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TXF8670000 1867; Eastern Johnson County, TX
Topic Started: Feb 21 2009, 11:00 AM (683 Views)
monkalup
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The Old Heifer! An oxymoron, of course.
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http://www.cleburnetimesreview.com/crimese...eyword=topstory
Published: February 17, 2009 04:43 pm

Part 6: Oldest unresolved murder

By Pete Kendall/reporter@trcle.com

Editor's note: This story is part of the series Annals of Crime Vol. I, which originally appeared in the Times-Review in 2001.

Arguably the oldest, most heavily publicized and least solvable murder within the Mansfield-Alvarado-Grandview triangle in eastern Johnson County involved a young female in a red velvet riding habit stained with blood.
The year was 1867.

Investigators of the long-ago era had a starting point - a body.

They never had a jumping-off point - a last name.

They pursued the case much as investigators would have gone at it a century later, combing the territory for missing persons and trying to find a match. There was no fingerprinting in 1867, of course, and no electronic communication with other agencies. The primary crime solving tools were ears and eyes.

Stumped forever, they joined the community in prayer at Grandview Cemetery. And then they went on about their business in the wild, wild west.

Will Benton was 86 and an Alvarado resident when he related the story to a Times-Review reporter in 1976:

“My grandfather and his family had just come rolling into Grandview in a wagon. Grandview was just a little place then. Used to be right where the cemetery is now. One of those roads off to the right in the cemetery used to be the town’s main street.

“My father told me that the family came upon a funeral. It was a big crowd at the cemetery. Wasn’t a big cemetery. It’d only been there 17 years, so there couldn’t have been many graves.

“They lowered the girl in a pine coffin into her grave. It was an unmarked grave. I never did hear what kind of service they had for her, whether there was singing or any kind of testimonial. Back in those days, you know, they had to bury the deceased quickly, because there wasn’t any embalming. But for sure, no one knew who the girl was. No one had any idea.”

Oldtimers said the young woman, believed in her early 20’s, rode into Grandview May 31 with a male approximately her age. She was clad in a red velvet riding habit, appeared affluent, and her horse was well-groomed and hearty.

The couple purchased supplies at Scurlock’s General Stores. The male paid the bill. They were offered shelter for the night, declined and departed. The next day, not far from town, the female was discovered dead with a bullet in her head. Blood had gushed from the wound onto her riding habit. The male was suspected of pulling the trigger but was never found.

There were two intriguing clues.

The name “Annie” was embroidered into the young woman’s handkerchief. And in the late night or early morning hours after her burial, an unidentified person pounded two long, thin stones into the ground at the head and foot of her grave and etched “Annie” into one of the stones. The artist’s identity? It’s one of life’s, and death’s, little mysteries.

Times have changed. Law enforcement officials man computers tied to data bases. They scrutinize autopsies in state-of-the-art laboratories. They can usually be counted on to unearth the key piece of evidence that helps them resolve the crime.

That’s the way it worked in one resolved body dumping. Former District Attorney Dan Boulware recalled the curious details.

“On that case, my memory is that it was 11 or 12 at night when I was called by the Sheriff’s Department,” said Boulware, now in civil law practice with John MacLean. “Where the event occurred, you get off I-35 on 917, going west. You come to the crest of a hill and start down. There’s a road to the right, a county road that comes back going north.

“There was a body in the ditch. The male had been wrapped, as I remember, in a material like plastic tarp, and the material had been duct-taped in various places around the body. He’d been shot, and he’d been dead a couple or three days. Somebody had killed him somewhere else, obviously wrapped him securely in that material to keep blood from getting in the car, and then rolled him into this ditch.

“It looked like a roll of carpet. I’m assuming whoever did it was in hopes that people wouldn’t pay much attention to it. I’m sure it was dumped at night, and at night that probably looked like the end of the world. In daylight, it’s not quite that secluded.”

Back in 1867, law enforcement agencies were hampered by primitive transportation. By the time horses got them to the crime scene, there might be no crime scene. Lack of immediacy resulted in lack of evidence. Lack of evidence resulted in lack of suspects. Lack of suspects resulted in lack of arrests. That’s changed. Horses have been put out to pasture. Crime fighters now arrive at a moment’s notice.

“I always went to the scene on a homicide, day or night,” Boulware said. “I felt it was beneficial for me to see firsthand what had happened. I wouldn’t have to ask anybody about it when I went to court. I would know what it looked like because I had seen it.”

One thing hasn’t changed since 1867. Johnson County is vast, largely rural and, in many areas, difficult to police. Officers can’t be everywhere at once.

“There’s 800 to 900 miles of roadway in this county if you drove them all,” Boulware said. “There’s no way the Sheriff’s Department can keep constant patrol of all the roadways.

“If you’re on one of the major thoroughfares, you might see a DPS trooper, but there aren’t enough people to patrol the county. You just can’t do it.”

Nobody saw a Fort Worth ex-convict who failed to survive a harrowing night near FM 917E and I-35 near Alvarado in 1991.

Released from the Texas Department of Corrections, the man had traveled to Waco, found the welcome mat rolled up, and began hitchhiking to Fort Worth. Cold and evidently alone, he bedded down for the night on the pasture side of a fence. He apparently never woke up.

Animals beat officers to the body by several days. A dog trotted into a resident’s yard carrying the man’s decomposed arm. The search commenced, and the man was found and identified through TDC documents in the vicinity of the body.

Investigators originally speculated the man was killed in Tarrant County, transported south and dumped. That changed when they followed in his I-35 footsteps, and the medical examination revealed no gunshot wounds or broken bones.

It was one of Johnson County’s strangest deaths of the century, but it was no homicide. Case cleared by exceptional means.
Lauran

"If you have a chance to accomplish something that will make things better for people coming behind you, and you don't do that, you are wasting your time on this earth." The late, great Roberto Clemente.


In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, any copyrighted work in this message is distributed under fair use without profit or payment for non-profit research and educational purposes only.
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monkalup
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The Old Heifer! An oxymoron, of course.
[ *  *  * ]
http://z13.invisionfree.com/PorchlightUSA/...showtopic=15585
Lauran

"If you have a chance to accomplish something that will make things better for people coming behind you, and you don't do that, you are wasting your time on this earth." The late, great Roberto Clemente.


In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, any copyrighted work in this message is distributed under fair use without profit or payment for non-profit research and educational purposes only.
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