Hi, park enthusiasts. I'm your host, Dillia D'Aambra. And the story I'm going to tell you about today is one that is near and dear to my heart, seeing as how I've spent a good amount of my career living and reporting in South Florida. This case came to me in the wildest of ways. I was camping deep in the Florida Everglades with some family friends when we happened to walk into a visitor

center gift shop. While we were all trying to get on the Wi-Fi, my friend saw a small book

titled Death in the Everglades, the murder of Guy Bradley, America's first martyr to environmentalism.

She brought it over to me and said it looked like it would make a great episode for Park Predators.

And man, was she right?

Stuart McIver's nonfiction novel published in 2003 is a fantastic read, and I highly recommend

it. It was a piece of source material I leaned heavily on to put this episode together.

And the reason for that is because the victim in this story, Guy Bradley,

was brutally murdered 119 years ago in 1905, which meant finding original, credible, still existing

news coverage wasn't necessarily going to be easy or possible for me in this case.

For those of you who don't know, the Everglades is a mammoth

protected natural ecosystem that essentially makes up a river of grass that spans the southern

tip of Florida. Some of the rarest and most endangered types of wildlife and plants exist there,

including alligators, American crocodiles, flamingos, Florida Panthers, and manatees.

You can take guided tours on boats and catch a glimpse of the more than 360 species of birds that call the

Everglades their home. At the turn of the 20th century, though, the skies over the ecosystem began to change.

Fewer and fewer and fewer feathered creatures were seen adorning mangrove trees and

nesting grounds.

And the man charged with getting to the bottom of why they were disappearing, found

himself fighting a fearsome foe that would ultimately prove to be fatal.

This is Park Predators. I'm Oh Oh Oh

I'm

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