1886
Founded in 1886 by a former Confederate general named John Stuart Williams, who was also a U.S. senator from Kentucky.
about 0:06:57The story
Naples sits on the Gulf of Mexico in Collier County, south-west Florida, about two hours from Miami and two and a half hours from Tampa. It was founded in 1886 by John Stuart Williams, a former Confederate general and U.S. senator from Kentucky, together with his partner, the publisher of the Louisville Courier Journal. Newspapers in the 1870s and 1880s praised the mild climate and abundant fish and likened the bay to the bay of Naples in Italy, which gave the town its name; in 1888 it had about 80 residents. By 1985 it was a retirement town of wealthy, elderly people, with a median age of 66.3 and a median home price above a million dollars.
The story centres on Margaret Virginia Hitchcock Benson, born on January 6, 1922 in Baltimore, the daughter of Harry Ross Hitchcock and his wife Charlotte. Harry had started as an assistant bookkeeper in the tobacco trade, became a salesman, and after the Depression built Lancaster Leaf in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, into the largest trader of dark leaf tobacco in the world. He divided his shares between his wife and his two daughters, Margaret and Janet, and in 1967 the stock became publicly traded blue-chip shares, making the family very rich. Margaret went to Goucher College, where she met Edward Hewlett Benson, known as Benny, born in 1920, a former polio patient and the responsible son of an alcoholic father. They married in Texas in December 1942, and their daughter Carol Lynn was born on July 8, 1944 at Vance Air Force Base in Oklahoma. Benny joined Lancaster Leaf, rose quickly and ran it from 1959.
Scott was not, in fact, Margaret's son. Carol became pregnant at 18; the family hid the pregnancy, Margaret adopted the baby and raised him as her own, and Scott was never told that his sister was his mother. Benny died on November 5, 1980 after an illness of three months, leaving Margaret with the money. She sold the Lancaster house for $475,000 in 1981 and moved to Naples, first to Port Royal and then, 18 months later, to a new house in Quail Creek, a gated golf community on White Violet Way. She spent freely: an accountant, Wayne Kurr, warned her after she went through more than $1.5 million in a year and a half.
By 1985 the three children were adults. Carol, a former runner-up for Miss Florida, lived near Boston with two teenage sons. Scott, 21, was a would-be tennis professional who told friends he was ranked 60th in the world, drove a Lotus, a Porsche and two Datsuns, and was heavily addicted to nitrous oxide, which he kept in five-foot tanks in his bedroom. Stephen, 31, had failed at a landscaping business and a string of other ventures funded by his mother, and now ran Meridian Security Network, a burglar alarm company in Naples. He was married for the second time, to Deborah Larsen, and owed his mother close to $300,000.
At the beginning of July 1985 Kurr flew to Naples to sort out Margaret's taxes and found the books of the businesses she owned with Stephen in chaos. On July 8 Margaret and Kurr confronted Stephen at his office and then drove to see the new house he had bought in Fort Myers, where Margaret saw the sports car he claimed to have sold. She talked about cutting him off. That evening Stephen telephoned Carol to make sure she and Scott would join the family outing the next morning.
At 7.30 on the morning of July 9, 1985 Stephen arrived at the Quail Creek house on time in his beige work van, which was loaded with financial records. He then took his mother's Chevrolet Suburban to buy coffee and doughnuts and was gone for 70 to 75 minutes. When he came back he handed out the coffee and arranged the seating himself: Scott was to drive, Margaret was to sit in the front passenger seat, and he and Carol were to sit in the back. Carol, who usually sat in front because she suffered from car sickness, climbed in behind Scott with the house plans. Stephen, half in and half out of the back seat, asked who had the keys, then got out, walked round the vehicle, helped Carol into her seat and left her door open because she asked him to. He passed the keys to Scott through the window and said he had forgotten the tape measure and was going back inside.
Scott turned the ignition and the Suburban exploded. The blast was heard up to five miles away, threw Margaret and Scott clear of the vehicle and rained debris over the garden and the 14th fairway. Margaret and Scott were killed instantly. Carol was blown onto the grass and was on fire. Two golfers, Charles Meyer and Fred Merrill, ran to help; Merrill had once been Margaret's real estate agent. He dragged Margaret away from the flames and then went to Carol. As he did so a second bomb, on a timer, exploded 30 seconds to a minute after the first, throwing shrapnel 200 feet and costing him part of his nose. Meyer was hit across the chest. Stephen, walking back to the house, was unhurt.
The Collier County Sheriff's Department led the investigation, with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. The first theory was that Scott was the target, because of his drug world and his temper, and that went nowhere. The gated entrance and the guard's log book made an outsider unlikely, and nobody could say which of the four was the intended victim. Investigators established that two pipe bombs had been used: one in the centre console between the front seats, set off by the ignition, and one under the left rear seat where Carol sat, on a timing device, designed so that everyone in the car would die. Carol survived because her door was open.
The break came from the evidence. A tape measure was found in the wreckage although Stephen had said he went back into the house to fetch one. The components were traced to Hughes Supply, a plumbing supplier a few hundred yards from his office: on July 5 a man matching his description bought two four-inch galvanised end caps, signing as Del Ray Construction, a firm that did not exist, and on July 8 two lengths of four-inch galvanised pipe, paying cash, a total of about $64. A receipt bore a left palm print that matched Stephen's. A flake of zinc on his trousers matched the galvanised coating of the pipe. A circuit board fragment from a burglar alarm matched his trade, and a bomb technician concluded that the devices had been set off electrically. A groundskeeper at the family's Pennsylvania home also described seeing Stephen carrying copper tubes with wires, then hearing a blast and finding him with a remote control, laughing. A federal auditor found that Stephen had diverted at least $180,000 into his own accounts, with total misappropriation across the businesses perhaps $2 million to $2.5 million.
Harry Hitchcock asked the judge to deny bail, saying that anyone who would murder his own mother and brother for money would murder his grandfather for the same money. No bail was granted. Carol testified, referring to Scott as her son, and described seeing Stephen standing on the walk staring at the Suburban before he ran for the house. The defence argued that someone angry with Scott had planted the bombs and called witnesses about his drug use.
Under the slayer statute he could inherit nothing, and Carol had the provision extended so that even his children could not benefit.
He was stabbed, had an 11-inch knife found in the vent of his cell in 1990, and was disciplined for running legal services for other inmates. Deborah divorced him in 1993 and left the state, and he lost his real estate licence in 1997.