WHOSE BULLET
It was a one-man war against law
and order in
Gainesville, Florida — and who
was that man?
By L E. Stapleton
Special Investigator for ACTUAL
DETECTIVE STORIES
SOMEONE had killed the prose-
cuting attorney's wife.
That was the incredible news
phoned in to the sheriff's office
in
Gainesville, Florida, very early
— Just
after midnight — the morning of
August
24. Someone had shot down lovely,
prominent Marilyn Fagan and left
her
lying in her own blood on her own
front
porch and only a few feet from
her un-
suspecting children.
What was this? The first step in
an
all-out gangland war against law
and
authority? Personal vengeance on
the
part of some criminal Prosecutor
Osee
Fagan had sent to prison? Or
something
else, something even darker and
more
mysterious?
Osee, in his mld-30's. was the
Alachua
County prosecutor He was a tall,
dis-
tinguished-looking man whose hair
was
turning prematurely gray As a
prose-
cutor, he'd waged a vigorous
campaign
against crime and corruption in
the
area. Bollta operators and bootleggers
were his prime target. And he'd
done a
good job So good that he had been
unopposed in the primary the
previous
May. Osee Fagan was looked upon
as a
comer in state politics.
Marilyn Fagan. an extremely
pretty
woman, was considered a perfect
wife
for the young prosecutor. She and
Osee
had met in college and married
when he
finished law school. She was In
her
early 30's. dark-haired and
statuesque.
Active In church and community
af-
fairs, she was considered the
perfect
hostess. Maybe lust right for the
gover-
nor's mansion
The up-and-coming young
prosecutor
and his pretty, charming wife and
three
children were well respected In
the
community. It was a happy
marriage.
That evening Osee had gone to
choir
practice. He returned before
midnight,
trying to be extra quiet. He
walked
through the kitchen into the
living
room. Six-year-old Lynn.-thelr
oldest,
was asleep on the couch, with the
tele-
vision going. He carried her up
to her
room and went back downstairs.
Some-
thing was peculiar about Marilyn
let-
ting her stay up so late, he
thought.
He noticed the front door
standing
open and went out to the porch.
He
went back to the house, dazed,
and to
the telephone to call the
sheriff.
At breakfast, Governor Leroy
Collins
read about the slaying of the
Alachua
County prosecutor's wife on page
one of
the local morning newspaper. He
was
shocked. The governor sent a
telegram
to the Gainesville police
expressing hope
for a speedy solution to the
case.
The story was on page one of
news-
papers throughout the state: the
kill-
ing became the number one topic
of
conversation. Members of the
Eighth
Judicial Bar Association posted a
$1,500
reward for the slayer's arrest
and con-
viction. The Gainesville Sun
contrib-
uted an additional $500.
All this put Chief Deputy Lu
Hindery
and Lieutenant Bob Angel,
conducting
the investigation for the
Gainesville
police department, on the spot.
Their preliminary investigation
at
the scene of the crime the
previous
night revealed that Marilyn Fagan
was
killed by a .32 -caliber bullet
which
went through the left arm into
her
heart, causing almost instant
death.
ScufT marks were found at the side
of
the house near a window. Robbery
was
eliminated as a motive since
nothing
was missing from the house and an
ex-
pensive engagement ring and gold
wedding band were still on the
victim's
finger.
Lynn, the little girl, had heard
the
front doorbell ring at about ten.
Ab-
sorbed in the program she was
watch-
ing, she'd thought it was a
neighbor at
the door She hadn't heard a shot,
and
she hadn't seen her mother
afterward.
A neighbor had seen a stocky man
of
medium height and wearing a check-
ered shirt in the neighborhood
earlier
in the evening. Another neighbor,
a
woman, had seen a blue
convertible
parked near the Fagan home about
10:30 that evening. She'd been
closing
her window blinds and she saw a
couple
get in the car and drive off
hurriedly.
When the car passed under a
street
light, she noticed that it had
white -wall
tires and a "Vote for
Collins" sticker on
the rear bumper.
Only the day before. Hindery had
re-
ceived a telephone call from
Detective
Captain Emmet t Lee of the
Jacksonville
police about a young couple that
had
burglarized a number of the more
ex-
pensive homes in the Avondale and
Springfield sections of that
city. They
were driving a blue 1955 Plymouth
con-
vertible with white -wall tires.
In the Fagan neighborhood a
number
of officers had searched the
fields, back
yards and trash cans for the
murder
gun. Arrangements were also made
for
the public works department to
search
the sewers. A house-to-house
canvass
of the entire northwest section was
made.
Nothing had been discovered.
In the morning Hindery and Angel
went through court records in
hopes of
finding someone who might have
had it
in for Fagan.
They came up with only two
possibles.
One, a man named Sam Boxer, had
threatened the young prosecutor
at the
conclusion of his trial for
assault.
"I remember him," said
Angel. "He's
got a nasty temper."
"According to the records,
he was re-
leased from Raiford three weeks
ago."
Hindery said.
The other one was Billy Bond, who
in the county jail had told one
of the
trusties that he was going to get
Fagan.
Bond had been out of prison for
more
than four months.
"He doesn't seem too
hot." Angel said.
"But let's look him up
anyway. There's
only one other angle. Somebody in
the
country -club section was
shooting off a
rifle last night and a bullet
went into
a woman's house. Maybe we have
one
of those crazy snipers around
here."
Billy Bond was serving time in
Duval
County for breaking and entering
and
could not have had anything to do
with
the murder. Sam Boxer was picked
up
late that afternoon by Deputy
Sheriff
Roland Johnson.
Miami when we found him."
ex-
plained the deputy.
"Why were you leaving
town?" Hin-
dery asked the man.
"Why do you think?"
snapped Boxer.
"I got word that you were
looking for
me, that's why."
"Where were you last
night?"
Boxer denied that he'd had
anything
to do with Mrs. Fagan's murder
and
claimed he was playing cards with
some
friends when the crime was
committed.
A quick phone call revealed that
he was
telling the truth. When the
witness who
had seen a man across the street
from
the Fagan home failed to identify
him.
he was released.
"How about talking with the
woman
who says a sniper shot at her
last
night?" suggested Angel.
"It's about
the only lead left."
They drove to the country-club
sec-
tion, where they found the woman
on
her patio.
After they were seated, Hindery
said,
"I'd appreciate it if you'd
tell me what
happened last night, ma'am."
"I thought I told everything
to the
police." she said. "Do
I have to go
through it again?"
"If you don't mind. You
might re-
member something you didn't think
of
last night."
She shrugged. "It was around
a quar-
ter after nine when the doorbell
rang.
I went to the door and looked
out. but
nobody was there. So I turned
away and
I heard the rifle shot and the
bullet hit
the wall a few inches from my
head.
That's all."
The doorbell had rung at Mrs. Fa-
gan's home, too. a few minutes
before
she was shot.
Angel dug this bullet out of the
wall.
It was apparently a .32 caliber —
the
same size as the bullet that had
killed
Mrs. Fagan.
"Do you have any idea who it
was?"
he asked the woman.
She hesitated. "My husband
had
some trouble with one of his employees
awhile back, a deaf mute named Phil
Singer. I don't want to get
anyone in
trouble, but it could have been
him. He's
got quite a temper, and he's
always car-
rying a rifle around."
Asked to explain, the woman said
that
Singer had been fired from his
job in
March because of inefficiency. He
had
pestered her husband almost daily
aft-
erward to give him his job back.
The
whole thing came to a head on
April 10,
when Singer created a disturbance
at
a Rotary meeting. He was arrested
on a
trespassing charge and sentenced
to the
city stockade for fifteen days.
Fagan. the officers knew, would
have
prosecuted such a case.
"Do you have Singer's
address?"
asked Hindery.
"He's got a bungalow on
Twelfth Ter-
race."
BACK at headquarters, Hindery had
a
phone call waiting from Sheriff
P. D.
Reddish of Starke, a town about
25
miles northeast.
"One of my deputies just
picked up a
couple in a motel outside
town," Red-
dish said. "They were
driving a blue
fifty -five Plymouth convertible,
and
they admit being on Eleventh Road
in
Gainesville last night around ten
o'clock. They were calling on
some
friends who weren't home, they
say."
"Any guns?"
"Nope."
"I'll check their story and
call you
back." said Hindery.
"What's the name
of the friends?"
The chief deputy needed only ten
minutes to learn that the couple
had
been telling the truth. He
immediately
relayed the information to
Sheriff Red-
dish and the couple was released.
Meanwhile the lab reported that a
ballistics test of the bullet
which killed
Mrs. Fagan and the one that
narrowly
had missed the housewife in the
coun-
try-club area proved they were
both
fired from the same gun.
"Let's go talk with Phil
Singer." Hin-
dery said.
When they arrived at the house,
they
learned that the Singers had
moved.
"They left a couple of
months ago." the
new resident said. "I
understand that
the woman next door knew them
very
well."
She did indeed. "Susan
Singer di-
vorced Phil and went back to her
parents in Cleveland while he was
in
the stockade," she said.
"She stood his
temper tantrums as long as she
could,
and I don't blame her. Phil
stayed
around town, though. I saw him just
a couple of days ago."
"How was he dressed?"
Hindery
asked.
"Let me see." she said.
"Oh. yes. He
was wearing slacks and a
checkered
sports shirt."
The officers notified Cleveland
police
to talk with Mrs. Singer's
parents. Fa-
gan, County Judge H. H. McDonald,
who had sentenced Singer, and
Sheriff
J. M. Crevasse, who had arrested
him.
were given police protection. New
York
police were asked to put a
24-hour
watch on the home of Singer's
mother.
An a 11 -points bulletin
describing the
suspect was broadcast. It said
that he
was armed and dangerous.
A look into Singer's background
dis-
closed that he had been in
trouble with
police since he was sixteen and
had
spent time in New York, Atlanta and
Miami jails.
Cleveland police reported that
Singer
had shown up at his in-laws' five
days
after being released from the
Gaines-
ville stockade and had left
again.
And there the investigation hit a
snag. Deaf mutes were picked up,
ques-
tioned and released. The FBI
entered
the case on the premise that
Singer had
crossed a state line to avoid
prosecution.
Thousands of flyers were
distributed.
Pressure on the local police was
mounting. Osee Fagan called
Hindery
and Angel several times a day to
see
how they were doing. A second
telegram
from the governor arrived. The
news-
papers kept the case alive with
constant
stories. Hindery sent the FBI
flyer to
every deaf-mute periodical in the
coun-
try and Canada.
And still he was not found . . .
JAMES SMITH finished his lobster
trick as a linotype operator on
the
Winnipeg Star and decided to go
to the
deaf-mute society on his way
home. He
was a vice president of the
organization.
On the bus he glanced through a
pe-
riodical for deaf mutes. There he
saw
a picture of Henry Miller, one of
the
newer members. Only the caption
called
him Phil Singer and said he was a
fugi-
tive from justice.
Smith jumped off the bus and took
a
cab to police headquarters.
He wrote a note to the desk
lieuten-
ant, pointing to the picture in
the paper.
He also jotted down Miller's
address and
offered to take the police there.
At the boarding house Inspector
James Toal found Singer in bed.
fast
asleep. A .32-caliber revolver
with two
empty chambers was in a drawer.
Singer was arraigned in Winnipeg
Magistrate's Court the next day
and
charged with having an unregistered
revolver in his possession.
Sixteen days
later, on November 26. he was
turned
over to the FBI office In Grand
Forks,
North Dakota.
On March 5, 1957, Circuit Court
Judge John A. H. Murphree in
Gaines-
ville sentenced Singer to die in
the elec-
tric chair in Raiford State
Prison.
Singer's attorney, Hollis Knight,
ap-
pealed the case to the Florida
Supreme
Court. A retrial was ordered, and
on
June 25, 1959, Singer again was
found
guilty, but this time with a
recommen-
dation for mercy. Accordingly, he
was
sentenced to life imprisonment.
