Features
Book chronicles history of North Texas murders
WICHITA FALLS, Texas (AP) — “Gunned down in Wichita Falls, shot in the back by a coward.”
Those words hand-carved into the grave marker of Thomas Curron Hollander in Riverside Cemetery inspired Julie Coley to set off on an odyssey, a quest to find out what happened to the man who lies beneath the simple pink granite marker set in 1916.
“I believe every grave has a story,” Coley said.
She found Hollander’s story then another, and another, and yet another. Enough stories, in fact, to fill a book.
So, murder she wrote.
She spent two years in libraries and courthouses dusting off the forgotten records of dastardly deeds and evil events. The result is a book “How Did They Die: Murders in Northern Texas 1892-1927,” a fat (400 pages) encyclopedia of murder and mayhem centered on the Wichita Falls area.
Why 1892 to 1927? Her stories are bookended by two of the most infamous criminal events in the city’s past — the robbery of City National Bank and murder of its teller, and the planning in a boarding house here of the bloody Santa Claus bank robbery.
Coley admits to “a curiosity for quirky and unusual history.”
Anyone who has seen her and husband Jeff prowling among the headstones and crypts of dozens of North Texas cemeteries can attest to that quirk. They have prowled and scribbled and snapped photos — 30,000 photos to date.
When her mother died in the mid-1980s, Coley, a history buff and former antiques dealer, found herself with few living relatives to fill in the blanks of her family’s history, so she delved into genealogy and became addicted to the painstaking discipline of research.
“I can’t stand to leave questions unanswered,” she said of her pursuit of elusive details that put together the pieces of lives lived and snuffed out long ago.
That her attention focused on the heinous deadly crime is understandable. Research into her own family revealed a long lineage of Texas and Oklahoma lawmen, and just to balance things out one horse thief.
The skeletons she found in the closet of the area’s past belong to the rich and powerful as well as the modest and meek. A famous cattle baron admitted to gunning down a man in a men’s room in Paducah then caught the next train home. All traces of the grave of a young mother disappeared in the years after she was shot to death by her deranged husband.
Motives for murder, Coley discovered, haven’t changed much over the years — greed, jealousy, pride and passion. A suspicious wife asked a cab driver to wait while she murdered the prostitute she found in the arms of her husband. On the way home from a rodeo in Wichita Falls, a man bludgeoned to death his wealthy in-laws to claim their fortune. A young woman thought she was destined to be a movie star after she blew away her lover in Electra.
More than a few people were surprised by phone calls or e-mails from Coley informing them that a distant kin was a perpetrator or victim of murder most foul.
“They wanted to learn more. They were eager to help,” she said.
But lest you think Coley entirely morbid, understand that most of her genealogy work has been directed at the living, helping people finding missing ancestors. In May she helped one frustrated woman find a lead on the birth mother she never knew.
Coley has also helped Times Record News reporters find missing pieces for historical articles. While she has charged fees for some time-consuming requests, most of her work is free, to help someone fill in the blanks of their heritage and for the thrill of the hunt.
As for tales of murder after 1927?
“I’m working on it,” she said.
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HAWKINS, Texas (AP) — Carrie Fussell got misty-eyed when she picked up the Taylor acoustic guitar and strummed it for the first time.
Fussell, who sings and plays guitar in a band called Calliope Musicals, an indie folk act, had come all the way from Austin to the small town of Hawkins, north of Tyler, just to buy a guitar.
“It is so pretty,” Fussell said. “When I was standing there playing it, I almost cried.”
Sitting in a room at Action Sound in the downtown retail district of this community of about 1,100 people, Fussell, 21, a Henderson native studying linguistics at The University of Texas, launched into a song as if performing for a nightclub full of adoring fans.
Outside the room, Action Sound owner Kelly Barber put his wiry frame to good use as he scaled a wall of shelves to pull down a used drum set a customer had come all the way from Kilgore to purchase. - More Features Headlines
