THE KILLER IN YBOR CITY!

Between 50 and 100 buildings were burned. Seven people were murdered. Several were wounded. And all this occurred throughout seven months in Ybor City at the hands of one man, “Robert Anderson, aka “The Firebug,” aka, “The Killer.”

For seven long months in 1912, Robert Anderson held Ybor City in a prison of fear. The men, women, and children of Ybor City were afraid to go outside. They were even scared to close their eyes at night. They wanted to hide inside, away from windows, away from the light, away from the eyes of “The Killer,” and to be on constant vigil in case he decided to enter their residence and make them or their home his next victim.

Before David Berkowitz became the Son of Sam, Ted Bundy was sneaking into sorority houses, Charles Manson was founding deadly cults, and Ted Kaczynski waged war on the nation through the mail; there was Robert Anderson.

A century later, few people seem to know about this dark period in Ybor City’s history; few know that their beloved historic district was once home to one of the nation’s first serial killers.

The first string of then-unsolved homicides began in 1911 on Christmas Eve when police found Tampa Steam Ways night watchman Leander Cutter murdered. In early 1912, police found an unidentified murdered African American man on the Seaboard tracks. On May 29, 1912, Manuel Perez was found dead near the Hendry & Knight docks, and on June 30, 1912, another Tampa Steam Ways night watchman, Edward Geary, was killed.

Police had no suspects in these murders, but there was no reason to believe they were connected. Also, it was 1912, and none of the victims were white, so the crimes were lost in the middle of the newspapers, and there was little public outcry to find the “men” behind the murders.

Then, on April 9, 1912, Anderson threw an anonymous letter over the wall at the Hillsborough County Jail. Anderson wrote that he was an African American man angry that some white men were having relations with African American women who lived on Fifth Avenue. In the letter, he then stated that he was responsible for the unsolved murders, and if law enforcement did not order a stop to this practice, he would burn the city to the ground.

When law enforcement did not speak out against what Anderson thought was a crime, he began mailing more letters with the same threat, sending some to the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office and some to the Tampa Police Department. When there was still no reaction from law enforcement to either listen to his demand or acknowledge his existence, Anderson carried out his threat.

For two months, Ybor City burned. From 50 to 100, fires were credited to him, most of them taking place in the African-American community’s lowest-income neighborhoods. In most cases, the fires were started with kerosene-soaked rags placed under a bed or in a corner among rubbish, where firefighters stated a fire could do the most harm.

None of the blazes elicited any severe damage until Anderson set fire to the original Centro Asturiano and destroyed the structure. It would take two years before a new building was erected.

Following the Centro Asturiano’s destruction, police searched for the man they called. “The Ybor City Firebug.” With no description or name of the suspect, police arrested and questioned a handful of individuals based on circumstantial evidence but released them each shortly after the questioning ended.

To make himself harder to find, Anderson turned himself into a woman. He sometimes dressed in drag when he lit fires. Witnesses began telling tales of a hideously ugly woman running from the homes moments before they erupted in flames.

While his tactics had Ybor City living in fear, law enforcement still ignored his request to stop the white men from having relations with the African American women, so he began using a more menacing approach to get attention. He traded his kerosene for a gun.

On August 9, a bi-racial African American woman named Ada was shot in the foot while sitting on her front porch. She never saw the shooter but said he must have fired at her from across the street while hiding behind a tree or a house. She said she did not know anyone who wanted to hurt her, and there was no warning before the shot was fired. She said she heard a loud boom, felt a stinging in her foot, and then noticed she had been shot. The woman suffered only a minor injury.

On August 11, another bi-racial African American woman, also named Ada, was shot and wounded by a phantom gunman while sitting on her porch. Again, the suspect escaped, and the victim said she did not know anyone wanting to harm her. Her injuries were more severe than the first Ada’s but were not life-threatening.

Police thought someone was looking to exact revenge on a woman named Ada who was “accidentally” firing at the wrong ones. But a few days after the August 11 shooting, “The Firebug” sent an anonymous letter to law enforcement stating he was behind the shooting and would continue to shoot anyone he wanted until white men were banned from sleeping with African American women. He also took credit for the unsolved Christmas Eve murder and the string of early 1912 unsolved murders but did not explain why he took their lives. 

Law enforcement again ignored his outlandish request, and Anderson remained true to his word.

Over the next month and a half, he shot and wounded another three individuals, two black women and another woman of mixed race.

At some point in September, Anderson sent an anonymous letter to the police department stating that he would kill an officer. Shortly after, he aimed at a police officer in an African-American community bordering Ybor City, known as The Scrubs. Anderson yelled to the officer from down the road that he would murder him and opened fire, unloading four shots at the officer. He missed. The officer returned fire and chased the gunman, but the pursuit failed. However, the officer added the suspect’s height, 5’6″; weight, 145lbs.-150lbs. ; and skin tone, a “ginger black,” to the description.

A few more men were arrested based on this description and released during the killing spree, and Anderson was never among them. Instead, he had the police completely baffled.

On September 26, at 10:30 p.m., Anderson walked into the Fourth Avenue and 15th Street home of Cuban woman Maria Louisa Rodriguez and, without warning, shot her. The bullet pierced her right side and broke a rung on the back of her chair. She died instantly. Her young son watched from the chair beside her, but the shooter entered and exited the house so briskly that he never saw him clearly. Rodriguez’s son gave chase, trying desperately to catch the man who had just murdered his mother, but another pursuit failed. The only description he could give was that the murderer was African American.