HORROR IN YBOR CITY-The Victor Licata Murders

Following the report’s release, the state attorney announced he would not even indict Victor for murder, saying it would be a waste of money to try someone for murder who was “definitely established” as insane. Victor was instead given a life sentence at a mental institution in Chattahoochee, Florida, with no parole. Victor, though, didn’t need parole. He found another way out of the institution.

On October 15, 1945- just one day short of the 12th anniversary of the Licata murders–Victor’s cell at the institution was found empty. Victor, along with four other patients, had escaped.

One of the escaped inmates was caught just hours after the empty cells were found and claimed that they sawed the iron bars from a cell window with a piece of tin and climbed to freedom. One of the institution’s attendants swore he checked the bars hours before the escape, and they were fully intact. But, investigators said a piece of tin couldn’t cut through iron bars and that even with a hacksaw, it would have taken days to do so, not mere hours. They concluded the escape was made possible through inside help.

According to investigators, the escapees obtained cellblock keys from one of the attendants and used them to meet in the same cell block. For how many nights they met is unknown, but they met enough times to saw the bars from a window in that cellblock; though never completely sawing them away, as doing so would have been noticeable. Instead, they sawed them to the point that they could remain intact but be easily broken when they were ready to escape. On the night they escaped, they broke the sawed bars away from the window and climbed down a sheet ladder.

Four of the five fugitives were quickly found; Licata successfully escaped the county. An ax murderer was on the loose. And, to compound matters, cellmates stated that Victor had recently been talking about his desire to murder every family member.

He may have tried to make good on that desire five years later.

In August 1950, Victor casually walked into his Cousin Philip’s restaurant in New Orleans, telling his Cousin that he had been working as a laborer in Louisiana for the past nine months and as a laborer in Texas and Delaware before that. Philip played it cool, fixing Victor’s dinner and then buying him a few beers at a bar across the street. Finally, he told Victor he needed to go home but asked him to return the next day.