REVEALED
The Murder of Joel Walker
Thanks to the efforts of Lee Sturgis…great-granddaughter of Joel’s sister
Callie and Linda Flowers…the great-granddaughter of Joel’s brother Kyle… while
working together, have uncovered the story behind the rumors. Joan Stanford…
granddaughter of Callie furnished a valuable piece of information, which
allowed this story to unfold:
I grew up hearing a story about the human skull my great-grandfather Kyle
Walker kept on his mantle. It was supposed to have something to do with the
murder of his brother, or the man who murdered his brother. It was forty years
ago when my grandmother Alma, who was married to Kyle’s son Clyde, told this
story to the family. I took notes one day as she was giving me the genealogy of
my Walker Ancestors. She said Clyde had an uncle who had been murdered near
Bartow around 1885. He had been carrying a payroll. I wrote the name of Noland
beside the information she had given me. I have searched for years trying to
find the name Noland Walker…to no avail.
Recently I was able to get in touch with Lee Sturgis, who is great-
granddaughter of Caroline (Callie) Rowell, sister to Kyle Walker. She had never
heard of a murder in the family, but through her I was able to locate other
descendants.
I called Joan Stanford in Mississippi…leaving a message. Joan returned my
phone call that evening and was able to shed further light on this supposed
murder. Her grandmother (Callie) had told her mother in “hushed tones” the
following information. “Joel Walker… her brother and brother to Kyle… had been
murdered and thrown into Lake Walk-In-The-Water near Frostproof, (close to
Bartow) Florida about 1895. When his body was found there were only skeletal
remains. Matthew Walker, the eldest brother, collected the bones… retaining
them until he himself was to be buried at which time Joel’s remains were to be
buried with him. It was rumored that Joel, who was a school teacher, had been
having an affair with a student at the time and she may have become pregnant.”
If this story isn’t bazaar enough… it turns out Matthew was a minister at the
Primitive Baptist Church and also served several other churches in the area as
well.
With this new found information, I got back in touch with Lee Sturgis, who
went to the Bartow Historical Library to see if we could substantiate any of
the story.
On May 29, 2009, I received a rather excited phone call from Lee. “I found
it,” she said. “Are you ready for this?” I listened intensely as Lee read me
the details from the old newspapers at the library.
Is Joel Walker Dead ? An article appearing in the Bartow Courier-Informant
on January 1, 1896 carried the following information about the murder:
“Some hunters recently returned from the Kissimmee River Territory
bringing news of the finding of the body of a dead white man in the swamp near
the head of Tiger Creek.” Tiger Creek is at the mouth of Lake Walk-In-The-
Water. “They say the body was so badly decomposed that it was impossible to
tell anything about it, even as to whether it was black or white. One arm and
hand however was covered by mud and water and was thus preserved and when it
was drawn out it was found to be white.” The article goes on to say that Joel
Walker had been missing for a couple of months and “a leather belt was means of
identification.”
On January 8, 1896 the Bartow Courier-Informant reported the arrest of
Lon Holland for the murder of Joel with the following headline:
Joel Walker Murdered…Lon Holland Arrested On A Charge Of The Crime. Lon Holland
gave an account of what took place…implicating another man for the crime, “Dan
Byrd the well known trapper and hunter.” Holland said that Dan and Joel were at
his house and “he…Holland… went out to turn the ponies on the pond near by
leaving Byrd and Walker at the house. When he came back to the house the two
men had gone down to the swamp and soon he heard a gun fire. He says he
presumed that one of them had shot an alligator, but soon Byrd came back to the
house and being asked what he had done with Walker, he replied that Walker had
tried to shoot him, but that he got the drop on him first.”
Two men consequently found Joel’s body and took the belt up to the house
to see if it could be identified by Holland and Byrd. They soon left to report
the findings and “for the purpose of having a jury impaneled.”
Between changing his story several times and the following
evidence…“Walker’s gun, saddle, horse and some clothes were found in Holland’s
possession and it is said that Holland even had on the dead man’s shoes”…Lon
Holland was arrested for Joel’s murder.
We now know without a shadow of a doubt, there was a murder of Kyle
Walker’s brother near Bartow as reported by my grandmother. I now believe when
I wrote the information down and wrote the name of Noland beside it that she
was referring to “Holland”…the man who killed him. She may have remembered it
as Noland or I may have heard it as such. That much of the mystery is solved.
The question remains…Who did the human skull my great-grandfather kept on the
mantle belong to?
When Lee called me on Friday…June 12, with another article she had found
about the murder of our ancestor, we both realized we were being drawn into the
depths of this story by some yet unrecognized pull beyond our immediate
control. Were we brought together for this journey into our ancestors past for
a purpose we had yet to discover? We were now beginning to realize the
enormousness of this story!
Given A Sentence For Life…Lon Holland Is Found Guilty Of Murdering
Walker. An excerpt from the Bartow Courier-Informant…October 21, 1896 follows:
“There were in all about seventeen witnesses introduced in behalf of the state…
The most important being Mr. E. M. Cody who first discovered the remains of the
murdered man; Mr. B. E. Bushnell who was with him; Mr. H. H. Fertic, who
arrested Holland; and the Walker Brothers who identified some of the articles
of clothing and other things as the property of Joel Walker…deceased.”
“Mr. Cody testified that about the 27th of last December, he and Mr.
Bushnell went down into the southeastern portion of the county to hunt wild
orange trees; that while in the swamp about the mouth of Tiger Creek…he came
upon the remains of a dead white man…the flesh having all been decayed or
removed. He went back a distance to find Mr. Bushnell and found him talking to
Lon Holland (the prisoner) and Dan Byrd. He related to them what he had found
and they all went back together to examine the bones, but Holland seemed uneasy
and restless…while there. They left the bones, etc. and on the second day
thereafter, Justice V. P. Simmons for the coroner’s jury went and held an
inquest over the remains; that the justice gathered up at this time, the skull,
the under jawbone, a toothbrush, a shirt, a pocket map and preserved them.
(These things were then offered in evidence and identified).
“It was proven by R. R. McKinney and his son Dock that on the ninth of
November, they were down near Holland’s house hog hunting; that Holland came to
their camp and then went away and was gone from thirty to sixty minutes; that
while he was gone a gun fired and when he came back, he said he had shot a
turkey; that he asked Dock McKinney to go down in the field near the swamp and
get a pair of shoes he had left on the fence; that he then took two horses, a
gun and other articles and went home with the McKinney’s where he remained most
of the time until he was arrested nearly two months later. The gun and one of
the horses were proven to have been Walker’s and the shirt which was found with
the bones was identified by one of the Walker Brothers.” Holland tried to claim
he had traded for the items in his possession, but it was testified by Mr.
Fertic who had arrested him “that on that day…that Holland had taken him aside
from the crowd and confessed to him as a friend that while he did not kill
Walker himself, he had it done and saw it done by Dan Byrd.” It was noted that
Dan Byrd had already proven he was somewhere else at the time of the murder.
Lon Holland was found “guilty of murder in the 1st degree as charged in the
indictment, with a recommendation of mercy of the court. A motion for a new
trial was at once made, heard and overruled.” He was then sentenced to the
state penitentiary at hard labor for “the term of your natural life.” It was
felt at the time by the community that although Lon Holland was responsible for
the murder of Joel, they also believed he had accomplices. Holland would be
taken to Tampa for safe keeping.
We can now get a clue as to the skull that was kept on Kyle Walker’s
mantel. It must have been the skull of his brother Joel that was retrieved from
Tiger Creek. Or was it? Matthew Walker was reportedly the one who collected the
bones. Did he and his brother Kyle share their brother’s bones? Since only the
skull and under jawbone of Joel was initially taken into evidence, Matthew must
have gathered the rest of the remains of his brother and brought them home. Why
they weren’t buried immediately is any ones guess.
Lee and I have continued in our quest for the truth to this unraveling
story. I became so fascinated with the details outlined in these newspaper
articles along with the family account of “the bones” that I made my way to the
Library some seventy miles away to lend Lee a hand and see for myself firsthand…
the printed word.
I found where the case was taken to the State Supreme Court which
confirmed the sentence of the lower court…Bartow Courier-Informant…May 12,
1897. Researching this murder on the internet, I have found where there is
a “corpus delicti” which came about because of this case and is argued in
courtrooms today, in what is known as Holland v. State, 39 fla. 178, 22 So, 298
(1897). This law deals with convicting someone on circumstantial evidence.
The story expands as we find that Lon Holland didn’t take kindly to being
locked up and proved to be quite an escape artist. There has been at least two
escapes and one attempted escape we have found to this date, of Holland. The
Bartow Courier-Informant reported on March 25, 1896 that he had escaped:
Holland Escapes From Moving Train…D. S. McKay Deputy Sheriff of Hillsborough
County was bringing Holland to Bartow from Tampa to stand trial when he
escaped through a window in one of the cars. The following account is made of
the incident:
“Mr. McKay soon missed his prisoner and after making a through search of
the train, he got off and tracked the man some distance and failing to find
him, he reached the conclusion that the best thing to do was come on to the
city and get Sheriff Ballard, Deputy Cantor and a small posse of citizens who
were soon ready, and next put Mr. Ballard’s bloodhound’s on him. They were not
long in bringing in the man. Holland tried to cover up his tracks in water and
mud so as to fool the dogs, but when captured he said if he had known the dogs
were so well trained he would have made no effort to escape.” Motions were made
to the court and the case was continued for the next term of court.
Holland Escapes Jail Again…December 9, 1896 Bartow Courier-Informant:
Called into question was why such neglect of the prisoners and their
facility was allowed due to the fact a man previously convicted of murder was
being housed there. It was noted that “a bar in the back window was already
nearly filed or sawn in two and that Holland completed the job and got out
there.” He was free for a couple of days before his father when paid a visit by
Deputy Cantor gave up the hiding place of his son. Mr. Holland felt that if his
son came back and stood a new trial he would be granted one. It was previously
reported Holland had been caught trying to go over the fence:
“Lon Holland had gotten out into the jail yard and was just getting over
the fence when the alarm was given and Mrs. Pike,” the wife of Deputy Pike, who
was away at the time, “ succeeded in getting him back into jail.” I can picture
this spunky little lady holding a shotgun to her shoulder, her finger squeezing
the trigger ever so slightly…I hear the words…“Lon Holland, you better get your
butt down from that fence before I fill it full of buckshot.”
During this particular period of time Florida farmed out it’s prisoners
to various “camps” throughout the state. The convict lease system was
eventually done away with in 1923 by Governor Hardee due to the harsh treatment
of it’s prisoners. In 1900 Alonzo Holland is found at the Florida State Prison
Headquarters Camp in High Springs, in Alachua County. From 1910 thru 1930, a
Lon Holland has been found on records living at a “Turpentine Camp” in
Highlands County. It is believed to be the same Lon Holland convicted in the
murder of Joel Walker.
Addendum: The following articled appeared in the Daily Courier…June 10, 1898.
It can be found at the Polk County Historical Library in Bartow, Florida. Note…
Dan Byrd was previously implicated by Lon Holland for the death of Joel Walker
in which Lon Holland himself…was subsequently found guilty. One year after the
case was seen by the Florida Supreme Court in which the sentencing by the lower
court was upheld…Dan Byrd is murdered. Coincidence or perhaps…“Walker Justice?”
Mr. Dan Byrd…his body riddled with buckshot near Fort Thompson, was riding
along with John Lucas.
Dan Byrd, the tall hunter and trapper, was well known in this city and
other parts of the state…He and John Lucas, who has figured prominently in
recent years in various rackets, were riding along side by side about one mile
up the Caloosahatchee River on Monday, June 6…when someone emptied a load of
buckshot into Byrd, dropping him instantly from his horse. After he struck the
ground, another load was fired into his back and it was ascertained afterward
that forty-eight shots had riddled his body. There is of course no definite
clue as to the murderers and it is not known whether Byrd or Lucas or both
were the objects of the bushwhacking.”
Seven months prior to this incident John Lucas was in an altercation in
this same area whereby he was cut up so badly it was reported by the Gulf Coast
Breeze…November 26, 1897, “ Lucas’ wounds are fatal.” He obviously had
recovered.
This story continues to unfold. It’s as if Lee and I have stepped back in time
and we are witnesses to an event that took place over one hundred years ago. As
we search the pages of old newspapers and journals that are being so carefully
protected by Historical Libraries across the world for the benefit of future
generations, let’s not forget the value of these repositories and their
importance in our lives.
Written, Authored, and contributed by Linda Flowers with the assistance of Lee
Sturgis who compiled most of the information found in the Bartow Courier-
Informant. Lee is co-contributor of this Family History.
The owner, contributors and source of this material must be acknowledged in any
printed or photocopied format.
Linda Flowers can be contacted at:
129 E. Spruce St., Tarpon Springs, FL 34689
Phone #...727-943-0774
Lee Sturgis can be contacted at:
219 S. Palmetto Ave., Ft. Meade, Florida 33841
Phone #...863-512-8732