I will soon be updating this story. I recently had a long conversation with a resident of Crestview, who grew up with some of the people involved. Through his perspective, I now firmly believe that the Cayson brothers were innocent of the killing of Lester Wilson, but I don't know why they were targeted for prosecution. I have felt that there was not enough credible evidence at their trial to warrant a guilty verdict. This story is much larger than what was initially reported in the newspapers at the time. More to come.
In
March
of 1940, when Ray Wilson was twelve years old, his father Lester was
assassinated in the living room of his home while listening to a radio
broadcast. Ray was in the next room at the time of the killing. As he
grew older, he realized that the local authorities were not that interested in
finding the killers, so he made a promise that one day he would be elected
Sheriff, and bring justice to his father.
That is exactly what he did.
Lester Wilson was the Chief of Police in Crestview,
Florida in the 1930’s. He unsuccessfully ran for Sheriff in 1932, and again in
1936. On March 1, 1939 he shot and killed Murray McArthur, and wounded Charlie
Powell outside a Crestview tavern. He claimed it was self-defense and the
result of an old grudge when he was Chief of Police. A jury acquitted Wilson of
Manslaughter.
Wilson had let it be known that he was going to once again
run for Sheriff in the upcoming primary. The incumbent Sheriff John Steele was
not seeking reelection. It looked like his chances were good. He would be
running against H. Isle Enzor. Enzor was the brother of Dr. Olin Enzor, who
with another brother Dr. Jut Enzor had founded the Enzor Brothers Hospital in
Crestview, and were well respected in the area.
Lester Wilson owned a taxi and his cab stand was at the
Sun Ray Café in Crestview. His son
Woodrow shared the cab driving duties with him.
At 8 pm Woodrow drove Lester home, dropping off a fare, Mrs. Vernie
Davis Locke, at her house, on the way.
After dropping Lester off at his home on Long Street, he took the cab
back to the Sun Ray Café.
Lester entered his house and warmed himself by the fire
for a couple of minutes. He then sat
down in a chair very close to the front door and near the radio to listen to a
news commentary. All the doors and
windows were shut because it was only about 36 degrees that day. Outside a man with a shotgun approached the
house and peered in the window to see where the occupants were. A moment later
he fired one blast through a small glass window in the front door hitting
Lester Wilson in the head and killing him instantly.
H. Isle Enzor was elected Sheriff, and the case remained
unsolved for 18 years.
Sheriff H. Isle Enzor served as Sheriff from 1941, until Aug
3, 1950 when he was removed from office by Gov. Fuller Warren for not enforcing
laws against gambling. Fox Wilson, brother of Lester Wilson, was removed from
his role as Constable for the same cause.
The Gov. appointed Enzor’s son-in-law, Ferrin C. Campbell to take his
place. Campbell was a Democratic candidate for the State House of
Representatives and resigned in November. Gov. Fuller then appointed James A.
McArthur to the office of Sheriff.
Former Sheriff Enzor won his seat back in the following
election, and served until 1956. Ray
Wilson was only 28 years old when he defeated Enzor in the primary. In June of
1956, Sheriff Enzor had a fatal heart attack at his home, and the Governor
appointed Ray Wilson to go ahead and take the role as Okaloosa County
Sheriff. At 28 he was the youngest
Sheriff in the state of Florida.
Ray Wilson graduated from High School in Crestview in
1946. He joined the Army and served in Korea in the 7th Infantry.
When he returned to Crestview, he worked in a dry-cleaning business until he
bought his own dry-cleaning operation. When he decided to run for Sheriff, he
sold his business. Driven by the need to
bring his father’s killers to justice, he almost immediately reopened the
investigation.
Arrests Made in Father’s Killing
In 1958, brothers Jesse, and Doyle Cayson, and William
Dorace Brown were arrested for the 1940 murder of Lester Wilson. There were
many witnesses at the trial of the three men. Some had been called as witnesses
during a Grand Jury hearing in 1952, but they were not as forthcoming at that
time. More than one claimed they were afraid to testify truthfully at that
time.
The courtroom was standing room only during the week-long
trial in November of 1958. There were about 235 people in the spectator seating
during the whole trial. The jury
consisted of 11 men, and one woman, Mrs. Raymond Byrne.
The Assistant State Attorney, Gillis Powell, explained that
the State intended to prove that:
n Jesse
Cayson fired the shotgun and killed Lester Wilson.
n The
other two defendants aided and abetted in the killing.
n All
three conspired to kill Lester Wilson
One of the most important witnesses for the State was
Mattie Lee Taylor Boeck, 45, of San Antonio, TX. She was known as Mrs. Lucas during her stay in
Crestview. She arrived in town from Andalusia, Alabama in January 1940 to work
in a shirt factory. She and a girlfriend lived in a house not far from the Sun
Ray Café where Lester Wilson had his cab stand. She had many dates with the
Cayson brothers during her time there. She said she did not know Brown, but had
seen him around town. She heard many discussions about the upcoming election
for Sheriff.
Night of the Slaying
Mrs. Boeck testified that she went to the Sun Ray Café where
Jesse Cayson, and Dorace Brown were seated at a table. While she was sitting
with them, they received a phone call from someone wanting to know who was
driving the Wilson cab. The caller was informed that the driver was Lester’s
son, Woodrow. Prior to the call Cayson, and Brown were discussing how to get Wilson
out on a fake call and mentioning, “do the thing, or do the job.” She said she
thought it was a joke. Shortly after the call Doyle Cayson came in to the café and
said, “Plans have changed, come on, we’re going to do the job tonight at the
house.” She walked out to Brown’s parked car and saw two shotguns in it. She
got in the car, but after some discussion, the others decided she would wait at
the café. As she returned to the café, she saw the Wilson cab pull away with
the defendants following about a block behind with their headlights off. A little
later Woodrow Wilson came back in the café and told her he was going out on a
call, in case anyone was looking for him. Then he drove away.
Shortly later, Fox
Wilson, brother of Lester came in the café and told her Woodrow’s father had
just been shot. She claimed she was the one who told Woodrow about his father’s
death.
Mrs. Boeck said she then went home for a few minutes,
then went to the post office. When she left the post office, Brown drove up and
forced her into the car. They drove away and shortly picked up Doyle Cayson.
Then they drove down the highway beyond the Shoal River bridge and stopped.
They stayed there for a few minutes, then drove a little farther down the road
where Doyle got out. She and Brown drove to another spot nearby where they sat
and talked. As they were talking, someone opened the car door and pulled her
out. She said she was beaten with some type of club and told to forget what
happened that night, or “this isn’t half what you’ll get.” Brown remained in
the car during the beating. When she got back in the car, he told her he was
sorry but there was nothing he could do. “My advice to you is to forget what
happened tonight.” Brown took her back to town, where she returned home and
went to bed. This was between 10 and 11 pm.
About midnight, Doyle Cayson came to her house and took
her, “down near railroad tracks,” where they remained until 3:30 or 4 am. She
said Doyle had been drinking.
The defense attorneys, Thomas Beasley, and Ferrin
Campbell tried to impeach Mrs. Boeck’s testimony by pointing out discrepancies
in her timeline, and by showing the differences in her testimony compared to
her 1952 Grand Jury testimony. She admitted she lied in 1952 because she was “scared
to tell the truth.”
Mrs. Lester Wilson testified that she and her father were
in the room when the fatal shot was fired through the small window in the door.
She said she only knew the defendants by sight, but she did not see who shot
her husband.
Woodrow Wilson testified that he had been helping his
father with the taxi business. He said he took his father home around 8 pm. A
customer, Vernie Davis Locke, was in the car for most of the trip. They dropped
her at her home on the same street where Wilson lived. He explained that his
father, Jesse Cayson, and a man named Adams were the only taxi operators in
Crestview at the time.
Mrs. Marie Slaughter Coker had worked as the chief
operator for Southern Bell Telephone company in Crestview on the night of the
murder. She testified that she heard the
voice of Doyle Cayson on the telephone talking to someone in the Sun Ray café asking
who was driving the Wilson cab.
Mrs. Marjorie King of Rocky Mount, NC testified about
eavesdropping on a conference in the Cayson home in 1943 between Jesse Cayson,
Sheriff H. Isle Enzor, Constable Joe Adams, and ex Sheriff John Steele who had
been Sheriff at the time of the killing. She said she was nursing Jesse, who
was sick, and overheard the three men tell Jesse that he had to “go to the
hospital.” (she assumed they meant Chattahoochee) because he had told all over
town that he had killed Lester Wilson. She quoted the men, “Jesse, you’ve got
to go; you can’t back out now, it is too late.” She said Jesse agreed, but
became angry when his mother insisted, he stay home. Jesse told his mother, “You
still don’t understand, I’ve told around town I killed Les Wilson!” His mother
asked, “Did you?” Jesse fell across the bed, placed a pillow on his face, and
cried. She said she did not report the conversation at the time because Enzor
was Sheriff, and Adams was a Constable. “There wasn’t no officers to amount to
nothing at the time.”
Her testimony was later refuted by Constable Adams, ex
Sheriff Steele, and her husband at the time who claimed she never mentioned the
conversation to him.
Another very important witness for the state was Curtis
Davis, 35, a lumber company truck driver who was a 16-year-old neighbor of
Wilson when the slaying occurred. He heard the shot that killed Wilson as he approached
a service station while walking along State Road 85 toward his house. He said he
was about 100 feet from the station and the intersection with Long Street.
Wilson, and Davis both lived on Long. Not more than two minutes after the shot,
he saw a 1938 Ford speed out of Long and turn south on the highway. At
intervals he then saw a 1937 Ford, and then a 1934 Ford with red wheels. The ‘37
Ford turned south at a high rate of speed and the ’34 Ford couldn’t make the
turn and continued straight across the highway and disappeared down the street.
Davis identified the first car as belonging to Constable Joe Adams, saying he
recognized the spotlight and the radio antenna. The second car had more than
one occupant, but he could not identify them. The third car, he said, belonged
to Doyle Cayson.
Mrs. Vernie Davis Locke was Curtis’s sister, and had been
the passenger that was dropped off by the Wilsons right before the murder. She
testified that after being dropped off, she saw two cars come down Long Street
at intervals, turn around in front of her house, two houses away from the
Wilson residence. Very soon afterwards she heard the sound of the shot. Her and
her father went towards the Wilson house and they noticed two cars parked close
together across the street with the lights off, and heard a car door slam. The
headlights came on as they approached.
She said at least an hour later, she saw Doyle Cayson at
the Wilson house, and recalled at least three times he brought up the subject
of his being away on a fishing trip when the shooting occurred. “Each time he
advised me to see the fishing tackle and equipment in his car. I told him I
would take his word for it.” Mrs. Locke contradicted the testimony of Mrs.
Boeck when she said that she did not see the Caysons, or Brown at the Sun Ray café
before the Wilsons gave her a ride home.
There were a couple other witnesses that claimed that a
drunken Doyle Cayson had bragged about being involved in the killing.
Doyle’s
story:
Doyle Cayson emphatically denied the State’s witness
testimony. He flatly denied having anything to do with the killing of Lester
Wilson. He claimed he left Crestview late in the afternoon of March 15 with
Burris Brown, (no relation to defendant Dorace Brown), and fishing in the Ti-Ti
and Silver Creeks area about 15 miles southeast of town during the time of the
killing. Doyle claimed he had never seen Dorace Brown until he was locked up with
him in the Panama City Jail on a murder charge. Clarence and Roy Alford, and Charley King, all
of Crestview, told of seeing Doyle fishing and backing up his story.
Doyle also said he did not get back to town until after 9
pm to get his headlights fixed. Arlie Royals, Sr. was a mechanic who claimed he fixed the
headlights on Doyle’s car in the early part of that night, and he told the two
of Wilson’s death. He also denied in its entirety all of Mrs. Boeck’s testimony.
The court then heard a deposition from Mrs. Lillie
Lindsey on behalf of defendant Dorace Brown. She said Brown and his wife were
at her home visiting with her ill husband on the night of the killing. Later
the defense produced other witnesses to back up Mrs. Lindsey’s story.
The Jury returned a verdict of Guilty for the Cayson
brothers, with a recommendation for mercy, and they acquitted Dorace
Brown. On December 1, 1958, the Caysons
were sentenced to life in prison at Avon Park Correctional Facility. Before sentencing Attorney, Thomas Beasley
introduced affidavits from five relatives of Hiram Lester Walker of Baker
purporting to show that Walker had made a deathbed confession to the Wilson
murder. Walker had passed away at the Enzor Brothers Hospital in Crestview on
November 24, 1957.
Over the next few years there were many appeals on the
brother’s behalf. Attorney Thomas Beasley claimed that they were innocent and
he knew who the real killer was, but could not say because of attorney-client privilege
as he had represented him. The Caysons were given polygraphs and supposedly
passed them, but all appeals were denied. The Caysons were both paroled in 1966.
Jesse passed away in July 1968, and Doyle in August 1968.
I don’t think it is
conclusive that the Caysons were guilty of this murder. I think the testimony
of Marjorie King should be discounted entirely.
Her own husband refutes her account and said she used narcotics. Jesse’s
sister later said she was the one who convinced Jesse to go to the hospital,
and he was on his way within the hour. She claimed Mrs. King was no where
around.
I believe Mrs. Boeck was
mostly truthful, although her timeline might have been off. She claimed Doyle came to her house at
midnight, and stayed with her until almost 4 in the morning. There were several
witnesses that reported that Doyle was at the Wilson house most of the night.
He even helped clean the crime scene. Enough people said that she definitely
had relationships with the brothers, and the owner of the Sun Ray café said she
and the Caysons were in his café that night.
One thing for sure, this
case divided the people of Crestview into two separate camps for years after
the trial. Family members quit speaking to each other, and long-time friends
became estranged over their beliefs in the guilt or innocence of the Caysons. This
case made national news. There was an article in Readers Digest and an article
I found in a Honolulu newspaper. I believe also there was a documentary that
Ray Wilson took part in after the trial.
As always, if anyone
reading this has any information that may have been passed down to them, I
would be most happy to hear, or see it.
