Q. What is Chattanooga’s connection to the 1950s assassination of a Florida judge and his wife?
A. Joseph A. Peel Jr. was arrested in the Hotel Patten on Nov. 3, 1960, less than an hour after arriving in Chattanooga from Charlotte, North Carolina, according to the next day’s edition of the Chattanooga News-Free Press.
Peel, a former municipal judge, was charged with murder for paying two men to kill Florida Circuit Court Judge Curtis Chillingworth. The circuit judge and his wife were kidnapped from their home June 15, 1955, and purposefully drowned in the Atlantic Ocean, according to a story in the Nov. 4, 1960, edition of the Chattanooga Daily Times. It took authorities five years to solve the case.
Florida authorities, upon learning Peel was expected in Chattanooga, flew here and made the arrest with the assistance of Hamilton County Sheriff James “Bookie’ Turner. The Nov. 4, 1960, News-Free Press story said Peel was carrying a passport and was reportedly planning a trip outside the country. Hamilton County General Sessions Judge N.B. Hargraves issued a fugitive warrant for Peel’s arrest, the story said.
Peel was convicted of accessory to murder and received a life sentence.
The Chillingworth murders were featured on the Nov. 26, 2013, episode of the Investigation Discovery series “A Crime to Remember.” The late syndicated columnist Jim Bishop penned a book, “The Murder Trial of Judge Peel,” that was published in 1962 and republished in 2017.
Do you have Chattanooga related trivia to share or a question you’d like answered? Email news@timesfreepress. com with subject line Chattanooga Knows.