The Motor Is Fixed

In November 1958, twenty-one-year-old Lew Gene Harvey left his Jacksonville home with a man calling himself John Lynch.

Days later, Harvey's body surfaced in a Palm Beach County canal-shot, weighted, and discarded.

The name John Lynch led investigators to Floyd "Lucky" Holzapfel.

Holzapfel led them back to former municipal judge Joseph A. Peel Jr.

And Peel led investigators toward a secret Florida had been unable to prove for five years.

The Motor Is Fixed is a deeply researched account of the criminal network that survived after the mysterious 1955 disappearance of Circuit Judge Curtis Chillingworth and his wife, Marjorie, from their Manalapan home.

Rather than beginning with Florida's famous missing judge, author Elias J. North follows the lesser-known murder that helped reopen the road to the truth: the killing of Lew Gene Harvey.

The investigation would uncover a web of violence, gambling connections, investment fraud, false identities, informants, a murder-for-hire plot, hidden recording equipment, immunity deals, and testimony from men who had every reason to protect themselves.

Inside this Florida After Dark case:

• The murder of Lew Gene Harvey and the mysterious "John Lynch"

• Floyd "Lucky" Holzapfel's connection to multiple violent crimes

• Joseph Peel's fall from municipal judge to convicted murderer

• The attempted killing of Harold Gray

• James Yenzer's dangerous undercover role

• Jim Wilber's forgotten part in the secret Melbourne motel recordings

• The murder contract that became a law-enforcement trap

• Bobby Lincoln's immunity bargain and eyewitness testimony

• The Fort Pierce murder trial

• Why the famous motel recordings were never played for Peel's jury

• The federal fraud case involving Insured Capital Corporation

• The disputed facts, conflicting dates, and historical myths that still surround the case

Drawing from Florida appellate decisions, federal court records, Florida Sheriffs Bureau accounts, reward litigation, government records, and period reporting, The Motor Is Fixed separates documented fact from decades of retelling.

The code phrase said the job was finished.

The criminal network kept running until everyone who knew the secret became a threat to someone else.

A Florida After Dark Case.