Beneath a Ruthless Sun

by Gilbert King

  IN THE DECADES after his release from Florida State Hospital, Jesse Delbert Daniels experienced more than his share of life challenges. From the outset he had difficulties holding on to steady employment, and the death of his mother in 1976 radically destabilized his living situation. He never became homeless, but the various residences he subsequently shared with other marginalized Floridians did not afford him adequate structure or supervision, and post-release counseling was virtually nonexistent in Florida at that time. The traumatic years he had spent at Chattahoochee without any treatment, and the “bad influences” Pearl Daniels had alluded to in her letters to physicians, had taken their toll, and not surprisingly, behavioral problems arose as he aged. Transfixed by bikini-clad women on Daytona Beach, he was arrested for exposure and lewd and lascivious behavior in 1986, and twice again in 1998.

  Reverend David Troxler, the minister at First Christian Church in Daytona Beach, took a protective interest in Jesse. “He’d been exposed to and experienced inappropriate sexual behavior at Chattahoochee,” Troxler said. “As time passed he became more out of touch and confused, and he didn’t have the mental ability to adjust to behavioral norms and expectations outside that asylum.”

  Jesse’s record would be purged, a judge ruled, if he agreed to move into a facility where he could be more closely supervised. Once the trust fund from his claims bill settlement ran out, he began receiving small disability payments, and was able to move into an assisted living facility in Daytona Beach, where he now lives. He has had no further behavioral incidents. His hearing and vision are failing him, and he recently broke his hip. Now he gets around not on a bicycle but with a walker.

  “I’ve had a pretty good life,” Jesse says with a stutter, his face lighting up with a friendly smile. “So far.”

  * * *

  —

  BLANCHE BOSANQUET KNOWLES never spent another night at the house in Okahumpka after she left it in the early-morning hours of December 18, 1957. As her mother, Ruth, had long desired, Blanche and Joe resettled in Leesburg, where they built a new house in Palmora Park and rejoined the city’s lively social set. Still, Blanche was fearful whenever her husband was away overnight; she insisted that all the windows in their new home be reinforced and that double bolts be installed on all the doors, including a door to the hallway outside the bedrooms. In the months after the attack, she often awoke in a panic, convinced she’d heard someone or something outside the house, especially when Joe was not at home. Immediately, she’d call the police, and with flashlight in hand and her sleepy children in her arms, she’d huddle in the darkness until help arrived. Once, she reported seeing a man with a flashlight approaching her home in the middle of the night. When the Leesburg Police Department investigated, they discovered bottles of fresh milk in the box by the door—the dairy man had delivered. As the years passed, police responded to her panicked, late-night phone calls more with patience than with alarm.

  Blanche’s daughter, Mary—the baby in the room on the night of her mother’s rape—spent two years at a local community college before she decided to finish her schooling at the University of Florida in Gainesville. She did not make the move alone. Nearly thirty years after graduating from Florida State College for Women, Blanche returned to school, to pursue a master’s degree in special education. She and Mary roomed together in the summers. “She had a heavier course load than me,” Mary recalled, “and we got along just fine.” Blanche resumed her Leesburg teaching job in the fall, and continued to make the weekly seventy-plus-mile trip to Gainesville to attend night classes at the university.

  When she’d completed her degree, Blanche devoted herself to working with the mentally disabled students at Leesburg High School; she taught young men and women like Jesse Daniels in the classroom and helped them prepare for useful lives outside by assisting them in practical matters like job applications, driver’s licenses, and personal finances. The new focus of her work wasn’t coincidental, according to her son Steve. “There’s more than one victim in this story,” he said.

  A few years after Blanche and Joe celebrated their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, Joe Knowles decided to throw his hat into the ring and run for the House of Representatives. The Leesburg Quarterback Club rallied around its founder, providing endorsements for billboards and newspaper ads. “Rarely do men of the caliber, character, and ability of Joe Knowles seek public office,” Sam Powell declared. “Joe Knowles will give us honest, efficient, and effective representation,” Gordon Oldham promised. Voters evidently agreed. Joe breezed to victory in the 1976 Democratic primary, but he lost the general election by a narrow margin to his Republican opponent—none other than Vince Fechtel Jr., who had joined Richard Langley in arguing against compensating Jesse Daniels. Joe served for a number of years more on the city commission and as mayor of Leesburg, and Blanche dutifully played the politician’s wife, standing by his side at ribbon cuttings, donning a visor and a campaign T-shirt to hand out flyers, and attending balls and country club events. The Leesburg Watermelon Festival had largely passed into history after the Freeze of 1957, however, and the Knowles Trophy, once awarded to the grower of the season’s largest melon, had been gathering dust in Joe’s office. Nor did the mayor’s wife, or any wife, any longer meet her husband at the train depot when the Quarterback Club returned from its annual autumn jaunt, as the Seaboard Coast Line had stopped routing trains through Leesburg. The Quarterback Club now chartered flights for its yearly trips to Florida Gator football games, and the club-car revelry that an aging generation of Lake County princes had enjoyed was relegated to memory.

  In 2006, after more than half a century of marriage, Blanche laid her husband to rest. She herself passed away in Leesburg in 2012, and silenced at last were the ugly whispers in the dark (“I was paid five thousand dollars to kill you . . . Wouldn’t you like to know who paid me that?”) that had long haunted her memory.

  * * *

  —

  MABEL NORRIS CHESLEY retired from the Daytona Beach News-Journal in 1977. She spent her remaining years in Volusia County, fishing and reading until her vision and her health began to fail. She died of cancer in 1995. Despite her award-winning coverage of the St. Augustine Movement in 1964, she always considered her reporting in Lake County on the Jesse Daniels case, as well as the Platt and Groveland cases, to be her most important work. “Those were the three really big stories I was involved in,” she said. “And eventually, they all worked out for the best.”

  Jesse’s guitar and teddy bear

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I am grateful to everyone who generously contributed to this project over the years, and none more so than Jesse Daniels, who patiently sat with me on several occasions, tolerated my countless questions, and entrusted me with his story. Jesse’s caretaker, the Reverend David Troxler of First Christian Church in Daytona Beach, graciously arranged my meetings with Jesse and facilitated my Freedom of Information Act requests to the FBI for Jesse’s personal files and reports. David was a godsend, and Jesse is fortunate to have him in his life. I am eternally thankful to Richard Graham and his wife, Bunnie, who welcomed me into their home and met with me many times for interviews and conversations. Richard was always in reach when I needed him (frequently) to guide me through the complexities of Jesse’s legal journey, and this book is infinitely better because of him.

  The book never would have been written had Evvie Griffin not brought Jesse’s story to my attention when I visited Groveland in 2012. Since then, I’ve met with Evvie dozens of times—usually before sunrise, over biscuits and gravy, at the Mason Jar in Umatilla. There, Evvie ceremoniously gave up his seat at the head of table 13—the same seat where Sheriff Willis McCall used to hold court—and we would talk for hours. He toured me around Lake County in his pickup truck, and he introduced me to insightful people, including his former partner, the late Tom Ledford. Evvie also gave me correspondence, photographs, reports, and other documents that were
indispensable over the course of my research. I am deeply grateful for his friendship and trust.

  My trips to see Priscilla Newell in Connecticut were invaluable for understanding Leesburg and Fruitland Park from her perspective. Priscilla guided me with grace, wisdom, and candor, and I’m proud to consider her a new friend. I am eternally thankful to other family members as well. Bud Bosanquet and his wife, Janine, welcomed me into their home in St. Louis, where they shared stories, answered questions, and shined light on the life of Blanche Bosanquet Knowles, and on growing up at Fair Oaks. Bob Gilchrist was also extremely informative and helpful.

  I would like to express my gratitude to the Knowles family—David, Steve, and Mary Elizabeth, the children of Joe and Blanche Knowles—who agreed to talk with me and who shared memories relating to a painful part of the family’s past. And Mary Ellen Hawkins was kind enough to speak candidly with me about her involvement in this case.

  Cindy Chesley and her mother, the late Patricia Chesley, were supportive from the start of my work on this book, describing to me Mabel Norris Chesley’s life and career in both Mount Dora and Daytona Beach. I will never forget a conversation with Cindy, midway though the project, when she casually said, “Oh, I found a box in Mom’s attic. Seems to be Mabel’s old newspaper files.”

  Rick Hernan, the former FDLE agent, contacted me out of the blue to tell me he had read Devil in the Grove and wanted me to know that in 1972, he and his partner, Al Albright, arrested Willis McCall. I’m most grateful for all of Rick’s assistance in the preparation of this book. Glorianne Fahs at the Leesburg Heritage Society was also particularly informative, granting me access to whatever I needed and helping track down people and documents. Legendary Lake County reporter and columnist Lauren Ritchie of the Orlando Sentinel was essential to my research, and I’m always happy when she shares with me her vast Lake County knowledge over a bottle of wine. Martin Dyckman, the great political writer, reporter, and columnist, was generous with his time throughout the research and writing of this book. And whenever I had a question about the Florida Supreme Court, it was reassuring to know that I could count on Justice James E. C. Perry for fast and precise answers.

  Over the course of the past eight years, I’ve spoken to hundreds of people in Lake County and beyond who were most generous and helpful. I could never list them all, but among them, I’m thankful to Tom Ledford, Mardie White, Donna Bott, Anne Pattillo Kail, Mary Alice Herlong Pattillo, Chops Hancock, Jerry Melvin, Hyatt Brown, Ann Dupee, Wayne Campbell, Robert Yates, David Bishop, and Sally J. Ling. In Okahumpka, I’m grateful to Gloria Hawkins Barton, Joseph Branham, Carlton “Red” Fussell, Carolyn Waller, and Lorenzo Coffee; and in Leesburg, Gordon Oldham III, Billy Bob Polk, Rudolph Berry, and Larry King.

  I relied heavily on the expertise of journalists, authors, librarians, and historians, including Lucy Morgan, Diane Roberts, Rachel Swarns, Janny Scott, Betsy West, Morris Kennedy, Craig Pittman, Dr. Eugene Huskey, Skip Horack, Pete Gallagher, Lisa Lindquist Dorr, Susan Carol McCarthy, Robert Bowie, Deborah Shafer, Kathy Kelly, and Mark Lane. Among the attorneys who guided me were Harley Herman, Barbara Peterson, Judge Emerson R. Thompson Jr., Mike Glazer, Mark Caramanica, Sandra Baron, Ira Feinberg, Joel Motley, Carlton Stoiber, Ben Krage, Jim Purdy, Christina Swarns, Tom Palermo, John Q. Barrett, Jimmy Crawford, and Lawrence T. King.

  This book benefited from a group of bright researchers whose talents, and company along the way, were always inspiring. Thanks to Matthew Boylan, Lindsay McGrath, Jaclyn Dwyer, Matthew Plunkett, Hannah Kaplan, Clay Daniel, Anna Llewellyn, Lane Turkel, Eleanor Roy, David Cohea, Jaime Coyne, Ebony Nichols, Amanda Hurley, Allie Conti, Charles Vojta, Kathryn Adams, Dusty Matthews, and my late mother, Dorothy King, who loved a good crime story and was as research-obsessed as her son. Her enthusiasm for this project continually spurred me on.

  I asked a lot of Karen Abbott, Emma Garman, Scott Smallwood, Greg Diskant, and Samantha Thompson LoCoco, who looked over an early draft of the book, and I’m ever grateful to them for helping me see things more clearly and offering invaluable advice and encouragement. The indefatigable Jim Wohl read several drafts, and his guidance was extraordinarily helpful to me throughout this project. And once again, my longtime friend Joe Hamilla and his wife, Cheryl, provided countless nights of hospitality and friendship on my Florida trips, as did my good friend Tom Schmidt. A special thanks to Elizabeth Prats, Bev Aoki, and Samantha Thompson LoCoco for everything they’ve done to keep me organized and in the right places.

  I couldn’t be more fortunate to be a part of Team Riverhead, beginning with my genius editor, Rebecca Saletan, who was handed a complicated and unwieldy manuscript and somehow managed to bring it under control. I’ll be forever grateful for her diligence and wisdom, and I’m honored to be working with Geoff Kloske, Karen Mayer, Elizabeth Hohenadel, Glory Anne Plata, Michelle Koufopoulos, Anna Jardine, Grace Han, Jynne Dilling, and everyone else at Riverhead.

  This is the third time I’ve had the pleasure of working with the inimitable Peter Skutches, whose contributions to this book are simply immeasurable. Thank you, Peter.

  And my agent and friend Farley Chase has been with me from the beginning. Wise beyond his years, he’s been a steady source of encouragement and sage advice, and I’m grateful to have him in my corner.

  Finally, my wife, Lorna, and daughters, Maddie and Liv, had to put up with another five years of dinner table stories about Lake County history. I’m not sure how they survived, but I love them deeply, and I’m glad we all made it through.

  NOTES

  This book is based extensively on primary sources and unpublished materials, including thousands of pages of court documents and transcripts, hospital records, legislative records, and testimony. For all this I am indebted to the State Archives of Florida in Tallahassee, as well as the Lake County Clerk of the Circuit Court Records in Tavares. In addition, I relied on files from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as well as Department of Justice memos and reports located at the National Archives and Records Administration in College Park, Maryland, many of which were acquired through the Freedom of Information Act.

  I also benefited from access to the personal files of Mabel Norris Chesley, courtesy of Mabel’s daughter, Patricia. The most important of these were Mabel’s files on the Jesse Daniels case, which included correspondence, unpublished articles, and original drafts of her stories for the Mount Dora Topic, of which nearly the entire year 1958 is missing from all collections of the paper’s microfilmed archives. I also relied on Mabel’s reporting, columns, and editorials in the Daytona Beach News-Journal, as well as reporting and feature stories by journalists Martin Dyckman and Pete Gallagher.

  I conducted dozens of interviews for this book and relied most heavily on conversations with Richard Graham and Jesse Daniels, as well as interviews with members of the Knowles, Bosanquet, Newell, and Gilchrist families. Also invaluable to me were the many conversations I had with former deputy and eventual Lake County sheriff Evvie Griffin, former FDLE agent Rick Hernan, and Lake County deputy Tom Ledford.

  I gleaned much of the historical context for this book from my many visits to the Leesburg Heritage Society, where Glorianne Fahs kindly granted me unlimited access to the extensive archives and photo collection. Historian Donna Bott generously shared a great deal of her research on the Chetwynd area of Fruitland Park, as well as her extensive files on the Bosanquet family history. Also extraordinarily helpful to my understanding of the relevant Florida history were D. R. S. Bott’s The Chetwynd Chronicles: The British Colony of Lake County, Florida, 1882–1902; Dan R. Warren’s If It Takes All Summer: Martin Luther King, the KKK, and States’ Rights in St. Augustine, 1964; Gary Mormino’s Land of Sunshine, State of Dreams: A Social History of Modern Florida; Frederick B. Karl’s The 57 Club: My Four Decades in Florida Politics; Robert W. Saunders Sr.’s Bridging the Gap: Continuing the Florida NAACP Legacy of Harry T. Moore;
John McPhee’s Oranges; Lisa Lindquist Dorr’s White Women, Rape, and the Power of Race in Virginia, 1900–1960; Danielle L. McGuire’s At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance—a New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power; and Robert Bowie’s A Roast for Coach Dan Spear. Sally J. Ling’s Out of Mind, Out of Sight: A Revealing History of the Florida State Hospital at Chattahoochee and Mental Health Care in Florida and Kenneth Donaldson’s Insanity Inside Out: The Personal Story Behind the Landmark Supreme Court Decision were also indispensable sources.

  ABBREVIATIONS

  NARA-FBI: Department of Justice Records Group 65, Federal Bureau of Investigation/DOJ Reports 44-HQ-11050, 44-HQ-13930, DOJ 144-18-855, National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland

  FSH-SAF: Florida State Hospital, State Archives of Florida, Tallahassee

  LEG-SAF: Florida Legislature Committee Records, Florida Department of State, State Archives of Florida, Tallahassee

  FDLE: Florida Department of Law Enforcement Records, Tallahassee

  LHM: Leesburg Heritage Society and Historical Museum, Leesburg, Florida

  LOC: Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

  MNC: Mabel Norris Chesley files

  FHWP: Franklin H. Williams Papers, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library

  LCC: Circuit Court of the Fifth Judicial Circuit of the State of Florida for Lake County, Lake County Clerk of the Circuit Court Records

  LDF: NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Files, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

  Unless noted otherwise, all interviews were with the author.

  CHAPTER ONE. A KILLING FREEZE

  In Okahumpka he was known: My descriptions of daily life in Okahumpka are drawn primarily from interviews with Jesse Daniels, as well as Okahumpka residents Carlton “Red” Fussell, Carolyn Waller, and Joseph Branham.