Wednesday, October 7, 2026 | Noon–1:00 PM
Bodacious Restaurant | Downtown Pensacola
At 115 E. Zaragoza Street, the walls of an old Pensacola building had witnessed more than a century of change. For years, the Arbona family ran a saloon there. Later, as a new owner remodeled the property, workers found something hidden on the second floor: a human skeleton.
Who was the man? How had he come to be there? And what, if anything, did his death have to do with the building’s troubled past?
That past begins with Eugenio “Eugene” Arbona. Born in Spain in 1832, he came to America as a young man, killed a man, and received a life sentence. Released a decade later, he married, raised a family, and eventually settled on Zaragoza Street. But the saloon was no peaceful family home. Arbona left for Spain, and when he returned, he found that his family no longer wanted him there. He went back to Spain, where he died by suicide.
Years after the deaths of Arbona’s wife and son Robert, T. T. Todd bought the property and began remodeling. Then came the discovery upstairs. The skeleton was startling enough. What workers found with it made the mystery darker still.
Join Michael Earl Simmons, retired Pensacola police officer, author, and crime historian, for a lunchtime journey into the lives once lived at 115 E. Zaragoza Street—and the questions the building left behind.
Come for lunch. Leave with one more mystery from old Pensacola.
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