September 20, 1998

Hattie Tells Her Diary About Marshal Bowman Murder

Second In A Series

The diary of Hattie Blanchard, Punta Gorda teacher for the school year 1902-03, deviated from routine daily activities to record the murder of City Marshal John Bowman.

In this series, brief explanations by me are enclosed in parentheses. Detailed information follows Hattie’s direct quotes.

The sensational assassination on the evening of January 29, 1903, was recorded by Hattie two days later:

* * *

JANUARY 31 -- Last Thursday night Nettie (Hattie’s sister), Mary Brown and I attended prayer meeting at Presbyterian Church. Mr. Weeks led. Mrs. Rankin made some remarks. Subject was “Mark’s Ingratitude to God.”

As we returned, we were told that Mr. Bowman, the marshal of Punta Gorda, had been shot and killed. He was sitting in his house with his little children about him, and one in his lap, trying on some new hats he had brought them.

The person who shot him used a gun and shot him in the head. James Cooper (son of Francis “Frank” M. Cooper, county tax assessor) and several other boys who were playing on a livery stable saw him run by, and he was seen by several others.

Mr. Smith and General (Albert) Gilchrist (then a state representative, later governor of Florida) saw him standing by the stable as the passed from supper.

As we came on, we were stopped by guards and told to go on the other side of the street so as not to walk over the murderer’s tracks. So we retraced our steps.

Miss Bancroft, who was with us was nervous. So we stopped at the Dade Hotel and asked Mr. Rowe to go home with us. He accompanied us and we went one square (block) around.

We were told to walk on the board walk on one street and the center of the road on the other. The town was guarded all night. Lanterns were hung about.

The bloodhounds came in on a late train and were put on the trail, but they returned to town and so failed to do anything. Friday at 12:15 occurred the funeral. We had just one session of school.

* * *

Bowman, 45, was murdered by an assassin firing through a screened front window of the family home on Taylor Street where the courthouse stands today. The “calaboose,” or one-cell jail, was located in a shed at the rear.

The marshal was holding his youngest child, two-year-old Betty, on his lap when a “ring shot” crashed into the back of his head. Blood and brains spattered everyone’s clothing. Miraculously no one else was hurt.

Bowman’s wound was filled with a tight cluster of buck-shot, created when the fiber casing of a shot-gun shell is scored. Had the usual, scattering of buck-shot been employed -- and the killer not been a good marksman -- others in the family would have been seriously hurt or killed also.

Mrs. Bowman moved to her mother’s home in Charlotte Harbor Town and died two years later. The children were placed in the Arcadia orphanage and adopted.

First on the scene was Gilchrist, the town’s most distinguished citizen. A bachelor, he lived at the Dade Hotel a half-block away on Marion Avenue. Strangely, years later he would play a major role in the incident.

Three men were tried for the crime, and one convicted to hang. Yet, evidence was not conclusive, and the trial became an early test of Florida’s capital punishment law. Positive identity of the killer remains a mystery to this day.

On the fateful night, several boys were playing around a stable being built across the street from Bowman’s home. Jimmy Cooper, on the roof, was in “plain view” of the scene.

The Punta Gorda Herald reported:

“Jimmy saw the flash of the gun, heard the report and saw the murderer run through the stable to Sullivan Street and go straight (south) in the direction where he was met by Johnnie Matthews and seen by Pope Henderson -- running from the scene of the murder while everybody else was running toward it.”

Jimmy did not recognize the assailant. However, Matthews and Henderson declared the fleeing person was Isiah E. Cooper -- no relation to Jimmy.

Isiah, 40, was a carpenter from Ft. Ogden who boarded in Punta Gorda while helping build a huge fish-fertilizer factory. He denied the slaying, asserting he was at George Alderman’s boarding house on Sullivan Street. His landlord corroborated the alibi.

Cooper also stated he had not owned a gun for months prior to the slaying. Several months later, a shot-gun, believed to be the murder weapon, was dredged from the harbor near the railroad dock. However, it could not be traced.

Townspeople raised $1,000 to hire a Tampa private detective to investigate the murder. He accused two men who had records of bootlegging, but County Judge A.E. Pooser “repudiated the evidence as trash” and discharged the defendants.

Thirteen days after the murder, Cooper was arrested. Ten people had come forward to state he had “made distinct and violent threats against Bowman” for falsely arresting him as a “tiger man” -- or bootlegger -- and had owned a shot-gun.

The jury of 12 DeSoto County men -- no Punta Gorda man was allowed to be seated -- declared Cooper guilty. The judge sentenced him to be hung at high noon at the county jail in Arcadia on August 5, 1904.

Arcadia was the county seat which included what is now Charlotte County. Activists there called the Mourning Club demonstrated outside the jail. They had whipped up sentiment throughout the state to spare Cooper -- charging he had been “railroaded” by circumstantial evidence.

As the day of execution drew near, sentiment for commutation of Cooper’s sentence increased. Outspoken citizens of Punta Gorda grew angry. A mass meeting of citizens was held in the city council room to protest “any interference by the Pardoning Board on behalf of this justly condemned murder.”

After telegraphing this statement to the governor, a delegation of 50 men led by Mayor A.C. Freeman took the night train to Arcadia to watch Cooper “swing.”

By 10 a.m., a crowd of 300 spectators -- including the Punta Gorda delegation and the Mourning Club -- had gathered around the gallows erected to execute Cooper.

In a dramatic “last words” statement to Punta Gorda Herald Publisher Adrian P. Jordan, DeSoto News Editor Graham, and Arcadian Banker C.C. Chollar, Cooper insisted he was innocent.

“To hang me would be to commit a worse murder than has already been committed, for I will hold up my right hand to God and tell you that I did not kill Mr. Bowman, and had nothing to do with it.”

“My life is being stolen from me and from my wife and little children -- wrongfully, forethoughtedly, willfully and without cause. I am guilty only of attending to my own business.”

Shortly after 10 o’clock, Sheriff Fiedler came to the jail house and read a telegram he had just received from Governor Jennings -- “DEATH WARRANT FOR EXECUTION OF PRISONER I.E. COOPER IS HEREBY REVOKED. AWAIT FURTHER ORDERS.”

Punta Gorda men shouted protests and discussed how they might get hold of Cooper to lynch him. However, the 10:30 train to Punta Gorda whistled its one-minute warning so the men rushed to catch it.

Neither Jennings nor the Pardoning Board ever disclosed the reasons for revoking Cooper’s execution. A second hanging was scheduled for September 1, 1905, but again stayed until February 20, 1906. This date was postponed indefinitely.

Albert Gilchrist, who had been the first to reach the Bowman murder scent, and had vowed to hang the assassin, was elected Governor of Florida in 1908. One of his first acts was to commute Cooper’s sentence to life imprisonment.

With this, Cooper was transferred to the state prison at Deland where he was leased to a heavily guarded turpentine camp as a laborer -- a common practice in those days.

On September 2, 1913, Cooper was sent to work in a flooded area of pine woods. His guard disdained to follow into the mire. Once out of sight, Cooper kept walking and disappeared.

According to Cooper family legend, Isiah contacted relatives and was put into a boat. When last seen he was rowing across Lake Eustice. He had a brother in Arizona, and is believed to have fled there where he died a year later.

NEXT WEEK: QUITS TEACHING

LAST WEEK: DAILY ACTIVITIES

caption -- man with mustache

Photo Courtesy of Charlotte Harbor Area Historical Society

Punta Gorda Marshal John H. Bowman had recently been elected to his fourth term when murdered. His job paid $50 per month.

By Lindsey Wilger Williams, retired newspaper publisher and syndicated columnist