Avon Elwood North and the Murder of Bettie Albritton

Small towns carry dark secrets, as with this tale about Avon Elwood North, a mortician, who murdered his business partner, Bettie Albritton in 1951. Locals claimed that when business was slow, he'd just make more business. Tales of poisoning, embalming and expedient burials ran rapid through the community, gaining media attention from all over the nation, including Time magazine. The 1890's funeral home, where these sinister acts may have occurred, still stands today on the southwest corner of Broadway and Oak Avenue, in historic Fort Meade, Florida.

Avon Elwood North of Lake Wales, Florida, and business partner I.W. Albritton opened up a morticians practice in the old Fort Meade home in the late 1940’s. However, on January 1951, I.W. Albritton died, leaving his business dealings with his wife Bettie Albritton. In June of the same year, North visited Mrs. Albritton’s home, a wood-framed cracker dwelling in rural Fort Meade. Also present, were Mrs. Albritton’s seventeen year old son and a farm hand, when she had suddenly fell ill. North told the two boys to head into town to get an ambulance, but by the time they returned with medical attention, Mrs. Albritton was on the floor dead.

North said, “Mrs. Albritton had suffered an attack and fallen from her chair,” according to reports published at the time in the St. Petersburg Times. North had arranged Albritton’s funeral, including the embalming and was buried within 4 days. However, just days prior to her untimely death, she had changed her will, making North the sole benefactor of her $50,000 estate, which raised great suspicion.

A.E. North would later be arrested for first degree murder just days after Mr. Albritton’s death. The case was sensationalized by the media and newspapers. Rumors began to spread of poisonings, expeditious embalming, speedy burials and murder. An anonymous old timer quoted the following: “Well, I know there were more victims, not everybody knows that, but I do.” Apparently, when business was slow, A.E North allegedly made extra business by resorting to murder; although, this has never been proven but suspected. If true, this would make Avon Elwood North Fort Meade’s only serial killer in a town where a single murder occurs less than every seven years.

To make matters worse, Rev. Andrew Tampling, a pastor of the First Baptist Church of Fort Meade, and Stanley Myers, North's father-in-law were arrested and charged with attempting to tamper with a witness’s testimony. W.A. Arnold had testified to seeing bruises around Albritton's neck during the funeral arrangements. Tampling and Myers offered to pay Arnold $3,000 if he would make an affidavit that the testimony was extorted from him and that he was instructed by prosecutors in what to say.

North's appeal, which cited the meal blessings by the clergy as a source of influence over the jury, had reached first the State Supreme Court, then finally the U.S. Supreme Court, which refused to reverse the court's decision.

Time Magazine reported the following statement on Monday, January 25, 1954: “The Supreme Court refused to reverse the murder conviction of Florida Undertaker A. Elwood North, found guilty of bludgeoning and strangling his business partner, Mrs. Betty Albritton. North appealed to the Supreme Court on the ground that an evangelist had been permitted to say grace twice at the dining table of the jury that convicted him. The preacher had read from Psalms and Proverbs, North contended, and might have prejudiced the case with references to 'destruction of the wicked'"--thus influencing the jury's decision to convict North for his "wicked" ways.

North was executed by electric chair in 1954, proclaiming his innocence up until his death. According to Cinnamon Bair’s research, A.E. North had written a letter to his wife stating that "others are going to someday clear my name and let the public know that the life of an innocent man was taken." The letter was released by North’s wife after his death.

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