HORROR IN YBOR CITY-The Victor Licata Murders

“I was afraid of him, all right, the way you’d be afraid of any crazy man,” Philip later told the media. “I decided I’d get him to come back the next day and have the police waiting for him.”

Victor did return the next day and spent three hours talking to the short-order cook, but he disappeared before the police arrived, taking with him a bank envelope containing around $180.

But he returned to the restaurant for a third time the following day, and this time his Cousin wouldn’t let him get away. Philip waited for Victor to turn his back and then pounced on him, pinning his tiny Cousin to the wall until the police arrived.

Upon his arrest, Victor was ordered to the Florida State Prison in Raiford until a court could decide where he should permanently reside. But, again, Victor had other plans.

In December 1950, a correctional officer found Victor’s still-warm body dangling from a bed sheet tied to the top of his double-decked bed. According to investigators, shortly after his cellmate went to the yard for exercise, Victor committed suicide by hanging, the final chapter in the bloody Ybor City story of the “Dream Slayer.”

For a related story, read Reefer Madness Hits Ybor City!

First published in Cigar City Magazine, March 2010.

Paul Guzzo is a reporter for the Tampa Bay Times. He found the lost segregation-era all-black Zion Cemetery. His unique beat also includes the local film industry, Tampa history, professional wrestling, and the odd and unique people who make up this area. Guzzo has been a journalist in Tampa since 1999, including a senior writer for Cigar City Magazine and Tampa Mafia Magazine. In his younger years, he was an independent filmmaker best known for an award-winning documentary on Charlie Wall, Tampa’s first crime lord.