Tag Archives: Beverly June Cochran

How One Corrupt Cop, Worshiped as a Hero, Went Down: The Story of J.C. Patrick

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J.C. Patrick, a colleague said, would serve a warrant on the Devil. Duval County’s chief homicide investigator always got his man. Unless paid not to. Patrick was the common denominator of corruption between the administrations of Sheriffs Rex Sweat and Dale Carson. This is the story of how his son took him down and how his reputation followed.

 

The Carling / Hotel Roosevelt: Deadly Fire, Tongue Sandwiches and Saturday Night Dances

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It was the deadliest single-building fire in the city’s history, day after the Gator Bowl. Now the Hotel Roosevelt bears its original name again, the Carling, a beautiful place to live and one of five highrises remaining from Jacksonville’s “Year of the Skyscraper,” 1926. Once you could get a tongue sandwich here for a quarter and a whiskey cobbler for 35 cents. 

McCormick Apartments and Mythos at Jax Beach

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“There are enough concrete blocks in the McCormick Apartments to build a solid wall eight feet high from Jacksonville Beach to Downtown Jacksonville.” So bragged J.T. McCormick at the 1948 Open House, five years before he was elected mayor of Jacksonville Beach. The mythos contains stories of horsewhippings and murders and the family who built up the beach.

The next installment of What Ever Happened to Beverly June?

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They called Emmett Spencer “the dream killer.”

They called Mary Catherine Hampton “the Liz Taylor of the Prison Set” and “Hillbilly Lolita”

Part Two: What Ever Happened to Beverly June?

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Emmett Spencer was in jail on charges of two murders and told police he’d dreamt about seven others. Soon headlines would refer to Spencer as the “Dream Killer.”

“I knew I couldn’t go on living as I had those six months. If I had, I believe I would have become totally insane.”

Tim Gilmore’s talk on the case will take place at Chamblin’s Uptown, August 16th, at 7 pm. 

https://www.facebook.com/events/1637767666267952/

Part One of a New Series: What Ever Happened to Beverly June?

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Every day, he replayed the Wednesday he’d come home from work at 6 pm—February 24, 1960—to find his wife gone, the baby crying alone in her crib.

Neighbors said the stranger had been parking a blue 1958 Ford across the street from the Cochrans’ for three weeks and reading a newspaper for hours at a time.