Thursday, September 01, 2022

"It was not just a man's life that was taken. It was Judge Chillingworth."

Judge Russell O. Morrow on sentencing Floyd "Lucky" Holzapfel, to death on Dec. 12, 1960, five years and six months after Judge and Marjorie Chillingworth were murdered. Holzapfel pistol-whipped Marjorie; it was her blood that trailed from the home to the beach. Holzapfel said, "Ladies first" before throwing pistol-whipped Marjorie overboard. He remembered seeing her flowing nightgown billow as she went down. It was also Holzapfel who said "There's a hole in the ocean" during a police-induced drunken undercover recorded statement. The statement was not introduced at his trial.


Holzapfel's sentence was commuted to life in prison in 1966. He died in prison in 1996.

Corrupt, high-living municipal Judge Joseph A. Peel, Jr., the mastermind of the murders, was convicted of being an accessory at trial in 1961. 

 


Peel served twenty-one years before receiving a mercy parole in 1982. He died nine days after he was released. Peel's trophy wife, Sara Imogene Clark remarried and died in 1993.

George "Bobby" Lincoln broke a shotgun on Judge Chillingworth's head sto make him sink. Lincoln was given immunity and never served any time. He moved to Chicago for a time, converted to Islam and changed his name to David Karrim.


 

He died in West Palm Beach in 2004. 


The Chillingworths were weighted down by Holzapfel and Lincoln and thrown overboard into the ocean. Their bodies were never found.

The empty double-vault grave in Woodlawn Cemetery in West Palm Beach.