In the spring and summer of 1926, a shadow of fear fell over Tampa, Florida, as a series of brutal slayings terrorized the community. Among the victims of this reign of terror was Caroline Rowell, a 94-year-old woman who became a victim in her own home. The horrific events of June 28, 1926, not only ended her long life but also decimated her family, marking one of the most violent chapters in the city's history.
The Rowell family lived at 116 South Nebraska Avenue.
On that late June day, a concerned neighbor, noticing the unusual stillness and lack of activity at the home, went to investigate. Inside, she made a grisly discovery. Caroline, her 45-year-old son Bee Dee Rowell, her 16-year-old granddaughter Eva Rowell, and a 40-year-old tenant, a mechanic named Charles Alexander, had all been brutally murdered. The weapon used in the massacre was an axe, and the scene left behind spoke to a terrifying level of violence.
In the aftermath of the killings, rumors swirled throughout Tampa. Bee Dee, a grocery clerk, had reportedly told people that he knew the true identity of the person who had murdered a woman named Emma Hilliard two months prior. For Hilliard's murder, a man named Charles "Blind Charlie" Manuel had been arrested and charged. The theory that Bee Dee was killed to silence him gained traction in the community, suggesting the four murders were not a random act of violence but a calculated effort to conceal another crime. Investigators questioned multiple suspects, but the case grew cold, and for a time, the massacre at the Rowell home remained unsolved.
The wave of violence in Tampa did not end there. In May 1927, nearly a year after the Rowell murders, another family, the Merrells, were found slain in their home, killed with a railroad spike maul. This crime ultimately led investigators to a 38-year-old itinerant worker named Benjamin Franklin Levins. After his arrest, evidence connected him to the Merrell crime scene, and the pieces of Tampa's year-long murder mystery began to fall into place.
Once in custody, Levins's story shifted multiple times. He was eventually transferred to a jail in Orlando for his safety after an angry mob of citizens descended on the Tampa jail, demanding he be handed over. In Orlando, he confessed to the Rowell family murders. He claimed his motive was a dispute with the family's tenant, Charles Alexander, over a woman, and that he killed the rest of the family because they could have identified him. His confessions were often contradictory, and during his trial, he claimed they had been coerced by police who threatened to return him to the angry mob in Tampa.
Benjamin Franklin Levins was ultimately tried in July 1927 for five counts of first-degree murder, specifically for the deaths of the Merrell family. Despite his claims of self-defense and attempts to blame an accomplice, he was convicted and sentenced to death. His accomplice, Leonard Thompson, was acquitted in a separate trial.
Though convicted for the Merrell murders, Levins was considered by investigators to be responsible for all ten homicides that had plagued the city between 1926 and 1927, including the four at the Rowell residence. On November 22, 1927, Benjamin Franklin Levins was executed in the electric chair at the state prison. He maintained his innocence to the end, and his body, which went unclaimed, was buried in an unmarked grave on the prison grounds. The execution closed a dark chapter for Tampa, but the brutal killing of Caroline Rowell and her family remains a chilling reminder of the serial killer who once walked their streets.
