lindsley’s home and discovered a machete and a package containing a bloodied white shirt, dark pants, a watch, and a pair of shoes.
After Athalia’s death, Frances Bemis, a 70-year-old retired department store public relations exec and fashion consultant, told her friends that she knew something about the murder. Bemis, who was reportedly a friend of Athalia’s was even said to have been collaborating with a writer on a book about Athalia after her death.
She did not seem afraid when Athalia turned up slain and told the St. Augustine Record said: “I think St. Augustine is the safest place I have ever lived,” “I go out walking at night and will continue to do so,” “I went out walking,” “the same night that the murder took place.”
Frances had indeed continued to go walking at night, including on November 3, 1974. A little over nine months after Athalia was murdered. The next day, not farm from where Athalia was murdered, a man walking his dog found Frances died in a vacant lot.
Frances was murdered by the killer
Frances had apparently been clobbered repeatedly with a stone block. She was semi-nude, with most of her clothes having been ripped off. However, an autopsy report found no indication of rape. An account by the New York Daily News noted that her body had been burned, as though a killer had tried to destroy the corpse. Police Chief Virgil Stuart did not believe there was a connection between Frances and Athalia’s murders at the time. With two women violently dead in St. Augustine, Florida, in 1974, it’s time to consider the theories.
Theory #1 – Athalia’s husband James Lindsley was the murderer
The first theory is that Athalia’s husband, James Lindsley, was responsible for her murder. James was an easygoing real estate agent who had served two terms as mayor of St. Augustine. Though they lived in separate homes, James said they did not have marital problems. Athalia Lindsley, however, had sent letters to her sister showing they were having issues. “Jimmy is a complete leech, a complete liar,” she wrote in one letter. She also said she changed the locks of her house. There was also gossip among community members that the crime scene was hosed down to protect James’s involvement. According to Elizabeth Randall, author of a book detailing Athalia’s murder, James complained about how many rumors flew around the town.
In testimony at Athalia’s murder trial, though, interestingly, not a trial prosecuting James, more on that in a bit, James told the jury that he owned a machete resembling the one used to kill his wife. He usually kept it in the trunk of his car, using it to hack at undergrowth while looking at properties for his real estate job. After Athalia’s murder, he turned the machete over to the police.
Residents owned multiple machetes
At that time, it was common for residents in the county to own one or two machetes, used to fight back against the Florida fauna. At the trial, James was shown the machete that was used on his wife. James could not confirm whether it was his, telling the judge, “All machetes look alike to me.” I think it’s important to say that because I imagine people who are watching this, they were imagining Jason Voorhees murdering this lady. But in reality, everyone had a machete, so it could’ve been Jim from down the street.
According to Randall’s book, there was a gap of around 15 to 25 minutes in James’s alibi. It supposedly occurred between the time James drove home from the grocery store where he had been shopping with Athalia and the time he drove back to his own home. Randall posits that James had enough time to drive to Athalia’s house during that period. Unfortunately that if you just have a 20-minute gap in your schedule where no one sees you, suddenly you’re open to being a murderer.
Theory #2 Athalia Lindsley neighbor Alan Stanford murdered her
The second theory is Athalia’s neighbor, Alan Stanford, murdered her in the culmination of a months-long feud. According to the New York Daily News, Athalia loved animals and took many in, including noisy dogs and even, at one point, a goat. The noise from these critters often disgruntled her neighbors. According to author Elizabeth Randall, both of Athalia’s neighbors, the Stanfords and the McCormicks, filed public complaints about the noise in 1972, resulting in a $50 fine for disturbing the peace.
Randall then describes an escalating neighborly feud in which Athalia outraged the Stanfords by cutting back their trees that extended over her property line. According to Randall, Athalia also planted bamboo across a city easement at the corner of the Stanford driveway which the Stanfords had the city remove. At the time, Stanford was the manager of St. John’s County, of which St. Augustine is the county seat.
Athalia had apparently suggested to the county commission that Stanford wasn’t qualified for his job, appearing at least four times before the commission to complain about him.
Athalia would claim that Stanford had neglected his duties of maintaining and building roads, but her complaints also verged into the personal. Randall describes a commission meeting where Athalia publicly accused Stanford
of putting sugar in her Cadillac’s gas tank. More saliently, she also said on October 9th, 1974, that Stanford threatened her, saying, “That man threatened my life. “He threatened to kill me.”
Sure, he seems fishy, but it also seems incredibly risky to murder your neighbor.
Athalia Lindsley ratted out Stanford
According to Randall, mere hours before Athalia’s murder, Stanford had been visited by the Florida Department of Professional and Occupational Regulations at Athalia’s request. Randall says they were investigating to see whether Stanford was in violation of Florida state statutes. Yeah, that’s a little fuel to the fire there. I don’t know if it’s enough to push him over the edge. It’s certainly not good. It’s not good; it doesn’t look great. But I still wonder.
When Locke McCormick first heard Athalia’s screams, he looked to her home and told his grandmother, “Mr. Stanford is hitting Ms. Ponsell,” which was Athalia’s maiden name. McCormick later explained that he’d assumed it was Stanford based on his clothing and the fact that the man was walking back toward Stanford’s house. But he didn’t see the man’s face or really know if it was him.
The police also noted a blood trail that cut across her driveway to a concrete wall
that demarcated the divide between her property and Stanford’s.
The sheriff took McCormick to a hypnotist in the hopes of unlocking further memories, but the results were inconclusive. That sounds about par for the course for investigative methods in Florida.
Recall, Dewey Lee had discovered a package of evidence, including a bloody shirt and a watch. While the shirt had been sitting in saltwater and mud for too long to determine conclusively if the blood on the shirt was Athalia’s blood type, a forensics expert was able to identify a laundry mark as Stanford’s name. Ultimately, however, it was decided the mark was too faint and garbled to be conclusive.
More damning for Stanford was the watch, which a jeweler identified as Stanford’s. Stanford claimed that after the murder, he had discovered his watch was missing. Stanford was indicted for the murder. His friends and fellow church members raised $20,000 for his bail and an estimated $250,000 defense fund, which would have the same buying power of more than $1.3 million today.
As a quick sidenote, at the time of Frances Bemis’s murder, Stanford was out on bail.
Stanford was acquitted thanks to a friendly jury
With the money raised by his friends, Stanford mounted a formidable defense. Stanford’s defense posited that Sheriff Dudley Garrett, Dewey Lee, and Athalia’s husband, James Lindsley, had all worked together to frame Stanford.
The defense posited Dewey Lee as a scammer. While he was on the stand,
a defense attorney asked Dewey, “Isn’t it a fact that you were looking for a spot “where nobody could see you put that stuff in the swamp?” It does seem like they’re desperately grasping at straws.
Key to the defense was the testimony of one Adelle McLaughlin, a data processing clerk and neighbor who was riding her bike past Athalia’s home at the time. Adelle testified that she had seen Dewey in Athalia’s yard less than two hours before the murder took place.
After two-and-a-half hours of deliberation on February 3rd, 1975, the jury declared Stanford innocent. Afterward, Sheriff Garrett told reporters, “Yes, I think Stanford did it. “I signed the complaint against him “and I don’t concur with the verdict.” There is something weird to be said about a town believing so much that this man did not do it that they literally raised $250,000 and only deliberated in the jury for two-and-a-half hours before saying, “Yeah, he didn’t do it.”
In 1974, in a span of fewer than 10 months, two women were violently murdered by hand in the same Florida community. The person responsible for either or even both deaths is a mystery. Could it have been a disgruntled husband, a fed-up neighbor, a scheming mechanic, or someone else entirely? The case remains unsolved.
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