More than four decades after it occurred, the murder of Athalia Ponsell Lindsley remains notorious… and unsolved. The only eyewitness said a man attacked Lindsley with a machete in broad daylight on the front steps of her white mansion. Gossip swirled that neighbor Frances Bemis knew who killed Lindsley and would notify authorities. Bemis was later murdered on her nightly walk. Author Elizabeth Randall puts the rumors to rest through research culled from over one thousand pages of depositions, records, official county documentation and interviews.
Elizabeth Randall is a widely published freelance writer and a high school English teacher. She is the author of four books. Her most recent publication was a book about history and folklore titled Women in White: The Haunting of Northeast Florida. She and her husband, Bob, who is a freelance photographer and who contributed many of the pictures in this book, divide their time between two homes: one in Lake Mary and one in Crystal River on the island of Ozello.