It's rare, but serious crimes do take place on Longboat.

Longboat Key residents and visitors alike woke up on Friday stunned to hear of the robbery-double homicide at the Zota Beach Resort. 

"It's a picturesque place to be,'' said Adam Freeman, who lives in St. Petersburg but was watching the investigation unfold from behind police lines along Gulf of Mexico Drive on Friday. "It's crazy. It's the last place you'd expect this. Last night, we were saying there was no crime around here.''

It had been 17 years since the last homicide on Longboat Key, which prides itself as one of the state's safest communities. In fact, according to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, serious crime is a fairly rare event in the town of about 8,000 year-round residents. Population grows to about 20,000 during the peak visitor season.

Here is a look at four homicides that took place between 1965 and 2000. Also, in 1990, a house fire killed  57-year-old Elizabeth Veltmann. Her son and husband were charged and convicted in federal court, but their convictions were ultimately overturned. 

2000

June 8: James L. Brown, a 57-year-old Broadway theater manager, was found dead in his Linley Street home. Eight days later, Jameson Nelson Smith was arrested and charged with second-degree murder. Smith told police he had performed some work at the victim’s house and knew the victim. A bloody handprint and a footprint at the scene linked Smith to the crime, as did his connection to the victim, whose car was also found 11 blocks from Smith’s home in Sarasota. On May 24, 2002, Smith was sentenced to 25 years in prison. State Department of Corrections records indicate his current release date as Sept. 13, 2021.

1986

Aug. 27: The body of real estate agent Martha McAllister was found on Aug. 30 behind the All Angels Episcopal Mission. She had been attacked and killed three days earlier while showing a home on Longboat Key. After her body was discovered, police were on the lookout for her red Subaru, which was missing. David Curtis Hartlep, 36 years old at the time, was arrested in Georgia in September. He was convicted of first-degree murder and robbery with a deadly weapon. He was sentenced to life in prison and is held today at a state prison in Taylor County.

1978

Aug. 25: On a quiet summer evening at the Longboat Key Holiday Inn, a tragedy unfolded that shocked the Key.  That’s when two men who had recently escaped from a Washington state prison work-release program and a 15-year-old girl found their way to the popular hotel on the north end of the Key. One of the escapees, Steven Critzer, began drinking in the hotel’s lounge, where a Longboat Key detective was also having a drink. The bartender told the detective he thought Critzer had a gun, but the detective found nothing when he searched him. But, within 30 minutes, Critzer had taken four hostages on the beach. He then shot and killed a 17-year-old tourist. A two-hour, multi-agency manhunt ensued, with Critzer taking cover behind St. Mary, Star of the Sea Catholic Church. SWAT team members captured him 12 hours after the shooting. He was eventually sentenced to life in prison.

1965

Aug. 28: After a not-guilty verdict in the death of his ex-lover’s husband in New Jersey the previous year, Carl Coppolino was charged with killing his wife on Longboat Key in 1965. At trial in Naples, he was defended by famed lawyer F. Lee Bailey, who had recently led the successful defense of Dr. Sam Sheppard, whose case the TV series The Fugitive was based. He would later go on to be part of O.J. Simpson's "dream team'' of defense attorneys.

Traces of the muscle relaxant  succinylcholine chlorine were found in his wife’s body. Though the body was exhumed, no such drug was found in the body of man who died in New Jersey, though a neck bone was found to be broken. Bailey raised the possibility the bone was broken during post-exhumation examination. The state claimed the drug could have disappeared from detection.

Bailey scoffed at the new science used to detect the compound in Coppolino's wife's body, but the jury was sure enough to deliver a second-degree murder conviction on April 28, 1967.

Coppolino served 12½ years and was paroled in 1979. According to the website murderpedia.com: "Coppolino holds a unique position as the only person ever charged with two entirely separate "love triangle" murders. Either case, taken on its own, might have resulted in acquittal, but coming in such quick succession, the two proved insurmountable. Juries are not prepared to extend coincidences quite that far."