By Michael Earl Simmons
Down here, every little community has its stories.
Most are quiet ones: family names, old churches, sandy roads worn smooth by time.
And then there are the stories folks lower their voices to tell.
Molino had one of those.
In the late 1890s, North Escambia County was still more woods than people. The piney forests pressed in close, and the turpentine camps smelled sharp in the heat. Dirt roads stitched together places like Cantonment, Bluff Springs, Millview, and Molino, carrying wagons, whispers, and sometimes trouble. Folks still remembered the terror stirred up just a few years earlier by Railroad Bill, and when peace finally settled back in, nobody was eager for another bad man.
But bad men have a way of showing up anyway.
His name was Sam Castlebury, and before the newspapers got hold of him, he was already practicing at being dangerous. Born in Alabama in 1872, Sam learned early how to take what didn’t belong to him. Houses. Stores. Anything not nailed down…and sometimes things that were. By seventeen, he was already headed to prison for burglary and theft.
Two years didn’t fix him.
Neither did the five he got the next time.
When Castlebury walked free in 1898, some folks hoped the worst was behind him. He took a job at John’s Turpentine Headquarters, and for a brief moment, it looked like he might stay on the right side of the line. But old habits don’t die easy in the piney woods.
On June 19, an argument broke out between Castlebury and a co-worker named Jim Montgomery. Montgomery came with his fists. Castlebury came with a turpentine cutter. Only one man walked away, and Castlebury ran, this time with murder added to his record.
Sheriff Ed McMillan of Escambia County, Alabama, swore out a warrant, and Sam did what he knew best. He crossed the line into Florida and went home to Molino.
That’s when life got hard for everyone else.
Castlebury armed himself with a stolen gun, broke into homes and businesses from Molino to Bluff Springs to Millview, and threatened neighbors with death if they talked. He never stayed in one place long and never slept indoors, choosing the woods instead. Every time deputies came looking, word reached him first. By the time the law arrived, Sam was gone.
The stories grew faster than the facts. They always do.
Before long, newspapers christened him “Railroad Bill No. 2,” borrowing the fear left behind by Slater. Whether he earned the title or not didn’t much matter. The north end of Escambia County lived on edge. Sheriff Smith swore in citizen deputies as fast as he could, trying to calm a countryside that felt hunted.
By October of 1898, Smith had had enough.
He formed a posse, including Deputies Sanders and O’Neal, along with six armed citizens, and went after the Bad Man of Molino in earnest. Fate stepped in on October 9, when Castlebury was walking a dirt road near Molino. An enemy he’d made waited behind a tree stump and opened fire, hitting him twice in the leg.
Wounded and desperate, Castlebury sent his three brothers-in-law – Charles, Joe, and Robert Harris – for food and ammunition. What he didn’t count on was their conscience. Deputies Ceasar Marshal and Levi Bailey stopped them, searched their supplies, and figured out where they were headed. It didn’t take much talking. The brothers admitted everything and agreed to lead the posse to him.
Near Wilder Creek, the hunt tightened.
Castlebury saw them coming but couldn’t run. He slipped into the swamp and hid as best he could. For hours, the posse spread out, searching the edges of the creek. Then Deputy O’Neal heard it—a cough. Just one sound, but enough.
They closed in and found Sam Castlebury in the water, only his head above the surface. Eight guns came up at once. He called out, begging them not to shoot. He said he was wounded. Said he had no cartridges left. Said he was giving up.
This time, it was true.
On Monday night, October 10, 1898, the Louisville & Nashville train rolled into Pensacola at the station near Alcaniz and Wright Streets. Word had spread ahead, and a crowd gathered to see him. Deputies Sanders and O’Neal stood proudly beside their prize, Castlebury on display like a trophy hauled in from the Gulf.
The Bad Man of Molino was done.
Sam Castlebury pleaded guilty to assault with intent to commit murder and received twenty years. Another twenty followed for breaking and entering. When the cell door closed, he was just twenty-six years old.
When it finally opened again in 1938, the world was unrecognizable.
He had missed a new century, the sinking of the Titanic, World War I, Prohibition, the Great Depression, and the rise of Adolf Hitler. Molino had changed. Pensacola had changed. The fear that once followed his name had faded into newspaper clippings and memory.
But for a time…one long, uneasy summer and fall, Sam Castlebury owned the shadows of North Escambia County. And down here, that’s the kind of thing people don’t forget, even when they wish they could.
Michael Earl Simmons is a retired Pensacola Police Officer, an author, and storyteller. His books are available on Amazon,
