The Phantom of Rockledge: The Murder of Ethel Allen and the Curse of Jack’s Tavern
by M.P. Pellicer | Noir Notebook
Ethel Cool Allen vanished into the shadows of old Florida, and many believed the law failed her. Yet justice has strange ways of collecting its debts.
Prohibition officially ended in 1933 with the repeal of the Volstead Act, but illegal liquor still flowed through the scrub hammocks and backroads of Central Florida. Speakeasies thrived in secret, fed by moonshine runners, gamblers, and drifters who slipped through the darkness along Florida’s east coast.
Authorities raided a Rockledge pool hall known as the Blind Tiger and seized twelve gallons of moonshine along with cases of liquor. Deputies later uncovered even more 160-proof hooch hidden at the owner’s home. The criminal underworld had not disappeared with Prohibition—it had simply adapted.
Into that atmosphere stepped Jack C. Allen.
Originally from Pennsylvania, Allen arrived in Florida during the early 1930s and built a modest fortune through Allen’s Amusements, a vending machine business. He invested in a gas station and opened a small roadside restaurant along the lonely stretch of Dixie Highway near the Florida East Coast Railway tracks. Every passing train rattled the building like an earthquake.
In December 1933, sensing opportunity after the return of legal liquor, Allen expanded the establishment into Jack’s Tavern, a two-story roadhouse filled with jukebox music, whiskey, and travelers drifting through the humid Florida night.
Among the regulars was eighteen-year-old Ethel Allen. No one ever confirmed whether she shared any relation to Jack Allen. Witnesses described her as attractive, quiet, and familiar with the tavern crowd.
Less than a year after Jack’s Tavern opened, Ethel disappeared.
Death Beside the Indian River
In November 1934, Alabama truck drivers noticed turkey buzzards circling low over the Indian River north of Eau Gallie near Rocky Water Tourist Camp. Drawn by the scavengers, they discovered a horrific sight along the shoreline.
A nude, mutilated corpse lay abandoned near the water.
The body had decomposed badly, but Alma Finney—owner of a rooming house above Walter’s Billiard Parlor in Cocoa—identified the victim as Ethel Allen. A tattoo above the victim’s right knee sealed the identification: a rope circle surrounding the initials “B.K.”
Finney also identified a ruby ring recovered from the body.
Whoever murdered Ethel unleashed astonishing brutality upon her.
The killer slashed her throat. A knife wound cut deep into her forehead and another pierced the base of her skull. Someone crushed the right side of her face so violently that part of her jawbone and upper teeth vanished. One leg had nearly separated from the body. The murderer attempted to burn the remains before dumping them into the river.
Only a patch of hair remained on the back of her head.
She wore nothing except part of a stocking wrapped around one ankle.
Investigators never recovered her clothing. They found only her purse, still containing $26.
Witnesses last saw Ethel climbing into a car with a man calling himself William H. Wilson. Several people later reported seeing the pair drinking together before Wilson allegedly offered to drive her to visit relatives in Wauchula.
Then Wilson vanished.
The Jersey Devil
Within days, police received reports that Wilson had surfaced in Miami, driving a new Ford sedan with Pennsylvania plates. Officers searched Flagler Street, Miami Beach, and downtown neighborhoods, but the suspect disappeared once again.
Investigators soon uncovered the truth.
“William H. Wilson” served as only one alias among many used by a career criminal named Willard Borton.
Locals in Rockledge already knew him by another name: “Jersey Devil” Borton.
By 1935, authorities formally indicted Borton for Ethel Allen’s murder after witnesses confirmed the pair spent considerable time together before her death. Yet prosecutors lacked enough evidence to bring him to trial.
While the murder investigation stalled, tragedy devastated the Allen family. In January 1935, Ethel’s sister Emily died at age twenty-four. Another sister, Edith, died in 1938 shortly after giving birth. A brother, Leroy, followed them to the grave in 1939.
Meanwhile, Willard Borton fled across the country and reinvented himself.
The Phantom of Bel-Air
By the late 1930s, Borton had transformed into one of California’s most notorious jewel thieves.
Newspapers dubbed him “The Phantom of Bel-Air.”
Using aliases such as Ralph Graham and Ralph Evans, Borton burglarized the lavish homes of Hollywood elites, including Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck. Authorities linked him to millions of dollars in stolen jewels.
He also carried a long criminal history from New Jersey, including prison escapes and robbery charges.
When California authorities finally arrested him in 1939, Florida investigators reopened Ethel Allen’s case. Sheriff Roy F. Roberts re-interviewed tavern owners, waitresses, ministers, and acquaintances connected to Borton’s time in Rockledge.
Still, prosecutors concluded they lacked enough evidence to extradite him for Ethel’s murder.
The FBI matched Borton’s fingerprints and photographs to the aliases he used in California.
Borton had even married a woman named Charlotte using the alias of Ralph Evans. He pled not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity for the charges of stealing approximately $2 million in jewels.
Borton was found guilty of the string of high-profile robberies, including a burglary involving actress Carole Lombard. Courts sentenced him to life imprisonment under habitual criminal statutes.
Ethel Allen never received her day in court.
Blood Debts Inside Folsom
Prison walls failed to contain Willard Borton.
In 1942, he escaped from Folsom State Prison alongside two other inmates before authorities recaptured him. Deputies stopped another escape attempt in 1947.
Then, in 1949, violence finally caught him.
Borton worked as a prison barber when several inmates attacked him inside Folsom. One prisoner slit his throat while others struck him with a hatchet. Officials never fully explained the motive behind the savage killing.
One of the attackers, Fred Evans, already served time for murder after killing a man in a Santa Cruz hobo jungle during an argument involving a teenage boy.
Evans survived only two more months.
Another inmate stabbed him to death in December 1949.
The cycle of violence continued. Authorities later charged prisoners John Allen and Louis Smith with Borton’s murder. Courts sentenced both men to death after prosecutors labeled them ringleaders in a condemned-row mutiny at San Quentin State Prison.
Appeals delayed their executions for six years, but California eventually executed both men in the gas chamber in 1957.
Some locals later whispered that Ethel Allen’s vengeance had finally reached the man accused of murdering her.
But if her spirit truly found revenge, it brought no peace.
The Haunting of Jack’s Tavern
Jack’s Tavern never escaped darkness.
Even during renovations in 1936, burglars broke into the property and stole liquor, cigarettes, and a rifle. Strange incidents continued for decades as ownership changed hands repeatedly.
During World War II, locals nicknamed the tavern “the battleground of the Navy” because fights and violence erupted there so frequently.
In 1944, Jack Allen sold the business to Conrad Korecky, who renamed it Cooney’s Tavern. Death, robberies, riots, and bizarre accidents followed almost immediately.
A twelve-year-old boy named Isiah Armstrong suffered severe head injuries after a car struck him outside the tavern in 1951. Though he survived and later became a minister, locals eventually connected the incident to stories about a ghostly child wandering the property.
Thieves repeatedly targeted the establishment throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Gunmen invaded nearby cottages. Burglars pried open windows under the cover of darkness. Armed robbers stormed the tavern after midnight.
Conrad Korecky died in 1968, and ownership was taken over by his family. Within a few months, Cooney’s Tavern was up for sale, but there were no takers.
Then organized crime entered the story.
Mafia Ties and the Cracker Mob
In 1970, authorities prosecuted gambling boss Harlan “The Colonel” Blackburn in Jacksonville. Blackburn allegedly controlled a sprawling criminal network tied to the Trafficante crime family.
The so-called “cracker mob” handled moonshine, gambling, and bolita rackets across rural Central Florida.
Prosecutors desperately wanted testimony from Clayton Korecky, owner of Cooney’s Tavern, believing he possessed key information about Blackburn’s gambling operation.
Korecky repeatedly avoided court appearances by claiming heart problems. FBI agents reportedly surveilled him for weeks and observed him working normally at the tavern despite his medical excuses.
When the prosecutor subpoenaed his wife, Bessie Lee Korecky, she also supplied a certificate signed by Dr. Ross from Merritt Island.
The judge ordered that Korecky and his wife not leave their home until they were examined by a court-appointed cardiologist. The judge wanted more than one doctor to examine the pair, but after a 3-hour examination by Dr. Daniel Jacobs, eight other cardiologists who were contacted to schedule the examination for Korecky all claimed they were booked a year in advance.
One could suspect these doctors did not want any involvement with a case that was trying a Mafia figure.
Witness testimony eventually revealed Korecky had transferred property to satisfy gambling debts connected to Blackburn’s organization.
Blackburn later received convictions on gambling charges and spent decades behind bars before dying in 1998.
By then, however, the tavern’s criminal reputation had already merged with something far stranger.
The Ghost of Ethel Allen
In 1972, owners renamed the building The Mad Duchess and embraced a theatrical mobster theme. Three years later, local Episcopalian minister Rev. Chip Finzer conducted a séance and exorcism inside the restaurant after employees reported terrifying encounters.
Witnesses described icy chills and oppressive sensations.
Finzer claimed multiple spirits haunted the property.
Employees and patrons soon began reporting sightings of a mysterious woman reflected in mirrors. Several witnesses insisted the apparition appeared only through the glass and vanished when they turned around.
A bartender claimed he watched a woman in a white dress glide silently between booths after closing time.
Another employee mocked the haunting moments before a bottle exploded at his feet.
Owner Willy Schumacher later recalled the first disturbing events:
“It all began the night we opened, Halloween of 1974. Things disappeared. You answered the phone, no one at the other end. You were on the balcony, the radio downstairs started blaring, you came downstairs, it stopped.”
Construction crews remodeling the building uncovered three hidden rooms.
By the late 1970s and early 1980s, paranormal investigators focused intensely on the tavern. Rockledge psychic Jean Stevens described suffocating sensations, rattling glasses, swinging fixtures, and disturbing visions involving knives, stairwells, and terrified women.
During one séance, Stevens claimed a shrill voice repeatedly whispered only two words:
“Ethel Allen.”
Another spirit allegedly complained that Ethel received all the attention.
Employees also reported encounters with a ghostly little girl and an older man dressed in work boots and dark slacks.
The haunting followed the building through every reinvention. The Mad Duchess became The Loose Caboose, then Sparrowhawk, then Gentleman Jim’s.
In 1985, new owners renamed the restaurant Ashley’s.
The ghosts allegedly stayed behind.
One employee later claimed she saw the feet of a woman wearing 1930s-style shoes inside a restroom stall. When she checked the stall, it stood empty.
As of 2026, Ashley’s of Rockledge still operates inside the old Tudor-style building beside the railroad tracks.
Locals insist Ethel Allen never truly left.
Some believe her spirit still wanders the mirrors, hallways, and stairwells of the old tavern, forever searching for the justice she never received in life.
Sources – The Miami Herald, The Sacramento Bee, The San Francisco Examiner