Curtis Chillingworth | |
---|---|
![]() Curtis Chillingworth, c. 1947 | |
Born | Curtis Eugene Chillingworth October 24, 1896 |
Disappeared | June 15, 1955 58) | (aged
Nationality | American |
Alma mater | University of Florida |
Known for | Being a judge |
Spouse | Marjorie M. McKinley |
Curtis Eugene Chillingworth (October 24, 1896 to presumably June 15, 1955) was an American attorney and judge who disappeared from his home in Manalapan, Florida and was presumed murdered along with his wife, Marjorie Chillingworth.
Their disappearances and deaths are recounted in the Investigation Discovery series A Crime to Remember (Season 1 Episode 3).
Curtis Chillingworth was born October 24, 1896 [1] to a prominent family in West Palm Beach, Florida. [2] He graduated from the University of Florida in 1917, and later that same year was admitted to the Florida Bar. After graduating, Chillingworth served at the naval base in Key West, then attended the United States Naval Academy, where he received a commission to serve on the gunboat USS Annapolis. During World War I he served as an ensign aboard the USS Minneapolis. [1]
After the war, Chillingworth returned to West Palm Beach to practice law with his father. In 1921, he began his career as county judge at age 24. He became the newly elected circuit judge in 1923, holding the position for thirty-two years until his death in 1955. He married Marjorie M. McKinley, a Cornell University student and daughter of old friends of the Chillingworth family.
Chillingworth remained in the U.S. Naval Reserves and was recalled to active duty in 1942. During World War II, he was stationed in London and Plymouth, England, where he participated in planning the occupation and recovery of Germany. He was released from active duty in 1945 as a full commander.
A 4.1-acre (17,000 m2) neighborhood park in West Palm Beach is named in honor of Chillingworth. [3]
Chillingworth and his wife were last seen at a dinner in West Palm Beach on the evening of June 14, 1955. They left the dinner about 10 p.m. for their Manalapan home. They went to bed expecting a carpenter to arrive in the morning of June 15 to build a playground for their grandchildren. [4]
The carpenter arrived at 8 a.m. and observed that the Chillingworths' door had been left open and that their home appeared to be empty. Later that same day, Chillingworth failed to appear as scheduled at a 10 a.m. hearing at the courthouse in West Palm Beach. [5]
An accidental drowning during a morning swim was quickly ruled out, and $40 found to be in Marjorie's pocketbook ruled out robbery. The keys were still in the ignition of Chillingworth's Plymouth automobile. No further clues were obtained and (at that point) the case went cold. The couple were declared legally dead in 1957. [1] Several suspects were considered, including Charles Nelson, brother of Chillingworth's friend Trapper Nelson, whose trial for murder Chillingworth had presided over. [6]
In June 1955, municipal judge Joseph Peel was slated to appear in court to answer charges of unethical conduct in a divorce case, for which he faced possible disbarment. Peel had used his elected position to protect bolita operators and moonshiners by giving them advance warnings of raids in return for financial compensation. Disbarment would mean the loss of his position and therefore his lucrative illegal racket and, according to The New York Times, thwart his "scheme to become governor of Florida." [7]
He had had a previous run-in with Chillingworth in 1953, when the senior judge had reprimanded Peel as he represented both sides in an earlier divorce case; Chillingworth warned Peel that he would get no second chance. [8] Peel hired Floyd "Lucky" Holzapfel, a known criminal and carpenter's apprentice, to murder Chillingworth and his wife. On the night of June 14, Holzapfel and an accomplice named Bobby Lincoln went by boat to Manalapan, and landed on the beach behind the Chillingworths' house around 1 a.m. Lincoln crouched in the bushes as Holzapfel knocked on the door. The judge answered in his pajamas. Holzapfel pulled a pistol from under his shirt and forced the judge and his wife into the boat. After the boat drifted for about an hour, the couple were thrown overboard with lead weights strapped to their legs. [9]
In 1959, Holzapfel bragged to a friend, James Yenzer, that he knew who had killed the Chillingworths, and in September 1960, Yenzer and a friend, ex-West Beach police officer Jim Wilber, lured Holzapfel to a hotel in Melbourne. Yenzer and Wilber managed to get Holzapfel drunk and discuss what he knew of the murders. Unbeknown to Holzapfel, a member of the Florida Sheriff's Bureau, tipped off by Yenzer and Wilber, was in an adjacent room in the hotel capturing his comments on tape.
Holzapfel was arrested on October 1, 1960, and on December 12, he pleaded guilty to both murders. He was sent to death row, but his death sentence was commuted in 1966; he died in prison thirty years later. On March 30, 1961, Peel was found guilty of accessory to murder. He received two life sentences, but was paroled in 1982 while in seriously ill health with cancer, and died nine days later. Lincoln finished his federal prison term in Michigan in 1962. [7]
Having denied any guilt throughout, Peel delivered a deathbed confession after his release, a week before his demise, in 1982, admitting to unchecked ambition and to greedily accepting bribes from gambling bosses and moonshiners, and that Judge Chillingworth was a roadblock to his schemes, stating: "I was to go from state attorney to attorney general to governor". [10]
The three Chillingworth daughters, Neva, Ann, and Marie, along with Marie's spouse, Bill, started the Judge Curtis E. and Mrs. Marjorie M. Chillingsworth Memorial Scholarship Fund at their own alma mater, Florida State University, in honor of their parents. [11]
Disbarment, also known as striking off, is the removal of a lawyer from a bar association or the practice of law, thus revoking their law license or admission to practice law. Disbarment is usually a punishment for unethical or criminal conduct but may also be imposed for incompetence or incapacity. Procedures vary depending on the law society; temporary disbarment may be referred to as suspension.
Palm Beach County is a county in the southeastern part of Florida, located in the Miami metropolitan area. It is Florida's third-most populous county after Miami-Dade County and Broward County and the 26th-most populous in the United States, with 1,492,191 residents as of the 2020 census. Its county seat and largest city is West Palm Beach, which had a population of 117,415 as of 2020. Named after one of its oldest settlements, Palm Beach, the county was established in 1909, after being split from Miami -Dade County. The county's modern-day boundaries were established in 1963.
Jensen Beach is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in Martin County, Florida, United States. The population was 12,652 at the 2020 census. It is part of the Port St. Lucie, Florida Metropolitan Statistical Area.
Manalapan is a town in Palm Beach County, Florida, United States. It is part of the Miami metropolitan area of South Florida. The population was 419 at the 2020 United States census.
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings was an American writer who lived in rural Florida and wrote novels with rural themes and settings. Her best known work, The Yearling, about a boy who adopts an orphaned fawn, won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1939 and was later made into a movie of the same name. The book was written before the concept of young adult fiction arose, but is now commonly included in teen-reading lists.
Juno was a town in Palm Beach County, Florida. Settlement in Juno dated back to at least early 1889, when residents of Dade County, which then stretched from modern-day Martin County to Miami-Dade County, voted for the area to become the county seat. Located at the north end of the Lake Worth Lagoon, Juno soon became the southern terminus of the Jupiter and Lake Worth Railway, which is often referred to as the Celestial Railroad due to its stations at Juno, Mars, Venus, and Jupiter. Juno's status as the seat of Dade County attracted people and businesses to the town, including The Tropical Sun, which became the first newspaper in South Florida.
Francis Lee Bailey Jr., better known to the general public as F. Lee Bailey, was an American criminal defense attorney. Bailey's name first came to nationwide attention for his involvement in the second murder trial of Sam Sheppard, a surgeon accused of murdering his wife. He later served as the attorney in a number of other high-profile cases, such as Albert DeSalvo, a suspect in the "Boston Strangler" murders, heiress Patty Hearst's trial for bank robberies committed during her involvement with the Symbionese Liberation Army, and US Army Captain Ernest Medina for the My Lai Massacre. He was a member of the "Dream Team" in the trial of former football player O. J. Simpson, who was accused of murdering Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. He is considered one of the greatest lawyers of the 20th century.
Guy Morrell Bradley was an American game warden and deputy sheriff for Monroe County, Florida. Born in Chicago, Illinois, he relocated to Florida with his family when he was young. As a boy, he often served as guide to visiting fishermen and plume hunters, although he later denounced poaching after legislation was passed to protect the dwindling number of birds. In 1902, Bradley was hired by the American Ornithologists' Union, at the request of the Florida Audubon Society, to become one of the country's first game wardens.
Rene Alexander Acosta is an American attorney and politician, who served as the 27th United States Secretary of Labor from 2017 to 2019. President Donald Trump nominated Acosta to be Labor Secretary on February 16, 2017, and he was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on April 27, 2017.
Vince "Trapper" Nelson was an American trapper, hunter and zoo founder. Though he was born in New Jersey, and lived in Mexico and Texas, Nelson is best known for establishing a homestead-turned-zoo on the shore of Florida's Loxahatchee River. Filled with exotic and wild animals, his zoo was a popular tourist spot in the 1940s and 1950s, visited by local and national celebrities. Because of this, he became known locally as "Tarzan of the Loxahatchee".
Okeelanta is an unincorporated community in Palm Beach County, Florida, United States, located approximately 4 miles (7 km) south of South Bay on U.S. Route 27 at County Road 827. It was originally developed as a planned community in the 1910s, but had effectively disappeared by the end of the 1920s. The name is a portmanteau of Lake Okeechobee and Atlantic Ocean.
Harriette Vyda Simms Moore was an American educator and civil rights worker. She was the wife of Harry T. Moore, who founded the first branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Brevard County, Florida. The murder of the Moores was the first assassination to happen during the Civil Rights Movement and the only time both a husband and a wife were killed for their activism.
Scott W. Rothstein is an American disbarred lawyer, convicted felon, and the former managing shareholder, chairman, and chief executive officer of the now-defunct Rothstein Rosenfeldt Adler law firm. He funded an extravagant lifestyle with a $1.2 billion Ponzi scheme, one of the largest such in history.
John Hopkin Ashley was an American outlaw, bank robber, bootlegger, and occasional pirate active in southern Florida during the 1910s and 1920s. Between 1915 and 1924, the self-styled "King of the Everglades" or "Swamp Bandit" operated from various hideouts in the Florida Everglades. His gang robbed nearly $1 million from at least 40 banks while at the same time hijacking numerous shipments of illegal whiskey being smuggled into the state from the Bahamas. Indeed, Ashley's gang was so effective that rum-running on the Florida coast virtually ceased while the gang was active. His two-man raid on the West End in the Bahamas in 1924 marked the first time in over a century that American pirates had attacked a British Crown colony.
Maurice Fatio (1897–1943) was a Swiss-born American architect.
Nubia Docter Barahona was a 10-year-old American girl who was abused and murdered on February 11, 2011.
Stuart Betts McIver was a historian who authored 14 books and many magazine and newspaper articles. His written work was often related to Florida and included Touched by the Sun and Death in the Everglades about the murder of conservation pioneer Guy Bradley. He was also scriptwriter and director of documentary films. He appeared as himself in City Confidential, Season 1, Episode 12 "Ft. Lauderdale: Sin in the Sun". He served six years on the board of the Broward County Historical Commission.
Isiah C. Smith (1922–2012) was a judge and civil rights attorney. He was Palm Beach County, Florida's third black lawyer. He and William Holland, Palm Beach County's first black attorney, fought successfully to integrate the county's schools, golf courses, department stores, airport taxi service, and the Florida Turnpike's restaurants and bathrooms through lawsuits and negotiations in the mid-1950s. While working with Holland at their practice, Smith also served part-time as Delray Beach City Prosecutor from 1970 to 1977. In 1986, he was appointed by Governor Bob Graham to become a circuit judge for Palm Beach County. He stepped down in 1992, having reached the age of 70, the mandatory retirement age in Florida for jurists.
Palm Beach County is a county in the southeastern part of the U.S. state of Florida. Its history dates back to about 12,000 years ago, shortly after when Native Americans migrated into Florida. Juan Ponce de León became the first European in the area, landing at the Jupiter Inlet in 1513. Diseases from Europe, enslavement, and warfare significantly diminished the indigenous population of Florida over the next few centuries. During the Second Seminole War, the Battles of the Loxahatchee occurred west of modern-day Jupiter in 1838. The Jupiter Lighthouse, the county's oldest surviving structure, was completed in 1860. The first homestead claims were filed around Lake Worth in 1873. The county's first hotel, schoolhouse, and railway, the Celestial Railroad, began operating in the 1880s, while the first settlers of modern-day Lake Worth Beach arrived in 1885. During the 1890s, Henry Flagler and his workers constructed the Royal Poinciana Hotel and The Breakers in Palm Beach and extended the Florida East Coast Railway southward to the area. They also developed a separate city for hotel workers, which in 1894 became West Palm Beach, the county's oldest incorporated municipality. Major Nathan Boynton, Congressman William S. Linton, and railroad surveyor Thomas Rickards also arrived in the 1890s and developed communities that became Boynton Beach, Delray Beach, and Boca Raton, respectively.
Grace Morrison was an American activist secretary and aviator.