Originally posted at bloodandoranges.com over several posts in 2013
On Dec. 11, 1889, Louis Witkovski, mayor of Starke, Florida, and sometime Bradford County Commissioner, encountered young attorney Barton Albert Thrasher on a Gainesville street. Later that morning, shortly after the two men entered Thrasher’s office, neighbors heard two gun shots. One passer-by reported finding Thrasher standing on the street, calmly admitting that he had shot Witkovski and that he was going to find the sheriff. Men who entered found Witkovski dead, sitting with his head hanging over the back of a chair with two bullet holes in his face.
After a prolonged delay, Thrasher was finally put on trial for Witkovski’s murder in February 1891 before the state circuit court at Gainesville. The trial was a sensation and newspapers covered it in detail. Thrasher had retained an all-star team of criminal defense attorneys who argued that Thrasher had acted in self-defense in shooting the one-armed, fifty-year-old man he had invited into his office. No witnesses appeared to exonerate Witkovski. Nevertheless, after three hours of deliberation, the jury exonerated B. A. Thrasher and he walked away a free man.
We’ll explore the stories of each of these men, the woman who linked them, and the sensational trial of Thrasher as reported in regional newspapers.
What do we know about Louis Witkovski? Census records show that he was born in the Posen district of Prussia in 1838 or 1839. While most Jewish immigrants to the United States before the 1880s were typically described as German, many, like Witkovski came from the Polish regions governed by Prussia. It is not clear when he arrived in the United States. He appears to have spent some time as a clerk in Savannah but by the summer of 1861 he was living in Alexandria, Rapides Parish, Louisiana. Witkovski listed his occupation as merchant when enrolling in the army, but not appearing in the 1860 census, he may very well have been a transient peddler. Soon after Fort Sumter, Witkovski enlisted and, in early July 1861, he was mustered into Stafford’s Guards, which became Company B the 9th Louisiana Regiment. The 9th, known as the Louisiana Tigers, became one of the most celebrated regiments in the Confederate armies. Witkovski’s service records show that he was present at all the battles of Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia until early May, 1863 when, after nearly two years of relentless combat, Witkovski was struck by a shell, or shell fragment, at the Battle of Chancellorsville. Surgeons amputated Witkovski’s left arm at the shoulder and a discharge from the army soon followed.
Immediately after the war, Witkovski could be found in Savannah and various places in Georgia. He married Mary Daniel in Jefferson County, not far from Augusta, and Mary gave birth in 1870 to Benjamin, the first of six children. The couple soon moved to Milledgeville. Although Mary was not Jewish, Louis assumed a leading role in the Jewish community of Milledgeville where he organized a Yom Kippur service for the towns 21 Jewish residents and founded a Jewish Social and Benevolent Society. He was also prominent in the fraternal lodge, the “Order of the Red Men.” Newspaper accounts after his death indicate that he was respected and liked in Georgia.
At some point in the mid-1870s, Witkovski’s business in Milledgeville suffered and he looked south for a more promising location to open a country store. In mid or late 1877, he moved his family to Starke in Bradford County, Florida where he immediately encountered problems. Witkovski’s initial travails in Starke are described in a long, anonymous account reported in May 1878 in the Jewish South, a regional, ethnic newspaper. The correspondent does not mention Witkovski, or even Starke, by name, but refers to “L. W.” who is identified as a one-armed Confederate veteran and Jewish merchant recently arrived from Georgia.
The Jewish South describes Witkovski as “an Israelite faithful to the teachings of his fathers, a plain, unassuming man, father of an interesting family and a model husband.” The Witkovskis were the only Jews in Bradford County; a Jewish family listed living in Bradford in the 1870 census had apparently departed. The author set the scene upon Witkovski’s arrival. The local store keepers, entirely Christian, “had formed a little ‘ring’ in order to fleece their…brethren systematically, and they grew rich by the extortion practiced upon the unsophisticated planters and freedmen.” The newcomer ignored the ring and “ere long Mr. W. had his hands full of work. His goods were precisely what they were represented to be and 25 per cent cheaper than sold hitherto by the good Christian dealers.” As a result, Witkovski’s “business increased day after day.” But the merchants’ ring soon expressed their displeasure with Witkovski’s conduct. One morning he found a letter marked with a skull and cross bones and signed “K.K.K.” that ordered him to leave within ten days or face the consequences. Witkovski ignored this threat, just as he ignored the ring’s business collusion, and instead “continued in honest dealing, selling goods at legitimate profits, giving honest weight and measure, and returning to colored and ignorant white folks the full amount of change due them, a practice entirely ignored before ” in Starke.
The reporter continued his narrative, alleging that the local tradesman held public meetings to demand that Christians keep away from the “d—d Christkiller.” But Starke’s residents paid as little heed to the ring as Witkovski had. The ring merchants then purchased the house and store rented by Witkovski and evicted his family and shop. Witkovski could not immediately find another lodging or store in Starke. The family instead found shelter with a farmer two miles from town. That same night, Witkovski purchased a lot and lumber to build a house. The merchants then announced that “no one doing work on the Jew’s house would ever receive employment from the other stores.” Nevertheless, Witkovski secured a “very large force of laborers” and nine days later broke ground on “the finest house” in Starke. He re-established his store and “his business visibly grew.“ The newspaper observed that Witkovski “had a hard fight for six months, but he maintained his ground like a man.”
The Jewish South then added a bitter coda to the story. At some point after he weathered the storm of threats, Witkovski visited Savannah and made arrangements to order tobacco for his store from the firm of H. Myers & Bros. Soon Witkovski received a letter (dated March 12, 1878) from the Jewish proprietors of H. Myers & Bros. declining to honor his order because “our trade in your town are so strongly opposed to our selling you goods, and they being very old customers, we feel compelled to oblige them.”
Although Witkovski found enemies among the merchant class of Starke, he was well received by the majority of citizens. Six years after his arrival, WItkovski became a candidate for mayor. One local newspaper decried “the attempt to excite popular prejudice against” Witkovski. But while the Bradford County newspaper insinuated that this prejudice arose from Witkovski’s Judaism, the reporter’s word choice suggests that Witkovski’s foreign origins may also have prompted opposition to his candidacy (Florida Weekly Telegraph in the American Israelite, January 4, 1884). Witkovski prevailed once again and was elected Starke’s mayor in 1883 or 1884 and soon also became a Bradford County Commissioner. He continued to fill the office of mayor until the fateful morning of Dec. 11, 1889.
Who was B.A. Thrasher, the man who shot Louis Witkovski?
Barton Albert Thrasher was born in Troy, Alabama in 1859 to a prominent family. His grandfather, Early Thrasher, was a successful planter in Morgan County, Georgia and owned 55 slaves. B. A.’s father, Barton H. Thrasher, a lawyer, moved the family in 1876 from Atlanta to Gainesville, where he built a large and successful law practice. Barton A. also studied law and graduated in 1881 from Cumberland Law School in Lebanon, Tennessee (now located at Samford Univ. in Birmingham, AL). Thrasher returned to Gainesville where he opened the law firm of Ashby & Thrasher. [Pruett, Our Thrasher Heritage, pp. 141-2; Rerick, Memoirs of Florida, 726.]. In the mid-1880s, Thrasher married Sarah W. Brown, daughter of prominent Gainesville businessman and city father, James B. Brown. For purposes of the story to follow, it is important to note that Thrasher was no stranger to violence. The Alachua County court dockets show that “Albert Thrasher” was indicted for “assault with the intent to commit manslaughter” in 1880. That case was placed on the absentee docket and it’s not clear how it turned out.
The facts about the shooting of Louis Witkovski- the one-armed, Confederate Veteran, German-Jewish immigrant shopkeeper and Bradford Co. politician- by Barton Albert Thrasher, a young attorney who was well-connected in Gainesville, are indisputable.
On the morning of Dec. 11, 1889, Witkovski, encountered Thrasher on a Gainesville street and the two men entered Witkovski’s office. Some minutes later, two gun shots were heard. Thrasher emerged from his office, admitted to passers-by that he shot Witkovski and turned himself into the sheriff, handing over two pistols, one of which Thrasher claimed belonged to Witkovski. Examination of Witkovski’s body found two bullets holes in his face and powder burns on the victim suggested that the shooting took place at very close range. There were no witnesses to the shooting or the conversation between the two men that immediately preceded it. Open and shut? Not so fast.
At this point, when we venture beyond these few facts to go deeper into the story, we risk losing our path in the dank miasma of a Florida swamp. The accounts available through court documents and newspaper reports reveal a confusing narrative of conspiracy, forged letters, defamation, blackmail, death threats, and erotic obsession, involving Witkovski, Thrasher, and the woman who linked them, Mrs. Annie J. Brown.
Not much is known about Annie Brown’s early life. She was born in South Carolina in 1859 or 1860. Next, the 1880 census finds her living in Gainesville married to John M. Brown, a railroad worker, and with a two year old son, Lee. The young couple lived next door to the household of John’s father, Col. James B. Brown, in whose home also lived John’s fourteen-year-old sister, Sarah (later Sarah Thrasher). Col. Brown – the father-in-law of both Annie Brown and Barton A. Thrasher – was a Civil War veteran, and successful livery stable keeper and orange grove planter.
Col. Brown, as he was known, was one of the leading citizens of Gainesville, elected mayor several times (including years corresponding with Witkovski’s term as mayor in nearby Starke), served on the city council, and was a master mason and Presbyterian church elder. [http://genealogytrails.com/fla/alachua/bio1.html]. The elder Brown sounds a lot like Witkovski.
Annie Brown’s circumstances soon changed. By 1885, she was divorced from John Brown and living in Bradford County with her seven year old son as boarders with another couple. The state census taker listed her as a merchant, but by this time she was working for Louis Witkovski.
The cast is a triangle as eccentric as their story: 1) the one-armed veteran, middle-age immigrant shopkeeper and community pillar who is possibly a predator as well as victim; 2) an independent, young, single mother making her way in the business world, whose impeccable image may mask a ruthless, femme fatale; and 3) the enthusiastically protective young lawyer and brother-in-law who is equally at home shooting a man in cold blood and then assassinating his character.
Barton Albert Thrasher readily confessed to killing Witkovski. At the same time he confessed, however, Thrasher calmly insisted that his shooting Witkovski was justifiable as self-defense. With no evidence or witnesses to support his defense, Thrasher’s contention is shameless and impressive in its audacity. But Thrasher had an ace up his sleeve which he skillfully played. The young trial attorney, whose father was one of the most successful lawyers in the region, well knew the peers who were to sit as jurors delegated with the power to decide whether he would hang or walk. Shrewdly, Thrasher, or his friends, leaked to the public that Thrasher’s reason for killing Witkovski lay not merely in Thrasher’s defense of such a trivial matter as his own life, but also arose from Thrasher’s nobly fulfilling a gentleman’s duty of defending the honor of an offended woman, his wife’s sister-in-law, Annie Brown.
The daylight murder of Starke’s mayor was ghastly enough to catch the attention of newspapers across the region. Then, the identification of the mysterious Mrs. Annie J. Brown, starring in the role as the feminine spark that ignited the deadly confrontation, added the irresistible ingredient of lurid glamour.
The ensuing delay of more than one year between Thasher’s arrest and indictment and then the trial surely encouraged rumor and gossip to swirl amid speculation about the exact nature of Annie Brown’s relationship with each of the married men. By the time of the trial, the defense team’s argument that Thrasher had shot Witkovski based on his belief that Witkovski was about to shoot first, were at most a second-thought as far as the public was concerned. Annie Brown’s appearance and testimony made Florida v. Thrasher a sensation.
Beginning on December 13, 1889, two days after the Witkovski murder, a grand jury hearing was held in Gainesville to decide whether Thrasher should indicted and imprisoned pending trial during a forthcoming circuit court term. The prosecution explained that Thrasher had confessed to killing Witkovski and evidence showed the shooting was at close range. Such evidence should be sufficient for an indictment. With the hearing public (unlike our grand jury hearings), Thrasher and his defense team decided to establish their defense in the court of public opinion, well in advance of the forthcoming trial, by introducing Mrs. Brown into the story.
The response of reporters to Annie Brown’s appearance and testimony suggests that the Gainesvlle jury, like the modern reader, was immediately distracted from the simple question of whether B.A. Thrasher should be indicted and convicted for shooting Witkovski in the face at close range while the one-armed, older man sat in a chair in Thrasher’s Gainesville office one Wednesday morning – a shooting to which Thrasher readily confessed. Instead, all attention was drawn toward the irresistible drama of the young widow and the ambiguous nature of her relationships with both the killer and the victim.
Thrasher’s fate would depend Annie Brown’s ability to divert the jury and public. She succeeded beyond all expectations.
The defense team’s strategy immediately began paying dividends because Annie Brown’s testimony at the hearing was reported in the regional press in detail. With widespread coverage, prospective jurors for the future murder trial were certain to learn of Brown’s lurid narrative that irreparably defamed Witkovski.
Mrs. Brown testified that she had been employed for about four years by Witkovski and managed the millinery department in his Starke store. Their agreement allowed Mrs. Brown to take home merchandise in lieu, or in partial payment, of her salary. According to Mrs. Brown, Witkovski had requested that they settle accounts in June 1889. Predictably with such an arrangement, a dispute arose between Brown and Witkovski over her pay and the amount of charges on her store account. Brown claimed that they had agreed her pay was $75 per month, but Witkovski insisted it was $50. In addition, Witkovski informed Brown that she owed money, about $200 according to Brown, to the firm to pay for merchandise she had taken. Brown claimed she repaid about $100 of her debt after borrowing the money from the Thrashers.
At this point, Brown’s testimony turns ugly. Brown said she told Witkovski she wanted to quit, but Witkovski threatened to “ruin her” if she did. At this time, according to Brown, Witkovski made an “improper proposal.” Brown stated that Witkovski informed her that he would visit her room at 10 o’clock that night. Brown reported that she replied “if you do I will kill you.” She locked her room that night and later a servant handed her a note from Witkovski to “Let the matter rest to-night.” She returned to work the next day but the matter was not spoken about. According to Brown, Witkovski never made any other such “improper proposals.”
Then, Mrs. Brown’s story transitioned from the salacious to utterly bizarre. About two weeks after Witkovski’s ‘improper proposal,” Brown said she quit and left Starke. She traveled to North Carolina and from there wrote to Witkovski to meet her in New York. Why she initiated contact with Witkovski to meet in New York is never explained in the newspaper accounts. When in New York Brown left instructions for Witkovski with the location to find her. Brown recalled that during their ensuing conversation in New York, Witkovski urged her to return to his employ but she refused. Brown then added the strange detail that Witkovski told her that “his business would go to the devil if she did not return,” but that he did not care because “everything he had was mortgaged.” A different newspaper reporter, however, gave Browns’ account of Witkovski’s words a different spin, suggesting not that Witkovski said his business would go “to the devil” without her presence, but that for all Witkovski cared, his business could go “to the devil” if she refused him. Witkovski returned to Starke and Brown eventually came to Gainesville, arriving on December 5, 1889.
From Brown’s testimony and the newspaper reports of the hearing, it is impossible to know what to make of the relationship between Brown and Witkovski. Brown worked for Witkovski for four years. The two engaged into frequent correspondence and a number of letters, some even affectionate, from each addressed to the other were presented at the hearing. In other letters Witkovski informed Brown that we could have her prosecuted for her conduct but sought instead an amicable settlement. For example, according to the Savannah Morning News, the following letter was found in Witkovski’s pocket the morning he was shot and entered into evidence:
Savannah Morning News, December 14, 1889
In a tantalizing detail, the journalists covering the trial reported that the prosecution presented a letter purportedly written by Brown to Witkovski which Brown insisted was a forgery. Regrettably, we did not know the contents of this letter, or, if Brown is to be believed, why anyone would have gone to the trouble of forging such a letter within days of the murder to impeach Mrs. Brown’s credibility.
Thrasher then made his statement. He claimed that when he met Witkovski in his office, Witkovski asked him to use his influence to get Mrs. Brown to return to his employ. Thrasher refused and offered the opinion that Witkovski was a “damned infernal scoundrel. According to Thrasher, Witkovski then said that he would carry out “threats” against Brown. The exchange rapidly escalated and Thrasher claimed that he told Witkovski “he hoped it would never be necessary to shoot it out.” Witkovski defied Thrasher’s warning against moving his [one] hand toward his pocket. Thrasher’s recollection making his case for self-defense is too good not to quote:
“Witkovski said: ‘Now , it is the time to settle it,” and attempted to raise from his chair, at the same time carrying his right hand behind him. Thrasher says, seeing that he was going to shoot, he slapped [Witkovski] in the face with his hat, and this frustrated him until he [Thrasher] got his own pistol out, and got the first shot. When Witkovski was shot, he fell back in the chair and dropped his pistol.” [Atlanta Constitution, Dec. 15, 1889]. Of course there is no way to verity any of this self-serving prattle, but it does make a great story
The grand jury indicted Thrasher for the murder of Witkovski on Dec. 19, 1889. Reports that Thrasher has been released on bail provoked “great indignation” on the part of Starke citizens who gathered in a large meeting which resolved that “we are more than ever firmly convinced that our mayor, Louis Witkovski, was murdered in cold blood and without shadow of excuse or extenuation.” [Savannah Morning News, Dec. 21, 1889] If this case wasn’t enough of a circus already, that same night, Thrasher’s attorney, Frank E. Hughes was arrested for contempt of court, arising from allegations of his tampering with the grand jury. Judge Jesse J. Finley fined Hughes $50, which seems later, after Hughes’ guilty plea to have been reduced to $10. Thrasher’s case was continued until the next term. The trial finally got under way with jury selection in early February 1891.
Upon the indictment, Thrasher applied to be released on bail. Florida law in the late 19th century set a high standard for bail in murder cases: the defendant would have to show that the evidence against him was so weak that the judge would have overturned a guilty verdict. Judge Finley – one of Florida’s most respected jurists (as well as a former congressman and Confederate general) – ruled that Thrasher’s claims of self-defense, or “justification,” did not meet this standard and denied bail. Thrasher appealed to Florida’s Supreme Court which found no reason to overturn Finley’s decision. 26 FL S. C. 526 (June 1890).
Helpfully, the Florida Supreme Court took the opportunity to iterate the standard necessary to win an acquittal on justification (i.e., self defense). Thrasher faced the burden of convincing the jury “by a preponderance of the evidence.” The traditional, and lesser threshold, of establishing reasonable doubt in a criminal case would not suffice to win acquittal on self-defense grounds. Further, the Supreme Court advised, the “party who seeks and brings on a difficulty cannot avail himself of the rights of self-defense to shield himself from the consequences of killing.” The law certainly did not look to be in Thasher’s favor: if the trial jury were to conclude that Thrasher sought or provoked the encounter with Witkovski that turned violent, the jury would have to convict Thrasher.
After delays, the trial finally began with jury selection in February 1891 in Alachua County’s impressive new courthouse. Judge Finley, nearly eighty years old, presided. Thrasher was represented by a team of prominent attorneys, including his law partner J. W. Ashby, Robert Wyche Davis (who many years later played a role in Billy Townsend’s Age of Barbarity), Sydney L. Carter, J. N. Liggett and Col. Hugh Miller. One prescient observer remarked that Thrasher was defended by “an array of counsel sufficient to make most any man feel safe of his life.”
On Feb. 16th, before a “packed courtroom,” B. A. Thrasher waited together with his wife and his mother, whose “pale and sad face excited the sympathy of all present.” [Gainesville Daily Sun, Feb. 15, 1891] The state’s attorney, William H. Wigg, began to build his case. Witnesses testified to seeing Witkovski alive in Gainesville on the morning of Dec. 11, 1889, later hearing gun shots and then finding Witkovski’s corpse in the law office of Ashby & Thrasher, “In an office chair, feet crossed and head thrown back on chair with two bullet holes in the head.” One witness recalled finding Thrasher on the street, within “fifty or sixty yards” of the office, heard him admit to shooting Witkovski and saying he “wanted to see Sheriff Wiengas right away.” Witnesses did not recall Thrasher claiming he shot Witkovski in self-defense. Doctors testified to examining the body and finding one gunshot wound below and to the left of the victim’s left eye, “ranging backward and upward, coming out the head at the junction of the parietal and occipital bones” and a second gunshot hole entering “the lower lip, deflected, fracturing the 2nd and 3rd vertebrae.” Daily Sun, Feb. 17, 1891.
The prosecution also introduced into evidence, over the defense’s objection, Thrasher’s statement admitting to the murder made during his preliminary examination back in Dec. 1889. On the morning of the second day of the trial, the state rested its case and Thrasher’s all-star defense team took over. Their first witness, working in an office across the street from Ashby & Thrasher, claimed to have seen through the window a stranger looking over a dead man’s body in Thrasher’s office.
A second defense witness added nothing substantial and the defense quickly abandoned this ineffectual line of argument. At this moment, the defense finally called its star witness: Annie J. Brown.
One wants to imagine the scene as Hollywood film noir. The courtroom is hushed as Mrs. Brown’s name is called and she glides through the swinging doors, strolls defiantly down the center aisle, the click of her heels on the floor echoing in the hushed courtroom, as the packed house stares with mouths agape. (Who plays Mrs. Brown in the movie?) We like to think that the one-time millenary department manager is fashionable dressed and carefully removes a flowered hat and dark veil as she takes the stand.
The defense seized on the opportunity of Mrs. Brown’s testimony to introduce new information to bolster Thrasher’s self-defense claim. Mrs. Brown testified that she had been employed by Witkovski for four years and left his employ on June 2, 1889. When defense counsel asked the reason she left, the state objected, and Judge Finley sustained the objection. The prosecution next objected to leading questions from the defense about whether in the days before the shooting, Mrs. Brown had communicated to Thrasher “any insults or indignities which had been offered” to Mrs. Brown by Witkovski, and whether within a week before the shooting she had communicated to Thrasher “ any threats made against him” by Witkovski. Brown was allowed to testify that within a week prior to the killing she indeed had communicated to Thrasher certain threats made by Witkovski that he would “take Thrasher’s life or do him serious bodily harm.” None of this crucial, and unverifiable, information was presented by Brown during her testimony at the grand jury proceedings fourteen months earlier. At this dramatic moment, the second day of the trial came to a close.
On the morning of the trial’s third day, Brown returned to the stand. Judge Finley sustained prosecution objections to defense questions asking Brown to state how she came to communicate Witkovski’s alleged threats. Brown then testified that Witkovski had told her that he knew that Thrasher was “her only friend to protect her.” According to Brown, Witkovski warned that he would kill Thrasher if he interfered. Brown concluded her testimony by stating that Witkovski instructed Brown not to elude him again and that “he would not allow anything on earth to stand between them.”
As Annie Brown steps down from the witness stand, the orchestra swells, fainting women are administered smelling salts, children’s ears are released, and flush-faced men swiftly and accurately expectorate an hour’s reserve of chaw into the nearest spittoon.
But the defense was not done. A surprise witness was called: F. S. Kerr, who testified to meeting Witkovski in Starke and again in New York City around Sept. 1, 1889. He also reported meeting separately with Annie Brown in New York. According to Kerr, Witkovski had threatened to harm or take Thrasher’s life if Thrasher prevented him from seeing Annie Brown. Kerr also mentioned that a detective had approached him in New York, but Kerr would not explain himself to the detective whom he considered “as one of a set of scoundrels trying to persecute this woman.”
After testimony that Thrasher had turned in two pistols, including Witkovski’s, to the sheriff, the defense rested its case and began its summation. Col. Liggett insisted on the “right of man to kill another man” when he deemed his life in danger from “overt acts or words on the part of the other in every possible phase.” But Liggett knew what this trial was really about and what the jury was waiting to hear. The attorney then “dwelt with great earnestness and wealth of illustration on the right of man to defend the honor of a woman.” The court’s day ended and, a reporter commented, it was then “universally conceded that the celebrated case” would be decided in Thrasher’s favor. Weekly Sun, Feb. 19, 1891.
On Saturday morning, the prosecution summed up its case. Gamely, the prosecutor attempted to counter Liggett’s dramatic appeal: the state sympathized with the family of the accused while reminding the jury of the “widow and orphans of the deceased,” but also advised the jury that “injured women, the grief of a bereaved family have no place in the jury box.” The prosecution then finally addressed the actual evidence: according to the testimony, Witkovski’s body was found in a position not consistent with drawing a pistol from a sitting position. The one-armed man pulling a pistol from his hip pocket would have moved his body forward, and if shot, should have fallen forward and not back as the witnesses described. In closing, the state instructed the jury that if it did not believe that Witkovski was drawing his pistol when shot, they must convict Thrasher of 1stdegree murder. Alternatively, if the jurors believed that Witkovski was indeed drawing his gun, they must convict Thrasher of 2nd degree manslaughter.
The jury retired to deliberate at 11:30 AM. At 2:30 PM, they returned with a verdict of not guilty. There was an “outburst of applause.” Thrasher’s wife, mother and friends embraced him and, “thus end[ed] one of the most celebrated murder cases in the history of Florida.” Weekly Sun, Feb. 26, 1891.
Barton A. Thrasher went on to a long and distinguished career as an attorney. In the supreme irony, Thrasher was appointed judge of Florida’s eighth judicial circuit in 1920, twenty-nine years after he was tried for murder in the same court. Judge Thrasher died in 1929 at the age of sixty-nine and is buried in Gainesville’s Evergreen cemetery.
Barton A. Thrasher never truly stood trial for murdering Louis Witkovski. Instead, the defense team skillfully used the sensational of Annie Brown’s testimony to turn the trial into an assassination of the character of Louis Witkovski. The victim had no opportunity to rebut and defend his name against degrading slander.
Theories:
1. Everything is true: We’ll assume the complete credibility of Thrasher and Brown: Witkovski, the middle-aged storekeeper, married, father of six, pillar of the community, disabled Confederate veteran, became erotically obsessed with his employee, Mrs. Brown, whom he falsely accused of stealing from the store. He stalked her, confronting her in New York. Mrs. Brown sought protection from her brother-in-law. Witkovski told Brown he would kill Thrasher if he intervened. The morning the two men met, Thrasher was justified in fearing for his life and shot Witkovski in self-defense.
2. It’s all contrived slander: For this scenario, we’ll consider Thrasher a thug and Brown as devious and ready to perjure herself to save her brother-in-law from the gallows. Brown was indeed stealing from Witkovski’s store by over-running her store account with no intention to fully repay. When Witkovski demanded his money back, Brown ran to Thrasher (who may have more than just a protective family connection to Brown) and distracted attention from her theft by falsely accusing Witkovski of sexual harassment. Thrasher, hypersensitive to Witkovski’s ungentlemanly insult to Brown’s feminine honor or even jealous, casually murdered a blameless man and got off free.
3. Somewhere in the middle: The fifty year old, one-armed shopkeeper and thirty year old divorcee had more than simply a professional relationship. An honest misunderstanding over Brown’s pay and store credit ensued as Brown lost track of her expenditures. Their relationship fractured, but the two still continued to correspond and meet, including the trip to New York. Perhaps this relationship was common knowledge and came to the attention of Brown’s influential in-laws who felt the family honor tarnished. Or maybe Brown simply asked that her attorney brother-in-law intercede to help resolve the financial dispute with Witkovski with whom some sort of relationship continued. Brown, however, did not count on Thrasher acting like a psychopathic lunatic. With Witkovski dead, she made the decision to cooperate in covering up the crime to redeem the Brown family’s reputation and spare her sister-in-law an early widowhood.
Yet, none of their theories would have mattered had the jury not nullified the law and imposed its own sense of justice. Faced with the allegedly impugned honor of a woman, the jury relied on completely unverifiable evidence to ignore the high standard that Florida’s supreme court established to acquit based on a self-defense argument. Indeed, it is hard to believe that the jury every seriously thought that Thrasher feared that Witkovski would take his life: no motive was established for Witkovski to want to kill Thrasher and then to threaten Thrasher in such a way to justify Thrasher preemptively shooting Witkovski in the face. The jury chose to vindicate Thrasher’s vigilante justice that punished Witkovski for trespassing the social code through his involvement with Annie Brown.
The above accounts are drawn from detailed newspaper reports. The Alachua County Clerk’s office cannot find the actual trial transcript.
Florida v. Thrasher, Jurors: 1. OG Barker, 2. CR Holder, 3. WJ Matthews, 4. WR Carter, 5. WP Barr, 6. John R. Dowd, 7. JZ Fletner, 8. WE Johnson, 9. Jas M. Graham, 10. FW Cole, 11. RA Coulter, 12. Lawrence Davis
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