The year 1955 was not only full of events, but it was a tragedy for a Palm Beach, Florida family. This was time when an average yearly salary was that of $4,130.00 and the average minimum wage was only $1.00. That doesn’t seem like very to us now, but it that time it was considered a lot. Back then a new house would cost you around $10,950.00. As well, the average cost of rent would be roughly $87.00. And if you wanted a television in your home, it would cost you around $99.95 for a black and white one. Also, the cost of a new car WAS about $1,900.00 and gas
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would only cost you 23 cents a gallon..
Deleted: If you look at the numbers you are probably thinking how you wish it would still only cost that much for gas, but when you look at how much minimum wage was and the cost of everything else then you would see that it is just like today
Knowing what the costs were in 1955 is only the money part of it; There were several important events that took place leading up to the American Civil Rights Movement. Rosa Parks was a black female who was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama for not giving up her seat in the front
Deleted: let us take a look at some of the other events that took place.
of the bus to a white person when she was asked. Rosa Park’s arrest was a big step for the movement because that event helped put it in full swing. More transition here, Emmett Till was a fourteen year old black teenager who was unjustly murdered because he didn’t show respect to a white female in Money, Mississippi. This was a time when segregation was big and Martin Luther King, Jr. was trying to change that for the black community in America.
On a less serious note, the music and television shows in this age were some to remember. The rock ‘n’ roll age of music was big and so were the names; Elvis Presley, Bill Haley and the Comets, and Chuck Berry. Certain television shows that were a hit during that time were Lassie, American Bandstand, Gunsmoke, and The Phil Silvers Show. A few other things that happened were; Disneyland opened up in Anaheim, California, “In God We Trust” was added to the paper currency we use today, and Hurricane Diane hit the northeast causing over $1 billion dollars in damage and killing 200 people. With what seemed like a normal year of events, there was one
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that would make headlines; the murder of Judge Curtis E. Chillingworth and his wife Marjorie Chillingworth. I’m confused; the Till murder or this one? Make clear the focus here, and put an argument with this last sentence. Who killed them? Or, if that is known, why?
On the moonless and warm night of June 15, 1955, the lives of Judge Chillingworth and his wife would change forever. Develop a paragraph or so introducing these people? Why were they? Background? Ages? The couple returned to their home in Manalapan, Florida around 10pm after a dinner they attended earlier that evening. Nobody thought that that was the last time anyone would see or talk to the Chillingworths. The carpenter who arrived the next morning at 8am noticed that the house was open but nobody was home. But when coworkers of the judge realized something was wrong was when he didn’t show up for a hearing that was scheduled that morning for 10am. When investigators got to the house they noticed several things that seemed to be out of the ordinary. The porch light had been broken, the blood drops that were found on the walkway of the beach, and the two used rolls of adhesive tape: one in the living room and the other on the beach. Some other things that investigators found odd were that the keys were still in his Plymouth, the money in her purse and his wallet, and their swimsuits still dry. With these pieces of information they ruled out accidental drowning and robbery. Since nobodies were ever recovered, the case went unsolved and remained open one man’s drunken mouth will tell all. It was in 1960, that Floyd “Lucky” Holzapfel had one to many to drink and started talking to a friend about what had happened to the Chillingworths. He began telling him how he was hired by Judge Joseph Peel to kill him because Peel was feeling threatened by Chillingworth. Holzapfel’s story began with the last night that the Chillingworths were seen. He arrived at their beach front house around 1am with his accomplice George “Bobby” Lincoln. Floyd awoke the
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judge telling him that it was holdup. They had no intention of killing the wife, but since she was a witness, she had to go to. They taped their wrist up and took them to the boat on the beach that would take them out into the ocean. Once they got about several miles out into sea, the men strapped weights to the couple. They threw Marjorie overboard first, with Lucky saying “Ladies first.” Once she sank, both men went after Curtis. He was a formal Navy veteran, so when he was thrown overboard he knew how to keep himself afloat. The killers were not happy, so one hit him over the head with a shotgun breaking the barrel of it; but this only dazed him. Frustrated that Curtis was still afloat, they lifted him up out of the water and strapped a 25 pound anchor around his neck. Once they let him go, they watched the trail of bubbles that slowly disappeared as Curtis sank deeper into the ocean. Once the job was finished, Halzapfel called Peel and stated, “The motor is fixed.”