The Gainer / Collins Murders
Across the road from the L&N Railroad Depot in
Milton, Florida was a building complex consisting of an Ice Factory, a general
store, and a warehouse with the office of the Collins Construction Company. The
buildings were owned by Spencer G. “Babe” Collins with the exception of the Ice
Factory which he had recently sold to the Gulf Power Company.
The evening of February 26, 1931 saw a raging fire
consume the buildings. The local firefighters were able to heroically contain
the damage and the nearby home of the Brashear family was saved. The family was
so thankful their home as spared that they publicly thanked the firemen in the
local newspaper.
In the ruins of the warehouse, the safe belonging to
the Collins Construction Company was found open and emptied with the exception
of some fire damaged road bonds. These bonds had been issued by the First
National Band for the construction of Highway 37. This road was constructed on
an existing road bed from Milton north to the Alabama state line near
Dixonville. (It is now Highway 87, and included the construction of a
$30,000 bridge.)
Investigation of the burned remains of the building
led the authorities to suspect arson. For some reason that is unknown,
suspicion fell on the construction company’s bookkeeper, Aubrey Gainer, a
well-known and liked 33-year-old from a popular local family. Gainer’s
father had recently retired from operating a store on Oak Street near the
courthouse. Aubrey was married to Emily (nee’ Carlson), and had an
eleven-year-old daughter named Betty. Emily’s parents owned a restaurant in
Milton
Spencer Gilbert, (Babe) Collins was possibly the wealthiest man in
Milton. His house was the brick home across from the Methodist church on
Berryhill. In the 1930 census the house is listed as having a value of $15,000
which was the highest in town. (The church now owns this house.)
I have read statements in the past claiming that the
Collins Construction Company was under investigation for tax evasion by the
state of Florida. I also read that Aubrey Gainer was cooperating with the
investigation. I haven’t been able to substantiate these claims, but I would
like to know more.
Aubrey Gainer was arrested and indicted for the arson.
It was claimed that he set the fire to cover shortages in the books of the
construction company. Of course, the books were not found and there is no
evidence to support the claim. On June 3rd, Gainer was acquitted of
arson in the Circuit Court. He must have known by now that his cooperation with
the authorities in the tax case was no secret and began making moves to get out
of Santa Rosa County. He bought a $50,000 life insurance policy and he invested
money in some drug stores in Crestview, Okaloosa County. He waited too long to
make his move.
On June 14,
1931 with great fanfare, and loads of visiting dignitaries, the bridge across
Santa Rosa Sound opened allowing vehicles with up to four passengers to pay one
dollar to drive across the sound to Casino beach. An excess of four in the car
paid 10 cents a head for the overage.
On July 18th Aubrey Gainer, wife Emily,
daughter Betty, and Betty’s friend Myrtle Mitchell, the Santa Rosa County
Sheriff’s 11-year-old sister, piled into the Gainer car for an excursion to
check out the new bridge. An outing such as this in 1931 must have been quite
exciting to the young ladies, and Aubrey surely needed a break from the
pressure he must have been under. (I wish I knew what kind of car he owned.)
Around 10 pm, or so, the weary sightseers returned to
Milton, and after dropping Miss Mitchell off at the Sheriff's office, made their way to
their home on Pine Street. The Gainer home was on the corner of Pine, and Escambia
with a separate garage located behind the house with its entrance off of Escambia
Street. About 300 feet due south of the garage was Hill Street and then the L
& N railroad tracks. (These parts
of Escambia, and Pike streets no longer exists.)
Aubrey dropped Emily, and Betty off before he turned
into the garage, and they moved into the yard to await Aubrey to walk to the
house. Gainer parked the car, exited the garage and taking Betty by the hand
started to walk to the house. Then, suddenly a shadow appeared from behind the
garage and fired a shotgun directly into Aubrey’s torso. As he fell, he pulled
Betty down with him. The gunman disappeared into the night as Emily, and Betty
screamed for help. The neighbors heard the commotion and called Sheriff
Mitchell. The Sheriff and Chief Deputy Wade Cobb arrived at the scene, and
though it looked bleak, Gainer was still alive and they arranged transportation
to a hospital in Pensacola where he died early the next morning. The attending
physician said Gainer was hit with nine pellets, six of which passed all the
way through his body, and three were removed.
Sheriff Henry Clay Mitchell had already been the top
law enforcement officer in Santa Rosa County for ten years. He was only 25 when
elected and was the youngest Sheriff in the nation when he took office. His
Chief Deputy Wade Cobb would also one day be a two-term Sheriff of the county.
They examined the crime scene at daylight and found some interesting clues.
About 150 feet or so from the garage they found a shotgun tossed in some bushes
and footprints led into a swampy area and then some tire marks consisting of three different tread patterns that a parked
car had left in the soft soil.
There was an arrest made almost instantly. H. R.
Covington, a sailor from Oklahoma, but assigned to Pensacola was taken into
custody but no charges were filed. He was released on July 23, after Sheriff
Mitchell made two more arrests, and was convinced he had the murderers. Two
days after the ambush, and killing, William T. Wolfe, and Webb Allen were taken
into custody and charged with murder. Webb Allen was the nephew of S. G.
Collins’ wife Minnie.
Sheriff Mitchell talked to many potential witnesses
during his investigation. Some witnesses told him they had seen Wolfe, and
Allen in a car the night of the murder. The suspects denied even being in town
that night. Wolfe lived about 15 miles or so north of Milton. The Sheriff did
not believe them and examined the car they were in. The suspect car had three
different types of tires with three different kinds of tread. The distinctive
tread matched perfectly the tread marks found near the crime scene. Then came
the revelation that the shotgun discarded in the bushes was bought a few months
later from a dealer in Pensacola by S.G. Collins. He had reported it missing
from his company office a short time before the crime.
When Gainer was murdered S. G. Collins was out of
town. He left during the first week of July on a trip to North Carolina to drum
up some business for his construction company. Also, his lawyer Lewis V.
Trueman was on a trip to Cuba with his wife, and another couple. Trueman had an article about their upcoming trip printed in the Milton Gazette.
Wolfe, and Allen were held on a $25,000 bond which
they could not post. Collins returned to Milton and posted a $25,000 bond. He
was suspected of being an accessory before the fact. Namely, hiring the killers
to silence Gainer. Wolfe, and Allen appealed their bond by filing a writ of
habeas corpus with the Florida Supreme Court. Even though Sheriff Mitchell was
sure that William Wolfe was the triggerman, and Webb Allen was the driver,
Wolfe was set free, and Allen’s bond was reduced to $5000. Within a week he was
able to raise the money and was also set free.
William Wolfe needs to be discussed a little. There is
no way at this late date to know for sure, and he was never convicted of any
violent crime that I have been able to find. However, in 1911 he was a convict
guard at a turpentine camp near McLellan and Leon Rivenbark was his
brother-in-law and fellow guard. George Rivenbark was a “woods rider” for the
Franklin Gaye camp. These were some hard men. George Rivenbark administered a
beating to Jonas Cooley, and when his brother Daniel Cooley came riding into
the camp a few days later, he was killed by Franklin Gaye. Three days later
Arch, and Alf Cooley were killed near the steel bridge on the Milton-Munson
road. They were shot from ambush, and their killing was never officially
solved. Hyman Cooley was sure he knew who had done the killing and a couple of
years later, he saw Leon Rivenbark and shot at him. He missed and when Leon
returned fire he didn’t. An inquest ruled it was self-defense. (See, “The Turpentine
Feud of 1911”). Also, a few
years ago, an older citizen of Santa Rosa County told me that when he was a
younger man in the late 1930’s and into the 40’s and 50’s it was known that Mr.
Wolfe was a man that did not mind getting his hands dirty.
I would also imagine that Sheriff Mitchell was
especially motivated to find, convict, and punish the Gainer killers because
his young sister Myrtle, and Betty Gainer were best friends, and possibly she
could have been there in the line of fire if she had gone home with Betty.
Santa Rosa county had a small law enforcement
presence. A Sheriff, and Chief Deputy; maybe another deputy, and some
constables scattered in different communities. During this same period in 1931
there were numerous other serious crimes. Ben Lee shot Dempsey Enfinger in a
dispute over a young lady. Another young lady named Lilla Yarler shot Tom
Harvell. A man named Will Cooley was killed by J.G., and Lee Thomas, brothers
from Bagdad, and his body dumped in the Yellow River. Cooley’s wife was also
implicated in the murder. A tenet farmer named George Ellis had a dispute with
the man he farmed for over two bales of cotton, and he shot and killed R.G.
Quick in the Berrydale area. Also, it was the year that a posse cornered 4
desperadoes in Mulat Bayou who were on a statewide crime spree. I’d say the
Sheriff’s office had its hands full.
Aubrey Gainer's father J.C. was a retired store owner and maybe the grief was just too much. He died suddenly on August 31.
Spencer G. “Babe” Collins was still under bond on
September 11, when he traveled across the bridge to the east Milton home of his business
partner, and friend J. E. Estes. He was there to discuss some of the business
he was able to obtain on his trip to North Carolina. The investigation of
Aubrey Gainer’s murder had stalled, and Collins was probably trying to put it
all behind him and get back to business.
It was right around dusk when he and Estes finished
their conversation and Collins walked across the road toward his car to head
back into town. Estes had turned to walk back to his house when a slow-moving
car, later thought to be a Ford Model A when described by witnesses, approached
Collins. As it neared him, someone fired a shotgun mortally wounding Collins. Estes
rushed to his aid, and Collins told him, “Get their number! Call the doctor,
they got me.” Estes looked at the car as it crossed the bayou bridge, but he
could not make out the license number.
A truck carrying three men, G.L. Metts, John F.
Collinsworth, and Posey Broxson arrived on the scene. Dr. J. B. Turner, and Dr.
Rufus Thames arrived quickly and tried to find a pulse. They pronounced Collins
dead on the scene. Sheriff Mitchell then arrived and questioned the witnesses.
There were some men working close by who had heard the shot, but did not see
anything other than identifying the type of car.
Collins had been hit in the shoulder with double-ought
buckshot with the 12 pellets ranging down through his body and shredding his
heart. He died right after his last words to his friend Estes.
A young man named Almon Spencer was in front of the
Imogene Theater when he heard the shotgun blast from across the river. As he watched
the bridge a car with three men he recognized came across and turned
immediately. Almost eight decades later one of his younger brothers told me
that the men in the car were, Chief Deputy Wade Cobb, C.B. Penton, and a man
named Villar. I also heard from someone who knew Cobb that around 1960 when he
was running for Sheriff, he expressed concern that he would not be elected
because too many people knew about his involvement in the Collins killing. It
is also interesting to note that within two years, the lawyer for Collins, L.V.
Trueman moved to Ogden, Utah and was there until he was killed at his home by
someone he ruled against in a divorce case. (Read about that case, here.)
Sheriff Mitchell summoned Judge McLeod who acted as
coroner, and they impaneled a jury consisting of Dick Lane, G.C. Beck, G.L.
Metts, Posey Broxson, Gully McCombs, and J.E. Estes. The Sheriff questioned the
men who were working nearby. They were T.R. Scruggs, owner of Scruggs Boatworks,
M.N. Diden, Dewey Batson, and John S. Cox. They told him they heard the blast,
but thought it was a blow out. They did not see a license plate, but agreed
that it was probably a Ford Model A.
If, (a big IF), Deputy Wade Cobb was involved, then Mitchell
probably knew what was going on and questioned the witnesses closely at the
inquest to see if anyone had seen anything important.
The death of Collins pretty much ended the investigation
into the Gainer murder. Will Wolfe, and Webb Allen were never tried and it
became a cold case. There was an arrest, and trial in the killing of S. G.
Collins however.
Collins older brother, John Houston Collins, known as
Long John due to his 6 ft., 7-inch height was well known and respected in
Northwest Florida. He had been Sheriff of Santa Rosa County on two separate
occasions. He was also an ex-mayor of Milton, and at one time was Postmaster.
He was not going to be easily satisfied about the progress of the investigation
into his brother’s murder. His investigation, and relationship with prison
officials at Raiford ended up with Cecil B. Penton being arrested and tried for
the murder of Babe Collins in 1934. My essay about his arrest and trial is
linked here.
Author’s note: I debated about sharing the possible
involvement of Deputy Wade Cobb. I finally decided it should be included. I
mean no disrespect toward a man who I consider to be a fine Sheriff and served
this county well during his career in law enforcement. I can even understand why
Sheriff Mitchell and Cobb would have taken things to this extreme. It was a
different time, and Mitchell probably felt his main suspect was going to get
away with it due to his great wealth and standing in the county. Mitchell was
defeated in his reelection bid by Joe Allen. Possibly because he didn’t solve
this case, or more likely due to the fact he was suing the County Commission
for not reimbursing him properly for jail, and prisoner upkeep. Mitchell went
on to a long career in different official state roles involving law enforcement.
He even unsuccessfully ran for Escambia County Sheriff later in life.
If you haven’t visited my blog yet, please
do so. You might find other stories of this type that will interest you. I hope
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These stories are all works in progress, and if I learn any new or different
information, I always update, and correct.
