The Flip Side of History. Steve Silverman
of the San Juan Hotel dated “Not After 1941.”
Etty panicked and immediately sought help. While awaiting assistance, he tried to comfort Myerly by applying wet towels to her head. Dr. Duncan McEwan, a resident of the hotel, was first on the scene, but was unable to revive her. He stated, “The girl died within five minutes after I arrived.”
The fact that Myerly succumbed so quickly, coupled with the distinct almond smell observed on both the tumbler and bottle, brought the immediate suspicion of cyanide poisoning. That would later be confirmed by laboratory tests.
A search by police of Myerly’s room turned up nothing out of the ordinary: a newly penned letter to her sister expressing how much she liked Orlando and its residents, a couple of newly purchased suitcases, a new pair of riding boots, some change in her pocketbook, eight one-dollar bills hidden inside a package of Kleenex tissues, several pawn tickets, and a number of love letters. On her dresser was a dog-eared copy of Love Stories. There was also the usual assortment of clothing and toiletries, but not a single shred of evidence suggested that she was unhappy or intended to take her own life.
This could mean only one thing: Etty murdered Myerly with that poisoned bottle of alcohol. But if he was the murderer, why did he seek help so quickly? Was he trying to cover his tracks by pretending to be concerned?
Etty was the one and only suspect in the case, but he offered up the most bizarre of excuses. He claimed that an unidentified man had given him the poisoned whisky about forty-five minutes prior to his meeting with Myerly. “He had the bottle in his hand at the time and I asked him what he was going to do with it. He tried to hand it to me saying, ‘You take it, I don’t drink whisky—I drink beer.’ ” Etty continued, “I offered to buy him a bottle of beer and we went into the taproom and he drank it. As he left, he stuck the bottle of whisky in my pocket.” Etty added that the man said something about losing $125 in a poker game and described the unknown suspect as “wearing a small mustache, [weighing] about 130 pounds and [standing at about] 5 feet 7 inches tall.”
Robert Etty was then placed under arrest as the police began their investigation. Accompanied by a detective, he was released from jail just long enough to search for the mysterious mustachioed man, if he truly did exist.
Their first stop was the tavern itself. Owner Jack Holloway confirmed that Etty had purchased a bottle of beer for someone who matched the mystery man’s description. Yet, he was unable to confirm that this man had passed the tainted bottle of whisky to Etty. A porter at Holloway’s was able to supply one piece of evidence critical to the search: he remembered that the suspect was having problems with his dentures.
A check with local dentists led them right to the suspect.
On February 17, police arrested Donald Long at his home at 627 East Washington Street in Orlando. The thirty-three-year-old, married, father of two fit Etty’s description perfectly, excluding the fact that he was clean shaven. Under questioning, Long admitted that he had shaved his mustache off the previous evening.
Long wasn’t exactly what one would call a model citizen. In 1931, he was sentenced to two years in the penitentiary for stealing a car. After his release in 1934, he somehow landed a job as a plainclothes officer for the Orlando Police Department. After public outcry over his appointment, he was transferred to the city’s sanitation department to drive a truck. Long had also been questioned in the unsolved October 5, 1937, murder of a man named Frank Beane. Shortly after the murder took place, Long contacted Sheriff J. C. Stone, who later testified, “He called me on the telephone and asked me to come out and get the gun, which he claimed was hidden in his garage by an unidentified person. His exact words were: ‘You come and get it. I’m afraid it might have been used in a murder.’ ” Sure enough, a gun of similar caliber to the one used in Beane’s murder was found in Long’s garage. But we’ll get back to that later…
Upon being brought in for questioning on the death of Dolores Myerly, Long asked the officer to stop at a local drugstore so he could purchase two capsules of sodium amytal (the legal limit without a prescription at the time), which he downed with a bottle of beer. Needless to say, he was whacked out of his mind by the time he arrived at the police station. As he sobered up, Long admitted to everything except giving Etty the bottle of liquor and gambling away $125. He also denied ever meeting Dolores Myerly and stated, “Etty lies when he says I told him I didn’t drink whisky and handed him the bottle! I do drink whisky and I didn’t have that bottle of whisky on me!”
The next step in the investigation was tracking down the source of the cyanide. Druggist E. K. Enzor of nearby McElroy’s Pharmacy told police that he had sold two boxes of cyanide to a chiropractor named Dr. Ernest N. Sykes the day before the murder occurred. When questioned, Sykes said that he had delivered the cyanide to Long, who had asked Sykes how much of it would be necessary to kill a man. Sykes replied, “About as much as you can get on the point of a knife.”
All signs now pointed directly to Long, which meant that he had intended to poison Etty, but accidentally killed Dolores Myerly instead. But what was the motive? The two were barely acquainted, and neither seemed to have any dislike for the other.
Upon being called to the witness stand to testify at the coroner’s inquest, however, Dr. Sykes proved that he wasn’t exactly the most reliable of witnesses. He suddenly changed his story and claimed that he had purchased the cyanide for another man: George Coston.
Coston, a former captain of the Orlando Police Department, was recently defeated in the prior sheriff election. Since the loss, Coston had been running his own private detective agency. He was also a longtime patient of Sykes, who now claimed that Coston asked him to purchase the cyanide. Sykes stated, “The last batch I delivered to him the morning of the fatal night.”
On February 19, Long, Sykes, and Coston were held on murder charges, while the man who killed Dolores Myerly, Robert Etty, was released. The pieces to the puzzle were starting to come together.
Remember the gun that was found in Long’s garage? Long claimed that Coston had helped him avoid being charged in the murder of Frank Beane after the gun was found on his property. As repayment for his services, Coston insisted that Long join his detective agency. The business was actually a cover for a series of crimes that Coston had planned to commit. These included the assassinations of several men (one of whom was the sheriff that beat him in the election), the robberies of several jewelry stores, the theft of the contents of a Sears, Roebuck, and Co. safe, and the robbery of valuables from several prominent citizens.
The best part of Coston’s scheme was that he never intended to do any of the dirty work himself. He was going to leave that up to Donald Long and Edward “Buck” Moseley, an eighteen-year-old who was serving a suspended sentence for robbery.
The biggest problem with the scheme was that Long never committed any of the crimes Coston had planned. Long stated, “Coston was beginning to get angry because I had not gone through with any of his planned robberies or murders. He was threatening me.”
Death certificate for Marie Bayouth.
On the evening prior to Dolores Myerly’s murder, Coston picked Long up and drove out to the Colonialtown neighborhood of Orlando to take care of some business. That was when Long told Coston that he was through. “Coston told me if I ever squealed, he’d blow my brains out and kick ’em all over Orange Ave.” He added that Coston wanted to have a drink to end their partnership, but Long declined because he had been drinking beer and claimed to get sick if he mixed the two. Long continued, “He took a drink and killed the remains of a pint bottle. Then he reached in the back of his car and pulled out a miniature and gave it to me.”
It should come as no surprise that Coston denied everything. “We never planned any robberies. We never planned any murders,” he insisted. “I used Long on odd jobs around my private detective agency.”
The real question was whether a jury would believe a bizarre story in which person A (Coston) intended to kill person B (Long) who, in turn, unintentionally had person C (Etty) unknowingly kill person D (Myerly).