From the The Tampa Tribune, Sunday, July 10, 1983
By ANDY TAYLOR and DANIEL MCLAUGHLIN Tribune Staff Writers
Billy Ferry was a creature of the night ' When the sun descended behind tall scrub pines in the Ocala National Forest, Ferry emerged from . the hermit's fortress he had constructed by the light ,of the moon. Dark and tattered clothes covered his 5-feet, 9-inch, 240-pound frame. A water; canteen dangled from his neck, resting on his beer-belly. And when flames from the bonfire he built each night began to , crackle and roar, his "Big Scrub" neighbors said they knew it was time to get inside and latch their doors. For when the sun went down, they say, the forest belonged to John William "Billy" Ferry Jr. He roamed the woods in a seemingly never ending quest for water. Neighbors watched through their windows as he quietly slipped under the branches of the lonesome pines, heading for Clear Lake. - There, he washed his clothes, perhaps bathed; or filled his canteen. . ' . His preference was cool, clear well water. Neighbors said he'd sneak into their yards and draw from their wells. He never drank tap . water. He told family members it was poisonous. There wasn't a person on Tree Stump Road who wasn't aware of Ferry's nocturnal habits. And like most people who encountered him, they said they were happy to see him go.
Danger-signs surround Billy Ferry's property where members of the Marion County Sheriff s Department and Florida Department of Law Enforcement searched for the body of Ferry's common-law wife. Indeed, others besides those in the forest may have encountered Ferry. Last weekend at a Clair-Mel City ' Winn-Dixie store, according to police, Ferry appeared again. It happened In a flash. A long-haired man jumped through the electronically controlled doors at the store, into a Fourth of July weekend crowd of holiday shoppers. There is no way of telling whether those who caught their final glimpse of the man had time to know it was gasoline before it was ignited. Three, including a 4-year-old girl, died. Eighteen were burned.
Relatives, neighbors, high school classmates, defense attorneys, co-workers and Jail guards describe Billy Ferry as a man who didn't fit in not on the Ocala forest campgrounds nor the tugboats on which he worked nor the Tampa convenience stores where he hung out "He was sort of like a biker type, sort of like a loner, real tough like," said a former schoolmate. Ferry dropped out three months before the end of his senior year at Brandon High School, say his sisters, to earn $1,200 a month as a merchant seaman. But there, too, Ferry was like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle that had been thrown into the wrong box. Burly shipmates resented his reluctance…..
Officials seek ID of body By ANDY TAYLOR and DANIEL MCLAUGHLIN Tribune Staff writers
The authorities want to know if the body is that of Susan Elaine Hallowell, the missing common-law wife of John William “Billy” Ferry Jr. Police say they plan to see if a body found near a river in Citrus County two years ago is that of Susan Elaine Hallowell, the missing common-law wife of accused Winn-Dixie firebomber John William "Billy" Ferry Jr. The headless body of a woman, 20 to 30 years old, was found September 1981 where the Withlacoochee River widens in the northern part of the county. The skull was found 30 miles away in Hernando County nine months later. It was found under a blackberry bush in the woods near U.S. 19 and Centrailia Avenue, just north of Weeki Wachee. Experts matched the head and body by examining pieces of the backbone, said Florida State University Anthropologist Dan Morse. Hallowell, 24 at the time of her disappearance in April 1980, has been the subject of a newly opened investigation in Marion County this week, when her name surfaced following Ferry's arrest in Tampa last Sunday. Marion County deputies and Florida Department of Law Enforcement technicians spent Friday and part of Saturday digging in the front yard of a campsite in the Ocala National Forest where Ferry and Hallowell had lived.
www.newspapers.com
