Murders of Judge Curtis Chillingworth and his Wife. 1955 Florida

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Blog Created: 1-12-2023

Last Updated: 1-13-2023

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Curtis Eugene Chillingworth (October 24, 1896 to presumably June 15, 1955) was an American attorney and judge who disappeared from his home in Manalapan, Florida and was presumed murdered along with his wife, Marjorie Chillingworth.

Their disappearances and deaths are recounted in the Investigation Discovery series A Crime to Remember (Season 1 Episode 3).

Background ~

Curtis Chillingworth was born October 24, 1896 to a prominent family in West Palm Beach, Florida. He graduated from the University of Florida in 1917, and later that same year was admitted to the Florida Bar. After graduating, Chillingworth served at the naval base in Key West, then attended the United States Naval Academy, where he received a commission to serve on the gunboat USS Annapolis. During World War I he served as an ensign aboard the USS Minneapolis.

After the war, Chillingworth returned to West Palm Beach to practice law with his father. In 1921, he began his career as county judge at age 24. He became the newly elected circuit judge in 1923, holding the position for thirty-two years until his death in 1955. He married Marjorie M. McKinley, a Cornell University student and daughter of old friends of the Chillingworth family.

Chillingworth remained in the U.S. Naval Reserves and was recalled to active duty in 1942. During World War II, he was stationed in London and Plymouth, England, where he participated in planning the occupation and recovery of Germany. He was released from active duty in 1945 as a full commander.

Curtis served in World War II.

A 4.1-acre (17,000 m2) neighborhood park in West Palm Beach is named in honor of Chillingworth.

Disappearance ~

Chillingworth and his wife were last seen at a dinner in West Palm Beach on the evening of June 14, 1955. They left the dinner about 10 p.m. for their Manalapan home. They went to bed expecting a carpenter to arrive in the morning of June 15 to build a playground for their grandchildren.

The carpenter arrived at 8 a.m. and observed that the Chillingworths' door had been left open and that their home appeared to be empty. Later that same day, Chillingworth failed to appear as scheduled at a 10 a.m. hearing at the courthouse in West Palm Beach.

Police investigation ~

An accidental drowning during a morning swim was quickly ruled out, and $40 found to be in Marjorie's pocketbook ruled out robbery. The keys were still in the ignition of Chillingworth's Plymouth automobile. No further clues were obtained and (at that point) the case went cold. The couple were declared legally dead in 1957. Several suspects were considered, including Charles Nelson, brother of Chillingworth's friend Trapper Nelson, whose trial for murder Chillingworth had presided over.

Judge Peel ~

In June 1955, municipal judge Joseph Peel was slated to appear in court to answer charges of unethical conduct in a divorce case, for which he faced possible disbarment. Peel had used his elected position to protect bolita operators and moonshiners by giving them advance warnings of raids in return for financial compensation. Disbarment would mean the loss of his position and therefore his lucrative illegal racket and, according to The New York Times thwart his "scheme to become governor of Florida."

He had had a previous run-in with Chillingworth in 1953, when the senior judge had reprimanded Peel as he represented both sides in an earlier divorce case; Chillingworth warned Peel that he would get no second chance. Peel hired Floyd "Lucky" Holzapfel, a known criminal and carpenter's apprentice, to murder Chillingworth and his wife. On the night of June 14, Holzapfel and an accomplice named Bobby Lincoln went by boat to Manalapan, and landed on the beach behind the Chillingworths' house around 1 a.m. Lincoln crouched in the bushes as Holzapfel knocked on the door. The judge answered in his pajamas. Holzapfel pulled a pistol from under his shirt and forced the judge and his wife into the boat. After the boat drifted for about an hour, the couple were thrown overboard with lead weights strapped to their legs.

In 1959, Holzapfel bragged to a friend, James Yenzer, that he knew who had killed the Chillingworths, and in September 1960, Yenzer and a friend, ex-West Beach police officer Jim Wilber, lured Holzapfel to a hotel in Melbourne. Yenzer and Wilber managed to get Holzapfel drunk and discuss what he knew of the murders. Unbeknown to Holzapfel, a member of the Florida Sheriff's Bureau, tipped off by Yenzer and Wilber, was in an adjacent room in the hotel capturing his comments on tape.

Arrests and convictions ~

Holzapfel was arrested on October 1, 1960, and on December 12, he pleaded guilty to both murders. He was sent to death row, but his death sentence was commuted in 1966; he died in prison thirty years later. On March 30, 1961, Peel was found guilty of accessory to murder. He received two life sentences, but was paroled in 1982 while in seriously ill health with cancer, and died nine days later. Lincoln finished his federal prison term in Michigan in 1962.

Aftermath ~

Having denied any guilt throughout, Peel delivered a deathbed confession after his release, a week before his demise, in 1982, admitting to unchecked ambition and to greedily accepting bribes from gambling bosses and moonshiners, and that Judge Chillingworth was a roadblock to his schemes, stating: "I was to go from state attorney to attorney general to governor".

Legacy ~

The three Chillingworth daughters, Neva, Ann, and Marie, along with Marie's spouse, Bill, started the Judge Curtis E. and Mrs. Marjorie M. Chillingsworth Memorial Scholarship Fund at their own alma mater, Florida State University, in honor of their parents.

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The crime of the century (like it's never been heard before)

The Palm Beach Post. by Jan Tuckwood, Published: June 10, 2019

If 'Dateline NBC" had existed in 1955, news crews would have been scouring the Manalapan beach alongside the police, Coast Guard and highway patrol on that historic day, June 15.

They would have followed a trail of blood splattered on the steps of a seaside bungalow and in the sand.

They would have scoured the evidence inside the house: Two unmade beds where Palm Beach County Circuit Judge Curtis E. Chillingworth and his wife, Marjorie, had been sleeping. The clothes they wore to dinner with friends the night before. The money in the judge’s pant pockets and in his wife’s purse. Two fans running. Two cars in the garage. A smashed bulb from a floodlight overlooking the beach.

Chillingworth — one of the most influential and important men in Palm Beach County — had not shown up for a morning hearing.

He and his wife had vanished. Their bodies were never found.

History would reveal their disappearance to be cold, calculated murder, the act of two henchmen hired for $2,500 by a rival judge, Joseph Peel Jr.

Chillingworth was closing in on Peel’s schemes involving gambling and moonshine, so Peel hired two thugs, Bobby Lincoln and Floyd “Lucky” Holzapfel to kidnap the couple, take them 2 miles out to sea, weigh them down with lead belts and push them overboard.

“Ladies first,” one killer said, while pushing Marjorie, 57, overboard.

The judge, 58, told his wife: “Honey, remember, I love you.”

She replied: “I love you, too.”

We know these details because Holzapfel spilled his secret four years after the crime, when it seemed the mystery would never be solved.

“Man, there’s a hole out there in that ocean nobody’s found the bottom of,” he told a friend.

He confessed, sobbing, during a November 1960 hearing.

“People like us should be stamped out like cockroaches because they aren’t fit to live with decent people,” Holzapfel said.

Holzapfel died in prison in 1996. Lincoln was given immunity in exchange for his testimony and died in 2004. Peel spent 21 years in prison, was paroled in 1982 and died nine days later.

The story of the Chillingworth murders has never ended, however.

The true-life thriller has captivated journalists for decades, partly because the characters and plot twists are so fascinating, and partly because, as Palm Beach Post reporter Eliot Kleinberg wrote in 2009: “To understand the magnitude of the 1955 murders of Judge Curtis Chillingworth and his wife, Marjorie, is to understand how small West Palm Beach was at the time — and how big Chillingworth was.”

The pioneering Chillingworth family was a pillar of the community. Curtis’ grandfather had been West Palm Beach mayor and Dade County sheriff. His father had been city attorney. Curtis Chillingworth was the youngest judge in Florida history when he was elected county judge in 1920 at age 24.

This week, on the 64th anniversary of the Chillingworth murders, two descendants of two other prominent local families debut a multipart podcast about Palm Beach County’s crime of the century, “Chillingworth” — a riveting in-depth investigation that’s taken nearly 10 years to research and produce.

Jonathan Paine and John Maass met when they were 5, in Sunday school at Holy Trinity Episcopal Church in West Palm Beach.

Their parents had grown up in West Palm Beach and knew the Chillingworths.

Paine’s parents were so close to Curtis and Marjorie that they had had dinner with them at the Manalapan beach house a few weeks before the murders.

His father, the late U.S. District Court Judge James Paine, told his son how detectives had used surveillance recordings during their investigation.

Maass’ grandfather, who was also a judge, was close to the Chillingworths, too. He also knew Joe Peel. There weren’t too many lawyers in town in the 1950s.

When Paine and Maass were children, the Chillingworth murders and the trials of Peel and Holzapfel were fresh.

By the time they had grown up and started careers in teaching and filmmaking, the details had faded.

By 2010, it was time for them to use their skills and their hometown contacts to tell the story in a new way — one that would rivet audiences today.

Paine teaches history, film and television production at Palm Beach Day Academy. Maass is a filmmaker, film professor and lawyer who has lived in Miami most of his adult life. He’s taught film at Miami International University of Art and Design and the University of Miami.

Here’s how they described their project to The Palm Beach Post:

“Several dimensions of the saga fascinated us. The surveillance recordings, the enduring sense of dread the crime created in Palm Beach County, the exploitation of poor African-Americans by numbers (bolita) and moonshine racketeers, the integrated criminal alliance that carried out the murders and a series of other crimes in the Deep South in the 1950s, the dynamic among the unlikely co-conspirators and the incredibly imaginative investigation run by the 31-year-old agent who solved the crime.

“We were also interested in how people are haunted by the horrible things they do, and how they sometimes seek redemption and sometimes don’t.

“‘Chillingworth’ is the story of what was essentially an assassination, but in this case the killers weren’t caught for many years and had a lot of time to think about the choices they’d made.”

Paine and Maass researched the project extensively and interviewed 15 people who were either directly involved in the case or were close to someone who was.

They discovered that Jonathan’s childhood friend, former DEA agent Jim Born, had the surveillance tapes, which had been given to him several years before by Judge James Knott.

The tapes provide a window into the mind of Holzapfel, who was recorded talking about his criminal odyssey, his childhood, his personal life, his exciting experiences in Brazil, his desire for redemption, and his feelings about his partners.

“The recordings are incredibly candid. And incredibly profane,” Maass says.

The tapes, along with lead detective Henry Lovern’s case files, provided Paine and Maass with a story-within-the-Chillingworth story that hasn’t been revealed to the public before now.

A documentary TV series is also planned, in partnership with their friends, producers Rick Cikowski and Brad Bernstein, and Texas Crew, a production company based in Austin. The podcast is produced by Nighthouse Films, Jonathan and John’s company, and Texas Crew.

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"Chillingworth" is a 10-episode podcast available free on iTunes and Spotify. Search for "Chillingworth podcast."

First episode debuts June 15 and new ones will be released once a week on Sundays for 10 weeks.

"Chillingworth" is the first of a series by John Maass and Jonathan Paine called "Worst of Men." Go to worstofmen.com for more information.

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Manalapan: 60 years on, Chillingworth murders still shocking

The Coastal Star, By Tim Pallesen.

The abduction and drowning of Circuit Judge Curtis Chillingworth and his wife, Marjorie, from their Manalapan oceanfront home still ranks as the county’s most terrifying crime 60 years later.

It was 1 a.m. on June 15, 1955, when the county’s senior judge answered a knock at his back door. The judge and his wife were abducted in their bedclothes by two thugs, forced into a boat, weighted down and thrown in the ocean to drown.

The case was a twisted tale of judicial betrayal. The thugs later testified that a corrupt West Palm Beach municipal judge had ordered the higher judge’s killing.

Chillingworth was one of only two circuit judges in Palm Beach County at the time.

The county had only 150,000 residents back then, compared to more than 1.3 million today. Manalapan had only 27 registered voters.

Police arrived at the couple’s two-story cottage near 1550 S. Ocean Blvd. after the judge didn’t appear for a 10 a.m. hearing and his courthouse colleagues became concerned.

Police found a shattered porch light, blood on the walkway to the beach and two used spools of adhesive tape, one in the living room and one in the sand.

The keys were still in the ignition of the couple’s Plymouth. Money was still in the judge’s wallet and his wife’s pocketbook, ruling out robbery as the motive.

Their swimsuits were dry, indicating that they hadn’t gone swimming in the ocean that morning. But a pair of men’s pajamas, a nightgown and two pairs of slippers were missing.

An air and sea search was unsuccessful. The bodies never were found and the Chillingworths were declared legally dead two years later.

The mystery began to unravel in 1959 when one of the hired thugs, Floyd “Lucky” Holzapfel, began talking. The other thug, Bobby Lincoln, agreed to testify, too.

The porch light was on when the two arrived by boat at the Chillingworth home at 1 a.m., the killers told authorities. Lincoln crouched in the bushes as Holzapfel knocked on the door.

“Aren’t you Judge Chillingworth?” Holzapfel asked the man in his pajamas who answered.

“Yes, I am,” the judge replied. Lincoln rushed from the bushes to smash the porch light with his gun.

Holzapfel pulled a pistol and asked if anyone else was in the house. The judge called for Marjorie, who came pulling a robe over her nightgown. The couple’s hands were taped. Mrs. Chillingworth screamed on the way to the boat. Holzapfel hit her with his gun, drawing blood. Once aboard the boat, Chillingworth offered to give Lincoln $200,000 to save their lives.

“Boy, if you take care of us, you will never have to work again,” Lincoln later quoted him as saying. But the killers instead strapped lead weights to the judge and his wife.

“Ladies first,” Holzapfel said, pushing Mrs. Chillingworth overboard.

“Honey, remember, I love you,” the judge told his wife. “I love you, too,” she replied. Mrs. Chillingworth went down “with a few bubbles,” Holzapfel recalled.

But the judge, a Navy veteran from both world wars, fought to stay afloat. The killers tied a 25-pound anchor around his neck and pounded him down with a shotgun before he sank. Holzapfel, who had served time for bookmaking and armed robbery, and Lincoln, a moonshiner, both testified that they “did it for Joe.”

Joe Peel was a flashy young lawyer in West Palm Beach who wore white linen suits. He drove a Cadillac and his beautiful wife, Imogene, drove a Lincoln Continental.

As a part-time municipal judge, Peel would sign warrants for police to raid gambling dens. Gambling operators paid Peel to tip them off before the raids.

Chillingworth, who had served three decades as Palm Beach County’s chief judge, wasn’t aware of the bribes. But he had disciplined Peel for a divorce case and was blocking his dream to become state attorney and governor someday. Peel went to trial on the charge of being an accessory to the Chillingworth murders.

“The ghost of Judge Chillingworth will not rest until his killers are shoveling coal in the fires of hell and damnation,” State Attorney Phil O’Connell said in requesting the death penalty. The jury convicted Peel but recommended life in prison. Peel denied everything during his trial and remaining life in prison. But he granted an interview with a newspaper reporter one week before he died in 1982.

“There’s no one to blame but myself,” Peel finally confessed on his deathbed. He admitted to taking payoffs from gambling figures and moonshiners. A Miami Beach nightclub owner was hoping to use Peel to bring open gambling to Palm Beach County nightclubs.

“I was one of his fair-haired boys — the one who would go up in the judiciary,” Peel said. “But I was greedy and too anxious.”

Before Judge Chillingworth got in his way, the plan was for Peel to permit gambling houses when he became Palm Beach County’s state attorney.

“Then I was to go from state attorney to attorney general to governor,” he said of his dream. But the corruption that shook Palm Beach County’s criminal justice system ended when Peel was convicted in 1961. Holzapfel was sent to Death Row despite his cooperation. His sentence was later commuted to life in prison, where he died in 1996.

Lincoln, who got immunity to testify against Peel, moved to Chicago where he worked at the Tender Touch Laundry before his death in 2004.

“People who have done what Joe, Bobby and I have done should be stamped out like cockroaches,” Holzapfel summed up the Chillingworth killers. “We’re not fit to be with decent people.”

Tim Pallesen was the Miami Herald reporter who took Peel’s deathbed confession in 1982. His story here was compiled from Palm Beach Post and Miami Herald archives and The Murder Trial of Judge Peel by Jim Bishop.

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Neva Chillingworth.

NEVA CHILLINGWORTH OBITUARY ~

Neva Chillingworth of West Palm Beach and Miami, Florida, passed away on 8/12/17 at the age of 94. She was born in West Palm Beach, and was the daughter of Judge Curtis Chillingworth and Marjorie Chillingworth. Neva Chillingworth graduated from Palm Beach High School in 1940, and from Florida State College for Women in 1944 with a B.S. degree in Business Science. After graduation from college she worked as a secretary for companies in West Palm Beach, Miami, and New York City and volunteered at organizations such as The Crippled Children's Society, The Literacy Program, and Kendall Hospital. In 1946 she married William S. Green. The couple divorced in 1952. Throughout her life Neva Chillingworth was an avid traveler, touring extensively in Europe and Asia. Her travels included two trips around the world in 1958 and 1972. She loved animals, gardening, and reading. In her memory donations may be made to the Humane Society of Greater Miami.

Published by the Miami Herald on Sep. 3, 2017.