For Sale —American Paradise (10 page)

With the release of the tramps, however, suspicion automatically turned to the Ashleys, and Sheriff Baker and his posse were determined to find them. They continued beating the bushes through the night and into the next morning. This set the stage for an ironic comedy of errors that could have had a tragic ending, but luckily led only to embarrassment.

It so happened that silent film director George Terwilliger was filming a shoot-'em-up thriller in Florida for Lubin Studios of Philadelphia. The film starred two heartthrobs of the early days of motion pictures, Ormi Hawley and Earl Metcalfe.

The script included a scene in which armed robbers boarded a train and robbed the passengers, and Terwilliger had made arrangements to shoot it on the FEC's tracks, just across the St. Lucie River from Stuart.

On Monday morning, the southbound train carrying Terwilliger and his film crew and actors stopped at the raised drawbridge that spanned the river. Terwilliger started putting his actors through a very realistic rehearsal. Men with guns climbed aboard the train and pointed them at passengers, who appeared to be horrified.

The sheriff's posse, still hunting for the previous night's robbers, saw what was happening.

“Then,” reported the Philadelphia
Evening Ledger
, “things started.”

“Several shots were fired, whether as a signal to other sheriffs or at the Lubin players has not been cleared up as yet,” the
Ledger
said, “but from every direction armed man-hunters carrying rifles appeared.”

The actors, now genuinely terrified, scattered as men brandishing weapons swarmed aboard the train.

“Some fled into the train—others stood still, frightened still, thinking they were about to be held up by a band of Florida robbers,” the
Ledger
reported. “Three of the sheriffs grabbed two of the Lubin ‘robbers.' Everyone talked, no one understood.”

Amid the chaos and shouting, director Terwilliger noticed that one of the men waving a gun was wearing a lawman's badge. Terwilliger grabbed the man by his suspenders and shouted “Moving pictures! Moving pictures!”

“Light then began to dawn on both sides,” the
Ledger
said. “The sheriff explained to Terwilliger and the latter explained to the sheriff.”

Guns were lowered and holstered, pounding heartbeats subsided; there may even have been a few laughs. And the posse apparently was stagestruck.

“After the company had recovered from fright, rehearsals were resumed,” the
Ledger
reported, “and the sheriff and his deputies, at their own request, acted in the pictures and then resumed their manhunt.”

A guide leading a group of hunters in the Everglades may have accidentally found what lawmen had been seeking—one of the Ashleys' hideouts. Around nightfall on February 16, C. C. Myers and a boatload of tourist hunters were about to land on a canal bank to set up camp for the night. Suddenly a man with a shotgun appeared on the opposite bank of the canal.

“If you want to see blood, make your campfire there!” the man shouted. Then he raised the shotgun and fired.

Myers was hit in the back by the pellets. The hunters fled. Myers survived the painful attack.

They couldn't identify the angry gunman who'd shot Myers, but the cops assumed it was an Ashley. And lawmen also thought the Ashleys had robbed a store in Deerfield, a small village south of West Palm Beach, a few days later.

On Tuesday, February 23, the Ashleys committed the crime that would clearly demonstrate to local lawmen that they were dangerous criminals. On that morning, teller A. R. Wallace was absorbed in taking a deposit from a customer at the Bank of Stuart. A movement caught his eye and he glanced up.

He was looking up the muzzle of a rifle that was pointed at him by Bob Ashley, kid brother of John Ashley.

“Hands up!” Bob said.

Wallace thought he was joking.

“Hands up!” Bob Ashley repeated more forcefully.

Wallace glanced around and saw that John Taylor, the bank's cashier, had his hands in the air.

“Better put 'em up, Wallace,” Taylor said. “He means it.”

Wallace raised his hands “All right,” he said. “What's next?”

John Ashley, a gun in each hand, waved one of his pistols at Wallace. He tossed a sack at the teller. “Throw it in here, that's what's next,” he said.

There was about $4,300 in bills and coins within sight of the robbers, and Wallace started tossing it into the sack. But he did not open any drawers containing more cash, and Ashley apparently was unaware that there was more cash at hand.

Wallace picked up a sack containing about $30 in pennies.

“Throw it in,” Ashley commanded.

Another gun-toting robber appeared. His name was “Kid” Lowe, a hardened criminal from Chicago who'd come south and somehow connected with John Ashley.

Lowe asked how much money was in the sack.

Told there was about $4,300, Lowe was angered.

“Where's the rest?” he demanded, shoving a gun in Wallace's face.

“There is no more,” Wallace said. “This is a small bank and has only a small supply of cash.”

Lowe grabbed Wallace and shoved him into the lobby, where several other terrified customers were waiting.

“Which one of you fellows can run a car?” Lowe demanded.

A customer named Frank Coventry said he could drive a car, and Lowe ordered him to drive the three robbers out of town.

What happened next has been debated for nearly a century.

Somehow, John Ashley was shot in the head but miraculously not killed. One account of the incident says Bob Ashley fired his gun in jubilation at the successful holdup and accidentally hit his brother. Another account says that as Coventry was driving out of town, Kid Lowe turned to fire a shot to discourage anyone who might be pursuing them, and the bullet struck one of the car's window frames, ricocheted, and struck Ashley. Still another explanation was that Ashley accidentally shot himself with his own gun. And Ashley later would claim that Lowe was trying to kill him so he wouldn't have to give Ashley a share of the loot.

However the shot was fired, the bullet struck Ashley below the chin and lodged behind his right eye. Somehow, he was not killed, but it was a severe wound—one that probably would have been fatal if left unattended.

Coventry sped south on the Dixie Highway. Ashley was losing a lot of blood from his wound and passed out briefly, Coventry said later. About ten miles south of Stuart, Coventry was ordered to stop. The three robbers got out. Coventry was told to return to Stuart, and if he so much as looked back as he was driving away, they'd kill him.

Coventry later told police that the three had horses waiting for them when they got out of his car. Despite his wound and weakness from loss of blood, John Ashley was still able to mount a horse and gallop into the swamp, Coventry said.

As they disappeared into the Everglades, carloads of heavily armed men were speeding after them. They knew the fugitives would head for their familiar hideouts. At one point that afternoon, the lawmen were certain they had their quarry surrounded. But John Ashley's intimate knowledge of the Everglades saved them, and somehow they eluded the posse.

By nightfall, about a hundred men, some of them on horseback, were thrashing through the Glades, looking for the bank robbers. John Ashley, still losing blood, was weakening and in intense pain. Still, he managed to elude the posse for two days.

Finally, he'd had enough. Ashley gave himself up on the morning of February 25.

But Bob Ashley and Kid Lowe were still on the run, and they'd taken the money with them.

The cops took John Ashley straight to a surgeon's office in West Palm Beach. By that night, he was back in the Palm Beach County Jail. Eventually, he would wear a glass eye in the socket where his right eye had been.

While the cops-and-robbers drama was playing out in the wilds of southern Florida, Edwin Menninger, a student at Washburn College in Topeka, Kansas, was busy preparing for a career in medicine. He hadn't given too much thought to his choice of professions. His father was Dr. Charles F. Menninger, a renowned psychiatrist. His brothers Karl and Will were also planning careers in medicine. It was a family tradition.

In 1915, Edwin Menninger was a senior at Washburn. He'd studied chemistry for three years, and now was applying himself to organic chemistry.

But he had other interests, including journalism. As a boy, he'd shown unusual skill in managing his newspaper-delivery routes. They were well-organized, and he had developed an effective system for collecting from his subscribers and adding new ones.

He was associate editor of the student-
produced newspaper, the
Washburn Review
. And he enjoyed the art of legerdemain.

He also enjoyed experimenting with chemicals. This, however, was a pleasure that would change the course of his life.

On March 2, 1915, Menninger and a fellow student were experimenting with chemicals in a laboratory in Rich Hall on the Washburn campus. They mixed phosphorus and potassium chlorate in a test tube. Menninger knew that he'd created a volatile, highly unstable combination. They decided to take the mixture outside to test it.

Menninger carried the glass test tube in his right hand. Without thinking, he shifted the tube to his left hand, upending it in the process.

That slight movement of the chemicals was all that was needed to agitate and ignite the compound. There was a blinding flash and the test tube was shattered in a shower of sparks and broken glass. Like John Ashley, Menninger lost his right eye, and his left hand was severely mangled. His plans to become a medical doctor were destroyed as well. When he recovered, he would leave Kansas for New York City to enroll in the Columbia University School of Journalism.

While Dr. Charles Menninger tried doggedly to save what remained of his son's left hand, a grand jury in West Palm Beach heard evidence against John Ashley for robbing the Bank of Stuart the previous month. On March 10, Ashley was indicted, along with Kid Lowe and Bob Ashley, on charges of bank robbery. Lowe and the younger Ashley were still on the run, however.

John Ashley still had to answer for the death of Desoto Tiger.

On March 22, Ashley was in court in West Palm Beach for the third time to face the charge of murdering the Seminole Indian. Prosecuting attorneys had made a vigorous effort to get the trial moved to another county, arguing that a
jury in Palm Beach County would be afraid to bring in a guilty verdict. But Judge Pierre Branning had sided with Ashley's defense attorneys in refusing a change of venue.

The judge soon changed his mind, however. Attorneys questioned 112 potential jurors, trying to seat a dozen to hear the evidence. Only two were chosen. All of the others told Branning that they'd already made up their minds about whether John Ashley was guilty or innocent and thus could not be impartial.

Branning gave up. The trial would be moved to Dade County.

John Ashley was in jail when the judge made his decision. It was a serious blow to his hopes for being acquitted of the murder charge. Nevertheless, he put up an optimistic front.

“All I want is a fair and impartial trial, and I believe I can get it in Miami as well as I could here,” he told a reporter for the
Daily Tropical Sun
.

Whether John Ashley actually believed what he said is another question.