Travel terror

What was your worst travel experience?”

A member of the online community Reddit posed the question earlier this month, and John Clarke, of Ontario, Canada, was one of more than 9,000 users who answered.

Clarke’s answer brought him back to the August 1978 night at the former Longboat Key Holiday Inn his family spent huddled in the hotel’s sauna, terrified that a gunman would burst through the door.

After answering the question, Clarke started Googling. He discovered from the Florida Department of Corrections website that Steven Critzer, the man responsible for the night of terror, died in prison Oct. 16, while serving multiple life sentences. He was 66.

Trip of terror
Clarke was 12 when his family traveled to Florida for the first time, and the trip started out picturesquely. Clarke met his first girlfriend — another 12-year-old staying at the hotel — walked the beach, searched for sand dollars and played in the hotel’s arcade.

August 22, 1978 was the family’s last night at the hotel. While Clarke and his brother and sister swam in the hotel’s indoor pool, his parents ate at the hotel’s restaurant. There, they saw Critzer with a long gun.
Clarke’s parents ordered the children out of the pool into the nearby sauna.

“As we did so, screaming people started running in from the doors to the beach. My parents ushered as many people as they could into the sauna with us, where we learned that the gunman had headed out to the beach and started taking hostages,” Clarke wrote.

Earlier that afternoon, Critzer and John Waugh, both of whom had escaped from a Washington state prison work release program, checked in at the hotel with a 15-year-old girl. They broke into a Key home and stole a weapon before checking in at the Holiday Inn.

According to the Aug. 25, 1978 Longboat Observer — the newspaper’s fifth edition — a bartender spotted Critzer’s weapon and asked off-duty police detective Tom Coons to search him. He found no weapon, but the encounter probably scared away Waugh, who drove away in their stolen vehicle.

Around 10:15 p.m., Critzer headed to the beach and rounded up a half-dozen hostages — just after Clarke’s parents led the family into the sauna. The family learned what was going on from a group of screaming beachgoers who also sought sanctuary in the sauna.

“Everybody was pretty terrified,” Clarke said. “Nobody knew where he was going to go.”

As Critzer attempted to take hostages, 17-year-old Edward McWilliams, a guest at the hotel didn’t move quickly enough for Critzer, who shot and killed the teen. Other hostages fled, and he fired another shot, injuring a 15-year-old girl.

Critzer then ran from the scene, causing a massive manhunt to ensue.

Eventually, police escorted individuals from the sauna, but Critzer was still on the run.

Clarke’s parents gave police statements, and then the family headed back to their rooms. The family barricaded doors and windows with mattresses and other pieces of furniture out of fear the gunman would return. The Clarkes left the Holiday Inn the next day, as planned, and headed to Miami, still not knowing where the gunman was.

Critzer had apparently been hiding out around St. Mary, Star of the Sea, Catholic Church and Pattigeorge’s restaurant. A police sergeant spotted him from the roof of Pattigeorge’s. Around 10:30 a.m. that morning, police arrested Critzer with help from the Sarasota and Manatee SWAT teams.

Waugh was arrested one week later in Seattle and charged with fleeing to avoid confinement.

The fear from the Longboat Key Holiday Inn stayed with the Clarkes after they drove on to Miami. When they woke up after their first night there, Clarke’s mother, Barbara, opened the hotel room curtains and saw a man staring into the room. He was a window washer.

“Luckily for the window washer, the glass was strong. I’m sure if my mom could have got through it, a window washer would have died that day,” Clarke wrote.

Aftermath
Critzer pleaded guilty in May 1979 to first-degree murder, attempted murder, five counts of kidnapping and burglary. He received life sentences for each except the burglary charge, for which he was sentenced to five years.

At the time of his sentencing, Critzer apologized for the crime and blamed excessive drinking for his actions, according to the now defunct Sarasota Journal.

The Longboat Observer contacted nearly a dozen longtime residents, each of whom vaguely remembered the crime but not in detail.

Clarke’s memories of the night remain vivid, although he does not think the experience scarred him. His family still talks about the trip on occasion and possibly would have returned to the Key, had it been closer.

“It was a little strange to see that he died in prison,” Clarke said. “It closed off that chapter, and it was such a weird time.”