Town note
Early Bristol had a store, three saw mills, two grist mills, a hotel and a great many churches.
about 0:08:27Spoilers are covered until your reading preferences load.
FILE 236 / 12 August 2021 / 151 MIN / full
We're gonna go to Bristol, Florida, right smack in the heart of the panhandle; it's in Liberty County and Bristol is the county seat. about 0:06:13
Early Bristol had a store, three saw mills, two grist mills, a hotel and a great many churches.
about 0:08:27The town was not officially established until 1958.
about 0:08:40The area was home to the Apalachee Indians; six excavated mounds were estimated to date to the early 1200s.
about 0:08:47A British trader maintained trading posts on the Apalachicola River.
about 0:09:16Early Bristol had a store, three saw mills, two grist mills, a hotel and a great many churches.
about 0:08:27The town was not officially established until 1958.
about 0:08:40The area was home to the Apalachee Indians; six excavated mounds were estimated to date to the early 1200s.
about 0:08:47A British trader maintained trading posts on the Apalachicola River.
about 0:09:16When Florida became a territory, pioneers from Georgia and the Carolinas settled here for the good farmland.
about 0:10:06During the Civil War the swamps made a haven for deserters.
about 0:10:13Baptist preacher L.V. Callaway claimed the site of Bristol was the biblical Garden of Eden, and Callaway's Garden of Eden was a tourist attraction from the 1950s to the 1970s.
about 0:10:5843.3%
Biggest faith: Baptist, about 20%
about 0:18:52White about 77% · Black 6% · Asian 3.3% · Hispanic 12%
Ethnicity can overlap race.Property crime
▲ about 50% above
Violent crime
▲ about 20% high
One-acre lot
about 0:22:33Three-bedroom, two-bath house, 720 square feet
about 0:23:15Three-bedroom, two-bath house, 1,676 square feet
about 0:23:29"about 50% above"
Comparison: "national average". Direction: above.
As told in 2021 about 0:25:33
"about 20% high"
Comparison: "national average". Direction: above.
As told in 2021 about 0:26:09
"952"
No direction stated.
As told in 2021 about 0:17:22
"55%"
Comparison: "way more males than females". No direction stated.
As told in 2021 about 0:17:33
"about 38 and a half"
Comparison: "about a year older than normal". Direction: above.
As told in 2021 about 0:17:39
"three times the normal amount"
Comparison: "normal". Direction: above.
As told in 2021 about 0:17:51
"35%"
Comparison: "way under the national average". Direction: below.
As told in 2021 about 0:18:07
"12%"
Comparison: "above the national average". Direction: above.
As told in 2021 about 0:18:10
"27%"
No direction stated.
As told in 2021 about 0:18:17
"about 77%"
No direction stated.
As told in 2021 about 0:18:21
"6%"
Comparison: "about half the national average". Direction: below.
As told in 2021 about 0:18:21
"3.3%"
Comparison: "about 5% nationally". No direction stated.
As told in 2021 about 0:18:21
"12%"
No direction stated.
As told in 2021 about 0:18:21
"79.8%"
No direction stated.
As told in 2021 about 0:20:11
"19.5%"
No direction stated.
As told in 2021 about 0:20:11
"43.3%"
Comparison: "lower than normal". Direction: below.
As told in 2021 about 0:18:52
"about 20%"
No direction stated.
As told in 2021 about 0:19:22
"0.0%"
No direction stated.
As told in 2021 about 0:19:22
"0.0%"
No direction stated.
As told in 2021 about 0:19:36
"11%"
Comparison: "a lot more than normal for a little town in Florida". Direction: above.
As told in 2021 about 0:19:36
"0.0%"
No direction stated.
As told in 2021 about 0:20:01
"$36,354"
Comparison: "national average about $57,000". No direction stated.
As told in 2021 about 0:20:34
"about 54%"
No direction stated.
As told in 2021 about 0:20:42
"about 80, almost 84"
Comparison: "100 is average". Direction: below.
As told in 2021 about 0:21:36
"50 out of 100"
No direction stated.
As told in 2021 about 0:21:41
"$115,100"
No direction stated.
As told in 2021 about 0:21:45
"55%"
No direction stated.
As told in 2021 about 0:21:51
"about $694 a month"
No direction stated.
As told in 2021 about 0:22:12
"$14,000"
No direction stated.
As told in 2021 about 0:22:33
"$139,000"
No direction stated.
As told in 2021 about 0:23:15
"$199,000"
No direction stated.
As told in 2021 about 0:23:29
4.5 / 5 · average of 2
“A small town with one caution light that blinks yellow, very little restaurants, and everyone super friendly and welcoming; you will never meet a stranger.”about 0:13:43
“Grew up here and loves the place, but wants more jobs and attractions to keep younger people occupied.”about 0:14:40
Bristol, the county seat of Liberty County in the Florida panhandle, was a town of about 950 people in the mid-1970s, with a bait and tackle shop on Lake Mystic and not much else. They had raised seven children, five sons and two daughters, and had 19 grandchildren and 22 great-grandchildren. He was left in pain and began drinking heavily and taking pain pills.
Lela May found out. Lela May, according to her friend Evelyn Smith, had always been jealous of any woman who worked at the shop, but this time she had real cause.
The affair turned into a nest of competing murder plots. He began at $2,000, then offered $5,000 and a red pickup truck. Lela May had her own plan.
He blew the horn, the signal for a bait delivery, and Lela May came out of the house. The autopsy later found two blows to the head, either of which could have killed her.
They left the car and the body at the refuge. Two days later they went back, tied a concrete block to Lela May's feet, put her in a small boat and pushed it out into Sifrett Creek, south of Bristol near Sopchoppy, expecting the boat to drift into deeper water and the body to sink. Instead the boat took on water, the block dragged one side down, and the boat sat half submerged with her body hanging over the side. He told the sheriff that she had got up after a knock at the door and that the last time he saw her alive was when she closed the bedroom door; he wept on television and said he wished he had answered the door himself. Three days of air and ground searches followed. On 27 June the fisherman Aubrey Lawhorn found the body in the half-sunken boat in Sifrett Creek. She had been beaten beyond recognition and scavenged by animals; she was identified by her fingerprints.
There was an agreement, signed on 30 May 1979 by assistant state attorney William Megs, that the state would not seek the death penalty against him if he testified; the judge said the agreement did not rule out death, but the prosecution ultimately asked the judge to take death off the table. James could find no trace of him afterwards.
He is buried in Lake Mystic Cemetery. Eldora Sanders Coxwell, his wife of 20 years, died on 2 December 2020, aged 92.
June 1976 / the Coxwell home and bait shop on Lake Mystic, Bristol, Florida; her body was left in Sifrett Creek
As told in the episode, on 12 August 2021.
Accused
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Public places are marked on the map.
business
about 0:36:25home
about 0:37:19body found
about 0:27:57other
about 1:04:49landmark
about 0:36:25landmark
about 2:09:02business
about 0:44:02business
about 0:44:36hospital
about 1:00:14landmark
about 0:09:16landmark
about 0:11:42other
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