Frances Bemis — The Woman Who Knew Too Much?

Florida Unsolved, based in St. Augustine, takes on one of the Ancient City’s most infamous cold cases and is forced to grapple with a seemingly connected murder that time, history and true crime enthusiasts seem to have forgotten.

With documented cold cases dating back as far as the murder of Lieutenant Guillermo Delaney in 1785, St. Augustine, the nation’s oldest city, has no lack of murder, mystery, and intrigue. The most well-known of these is, no doubt, the (technically) unsolved murder of Athalia Ponsell Lindsley on January 23, 1974.

Lindsley lived on 124 Marine Street in St. Augustine, one of the city’s oldest and historically layered residential neighborhoods running along the Matanzas River waterfront. On January 23, 1974, a singular moment that would come to define St. Augustine’s cold case history — a former model, Broadway dancer, and TV personality was murdered on the front steps of her home, in plain daylight. And this wasn’t just a murder, it was a murder most gruesome. Lindsley was found nearly decapitated having been struck at least nine times by a machete. Virgil Stuart, Chief of Police at the time stated, “a crime of just pure hate…”

A neighbor was tried and acquitted for the murder of Lindsley and for over fifty years, justice has gone unserved.

Florida Unsolved recently began an investigative deep dive into the Lindsley case — reviewing court records, depositions, and public documents, and pursuing additional records through Chapter 119 of the Florida Statutes. It is the platform's primary focus case at the moment, and we intend to treat it with the seriousness it deserves.

In researching the Lindsley case, we kept running into another name, sadly not as well known. Frances Bemis. Less than ten months after Lindsley was killed, in November of 1974, her neighbor, Bemis left home for her evening walk never to return. Her body was found the following day in a vacant lot on the corner of Bridge and Marine. She was beaten to death, cause of death being massive blunt force trauma to the head with a cinderblock, crushing her skull.

Athalia Ponsell Lindsley and Frances Bemis were not only acquaintances but lived near one another (along with the man accused of killing Lindsley) on Marine Street. Lindsley at 124, Bemis owned the Maria Sanchez Apartments at 144, with Alan Griffin Stanford Jr. at 126 (the primary suspect in the Lindsley case) immediately next door to Lindsley.

Bemis was, by profession, a newspaper writer. At the time of her death, Bemis is documented as having been working on a book-length investigative work into the death of Lindsley. She told people that she knew who did it and intended to prove it. And then she was dead.

Solving this cold case could unravel the puzzle that is the Lindsley case. What exactly did Bemis know? Who did she tell what she knew? What became of her notes and research materials? Were they collected by the St. Augustine Police Department and examined as evidence? Are they referenced in the case files? The timing and the proximity is simply too much for coincidence. Did a neighborhood feud become something much more calculated? Did the man who got away with the Lindsley murder get away with another?

The Bemis case is only ever discussed tangentially in relationship to the Lindsley case and has garnered essentially no modern investigative attention. In an effort to remedy that, Florida Unsolved recently submitted a public records request to the St. Augustine Police Department for the Bemis case files under Chapter 119 of the Florida statutes. While we received the case files for the Lindsley case the same day as requested in digital format and at no charge (SJSO case file request still pending), the cost estimate returned for the Bemis files was approximately $500. We publish this figure here not as a criticism of the SAPD — retrieval and duplication of a fifty-year-old case file does involve substantial labor and such agencies do operate under resource constraints — but this is an issue worth reflecting on. $500 for a case file for a 1974 homicide indicates that the documents have never been digitized and/or formally requested.

While the Lindsley case has books written about it, a television documentary, internet threads, and has been discussed on true crime podcasts, the name of her acquaintance, Frances Bemis, has been but a footnote and never the headline. But she will be, here on Florida Unsolved. Every victim is a person with a story and no life story is “better” than any other — only different.

Florida Unsolved exists just for this reason — sensationalism in the true crime space gets clicks but clicks don’t solve cases. We aren’t here for the clicks or dramatic retellings for engagement. We are here to follow the evidence wherever it may lead and that includes police storage rooms where files may have collected fifty years of dust because the story doesn’t sell or is simply too inconvenient for narrative. But the Frances Bemis case file may be the single thread that, when pulled, unravels two mysteries — the brutal unsolved murders of two women who deserved to live out their lives.

We are pulling the file and the thread. Whatever Frances Bemis knew about the murder of Athalia Ponsell Lindsley died with her. Unless, it is simply sitting in a file waiting for someone to read it.

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Florida Unsolved operates without advertising, without institutional funding, and without an agenda beyond the truth. Pursuing the Bemis case file through Florida's public records law carries an estimated cost of $500 — records that appear to have sat untouched for decades. If you believe Frances Bemis and Athalia Ponsell Lindsley deserve more than fifty years of silence, consider supporting this investigation. Every dollar goes directly toward records requests, forensic resources, and keeping these cases in the light where they belong. Contact us to learn more.

If you have any information related to the murders of Athalia Ponsell Lindsley or Frances Bemis, contact the St. Augustine Police Department or reach Crime Stoppers anonymously at 888-277-TIPS.