PBSO marks 1924 slaying of deputy
WEST PALM BEACH — The Palm Beach County Sheriff ’s Office on Tuesday marked the anniversary of the Jan. 9, 1924, death of deputy Frederick A. Baker, one of the county’s first deputies slain in the line of duty.
The agency made a posting on its Facebook page, as it does for all such anniversaries, and also noted that Tuesday was Law Enforcement Appreciation Day.
Frederick Baker was a cousin of Sheriff Robert Baker and is forever linked to the yearslong feud that Baker and his father and predecessor as sheriff, George Baker, had with John Ashley, the leader of South Florida’s notorious Ashley Gang.
The gang roiled Prohibition-era South Florida with robberies, hijackings, rum-running, moonshining and murder.
In January 1929, when a posse led by Bob Baker opened fire at Ashley’s camp and moonshine operation in western Martin County, Joe Ashley, John’s father, was shot as he tied his shoes. John, seeing his father hit, killed Fred Baker. The gang fled, and angry townspeople burned the Ashleys’ camp and homes.
Fred Baker was presumed to be the first Palm Beach County deputy murdered until 1996, when William Wilbanks, a professor at Florida International University, unearthed the story of George Clem Douglas, killed Aug. 17, 1921, while trying to arrest a thief in Bare Beach, near Belle Glade.
The Ashley Gang would meet its end on Nov. 1, 1924, when Ashley and three cohorts would be stopped on a bridge near Sebastian and were “shot escaping.” Decades later, a retired deputy who’d been on the bridge that night would admit they were executed.