Life and Death on the Loxahatchee by Snyder, James D. (2002) Paperback

Life and Death on the Loxahatchee is both the story of a real-life Tarzan and the people who lived downstream along Florida's only federally-designated Wild and Scenic River. Vince Nelson was unique, but also a symbol of all those who fished, trapped, ploughed and hammered out hardscrabble lives on the Jupiter-Tequesta riverfront in the days before it became golf courses and millionaire mansions.

Who was Trapper Nelson? he was born in 1908, the sickly son of a landless Polish immigrant. Over the next sixty years he would wrest from the wilderness a eleven hundred acres along Florida's most breathtaking jungle river.

Along his life's journey Nelson became the Legend of the Loxahatchee, with as many faces as the people who claimed to know him. Hobo, trapper, hunter, alligator wrestler, gambler, celebrity host, charmer of snakes and women alike, this modern Tarzan's life ended as mysteriously as he had lived it. On a steamy July day in 1968, a friend found Vince Nelson dead in his jungle paradise, his torso torn open by a shotgun blast.

Many people had a motive. So did Trapper himself. Draw your own conclusion as you read the opinions of his family, friends and forensic experts.