This book describes events that took place almost a century ago.
In some cases, the documentation for these events is plentiful and specific. In other cases, however, the documentation is scarce, and sometimes the documentation that does exist is conflicting or fragmentary or the events described do not align with other well-documented events that were taking place at the same time.
This is especially true about the career of the Ashley Gang, where I found differing accounts of several events.
For example, newspaper stories written while John Ashley was on trial for the murder of Desoto Tiger repeatedly wrote that he’d been paid $584 for the otter hides he stole from the Seminole Indian. Later accounts, however, said he’d received $1,200 for the hides. Because $584 was, without exception, consistently reported by all of the journalists covering the trial as it unfolded, I used that amount.
Tiger’s first name also was spelled Desoto, DeSoto, and De Soto. I used the spelling I found most often in news stories.
The New Smyrna News, citing the Miami Daily News, reported that after Ashley escaped from prison in July 1918, he served several months in the US Navy aboard the battleship USS Maryland and then deserted. But the battleship was being built when Ashley escaped. The Maryland was launched in March 1920, but it was not completed and commissioned for service by the navy until July 1921—more than a month after Ashley was recaptured and returned to prison.
I was not able to determine whether Ashley might have been aboard the battleship briefly before it was commissioned. So I did not mention Ashley’s possible military service.
There were similar uncertainties about John Ashley’s nephew, Handford—or Hanford—Mobley, starting with the spelling of his first name. Newspaper stories of the day consistently spelled his name Hanford. Author Hix Stuart, who claimed to have the only interview ever granted by John Ashley, also used this spelling.
But Mobley’s tombstone spells his first name Handford, and this is the spelling I’ve used.
There also are uncertainties about some of Mobley’s crimes and adventures. The Miami Herald reported on November 9, 1924, that it was Mobley who had served in the navy. I also found frequent mention in books and magazine stories about Mobley and other gang members robbing liquor distributors in the Bahamas sometime before his death in late 1924. But the only account of this robbery that was written fairly soon after Mobley’s death was by Stuart, whose book about the gang was published in 1928. Stuart mentions the robbery but does not give a date.
The New Smyrna News of November 21, 1924, mentions that Mobley was wanted for piracy for stealing $15,000, but this story says he stole the money on the high seas between Florida and the Bahamas and does not mention a robbery of liquor distributors. Other accounts of Mobley’s crimes were written many years after his death, and these stories gave conflicting information about the robbery.
Stories about the gang’s bank robberies also were inconsistent, especially about the amount of money they stole in each robbery.
There were similar discrepancies in the newspaper stories about the gangland murder of Al Capone’s enemy, Frank Uale.
In writing about these and other events, I pieced together the stories as best I could from the documentation that was available. Where there were inconsistencies, I used the version that seemed to me to be the most plausible or matched with other events that happened simultaneously.