Читать книгу The Last Sheriff in Texas - James P. McCollom - Страница 9

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Time:

On a day in July 1945, Vail was handed a court order, told to go out to a ranch five miles west of town and get Jesusa Rodriguez’ two children. Jesusa had been divorced from Geronimo Rodriguez and was supposed to have the children for the next six months. They were living with Geronimo’s old man, Felix.

Old Felix had a shotgun in the house; whether or not he pointed it at Sheriff Ennis is still in dispute. Anyway, the sheriff let go with his sub-machine gun. Felix tottered backward, died as his uncles, Domingo and Antonio, came running from the back of the house. Ennis wheeled on the porch, fired another burst. They fell dead, too. Economical Ennis had fired only five shots—two for Felix, two for Dom and one for Tony.

Not everybody in Beeville loved the Time article. Some folks thought a Yankee’s use of Texanisms (rip-tailed roarer, sashay, heller, whup the pants off) sounded like mockery. American Legion Post 274 sent a letter to the editor protesting its unfairness to Vail and the town. The main objection was that the article dredged up the Rodriguez shooting again. It was something the town wanted to forget.

Felix was sixty-two, Antonio fifty-eight, Domingo fifty-five on the day they died. All three were born in South Texas; they had lived and worked on the John Wilson ranch for decades.

Domingo was particularly well-known and admired. He had served the previous year on the county’s grand jury. Political candidates asked his support in seeking votes among Hispanics at election time. Felix was survived by his wife; his son, Geronimo; and four daughters—Victoria, Trinidad, Lupe, and Mercedes.

There were those in town who said that the Rodriguez brothers had fired first. There were others who said they were as peaceful as anyone in the county, that none of the three would have fired a gun at a lawman.

Alfred Allee was sent to Beeville to handle the Rodriguez investigation. He interrogated Vail and the two men he had deputized to go with him—Frank Probst and Joe Walton. He interrogated Jesusita Rodriguez, the complainant ex-wife, and Victoria Rodriguez, Felix’s oldest daughter. The testimony:

Jesusita Rodriguez (the complainant, ex-wife): “Antonio fired the first shot at Vail Ennis. After that all the police started shooting.”

Frank Probst: (Questioned: Did anyone except Sheriff Ennis fire any shots?) “Not that I know of. If they did, I did not know of it.”

Joe Walton: “I saw a shotgun leveled at Vail. There was one man in the door.” (Questioned: One man or two men?) “I saw only one in the door. I saw Vail fire the machine gun blast that killed the three men.”

Probst: “I heard Felix say, ‘No, no.’ He was in the doorway, and another man was there. A 30-30 was next to the door. One of them reached for the 30-30. A shot was fired through the door. I retreated. Two more shots came through the door. Then I heard the sound of the machine gun.”

Victoria Rodriguez (Felix’s daughter): “When Vail Ennis returned, Geronimo was in the kitchen eating lunch. Antonio told him to hurry and finish lunch and bring the children. When the first bullets were fired, Geronimo had the children in his arms, bringing them to the door. My father did not have a gun—it was behind the door, where they kept it for hunting rabbits. I begged the sheriff not to shoot my father but he shot him. My father staggered to the kitchen, helped by the others, and died in my mother’s arms. His last words were: ‘Take care of the children.’”

Probst: “Coming around the right side of house I saw two men with a rifle. I heard a machine gun blast, saw the men go down. I did not see shots fired. I rushed into the house, Geronimo was crouched down. The shotgun was three feet away. I grabbed Geronimo. He kicked a woman and knocked her down. The woman grabbed for the shotgun but Vail came in and took it away from her. He broke it on the back steps. The tear gas was thick. I tried to calm Geronimo. He hit Vail in the face. I told Vail we’d better back up and see what the score is.”

Victoria Rodriguez: “After my uncles were shot, Vail Ennis and Probst came into the house and Vail Ennis said he was going to kill Geronimo. He knocked Geronimo down; Geronimo was trying to defend himself, and I was trying to help him. Vail Ennis hit me on the head and kicked me in the stomach. He told me to get out or he would kill me. I went out through the front door. The others hid in an adjacent room.”

Probst: “Outside we took the rifle from under the bodies of Antonio and Domingo. It was in Domingo’s hand. The rifle contained seven shells, one in the barrel, and the hammer was cocked. There was one shot in the shotgun.”

The grand jury issued three murder indictments against the sheriff. The trial was held in Victoria, fifty-five miles northeast of Beeville, in January. In his closing argument, the flamboyant defense attorney, Dudley Tarlton, gave a performance lasting almost two hours, citing Shakespeare and the Bible. The jury took less than two hours to find the sheriff not guilty.

Back in Beeville, where even before the shooting twenty-one leading citizens (known as the “relators”) had filed a suit to oust the sheriff from office and they persisted with that effort. There were two or three hearings, the last one on February 22.

. . . it has become manifest, that he (Vail Ennis) is temperamentally, and by habits of thought and action, and expression, and by disposition to and acts of violence, wholly unsuited and unfitted to exercise the duties of said office, and that to permit him longer so to do would endanger the lives and liberties of the citizens and the public, and would disturb the peace of said county, in that during his aforesaid tenure he has, by his own violence, caused the deaths of at least five citizens, has assaulted, beaten, and tortured, without justification or excuse, various and sundry other citizens, has illegally arrested and held under false imprisonment, and violated the sacred civil rights of a large number of other citizens and individuals . . .

The action was abruptly dismissed by the district judge on the grounds that the relators had no legal standing for such a suit, leaving the town elders dazed and confused, and giving the last word to Sheriff Vail Ennis: “I harbor no ill will against those who sought to remove me from office. All I have to say with reference to the ouster suit is that I completely deny all the allegations contained in the petition.”

The shooting of the gentlemanly farmers was a tragedy. The Rodriguez funeral was the largest in the town’s history, larger than that of A. C. Jones, who brought the railroad to Beeville; larger than that of William McCurdy, who published the first newspaper in Beeville. Eight hundred signed the mourners’ register at the bullet-riddled house on the George West highway. More than a thousand, Hispanics and Anglos, nearly a quarter of the town’s population in 1945, attended the brothers’ burial on the Monday after the shootings. Father Berg, the new priest at Our Lady of Victory, officiated. The priest asked relatives and friends to refrain from vindictive acts.

Excessive violence by law enforcement. The debate went back to the Texas frontier, to the original Rangers. No group of lawmen had been more praised or vilified. Their history was a patchwork quilt of heroism, political confrontations, and harsh reprisals. After rustlers killed a Ranger in the Rio Grande Valley in the 1870s, Rangers shot, killed, and stacked twelve of the rustlers in the town square at Brownsville. During the decade that followed the Mexican Revolution of 1910, shootouts on the Rio Grande were said to have killed thousands of people, Mexicans and Anglos. Rangers became known to Mexican schoolchildren as the “rinches,” figures scarier than the Grimms’ ogres. Politicians never knew quite what to do with them. Time and again they were called to rescue Texas, only to be dismissed when politicians felt safe. Ma Ferguson expelled the entire Ranger corps when she became governor of Texas in 1933, leaving Texas towns as fair game for the new outlaws of the Depression, Machine Gun Kelly, and Raymond Hamilton. The Bonnie and Clyde rampage included the murders of two police officers in Missouri, a sheriff and a constable in Oklahoma, and two young highway patrolmen in Texas and the wounding and kidnapping of several other peace officers—all that before the ex–Texas Ranger Frank Hamer tracked them down.

Folklore favored the outlaw. Harry Wells, the “cowboy bandit,” had shot two Beeville peace officers in 1938. Newspaper reports dwelled on how handsome and daring he was. He was selected as the top news story of the year in Bee County. There was a ballad about Bonnie and Clyde. Another one about Gregorio Cortez. No ballad for Frank Hamer.

The deciding factor in the Rodriguez incident was that the Rodriguezes had guns. In Texas, you don’t pull a gun on someone unless you are prepared to use it. Everyone knew that. Alfred Allee knew it better than most. The Allee family history was one of shooting and being shot at. His grandfather, for whom he was named, had tracked down the bank robber Brack Cornett in 1888 and shot him in a gunfight at full gallop. That grandfather, as well as Allee’s father and great uncle, all Rangers, had died violent deaths.

Alfred Allee had little sympathy for those who complained of excessive force by peace officers. He had seen too much of excessive force by the other side.

And most of Texas agreed with him. In some places, there were lawyers who argued that it was better to free a hundred criminals than to convict one innocent man. That just made no sense in Texas.