The vibrant postcard, with the image of a peacock on the front, arrived in the mail from Florida on October 7, 1974. Its message was endearing and personal.
‘My favorite family, I hope you are well, and I hope that my dog is not preggers. Feed her as well as you please. I forgot to give you some money for her keep. Take her to Dr. Miller if she needs attention. Be home soon. J’
These light-hearted handwritten words were the last time James Norris’ parents and five siblings ever heard from the handsome 24-year-old ‘romantic’.
Norris vanished into thin air shortly after they received the postcard, which had been sent on October 4 from the town of Inglis located north of Tampa. Suddenly his final message was an ‘essential clue’ in a mystifying missing person’s case.
Speaking exclusively to DailyMail.com, his sister Rosemary Norris-Southward, 63, said: ‘It was really a big surprise when we got the postcard. He wasn’t the type to send a postcard when he was on vacation. I think he was starting to get nervous. I think he thought “nobody knows where I am so I’d better let them know.”‘
Post college, the easy-going and beguiling ‘hippie’ had cast himself into the carefree, drug-friendly culture that was San Francisco in the Seventies. He was renting an apartment with a roommate that he also shared with his Afghan dog, Casaelya.
Unbeknownst to his family, Norris – fun-loving, adventurous but flawed – had flown from northern California to Miami on October 3 with $12,000 cash he’d pooled from friends to take part in what he’d hoped would be a profitable, small-time drug deal.
The plan had been to purchase high-quality marijuana sourced from Columbia and to sell it at a profit back in the Bay Area. But the deal went south and within hours Norris was dead, authorities say.
His skeletal remains were eventually found by workmen in April 1976. They had been buried among the Florida undergrowth near a remote neighborhood called Tennille in Taylor County, just off Highway 98 which runs north-south along the Gulf coast.
But it wasn’t until 2010 with advanced DNA testing that a positive match was made and a murder investigation was launched. Police have never revealed a cause of death.
Today, 50 years on from Norris’ disappearance, his death is still a daily source of anguish for his family.
Here they speak with DailyMail.com about what they think happened amid their ongoing hopes that someone will be arrested for his murder – which remains one of the oldest cold cases in the Sunshine State.
Rosemary Norris-Southward was 13 at the time Norris disappeared.
‘I think they robbed and murdered my brother and took the money,’ she told DailyMail.com.
‘Early on the investigators identified members of this drug organization in Citrus County. From what I’ve seen some of these people are still alive.
‘They have reached out to law enforcement in other states. They’ve done a very thorough investigation. They have persons of interest but they can’t prove it was them.’
The postcard was mailed from Inglis, an oceanside town in Levy County, located 75 miles south of Tennille.
Rosemary strongly suspects her brother sent the postcard to be a clue to his location when he realized he was out of his depth with the drug deal.
She said: ‘We had never heard of Inglis and had no idea why Jimmy was in Florida.
‘Even though it wasn’t at the location where the homicide occurred he was dropping a pin so people could find him. It was definitely a smart thing for him to do otherwise we would have been completely at a loss.
‘The fact that he sent this postcard from such a remote area really was an essential clue. Even if we’d found out he was in Miami there would have been no way for us to know he’d crossed over to another part of the state.’
Today Rosemary, a graphic designer, uses her personal experience to help law enforcement with missing person’s cases.
The family, living in the town of Fairfield 50 miles north east of San Francisco, hired a private investigator shortly after Norris’ disappearance who – wrongly – concluded he had fled the country with the money and changed his name.
Speaking for the first time about her former love, his girlfriend at the time revealed that Norris told her he was planning a drug deal in Florida so he could make enough money to start a new life with her in Hawaii.
‘He was a romantic and artistic person,’ Catherine Seekot told DailyMail.com. She and Norris dated on and off for two years. ‘He enjoyed life. He was very handsome. He had luminescent green eyes set off by his dark hair and tanned skin.’
Catherine, now 75, was living on the island of Maui at the time and revealed Norris had planned to move there to be with her.
‘He said he was going to Florida but he didn’t give me any specifics. We wanted to sell some weed so he could have money when he moved to Hawaii,’ she said.
‘We spoke by phone before he left – I never thought I wouldn’t see him again. I hadn’t realized it had been 50 years.’
With no electricity or phone at the time of Norris’ disappearance, it took Seekot two months to discover he was missing.
She had held onto the letters he sent to her and they were eventually turned over to police as they contained details of his movements before the doomed trip to Florida.
Investigators with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement said Norris traveled with an associate from Miami five hours north to Citrus County on the Gulf coast.
At the time, the area was the wild west for smuggling marijuana into America due the remoteness of the sparsely populated coastline.
Police believe Norris went to meet members from a local drug organization based in Citrus County who had connections in Miami, San Francisco and San Diego in southern California.
Despite the passage of time, investigators are still convinced that there are people alive today who have information about the murder and last year released three names connected to the case.
They say a man, Willis Gillett, known as Will, may have had inside knowledge of what happened to Norris. He lived in Citrus County and also San Diego but died about 30 years ago.
Norris’ roommate, Mitchell Lazor, may have also had information but he disappeared in the San Francisco area in 1994 – although FDLE does not believe the disappearance is related to Norris’ murder.
Another man, Dan Bever, lived in the City of Hialeah near Miami, may have had useful information but he died in Palm Beach County about 25 years ago.
Dogged investigators are still convinced there are people alive today who have knowledge of Norris’ killing. They also followed a lead to Aspen, Colorado where they say a man previously related to the Citrus County drug organization lived.
In 2021, the FDLE told The Aspen Times that the unnamed man, now in late 60s or 70s, moved to the mountain resort town in the 1980s and has discussed the case over the decades.
‘Over the years that we’ve investigated this we’ve gotten a lot of the pieces of the puzzle. Someone could be holding a piece of the puzzle that they may not realize fits into the big picture,’ said FDLE Special Agent Supervisor Mike Kennedy.
‘We’re working for the family of Mr. Norris so they can find out what happened to their loved one. We do have persons of interest and they should be held accountable for their actions even if it is 50 years later.’
Norris’ cousin, Yvonne McAllister, 75, shared a house with Norris before he headed to Florida. ‘Jimmy was tall and handsome. He was the whole package and an all round nice guy,’ she told DailyMail.com.
Another sister, Theresa Huzel, 66, who was 16 at the time Norris disappeared, said: ‘He had a certain charisma and would light up a room. He was a bit of a hippie and wore interesting clothes. As a big brother I looked up to him.’
She praised law enforcement which is keeping up the hunt for Norris’ killer after half a century.
‘It’s nice to know that there is someone who is interested in this cold case,’ she said. ‘There’s still some dedicated public servants who care enough to do this difficult work. That’s been a comfort.
‘Whether or not it gets solved in my lifetime I don’t know.’
Norris’ remains were buried along with his mother Esperanza who died aged 86 in 2007. His father, also called James Norris, was British and died in 2000 aged 76. Casaelya, Norris’ beloved dog, lived with the family until she died of old age.
Catherine, the former girlfriend, said: ‘I knew James would never leave his mother and siblings and his dog. He was very loyal to his family. He loved his mother unconditionally.’
She added: I fell in love a couple of times after James but didn’t marry.’
Of his early demise, she lamented: ‘He was a little too naïve about the ways of the world.’
If you have information about the murder of James Norris, please contact FDLE in Tallahassee at (800) 342-0820.
The Norris family has established a Facebook page and a website sharing information about the search for Norris.
