Last Gangster in Austin: Frank Smith, Ronnie Earle, and the End of a Junkyard Mafia

by Jesse Sublett

Overview

Ronnie Earle was a Texas legend. During his three decades as the district attorney responsible for Austin and surrounding Travis County, he prosecuted corrupt corporate executives and state officials, including the notorious US congressman Tom DeLay. But Earle maintained that the biggest case of his career was the one involving Frank Hughey Smith, the ex-convict millionaire, alleged criminal mastermind, and Dixie Mafia figure.

With the help of corrupt local authorities, Smith spent the 1970s building a criminal empire in auto salvage and bail bonds. But there was one problem: a rival in the salvage business threatened his dominance. Smith hired arsonists to destroy the rival; when they botched the job, he sent three gunmen, but the robbery they planned was a bloody fiasco. Investigators were convinced that Smith was guilty, but many were skeptical that the newly elected and inexperienced Earle could get a conviction. Amid the courtroom drama and underworld plots the book describes, Willie Nelson makes a cameo. So do the private eyes, hired guns, and madams who kept Austin not only weird but also riddled with vice. An extraordinary true story, Last Gangster in Austin paints an unusual picture of the Texas capital as a place that was wild, wonderful, and as crooked as the dirt road to paradise.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781477323984
Publisher:	University of Texas Press
Publication date:	06/07/2022
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Jesse Sublett is an author, musician, and painter in Austin. This is his fourteenth book. He last wrote about the Austin underworld in 1960s Austin Gangsters: Organized Crime That Rocked the Capital. Other notable books include Armadillo World Headquarters: A Memoir (with Eddie Wilson), and his memoir Never the Same Again: A Rock ‘n’ Roll Gothic.

Table of Contents

Author’s Note. A Deep Dive
Introduction. Junkyard Owner Shotguns Robber: Was It a Setup?
Chapter 1. Baptist Preacher’s Son
Chapter 2. The Eagle Scout
Chapter 3. Texas Package
Chapter 4. The Big Hassle
Chapter 5. Best Job He Ever Had
Chapter 6. The Two Franks
Chapter 7. This Is War
Chapter 8. He Can Always Go Step on Bugs
Chapter 9. A Is for Arson
Chapter 10: The Robbery
Chapter 11: Power
Chapter 12. Star Time
Chapter 13. The Trial
Chapter 14. Aftermath
Acknowledgments
Notes
Photo Credits
Index

What People are Saying About This

Kathryn Casey

Once again Jesse Sublett proves that the Lone Star State's capital lives up to its mantra: Keep Austin weird. Enjoy this romp back in time to the era when Ronnie Earle ruled at the courthouse and Frank Smith in the salvage business.

Skip Hollandsworth

A rookie district attorney. A wily, backslapping multimillionaire bail bondsman. And one of the biggest criminal investigations in Austin history. Jesse Sublett’s book is both a riveting crime story and a character-rich study of Austin, Texas. It’s smartly crafted and excellently researched.

W.K. Kip Stratton

Jesse Sublett is a first-rate writer and researcher. Once again, he dives deep, exposing the creeps and bottom feeders of Austin’s criminal past to create an engrossing portrait of district attorney Ronnie Earle at the dawn of his long and legendary career. Last Gangster in Austin is a great read.

Editorial Reviews

Take a nostalgic trip back in time to the Austin of the 1970s in this gripping account of corrupt leadership, crime, power, and Texas-sized personalities.

Austin Monthly

[Last Gangster in Austin] is one of the most egregiously Texas stories, nay, one of the most remarkably Austin stories one could read...fantastic, an often wildly entertaining look at Austin when it really was a bit of an outlaw place.

Austin Chronicle - Joe Gross

Here's a true-crime story that's every bit as compelling as your favorite pulpy, fictional counterpart...It's a tale replete with genuine heroes, repellent villains, and a slew of supporting characters any self-respecting crime novelist would be proud to have created on the page...Sublett constructs the story with a sharp eye and a hard-boiled flair.

Austin Chronicle - Jay Trachtenberg

If you pick up just one new Texas history this summer, make it Last Gangster in Austin...Sublett's riveting true-crime story reads like a classic noir novel.

Austin American-Statesman

2022-02-15
How a creepy Texas crook with lots of friends was taken down by a valiant public servant and a dogged newsman.

Sublett, a revered Austin musician and mystery author, found the seeds of his latest nonfiction book on Austin-related topics when researching his affecting memoir Never the Same Again (2004), in which he recounted the 1976 murder of his girlfriend by a serial killer while he was out at a gig. The author kept encountering news stories about a guy named Frank Smith, who turned out to be "Don Corleone as reimagined by Hee Haw.” As Sublett describes him, Smith’s “criminal record and unsavory associations did no apparent harm to his wrecking yard business. He thrived on being quoted in the media, and reporters happily accommodated him. He was a six-foot-two, XXXL loose cannonball of contradictions….The son of a Baptist preacher, he often quoted the Bible, even in response to a message that a murder-for-hire contract had been fulfilled.” Among other misdeeds, Smith engineered an outrageous crime against the Rabbs, a sweet family who ran a junkyard, paying them $15,000 in cash for a group of vehicles and then sending gunmen over to steal the money back. The hero of Sublett's narrative is the late, great Ronnie Earle, longtime Travis County district attorney. Even though he held many left-leaning beliefs, “Earle was no coddler of criminals, and he came down on Frank Smith like a ton of bricks, using every weapon at his disposal." Also integral to the pursuit of Smith was Austin American-Statesman journalist Bill Cryer, whose crime reporting Sublett quotes admiringly and to great effect. This may seem more like fodder for a magazine article than a book, and there is more repetition of the facts than necessary, but readers interested in Austin history and quirky true crime will find plenty to enjoy.

A vividly detailed and stylishly written portrait of an Austin long gone by.

Kirkus Reviews