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CHAPTER THREE

WIPING out the Ashley gang of bank robbers and desperadoesin that fall of 1924 marked the end of one chapter of fron-tier Florida. Four bodies, sprawled dead beside the Dixie

highway at Sebastian river bridge, closed the books on John Ash-ley and his chief lieutenants, a band which had terrorized the East-Coast for more than a decade.

Their last exploit was the robbery of the Bank of Pompano of$9,000 on September 12. Before disappearing into the Everglades,they sent a rifle bullet to Sheriff Bob Baker of Palm Beach countywith the mocking message that they would meet him in the 'glades.

Baker, the most intrepid peace officer Florida ever knew, soonwas hot on their trail. After 10 days of crawling and wadingthrough the swamps, Baker and his deputies got close enough toexchange shots with the outlaws. Three deputies were wounded,no captures were made.

Nothing more was heard of John Ashley and his followers fornearly a month. Then, as Baker was about to conclude a spiritedcampaign for re-election, he got word that Ashley was going totry to escape up the coast to Jacksonville, where some of his kinlived. The night of their departure was November 1, when Bakerwas to make his last speech of the campaign in Lake Worth. Heknew if he should drive up the coast to intercept them, the warn-ings would fly like wildfire. So he sent four of his deputies, in astrange automobile, to enlist the aid of Sheriff R. E. Merritt of St.Lucie county in setting a trap at the Sebastian river.

A heavy chain was stretched across the bridge and a red lan-tern hung on it. Late at night, a motor car stopped there. It con-tained innocent travelers, but while it blocked the way, the Ashleycar drove up behind it and was immediately surrounded by dep-uties. John Ashley, Hanford Mobley, Ray (Shorty) Lynn and BobMiddleton were caught before they had a chance to reach for thepistols or rifles with which they were armed.

What occurred next will always, presumably, be shrouded indoubt. Shooting began and when the smoke had rolled away, JohnAshley and his three followers were dead by the side of the road.The official report on the shambles related that before Ashley andhis companions could be handcuffed, they had suddenly producedhidden weapons and made a break for liberty, the lethal shootingfollowing. Not long after, however, two young men reported theyhad passed by the bridge and had seen four men handcuffed andin chains lined up along the side of the road. A few minutes afterthey had gone, they said, they heard shots. Many in St. Lucie countysigned petitions that they believed the Ashley crew had beenmurdered.

However that may be, the backbone of the Ashley gang was

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broken. The body of Middleton, product of the Chicago under-world, was claimed by relatives. Back to the rude little buryingground at Gomez went the other three, back to Mrs. Joe Ashley,mother of John and grandmother of Mobley. The two, with thestranger, Lynn, who had no kinpeople, were buried beside thefather, Joe, who had been shot to death early that year in a stillraid which also claimed the life of Deputy Fred Baker.

Ed and Frank Ashley, brothers of John, had died in 1921while running a load of liquor from Bimini. They disappeared atsea, believed to have been victims of hijackers. Bob Ashley, an-other brother, was killed in Miami in 1915 when he tried to "spring"John, held in jail by Sheriff Dan Hardie while awaiting trial on acharge of murder. Laura Upthegrove, "queen of the Everglades"and John's sweetheart and gun-fighting companion, killed herselfin a fit of rage several months after John's death, drinking poisonat her filling station near Canal Point. Daisy Ashley, beauty ofthe family, also died by her own hand. Lesser members of thegang have scattered, or are in prison.

Nothing out of the way marked the life of John Ashley until1911. He was a trapper and wood chopper, and one of his trap-ping companions was a Seminole, DeSoto Tiger. A dredge diggingone of the state canals back of Fort Lauderdale hauled out thebody of DeSoto Tiger one day, and John Ashley was accused of themurder. He escaped, traveled into the West, and returned aboutthree years later, giving himself up to Sheriff George B. Baker,whose son, Bob, then was jailer. While his trial was in progress,however, Ashley again escaped, and began a reign of terror whichis thought to include even robbery of a Florida East Coast passen-ger train.

In 1915 the Stuart bank was robbed of $4,300 and an acciden-tal shot destroyed John Ashley's left eye. His need for medicalcare led to his speedy capture and he was lodged in Dade countyjail, from which his brother Bob unsuccessfully tried to free him.The old charge of murder finally was thrown out, but John wassentenced to serve 171/2 years in Raiford state prison for the bankrobbery. He escaped, made and ran liquor back in his old hauntsfor three years, was recaptured in 1921 and returned to the prison.

By escapes from various penal institutions, the augmentedAshley gang reassembled in 1924, after Mobley and a companionhad again robbed the Stuart bank. The first major achievementafter that was the foray against the Pompano bank, which endedso disastrously.

Only "Old Lady Ashley" was left at the little home at Gomez,south of Stuart, out of all that fierce brood she mothered. Todayeven Bob Baker is dead, passing away recently from the effects ofan old injury which resulted in the loss of one leg. He went quitepeacefully beyond the power of that curse called down upon himby Mrs. Joe Ashley as she wept beside the graves of John Ashleyand Hanford Mobley: "It's Bob Baker's work," she had exclaimed.

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"I hope he's paralyzed tomorrow and they have to feed him outof a spoon the rest of his life."

Bob Baker, during his last years, told a picturesque and slight-ly gruesome story of that final chapter. John Ashley for years hadworn a glass eye in place of the one destroyed by accident duringthe first Stuart bank robbery. It had long been Bob Baker's threatthat he would yet wear Ashley's eye as a watch charm.

After the Sebastian bridge affair, the glass eye found its wayinto Baker's possession. But before the funeral, Baker recalled,Laura Upthegrove sent word to him that if he didn't replace thateye she would "crawl on my hands and knees through hell to getyou."

"I knew that I'd have her to kill if I kept it," he remarkedruefully, "so I sent it back." That was perhaps the only time inhis life that Bob Baker backed down before the threat of death.

. they thought nothing of spending a million dollars during the boom for thisDouglas entrance to Coral Gables.-Brower Photo.

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