In the South, we like to take things slow.

A glass of sweet tea on the porch…
A warm breeze drifting in from the bay…
Old stories shared as the sun goes down…

But not all Southern stories are sweet.

Some are dark.

Some are tragic.

And some still echo through the streets of downtown Pensacola more than a century later.

On Thursday evening, May 28, I will host the very first Sweet Tea Murders LIVE: An Evening of Pensacola Crime Stories at the Pensacola Museum of Art.

What makes this event special is the setting itself.

The museum building once served as Pensacola’s Police Headquarters and City Jail from 1908 until 1956. Inside the very walls, prisoners once waited behind steel bars while detectives and officers worked the cases that shaped the city’s history.

And on this night, those stories will return.

During the evening, I will tell two remarkable Pensacola crime stories:

• The murder of Captain Martin Villar, a respected ship’s captain, whose violent death shocked the waterfront community.

• The infamous 1926 Axe Murder on Chipley Alley, one of the most chilling and mysterious crimes in Pensacola history.

This will not be a lecture.

It will be an interactive storytelling experience, told by someone who spent 30 years walking Pensacola’s streets as a police officer and homicide detective. The stories will unfold with the places, people, and investigative details that rarely appear in history books.

Guests will also receive a Sweet Tea Murders mason jar filled with Southern sweet tea, because around here the tea is always sweet…

…but the stories are murder.

The event begins at 6:30 PM on May 28 at the Pensacola Museum of Art.

Seats are limited.

If you enjoy true crime, Pensacola history, or simply a good story told in the place where it happened, this is an evening you will not want to miss.

🎟 Reserve your tickets now at:
https://sweetteamurders.com/event/sweet-tea-murders-live-an-evening-of-pensacola-crime-stories/

Because in the South, every town has its stories.

Some are sweet.

And some are murder.

Michael Earl Simmons