In the spring of 1927, a shadow of terror fell over Tampa, Florida, culminating in the brutal annihilation of a family and ending a string of unsolved, horrific murders. Among the victims was five-year-old Mildred Merrell, a young girl whose life was extinguished alongside her parents and two of her brothers in their home. The crime was not just a singular tragedy but the final, bloody act of a serial killer who had haunted the city for over a year.
The Merrell family had only recently
moved into their house at the corner of 1st Avenue and 31st Street, having been there for just six weeks. The father, Herman "Looney" Merrell, was a carpenter, and his wife, Nettie, operated a drink stand. On the night of May 27, 1927, their home became a scene of unimaginable violence. When one of the older sons, 15-year-old Kenneth, returned home from an evening out, he discovered a massacre. His parents, Herman and Nettie, were dead. So were his siblings: 11-year-old Ralph, little Mildred, and the family's newest addition, five-week-old infant Lester. Another brother, eight-year-old Hugh, miraculously survived by hiding under a bed, unseen by the killer. An older son, Gilbert, was also spared as he was at work.
Investigators arriving at the gruesome scene found the family members had been bludgeoned to death. The murder weapon, a railroad spike maul, was found in a front bedroom, initially leading police to suspect the killer might be a railroad worker. The city was already on edge from a series of unsolved axe murders that had begun in April of the previous year, and the sheer brutality of the Merrell family slaying caused widespread panic and outrage. The community was incensed, demanding swift justice for the slaughter of an entire family, including an infant.
The day after the murders, a crucial discovery was made in a lumber yard half a mile from the Merrell home. Police Lieutenant D. Z. Meeks found a makeshift campsite with a newspaper detailing the killings, bread scraps, and distinct hand-rolled cigarette butts. Nearby were three broken matches, a detail that matched evidence found at the crime scene. Officers staked out the location and, shortly after midnight, arrested a 38-year-old itinerant worker named Benjamin Franklin Levins. In custody, Levins' boot print matched one from the Merrell house, and he was observed breaking a match in the same peculiar way as those found at both the home and the lumber yard.
Levins' story shifted multiple times under interrogation. He initially blamed a friend, Leonard Thompson, but later confessed to the Merrell murders, as well as a previous quadruple murder of the Rowell family in 1926. His motive for the Merrell killings was a chilling case of mistaken identity. Levins admitted he had intended to kill another family, the Ryles, whom he held a grudge against and who had previously lived in that same house. He only realized he had murdered the wrong family after reading about it in the newspaper the next day. News of his confession leaked, and an angry mob of thousands stormed the county jail, attempting to lynch him. The ensuing riots lasted for days, resulting in several deaths and numerous injuries before the National Guard could restore order.
To ensure a fair trial, the proceedings were moved to Orlando in July 1927. In court, Levins changed his story again, claiming police had coerced his confession by threatening to return him to the Tampa mob. He admitted to killing Herman Merrell but claimed it was in self-defense after the homeowner caught him breaking in. He insisted that his companion, Thompson, had killed the rest of the family after he fled. The jury did not believe him. Benjamin Franklin Levins was convicted of five counts of first-degree murder for the deaths of the Merrell family and sentenced to death. Leonard Thompson was acquitted in a separate trial.
On November 22, 1927, just six months after he ended Mildred Merrell's young life and devastated her family, Benjamin Franklin Levins was executed in the electric chair at the state prison in Raiford. He was believed to be responsible for at least nine, and possibly ten, murders across Tampa between 1926 and 1927. His execution brought an end to a reign of terror, but it could never restore the lives he had so brutally taken, including that of a five-year-old girl whose family was destroyed by a killer's mistake.
