'Murder' Annotated Contents

Following is an annotated table of contents for the "Murder" section of Texas Confidential! "Sex," "Scandal," and "Mayhem" tables of contents with chapter descriptions appear as separate posts.

1) The Border Reivers: In the late 1840s, the Glanton Gang, a bloodthirsty pack of scalphunters, terrorized the Mexican border region and served as a mercenary unit tasked with exterminating local Indians. (Note: Cormac McCarthy's magnum opus Blood Meridian is based on the activities of the historic Glanton Gang.)

2) The Nueces Massacre: In 1862, a group of Confederate cavalrymen pursued and then massacred more than 40 German immigrants who had decided to remain loyal to the Union cause and were attempting to flee to Mexico.

3) The Way of the Gun: Over the years, innumerable gunmen and hoodlums have prowled the lonely roads and trails of the Lone Star State, preying upon those unfortunate enough to cross their paths and eventually enjoying similar fates themselves.

4) The Death of Ambrose Bierce: In 1913, 71-year-old Ambrose Bierce departed his home in Washington, D.C., to cover the ongoing revolution in Mexico. And then he disappeared without a trace, consolidating his mark on literary history by becoming the subject of one of the most famous disappearances in America.

5) Texas Ser-y’all Killers: Texas has certainly not been immune from the brutal scourge of serial killers and has been home to some of the worst that have thus far been caught anywhere in the country.

6) The Ivory Tower of Death: On August 1, 1966, 25-year-old Charles Joseph Whitman, a former Marine and an architectural engineering student at the University of Texas, launched a bloody rampage that left 18 people dead and 42 wounded by the time it was over.

7) The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: From the moment it hit the big screens in 1974, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre became the archetype for the slasher film and gained a reputation as one of the most terrifying movies ever made. It also quickly gained a reputation for having been based on an actual incident that had occurred somewhere in Texas.

8) The Crime of the Century: On May 29, 1979, hit man Charles Voyde Harrelson, estranged father of actor Woody Harrelson, made history when he killed U.S. District Judge John H. Wood Jr. in San Antonio, committing the first assassination of a federal judge in the 20th century.

9) The Women of Death Row: Of the 337 people currently on death row in Texas, a mere 10 of them are women. They are no ladies, however, and are among the worst criminal offenders to have been caught and tried in the state. Texas has put to death three other women since reinstating the death penalty in 1976. (Shown here is Karla Faye Tucker, executed by lethal injection on February 3, 1998.)

10) A Fatal Attraction: By the age of 23, the popularity of Mexican-American pop star Selena was unprecedentedly successful had a devoted, one might almost say fanatical following. And on March 31, 1995, one of those followers, jealous of her idol’s success, shot the singer to death.

11) The Most Hated Woman in America: Madalyn Murray O’Hair may, in fact, have been the most hated woman in America at one point. She was certainly despised enough that in 1995, when she disappeared and it looked likely that she had been murdered, the police in Austin pretty much just decided not to do anything about it.

12) (Bad) Mothers of the Year: A disturbing number of Texas mothers have decided to end it all … for their unfortunate children (or, at the least, to injure them grievously). Medea herself would have been impressed with some of these filicidal matrons. (See "10 Years Ago Today: Andrea Yates Child Murders" on this site for a writeup on one of these bad mothers.)

13) Cruel Justice: Presiding Judge of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Sharon Keller (shown at right) decided that a clerk’s office could not stay open late to allow a stay of execution to be filed, and a man was put to death as a result.

14) A Texas Murder Trial: One night in November 2006, sheriff’s deputies in Comal County found the barefoot, mangled body of an 83-year-old woman on the south side of Canyon Lake. A resident from the other side of the lake claimed to have accidentally run over her but her story did not quite hang together.

15) Joe Stack and the IRS: No one likes to pay taxes, but Andrew Joseph Stack III got worked up about it enough to actually commit suicide by flying a plane into an Internal Revenue Service field office in Austin in February 2010.