March 4, 2021 • 45 mins
The politically-connected, cartoonishly belligerent Billy Cottrell was a terrible Mayor, hated and feared by the locals of Cedar Key, Florida -- and no one was sure what to do. At least, that is, until the Federal government got word of the situation. Tune in to learn how the US President eventually pled with Congress to allow for military intervention.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you so much
as always for tuning in. No before we start today's episode,
which is a doozy, I have to say, I woke
up this morning as we were about to record, and
I realized, holy smokes, it's March again. I woke up
this moan and it was March again. Was it kind
(00:49):
of like that? Did you have the blues? That was? Actually?
That was? Was that? That was really a harmonica situation
you had going on there? Ben, I have the do
be as superpower to impersonate a harmon on it? Yeah? No,
it's good. Um I think the I think the cold,
the bitter cold of winter may well be behind us.
Knock on, knock on wood. Yeah, who hopefully, hopefully man.
(01:12):
But but for me, it was more thinking about just
how odd it was that we in many ways lost
a year right on activities of travel, Uh, you and
I especially because we were always on plates. It's true,
we were, we were planed up and then all of
a sudden we were we were grounded. But you know,
(01:34):
there there was there's a silver lining in all of this. Um.
I discovered macromay, I learned how to knit. Uh, And
I've been making music in my home studio a bunch. Okay,
the third one is true. I was gonna say, I
was gonna say I would love to hear about the
nitty I know about the studio stuff. Let's see, I
memorized the periodic table, the Greek alphabet or something else. Yeah,
(01:57):
I learned a lot of useless knowledge, and a horse
worked on my pseudo harmonicas skills. But perhaps nobody was
feeling the heat of the pandemic more so than our
good pal super producer Casey Pegram, who has not returned
to his second life as La Boush in some time, right, Yes, indeed, um.
(02:20):
And you know another thing I think that we may
have had a pretty good run on during this COVID
situation is Florida man stories. But today we have a
particularly historical Florida man story. Dare I say the precedent
of the Florida man meme? Oh, well, that's just the
way I'm looking at it. I don't know if anyone
else thinks of it that way, but it's it's up
(02:41):
to our fellow ridiculous historians. I am tempted to agree
with you, my friend. You see, back in eighteen ninety,
in the spring of eighteen nine, Uncle Sam sent a
heavily armed ship to get rid of a local despot.
This is thing that the US does all the time,
(03:02):
and has done uh in the century or so since.
But this is a little bit different because this military intervention,
which was okayed by the President of the time, Benjamin Harrison,
this military intervention was not on the shores of Tripoli,
wasn't you know, half a world away in the Pacific Theater. Instead,
(03:23):
it was in our very own US state. That's right,
everyone's favorite peninsula, Florida. Yeah, it turns out, um, they
had themselves a real tyrant on their hands in the
form of a mayor by the name of William W.
Billy Cotrell, who reigned down terror and menace, most foul
(03:46):
on one particular little town in Florida called cedar Key.
And it really did take the intervention of Washington and
a full on military coup to remove this man. It's
so very wild. So just so you get a sense
of where cedar Key is, it's in the Gulf facing
(04:08):
side of the Florida Peninsula. It's kind of a little
north of Tampa and UH little southeast of Tallahassee, uh
kind of southwest of Gainesville. It looks like a beautiful
place if you love archipelago's and islands. But today we're
gonna learn why Billy was the only US mayor so
(04:29):
far who was ever deposed by a full on military coup.
So only one of the Cedar Keys way Key is
inhabited today. There are a bunch of other islands that
collectively form what we call the Cedar Keys National Wildlife Refuge.
Just like it's like our earlier story on the Dead
(04:50):
Pig War. If you look at the map, then these
islands don't seem particularly They don't seem to be a
big deal until you think of them in the context
of the time and the area. UH. They are strategic
during the nineteenth century. They have a supply depot that
was instrumental during the Second Seminole War. Later, during the
(05:14):
Civil War, they're occupied by Union troops. They're part of
a railroad system that makes them a hub for trade
and transport. It's an important place, even though it's relatively
new in comparison to some other U. S cities. Because
it was UH it was only really formed during the
Civil War in eighteen forty. Yeah. It also makes me
(05:35):
think of another topic we did on stuff they don't
want you to know about, the Marshall Islands, which had
some strategic qualities as well. That we're exploited pretty heavily
by the United States government in the form of uh,
pretty brutally thoughtless nuclear weapons tests. Absolutely uh and luckily uh,
(05:56):
as we'll see, we're very lucky that Mayor Cotrell was
not able to get his hands on some nukes because
that guy Noll, that guy with some nukes, who buddy.
Uh So Cedar Key is named Cedar Key because of
a fifteen forty two Spanish map that described as the
(06:16):
Cedar Islands. You can probably guess why, folks. One of
the first things the early European explorers noticed was that
there were a ton of cedar trees all over the archipelago,
and so, as you might imagine, lumber becomes a primary
industry totally. I mean, they're also is fishing. They also
exported cotton, but the island was dotted with sawmills and
(06:39):
pencil factories, which I love the idea of a pencil factory,
that's something you think of today, but it was a
big deal at the time. It's churning out pencils in
the eighties, and the pencil plants didn't farewell as the sawmills.
The cedar was eventually depleted and it became much more
of an important strategic location as far as the rail
(07:00):
system went. Cedar Key was a very important port city
until eighteen eighties six, when the Port of Tampa nearby
started to draw shipping business away from cedar Key. It
was a real upset about residents lost their jobs when
those mills closed. And then adding insults to injury, you
had a hurricane and an accompanying tidal wave that absolutely
(07:23):
obliterated much of the area. So you know, this was
it was. It really does make me think of the
kinds of situations that often lead to tyrannical rule, right.
I mean, you had Hitler coming into power after the
devastation that Germany saw during World War One. The you know,
people who had lost their jobs, been demoralized in the
(07:46):
face of the world, and then you got someone coming
in to take advantage of that economic strife and um
kind of just generalized anxiety. Right. Yeah, when it rains,
it pours and the town itself became a fundamentally different place.
The population plummeted. There were barely two thousand people there.
(08:09):
There was only one road, one in and out area
right a parallel the very thin section of the Central
and Peninsula Railway. And this made the town's population easy
to control. And in this chaos, it was a little
fingering game of Thrones, says, chaos is a ladder. In
(08:30):
this chaos, someone climbed the ladder. A thirty three year
old William W. Cotrell. In eight eight nine, he had
been elected mayor of Cedar keys Uh. He was elected unanimously,
which seems pretty unusual until you realized only a hundred
and one people voted. He wasn't just the mayor, he
(08:50):
was also the customs inspector. I know, on the face
of it that sounds incredibly corrupt, but you have to
remember in a lot of small towns, even a day uh,
the same individual will end up taking multiple positions in governance,
not not necessarily out of corruption, just out of necessity. Anyway,
(09:11):
here's the thing with Cantrell. He is a terrible and
super sketchy mayor. When he was first elected, he disappeared.
He just straight up ghosted off the grid for more
than a month, and then when he came back, people
were like, dude, you were a better mayor when you
(09:31):
were not here. Yes, some really really strange, unpredictable behavior.
He did appear to set a pretty nasty precedent from
the start. For example, he was a big fan of
carrying around firearms and using them, brandishing them to intimidate
(09:53):
his constituents. It was reported at the time that he
had used a install uh to force a black man
to beat a telegraph operator brutally in the streets in
front of you know, just pastors by um. There were
women who were reportedly shopping at the nearby dry goods
(10:15):
store who he held hostage at gun point, seemingly for
his own amusement. There was a place called the Schlemmer
House Hotel, which actually was riddled with bullet holes from
when the mayor, drunken lee let off a volley of
shots in pursuit of someone he had a beef with.
(10:35):
The guy was an absolutely like the very definition of
a loose cannon. He's he's like the Tasmanian devil from cartoons. Also,
you know, obviously the policy of ridiculous history is there's
nothing wrong with one or three good cocktails. But this
guy was wasted in office continually, and he was quite
(10:57):
a belligerent person when inebriated. Uh, It's it's strange because
he also he physically assaulted, intimidated, and threatened everybody in town.
Social class didn't matter, and he verbally abused them. But
he got support in his shenanigans because his own goons
(11:19):
were elected to be the police force. Drinking buddies became
the cops. You mean that's he literally had a goon
squad at his disposal, hiding behind the legitimacy of of
the badge, you know. Um town Marshal j R. Mitchell
was one of Cotrell's loyal followers, and it was said
of of the time, you know, in hindsight perhaps that
(11:43):
he only really stuck with Mitchell because he himself was
afraid of being shot. Yeah, and this guy, this guy
was essentially like a Boss Tweed type figure, but like
worse literally like almost like a Wild West kind of
you know, just ruling with an iron fist kind of
pine of terror type dude. Yeah, you know, I was
(12:08):
thinking about this. I was looking over this past week
or so. He's not quite a Colonel Kurtz because the
people Colonel Kurtz ruled supported him, which is weird if
you are you are losing a popularity test with the
villain of apocalypse. Now, yeah, his goons would have gun parties.
(12:30):
They would get drunk and party and then they would say,
let's make everybody in town come out and dance, and
then they would, like, under the threat of being shot,
they would make these people dance. The guy had so
many grudges. He was like an evil elephant that never forgot,
and a lot of his grudges. I think this is
(12:51):
a good argument for maybe late stage alcoholism, because a
lot of his grudges were things that nobody understood, like
including the people out of grudge for including the people
who knew both parties. One time he tried to kill
a guy who worked at the railroad for some reason,
and then another time he tried to stab a dude.
He wounded him, but he didn't kill him over an
(13:12):
insult that no one was aware of, and it seemed
like the mayor himself could not explain what happened. This
was like, I know, I know local politics can be
a sticky situation, but I think having a mayor that
randomly stabs people is a municipal issue that takes precedence
(13:32):
over party affiliation. Hopefully that's not a hot take. The
town was riddled with bullet holes all over the buildings
because he was he was just so gunhappy. I'm laughing,
but I probably shouldn't be, because he also reportedly killed
his own brother in law and then cursed out his
sister for quote unquote being poor. He would hit children
(13:57):
while their mothers were carrying them. This is nuts at
this point, it's like a Roman emperor. How much of
this is true? Oh yeah, exactly, it's It's a really
good point, Ben, And that really applies to a lot
of the Roman emperor stories when you had their political
opponents being the ones who were writing the history books.
Uh and possibly either you know, obviously, where there's smoke,
there must be some fire most of the time. But
(14:19):
exaggerations did certainly happen. I think at the very least
we can assume with some level of certainty, this man
had a serious drinking problem, a serious lea violent temper,
and not much respect for any form of human dignity
at all. Uh So, like you said, Ben, the town
was absolutely riddled with bullet holes that were kind of
(14:42):
little reminders of these uh temper tantrums that he would throw.
And we have accounts that when taken with the you know,
descriptions of of how he would behave when he was
you know, older and and uh actually in charge of
the town, along with some stories of his youth, and
those stories kind of portrayed him as a young man
(15:04):
completely unhinged. Uh. There's a quote from James L. Jim Cotrell,
the great grand nephew of Billy even you know in
the family, it's completely willing to throw his relative under
the bus and saying when people talk about him when
he's not intoxicated, he's a normal person. He behaves, he
gets along, and then you throw some whiskey in him
(15:25):
and he turns into Billy the Kid, which is a
hilarious and astute reference there. Totally. So yeah, there are
signs here that he was a son of privilege and
things that cast a bit of ominous foreshadowing on his
life story. So he was racing to his family's schooner
(15:45):
called Nanny in Tampa Bay when another boat pulled ahead
and he got angry that he wasn't the first place
in the race. So he ran below deck, grabbed a
firearm and was trying to shoot the competition, shoot the
people on the other boat before the crew was able
to restrain him. This is the big question, folks as well.
(16:06):
This is one of the big questions. How on earth
was Bill getting away with all of this? Well, like
we just said, son of privilege. Turns out his father,
one J. L. F. Co Trell, was a state senator
and one of his siblings was also an owner of
a store on the main street drag, so he had juice,
(16:30):
he had political and economic connections. And also remember this
is somewhat of an isolated place this time, there's one
way in, one way out. The population is plummeted due
to economic turmoil as you described earlier, Noal and the
entire town of cedar Key is kind of in an
abusive relationship with this dude. And what happens in abusive
(16:50):
relationships a lot of threats. So the majority of the
citizens are not talking about this hellish stuff happening in
their town because they have received death threats. In fact,
three of his he had three brothers, and when they
joined his campaign, part of their platform, part of the
stuff they declared was that they would explicitly hunt down
(17:12):
and murder anyone who talked trash about their brother or
tried to harm him. Yeah. More additions to the goon Squad,
the bully patrol. Uh and these actually had legitimate skin
in the game, you know, being of blood relation, I imagine. Uh,
really you know, believed were true believers of of their brother,
possibly from you know, years of of their own bullying
(17:35):
at his hands. Again just editorializing here a bit, but
as opposed to like the marshal who was you know,
possibly based on reports that we read going along with
him specifically because he was afraid of him himself of
actual you know, physical harm coming to him or his family. Yeah. Now,
of course there are legal mechanisms that exist. The Levy
County Grand Jury had issued some eighteen indictments against him,
(18:00):
but this never came to anything. None of those indictments
were served. The Revenue Cutter Services Lieutenant Cardon later said
that any of the eighteen charges he got hit with
would have carried a hanging or life sentence in New York. However,
Cantrell's father still has a lot of political influence, and
(18:23):
he's the one who contacts the other patricians or members
of the political class, like the governor of Florida at
the time, Francis P. Fleming District Attorney Joseph Stripling, and
tells them specifically that his son is untouchable. And although
his father, the elder Senator Cantrell's last term was five,
(18:44):
he had enacted a special bill that placed a time
limit on his son's indictments. So they were like, you
can eventually touch him, but not now. And so one
thing he is really good at is levery gene this
kind of nepotistic power, because he's certainly not a good mayor.
How did he leverage this power well? In I think
(19:08):
just after he took office on January second, eight nine,
he found a bride. He married a woman named Carolina Freer.
She also came from a heavily politically connected family. So
he's just like racking up insurance policies in between bouts
of getting black out, drunk and shooting at people. Yeah,
(19:30):
more of the same. So we know what you're thinking, folks,
This is America. This guy is a cartoon. What an
unfortunate thing to happen to the good people of cedar Key.
Thank God who was only a one term mayor. Right yeah, no,
uh no, no, uh, I don't even It must just
(19:51):
be more intimidation, I suppose, or some form of Stockholm
syndrome perhaps. Like literally, it feels like this man was
holding the town hostage and he was able to get reelected.
His behavior was damning the town to further economic loss. Uh.
He was terrifying the few businessmen that were willing to
(20:15):
kind of come into Cedar Keys to try to help
maybe revitalize the town hopefully, or looked at it as
a business opportunity. I mean, the streets were literally again
riddled with bullets. It was like a Wild West situation.
His own brothers, Eugene and James, had a business, a
mercantile business that had to close itself because of lack
(20:36):
of customers because nobody wanted to come through town. He
did have methods of kind of coercing townspeople to shop
at his brother's store, but even that wasn't enough. It
was so bizarre, as was his brother's behavior. They were
just completely inconsistent. Uh. They wasn't clear whether they fully
(20:57):
wanted to support him or whether they were in it
to make money for themselves. It was just a very
very strange relationship. There were newspaper reports at the time
that the business in town was almost entirely d o
a uh. There were you know, long lines of storefronts
closing down, one firm after another having sold their assets.
(21:20):
The business owners were either afraid to hang around in
such a terrifying place, or they just gave up in
utter despair when they saw this decline continuing. You know.
But despite his terrible and clearly illegal behavior, he still
(21:41):
had some support from a minority of the people in town,
a minority of the white towns folks, because they were
able to, i think, glean some benefits from this corrupt system.
And they had all the typical rationalizations and dismissals. You know,
they would say, look, he's a great i you know
(22:01):
when he's sober, or he's a dashing young man. Maybe
just a little spoiled, but he comes from a wonderful family,
and we're friends with that family. So as a result,
anybody would have been opposition and had the means to leave,
just left. Why would you stay in a place that
it's not good for business, it's not good for families,
(22:22):
it's not great for education. So why why stay in
cedar Key. That's how he gets re elected. But this
time it's not unanimous, and twenty four people vote, he
gets sixty seven of the votes and the remainder go
to his opponent, One Samuel G. Reddick. But I would
also argue this vote was probably fixed. I'm just guessing.
(22:44):
I'm just assuming here. Uh, the votes weren't secret. Remember
we talked about in the famous episode the importance of
secret polls. So the votes aren't secret, especially in a
place like this, a lawless and insane you know, God,
I can't even imagine be terrified. Yeah, not to not
vote for the guy with the gun. Yeah, and to
know that he knows who you voted for. And so
(23:08):
he is going crazy because he holds all these grudges. Right,
So he's in his mind the people who voted for
his opponent, Reddick, have essentially put themselves on a kill list.
And that's when our hero of the story steps in
her name, Mrs rose Bell. Uh. She is the person
(23:30):
that we mentioned the very top who looks for help,
and she knows, she's well aware that Florida's political system
is what we would sometimes call food bar. So she
doesn't right to the governor of Florida. She doesn't right
to other local mayors, she doesn't write to other local
law enforcement. Instead, she writes to the President of the
United States on August four, eight ten nine, and she says,
(23:54):
this guy is a loony tune. He is an habitual drunkard.
He's threatening everybody. And then she describes in details some
of the terrible stuff he does. And thank God for
Mrs rose Bell, you know, the one person with the
stamina and the courage to to stand up to this
man um. She described the good Christian men of the
(24:18):
town as being too timid to put a stop to
this psychotic behavior, and ended the letter by saying that
she had quote no son or husband for him to
fuss with and shoot I expose his character. Yeah, Which
that's such an interesting sentence to me there, because it's
almost as if she's saying, I have nothing to lose here,
(24:40):
so you can kill me, but I want to save
this town. And then President Harrison is to a degree
touched by this. Smithsonian Magazine reports that he later noted
it was a grim commentary upon the condition of social
order at Cedar Keys that only a woman had the
courage to file charges against Counturroll. So he's Harrison is
(25:03):
being you know, a fair bit misogynistic there, but also
he is asking the question many of us asked ourselves
when first learned of this story, which is how did
he get this far? How did it happen? So Harrison
figures out quickly. He says, okay, we need to get
some boots on the ground. When you get some eyes
(25:24):
in the streets here, figure out how this mayor is
keeping this town in a tyrannical death grip. It seems
like it is family connections, fear and isolation. And so he, uh,
he gets his main man, J. H. Pinkerton to get involved,
and you know the Pinkerton Agency, and Pinkerton himself tremendously
(25:45):
controversial figures. Pinkerton had been named the new customs collector
and he had the oversight of revenue generation in maritime law.
This is a pretty this is a catbird seat kind
of position. And so as soon as he gets to
cedar Key, he runs head to head up against Mayor Cartrell,
and they have problems right from the beginning. So because
(26:10):
Cartrell was already mayor and customs inspector, customs inspector was
a positioned by the way outranked by the job Pinkerdon had.
But because Catrell was already serving these two different government positions,
he pretty much thought he deserved the promotion to customs collector.
He was like, I should do this, It's my town.
(26:31):
So finally Coutrell seems to have met his match. Like
you said, Pinkerton was a tough dude and was not
going to be pushed around by this rogue mayor, so
of course he threatened him. He sent him a telegram
to Washington as soon as he felt like it was
safe to do that, and their feud had already kind
(26:52):
of escalated in previous weeks um when Pickerton insisted the
Coutrell resigned from this post as inspector because of his
erratic behavior, and he was ultimately removed from that inspector's post,
at which time he approached Pinkerton in town on May nine,
asking him if he could go get his personal belongings
(27:15):
that he had left behind in the customs house. But
it was after office hours, so Pinkerton says, uh, no,
we're not open. So how does Mayor Contrell respond? He says,
watch out, Pinkerton, I better not see you on these
streets or I'm going to kill you and uh. And
(27:37):
Pinkerton knows this threat was serious, and so he stayed home.
He actually stayed off of the streets. He was kind
of in quarantine or a house arrest will be a
better word. And this frustrates the mayor, and so the
mayor is like, why won't this guy come out of
his house so I can shoot him like I said
I would. So he tried to force someone else to
(27:59):
go into Pinkerton's home and then drag him physically into
the street. This guy was like, no, you're crazy. You
are a terrible mayor, dude, and then the mayor beat
the crap out of him. Yeah, as was his way.
So you know, there was a telegram that Pinkerton's sent
on May to the Treasury Department that really does a
(28:20):
fabulous job outlining the situation and how dire it was.
He refers to the situation where he refused to open
the customs house store after hours and that is when um.
In addition to threatening him himself, Contrell also ordered the
town Marshal j R. Mitchell to quote shoot the goddamn
Republicans son of a bitch if he failed to open
(28:41):
the doors to him. He then called me him in
his in his dispatch, called me vile names he could
think of in a loud and angry voice, and said,
I will make it a hell for you, and you're
set as long as you stay in cedar keys and
many other vile things, equally bad, using all the time
the most profane oaths and vile epithets. Yeah, so he's
(29:04):
a potty mouth too. The marshals found themselves out gutten
by what essentially had become a gang terrorizing the town.
And so at this point Pinkerton requested assistance. Casey, can
(29:25):
we get some like history appropriate going to war music? Perfect?
It's crazy how we can just describe that stuff and
you always know what it is. Case, but this is it.
Pinkerton asked for federal and intervention as well as our
earlier letter writer, and this request was granted through that
(29:47):
revenue cutter service. They sent a ship called McClean to
the islands on May nine. The Captain Thomas S. Smith
and his crew arrived just a few days later, and
they were appalled. We have to remember they were outsiders.
They realized how abnormal this was, and the captain Captain
Smith said, quote the newspaper reports are not only not exaggerated,
(30:13):
but do not tell what half of this man Cartrell's crimes.
The fact is the people here are in a perfect
state of terror and are unable to obtain assistant to
all protection from the state authorities owing to the influence
wielded by Cartrell and the methods resorted to when frightening
and terrorizing witnesses. So because they have this ship with them,
(30:36):
the captain and his crew and some additional marshals start
searching Sea heer Key for the mayor sort of like
I get the sense, snol that this is like house
by house knocking on doors, like you know, a man hunt.
Almost right, yes, yeah, but as you know, big bads
in many stories are wont to do uh. He did
(30:57):
escape Contrell, Eva did capture. He made his way up
the Swannee River and out of the reach of his pursuers.
And even after this escape, Pinkerton requested that the cutter
remained nearby to you know, give people a little bit
of comfort, right, to make sure that they knew that
(31:19):
they were going to be taken care of, and that
Catrell could not just you know, come back as big
bads are also want to do and undeterred and just
continue his reign of terror. So, uh, the McClain remained
docked and continued firing blank rounds, and that sound could
be heard throughout the keys. But despite being absolutely terrorized
(31:44):
by this guy for over a year, Uh, they didn't
care for the idea of federal intervention either. In fact,
they may have disliked it even more. They saw the
docking of this federal vessel on their shores as a
sign of a lack of their own autonomy and of
(32:05):
big government sort of swooping in. And keep in mind
with the twenty five years after the Union had left,
so there was still, you know, as don't we know,
there remains today in some pockets of the South, this
kind of hostility, this kind of sense of an identity
separate from the rest of the country. Right. Uh. There's
(32:28):
a really great quote from the New York Times from
that era saying, quote, the people here have lived so
long in an unreconstructed condition that the appearance of the
United States seamen in the streets intent on forcing order
and obedience is especially galling. Captain Smythe was actually threatened
by a resident who threatened to shoot on site anyone
(32:51):
who attempted to come into his home. This is also ironic, Ben,
considering that he's you know, we know that that Billy
Catrell and his goons often would enter people's homes, forcing
them out into the street and making them dance like
little puppets. And yet the the idea of any outside
force coming in and doing the same in the name
(33:14):
of keeping order and maintaining their safety. This is serious
Stockholm syndrome stuff here, right, So there's a lot to
be said here with bed side manner. First off, we
have to understand these people have endured a lot of abuse.
And then secondly, we have to understand that the way
the FEDS are approaching this situation is not particularly like
(33:39):
touchy feely or helpful. They're on a man hunt and
so they're doing kicked doors house by house, clearing the block.
So of course you would react adversely to that because
it's like terrifying tactics, if not terrorism itself, because they're
like kicking doors in, they're hitting people with rifle butts,
tearing apart houses. So they're like talking, I guess you
(34:01):
would call it tossing. You know, they're looking for any closet,
under any floorboards where somebody might be hiding. And to me,
it's kind of silly that Smythe and his team don't
understand why people would react adversely to busting in their
house and tearing apart their stuff. But these people were
(34:22):
complaining about these house searches. So the telegrams complaining about
this made their way back to Washington, and uh. This
gave the the folks of the Revenue cutter Service increased scrutiny,
and Congress started to argue about it. One special deputy said, look,
we have to keep our eyes on this situation. We
(34:44):
have to ensure that homes haven't been entered unlawfully or
without permission. But he did include a very classic line
where he said, otherwise, quote the rabbi will tell and bluster.
So it came down to President Benji Harrison, who said
on June six that he had decided it just didn't
(35:05):
make sense to appeal to local authorities. They were all corrupt.
They would have to do something else. So we actually
we have a full quote from his written statement. That's right.
He says, quote it will be agreeable to me if
the local authorities. This is how he talked clearly, acting
upon their own sense of duty, maintain the public order
in such a way that the officers of the United
(35:25):
States shall have no occasion to appeal for the intervention
of the general government. But when this is not done,
I shall deem it my duty to use the adequate
powers vested in the executive to make it safe and
feasible to hold and exercise the officers established by the
Federal Constitution and the Lyre. So what he's saying there
(35:50):
is that, look, the local system isn't working, so Uncle
Sam is going to have to bring the hammer down
and restore order. I, as president, considered that part of
my job based on just how far out of hand
this has gone totally. I mean, and you got to
think too, Ben, there had to have been a collective
more than PTSD. But also just like they lived in
(36:12):
this weird violent bubble, and when you're governed by violence,
violence probably becomes kind of an undercurrent of of day
to day life. So even like left with this vacuum
of this iron fisted you know, despot people didn't know
how to govern themselves. You know, they were probably you know,
kind of freaking out. And I and I understand nobody
(36:33):
wants the FEDS coming into their house to search their stuff,
but I understand the need for this level of intervention.
What do you think then, Yeah, well I think it's
weird because I I would be hesitant to say that
the townsfolk who are being victimized had some kind of
Stockholm syndrome. It's just like these are two now, these
are two different gangs carrying up our town essentially. And
(36:56):
also we have to remember everybody who could have left,
who was not part of the goon squad already left.
So the people there are probably don't have the means
to relocate or they're part of this brutal gang structure.
And people still hadn't found Mayor Billy. He made his
(37:17):
way up the Swannee River. He's heading hot headed towards
the Georgia border, traveling onward to Alabama. He learned nothing
from this. From his narrow escape, he did not change
his behavior, but this kind of stuff doesn't fly in
the rest of the US. So on July same year,
he was arrested in Alabama for you know, being a lunatic,
(37:41):
and he posted a two thousand five bond. He had
a trial set for Jacksonville, but he never made the trial.
On November five, he got intensely intoxicated, picked a fight
with a guy at a restaurant who owned the restaurant,
and then, according to the newspaper, the police chief of Montgomery, Alabama,
(38:04):
Adolph Gerald, got on Cantrell's bad side by not allowing
him to do whatever the hell he wanted, and so
Catrell like picture this picture, like pointing at him and going,
you've made a powerful enemy. We're gonna have a duel.
I swear vengeance upon you. And then he told all
the people he knew or anyone who was listening, like
(38:26):
I'm going to kill the police chief. It's just scheduling. Now,
we just have to get our schedules to align for
the duel. I think he's got a thing at three,
but maybe maybe four thirty, So just past eleven in
the morning. The next day, Cattrell showed up at police
headquarters um exiting a horse drawn buggy, and Cherald didn't
(38:47):
wait for the like the duel to begin for you know,
pistols at dawn. Right as Cantrell was getting out of
the carriage, Gerald walked up and just blasted him with
both earls of a double barreled shotgun got him once
in the torso and once right in the eye, leaving
him bleeding out in the street, and what was described
(39:10):
as a bloody and ghastly spectacle by the Montgomery Advisor
fitting fitting in. I mean, from bloody beginnings come bloody endings.
Uh and gerald s He surrendered himself to the county sheriff,
claiming self defense, which I don't know how that would
work out in court. I guess, can you act preemptively
(39:31):
in self defense? Well? Was it preemptive because the guy
had explicitly told multiple people he was going to kill
the police chief. He showed up Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah,
he showed up intending to kill him. So like, look,
also it didn't hurt that Catrell was just a massive jerk.
So the next day the coroner says, okay, we we
(39:54):
accept that this was self defense because everything about this
man's life proves that he definitely was there to kill you.
So in the end, President Harrison, his intervention didn't really matter,
not not too much, and the coast Guard didn't really matter.
But it was a shootout in Alabama that ultimately put
(40:15):
an end to this guy's reign. Of terror, and newspapers
across the country carried the story. The New York World
called it the bloody end of a bloodthirsty monster, and
the New York Times even ran this headline by way
of obituary, Cultrell killed at last. Can you imagine people
hate you so much that your obituary basically as yea
(40:38):
in the headline. I would argue that our buddy Robert
Evans ought to consider this guy for an episode of
Behind the Bastards. Yes he was absolutely that, Yes he
was a bastard. Indeed. Uh, Luckily, folks who may be
glad to know that the town of Cedar Keys still
around today. It is way more chill than it was
(40:59):
in the eighteen nineties. Fishing is still a big industry.
I think the pencil factory closed. And uh, the local
historical Society has a lot to tell you about, a
lot to talk about. And nowadays, if you if you
ever find yourself down that way, do stop by. It
seems like a quiet, wonderful place to relax. Maybe they
(41:23):
have a sign in the town square that says, you know,
like X amount of years or days since the mayor
shot someone, or maybe it's still too soon to joke about.
But I I would visit cedar Key, you know, I'm
I'm a fan of road trips. I would love to
check it out. I know I would too. I got
I gotta wonder too, Ben the the You know how
Florida has these standard ground laws, you know, like if
(41:44):
anyone's coming at you or encroaching upon your property or
what have you, you know, fair game for you to
blast them. Do you think this is I mean, I'm
sure it was more than just this, but this does
seem like kind of a precedent for that, you know what?
That is an interesting question wondering. Let's see, the standard
ground law was that in two thousand five. It was passed.
(42:06):
I don't recall exactly. I just know it was very controversial. Um,
and you know, I just it just I wonder if
just there's something in the history of Florida that led
to it being one of the only states that has
such a law. True. Uh, and maybe this was not
the only incident of its type. But regardless, it's tough
to have much sympathy for this mayor, even though he
(42:28):
did die in a very painful way. Uh. He is
estimated to have murdered himself anywhere from five to ten people.
So he was a big bully, uh and the town
was inarguably better off without him. Thus ends the story
of the tyrant Mayor of cedar Key. And that's our
episode for today. Think you as always to super producer
(42:51):
Casey Pegram thinks also to Gabe Louisier, who we've been
teasing for so long, but we you know, we did
have a great talk with him. Um, we're gonna take
him to the circus? Can I say that as a spoiler?
Is that enough of a teaser? Maybe? I think that's
perfect Ben? Uh, Now you know, not literally, we're not
(43:11):
quite there yet and and these are COVID time but
hopefully soon everybody, hopefully so hopefully your loved ones are
getting that vaccine. And by the way, I want to
say this, I think just for everyone's benefit. Um. I
have a friend who pointed out to me that you
can actually call places like Walmart, for example, this may
be the only one around here that's doing it, and
get on a waiting list for leftover doses of the
(43:33):
vaccine because it's all appointment based and sometimes people don't
turn up and they expire if they're not used the
day that they're taking out a cold storage or put
into the actual syringes for distribution, you know, for inoculation.
So if anyone is interested, you can call local Walmart
and actually get on a waiting list. And my my
friend got the first dose of the vaccine and she
(43:55):
is uh not an elderly person at all. Yeah, yeah,
yeah you can. The vaccine situation in the US is
going state by state. Please do be safe, folks, Uh,
please take care with yourself and your loved ones. We'll
get that through this together. If Cedar Key can survive
a tire at mayor that we can weather a pandemic.
(44:17):
Thanks of course to our favorite audio infection, Jonathan Strickland,
a k a. The Quisted. Yeah for sure, I think
we'll be hearing from both him and UH hero of
the day, Gabe Luzier in the very near future. Huge
thanks to Alex Williams, who composed our theme. Christopher haciois
here in spirit. He's Jeff Coach. Check out this Day
(44:37):
in History class on a podcast platform near you. And
of course, thanks to the Cedar Keys Board of Tourism,
a thing that I just made up. We'll see you
next time. Books for more podcasts. For my heart Radio,
(44:58):
visit the I heart Radio, ap Apple podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you so much
as always for tuning in. No before we start today's episode,
which is a doozy, I have to say, I woke
up this morning as we were about to record, and
I realized, holy smokes, it's March again. I woke up
this moan and it was March again. Was it kind
(00:49):
of like that? Did you have the blues? That was? Actually?
That was? Was that? That was really a harmonica situation
you had going on there? Ben, I have the do
be as superpower to impersonate a harmon on it? Yeah? No,
it's good. Um I think the I think the cold,
the bitter cold of winter may well be behind us.
Knock on, knock on wood. Yeah, who hopefully, hopefully man.
(01:12):
But but for me, it was more thinking about just
how odd it was that we in many ways lost
a year right on activities of travel, Uh, you and
I especially because we were always on plates. It's true,
we were, we were planed up and then all of
a sudden we were we were grounded. But you know,
(01:34):
there there was there's a silver lining in all of this. Um.
I discovered macromay, I learned how to knit. Uh, And
I've been making music in my home studio a bunch. Okay,
the third one is true. I was gonna say, I
was gonna say I would love to hear about the
nitty I know about the studio stuff. Let's see, I
memorized the periodic table, the Greek alphabet or something else. Yeah,
(01:57):
I learned a lot of useless knowledge, and a horse
worked on my pseudo harmonicas skills. But perhaps nobody was
feeling the heat of the pandemic more so than our
good pal super producer Casey Pegram, who has not returned
to his second life as La Boush in some time, right, Yes, indeed, um.
(02:20):
And you know another thing I think that we may
have had a pretty good run on during this COVID
situation is Florida man stories. But today we have a
particularly historical Florida man story. Dare I say the precedent
of the Florida man meme? Oh, well, that's just the
way I'm looking at it. I don't know if anyone
else thinks of it that way, but it's it's up
(02:41):
to our fellow ridiculous historians. I am tempted to agree
with you, my friend. You see, back in eighteen ninety,
in the spring of eighteen nine, Uncle Sam sent a
heavily armed ship to get rid of a local despot.
This is thing that the US does all the time,
(03:02):
and has done uh in the century or so since.
But this is a little bit different because this military intervention,
which was okayed by the President of the time, Benjamin Harrison,
this military intervention was not on the shores of Tripoli,
wasn't you know, half a world away in the Pacific Theater. Instead,
(03:23):
it was in our very own US state. That's right,
everyone's favorite peninsula, Florida. Yeah, it turns out, um, they
had themselves a real tyrant on their hands in the
form of a mayor by the name of William W.
Billy Cotrell, who reigned down terror and menace, most foul
(03:46):
on one particular little town in Florida called cedar Key.
And it really did take the intervention of Washington and
a full on military coup to remove this man. It's
so very wild. So just so you get a sense
of where cedar Key is, it's in the Gulf facing
(04:08):
side of the Florida Peninsula. It's kind of a little
north of Tampa and UH little southeast of Tallahassee, uh
kind of southwest of Gainesville. It looks like a beautiful
place if you love archipelago's and islands. But today we're
gonna learn why Billy was the only US mayor so
(04:29):
far who was ever deposed by a full on military coup.
So only one of the Cedar Keys way Key is
inhabited today. There are a bunch of other islands that
collectively form what we call the Cedar Keys National Wildlife Refuge.
Just like it's like our earlier story on the Dead
(04:50):
Pig War. If you look at the map, then these
islands don't seem particularly They don't seem to be a
big deal until you think of them in the context
of the time and the area. UH. They are strategic
during the nineteenth century. They have a supply depot that
was instrumental during the Second Seminole War. Later, during the
(05:14):
Civil War, they're occupied by Union troops. They're part of
a railroad system that makes them a hub for trade
and transport. It's an important place, even though it's relatively
new in comparison to some other U. S cities. Because
it was UH it was only really formed during the
Civil War in eighteen forty. Yeah. It also makes me
(05:35):
think of another topic we did on stuff they don't
want you to know about, the Marshall Islands, which had
some strategic qualities as well. That we're exploited pretty heavily
by the United States government in the form of uh,
pretty brutally thoughtless nuclear weapons tests. Absolutely uh and luckily uh,
(05:56):
as we'll see, we're very lucky that Mayor Cotrell was
not able to get his hands on some nukes because
that guy Noll, that guy with some nukes, who buddy.
Uh So Cedar Key is named Cedar Key because of
a fifteen forty two Spanish map that described as the
(06:16):
Cedar Islands. You can probably guess why, folks. One of
the first things the early European explorers noticed was that
there were a ton of cedar trees all over the archipelago,
and so, as you might imagine, lumber becomes a primary
industry totally. I mean, they're also is fishing. They also
exported cotton, but the island was dotted with sawmills and
(06:39):
pencil factories, which I love the idea of a pencil factory,
that's something you think of today, but it was a
big deal at the time. It's churning out pencils in
the eighties, and the pencil plants didn't farewell as the sawmills.
The cedar was eventually depleted and it became much more
of an important strategic location as far as the rail
(07:00):
system went. Cedar Key was a very important port city
until eighteen eighties six, when the Port of Tampa nearby
started to draw shipping business away from cedar Key. It
was a real upset about residents lost their jobs when
those mills closed. And then adding insults to injury, you
had a hurricane and an accompanying tidal wave that absolutely
(07:23):
obliterated much of the area. So you know, this was
it was. It really does make me think of the
kinds of situations that often lead to tyrannical rule, right.
I mean, you had Hitler coming into power after the
devastation that Germany saw during World War One. The you know,
people who had lost their jobs, been demoralized in the
(07:46):
face of the world, and then you got someone coming
in to take advantage of that economic strife and um
kind of just generalized anxiety. Right. Yeah, when it rains,
it pours and the town itself became a fundamentally different place.
The population plummeted. There were barely two thousand people there.
(08:09):
There was only one road, one in and out area
right a parallel the very thin section of the Central
and Peninsula Railway. And this made the town's population easy
to control. And in this chaos, it was a little
fingering game of Thrones, says, chaos is a ladder. In
(08:30):
this chaos, someone climbed the ladder. A thirty three year
old William W. Cotrell. In eight eight nine, he had
been elected mayor of Cedar keys Uh. He was elected unanimously,
which seems pretty unusual until you realized only a hundred
and one people voted. He wasn't just the mayor, he
(08:50):
was also the customs inspector. I know, on the face
of it that sounds incredibly corrupt, but you have to
remember in a lot of small towns, even a day uh,
the same individual will end up taking multiple positions in governance,
not not necessarily out of corruption, just out of necessity. Anyway,
(09:11):
here's the thing with Cantrell. He is a terrible and
super sketchy mayor. When he was first elected, he disappeared.
He just straight up ghosted off the grid for more
than a month, and then when he came back, people
were like, dude, you were a better mayor when you
(09:31):
were not here. Yes, some really really strange, unpredictable behavior.
He did appear to set a pretty nasty precedent from
the start. For example, he was a big fan of
carrying around firearms and using them, brandishing them to intimidate
(09:53):
his constituents. It was reported at the time that he
had used a install uh to force a black man
to beat a telegraph operator brutally in the streets in
front of you know, just pastors by um. There were
women who were reportedly shopping at the nearby dry goods
(10:15):
store who he held hostage at gun point, seemingly for
his own amusement. There was a place called the Schlemmer
House Hotel, which actually was riddled with bullet holes from
when the mayor, drunken lee let off a volley of
shots in pursuit of someone he had a beef with.
(10:35):
The guy was an absolutely like the very definition of
a loose cannon. He's he's like the Tasmanian devil from cartoons. Also,
you know, obviously the policy of ridiculous history is there's
nothing wrong with one or three good cocktails. But this
guy was wasted in office continually, and he was quite
(10:57):
a belligerent person when inebriated. Uh, It's it's strange because
he also he physically assaulted, intimidated, and threatened everybody in town.
Social class didn't matter, and he verbally abused them. But
he got support in his shenanigans because his own goons
(11:19):
were elected to be the police force. Drinking buddies became
the cops. You mean that's he literally had a goon
squad at his disposal, hiding behind the legitimacy of of
the badge, you know. Um town Marshal j R. Mitchell
was one of Cotrell's loyal followers, and it was said
of of the time, you know, in hindsight perhaps that
(11:43):
he only really stuck with Mitchell because he himself was
afraid of being shot. Yeah, and this guy, this guy
was essentially like a Boss Tweed type figure, but like
worse literally like almost like a Wild West kind of
you know, just ruling with an iron fist kind of
pine of terror type dude. Yeah, you know, I was
(12:08):
thinking about this. I was looking over this past week
or so. He's not quite a Colonel Kurtz because the
people Colonel Kurtz ruled supported him, which is weird if
you are you are losing a popularity test with the
villain of apocalypse. Now, yeah, his goons would have gun parties.
(12:30):
They would get drunk and party and then they would say,
let's make everybody in town come out and dance, and
then they would, like, under the threat of being shot,
they would make these people dance. The guy had so
many grudges. He was like an evil elephant that never forgot,
and a lot of his grudges. I think this is
(12:51):
a good argument for maybe late stage alcoholism, because a
lot of his grudges were things that nobody understood, like
including the people out of grudge for including the people
who knew both parties. One time he tried to kill
a guy who worked at the railroad for some reason,
and then another time he tried to stab a dude.
He wounded him, but he didn't kill him over an
(13:12):
insult that no one was aware of, and it seemed
like the mayor himself could not explain what happened. This
was like, I know, I know local politics can be
a sticky situation, but I think having a mayor that
randomly stabs people is a municipal issue that takes precedence
(13:32):
over party affiliation. Hopefully that's not a hot take. The
town was riddled with bullet holes all over the buildings
because he was he was just so gunhappy. I'm laughing,
but I probably shouldn't be, because he also reportedly killed
his own brother in law and then cursed out his
sister for quote unquote being poor. He would hit children
(13:57):
while their mothers were carrying them. This is nuts at
this point, it's like a Roman emperor. How much of
this is true? Oh yeah, exactly, it's It's a really
good point, Ben, And that really applies to a lot
of the Roman emperor stories when you had their political
opponents being the ones who were writing the history books.
Uh and possibly either you know, obviously, where there's smoke,
there must be some fire most of the time. But
(14:19):
exaggerations did certainly happen. I think at the very least
we can assume with some level of certainty, this man
had a serious drinking problem, a serious lea violent temper,
and not much respect for any form of human dignity
at all. Uh So, like you said, Ben, the town
was absolutely riddled with bullet holes that were kind of
(14:42):
little reminders of these uh temper tantrums that he would throw.
And we have accounts that when taken with the you know,
descriptions of of how he would behave when he was
you know, older and and uh actually in charge of
the town, along with some stories of his youth, and
those stories kind of portrayed him as a young man
(15:04):
completely unhinged. Uh. There's a quote from James L. Jim Cotrell,
the great grand nephew of Billy even you know in
the family, it's completely willing to throw his relative under
the bus and saying when people talk about him when
he's not intoxicated, he's a normal person. He behaves, he
gets along, and then you throw some whiskey in him
(15:25):
and he turns into Billy the Kid, which is a
hilarious and astute reference there. Totally. So yeah, there are
signs here that he was a son of privilege and
things that cast a bit of ominous foreshadowing on his
life story. So he was racing to his family's schooner
(15:45):
called Nanny in Tampa Bay when another boat pulled ahead
and he got angry that he wasn't the first place
in the race. So he ran below deck, grabbed a
firearm and was trying to shoot the competition, shoot the
people on the other boat before the crew was able
to restrain him. This is the big question, folks as well.
(16:06):
This is one of the big questions. How on earth
was Bill getting away with all of this? Well, like
we just said, son of privilege. Turns out his father,
one J. L. F. Co Trell, was a state senator
and one of his siblings was also an owner of
a store on the main street drag, so he had juice,
(16:30):
he had political and economic connections. And also remember this
is somewhat of an isolated place this time, there's one
way in, one way out. The population is plummeted due
to economic turmoil as you described earlier, Noal and the
entire town of cedar Key is kind of in an
abusive relationship with this dude. And what happens in abusive
(16:50):
relationships a lot of threats. So the majority of the
citizens are not talking about this hellish stuff happening in
their town because they have received death threats. In fact,
three of his he had three brothers, and when they
joined his campaign, part of their platform, part of the
stuff they declared was that they would explicitly hunt down
(17:12):
and murder anyone who talked trash about their brother or
tried to harm him. Yeah. More additions to the goon Squad,
the bully patrol. Uh and these actually had legitimate skin
in the game, you know, being of blood relation, I imagine. Uh,
really you know, believed were true believers of of their brother,
possibly from you know, years of of their own bullying
(17:35):
at his hands. Again just editorializing here a bit, but
as opposed to like the marshal who was you know,
possibly based on reports that we read going along with
him specifically because he was afraid of him himself of
actual you know, physical harm coming to him or his family. Yeah. Now,
of course there are legal mechanisms that exist. The Levy
County Grand Jury had issued some eighteen indictments against him,
(18:00):
but this never came to anything. None of those indictments
were served. The Revenue Cutter Services Lieutenant Cardon later said
that any of the eighteen charges he got hit with
would have carried a hanging or life sentence in New York. However,
Cantrell's father still has a lot of political influence, and
(18:23):
he's the one who contacts the other patricians or members
of the political class, like the governor of Florida at
the time, Francis P. Fleming District Attorney Joseph Stripling, and
tells them specifically that his son is untouchable. And although
his father, the elder Senator Cantrell's last term was five,
(18:44):
he had enacted a special bill that placed a time
limit on his son's indictments. So they were like, you
can eventually touch him, but not now. And so one
thing he is really good at is levery gene this
kind of nepotistic power, because he's certainly not a good mayor.
How did he leverage this power well? In I think
(19:08):
just after he took office on January second, eight nine,
he found a bride. He married a woman named Carolina Freer.
She also came from a heavily politically connected family. So
he's just like racking up insurance policies in between bouts
of getting black out, drunk and shooting at people. Yeah,
(19:30):
more of the same. So we know what you're thinking, folks,
This is America. This guy is a cartoon. What an
unfortunate thing to happen to the good people of cedar Key.
Thank God who was only a one term mayor. Right yeah, no,
uh no, no, uh, I don't even It must just
(19:51):
be more intimidation, I suppose, or some form of Stockholm
syndrome perhaps. Like literally, it feels like this man was
holding the town hostage and he was able to get reelected.
His behavior was damning the town to further economic loss. Uh.
He was terrifying the few businessmen that were willing to
(20:15):
kind of come into Cedar Keys to try to help
maybe revitalize the town hopefully, or looked at it as
a business opportunity. I mean, the streets were literally again
riddled with bullets. It was like a Wild West situation.
His own brothers, Eugene and James, had a business, a
mercantile business that had to close itself because of lack
(20:36):
of customers because nobody wanted to come through town. He
did have methods of kind of coercing townspeople to shop
at his brother's store, but even that wasn't enough. It
was so bizarre, as was his brother's behavior. They were
just completely inconsistent. Uh. They wasn't clear whether they fully
(20:57):
wanted to support him or whether they were in it
to make money for themselves. It was just a very
very strange relationship. There were newspaper reports at the time
that the business in town was almost entirely d o
a uh. There were you know, long lines of storefronts
closing down, one firm after another having sold their assets.
(21:20):
The business owners were either afraid to hang around in
such a terrifying place, or they just gave up in
utter despair when they saw this decline continuing. You know.
But despite his terrible and clearly illegal behavior, he still
(21:41):
had some support from a minority of the people in town,
a minority of the white towns folks, because they were
able to, i think, glean some benefits from this corrupt system.
And they had all the typical rationalizations and dismissals. You know,
they would say, look, he's a great i you know
(22:01):
when he's sober, or he's a dashing young man. Maybe
just a little spoiled, but he comes from a wonderful family,
and we're friends with that family. So as a result,
anybody would have been opposition and had the means to leave,
just left. Why would you stay in a place that
it's not good for business, it's not good for families,
(22:22):
it's not great for education. So why why stay in
cedar Key. That's how he gets re elected. But this
time it's not unanimous, and twenty four people vote, he
gets sixty seven of the votes and the remainder go
to his opponent, One Samuel G. Reddick. But I would
also argue this vote was probably fixed. I'm just guessing.
(22:44):
I'm just assuming here. Uh, the votes weren't secret. Remember
we talked about in the famous episode the importance of
secret polls. So the votes aren't secret, especially in a
place like this, a lawless and insane you know, God,
I can't even imagine be terrified. Yeah, not to not
vote for the guy with the gun. Yeah, and to
know that he knows who you voted for. And so
(23:08):
he is going crazy because he holds all these grudges. Right,
So he's in his mind the people who voted for
his opponent, Reddick, have essentially put themselves on a kill list.
And that's when our hero of the story steps in
her name, Mrs rose Bell. Uh. She is the person
(23:30):
that we mentioned the very top who looks for help,
and she knows, she's well aware that Florida's political system
is what we would sometimes call food bar. So she
doesn't right to the governor of Florida. She doesn't right
to other local mayors, she doesn't write to other local
law enforcement. Instead, she writes to the President of the
United States on August four, eight ten nine, and she says,
(23:54):
this guy is a loony tune. He is an habitual drunkard.
He's threatening everybody. And then she describes in details some
of the terrible stuff he does. And thank God for
Mrs rose Bell, you know, the one person with the
stamina and the courage to to stand up to this
man um. She described the good Christian men of the
(24:18):
town as being too timid to put a stop to
this psychotic behavior, and ended the letter by saying that
she had quote no son or husband for him to
fuss with and shoot I expose his character. Yeah, Which
that's such an interesting sentence to me there, because it's
almost as if she's saying, I have nothing to lose here,
(24:40):
so you can kill me, but I want to save
this town. And then President Harrison is to a degree
touched by this. Smithsonian Magazine reports that he later noted
it was a grim commentary upon the condition of social
order at Cedar Keys that only a woman had the
courage to file charges against Counturroll. So he's Harrison is
(25:03):
being you know, a fair bit misogynistic there, but also
he is asking the question many of us asked ourselves
when first learned of this story, which is how did
he get this far? How did it happen? So Harrison
figures out quickly. He says, okay, we need to get
some boots on the ground. When you get some eyes
(25:24):
in the streets here, figure out how this mayor is
keeping this town in a tyrannical death grip. It seems
like it is family connections, fear and isolation. And so he, uh,
he gets his main man, J. H. Pinkerton to get involved,
and you know the Pinkerton Agency, and Pinkerton himself tremendously
(25:45):
controversial figures. Pinkerton had been named the new customs collector
and he had the oversight of revenue generation in maritime law.
This is a pretty this is a catbird seat kind
of position. And so as soon as he gets to
cedar Key, he runs head to head up against Mayor Cartrell,
and they have problems right from the beginning. So because
(26:10):
Cartrell was already mayor and customs inspector, customs inspector was
a positioned by the way outranked by the job Pinkerdon had.
But because Catrell was already serving these two different government positions,
he pretty much thought he deserved the promotion to customs collector.
He was like, I should do this, It's my town.
(26:31):
So finally Coutrell seems to have met his match. Like
you said, Pinkerton was a tough dude and was not
going to be pushed around by this rogue mayor, so
of course he threatened him. He sent him a telegram
to Washington as soon as he felt like it was
safe to do that, and their feud had already kind
(26:52):
of escalated in previous weeks um when Pickerton insisted the
Coutrell resigned from this post as inspector because of his
erratic behavior, and he was ultimately removed from that inspector's post,
at which time he approached Pinkerton in town on May nine,
asking him if he could go get his personal belongings
(27:15):
that he had left behind in the customs house. But
it was after office hours, so Pinkerton says, uh, no,
we're not open. So how does Mayor Contrell respond? He says,
watch out, Pinkerton, I better not see you on these
streets or I'm going to kill you and uh. And
(27:37):
Pinkerton knows this threat was serious, and so he stayed home.
He actually stayed off of the streets. He was kind
of in quarantine or a house arrest will be a
better word. And this frustrates the mayor, and so the
mayor is like, why won't this guy come out of
his house so I can shoot him like I said
I would. So he tried to force someone else to
(27:59):
go into Pinkerton's home and then drag him physically into
the street. This guy was like, no, you're crazy. You
are a terrible mayor, dude, and then the mayor beat
the crap out of him. Yeah, as was his way.
So you know, there was a telegram that Pinkerton's sent
on May to the Treasury Department that really does a
(28:20):
fabulous job outlining the situation and how dire it was.
He refers to the situation where he refused to open
the customs house store after hours and that is when um.
In addition to threatening him himself, Contrell also ordered the
town Marshal j R. Mitchell to quote shoot the goddamn
Republicans son of a bitch if he failed to open
(28:41):
the doors to him. He then called me him in
his in his dispatch, called me vile names he could
think of in a loud and angry voice, and said,
I will make it a hell for you, and you're
set as long as you stay in cedar keys and
many other vile things, equally bad, using all the time
the most profane oaths and vile epithets. Yeah, so he's
(29:04):
a potty mouth too. The marshals found themselves out gutten
by what essentially had become a gang terrorizing the town.
And so at this point Pinkerton requested assistance. Casey, can
(29:25):
we get some like history appropriate going to war music? Perfect?
It's crazy how we can just describe that stuff and
you always know what it is. Case, but this is it.
Pinkerton asked for federal and intervention as well as our
earlier letter writer, and this request was granted through that
(29:47):
revenue cutter service. They sent a ship called McClean to
the islands on May nine. The Captain Thomas S. Smith
and his crew arrived just a few days later, and
they were appalled. We have to remember they were outsiders.
They realized how abnormal this was, and the captain Captain
Smith said, quote the newspaper reports are not only not exaggerated,
(30:13):
but do not tell what half of this man Cartrell's crimes.
The fact is the people here are in a perfect
state of terror and are unable to obtain assistant to
all protection from the state authorities owing to the influence
wielded by Cartrell and the methods resorted to when frightening
and terrorizing witnesses. So because they have this ship with them,
(30:36):
the captain and his crew and some additional marshals start
searching Sea heer Key for the mayor sort of like
I get the sense, snol that this is like house
by house knocking on doors, like you know, a man hunt.
Almost right, yes, yeah, but as you know, big bads
in many stories are wont to do uh. He did
(30:57):
escape Contrell, Eva did capture. He made his way up
the Swannee River and out of the reach of his pursuers.
And even after this escape, Pinkerton requested that the cutter
remained nearby to you know, give people a little bit
of comfort, right, to make sure that they knew that
(31:19):
they were going to be taken care of, and that
Catrell could not just you know, come back as big
bads are also want to do and undeterred and just
continue his reign of terror. So, uh, the McClain remained
docked and continued firing blank rounds, and that sound could
be heard throughout the keys. But despite being absolutely terrorized
(31:44):
by this guy for over a year, Uh, they didn't
care for the idea of federal intervention either. In fact,
they may have disliked it even more. They saw the
docking of this federal vessel on their shores as a
sign of a lack of their own autonomy and of
(32:05):
big government sort of swooping in. And keep in mind
with the twenty five years after the Union had left,
so there was still, you know, as don't we know,
there remains today in some pockets of the South, this
kind of hostility, this kind of sense of an identity
separate from the rest of the country. Right. Uh. There's
(32:28):
a really great quote from the New York Times from
that era saying, quote, the people here have lived so
long in an unreconstructed condition that the appearance of the
United States seamen in the streets intent on forcing order
and obedience is especially galling. Captain Smythe was actually threatened
by a resident who threatened to shoot on site anyone
(32:51):
who attempted to come into his home. This is also ironic, Ben,
considering that he's you know, we know that that Billy
Catrell and his goons often would enter people's homes, forcing
them out into the street and making them dance like
little puppets. And yet the the idea of any outside
force coming in and doing the same in the name
(33:14):
of keeping order and maintaining their safety. This is serious
Stockholm syndrome stuff here, right, So there's a lot to
be said here with bed side manner. First off, we
have to understand these people have endured a lot of abuse.
And then secondly, we have to understand that the way
the FEDS are approaching this situation is not particularly like
(33:39):
touchy feely or helpful. They're on a man hunt and
so they're doing kicked doors house by house, clearing the block.
So of course you would react adversely to that because
it's like terrifying tactics, if not terrorism itself, because they're
like kicking doors in, they're hitting people with rifle butts,
tearing apart houses. So they're like talking, I guess you
(34:01):
would call it tossing. You know, they're looking for any closet,
under any floorboards where somebody might be hiding. And to me,
it's kind of silly that Smythe and his team don't
understand why people would react adversely to busting in their
house and tearing apart their stuff. But these people were
(34:22):
complaining about these house searches. So the telegrams complaining about
this made their way back to Washington, and uh. This
gave the the folks of the Revenue cutter Service increased scrutiny,
and Congress started to argue about it. One special deputy said, look,
we have to keep our eyes on this situation. We
(34:44):
have to ensure that homes haven't been entered unlawfully or
without permission. But he did include a very classic line
where he said, otherwise, quote the rabbi will tell and bluster.
So it came down to President Benji Harrison, who said
on June six that he had decided it just didn't
(35:05):
make sense to appeal to local authorities. They were all corrupt.
They would have to do something else. So we actually
we have a full quote from his written statement. That's right.
He says, quote it will be agreeable to me if
the local authorities. This is how he talked clearly, acting
upon their own sense of duty, maintain the public order
in such a way that the officers of the United
(35:25):
States shall have no occasion to appeal for the intervention
of the general government. But when this is not done,
I shall deem it my duty to use the adequate
powers vested in the executive to make it safe and
feasible to hold and exercise the officers established by the
Federal Constitution and the Lyre. So what he's saying there
(35:50):
is that, look, the local system isn't working, so Uncle
Sam is going to have to bring the hammer down
and restore order. I, as president, considered that part of
my job based on just how far out of hand
this has gone totally. I mean, and you got to
think too, Ben, there had to have been a collective
more than PTSD. But also just like they lived in
(36:12):
this weird violent bubble, and when you're governed by violence,
violence probably becomes kind of an undercurrent of of day
to day life. So even like left with this vacuum
of this iron fisted you know, despot people didn't know
how to govern themselves. You know, they were probably you know,
kind of freaking out. And I and I understand nobody
(36:33):
wants the FEDS coming into their house to search their stuff,
but I understand the need for this level of intervention.
What do you think then, Yeah, well I think it's
weird because I I would be hesitant to say that
the townsfolk who are being victimized had some kind of
Stockholm syndrome. It's just like these are two now, these
are two different gangs carrying up our town essentially. And
(36:56):
also we have to remember everybody who could have left,
who was not part of the goon squad already left.
So the people there are probably don't have the means
to relocate or they're part of this brutal gang structure.
And people still hadn't found Mayor Billy. He made his
(37:17):
way up the Swannee River. He's heading hot headed towards
the Georgia border, traveling onward to Alabama. He learned nothing
from this. From his narrow escape, he did not change
his behavior, but this kind of stuff doesn't fly in
the rest of the US. So on July same year,
he was arrested in Alabama for you know, being a lunatic,
(37:41):
and he posted a two thousand five bond. He had
a trial set for Jacksonville, but he never made the trial.
On November five, he got intensely intoxicated, picked a fight
with a guy at a restaurant who owned the restaurant,
and then, according to the newspaper, the police chief of Montgomery, Alabama,
(38:04):
Adolph Gerald, got on Cantrell's bad side by not allowing
him to do whatever the hell he wanted, and so
Catrell like picture this picture, like pointing at him and going,
you've made a powerful enemy. We're gonna have a duel.
I swear vengeance upon you. And then he told all
the people he knew or anyone who was listening, like
(38:26):
I'm going to kill the police chief. It's just scheduling. Now,
we just have to get our schedules to align for
the duel. I think he's got a thing at three,
but maybe maybe four thirty, So just past eleven in
the morning. The next day, Cattrell showed up at police
headquarters um exiting a horse drawn buggy, and Cherald didn't
(38:47):
wait for the like the duel to begin for you know,
pistols at dawn. Right as Cantrell was getting out of
the carriage, Gerald walked up and just blasted him with
both earls of a double barreled shotgun got him once
in the torso and once right in the eye, leaving
him bleeding out in the street, and what was described
(39:10):
as a bloody and ghastly spectacle by the Montgomery Advisor
fitting fitting in. I mean, from bloody beginnings come bloody endings.
Uh and gerald s He surrendered himself to the county sheriff,
claiming self defense, which I don't know how that would
work out in court. I guess, can you act preemptively
(39:31):
in self defense? Well? Was it preemptive because the guy
had explicitly told multiple people he was going to kill
the police chief. He showed up Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah,
he showed up intending to kill him. So like, look,
also it didn't hurt that Catrell was just a massive jerk.
So the next day the coroner says, okay, we we
(39:54):
accept that this was self defense because everything about this
man's life proves that he definitely was there to kill you.
So in the end, President Harrison, his intervention didn't really matter,
not not too much, and the coast Guard didn't really matter.
But it was a shootout in Alabama that ultimately put
(40:15):
an end to this guy's reign. Of terror, and newspapers
across the country carried the story. The New York World
called it the bloody end of a bloodthirsty monster, and
the New York Times even ran this headline by way
of obituary, Cultrell killed at last. Can you imagine people
hate you so much that your obituary basically as yea
(40:38):
in the headline. I would argue that our buddy Robert
Evans ought to consider this guy for an episode of
Behind the Bastards. Yes he was absolutely that, Yes he
was a bastard. Indeed. Uh, Luckily, folks who may be
glad to know that the town of Cedar Keys still
around today. It is way more chill than it was
(40:59):
in the eighteen nineties. Fishing is still a big industry.
I think the pencil factory closed. And uh, the local
historical Society has a lot to tell you about, a
lot to talk about. And nowadays, if you if you
ever find yourself down that way, do stop by. It
seems like a quiet, wonderful place to relax. Maybe they
(41:23):
have a sign in the town square that says, you know,
like X amount of years or days since the mayor
shot someone, or maybe it's still too soon to joke about.
But I I would visit cedar Key, you know, I'm
I'm a fan of road trips. I would love to
check it out. I know I would too. I got
I gotta wonder too, Ben the the You know how
Florida has these standard ground laws, you know, like if
(41:44):
anyone's coming at you or encroaching upon your property or
what have you, you know, fair game for you to
blast them. Do you think this is I mean, I'm
sure it was more than just this, but this does
seem like kind of a precedent for that, you know what?
That is an interesting question wondering. Let's see, the standard
ground law was that in two thousand five. It was passed.
(42:06):
I don't recall exactly. I just know it was very controversial. Um,
and you know, I just it just I wonder if
just there's something in the history of Florida that led
to it being one of the only states that has
such a law. True. Uh, and maybe this was not
the only incident of its type. But regardless, it's tough
to have much sympathy for this mayor, even though he
(42:28):
did die in a very painful way. Uh. He is
estimated to have murdered himself anywhere from five to ten people.
So he was a big bully, uh and the town
was inarguably better off without him. Thus ends the story
of the tyrant Mayor of cedar Key. And that's our
episode for today. Think you as always to super producer
(42:51):
Casey Pegram thinks also to Gabe Louisier, who we've been
teasing for so long, but we you know, we did
have a great talk with him. Um, we're gonna take
him to the circus? Can I say that as a spoiler?
Is that enough of a teaser? Maybe? I think that's
perfect Ben? Uh, Now you know, not literally, we're not
(43:11):
quite there yet and and these are COVID time but
hopefully soon everybody, hopefully so hopefully your loved ones are
getting that vaccine. And by the way, I want to
say this, I think just for everyone's benefit. Um. I
have a friend who pointed out to me that you
can actually call places like Walmart, for example, this may
be the only one around here that's doing it, and
get on a waiting list for leftover doses of the
(43:33):
vaccine because it's all appointment based and sometimes people don't
turn up and they expire if they're not used the
day that they're taking out a cold storage or put
into the actual syringes for distribution, you know, for inoculation.
So if anyone is interested, you can call local Walmart
and actually get on a waiting list. And my my
friend got the first dose of the vaccine and she
(43:55):
is uh not an elderly person at all. Yeah, yeah,
yeah you can. The vaccine situation in the US is
going state by state. Please do be safe, folks, Uh,
please take care with yourself and your loved ones. We'll
get that through this together. If Cedar Key can survive
a tire at mayor that we can weather a pandemic.
(44:17):
Thanks of course to our favorite audio infection, Jonathan Strickland,
a k a. The Quisted. Yeah for sure, I think
we'll be hearing from both him and UH hero of
the day, Gabe Luzier in the very near future. Huge
thanks to Alex Williams, who composed our theme. Christopher haciois
here in spirit. He's Jeff Coach. Check out this Day
(44:37):
in History class on a podcast platform near you. And
of course, thanks to the Cedar Keys Board of Tourism,
a thing that I just made up. We'll see you
next time. Books for more podcasts. For my heart Radio,
(44:58):
visit the I heart Radio, ap Apple podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
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