18 hours ago
EXCLUSIVE Horrifying secret of unassuming US town known as 'nub city'... where residents do the unthinkable for cash
Framed by lush woodlands, rolling farmland and glistening springs, the sedate town of Vernon in northeastern Florida has a fairly blissful appeal.
But the tucked-away community of just over 700 residents has a grisly history lurking under the surface.
When industry in the rural town died out during the first half of the 20th century, with the closure of the sawmill and steamboat port, many residents struggled to make ends meet.
And that's when a bizarre and horrifying money-making scheme made its rounds and earned the town its nickname: Nub City.
In a New York Times article published in 1972, insurance investigator John Healy reveals how people in Vernon started chopping off their own limbs to make false accident claims.
Mr Healy, who worked for the Continental National American insurance group at the time, told how a 'three‐year orgy of self‐maiming that started with a claim for about $5,000 and petered out with one around the $300,000 level.'
The piece reports that around a dozen of the town's residents were 'missing feet, arms, hands or eyes,' but other reports state that the number of maimed locals was closer to 50.
Giving an insight into Vernon life at the time, Mr Healy wrote: 'To sit in your car on a sweltering summer evening on the main street of Nub City watching anywhere from eight to a dozen cripples walking along the street, gives the place a ghoulish, eerie atmosphere.'
L.W. Burdeshaw, who also worked as insurance agent in the area during the 1970s, said that the incidents were put down to a variety of incidents which later transpired to be false.
He said his list of policyholders in Vernon included a man who accidently shot his foot off while protecting chickens, another man who lost his hand while trying to shoot a hawk and a man who purchased insurance and then, less than 12 hours later, shot off his foot while aiming for a squirrel.
While numerous claims went through, insurance investigator Mr Healy said suspicions were raised when the claims started reaching the six figure mark.
He revealed: 'We got in on the thing with a claim at about the $100,000 level. I solved it pretty quickly.'
One insurance investigator told the St. Petersburg Times that a local farmer made more than $1 million after taking out policies with '28 or 38 companies' before losing his foot.
Before making the claim, he was apparently 'paying premiums that cost more than his income.'
While the man's injury looked suspicious, with a tourniquet in his pocket and the fact that he had swapped his car that day for his wife's which was an automatic instead of a stick shift, the jury found it difficult to believe he would shoot off his foot.
However, eventually the insurance companies cracked down on the insurance scam that was circulating through Vernon and the trend petered out.
Mr Healy said when he was interviewed in 1972: 'After the first few times, nobody could collect anything more than nuisance value, and then nothing at all.
'We informed the local authorities about the thing, though there's not much they can do about it.
'And don't think those people down there can get accident insurance any more. I haven't heard anything from there for at least two years.'
In some online threads, Vernon residents talk about the town's mysterious history and their memories of what was going on.
Kelly Crocker wrote on YouTube in response to the 1981 documentary simply titled 'Vernon, Florida': 'My hometown. Was once called Nub City.
'When I grew up, there were seven local men with nubs. Some were legitimate accidents and others said to be fraud.'
Meanwhile, another commenter added: 'Yep, from there too and there were plenty of "accidents" before the 80's fraud charges.'
There is little in the way of imagery from Vernon's darker days.
However one brawl, which took place during a local council meeting in 1984, was caught on camera and it shows resident James Armstrong wearing a hook in place of a missing left hand.
When a reporter later asked his councilor wife Narvel how he lost his hand, she implied it was the result of self mutilation, by simply responding: 'I think you know.'
Errol Morris, who was the film director behind the aforementioned documentary 'Vernon, Florida', originally set out to make a movie about Nub City and the insurance claim saga.
However, he claimed that threats from residents who didn't not want the story being made public made him rethink his narrative.
He told one reporter, following a particularly harrowing encounter: 'I knocked on the door of a double-amputee, who was missing an arm and a leg on opposite sides of the body - the preferred technique, so that you could use a crutch.
'His buff son-in-law, a Marine, beat me up. I decided whatever I was doing was really, really stupid and dangerous.'
Instead of insurance 'scammers', Morris' documentary purely focuses on what life was like in Vernon in 1981, with a worm farmer and a turkey hunter among his subjects.
Today, Vernon has moved on from its gruesome past with no amputations in sight.
Touching on what it is like in the 21st century, one resident explains: 'I grew up near Vernon and live there now.
'The town is still full of eccentrics (we have a guy who exclusively rides his lawnmower around town) but it's nothing like it used to be.
'State highway 79 was expanded to four lanes a while back, and it's construction knocked out dozens of little shops and homes.
'The whole place has been taken over by asphalt. I wish it would go back to how it was before.'
