Texas Confidential. Michael Varhola
to effectively continue their depredations.
Serial killer Kenneth Allen McDuff, for example, was given three death sentences but was released after just a little more than two decades in prison—and subsequently killed at least another eleven people. He was part of a broader wave of clemency that led to the release of a stunning 60,000 “low-risk” offenders and 127 convicted murderers, 20 of them former death row inmates. And confessed killer Janice Marie Vickers, whose murder trial I covered in 2009, received just seventeen years for what is generally known as First-Degree Murder—and simply Murder in Texas—meaning she will probably serve less than five years in prison for deliberately running over an old lady’s head multiple times with a car.
So, to say that I have been personally moved by my involvement with this book would certainly be true. And, if I have done my job well, then you will also be moved by some of the stories in this book and find them to be as fascinating as I do!
Michael O. Varhola
Canyon Lake, Texas
May 2011
Acknowledgments
A GREAT MANY OF MY FRIENDS, family, and associates deserve recognition for the roles they played during the development of Texas Confidential.
Foremost among the people who are due thanks is my wife, Diane. Among other things, she traveled with me to a number of the sites associated with the various chapters, discussed the project to one extent or another on almost a daily basis, and carried the weight of household responsibilities so that I could devote the necessary time and effort to this project.
Karen Holmes, publisher of the Hilltop Reporter, deserves thanks both for providing a venue that allowed me to work as a journalist in Texas and for offering encouragement and information throughout the development of this book.
Gratitude is due to the hosts, organizers, and affiliates of Psi-Fi Radio, a paranormal-themed show I appear on regularly. Donna Stewart, Sharon Kincaid, Laura Schier, and Clarence Rice encouraged me to discuss this book and some of its weirder chapters on the show. Fellow Texan Lydia Aswolf, host of the show Lydia’s Literary Lowdown, also provided a platform for me to discuss my activities and provided ongoing encouragement during the progress on this book.
A group of people who deserve recognition for their help include the staff at Clerisy Press, including editors Jack Heffron and Donna Poehner, marketing and publicity specialists Kara Pelicano and Hillary Bond, and publisher Richard Hunt, all of whom provided critical support, guidance, and encouragement during the development of Texas Confidential. Thanks, too, to John Boertlein, author of two of the other books in the series of which this book is a part. The chapter “Walking Tall in the White House” in this volume was adapted from his book Presidential Confidential.
A number of fellow writers, editors, and publishers warrant some acknowledgment for their general encouragement and specific contributions. These include Dominick and Charlene Salemi of Brutarian magazine, for which I write “The X-Phile” column on the paranormal; journalist Theron Brittain, who covered the Vickers murder trial with me; newspaperman J.D. Prose, who has always set a standard in my mind; Chip Cassano, who introduced me to the works of Cormac McCarthy; author Gary Cartwright, whose books on Texas history and crime were invaluable resources for me; Jake Silverstein, editor of Texas Monthly magazine, whose research into the final days of Ambrose Bierce helped me with my own chapter on that subject; and crime author Jesse Sublett, who very generously agreed to write the foreword to this edition of the book at the last minute.
Several friends also followed the progress of this book and periodically provided comments or encouragement on various aspects of it, among them Rick Atkinson; Richard Balsley; Coleen Cox; Caroline Eveningstorm; Nikolas Orion French; Rebecca Gallagher; Robert Gruver; Denise Lindsey; Jon Reichman; Terri Rodabaugh; Roxie Ann Young Sasiela; William Thrasher; Chris Van Deelen; my parents, Mike and Merrilea Varhola; Pete Wyeth; and Stan, Charmaine, and Sean Swearingen.
A number of the proprietors of various sites I visited or people I encountered in the process of doing so deserve my thanks as well, and these include Mark Priest of Miss Hattie’s Bordello Museum in San Angelo.
Various law enforcement personnel I have worked with over the past few years also warrant mention here, not necessarily because they directly assisted with this book but because they have generally been helpful in providing me with information related to my journalistic activities. They include Lieutenant Mark Reynolds of the Comal County Sheriff’s Office, Chief Joe Hamilton of the Bulverde Police Department, and trooper Rick Alvarez of the Texas Department of Public Safety.
It is important to recognize the work of the many authors, editors, journalists, radio and television reporters, contributors to online sites, and others who created the vast body of published information that I drew upon for this book.
I would also like to thank all of the editors, colleagues, family members, business associates, and friends who patiently—or, in some cases, not so patiently—waited for me to fulfill my obligations to them while I was focusing so much of my attention on this project.
Finally, if there is anyone I have left out of these acknowledgments, I would like to sincerely beg their forgiveness and thank them for their help as well!
INTRODUCTION
“Everything is bigger in Texas,” as the saying goes, and this certainly applies to the sleaze, iniquity, and violence that have taken place in the Lone Star State. This book is a selective overview of some of the most striking episodes of illicit sex, scandal, murder, and mayhem in Texas and the people who have perpetrated them and provides a glimpse of the state’s seamy underbelly.
Anyone who frequently watches true crime shows—not to mention other television programs and movies—has likely been struck by how many episodes are based on incidents that occurred in Texas.
Part of this, of course, can be attributed to the fact that Texas is so much bigger than other states and is thus simply proportionately more likely to be the site of unsavory activity. It is ranked second after Alaska in terms of geographical size and second after California in terms of population and, as of this writing, has a growing population of more than 25 million. For sake of comparison, 268,820-square-mile Texas is 64 percent larger than California and 17,300 percent larger than Rhode Island, and within that vast area there are at least seven large, distinct, geographical areas—each as large as many other states—the Panhandle Plains, Prairies and Lakes, Piney Woods, Gulf Coast, South Texas Plains, Texas Hill Country, and Big Bend Country.
Geographically and culturally, Texas is a virtual subcontinent and nation unto itself.
And, exceptional among U.S. states, Texas was indeed its own nation, existing as an independent republic from 1836 until late 1845, when it became the twenty-eighth state. It also seceded from the United States and was one of the Confederate States of America from 1861 to 1865.
Its vast size and the commensurate number of crimes aside, there seems to be almost an assumption of good-old-boy malfeasance in Texas. An excerpt of an article from The Handbook of Texas Online, a site operated by the Texas State Historical Association, succinctly points to this attitude:
“Texas went through one of its traditional and periodic governmental scandals in 1971–72, when federal accusations and then a series of state charges were leveled against nearly two dozen state officials and former state officials,” the handbook says of the Sharpstown Stock Scandal (q.v.).
On a more metaphysical level, people have also always seen the devil in Texas, and his name appears in the names of desolate, isolated, or forbidding places throughout the state, a handful of examples being the Devil’s Backbone, Devil’s River, Devil’s Sinkhole, and the Devil’s Hollow. Other place names with a supernatural bent are also fairly common (e.g., Purgatory Road in Comal County). Perhaps the iniquity that has occurred in Texas has inspired people to see the devil in its landscape, or perhaps he really is present and has inspired much of the evil that has been perpetrated here.
Texans are not, nonetheless, an overly grim people, and there is a certain joviality associated