True Crime Florida: The Florida Keys Files

One highway crosses the islands. The files beneath it run much deeper. In The Florida Keys Files, J.R. Stranahan follows crimes and mysteries from Florida Bay to Key West: the killing of bird warden Guy Bradley, the disappearance of fire chief Bum Farto, a police corruption trial, unresolved Lower Keys murders, the MacIvor family homicides, and the cases of Janet Acosta and Michelle Osborne. The final chapter opens six shorter Keys files involving Elena Hoyos Mesa, a Key West bookstore murder, a fatal harbor crossing, crimes against endangered Key deer, an organized illegal lobster harvest, and a federal backpack-bomb prosecution. Built from court opinions, official investigations, public records, historical archives, and contemporary reporting, this is Monroe County history centered on the people whom legends and headlines too often leave behind.