The Chillingworth Murders

Marjorie McKnight Chillingworth

(This story has been revised to remove the link to the Historic Hartman House Bed & Breakfast. Two reasons. First and foremost, someone replaced my link with an X-rated link. Second, the Historic Hartman House is no longer open as a bed and breakfast and is not open to the public. To the reader who reported the hacked link to me, thank you.)
 
         On September 22, I posted a little historical fiction piece in response to Rachel Harrie’s Second Campaign Challenge. If you haven’t seen it, or would like to re-read it before you go on, this LINK will take you right to it.  Several of the comments to my story asked for more information. Since the challenge ended on October 3, I felt it was now okay post the “rest of the story” as Paul Harvey says without defeating the 200 word limit. 

The disappearance and presumed murder of Judge Curtis E. Chillingworth and his wife, Marjorie McKnight Chillingworth was the most shocking event of its time in Palm Beach County, both for who the victims were and why they were murdered. The Birth of an Imago was based on what is known about the true last moments of Marjorie Chillingworth’s life.

            One of my dad’s favorite routes north from Delray Beach to North Palm Beach after a Sunday afternoon at my grandparents, was to travel north next to the ocean along A1A as far as possible. There was no super highway I-95 through Palm Beach County in those days and although the drive was slow-going, the ocean was always to our right and it was beautiful to smell and see as we meandered home.

            At one point in Manalapan, a small town tucked up next to the ocean south of Palm Beach, A1A takes a hard left turn away from the beach. As we approached the curve, a big house sat directly in front of us facing south.  Even before I knew whose house it had been, the house and the beach beside it always felt surrounded by a feeling of melancholy even to me as a child.  A beach is a hard thing to infuse with such a sad feeling, but there it was, dampening the sunshine. I don’t remember exactly when Dad told me about the Chillingworth murders, but I can tell you that from the moment he did, I understood that this place had earned its sadness.

When we approached the house, I’d stop my mindless chattering from the back seat and look out the window solemnly as we passed. I’d even go so far as to kneel silently on the back seat and stare out the back windshield as the car moved around the next curve and the house disappeared from sight.



Judge Curtis E. Chillingworth
Florida Archives Photo

            Around 10:00 p.m. on June 14, 1955, Judge Chillingworth and his wife, Marjorie, left a friend’s house for their “beach cottage” on the shoreline in Manalapan, Florida. The weather on the fourteenth was slightly rainy and it was a typical steamy summer Florida evening. The Chillingworths disappeared into the balmy night sometime after returning home and never reappeared.

            On June 15, a carpenter showed up at the house to build some playground equipment for the Chillingworth grandchildren. He found the door open and realized the house was empty.

            At 10:00 a.m., Court was ready to start in West Palm Beach, but Judge Chillingworth, habitually punctual, was nowhere in sight. No one answered the telephone at the Chillingworth home and his staff grew alarmed. The police were alerted and drove over to the house to investigate.

            The was no sign of the Chillingworths but the beds had been slept in and it appeared that only pajamas and slippers were missing. Concerns heightened when two rolls of tape were found-one in the house and one on the beach. When drops of blood were spotted on the walkway from the house to the beach, the investigation accelerated.

            At first, it was thought to be a kidnapping but no ransom note was ever found and the case grew cold.

Peel
PBC Sheriff's
Office Photo

            The crime was still unsolved when in November, 1958, a bootlegger named Lew Gene Harvey vanished overnight. His wife remembered that her husband had left the house that night with “John Lynch.”  Lynch was an alias used by a man named Floyd Albert “Lucky” Holzapfel. Floyd had a criminal past and had been arrested one time along with Joseph A. Peel, Jr.  At the time, Peel was a local attorney and West Palm Beach’s only municipal judge. Peel hired Floyd to beat Peel’s law partner to death for the proceeds of an insurance policy. The partner survived and fingered both men.

Holzapfel
PBC Sheriff's
Office Photo

            The police started digging and found that Peel had been reprimanded by Chillingworth, his supervisor, for representing both sides in a divorce. Peel had been told that one more breach of ethics like that and he’d face disbarment.  This terrified Peel as he had a nice little side income generated by alerting bootleggers and other criminals to impending search warrants and subpoenas. When police left his office with important documents in hand, Peel would be on the phone calling in a warning to the crooks. He was well paid for the inside information and by jeopardizing his secret stream of income, Chillingworth had unwittingly stepped into the gun sights.

The police set up a sting and pretending to be good ol' boy friends of his, got Holzapfel drunk one night, and encouraged him to confess to the Chillingworth murders. Of course, his “friends” taped the whole confession and the ugly truth about the Chillingworths’ mysterious disappearance finally emerged.

Lincoln
PBC Sheriff's
Office Photo

            We have only the words of the murderers as to what happened that night and no one but the two of them ever knew the whole story. According to them, Holzapfel and his friend George David “Bobby” Lincoln rowed their little skiff about four miles off of the coast and proceeded to wrap Mrs. Chillingworth in chains.  The Judge told Mrs. Chillingworth, “Remember, I love you.” And she replied, “I love you, too.” Holzapfel turned to Mrs. Chillingworth and saying, “Ladies first,” shoved her out of the boat and into the water.

            Some versions of the story say that Judge Chillingworth jumped in after her to attempt to save her, but she sank from sight. The Judge, having grown up on and in the ocean in Palm Beach County, was an excellent swimmer and almost escaped, even with his hands taped and lead weights on his feet. But one of the men hit him on the head with a gun. The two dragged him back on the boat, tied an anchor around his neck and pushed him overboard to drown also.

            The 200 word story I entered in the Challenge was actually the third story I wrote. The first two just didn’t speak to me the way the last moments of Marjorie Chillingworth did. By all accounts, she was an educated, gracious, loving wife and mother, active in the Garden Club and well respected and loved by all who knew her. She was the very model of a 1950s socialite wife. The majority of the story always seems to focus on the Judge and not much seems to be in the public domain about Marjorie and her life. In writing about the last moments of Mrs. Chillingworth, I put myself in that boat and tried to imagine what she was feeling–the confusion,  fear, anger, and the sadness.

          It’s no wonder that the house and beach beside it still resonate with the echoes. God rest their souls.