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5. John J. Mendenhall
Image courtesy of Jax Psycho Geo at https://jaxpsychogeo.com/all-over-town/murder-in-jacksonville/
John Mendenhall was known as the Pinellas County citrus king. In 1914, Mendenhall feel in love with a young lady who attempted to exploit a large sum of money from him. Mendenhall responded by shooting the young woman and her mother to death in July 1915. He attempted to kill the chauffeur carrying them too but he successfully fled. Mendenhall was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison.
In prison, Mendenhall became a model prisoner and was put in charge of construction. In 1923, Jacksonville physician Ralph Greene, designed the electric chair while Cook’s Cabinet Shop on Newnan Street fashioned it. In 1924, Mendenhall installed it at the Florida State Prison in Raiford.
60 and stricken with cancer, Mendenhall was pardoned in July 1930 after being incarcerated for 15 years. Finally free, Mendenhall moved to Jacksonville, working construction and shipyard jobs to support himself. Living in an Adams Street rooming house, he befriended Mary Rae Anderson and her Laura Matilda Green. In 1934, both ladies were found beaten to death. Mendenhall declared his innocence, claiming he was home playing rummy when they were murdered. However, his fingerprints were found on a knife, hammer, and his blood on a sheet. He also had scratches on his hands and wrists.
However, Mendenhall claimed he had done handyman work for the ladies, which is why his prints were on the knife and hammer. The scratches and blood came from him saving the senile mother from attempting to run into the St. Johns River.
Mendenhall’s second murder trial lasted several days. Finally, the jury deliberated and John J. Mendenhall was found not guilty!
Courtesy of the St. Petersburg Times.
4. Henry “Skimp” Tillman
A resident of Northshore, Henry “Skimp” Tillman’s house still stands at 111 Tallulah Avenue.
Henry “Skimp” Tillman was the epitome of a vibrant downtown Jacksonville era that featured an undertone of violence. The city’s lawless streets were littered with bars and juke joints in the years immediately following the downfall of Prohibition. During this time, newspapers were filled shootings at saloons, chili parlors, hash houses and dance halls.
Known for having a bad temper, Skimp Tillman was the one-eyed bar owner of Skimp’s at the northwest corner of Main and State Streets. Over a twenty year period, Tillman had been charged six times with assault to murder. In one 1935 case where he was acquitted, a customer named Leslie Oldham told the bartender, “I’ll get you yet, Skimp.” Skimp responded by telling him, “I’ll get you, Leslie,” then shooting him from behind the bar.
In 1935, Tillman shot to death a customer named Leslie Oldham in Skimp’s bar at Bar and Lee streets. Witnesses said Oldham said, “I’ll get you yet, Skimp,” and Skimp replied, “I’ll get you, Leslie,” and shot from behind the bar. He was acquitted and the world turned and the life and times of Skimp Tillman went on.
Skimp’s luck with beating the law ran out on the afternoon of August 12, 1948. That day, he shot Frank Wood inside of his bar. Moments earlier, Skimp had an argument earlier with his customer about cases involving the Hyslers.
Labeled a trigger-happy hot-head by Assistant State Attorney Nathan Schevitz, the jury found him guilty of first degree murder. The punishment was a ride on “Old Sparky.” At 8:30 a.m. on June 5, 1949, Henry Van “Skimp” Tillman was electrocuted at the age of 51.
3. William “Big Bill” Johnston: Florida’s Mr. Big
Photograph of William Johnston in the Chicago Tribune on May 8, 1964.
William “Big Bill” Johnson was a one-time mutuels clerk at Sportsman Park, a Chicago horse track owned by Al Capone during Prohibition. He eventually rose to the position of public relations director for Edward O’Hare. O’Hare, also known as “Easy Eddie”, was one of Capone’s top lieutenants. O’Hare International Airport was named in honor of Easy Eddie’s son and Medal of Honor recipient, Butch O’Hare.
The Miami Herald’s coverage of Easy Eddie’s murder. William Johnston took Edward O’Hare’s place as president of Capone’s dog tracks after O’Hare’s death. Photograph courtesy of https://wolfsonianfiulibrary.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/picture5.jpg
Easy Eddie helped federal prosecutors convict Capone of tax evasion in 1933. A week before capone was released from Alcatraz, Easy Eddie O’Hare was slain by gang bullets in 1939. After O’Hare’s death, William “Big Bill” Johnston became the head of the Capone syndicate’s dog tracks in Chicago, Jacksonville, Orange Park, Tampa, and Miami. Working under Johnston was John Patton. Long associated with the Capone gang, Patton was known as the Boy Mayor of Burham, the Chicago suburb that was the center of vice, gambling, and booze for the Capone syndicate.Wanting a piece of the S & G Syndicate’s bookmaking business in Miami, the Chicago mob sent Harry “The Muscle”
Russell to make them a partnership offer they couldn’t refuse. Initially, S & G, which was led by a group of South Florida businessmen, refused. Denied by S & G, Johnston proceeded to illegally contribute $154,000 to the election campaign of Governor Fuller Warren. All told, between Johnston and his associates, $404,000 was funneled into Fuller Warren’s campaign, accounting for more than half of his fundraising.
Soon, the new governor from Jacksonville appointed W.O. Crosby, a Jacksonville private eye with a criminal record, to investigate Miami’s gambling syndicates. Crosby teamed with Duval County sheriff Jimmy Sullivan in a series of raids. Interestingly enough, only S & G parlors were hit. The raids abruptly stopped once Johnston and his associates got of piece of S&G’s pie and a major share of Florida’s contracts for road-building materials.
In later years, Johnston, who lived with his wife Anna at 1090 Arbor Lane in San Marco, added downtown Jacksonville’s luxurious George Washington Hotel to his list of properties. A benefactor of public education, Florida State University’s William Johnston Building and Bishop Kenny High School’s William Johnston Stadium are named in honor of the alleged associate of Al Capone’s Chicago mob.
Big Bill Johnston’s former house in San Marco.
2. Paul John Knowles: The Casanova Killer
Knowles is considered to be among America’s most unpredictable serial killers, due to his murders not following a pattern.
Paul John Knowles was known as the Casanova Killer. According British journalist Sandy Fawkes, that named was earned because of his good looks, which she likened to a “cross between Robert Redford and Ryan O’Neal.” Fawkes had met Knowles in an Atlanta bar and was quickly infatuated by the killer, who happened to be driving a Chevy Impala from a victim he had murdered a few hours earlier.
Over a seven month period, Knowles murdered between 18 to 35 people. Knowles was born in Orlando in 1946 and given up by his father to live in foster homes and reformatories after being convicted of a petty crime. By the time he served his first jail sentence for kidnapping a police officer, he was a 19 year old with a 11-year history of crime.
Knowles began his killing spree after being rejected at the alter by a fiancé who called off their wedding after a psychic warned her of a dangerous man in her life. According to the Casanova Killer, that rejection resulted in him killing three people in San Francisco that night.
After returning to Jacksonville, he was arrested after stabbing a bartender during a fight. While being held in a detention cell, knowles picked his lock and escaped on July 26, 1974. Soon, retired Jacksonville schoolteacher Alice Curtis was found dead.
During his reign of terror in 1974, Knowles killed the old, young, men, women, and children by a several methods. Methods of death included strangulation, shotgun, and stabbings with scissors. During some of his murders, he sexually assaulted women. With others, he stole cars, money, and credit cards.
Knowles killing spree ended in November 1974, when he was captured by a hunter in the backwoods of Georgia, while trying to escape a roadblock. In custody, he bragged about the deaths and claimed his motive was a thirst for fame.
The Casanova Killer time in custody would not last long and he didn’t live to see 30. While working with detectives to locate hidden murder weapons on December 18, 1974, Knowles attempted to pick a lock on his handcuffs with a paper clip that he had hidden in his socks. Georgia Bureau of Investigation Agent Ronnie Angel responded by firing three shots into the chest of Knowles, killing him instantly.
1. Ottis Elwood Toole
Ottis Toole. Photograph courtesy of Crime Library at https://www.crimelibrary.com/blog/files/2013/05/ottis-toole.png
Ottis Elwood Toole was born in Jacksonville on March 5, 1947 to an abusive mother and an alcoholic father who abandoned him. As a child living in Springfield, he was a victim of sexual assault and incest. In addition, he claimed that his abuse started when he revealed to his family that he was gay.
By the time he was a young adult, he had become a male prostitute and a serial arsonist, sexually aroused by fire. Although he was first arrested at the age of 17 for loitering, Toole claimed that his first killing occurred three years earlier when he ran over a traveling salesman who propositioned him for sex.
Between 1966 and 1974 and being supported by panhandling and prostitution, Toole drifted around the country racking up murder accusations in the Southwest and South. A wanted man, he returned to Jacksonville in early 1975.
After meeting Henry Lee Lucas at a Jacksonville soup kitchen in 1976, the two lovers went on to commit several murders. In 1982, Jacksonville’s streets would get a little safer when Toole was arrested and sentenced to 20 years for arson. While in custody, he admitted to barricading George Sonnenberg in a boarding house and lighting it on fire after an argument between the two, although according to Dr. Tim Gilmore of Jax Psycho Geo and author of Stalking Ottis Toole: A Southern Gothic, Toole also retracted his story. After being sentenced to life in prison, he admitted to committing several more murders. These included the strangulation of a 19-year old Tallahassee woman, four more murders in Jacksonville, and the confession of the 1981 murder of 6-year-old Adam Walsh.
Walsh had been abducted from a Sears department store in Hollywood, FL and his decapitated body was found two weeks later in a Vero Beach, FL canal. Adam’s death promoted his father John Walsh to become an advocate for victims’ right. Walsh would go on to become the host of the television program America’s Most Wanted. In addition, President Bush signed the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act in 2006 and the Code Adam program for helping lost kids in stores is named in Adam’s honor.
As for Jacksonville’s Toole, he never stepped foot outside of a prison again. He also retracted, and confessed, and retracted to killing Adam Walsh. According to Dr. Tim Gilmore, “the Jacksonville detective credited with obtaining Toole’s confession was removed from the case after it surfaced that he’d fed Toole information and offered him a book deal–especially ironic since Toole was illiterate and had an IQ of about 75.”
On September 15, 1996, he died of cirrhosis at Florida State Prison in Raiford. Toole’s associate, Henry Lee Lucas, died in prison of heart failure on March 13, 2001.
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Article by Ennis Davis, AICP. Contact Ennis at edavis@moderncities.com