Even as a proud Louisiana boy, I have probably seen more of East Texas in my lifetime than parts of my home state. Whether I was heading to a family reunion, wedding, or funeral in the lands between the Interstates or just passing through to Dallas, Houston, or Oklahoma, I grew to appreciate the diversity and beauty that the eastern part of the Lone Star State offers. The landscape is made of a variety of ecosystems to inspire the soul of the artist, from the coastal plains along the gulf to the sandy swamps along the Sabine River, to the backwaters of Caddo Lake, up through the piney woods, over the red clay hills, including some the locals called “mountains” when it came to naming their towns, and on up to the rolling prairies along the Red River. It is where the spirit of the Old South meets the promise of the American West, a perfect blend of Americana. While intellectuals have disparaged the area as culturally stuck behind a “Pine Curtain,” the Brigadoonesque towns offer filmmakers numerous settings. One can be driving 35 miles per hour down a Norman Rockwell Main Street as they round a courthouse square straight out of The Andy Griffith Show and just a moment later are going 65 miles per hour down a lonely state highway that feels like something out of a Flannery O’Connor Southern Gothic in which Bonnie and Clyde are waiting in ambush. And, if one looks hard enough at the treelines and underbrush, one can almost see the Native Americans hunting wildlife, pioneers carving a home out of the wilderness, and cowboys and outlaws dodging Texas Rangers. Like the west Louisiana location of No Man’s Land (see my post on Leather Britches Smith), it is indeed a place where the heavy hanging mantle of history, and not just because you can hit a historical marker or antique store whichever which way you throw a stone, and the stillness of time inspires the imagination.
This is what drove me to pick up Bob Bowman’s books. Ironically, I first found his books at the Logansport Library just over the Sabine River in Louisiana. With titles like the four-volumed Historic Murders of East Texas, The 35 Best Ghost Towns in East Texas and 220 Other Towns We Left Behind, They Left No Monuments, The Forgotten Towns of East Texas, and The Gift of Las Sabinas, his books give a good introduction to East Texas history through human interest stories that don’t get bogged down in academic pedanticism. He covers subjects like Native American history in Tomahawks at Twilight: Indian Atrocities in Early East Texas, vigilantism in Death by Rope: Historic Lynchings and Hanging in East Texas, sayings and expressions in If I Tell You A Hen Dips Snuff, home remedies in Rub Onions & Skunk Oil on My Chest and Call Me Well, and even Texas restaurants in Say, Do You Know A Good Place To Eat? While a good deal of the stories are local color, others have connections to and even effects on wide-ranging historical topics and pop culture. His books are truly a treasure trove for writers, filmmakers, and other artists setting their work in East Texas. His works have been the jumping-off point for my research for projects of my own, including The Conner-Smith Feud.
While several stories in his books would make great individual Westerns and movies, I believe his works would make the basis for a great Western anthology series in the vein of American Crime Story. It would be like The Ballad of Buster Scruggs meets American Horror Story. To showcase local talent each segment of a 12-episode series could be directed by a Texas filmmaker. Maybe a famous Texas actor or musician like Dennis Quaid, Matthew McConaughey, or George Straight could narrate. And of course, audiences would be interested due to the resurgence of Westerns thanks to another Texan, Taylor Sheridan.
(Note: Unfortunately, Mr. Bowman has passed away and since he self-published his books, they are hard to find. So, keep an eye out for them in resale shops, used bookstores, and antique shops whenever you pass through East Texas.)
- The Oldest Known Murder in East Texas (Chapter 1 Historic Murders of East Texas, 3)
When René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle set sail from France in July 1684, fresh off his discovery of the mouth of the Mississippi and his proclamation that all the lands whose water drained through it belonged to King Louis XIV of France (Louisiana), he had no idea that he was heading into a real-life version of Werner Herzog’s Aguirre, the Wrath of God. To establish a trading post on the shores of the Mississippi to prevent both Spanish and English intrusion in the area, he headed a convoy of four ships carrying three hundred people, including soldiers, officers, merchants, valets, women, children, six missionaries, his brother Jean Cavalier, his nephew, his friend Henri Joutel, and fellow explorer Henri de Tonti, also known as the Iron Hand. Many of his recruits were gentlemen whose easy lives had not prepared them for the coming ordeal.
The expedition encountered problems from the start. The Spanish captured the Saint-Francois, carrying the expedition’s food and other necessary supplies. The biggest problem was La Salle himself. He refused advice from experienced seamen. Then when the ships finally made land on February 20, 1685, they had missed the mouth of the Mississippi by four hundred miles. They were at Matagorda Bay, 108 miles southwest of present-day Houston. One of the expedition’s ships sank in the mouth of the bay and another one full of disgruntled colonists returned to France.
Instead of admitting his mistake, La Salle ordered a settlement called Fort Saint Louis to be built. After months of malnutrition, overwork, inexperience with the dangers of the Texas wilderness, and Indian attacks, the colonists’ numbers had been reduced to 108. Then the last ship, the Belle, was wrecked during a storm.
As the colonists struggled to build Fort Saint Louis, La Salle explored the interior. He first went west, where he reached present-day Val Verde County on the Rio Grande. Then he headed into East Texas, where he traded with the Hasinais of the Caddo confederacy for horses they had taken from the Spanish. It was during this expedition that La Salle finally realized that he was lost. By February 1687 the number of colonists was down to 36.
La Salle, finally admitting that he had been wrong, left Iron Hand Tonti in charge of the colony and set out to lead the remnant to the Mississippi, crossing the lower Brazos on March 14. His arrogance and ill temper continued to plague the expedition. Henri Joutel wrote in his journal that the land they found in East Texas was the most agreeable they had seen since the landing, but game was scarce because they were following a major Indian trail. La Salle ordered the expedition to stop and sent a party of men led by Pierre Duhaut ahead to find some corn he had cached during an earlier expedition. They found it, but it was spoiled and rotten.
On the party’s return, they killed two buffalo. The group’s leader sent a man named Saget for horses to carry the meat back to the camp. La Salle sent his nephew, an Indian guide, and a man named Marle to guide the party back to the camp. When the men did not return after a couple of days, La Salle and Saget set out to find what had become of them. La Salle instructed Joutel to build a small fire on a rise of land every hour to help direct the party back. Then he, a priest, and an Indian guide set out.
When La Salle’s nephew met up with the party, he seized the bison meat and told them he would decide what portions they would receive. As he left with the meat, Duhaut began plotting with other members of the party to murder La Salle.
Then Duhaut grabbed an ax and began striking the nephew, Saget, and an Indian guide. The nephew did not die immediately but was killed by Marle, a member of the conspiracy, to put him out of his misery. Duhaut then led his conspirators to murder La Salle but heavy rain forced them to wait as they built a raft to cross the swollen Brazos.
When the rain stopped, La Salle, the priest, and the Indian guide approached the camp. He saw several buzzards overhead. That could mean one thing: dead meat. He fired a signal shot from his musket. He did not know that Duhaut and his servant had crossed the river and were waiting in the tall grass along his path. They waited as he crossed the river. When La Salle saw the servant, he inquired about his nephew. The servant replied he had, “drifted away.”
Duhaut rose out of the tall grass and fired. The ball struck La Salle in the back of the head and he fell to the ground before he knew what hit him. The priest was afraid that he was shot as well, but Duhaut told him he had no quarrel with him, saying he had killed their leader out of despair. The conspirators stripped La Salle’s body of his clothing and possessions. Then they dumped it in the brush to be devoured by wild animals.
He was the first recorded Caucasian murdered in East Texas.
Several other killings followed La Salle’s murder. Duhaut was killed to revenge La Salle. Of the 180 original colonists, only 15 made it out of Texas and to European settlements. “Iron Hand” Tonti led a group to safety that crossed a “stream of creeping red water” – The Red River. Fort Saint Louis, the site of the first European children to be born in Texas, was wiped out by an Indian attack in 1688. Still, its presence would cause France to have a claim on Texas leading to border disputes lasting until the 19th century.
“La Salle Was Murdered Here” is a designation claimed by many East Texas locales. The counties of Rusk, Hardin, and Cherokee and the towns of Beaumont and Burkeville all have their historical arguments, the latter including the claim that in 1913 German stave makers found the words “La Salle” carved in the trunk of a white oak they had cut down. Some historians, arguing that La Salle would have headed north to avoid cannibalistic tribes on the Gulf Coast, believe he made it as far north as Oklahoma, even claiming that the runestone in Heavner is his headstone. The most convincing claim belongs to Grimes County since La Salle was murdered just a few days after crossing the Brazos.
There in downtown Navasota is a statue of him, a reminder of when Europeans venturing into the green wilderness of East Texas encountered their own hearts of darkness.
2. The Devil’s Innkeeper (Chapter 1 in More Historic Murders and Chapter 33 in Death by Rope)
Thomas D. Yocum’s family came from Mississippi, where they were reputed to have been involved with John Murrell’s gang of highwaymen and cutthroats along the Natchez Trace. They moved on to the neutral ground between Louisiana and Texas, where they were again accused of murdering travelers in the area.
The Yocum Gang was involved in killings along the El Camino Real de los Tejas between Many, Louisiana, and San Augustine, Texas. They killed an elderly Frenchman, stole his slaves, and then tried to resell them. The neighbors of the dead slave owner formed a posse and drove the gang out.
Two of Thomas Yocum’s brothers were caught returning with stolen horses from Louisiana and hung in East Texas. His father was tried several times in Natchitoches but got away clean due to corruption. Rumors were that some members of the jury and the court were part of land pirate John Murrell’s “Grand Council.”
By 1824 Thomas Yocum was settled in the town of Liberty in the Mexican district of Atascocita, Texas. The arrival caused the alcalde of the municipality to write Stephen F. Austin himself, warning him that the Yocums were accused of kidnapping whole families of slaves to resell them. Thomas escaped the inquisitive neighbors by settling on a half marsh, half prairie land grant on Pine Island Bayou, a tributary of the Neches River. The land grant was twenty miles from Beaumont and near sour-water lakes known for their medicinal properties. Sam Houston came to the lake in the spring of 1836 to heal his broken leg after the battle of San Jacinto.
Thomas set up the Yocum Inn in a grove of pecan trees near the settlement of West. Made of logs and roughhewed lumber, the inn stood beside the Opelousas Trail, a cattle drive route from Brazoria, Harris, and other west Texas counties to New Orleans. An extension of the Old Atascocita Road, a military trail established by the Spanish in 1756, many prominent men took the route. As cattlemen made their way home, they would stop at the inn laden with profits from cattle sales in New Orleans. They often stopped at Yocum’s place for lodging and food. He encouraged cattlemen to graze their cattle on his prairie.
Yocum, his wife, stepdaughter, and a trusted slave were known as generous hosts, who at times allowed travelers to stay for free. His stepdaughter was said to be very beautiful and would often stand by the side of the trail to attract travelers to the inn. Yocum served as postmaster at Pine Island. He also supervised local elections and served on juries, including one that sentenced two men to hang for murder in 1836. He owned 1,500 heads of cattle, 30 horses, and an impressive carriage.
Soon cattlemen returning from their drives began disappearing with their money and valuables. One well-dressed traveler riding on a fine horse was seen asking Tom Yocum for directions. An hour later Yocum was seen riding the horse. “He only had seventy-five cents,” he explained to inquiring minds.
Locals reported seeing iron parts from wagons used by travelers on piles of burning wood on the inn’s property, a large collection of saddles, and the presence of unfamiliar horses Yocum claimed to have received in horse trades. Travelers came looking for missing kin and friends they had not heard from since traveling through the area. Slaves of the community avoid the property. Soon locals started discovering skeletons in a lake near the community of China. But in the days following the Texas Revolution, there was no organized law to investigate the disappearance and skeletons.
A Russian organ-grinder with his monkey, Jocko, stopped at the inn. The children of the community enjoyed watching the monkey and putting money in its cap. But then both the organ-grinder and Jocko disappeared. His large dapple-gray horse, a striking contrast to the Spanish ponies Texans usually rode, was spotted in the corral of the inn. Then two skeletons, one large and one small, were found in an isolated lake. The organ-grinder was found at the bottom of a well. This was the first disappearance talked about far and wide in the community.
The suspicions about Yocum spread beyond the community. The Texas Republic’s secretary of war advised the local military garrison to be on their guard while searching for cattle near the Pine Island Bayou area. “A man by the name of D. Yokum (and others) who form a party…and are considered dangerous. Be on your guard while among them.”
Then in early 1843 Yocum invited the chief drover of 3,000 steers to New Orleans to stay at his inn on his return trip. The drover, accompanied by his dog, came back the same way and stopped to stay at the inn. Like so many before him, he disappeared. Several weeks later, the brother of the missing drover came riding into the community. He dismounted at the inn and talked to the slave at the gate. Yocum was inside, listening to every word. The slave said he had never seen anyone of the drover’s description.
Then the drover’s dog appeared, attracted by the brother’s familiar voice. Then the man saw his brother’s saddle hanging on a fence. The slave reached for a rifle, but the drover’s brother shot him with his pistol. Yocum, alerted by the shooting, saddled up and rode away. The drover’s brother gathered up a posse to pursue him.
They cornered Yocum in Montgomery County and hung him from a tree Yocum cursed the men as they put him on a horse, swatted the animal’s rear, and let him choke to death. The pursuers then shot him five times through the heart to make sure he was dead and left his body hanging as a warning. The posse returned to the inn, whereupon finding evidence of more murders in wells, thickets and alligator sloughs, according to W. T. Block, burned the inn to the ground
Some say that Yokum was killed by Regulators, like those out of Shelby County [which should also be a movie]. President Sam Houston spoke out against “Certain residents of Liberty and Jefferson [who] have murdered one Thomas Yucm and driven his widow and children from their home.” Apparently, he was either unaware of Yokum’s crimes or against vigilantism no matter the criminal targeted.
When one of Yocum’s older sons, Christopher, returned to the area after being honorably discharged from the Texas militia, the sheriff locked him up for his own safety. Christopher was found the next morning hanging on the courthouse lawn, a ten-penny nail driven into his head.
After the death of Christoper local lore continued the Yokum saga. Without the ability to ask the son, the location of the father’s stolen gold and other stolen valuables became a mystery. A black woman in her nineties later claimed to have seen Yokum and his slave burying a volt behind the inn when she was a girl. They threatened to kill her if she told anyone. However, when she looked for it later, the forest was so overgrown with new trees and flora that she did not recognize the area. For the next 150 years, especially during the Great Depression, treasure hunters flocked to the area, tearing holes into the land easily mistaken for the unmarked graves of the victims from Thomas D. Yocum’s murder farm.
3. The Death of Chief Bowles (Chapter 1 in Historic Murders of East Texas and Chapter 30 of Tomahawks at Twilight)
Chief John Bowles, also known as Duwali, Chief Bowl, Colonel Bowl, The Bold Hunter, and simply The Bowl – was born in North Carolina to a Scottish father and Cherokee mother. The Bowl learned violence at an early age. When his father was murdered by fellow settlers, Bowles, only 14 years old, hunted down and killed them.
As the leader of a Cherokee village in North Carolina, he signed the Treaty of Holston in 1791 and a cession treaty in 1895. The latter proved unpopular with his fellow Cherokee. To find new hunting territory, Chief Bowles led his tribe across the Mississippi River, into the St. Francis Valley of Missouri, and then into Arkansas. By the 1820s they were in East Texas, settling near Nacogdoches, where The Bowl united several tribes under his leadership. He sent a representative to Mexico to negotiate with the government for a land grant in East Texas. To cement his relationship with the authorities in Mexico City, he often found himself at odds with Anglos settlers. He helped the Mexicans put down the Fredonian Rebellion [which should also be a movie] at Nacogdoches in 1827.
In 1833 his attempt to secure territory on the Angelina, Neches, and Trinity rivers was interrupted by unrest between the Anglos and the Mexican government. In February of 1836, Sam Houston negotiated a treaty with The Bowl in Rusk County. It guaranteed the tribal possession of 1.5 million acres in East Texas. Houston had been friends with the Cherokees since a boy, living with them in Tennessee. The Bowl took him at his word and kept the Cherokee out of the Texas Revolution so the Texans would not have to fight a two-front war. Houston rewarded them with a reservation that included Smith and Cherokee counties. He also gave Bowles a sword as a token of friendship.
However, when Houston presented the treaty to the Texas Congress, members said it was based on a false promise, and some of the Cherokees had shown hostility to whites during the war. Furthermore, some of the land given to the tribe had already been granted to David G. Burnet, and there were already land titles before Houston had negotiated the treaty. The treaty was tabled on December 29, 1836, and declared null and void a year later. Houston did his best for ratification since he had pledged his honor to the Cherokees. The tribe, he pointed out, had taken up farming and ranching on land they had claimed under the flag of three nations. Houston and Bowles remained friends even as rejection of the treaty ignited conflict between the Cherokees and whites. There were sporadic raids throughout 1838 and 1839. The slaying of 18 whites during the Killbough Massacre in present-day Cherokee County inflamed white passions [The massacre also deserves to be a movie].
When Mirabeau B. Lamar replaced Houston, the new president was given evidence that the Mexican government planned to entice the Indians to attack Texas settlers [The full story of the Cordova Rebellion deserves a full movie treatment]. With public opinion on his side, Lamar decided to expel the Cherokees.
At first, the president offered to pay for the lands the Cherokees had turned into crops. He agreed to meet with the now 83-year-old Bowles for talks. During their meeting, Bowles agreed to lead his people from East Texas. He represented several tribes in the area, including the Shawnee, Delaware, Kickapoo, Choctaw, Biloxi, Coushatta, and Caddo. On July 14, 1839, the traditional blanket was spread on the ground. The Bowl was not there. When he finally did arrive, he was upset to hear that his people were going to be escorted out of the republic by armed soldiers like prisoners while the guns of the tribe were to be confiscated, leaving them without the means to hunt. He said he would only lead his people out of Texas if peacefully and without coercion. He left to speak with the tribes, promising to return in a few days.
But on July 15 a group of soldiers rode into the Cherokees camp. They were greeted by eighty warriors. The Bowl told the soldiers the women were fearful they would be killed if the warriors gave up their guns. He would not sign the treaty.
The leader of the group, General Kelsey H. Douglass, said he had been sent with 500 troops to enforce Lamar’s decision. He lost his temper and told the chief he would march on the Cherokees within the day.
The Bowl, his son John, and a handful of braves carrying a flag of truce rode to the Texas camp. He promised the Texans that he would cross the Neches River that morning. President Lamar ordered Douglass to keep an eye on the Cherokees. Sam Houston rode to East Texas to help resolve the crisis. He arrived to find the Cherokee camp deserted.
Douglass and his soldiers trailed the Cherokees during the afternoon of July 15 and confronted them on the crest of a small hill a few miles west of Tyler in present-day Henderson County. When the Indians advanced down the hill firing their guns, the soldiers returned fire. Eighteen Cherokees and five Texans were killed.
The morning of the 16th Douglass’ soldiers continued their pursuit. On their way, they set fire to a Delaware village. They caught up with The Bowl near the headwaters of the Neches River in present-day Van Zandt County and were met by a mile-long line of warriors. A ninety-minute battle broke out in the bottomlands. The Cherokees took shelter in a cornfield but were soon driven into the open. The better-armed Texans killed dozens of warriors. The wounded fled from the battlefield.
Dressed in a military hat, silk vest, and sash and clutching the sword Houston had given him, the old chief could be seen riding back and forth along the battle line, exhorting the warriors to hold their position. Some of the white soldiers who saw his actions were awed by his bravery and display of “barbaric manhood.” He finally saw the futility of the fight and ordered a retreat.
During the retreat, the chief’s horse was shot. He tried to escape on foot as bullets rained around him. A soldier named Henry Conner walked up and shot him in the back. He staggered a few feet before falling. He again rose, this time into a defiant sitting position. A soldier identified as Robert Smith walked up to The Bowl, declared him guilty of killing his father-in-law, and shot him in the head
Other soldiers tore clothing, weapons, and other “souvenirs” from the chief’s body. Then, like a scene out of John Wayne’s The Searchers, the Texans, knowing that in the culture of the Cherokee, a brave scalped in battle lost all honor and the dignity of a funeral. His body was left on the battlefield to rot. For years after his skull, bleached into the color of the white man, could be seen in the prairie grasses where he had fallen.
100 Indians were killed during the battle. The Texas pursued the Cherokees to the headwaters of the Sabine River where they burned cornfields, huts and whole villages until the Cherokee finally fled the republic. The chief’s son, John Bowles, would be killed in the coming winter trying to lead the Cherokees to Mexico.
Houston denounced his fellow Texans’ treatment of the Cherokees and expressed his anger in letters, newspapers, and speeches. His remonstrations fell on deaf ears. One of his enemies taunted him by sending him a hat he had supposedly given to The Bowl. The sword that Houston gave the chief has been lost to history.
In 1999 for the 160th anniversary of the Bowl’s death, the American Indian Cultural Association held the funeral service denied the old chief. A healing service was conducted as well. A descendant of the Cherokees declared it to be a good place, because “whenever blood is spilled, a spirit lives.” The Cherokees eventually bought the land where Chief Bowles was killed, and it is now sacred ground to their nation.
4. John Wesley Hardin’s First Kill (Chapter 3 in Historic Murders)
The Legend of John Wesley Hardin contributed much to the folklore of the Wild West. Historians much debate his claim, written in his autobiography, of killing 42. What is not debated is that his first kill occurred in the East Texas town of Moscow, Polk County.
Born to a Methodist circuit who much admired John Wesley, Hardin grew up in the turmoil of the Civil War and Reconstruction and witnessed many violent acts. In 1861 he saw a man murdered in a grocery store in Sumpter, Trinity County. The murderer was acquitted on the grounds of self-defense. In 1867 when John Wesley was 14 years old, he stabbed another boy in a schoolyard brawl.
The next year, at age 15, he committed a more violent act. While visiting a cane mill, he challenged a black man named Mage Holshousen to a wrestling match. Mage became angry when John Wesley beat him and threatened to kill him. A crowd of men kept the two participants apart, de-escalating the situation.
However, according to John Wesley, Mage followed him home and stood in the yard, making threats, until a relative ordered him away. The next day John Wesley was riding to visit a friend when he encountered Mage. The black man began making threats and ran after him with a walking stick. John Wesley shot him several times with his Colt .44 in self-defense.
Because John Wesley, a white man, had killed Mage, a black man, at the height of Reconstruction, his family believed he would not receive justice at the hands of government officials. His father told him to hide “Until the Yankee bayonets should cease to govern [in Texas].” John Wesley went to live with his brother on the Nogalus Prairie just north of Sumpter.
But Union soldiers pursued him. He ambushed them as they were crossing a creek. Hardin killed two soldiers with a blast from his doubled-barreled shotgun and his cap-and-ball six-shooter. He demanded a black soldier to “surrender in the name of the Southern Confederacy.” When the soldier answered his demand with a shot, John Wesley killed him with his six-shooter. Despite a slight wound, Hardin buried the soldiers in the creek bed.
Then he rode off to the cattle trails of the Great Plains and into Legend.
5. Murder in The Barrymore Troupe (Chapter 5 in Historic Murders)
In 1879, a struggling actor, born Hebert Arthur Chamberlain Hunter Blythe, stepped off the train in Marshell, Harrison County. A skilled boxer, the 30-year-old thespian had changed his name to Maurice Barrymore to protect the reputation of his civil servant. Born in India, Barrymore claimed he cut his teeth on goat’s milk. His stop in Marshell would show that he could bite into Texas beef.
Barrymore had married and to support his family, including a son named Lionel, he began touring the South and West with an acting troupe. Including Ellen Cummings, Ben Porter, H. R. Davis, and Mrs. E. F. Baker, the troupe performed at the Mahone Opera House in Marshell on March 19, 1879. That evening Barrymore, Porter, and Ellen Cummings walked to the lunchroom at the train station.
A Texas and Pacific Railroad detective, Jim Currie, entered the lunchroom and asked for a drink “with a little budge with it.” After being refused by the bartender, Currie then made crude remarks toward Ellen Cummings. The bartender derided Currie for his remarks and told him to leave. As the detective was leaving, he passed Porter, who had a habit of putting his hands on the back of his neck.
“You put your hands this way when I passed you a while ago,” said Currie. “You can’t give me any gaff of that kind.”
“My friend, if you alluded to me, I hadn’t thought of you,” said Porter. “I was talking to this lady here.”
“You’re a damned liar,” snarled Currie.
“I’m in the company of a lady and would prefer you wouldn’t make remarks of that kind in her presence,” replied Porter. “If you want a difficulty, you can see me anywhere you like outside the house.”
The local bartender stepped into the fray, telling the detective to stop. Barrymore took off his coat and, taking the stance of a boxer, said, “Go away, there’s a lady here.”
Currie pulled out his pistol and shot Barrymore in the left arm and chest. Then he shot Porter in the stomach, who struggled out of the station and fell to the sidewalk. Barrymore fled through the kitchen. Porter died forty minutes later. Barrymore required surgery to stop his profuse bleeding and save his life. He later reportedly asked for the bullet to give “to my son Lionel to cut his teeth on.”
Currie reportedly walked back into the lunchroom to ask for his bill before being arrested by law officers. He was arranged before Justice of the Peace R. C. Hanson. Local newspapers tried to save face for the community by claiming Currie was from Cincinnati or New York, having come to the area vie working on the railroad in Kansas, leaving behind a murderous past. A Kansas newspaper claimed that Bill Hickok had called Currie the most desperate man in the Black Hills.
Currie showed no remorse for the murder of Porter, whose body was placed in a coffin for transport to a burial in New York. Officials and employees of the Texas and Pacific Railroad raised one hundred thirty-nine dollars for the burial expenses. All throughout The Lone Star State, from Dallas to Galveston, residents turned out to offer their apologies to Ellen Cummings for the insult and raise funds for Porter’s widow. During his recovery, Barrymore remained in the home of station agent R. W. Thompson.
Currie was brought to trial in June. Barrymore returned to Marshell but because Miss Cummings was bedridden under orders from her doctor, the district judge granted Currie another delay. When local newspapers began encouraging local citizens to form a vigilance committee, the judge had to deny that he would set Currie loose. The proceedings dragged on into the fall because the key witnesses couldn’t return to Marshell due to their travels.
The trial finally got underway in the summer of 1880. There was standing room only in the courtroom. Currie’s defense tried to paint Barrymore as the aggressor, pointing out his past boxing career, and portrayed Currie as an upstanding citizen, revealing that his brother was the mayor of Shreveport, Louisiana. A jury found Currie not guilty “on the grounds of temporary insanity.” There were rumors of bribery.
The outrage from national newspapers helped boost Maurice Barrymore to fame. He would go on to head a century-long dynasty of actors that would include Lionel Barrymore (Mr. Potter in It’s A Wonderful Life) and Drew Barrymore (E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Batman Forever, Scream) Just one of many ways East Texas has contributed to pop culture.
6. The Dalton Gang Rides in East Texas (Chapter 8 of Historic Murders)
The October 5, 1892, shootout in Coffeyville, Kansas might have ended the lives of Bob Dalton and Grat Dalton and the criminal career of their brother Emmett, but it did not end the gang. The surviving members, including Bill Doolin, continued their operations in the wilds of east Oklahoma. They were soon joined by Mason Frakes (Bill) Dalton, seeking to avenge his brothers and steal enough money to pay for his land speculations. They hid out on the farm of Houston Wallace near the town of Ardmore, Oklahoma.
In spring 1894 they met Houston’s brother Jim, who was living near Longview, Texas, where he had married the daughter of a well-to-do family. Jim told the gang about the prosperity of First National Bank of Longview, Texas. Somehow Dalton got it in his head that it would be a good idea to rob a bank in Texas.
The gang was joined by Jim and Asa Nite, brothers working at a sawmill near Longview. The brothers cased out the area, provided local intelligence, and rode possible escape routes for the gang.
On the soggy afternoon of May 23, 1894, the gang rode into Longview. The bank had been tipped off when Dalton, using a pseudonym, wrote an unidentified Longview citizen that he better pull his money out of the First National. However, the ban declared the letter a hoax. Jim Nite rode passed a doctor, who called out to him that his bill was overdue. Jim replied that he was going to the bank to get some money.
The outlaws dismounted on Tyler Street. Ash Nite and Wallace led the horses to an alley behind the bank. Dalton and Jim Nite stepped into the bank where Dalton handed Banker Joe Clemmons a note demanding money. Clemmons thought the outlaw was asking for a donation, so he started to dig into his own pocket. Dalton stuck a shotgun in his face and told everyone to raise their hands.
Dalton entered the vault and began filling a burlap bag with coins, greenbacks, and banknotes. This enraged Clemmons’ brother Tom, who jumped Dalton and grabbed his shotgun. The outlaw tried to shoot him several times, but Tom had put his hand in front of the hammer, keeping the weapon from firing. Then a local businessman, John Welborn, entered the front door. Seeing the robbery, he dashed back out into the street, and yelled, “They’re robbing the bank!”
A bartender, Geroge Buckingham, came out of his saloon and began firing at the gang. Wallace shot him and continued to fire at his body until a woman screamed, “Don’t shoot that man anymore! You have already killed him!”
Wallace began firing at anyone he saw. City Marhsall Matt Muckleroy went down with a shot to the chest, but his life was saved when the bullet ricocheted off a silver dollar in his shirt pocket and went down to his stomach. Wallace then murdered a millworker named Charles Leanord, wounded J. W. McQueen, and grazed the head of an unknown African American man.
Then local attorney Charles Lacey took cover with a rifle in a feed store next to the bank. From an upper-story window, he shot Wallace. Asa Nite fired at Lacey but missed. At least 300 shells were exchanged in the gunfight.
Dalton and Jim rushed out of the bank with their loot of $2,000 and ran into the alley, using the Clemmons as human shields. The three surviving outlaws with their hostages jumped upon their horses. They rode west where they caught a ride on a logging train. A mile out of Longview, they let the Clemmons go. Continuing west the gang met a lone man. Dalton gave him a note and two cartridges to take to Longview, declaring “You’ll get plenty of these if you follow too close.” A posse was formed and rode for 12 miles until losing the outlaw trail in the pines.
In Longview, a mob vented their anger on Wallace’s body. Placing a rope around his neck, they dragged his body to the train station where they hoisted the body up a telegraph pole. But then a local businessman intervened and demanded that Wallace be given a decent burial. When the lawmen got a hold of the body, they discovered in the hat a label from a hatmaker in Ardmore, Indian Territory. Businessmen and other citizens of Longview raised a reward of $35,000 for the robbers
Bill Dalton was killed by a posse on June 8, 1894, at his home in Oklahoma. A bag of $1700 was found in the house. Sheriff Jack Howard and Tom Clemmons traveled to Indian Territory and identified the body.
Attention was then turned to the Nite brothers. On May 31, 1895, Howard received a letter from a west Texas sheriff suggesting a spy be placed in the neighborhood of the Nites. In February 1897 a posse searching for stolen cattle in Kimble County engaged cattle thieves in a gun battle. When the smoke cleared they discovered that they had killed Asa Nite and wounded Jim Nite. First National paid the posse $500 and Jim was sent to Longview to stand trial. He was charged with the murders of George Buckingham and Charles Leaned.
Nite’s defense lawyers believed he would not receive a fair trial in Longview, where for the past few years citizens had been keeping a lookout for bank robbers, closely watching strangers who entered town. The trial was moved to Tyler. One of the key witnesses was the doctor who Jim owed a bill. Jim was found guilty but a second trial was held after it was found that a jury member had taken short-handed notes during the first trial. While awaiting the second trial, Jim escaped from the Smith County courthouse using a saw he had hidden in his walking cane.
He dodged the law for three weeks until he was captured in New Mexico. His lawyers again managed to move his trial to Rusk County. He was sentenced to life in the penitentiary. He received a pardon in 1924 but did not give up his outlaw ways, dying at the hands of a drug store owner he tried to rob in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Years after the robbery the Longview businessman who had seen to it that Wallace’s body received a decent funeral traveled out west. While camping for the night, he was met by a local farmer, who ascertained who he was. The farmer blew a signal on an old cow horn and a bunch of rough-looking characters appeared out of the darkness. The businessman feared for his life until the farmer said, “I want all of you to shake hands with the Christian gentleman who had my brother Jim buried and kept his body from being treated like a dog.”
7. John Wesley Hardin Returns to East Texas (Chapter 3 of Historic Murders and Chapter 4 124 Stories You Might Not Know)
In 1872 John Wesley Hardin, now a famous gunfighter, returned to East Texas. He had taken time off from his gunfighter career to promote himself as a horse racer. After winning a good amount of money in Nacogdoches, he and business associates, John and Jess Harper, headed to Hemphill to promote the next race. They spent the night with a doctor. Hardin left his horse in the doctor’s livestock pen and headed toward the town square in Hemphill to announce the race. Outside of the Sabine County courthouse he heard Deputy Sheriff Sonny Speights cussing a young boy. Hardin told the deputy sheriff to pick on someone his own size and “see how far you will get with it.”
Speights accepted the challenge. Both men went for their guns. Hardin reached his first and sent a derringer through the deputy’s right wrist. The lawman dropped his gun, which exploded when it hit the ground. Hardin said he could have just shot him through the heart, but all he wanted to do was to teach the deputy a lesson in manners.
Hearing the shots, the sheriff of Sabine County rushed out of the courthouse. But backed off when he saw that he would be up against John Wesley Hardin. Hardin then jumped on a horse that did not belong to him and rode to the doctor’s house. The Harper brothers had already saddled his horse in the corral. But then when they tried to open the corral the gate jammed. Seeing more law officers coming down the road, Hardin spurred his horse and jumped out of the corral.
As the horse cleared the corral fence, Deputy Jap Smith fired a blast from his shotgun. Buckshot springled the horse in the neck. Despite the wound, Hardin managed to race the horse down the road. The lawmen’s last sight of Hardin was him waving his hat to them in a friendly manner.
Hardin stopped in Polk County to visit relatives. When he and a cousin rode into Trinity, an argument over gambling broke out and turned into a gunfight. Hardin suffered the worst wounds of his “career.” He was shuffled around East Texas by friends until arriving in Angelina County, where he stayed at a friend’s house in Lufkin.
He didn’t stay long. Two lawmen ambushed him and wounded him again. Hardin killed both with a shotgun. Knowing he could not run forever, he turned himself over to the sheriff of Cherokee County, who happened to be an old friend. Sheriff Richard Reagan agreed to give him protection.
As Hardin turned himself over to Reagan, he reached down to surrender his pistol. One of the deputies thought he was gunning for the sheriff and gave Hardin a third wound. Reagan carried him to Rusk, where two weeks of nursing by the sheriff’s family saved his life.
After healing up, Hardin headed back to cattle country, where a shooting in Brown County led to him being constantly pursued all over the Long Star State.
8. The Man Who Lynched Himself (Chapter 7 of Historic Murders and Chapter 33 of Death by Rope)
On February 10, 1888, Panola County Treasurer Dennis Hill worked in his office on the south side of the Carthage courthouse. Panola was one of the poorest counties in Texas. There was only one safe in the entire county, and it was in Treasurer Hill’s office. It contained not only $4000 in school funds, and $750 in general county funds, but also business receipts, deposits, money, and valuables for locals and their businesses.
Hill was married with two young sons, but his family did not worry when he did not return home that night. They figured he had stayed with friends in town. But when he did not come home by noon Saturday his family and friends went looking for him. The door to the treasurer’s office was found locked. The blinds were closed. By standing on the shoulders of another man, a friend was able to look into the office. He saw Hill’s body “laying stiff and bloody in death.”
Sheriff James P. Forsythe, a friend of Hill, was called to investigate the murder. He determined that Hill had been struck in the head several times by a fireplace ax and his throat cut from ear to ear by a knife or razor, almost severing the head. It appeared that while Hill was kneeling to open the safe he had been hit in the back of the head by the ax. He had turned and was struck in the face, his blood splattering the contents of the safe. The assailant had slipped out and locked the door behind him. The entire contents of the safe were gone, including the school and county funds, for a total of $6000. Nobody had reported seeing anything suspicious around the courthouse that night.
Forsythe, a popular sheriff who had served two consecutive terms and never carried a gun, immediately began an investigation. The first suspect was an African American janitor who worked at the courthouse. George Truett had been spending silver coins around town. Sheriff Forsythe arrested him. Under interrogation, he said he had found the coins buried between his house and the Forsythe place. His story held up under scrutiny.
Hill’s friends hired a one-armed railroad detective named H. E. Parker. Upon his arrival in town, the detective was met by 22-year-old W. T. “Tom” Forsythe. The son of the sheriff, he was known around town as lazy and inconsiderate. Forsythe had hired his son, hoping the job would make him respectable. However, Tom continued to drink and gamble.
Parker lured young Forsythe into a card game. When Tom loses and has to come up with money to pay off the debt, Parker follows him to the woods where he sees him unearth buried coins near a fallen pine tree.
Parker’s suspicions soon fell on Tom. The younger Forsythe had been under the influence of alcohol since the murder. A railroad worker arrested for spending a blood-stained $10 bill at a grocery store, said he won it in a card game against Tom. The deputy had also paid off a debt with a note marked by blood and had attempted to exchange a bloody $50 bill at nearby Beckville.
While Tom was drinking in a saloon, Parker hired two men to grab his arms and hold them while he took his pistols. Tom tried to blame the crime on George Truett but broke down under interrogation. Sheriff Forsythe went to the jail and demanded the keys, apparently to release his son. Parker refused to hand the keys over. Tom claimed that he had been asking Hill for change for a twenty-dollar bill and when he saw all the money in the vault, he went crazy and killed him. He told Parker there was a trunk in his home containing money and gave him the key. All but $700 of the $6000 was recovered.
During Tom Forsythe’s arrangement, he dangled his feet over the edge of a table and smoked a cigar. His attitude infuriated the community. Newspapers reported that angry mobs would soon cause Young Forsythe “to pull down on a hemp rope” and “150 determined and well-armed citizens will burn him,” a reference to the frontier practice of burning a criminal’s body to preclude it from being buried in a respectable cemetery.
On February 28 several hundred men, including leading citizens of Carthage, marched on the jail and forced the constable to give up the keys. They pulled Tom Forsythe from the jail and carried him to the edge of the woods where they tied a rope around his neck and threw it over a limb.
When Sheriff Forsythe was informed of the mob, he replied “Let it happen. I don’t want any more killing.”
At the edge of the woods Tom told the crowd that “I want to die, and do it quickly.” Instead of being pulled from the ground and choked to death, he asked the mob if they would let him climb and jump down so his neck would break. “I can jump myself.” A ladder was brought from the hardware store. Tom climbed it and set upon the limb. He asked for a drink of water, paused, and jumped.
The mob did not burn his body. Instead, they carried it to the treasurer’s office, where they dropped it on the floor as a gesture of justice being fulfilled. His body was buried in Oddfellows Cemetery. No legal action was taken against the mob.
Sheriff Forsythe did not seek reelection but the leading citizens, including members of the mob, convinced him to run again. By the time he retired in 1906, he had served eighteen years. Sheriff John Spradley of Nacogdoches said Forsythe faced “a trial of manhood and courage such as came perhaps to no man who ever served as sheriff of any county in this state.” When he died, he was buried in Oddfellows Cemetery next to his lynched son. His story should be told because, despite the stereotypes of good ol’ boy networks and family dynasties running backwoods Texas towns, his integrity showed that while blood might have been thicker than water, the arm of the law was stronger.
9. The Murderous Morning Rampage of Tom Tate (Chapter 11 of Historic Murders)
Thomas Tate was a strikingly handsome man, but he was also a failed restaurant owner, a bootlegger who overindulged on his own product, and a chronic troublemaker. This troublemaking led to a fight outside of the Hebron Missionary Baptist Church on Thunderstruck Road in the Smith County community of Kidd. He accused Caswell Black of stealing watermelons from Jim Fuller’s melon patch. Black accused right him back. And in East Texas, you just don’t mess with another man’s watermelons, nor do you falsely accuse another man of such a deed. One of the men who talked about the accusations was named Pres Hardigree. The fight between Tate and Black outside the church was witnessed by between 50 to 100 people. Both men were arraigned in Tyler for disturbing the peace, pleaded guilty, and paid small fines. Afterward, Tate left the Kidd Community and moved to Tyler.
On January 18, 1912, drunk on his bootlegged product, Tate rented a buggy and two horses from Walter Story’s livery stable and headed eight miles to the Kidd community.
He stopped by where his brothers lived and asked them if they had a pistol he could borrow. They did not. After sharing some drinks with them, he rode to Hunter Guinn’s store, where he roused the store owner from his sleep. He asked him for cartridges. Guin claimed he did not have any to sell. He then returned to his brother’s place, where he stole a pistol. At about 5:15 a.m., he stopped by his brother-in-law’s place, where he borrowed a single-barrel shotgun, and twelve shells packed with No. 4 shot.
First, he stopped by Pres Hardigree’s place, calling for him to come out and talk with him. As Hardigree lit a lamp and came out of his house, Tate shot him in the chest with a .38 caliber bullet, killing him. Then he entered the house and yanked a phone cord from the wall. He started choking Mrs. Hardigree with the cord, demanding a razor. She claimed she didn’t have one. He then assaulted her. Afterward, she ran to the home of Gus Martin, the father-in-law of Caswell Black, for help.
On his way to the Martin home Tate ran into a post, smashing the conveyance, before he made it to the Martin house. He tried to enter the house, but the door was locked. The sound of the jingling lock woke up Martin’s fifteen-year-old daughter, Lula. She set up as Tate raised her bedroom window and entered. He grabbed her and threatened to kill her if she made an outcry. Lula screamed anyway, waking up the family. Tate fled through the window.
Martin ran out to confront him, lantern in hand. Tate fired a shot, busting the lantern’s globe. But Martin had already recognized him. Tate fled into the darkness. A little later Mrs. Hardigree showed up at the house and was let inside.
Tate returned a half-hour later with the audacity to ask if he could stay there for the night. Mr. Martin shot at him. Tate threw himself against the door. Mr. Martin and his eighteen-year-old son Willie pressed their bodies against the door from the inside to prevent Tate’s entrance. Tate pushed his shotgun through the door and fired. He pulled it back out, reloaded, and fired at the door, hitting Willie in the thigh and groin. Despite his injuries, Willie managed to crawl 350 yards to a black man’s house nearby to ask for help. Tate shot again through the door, hitting Mrs. Liddie Martin in the nose and the lower half of her face as she held her grandson in bed.
Tate then went to the window and began firing into the house. One shot hit Mr. Martin in the shoulder and elbow. Another hit Mrs. Martin in her side and leg, shattering the leg. Pellets struck the grandson. The wild shots missed Lula, a nine-year-old son, and Mrs. Hardigree.
Tate then walked away. Tate unhitched a horse and rode to the Black home. He left behind a whiskey bottle on the Martin’s porch.
Martin sent Lula and her younger brother to the house of John Black about 200 yards away. Lula warned the Black family of Tate’s rampage, and they escaped before his arrival. When Tate arrived and found the family gone, he decided to hide beneath a nearby shed. He eventually fell asleep.
Upon hearing of the rampage, Sheriff Joe Land and Deputy H. R. “Luck” Turner rushed in their buggy to the Kidd community. That morning, they found Tate asleep and surrounded by a loaded shotgun, several shells, and a whiskey bottle.
“Hello, Luck,” Tate said to the deputy.
“What in the world have you killed all those people out here for,” asked the deputy.
“What people,” laughed Tate.
“Why you have killed Mr. Hardigree and Mr. Martin and his family and shot the furniture all to pieces,” replied the deputy.
“Oh, pshaw, Luck, I ain’t done it.”
He laughed and did not resist as the deputy bound and put him in the buggy. Sheriff Land expected a lynch mob before they reached the Smith County jail in Tyler, but none materialized. Mrs. Martin died from her wounds the next day. When questioned about the murders, Tate replied, “They talked about me and wronged me.”
He was sent to the Anderson County jail in Palestine because of emotions running wild in Smith County. His defense attorney was chosen by drawing from a hat. They used the defense that Tate did not know what he was doing due to intoxication.
During the trial, Tate’s brothers said his actions were due to bad whiskey. Tate’s wife, who divorced him later, said he took capudine and morphine tablets for “sick headaches.” During the trial Tate remained calm, holding his son, who he played and laughed with.
The jury found Tate guilty and sentenced him to be hanged. He turned deathly pale upon being handcuffed. State prison officials refused to accept Tate unless Smith County paid for a special guard. Take was sent to the Fort Worth jail. He tried escaping but prison officials found a steel saw hidden in a box of cornflakes given to him by a visitor.
On November 19th he escaped using a steel spring from his booth, sawing through the bars over a small opening in his cell used to pass food inside. He slipped into a corridor, carrying six feet of hoes, two blankets, and a 12-foot section of pipe. He reached the jail’s roof where he used a makeshift ladder to slip to the ground. He found the jail’s gallows, which he climbed on top of, fastened the hose to a chimney, and slid to a yard back of the jail. The guards were distracted by a passing parade, and his escape was not discovered until midnight. The jailers believed that he was helped from the outside. His pretty face was soon on wanted photos all over the Lone Star State.
Smith County offered a $250 reward for his capture. For the next decade, East Texas newspapers mentioned sightings of him. Many believed he escaped to Oklahoma. He was never captured and for years afterward, East Texan children would hear their parents talking about Tom Tate, cementing his place in history as a piney woods boogeyman.
[Note: Instead of being filmed as a Western, this episode could be shot like a slasher or horror movie, with nods to Halloween and Friday the 13th.]
10. The East Texas Murder that Killed Bonnie and Clyde (Chapter 17 in Historic Murders)
The Depression Era outlaw duo Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow became infamous to the law enforcement community for committing twelve murders, but folk heroes to the struggling poor for robbing banks across Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Missouri. Accompanying them on their spree was an Oklahoma boy named Raymond Hamilton. He and Clyde disagreed on their targets, with Hamilton wanting to rob banks instead of small businesses. He and the duo split ways after a bank robbery went sideways. The couple went to New Orleans, where they lived the high life until the money ran out.
Meanwhile, Hamilton was arrested in Texas and sent to Eastham Prison, known as “The Bloody Ham.” He convinced a drug addict named James Mullens that he would give him a thousand dollars if he could find Clyde and convince him to spring him from jail. Mullens contacted the duo, who were reeling from the death of Clyde’s brother and the capture of his sister-in-law. Clyde listened to the plan devised by Hamilton that called for weapons to be smuggled into the prison and then used by the prisoners while they were taken outside the walls to work in the fields.
On January 14, 1934, Bonnie and Clyde dropped off Mullens and Floyd Hamilton, Raymond’s older brother, less than a mile from a prison field camp. Mullens and Floyd placed a pair of Colt .45 automatics into a rubber inner tube, walked through the piney woods, placed the tube beneath a culvert near the prison woodpile, and slipped back to the waiting duo. Despite warnings from the sheriff and police detectives in Dallas, the staff at “Bloody Ham” allowed Hamilton to work outside the prison walls.
On January 16, as thick fog rolled off the Trinity River, Clyde and Mullens stepped out of a stolen Ford V8 coupe parked on the Calhoun Ferry Road and sneaked to a creek ravine near the prisoner assembly area. At 7 a.m. the prisoners were escorted by guards known as “longarm men” and “backfield men” out of the prison and to the workcamps. Among them were Hamilton and another prisoner, Joe Palmer, carrying the .45s they had found in the woodpile. As the prisoners neared the ravine hiding Clyde and Mullens, Hamilton and Palmer pulled out their weapons and began firing at the guards.
Two guards, Major J. Crowson and Olin Bozeman, were sitting on their horses, talking to each other. Palmer fired at Crowson, hitting him in the stomach and throwing his body from the horse. Bozeman fired his shotgun at Palmer, grazing his head. Palmer fired back, hitting him in the leg. Hamilton accidentally dropped his pistol’s clip in the mud, leaving him without ammo.
Clyde and Mullens jumped from the ravine and joined the fight with their Browning automatic rifles. Unarmed prisoners dropped to the ground. Bonnie began honking the V8’s horn to guide Clyde and Mullens, with the escaped prisoners, through the woods. Three other prisoners escaped during the firefight: Hilton Bybee, J. B. French, and a boy from Bienville Parish, Louisiana named Henry Methvin.
French escaped into the woods while Bybee and Methvin ran toward the V8. Mullens stopped them, saying that only Raymond and Palmer could get in. Clyde said it was his car, and he was running the operation. With seven people in the car, the gang escaped to Hillsboro, dodging a statewide police dragnet.
French was captured the next day when he ran into the house of farmer Gabe Wright while trying to escape the police dogs. The African American farmer held him at gunpoint until the law arrived. The guard Crowson died of his wounds, but not before identifying Joe Palmer as his killer. Bozeman was treated at the hospital and was back to work the next day.
The gang dropped Bybee off before heading to Fort Worth, where they ditched the Ford and stole another car. Hamilton and the duo parted ways once again. He and another outlaw robbed the First National Bank in Lewisville and after a lengthy chase, he was captured in the town of Howe. During his trip back to prison he was joined by Joe Palmer.
The Eastham prison escape caused law enforcement such embarrassment that the Texas government called Texas Ranger Frank Hamer out of retirement. Hamer tracked down Henry Methvin to Bienville Parish and, with Henry’s father’s help, sent Bonnie and Clyde into legend along a lonely stretch of Louisiana highway.
Raymond Hamilton and Joe Palmer were both convicted of the murder of Crowson and sentenced to the electric chair. When the judge asked Palmer when he wanted his execution date set, he said “Yessir, make it 1999.” The judge was not amused. When the judge set the date for Hamilton’s execution for May 10, 1935, Raymond asked if that was “The same night as Joe’s going over?” When the judge answered in the affirmative, Raymond said, “Well, that’s the way I want it.” When May 10th came, Hamilton chose to go first. His final words to those who gathered to witness his trip to the chair were, “Well…goodbye all.”
11. A Murder and A Music Legend (Chapter 18 in Historic Murders)
On the night of April 23, 1936, Marlie Childs, 34, former treasurer of Shelby County, was killed by a rifle shot to the head as he stood drinking a glass of water in the kitchen of his home in Center, Texas. He was found by his younger wife of six years, Reable Sapp, a pretty small-town girl from Timpson. She said Marlie, who had been struggling with polio, had gotten up to get water to take his medication. There had been a sharp noise, and she had walked into the kitchen to find him lying on the floor. She ran to a neighbor’s house, who called the police.
The police, led by the district attorney Wardlow Lane, first thought Childs had committed suicide. But there was no gun. Then they found a broken window pan, powered burns on the screen, and a place on the ground where someone had stood near the window. They determined that Childs had been hit behind the ear by a 22. caliber slug fired by a rifle at close range.
Bloodhounds were brought in to follow the scent of the killer. They led the police through the shrubbery around the house and to a small clearing where tire tracks and warm oil drips meant a car had recently been parked.
Reable told Lane that Childs did not have any enemies. She thought the murderer must be a tramp. A witness noticed an old green Chevrolet sedan parked across the street from the funeral home where Childs’s body had been taken. The windshield was scratched by a wiper without a rubber blade. A local mechanic said the car was driven by a good-looking fellah who lived up around Jefferson.
Lane questioned a service station attendant at Woodlawn 9 miles south of Jefferson. The attendant said the car belonged to a young man who worked in a Civilian Conservation Camp and had been driving back and forth between Center and Jefferson. In Jefferson, law enforcement found the car parked near a candy store. The candy store clerk said the owner was Terrance R. (Bud) Bramlett.
At that moment Bud Bramlett walked up. Lane asked if he would be willing to go for a ride with him. Bud agreed. As the law drove him around, he asked “Is this about the woman’s husband in Center?” He said he had an alibi. “Four or five people will tell you under oath that I was here in Jefferson that night.”
During questioning, Bramlett said he had seen Reable Childs at a drug store in Center. They had made eye contact but did not speak. Still, Bud returned to Center, “Just to see that girl again….We’ve been sweethearts ever since.”
Reable told him about the prosperity marrying Marlie had brought her. But she also told him all about how she had to nurse Marlie, whose polio-stricken body was declining. Insomnia kept him up at night and pain racked his body during the day. Bud and Reable drove Jefferson, where he introduced her to his friends as his secret bride. When his friends wanted to host a party for the couple, Reable said to drop the fake marriage story because someone Bud intended to invite knew her.
Bud’s four Jefferson alibies didn’t hold up under scrutiny. However, four witnesses said they had seen him in the green Chevrolet in Center on the night of the murder. District Attorney Lane told Bud if he wrote a confession, Reable would be spared the electric chair. The young man wrote in a 36-page confession that he had stood at the window and shot Marlie when Reable sent him to the window for a glass of water. They had planned the whole thing out and Reable had decided on shooting Marlie since she did not like the idea of cutting someone. The sign for Reable to send Marlie to the window was the rustling of Bramlett’s hand over the wisteria leaves outside. Bud then drove to Jefferson to have an alibi and hid his rifle in a closet. It was discovered there by Shelby County deputies.
Lane and the deputies took Bud and Reable to a jail in San Augustin for guarding. When Bud saw the freshly widowed Mrs. Childs, he asked her, “Reable, tell me the truth. Has there been anyone else since we were sweethearts?”
“I don’t know what you are talking about,” she replied.
Reable would not admit guilt in the case, even after grueling interrogation with Texas Rangers in Beaumont. She didn’t plot with Bud, she claimed. When Reable and Bramlett were arraigned on charges of “murder with malice aforethought” in Center, their attorneys asked for a change of venue to Carthage in Penola County and for the trials to be held separately.
Reable was tried first in September 1936. Prosecutors painted her as a woman who wanted the love of a younger man and the money of her husband. Reable said she was innocent. She admitted to having troubles with Marlie Childs, which had started shortly after their marriage when he refused to allow her to have children. She did ask him for a divorce after meeting Bud. But she had also told Bud if he caused any trouble she would not speak to him ever again because she would not marry a murderer.
The jury did not believe her and she was the first woman convicted for murder in Panola County history, which had not given a death penalty in 90 years. So many reporters came into the town that hotel rooms were $5 a night. Reable was found guilty and sentenced to twenty-five years in the state prison at Goree Women’s Prison in Huntsville.
Bud Bramlett repudiated his 36-page confession and claimed that Reable shot Childs in the back of the head when he went into the kitchen. Someone who worked with Bud at the CCC camps claimed Bramlett offered him $3,000 if he killed Childs. Throughout the trial, Bud claimed that he had been enticed by Reable, who he had met at a dark movie theater in Center and agreed to meet in the treasurer’s office, where they had their affair. He was found guilty and sentenced to fifty years in prison at Huntsville.
But the story doesn’t end there.
During Reable’s early life, she had taken music lessons in Carthage. She and seven other inmates decided to form a women’s band inside the walls of Goree. They were in on a variety of charges, including assault and robbery, cattle rustling, burglary, and drug possession. These outcasts of society wanted to do something no one believed they were capable of. Reable would play the banjo and steel guitar. A high school piano teacher was brought in to help teach some of the inmates.
The Goree All-Girl String Band made its debut on July 19, 1940, on Thirty Minutes Behind the Walls, a prison show that was broadcast from WBAP Radio out of Fort Worth. The show consisted of acts performed by prisoners and was broadcast from the prison auditorium in the all-male unit in Huntsville.
One member of the band, Mozelle McDaniel, learned to yodel and became known as the Western Songbird. Their most requested song was “I Want To Be A Cowboy’s Sweetheart.” They performed at the famous Texas Prison Rodeo in Huntsville. During one of the performances the piano teacher noticed a handsome, wavy-haired young convict sitting by himself on a fence, staring forlornly at the Goree Girls, especially Reable. She later learned it was Bud Bramlett.
The popularity of the band grew. They performed at the Fort Worth Livestock Show and Rodeo, at the home of a Fort Worth newspaper tycoon, and the house of a powerful judge and banker from Houston. Letters and gifts were sent to the jail for the band members. Reable even received a bracelet from an admirer in Egypt.
By 1941 the listenership of Thirty Minutes had jumped from 32,000 to 100,000. Eventually, their singing began charming the ears of Governor W. Lee O’Daniel and his successor Coke Stevenson, and paroles were given. The first to be released was Mozelle “The Western Songbird” McDaniel, just two years into a seven-year sentence. Other inmates replaced the members as they were paroled.
Bramblett managed to talk the producer into allowing him to appear in the show. He was hoping to get Reable back. He talked about his reformed life, pointing to his Sunday School attendance. Another male inmate, Paul Mitchell appeared on the show to tell his story. He also wanted to get a look at Reable. He talked the warden into letting him chauffeur the band.
In 1943 Reable was the second to last member of the original band to be paroled. The show was soon canceled. She married Paul Mitchell and moved to Houston. A decade later she made headlines for saving a drowning boy at a local pool. After his release, Bud Bramlett pursued Reable to Houston and tried once again to convince her of his affections. He was soundly rebuffed and moved back to East Texas
She and Paul had the child that Marlie Childs had denied her, a girl named Gayle. The daughter did not learn of her mother’s past until they drove to Nacogdoches to visit her college boyfriend. The boyfriend told Gayle that he knew someone who said Reable killed her first husband. After the trip, Paul and Reable sat down with her to explain their history.
Gayle married Bill Royer, one of the American hostages taken at the US Embassy in Iran. After his release, many reporters showed up to cover the wedding. To avoid distracting her daughter’s big day, Reable, like so many other tales and legends and aspects of East Texas history, quietly stepped back into the shadows so the young can march on into a better tomorrow.
[Note: The story of the band has been adapted into a stage musical at the Theatre Barn in New York City and was almost a movie called The Goree Girls starting Jennifer Aniston]
12. The Ezekiel Airship (in Chapter 3 of 124 Stores You Might Not know If You Did Not Read This Book)
Reverend Burrell Cannon was more than just the preacher of First Baptist Church in Pittsburg, Camp County. He was also a sawmiller and inventor. And with a name that sounded like he was about to shoot off any minute and send a cannonball toward the wide blue Texas sky, of course, the sky would be the limit for his imagination. One day while reading the Book of Ezekiel he suddenly had a revelation. There in the Bible was the perfect blueprint for a flying ship: The appearance of the wheels and their work was like unto the color of berly….and their appearance and their work was as it were a wheel in the middle of a wheel.”
Here in the hills and prairies of north East Texas the Old Testament and the Age of Innovation met in the mind of Rev. Cannon. After studying the Biblical passages for years and taking extensive mechanical notes, he produced a design in 1900. The aircraft would have a series of wheels, a 26-foot wingspan, and a cluster of levers to control the craft’s flight. It was more of a helicopter than an airplane. It would be powered by a four-cylinder gas engine. With the financial backing of friends, the good reverend started the Ezekiel Airship Manufacturing Company. The craft was built at a foundry in Pittsburg.
On a Sunday in 1902, employees of the foundry rolled the machine out into a pasture. One of the employees, Gus Stamps, gave it a test flight. It flew about ten feet before drifting toward a fence. Stamps killed the power before an accident could occur. Which was a good thing since Reverend Cannon was not there but, it being Sunday and all, was preaching at a nearby church.
He failed to raise more interest in the aircraft. He loaded up the plane on a railroad flatcar for display in St. Louis at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition. However, a storm near Texarkana sent the aircraft for an unintended flight off the boxcar, destroying it.
Rev. Cannon built a second airship in 1911. It was destroyed when a hired pilot flew it into a telephone pole during a test flight. Cannon moved on to other inventions, like an automated cotton picker and a boll weevil destroyer. In 1922 all of his notes for the Ezekiel Airship were destroyed in a fire.
The people of Pittsburg have since come around to the reverend’s airship. A replica of the Ezekiel Airship is now on display at a museum downtown. Many wonder if the reverend had had the backing and PR of the Wright Brothers, Pittsburg, Texas, not Kitty Hawk, would be known as the birthplace of American aviation.
Just goes to show that the spirit of the American Dream and the daring to reach for the sky is alive and well in East Texas.
Those are just a few of the stories that I have found in Bob Bowman’s books That Should Be Movies.
