Vanessa, 4, was convulsing in a fetal position nearby.Īutopsies said they had ingested parathion organophosphate dust-a deadly toxin citrus farmers used to kill insects. At her feet was a whimpering, spastic, barely alive Diane, 3. At the broken front door, was James Jr., 2, lifeless in the arms of a wide-eyed babysitter named Betsy Reese. Three preschoolers from the same family were found dead at home, said police. A homicide case was being built by Frank Cline, the sheriff of DeSoto County, a small Central South Florida community of rural farm fields and cattle pastures … and, as I was to find out later, renowned as a scary Florida “sundown town” of the Ku Klux Klan.Ĭronkite’s deep, paced, ominous tone projected unspeakable horror as he detailed a dreadful scenario where four siblings-sisters Betty Jean, 8 Alice, 7 Suzie Mae, 6 and Doreen, 5-were stricken with violent convulsions, all at the same time, in four separate classrooms at the local, all-black Smith-Brown school, just after lunchtime. The chief suspect? Their father, an itinerant fruit picker named James Richardson. Seven from the same family! Six dead, one dying. Seven black children poisoned in Arcadia, Florida-about 150 miles southwest of our town. You know, someone throwing blood on Selective Service records, or Jim Morrison or John Lennon arrested-or banned-again.
It wasn’t the routine Vietnam protest story of that era. There had been a tragedy in a small town in Florida that very afternoon. But something far beyond the pomposity in Cronkite’s presentation shocked me that night. “Quiet,” my father ordered, reaching for the gold and silver Space Command remote, aiming it at our brand new rabbit-eared Zenith TV set, in full view from the living room. I was sitting at the dinner table with my family, in the Breeze-Swept Estates neighborhood of Rockledge, a small town on the Indian River Lagoon in Brevard County, Florida. The world first heard about the seven poisoned Richardson kids on October 25, 1967, at 6:30 p.m.
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