Murder in St. Augustine: The Mysterious Death of Athalia Ponsell Lindsley

Elizabeth Randall

Oct 2018 · Arcadia Publishing

About this ebook

The true story of the long-unsolved killing of a celebrity in northern Florida: "A page-turner." — First Coast Living

The murder of Athalia Ponsell Lindsley, a former model and television hostess who was once engaged to Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., is still notorious more than four decades after it occurred. The only eyewitness said a man attacked Lindsley with a machete in broad daylight on the front steps of her mansion. Gossip swirled that neighbor Frances Bemis knew who killed Lindsley and would notify authorities—and then Bemis was later murdered on her nightly walk.

Police arrested only one suspect for Lindsley's murder, which remains unsolved to this day. Here, Elizabeth Randall replaces the rumors with research, and draws from over one thousand pages of depositions, records, official county documentation, and interviews to reveal the story behind this shocking crime.
Includes photos

Ratings and reviews

I read true crime books regularly. The justice system might not have proved the case, but the book did.

About the author

Elizabeth Randall is a widely published freelance writer and a high school English teacher. She is the author of four books. Her most recent publication was a book about history and folklore titled Women in White: The Haunting of Northeast Florida. She and her husband, Bob, who is a freelance photographer and who contributed many of the pictures in this book, divide their time between two homes: one in Lake Mary and one in Crystal River on the island of Ozello.