This week in history: Jade collection stolen from Norton Art Gallery

On Nov. 23, 1965, thieves cleaned out much of the Norton’s jade collection, a haul worth about $1 million. All but three of the 100 pieces were recovered three months later in a Broward County garage. The theft was thought to have been tied to other major crimes in south Florida. The museum, now known as the Norton Museum of Art, still owns the jades it acquired in 1942 from the collection of Stanley Charles Nott. Read more about the history of the Norton Museum of Art here and here.

Tags: art, museums, notorious crimes, This Week in History

Collins made ‘Ten Most Wanted’ list in 1964

Last week we told you about the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted” list. Since it began in 1950, two of the nearly 500 criminals on it were local.

They were No. 418, Jack Farmer, from 1988, whom we featured last week, and No. 193: Chester Collins.

Collins, then 50, was put on the list May 14, 1964, after a federal commissioner in West Palm Beach issued a warrant.

Seven years earlier, in 1957, he’d escaped a state prison camp in Fort Pierce.

Collins was doing 10 years on a conviction from Central Florida’s Polk County after he was convicted of attempted seconddegree murder for using a hatchet to slash his girlfriend, and a schoolteacher who was with her, in Winter Haven.

According to a news story, the FBI said Collins, alias Chester Allen, had “a vicious temper and should be considered dangerous.” A $25 reward was offered.

Collins came off the list three years later, on March 30, 1967, but not because he was caught.

It turned out he’d become an early beneficiary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 1963 Gideon vs. Wainwright decision.

Clarence Gideon was a Panhandle drifter charged with breaking into a Panama City poolroom. He was convicted in a trial at which he had to defend himself.

In prison, he scrawled a letter in pencil to the high court.

Its ruling — “Wainwright” was Florida Corrections Secretary Louie Wainwright — led to the line heard on every television cop show: “If you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be appointed for you.”

In March 1967, Wainwright wrote the U.S. attorney in Miami to say state and federal leads had run dry and agencies must have bigger fish to fry than Collins.

“Also, there is the strong possibility that if he were apprehended now, he could soon win his freedom by filing a petition for relief to the courts under the recent Gideon decision,” the director wrote the feds.

In the end, Collins won. In 2007, Florida’s Department of Corrections created a new “cold case” department. It soon learned Collins had died three years earlier, in November 2004, in Houston, Texas. He was 90.

Read more about the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives 50th Anniversary here.

Tags: notorious crimes

Two area men made FBI’s Wanted list

Question: Has one of the FBI’s iconic Ten Most Wanted lists, which turn 60 this year, ever had a connection to Palm Beach County or the Treasure Coast?

Answer: Two have. First, a history of the list.

In 1949, a wire service reporter asked the names of the “toughest guys” the FBI sought.

Realizing the potential, the agency provided the 10 considered the most dangerous. The list, to coin a 21st-century term, went viral, and FBI director J. Edgar Hoover made it official on March 14, 1950.

A staple in post offices, it’s been on www.fbi.gov since 1996.

Remarkably, 463 of 496 have been nabbed. Most of the others, including one of the two local figures, came off for other reasons — surrendered, found dead, charges dropped or no longer fit criteria.

The list has evolved from robbers to 1960s revolutionaries to mobsters to drug traffickers to international terrorists.

Paul Michael Merhige, charged with killing four relatives and wounding two more at a 2009 Thanksgiving dinner in Jupiter, was on the FBI’s Wanted list, but not its Ten Most Wanted. He was on the lam for 38 days before a tip to America’s Most Wanted led to his capture in the Florida Keys.

Another who made the list was Jack Darrell Farmer, a national fugitive for 13 months but on the list for only three days, May 29 – June 1, 1988.

After Farmer appeared on America’s Most Wanted, which had debuted only that April, an employee at the Publix distribution center in northern Broward County recognized him as the co-worker he knew as Robert J. Niewiadomski.

FBI agents and Lantana SWAT officers arrested Farmer and his wife at their Lantana rental home. The FBI had named Farmer as leader of “the Little Mafia,” a gang of drug dealers, loan sharks and home invasion experts tied to two Chicago murders.

A Chicago grand jury had indicted him and 13 others in 1986, but in 1987, during a conference, he tied up his lawyer and fled. In 1989, Farmer was sentenced to 40 years in federal prison. He killed himself in prison in 1993.

Next Week: A four-decade cold case

Fliers passed out in January 2010 offered $100,000 in reward money for information leading to the arrest of Paul Michael Merhige, who was on the FBI’s Wanted list. He allegedly killed 6-year-old Makayla Joy Sitton and three other family members on Thanksgiving Day 2009 in Jupiter. He was captured because of a tip to TV’s America’s Most Wanted show. (Gary Coronado/The Palm Beach Post)

Jack Darrell Farmer was on the FBI’s Wanted List for three days before he was arrested in Lantana.

Sources included archives of the Chicago Tribune. 

Tags: notorious crimes

This week in history: Notorious Ashley Gang shot down

On Nov. 1, 1924, four members of the Ashley gang were apprehended and killed on a wooden bridge over the St. Sebastian River in what was then St. Lucie County. John Ashley and his gang had terrorized south Florida for decades — robbing banks and trains from Stuart to Miami, smuggling moonshine, and running rum from the Bahamas. Members of the gang are buried at the Ashley homestead near present-day Port Salerno. Read more about the Ashley Gang here at HistoricPalmBeach.com.

Tags: Ashley Gang, notorious crimes, This Week in History

St. Lucie woman a living history book

Because Florida’s modern history really began pretty much a the start of the 20th century, some of our residents are walking history books. One is Ada Coats Williams. She turned 90 this week.

Her grandparents — her gandmother was Robert E. Lee’s cousin — came from Alabama to the Titusville area in the 1870s. They moved to Fort Pierce in 1894.

Her father, William Lee Coats (known as Okeechobee Bill), was the city’s first pharmacist, a real estate salesman and a legislator.

“During the boom days, he made scads of money, and after the boom, he was very broke.” Williams said in 1999.

She was born in Okeechobee on Sept. 8, 1920, and grew up in Fort Pierce when it literally was a cow town.

“Everybody knew everybody else in Fort Pierce,” she said in July. “When you left your home you didn’t lock your door.”

And she lived through the Depression and World War II.

“I dated those young men who trained here,” Williams said. She also recalled seeing freighters struck by German U-boats.

“All of a sudden, you’d see the fire and flame go up,” she said.

For 16 years, she taught creative writing and English composition at Indian River Community College — now Indian River State College.

She’s written seven historical outdoor dramas and several books, including histories of St. Lucie County and Fort Pierce and, of course, Florida’s Ashley Gang.

John Ashley was only 18 in 1911 when he was suspected in the slaying of a Seminole trader. His gang robbed banks from Stuart to Pompano Beach and killed two lawmen.

In 1924, Ashely and three partners were stopped on the bridge over the St. Sebastian River by the St. Lucie County sheriff. Moments later, all four were dead, face-down.

Police insisted the Ashley gang had pulled guns. But years later, a deputy who had been on the bridge told Williams the gang members were shot unarmed.

Williams has been married 59 years to Harold S. Williams, a retired citrus grower. The couple have three chidren, three grandchildren and five great grandchildren.

Now retired, she’s active in her church and spends time with people her age who aren’t in good health.

“I have been so blessed in so many ways,” Williams said.

Ada Coats Williams in 2002 (Palm Beach Post file photo)

Tags: Ashley Gang, notorious crimes