Texas True Crime Miscellany

by Clay Coppedge

Overview

Outrageous acts of villainy have slowly drifted out of the national limelight and into the dustbin of Texas history. Consider the uproar over the 1879 shooting of actor Maurice Barrymore in Marshall and the 1949 murder of oil field legend Tex Thornton in Amarillo. The 1909 Coryell County Courthouse massacre committed by a sixteen-year-old girl remains just as shocking today. For the long-suffering associates of repeat offenders like Fort Worth's Flapper Bandit or Temple's International Man of Mystery, notoriety couldn't fade quickly enough. From the lawless days of the frontier to the rise of organized crime, Clay Coppedge sifts through eighteen obscure case files to chart the evolution of crime and punishment in the state.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781467149013
Publisher:	History Press, The
Publication date:	07/26/2021
Series:	True Crime
Pages:	128
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Clay Coppedge has published four collections of his Texas history columns, a history of baseball in Texas and a memoir. His work has appeared in a wide range of magazines, including Acres USA, Field & Stream, Progressive Farmer, Texas Co-op Power and Texas Highways. He lives and writes just outside of Walburg, Texas.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements 7

Part I Early Times, Early Crimes

James Brock's Honesty of Purpose 10

Six Degrees of Murder 15

Looking for Sostenes L'Archeveque 21

Death in Every Bistro 27

Rube Burrow Goes Glimmering 33

A Sure Thing Man 39

Murder Comes to the South Plains 42

Part II Dementia Texana

Dementia Texana 48

Temple's International Man of Mystery 56

The Hanging of George Hornsby 65

Monroe Fisher's Higher Calling 72

Becky Was No Flapper 75

Robert Blake's Last Mile 80

Double Crossed, Double Murder 89

The Walking Arsenal 93

Tex Thornton's One Time to Die 97

The Cowboy Gangster 106

Oil Field Voodoo 112

Bibliography 115

Index 121

About the Author 127