Alcatraz Prisoner Confesses to Florida Murder!

 

Raymond Remine admitting photo Alcatraz 1937

The letter arrived out of the blue and landed on the desk of the Attorney General of the state of Florida in 1947. A prisoner at Alcatraz was confessing to what the Tampa Times called, “Tampa's Most Mysterious Unsolved Slaying,” the murder 16 years earlier, on New Years Eve 1931, of City Detective John E. Jones.

The Times wrote, “Detective Jones was brutally slain as he sat in a parked automobile near the old Police Pistol Range near midnight. Seven shots from an automatic .38 caliber pistol struck him in the back. His companion in the car, Mrs. Hattie Steward, was shot once by the same gun but was able to walk to the highway and summon aid which launched an extensive investigation.”

Initially Mrs. Steward, a widow, was charged with Jones’ murder but that was later dismissed. Next in the lineup was Detective Jones' estranged wife, Mrs. Minnie Jones. She too was taken into custody and questioned at length but she was also released.

The Times added, “A full year later, on Jan. 17, 1932, bootlegger ‘Hard Sam’ Daughterty was arrested in Miami and charged with the murder but that charge, too, later collapsed and police were never able to solve the mystery.”

And now on November 5, 1947, Tampa police thought they had a break in the case.

A prisoner serving a long term in Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary had confessed to the slaying.

At first authorities withheld the suspect’s name.

Then five days later came this story:

“Police Chief Eddings today received the complete confession of Ramon Remine, 53, long termer at Alcatraz Federal Prison, and a man of several aliases, who says he murdered John E. Jones, Tampa detective, on New Year’s night, 1931, and now asks to be returned to Florida where ‘he hopes’ he will be sentenced to the electric chair, Detective Inspector Stephens reported.”

Police had a confession of their own to make to  the newspaper: All the case files from the Jones murder case had been lost. All they had to rely on were newspaper clippings.

 

It’s a fascinating murder case that I will describe below.

But first that other detail, a reason for you to read on: Ramon Remine was my first cousin.

His grandfather was my great grandfather, making him my mother’s first cousin and my first cousin, once removed (I looked it up; he’s not my second cousin).

Ramon Remine was one of many aliases that Raymond Remine used, according to his FBI File, which I obtained in 1980 with a Freedom of Information Act request (a little over 500 pages at 10 cents a page). He was also known to authorities as John Traynor, Jack Hines, Hal Hanes, J.D. Boone, and my two favorites: Jack Daniels and Daniel Boone,

Raymond was well-known as a bank robber but even better known as an escape artist – he broke out of every jail he was ever in, except for Alcatraz.

Which brings us back to the Tampa murder.

 

Initially officials in Florida were skeptical of Raymond’s confession, according to the Tampa Times.

“Officials believe that Remine might be wanting to get off ‘the rock’ where he has been sentenced to remain until 1964, the earliest date upon which he could ask parole. They said he was sent to Alcatraz in 1937 for a bank robbery in his native Tenn., but was later transferred to Atlanta and in 1944 while being returned to Alcatraz, escaped from his guards. He was later captured and put back on the rock.”

So why was a Tennessee bank robber confessing to a Florida crime?

Again the Tampa Times:

“According to the Chief, Remine said that he had been a salesman at the time the crime was committed and that he had only been in Tampa a week or so before the slaying.”

Despite their initial skepticism, Tampa authorities began an in-depth investigation, or as in-depth as any investigation of a 16-year-old case with all the files missing could be.

The first step was reading the original newspaper story from January 2, 1931:

MYSTERY SURROUNDS MURDER OF DETECTIVE

SLAYER FIRED HIS GUN FROM REAR OF AUTO

Mrs. Steward's Wound Narrowly Missed Spinal Column.

The fact that City Detective John E. Jones, murdered last night in the outskirts of the city, and Mrs. Hattie Steward, his companion, both were shot from the rear, apparently by someone in the back seat of the automobile in which they were parked, added to the mystery of the case today.

Just how narrowly Mrs. Steward escaped death from the slayer's bullet was revealed shortly before noon when she was treated at the municipal hospital. The bullet had entered between her left shoulder and her left hip and barely missed her spinal column as it coursed downward to lodge just above her right hip.

Mrs. Hattie Steward

Woman's Story Questioned

Another complicating feature was the failure of officers to reconcile the story of Mrs. Steward with their reconstruction of the crime. For Jones to have been killed in the manner she described, they said, would have been impossible.

Mrs. Steward was examined at the municipal hospital this morning and later removed to the hospital ward of the county jail, where she is being held pending completion of the investigation.

Officers investigating Jones' murder are convinced that the detective's slayer was sitting on the rear seat of the automobile when he held his pistol close to Jones' back and emptied the magazine.

Parked in Lonely Spot

Jones was murdered shortly after 10 o'clock last night, while he and Mrs. Steward were seated in a car parked on the old police pistol range, about 100 yards north of Michigan avenue, and a half-mile west of Lincoln avenue.

They had been there but 20 minutes when the slaying took place, and Mrs. Steward, unable to summon help by firing the detective's own pistol, finally walked into Macfarlane park, several miles away, where she was picked up and carried to a West Tampa cafe.

The scene of the murder is a lonely rendezvous, miles away from the nearest house. The spot where the slaying took place is in a field clear of trees, and in plain view of Michigan avenue.

Jones and Mrs. Steward were preparing to drive back to town. Suddenly, she said, she heard someone say, "Now I've got you where I want you!” A fusillade of shots followed. As Jones slumped down into the seat under the steering wheel of the car, she grabbed his pistol-one that she had given to him for a birthday present-and emptied it into the air to attract help.

When the shots went unanswered, she walked to Macfarlane park, was picked up by a motorist, and carried to the Four Brothers cafe in West Tampa, from where she called officers.

  

That’s the gist of the murder tale.

From the get-go investigators were suspicious of Mrs. Steward’s story.

The shots that killed Jones came from the rear and from close range. Her wound was in her front.

She claimed they had stopped earlier at a roadhouse for a pint of liquor. The roadhouse owner said they were never there.

There had been a full moon that night and yet she claimed she didn’t see anyone approach the car or run away.

And when she led detectives back to the scene of the murder, she took them on a long circuitous route.

“When Mrs. Steward returned to the scene, Jones' body had been removed by the officers from the car and was lying in the grass nearby. Almost hysterical, she knelt by his side and begged him to speak to her. ‘Poor old daddy,’ she cried ‘they never gave you a chance. Oh! if you could only speak and tell them who did it.’”

He couldn’t so detectives booked Mrs. Steward on suspicion of murder. Without any evidence against her, she was released.

Next up was the estranged wife, Mrs. Minnie Jones, who was also arrested and questioned. Then released.

And a year later the arrest of local bootlegger “Hard Sam” Daughtery, who was also let go. "Hard Sam," who got his nickname from an Atlanta jailer, after a fellow inmate whacked him on his "hard head" with a lead pipe, had a connection to Jones. He and Jones' son Robert had once kidnapped a witness in Sam's bootlegging trial. But detectives couldn't make a case against him either. 

So there the matter sat for 16 years.

Till Cousin Raymond entered the picture.

 

Raymond Remine booking photo from Alcatraz in 1945

Raymond had a good story.

“Remine said he had been traveling through the Tampa territory as representative of a novelty company [he refilled vending machines] when he met a man named Ward [conveniently Raymond couldn’t recall Ward’s first name] and they decided to ‘have some fun by scaring’ occupants of the car they saw parked off the old road to Clearwater. He said Jones opened fire on him and he and Ward emptied their guns at Jones as they fled.”

The newspaper noted Remine was vague about other details-where he stayed in Tampa, his alleged accomplice (who might have fired the fatal shots) and other pertinent points. He remembered well, though, that Jones opened fire on him and his fun-seeking friend, Ward.

“In checking to establish that Remine might have been in Tampa, they learned that the man for whom Remine had worked knew Remine had been in Tampa at the time of the murder. This ex-employer, a Walter C. Gulick, related that Remine was here with a woman he believed to be Remine's wife. Remine was going by the name of John Traynor and Gulick related that a year later Remine had gotten him into a lot of trouble by opening fire on a Des Moines city detective who was only inquiring as to the identification of Remine's automobile. Remine, Gulick now believes, thought the detective wanted to quiz him about the Tampa murder.”

Gulick conveniently left out the fact that he and Raymond had robbed a bank in Ely, Iowa the next year and both had gone to prison.

As for “Traynor’s wife,” Minnie Stevens Traynor, detectives located her in Iowa and she told them that “Remine's behavior after the time of the shooting was suspicious and he had refused to let her see newspapers on their way back North.”

She conveniently neglected to mention that she had served a stint in prison for smuggling a pistol into the Minnesota prison where Raymond was being held in 1932 and the two of them threatened a deputy sheriff and then hijacked a taxi to Iowa. Instead of tipping the cabbie, they tied him to a tree and drove on with his hack.

It was a complicated case but in the end Tampa authorities concluded what I had concluded in 1980 when I first read Raymond’s confession letter in his FBI file: Raymond wanted to get extradited to Florida where he stood a much better chance of busting out of jail. He knew he would never escape from Alcatraz and extradition was his only hope.

“‘In weighing the probabilities of a death sentence,’ Farrior wrote into the record, ‘we must also remember that he was smart enough to soften the crucial point of his confession, to-wit, the actual shooting, by saying he and his companion saw the couple parked in the car in a compromising position and came up for the purpose of frightening them only when Detective Jones started firing.’ By closing the case against Remine, Florida also closes a door to the convict's last hope to get off ‘the rock.’”

And also the last hope to solve the murder.

The 1931 murder of Detective John E. Jones remains unsolved to this day.

Raymond Remine did eventually get off The Rock. As his health deteriorated, he was transferred to the United States Medical Center For Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri where he died in 1964.

 

Did Raymond Remine kill Detective John E. Jones?

Obviously Raymond was not averse to shooting at someone, witness his well-documented run-in with Des Moines detectives in 1932.

His record shows he pistol whipped numerous people who got in his way, from bank tellers to deputies. But there is nothing else about murder in his file – and I’ve read the entire FBI file along with newspaper accounts of a number – but probably not all – of his bank robberies. The Tampa Police cleared him. 

He lead an interesting life, working as a farm hand on his uncle’s Iowa farm as a teenager, trying his hand at prize fighting, robbing his first bank in 1920, at age 24, spending time in many of our country’s finest jails and prisons, including Leavenworth, Atlanta and Alcatraz, and along the way marrying at least five women, possibly more. Probably more.

During his first stint in Alcatraz in the late thirties,  a fellow prisoner was one Al Capone. And during his second stint in the late forties, he was imprisoned with the Birdman of Alcatraz. I don’t know if he was friends with either.

I never met Raymond, he was in Alcatraz when I was born and then moved to the Springfield, Missouri prison. I was 16 when he died.

In fact I had never heard about Raymond until the seventies when one of my uncles decided that my generation of cousins needed to know more about our family history.

But it was only recently that I researched that long ago murder confession and turned up the Unsolved Murder of Detective John E. Jones.