1960s Austin Gangsters: Organized Crime that Rocked the Capital

by Jesse Sublett

Overview

Timmy Overton of Austin and Jerry Ray James of Odessa were football stars who traded athletics for lives of crime. The original rebels without causes, nihilists with Cadillacs and Elvis hair, the Overton gang and their associates formed a ragtag white trash mafia that bedazzled Austin law enforcement for most of the 1960s. Tied into a loose network of crooked lawyers, pimps and used car dealers who became known as the "traveling criminals," they burglarized banks and ran smuggling and prostitution rings all over Texas. Author Jesse Sublett presents a detailed account of these Austin miscreants, who rose to folk hero status despite their violent criminal acts.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781625853776
Publisher:	The History Press
Publication date:	03/09/2015
Series:	True Crime
Sold by:	Bookwire
Format:	eBook
Pages:	176
File size:	9 MB

About the Author

Jesse Sublett is an author, musician and artist from Austin, Texas. His publications include Rock Critic Murders, Never the Same Again, Broke, Not Broken and has contributed to Texas Monthly, Texas Observer, New York Times, Texas Tribune and the Austin Chronicle. A member of the Texas Institute of Letters, his seminal Austin rock band, the Skunks was inducted in the Austin Music Hall of Fame in 2008. Jesse lives in Austin with his wife, Lois Richwine. His blog can be found at JesseSublett.com.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements 7

Introduction 9

1 Getting Even: 1956-1961 17

2 "The Cream of Austin's Underworld": 1962-1963 35

3 Chicken Shack Cadillacs: 1964 51

4 Crime Wave: 1965 67

5 Bugging Out: 1965 79

6 Hell Hounds on Their Trail: 1966 93

7 They Didn't Care: 1967 109

8 The Big Circus: 1968 119

9 The Big Freeze Out: 1972 135

10 Austin Weird 147

Appendix 1 The Overtons in JFK Conspiracyland 153

Appendix 2 Other Sources on the Dixie Mafia 159

Notes 161

A Note on Sources 173

About the Author 175