On Wednesday, October 25, 1967 it was 6 pm when the CBS Evening News aired & Walter Cronkite spoke of a tragedy in the small town of Arcadia, Florida, a rural area with sprawling farm fields & cattle pastures, which sits about 45 miles southeast of Sarasota in DeSoto County. Seven children from the same family had been poisoned, six were dead & one was actively dying. Their father, James Richardson, an African-American man who worked as a fruit picker, was the prime suspect as a homicide case was being led by DeSoto County Sheriff Frank Cline.
The devastation began that afternoon when four siblings within the Richardson family; sisters Betty Jean, 8; Alice, 7; Suzie Mae, 6 & Doreen, 5, were suddenly stricken with violent convulsions all at the same time within four separate classrooms at the local Smith-Brown school, just after they had returned from their lunch break.
In the meantime, three preschoolers from the same family were found dead at home. Police found 2-year-old James Jr’s lifeless body in the arms of his panic-stricken babysitter, Betsy Reese while at her feet were whimpering & writhing 3-year-old Diane & 4-year-old Vanessa who were clinging to life, convulsing in a fetal position nearby. Their autopsies later revealed that they had all ingested parathion organophosphate dust which is a deadly toxin that citrus farmers use to kill insects.
Ingestion of parathion in smaller doses can cause headaches, nausea, vomiting, abdominal cramping, diarrhea, muscle weakness, twitching, excessive secretions & shortness of breath while more severe cases can lead to seizures, skeletal-muscle paralysis, cardiac arrhythmias, respiratory failure or may become comatose.
In a rush of judgment, Sheriff Cline informed the media that the children had been poisoned by their father for insurance purposes. By the following day, The Miami Herald called it “the most ghastly crime in Florida history.” Walter Cronkite’s shocking report helped splash the story on international media front pages & in the days that followed, hoards of reporters headed down to Arcadia, Florida to cover the case.
Veteran Judge Gordon Hays ordered an unprecedented “coroner’s inquest” with haste which went on to mix rumor, forced testimony & blatant lies, all saturated with Southern racism & the inquest certified that the children were the victims of mass homicide at the hands of their father.
The children went on to be buried in Arcadia’s Oak Ridge Cemetery after the seven small white caskets had been displayed in the high school gym as a young girl, who later went on to become mayor, sang “Amazing Grace.”
James Richardson was tried for the murder of one child, his stepdaughter, Betty Jean & was convicted & sentenced to death. Had James been found innocent in that case, the sheriff promised that “we’ll keep trying him for each child, one after the other, until he’s found guilty.” From day one James Richardson had been the only suspect in the case despite the fact that at the time the children fell ill he & his wife Annie Mae were 14 miles away picking fruit when the children ate both their breakfast & lunch that day.
James Richardson was by no means an angel & had a lengthy juvenile record & had spent time at Marianna Correctional School for Boys. Four years earlier, in June of 1963, while he was married to his previous wife, Margie Westbrook, he arrived at Duval Medical Center in Jacksonville with his son Sampson who was DOA (dead on arrival). James had brought the baby in earlier that day for extreme vomiting & the case was later closed on July 2, 1963 as a “natural death” & no autopsy had been done.
Years later, Sheriff Cline reported that Sampson had died after consuming uncooked beans & that Margie had left for Detroit with her other three children because “she felt Richardson was instrumental in the child’s death & was afraid the others might eat some beans & die.”
On the morning of the fateful day of Wednesday, October 25, 1967, before leaving for the fruit groves, Annie Mae Richardson prepared chicken sandwiches for her children’s breakfast & a small pot of grits cooked into a stew of rice & beans for their lunch.
The Richardson family were migrant farmworkers who frequently moved & both wife & husband habitually left home for various reasons, later returning. Only seven months before the children’s deaths, Annie Mae obtained a warrant for arrest attesting nonsupport from her absent husband & four days before the children died, a warrant was issued for James for desertion & nonsupport by his ex-wife Margie Westbrook.
Police failed to question or investigate the Richardson’s next-door-neighbor who served as the children’s babysitter, 32-year-old “Big Mama” Betsy Reese who had served the children the poisoned food on the day they all died. This is despite the fact that both the sheriff & state attorney were aware of the fact that Reese’s first husband mysteriously died after consuming a stew that she prepared & that she was still on parole for fatally shooting her second husband.
When investigators responded to the Richardson home, there were no obvious signs of poison & they only noted insect spray which was unlikely to be the cause of the poisoning. Later testing found traces of the poison everywhere; sprinkled in the sugar bowl, in the talcum powder, inside the laundry powder that had only been purchased one day earlier, in the self-rising flour, the cold jar of used lard, the corn meal, in the locked refrigerator as well as on the clothing on what both the parents & children wore. Scientists later testified that the traces of poison amounted to what could have killed the entire town.
As investigators spoke with James Richardson he explained that the business card in his pocket which listed the names & ages of the children, including the ones that did not live there, was from a door-to-door insurance man who had stopped by unannounced just the night before. The card read, “Gerald Purvis, Union National Life Insurance Co.”
To investigators, this business card screamed “motive” & when they went on to speak with Gerald Purvis, he repeatedly denied that James had purchased insurance coverage. Despite this fact, State Attorney Frank Schaub blatantly lied when he told the coroner’s panel that James killed the children in order to collect from an insurance policy he had purchased on them only the night before.
This lie carried great weight in that part of Florida as Schaub was considered a legend since only six months earlier he gained national prominence after he out-lawyered celebrated defense attorney F. Lee Bailey, proving that Bailey’s client, Carl Coppolino, murdered his wife via poisoning.
In the spring 1988, more than 20 years had gone by since the tragedy of the murders of the Richardson children when an old woman in a Wauchula, Florida nursing home who was suffering from dementia repeatedly told the nurses, “I killed the children. I killed the children.” This patient was none other than the babysitter of the Richardson children, Betsy Reese. Nurse Belinda Frazier later signed an affidavit that Reese confessed more than 100 times between 1985 & 1987.
Journalist Peter Gallagher firmly believed that James Richardson had been wrongfully convicted & made it his mission to have him released from prison. He, along with South Florida investigative reporter Charles Flowers, headed to meet James at the Tomoka Correctional Institution near Daytona Beach. When they spoke with Warden Leonard Dugger, he said there was no doubt in his mind that James was an innocent man who had served 21 years in prison by that point. During those two decades behind bars, he had a completely clean record. Most prisoners who are convicted of killing children have an extremely tough time among their fellow inmates but in James’ case, everyone believed him to be innocent.
As they spoke with James, he spoke of his last day of freedom, the day that his children died. He recalled sitting on a bench under a tree within an orange grove with Annie Mae, eating sandwiches for lunch from the same batch which was left for the children as they waited for the rain to pass.
Only a few blocks from the Richardson home, four of the Richardson children collapsed at their school desks, bodily fluids rushing from their every orifice as their teachers & classmates watched in horror as they began to die right in front of their eyes. One of the teachers immediately recalled an incident that happened one week earlier in Tijuana when dozens of residents, mainly school-aged children, died or were hospitalized after consuming parathion-laced bakery bread.
As the trauma unfolded at school, three of the children were collapsing at home. As police arrived, they immediately noted a chemical smell in the air, but despite searching both the home & the shed out back five times, there was no obvious sign of any poison. The sheriff, who had been born & raised in Arcadia immediately believed the odor was from parathion since it was routinely used on Florida citrus after it was created during World War II as a gas weapon by the Nazis.
There are no records to indicate that Reese’s adjoining apartment was searched. When investigators spoke with her, she told the police that she’d served the children breakfast sandwiches that morning & beans, rice & grits for lunch which was made earlier & stored inside a locked refrigerator. A chunk of headcheese was also taken from the refrigerator for Reese to dredge in flour & fry up to go along with lunch. After breakfast the four children walked to school, returned for lunch & then walked back to school where they soon collapsed.
When the Richardsons were notified, they were only told that one of their children was ill & had no idea that six of their children were already gone. When they arrived at the emergency room, Betsy Reese was standing outside & instructed James & Annie Mae, “Go inside. They tell you inside.” As James entered the hospital, he was met with a group that included Sheriff Cline who continued to ignore James’ questions of what was going on, why they were there & where his children were. Instead, Cline only asked James if he had insurance on his children & James told him that he didn’t.
An hour later, a priest arrived & told James that they needed to pray yet James had no idea what they were meant to pray about, still not having been told about what happened to his children. This is when the priest, whom James had never met before, told him the unthinkable news, “All your children is dead.” James didn’t believe the man & accused him of being a liar while Annie Mae fainted from shock & grief.
When it came time for Annie Mae & James to identify their children, Annie Mae fainted a second time; they walked through a hallway & into a room & there, the bodies of their seven children lay, covered in white sheets. One of the sheets suddenly moved back & their daughter said, “I’m alright. I want to go home with my mother & father.” Suddenly, the child layed back down & died. James was in a deep shock which was later used against him by prosecutors to portray him as a cold blooded killer.
Now in 1988, as the journalists sat with James at the prison, he recalled how Betsy Reese’s children would routinely eat breakfast with his children, yet on that fateful morning, they weren’t there. James could only continue to wonder why on that particular day had they not been there? Annie Mae would routinely prepare the food for the day before heading out to the groves so that Reese could simply warm the food & serve it to both her own children as well as the Richardson kids.
James could only speculate & wonder why her children weren’t there that particular morning. What he didn’t know was that early that morning, Reese asked her sister to drive nine children, including her own daughter & five grandchildren, to Sarasota, leaving only the seven Richardson children to eat the poisoned food.
Only one child survived past nightfall; 3-year-old Diane died the next morning. It was the same morning that the town alcoholic, Charlie Smith, who was accompanied by Reese incidentally “found” a bag of parathion in the Richardson shed that the police had searched five times the day before when the poison was not there at the time. Despite the fact that the shed was bone dry, the bag of parathion was damp to touch. It was believed that whoever put the bag there was the person who had also poisoned the children.
Jail inmates later told James that Betsy Reese had been upset with him for giving her husband a ride to Jacksonville where he stayed & refused to return home. Many believed that her husband likely saved his own life by escaping Reese’s clutches.
Back in 1967 after seven of the Richardson children were murdered, during a press conference, Sheriff Cline announced that James had five other children that died of suspicious circumstances in Jacksonville & indicated that the motive for his crime was to collect $14,000 in insurance money despite the fact that this was unproven. Sheriff Dale Carson from Duval County was bothered by this & had fielded dozens of media inquiries & offered to write an official letter clearing James of any Jacksonville crimes.
James had yet to obtain an attorney & was facing Judge Gordon Hays who had worked in Arcadia for over 31 years & was one of the most powerful men in DeSoto County. Judge Hays announced that James had taken & failed a lie detector test which indicated that he had “knowledge” of the poisoning. He declared that he would be instructing Sheriff Cline to file murder charges against James & the verdict was written in stone before the trial even began.
Attorney John Robinson agreed to represent James pro bono; he was a white, 30-year-old civil lawyer who had yet to defend someone at a criminal trial. When they first spoke, James expressed to Robinson his terrible treatment in the Arcadia jail & how Sheriff Cline would push him & call him racial slurs. Robinson removed a microphone that Cline had placed in James’ jail cell.
On December 7, 1967, a county grand jury returned an indictment of first degree murder against James & bail was set at $7,500.
Soon after, new evidence came out when two fellow inmates, James “Spot” Weaver & James Cunningham insisted that James had confessed to them. Cellmate Earnell Washington went on to elaborate that James confided that “he wanted to get rid of his wife & children because he wanted the money & to go back with his other women.” He said that according to James, “during the night with the wife not home, he put poison in the stuff they use & the sweet powder.” He said that while Annie Mae got the children ready the next morning, James put the poison in the grits.
All three men, including Washington, who was in jail for assault with intent to commit murder, were immediately released after providing depositions & agreements to testify. Soon after, Washington was stabbed to death in a local pool hall.
James’ trial began on May 27, 1968 at the Lee County Courthouse in Ft. Myers with Judge John Justice leading the way. He allowed the late Washington’s pretrial depositions to be read.
State Attorney Schaub never called Charlie Smith, who found the parathion in the shed, nor Betsy Reese, who had fed the children the poison-laced food, nor Purvis, the door-to-door insurance salesman, to the stand. He elaborated that he didn’t feel that Reese was competent or mentally alert enough. Not knowing what the prosecution knew about those witnesses, Robinson also chose not to call them.
Four days after the trial began, on May 31, 1968, the all-white jury deliberated for 84 minutes & came back with a guilty verdict & recommended that James be put to death. He was immediately transferred to Florida State Prison’s Death Row. In 1971, both the appeals for his conviction as well as his death sentence were denied. The following year, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that the death penalty was unconstitutional & James’ sentence was changed to life in prison.
When journalists tracked down inmate Spot Weaver who had testified that James confessed to killing his children to get away from it all & to get back at his wife for cheating, he admitted that he lied out of fear since in the 1960s, the prison system was very rough for an African American man; Arcadia was a location where the the Ku Klux Klan marched in the annual Christmas parade.
Weaver went on to say that he had been visited in jail by Deputy John “Bad Boy” Boone who was sent by Cline to “assist” with the investigation. According to Weaver, Boone was the type who beat prisoners in order to get them to testify against James.
When they tracked down John Boone, they asked him if he had threatened Spot Weaver & James Cunningham, who by that time was deceased, he admitted that “it could have happened.” He went on to say that it was a “different time back then. If the sheriff said to do something, you did it. Those were frontier times. It was my job.” Boone said that since the sheriff told him that James was guilty, he had to be.
When they tracked down insurance man Purvis, he was in very poor health, suffering from COPD & he maintained that James had absolutely not purchased insurance on his children & said, “He had no money until his payday at the end of the week.”
The journalists were also contacted by an Arcadia resident named Remus Griffin who told them that his girlfriend was a secretary for State Attorney Schaub’s ex-assistant Treadwell & she had found a sealed legal box of documents stowed away in Treadwell’s desk. It included paperwork from the 1967-1968 Richardson case & included evidence that could have exonerated James Richardson 21 years earlier.
In 1979, Remus Griffin broke in & stole the box which he then stored in his girlfriend’s trailer & now, 10 years later, he wanted them to have the box. The box contained transcripts from jailhouse snitch interviews & contained conflicting accounts of James’ so-called “confessions.” The whole motive of James having purchased insurance on his children was discounted in depositions from both James & Purvis & included prosecutor’s notes about Reese’s violent criminal background that suggested revenge motives for Reese. Hidden documents suggested that Reese may have simply grabbed the wrong bag when she went to fry up the hogshead cheese on that tragic day.
On February 1, 1989, a special investigation into James’ murder conviction was ordered & on May 2, 1989, all charges against James Richardson were terminated. James was released from prison on April 26, 1989 after spending 21 years behind bars. At the time of his release, James had no money whatsoever & he went on to file a suit against DeSoto County for wrongful conviction & was awarded $150,000, most of which went toward legal expenses that had accumulated since 1968.
Had the secret box of files not been stolen & forwarded to the governor’s office, James Richardson would likely still be sitting behind bars & the State’s & sheriff’s actions in the case may never have been uncovered. A few years later, Schaub was suspended for 30 days for prosecutorial misconduct for his transgressions in an unrelated case where he knowingly made false statements & knowingly failed to disclose a material fact to the defense.
James’ $1.2 million compensation was constantly denied for more than 20 years until June 2014 when Florida Governor Rick Scott signed a bill that provides compensation to a wrongfully incarcerated person convicted & sentenced prior to December 31, 1979 whose case was reversed by a special prosecutor’s review. Richardson may be the only individual eligible under this restrictive law.
47 years after his conviction & 26 years after his release, James Richardson received a compensation check. He was set to receive ten checks for $112,000 annually through 2025 ($25,000 from each check will go to the attorneys & lobbyists who worked on James’ case through the years).
In 2015, a documentary about James’ case titled, Time Simply Passes was made & released on digital platforms in January 2018.
James relocated to Wichita, Kansas where he lived with his wife Teresa. They lived under the radar as James was fearful that he would be robbed if someone found out that he had money. His nemesis, Sheriff Cline, lost two elections in the 1980s & retired to Port Charlotte where he died in October 2013. Betsy Reese died in 1993. James Richardson passed away in Wichita on September 16, 2023 at age 87.
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