The true story of the long-unsolved killing of a celebrity in northern Florida: “A page-turner.” —First Coast Living The murder of Athalia Ponsell Lindsley, a former model and television hostess who was once engaged to Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., is still notorious more than four decades after it occurred. The only eyewitness said a man attacked Lindsley with a machete in broad daylight on the front steps of her mansion. Gossip swirled that neighbor Frances Bemis knew who killed Lindsley and would notify authorities—and then Bemis was later murdered on her nightly walk. Police arrested only one suspect for Lindsley’s murder, which remains unsolved to this day. Here, Elizabeth Randall replaces the rumors with research, and draws from over one thousand pages of depositions, records, official county documentation, and interviews to reveal the story behind this shocking crime. Includes photos

This book is a true story of a ghastly murder in the nation's oldest city in January of 1974. The victim was a former New York City model who in earlier years had moved in the highest social circles, which included the Kennedy family of Massachusetts. The murder investigation and subsequent trial involved many people from the highest echelons of St. Augustine and St. Johns County.

Sex Slayings Throughout its long and colorful history, St. Augustine, Florida has been home to pirates and villains, marauders and despots. But it wasn't until the late 1980s that the city's red-light district, known locally as Crack Head Corner, became the hunting ground for a serial killer whose brutality knew no bounds. A Killer's Taunts On November 29, 1988, Anita Stevens, 27, climbed into a stranger's vehicle, thinking to turn a quick trick to fund her drug habit. She was the first to die. Over the next six years, six more prostitutes would fall victim to the same phantom killer, slain by gun, blunt objects, a strangler's noose--and the murderer's bare hands. His signature was the obscene poses in which he arranged his half-nude victims. Final Justice Frustrated by false confessions, investigators sifted through a myriad of suspects until a Christmas Eve, 1996 murder in Asheville, North Carolina led them to the real killer: William Darrell Lindsey. Twice-married, a father of five, Lindsey had drifted across the South for years. Wherever he went, rape and murder followed. He admitted to seven sex slayings, but experts believe that the death toll was somewhere between twelve and twenty. Here is the chilling true story of a fiend whose sadistic lust was the most depraved addiction of all. Includes 16 Pages Of Shocking Photos McCay Vernon, Ph.D., is a psychologist whose career has been concentrated in the fields of deafness and forensics. He is the author of seven books, over 300 articles, and award-winning documentary films and television productions in those fields. Although his path never crossed that of William Darrell Lindsey, Dr. Vernon attended the same high school, delivered the local paper to Lindsey's family, and shared many acquaintances with the killer. Marie Vernon is a freelance journalist whose columns, feature articles, and book reviews have appeared in such major newspapers at the Baltimore Sun, Cleveland Plain Dealer, and Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The Vernons live near St. Augustine, Florida.

When Pedro Menéndez de Avilés founded St. Augustine in 1565, his New World survival kit included gambling, liquor and ladies for hire. For the next four hundred years, these three industries were vital in keeping the city financially afloat. With the cooperation of law enforcement and politicians, St. Augustine's madams, bootleggers and high-rollers created a veritable Riviera where tourists, especially the wealthy, could indulge in almost every vice and still bring the family along for a wholesome vacation picking oranges and gawking at alligators. Join historian Ann Colby's tour of spots not on the standard tourist map to discover hidden-in-plain-sight bordellos, speakeasies, casinos and the occasional opium den.

Kathy Augustine was a controversial two-term Nevada State Controller. In 2003, her husband Chuck died of an apparent stroke. Only a month later, she married Chaz Higgs, an ER nurse who, it was later revealed, had attended to her late husband just before his death. Three years later, fifty-year-old Kathy died after a heart attack—the result, her family and friends believed, of a stressful political campaign. But when an autopsy of Kathy’s body revealed no signs of heart disease, investigators dug deeper into Kathy’s case…only to find the presence of a powerful, paralyzing emergency-room drug in Kathy’s system. A jury would later charge Nurse Chaz with murder in the first degree. But could Kathy’s first husband also have been the victim of Chaz’s treachery? And just how much did Kathy know? This is the shocking true story of a family torn apart by lies, medical crime, and POISONED LOVE.

When PI Quint Mitchell volunteered to help with an archaeological survey in St. Augustine, he didn't count on digging up a murder victim. In the nation's oldest city, Mitchell discovers links to ancient sins, comes face to face with his own past, and unleashes powerful forces that will do anything to keep their secrets-even if it means taking his life. In this award-winning debut mystery, author Parker Francis taps into an undercurrent of violence hidden behind the sleepy facade of the historic town. When Mitchell's friend, the City Archaeologist, is charged with a brutal murder, he must find the true killer while fighting inner demons and the corrosive residue of racial violence dating back to the Civil Rights Movement. As he learns, St. Augustine was birthed in blood-Matanzas means "place of slaughter" in Spanish-and violence is never far from the surface.

Photojournalists Bob and Liz Randall spent two years exploring Florida's ancient and enchanting Ocklawaha River. Their journey provides an inside look at the rich recreational resources of the river, its wildlife and the people, past and present, who contributed to its history and welfare. Along the way, they met artists, environmentalists, captains, law enforcement officials, conservationists, filmmakers, historians and local descendants whose lives are inextricably intertwined with the prehistoric river. From its subterranean and aquatic past to the Seminole Indian Wars, the steamboat era and political struggles, many voices are integral to the river's survival and to one of the longest environmental conflicts in Florida history.