| Athalia Ponsell Lindsley was
born in Toledo, Ohio in August of 1917, and was murdered at her home located
at 124 Marine Street in St. Augustine, Florida, between 5:30 p.m. and 6:00
p.m. on Wednesday, January 23, 1974. |
| Until she was about 9 years old, she lived on the
Isle of Pines in the West Indies, at which time she moved to Jacksonville
with her family. Athalia graduated from Robert E. Lee High School,
University of Florida extension courses and attended the University of
Mexico in Mexico City. |
| For several years she was employed as a fashion
model with the John Robert Powers agency. She appeared in two Broadway
shows and for about a year and a half, she was on CBS television’s “Winner
Take ALL’ with Bud Collier. She had been in the real estate business
for about ten years and was a published writer. |
| In a press release which she prepared in 1970 for
her unsuccessful bid for a seat in Florida’s House of Representatives,
at a time when District 23 included all of Duval County, she pledged “Positively
no special interest or wheeling and dealing”; typifying her independent
and defiant attitude. |
| Athalia was a Republican before
it was popular in northeast Florida to be one. Her politics included
a platform of Christian principles in government, neighborhood schools
and she opposed the legalization of marijuana. |
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| She also opposed the Cross-Florida Barge Canal,
opposed new taxes, and opposed existing bureaucratic programs. She
supported a strong, well armed militia, National Guard, ROTC, police and
the armed services. She professed that capital punishment was the
only “dependable deterrent” to crimes of violence; to which, ironically,
she would become a victim. |
| Athalia was abrupt, even caustic in her dealings
with people who she believed were up to no good. In a quote from
a campaign flyer which she produced, she called the United Nations “satanic”,
accused it’s charter of being patterned after the charter of the Soviet
Union, and called for a repeal of the United Nations Participation Act.
In three replies to a local television station’s editorials, Athalia opposed
gun control on grounds that it was unconstitutional, she opposed the news
media’s slanted coverage, and she opposed the station’s “Rumor Control
Program” labeling it a Bolshevik scheme. She did not like Jacksonville’s
consolidated (Metro) form of government and vowed to put communists “on
target”. |
| But, Athalia did have a softer side when it came
to her passion for animals. She would crusade against cruelty or
neglect of animals, calling it criminal, she insisted on a repeal of the
so-called “bloodless bullfight” law and one of her peeves was the soring
of Tennessee Walking Horses; a practice that has been federally outlawed
since 1970 that involved applying chemical irritants to the horse’s front
pasterns to achieve better animation during competitions. |
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