A century after the men of Chokoloskee shot Edgar J. Watson dead in the mud at Ted Smallwood’s dock, people on these islands still argue about whether they did the right thing. That kind of argument takes some doing. Most communities settle their cold cases. Out here, we are still working on 1910.

The man at the center of it was Edgar J. Watson, known to anyone paying attention as Bloody Ed Watson. Cane farmer. Husband. Father. Father-in-law. Suspected serial killer. Take your pick. He owned forty acres of high ground at Chatham Bend, grew sugar cane, ran syrup up and down the coast, and somehow kept ending up at the center of dead bodies.

The Bandit Queen

Before Watson ever set foot in the Ten Thousand Islands, he had already collected a reputation in Indian Territory for killing the outlaw Belle Starr. Maybe he did it. Maybe he didn’t. A grand jury looked at the evidence and let him walk. The rumor came with him to Florida and never left.

Married Into the Langfords

By the time Watson settled here, he had family ties reaching into one of Florida’s serious pioneer clans. His daughter Carrie had married Walter Langford — Fort Myers banker, organizer of the First National Bank of Fort Myers, the kind of man who could make a phone call and get things done. That son-in-law would post Watson’s bail when the law caught up. A few weeks after the killing, he would also come down to claim him. We’ll get to that.

Plenty of stories circulated about Watson’s temper. By one widely told account, Watson grabbed Adolphus Santini at a Key West auction and cut him from ear to ear with a knife. Santini lived. Watson paid him to drop the charges and never said a word about it in public. Both families still have people walking around Southwest Florida today. And yes, they know.

Bloody Ed Watson at Chatham Bend

Watson’s place at Chatham Bend ran like a real operation. Sugar cane, 90-gallon syrup kettles, a 70-foot schooner moving product to Key West and Tampa. He needed seasonal hands and he hired them out of Fort Myers, Marco, and anywhere else nobody would come looking. The problem, locals started noticing, was that the workers tended to disappear around payday.

In the fall of 1910, one of Watson’s hired hands fled Chatham Bend on foot. He crossed river, swamp, and saw grass to reach Chokoloskee with a story too specific to ignore. He led the men back to a grave on the property — a grave with a woman’s leg sticking out of the ground. Her name was Hannah Smith. She had been working on Watson’s place. Over six feet tall and three hundred pounds, and Watson had not buried her deep enough.

Then the hurricane hit. Five days of weather scoured the islands and washed more remains up out of the shallow ground at Chatham Bend. After Hannah Smith, the rumors were not rumors anymore.

October 24, 1910

Watson rowed into Chokoloskee three days after the storm and tied up at Smallwood’s trading post. Nearly thirty men stood on the bank with their shotguns leveled. He tried to talk his way out. He claimed his foreman, Leslie Cox, had been the real killer all along, and held up Cox’s hat with a bullet hole through it as proof he had already settled the matter.

Nobody bought it.

When Watson raised his shotgun and pulled the trigger, the gun misfired — his paper shells had soaked through in the storm’s flooding. Thirty-three rounds answered him from the bank. Watson went down at the edge of Smallwood’s dock.

Rabbit Key and Back Again

The men tied Watson’s body behind a boat and dragged it out to Rabbit Key, where they buried him in a shallow grave under a pile of coral rocks. Done. Three weeks later, Walter Langford sent men down to Rabbit Key to recover the body and arranged a proper burial at the Fort Myers Cemetery on Michigan Avenue. The same banker who had once posted Watson’s bail now also had to claim him.

What It Was

By the strict letter of the law, the men who killed Watson committed murder. No charges, no trial, no conviction — they simply went back to their boats and went home. By any practical measure, they did what nobody else was going to do. The nearest sheriff sat ninety miles away. Hannah Smith was not coming back. Something had to give.

That argument is still alive. The Smallwood Store stands today as a museum, and Watson’s name comes up there pretty often. So does Leslie Cox, who vanished after the storm and never turned up again, dead or alive. If Watson told the truth about Cox doing the killings, then the men of Chokoloskee shot the wrong man. If he lied, they got it right. Both options have made people uncomfortable for over a hundred years.

You can stand on Smallwood’s back porch and look out at the same bay Watson rowed across that October morning. The water has not changed much. Neither has the argument.

You may also be interested in Smallwood Store A Glimpse of History or Our Town…100 Years Ago.