You\u2019ve written elegantly before in the noir form. \u201cLast Gangster in Austin\u201d reads like tightly disciplined noir true crime report. Was that your intention?<\/strong><\/p>\nLike all crime stories, it starts with disruption. You try to make sense of it. What happened?<\/p>\n
I mean, it starts with a robbery at a junkyard. A would-be robber wearing a rubber monkey mask opens fire, misses everybody, dies of a shotgun blast. He left his prescription glasses in the getaway car.<\/p>\n
What? A junkyard? Why? Who was that guy in the green Cadillac?<\/p>\n
It\u2019s like jazz. A melody, then a deconstruction, going inside and out each riff, each note, you put it all together. To me, that\u2019s noir, and this story seemed to be the perfect noir thing.<\/p>\n
All the old courthouse hands underestimated liberal newcomer Ronnie Earle. What were his strengths and weaknesses on this, his first big case?<\/strong><\/p>\nRonnie Earle had great knowledge of the law, but he had never tried a case in a courtroom. Earle and Smith had already jousted with each other by proxy when Earle was in the legislature, working on bail bond reform.<\/p>\n
Once in office, Earle moved quickly to use the powers of his office to shut down Smith\u2019s bail bond business and see that he was held without bail before the trial. Earle did a masterful job of crafting a case against Smith that depended heavily on testimony from Smith\u2019s former underlings and achieved a successful outcome: a guilty verdict of life in prison and justice for the Rabb family.<\/p>\n\nIn your previous book on the Overton Gang, you\u2019ve brought to light an Austin \u2014 and Texas \u2014 underworld about which I knew nothing. What put you on this path?<\/strong><\/p>\nI started out wanting to write like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, so I wrote detective stories and novels set in Austin. I started writing about Austin in the 1970s with my memoir, “Never the Same Again.” Much of that was about the murder of my girlfriend, Dianne Roberts, by a serial killer in 1976.<\/p>\n\n
In my research I stumbled across these incredible stories about a junkyard mafia, an assassination in a downtown massage parlor, and the Timmy Overton Gang, led by ex-football players. If not for Austin crime in the 1960s and 1970s, I never would have written (books) about the Armadillo World Headquarters, Esther\u2019s Follies\u00a0and other stuff.<\/p>\n
Your account of Frank Smith\u2019s trial in Fredericksburg is a page-turner, even if we can reasonably guess the outcome. How did you piece it together?<\/strong><\/p>\nThe Rabb family had a copy of the trial transcripts, but a flood destroyed all but a single volume. Fortunately, that volume included some of the trial\u2019s most important testimony, including when Frank testified and lead prosecutor Phil Nelson did a masterful job of taking him completely apart.<\/p>\nTo make up for the other parts of the trial, I cobbled together material from the daily newspaper coverage. I also found the reporter\u2019s notes for Frank\u2019s bail hearing, in which the two thugs who had agreed to testify against him told their story in delicious detail.<\/p>\n
In short, the trial is a patchwork of sources, but I think it all came together nicely.<\/p>\n
I agree. You close your book with an appreciation of Ronnie Earle\u2019s long, community-building career as D.A. I have to admit that he was just part of the permanent scenery when I arrived in 1984. I didn\u2019t realize all the ways he made Travis County a better place. What were his biggest accomplishments?<\/strong><\/p>\nEarle created the nation\u2019s first Public Integrity Unit, which among other things, prosecuted cases of insurance fraud, Medicaid fraud, motor fuel tax evasion\u00a0and other offenses that brought in millions of dollars in fines to the state treasury.<\/p>\n\n
Earle was most passionate, however, about the effort he put into helping create entities and programs that promoted community welfare and social justice, such as the Children\u2019s Advocacy Center, organized to provide better support for child abuse victims and more convictions in child abuse cases.<\/p>\n
Earle also created the first Victim\/Witness Assistance Division in Texas. Ideas developed during meetings of the Travis County Community Justice Council, which Earle also created and chaired, were adapted for inclusion in the 1989 Criminal Corrections Reform Act, for the most sweeping reforms to criminal justice in Texas in 50 years.<\/p>\n
Although Earle liked to say that the Frank Smith trial was his \u201cfinest moment,\u201d I believe he was proudest of his efforts in community justice reform, programs that addressed child abuse, served crime victims and helped \u201creweave the fabric of the community.\u201d<\/p>\nRonnie Earle, by the way, was district attorney when the killer of my girlfriend in 1976 was sentenced to two life terms. He\u2019s still in jail. I guess I\u2019ve always felt that Ronnie and I were connected in some way because of that, too.<\/p>\n
So an insider question: How the heck did you gain access to all the major players, including American-Statesman reporter and later Gov. Ann Richards spokesman Bill Cryer, as well as the surviving relatives of Smith, Earle and others?<\/strong><\/p>\nMy book, “1960s Austin Gangsters,” grew out of research I\u2019ve been pursuing since the early 2000s, and along the way, I kept collecting stories as well as contacts.<\/p>\n
Tressa Granger, daughter of Ned Granger, who was county attorney during the Frank Smith era, urged me to write about Frank for years. Tressa introduced me to Frank\u2019s daughter, Letisha Taylor, and other important figures.<\/p>\n
An old college friend grew up with Dottie Ross, who ran Frank\u2019s bail bond office, another resource.<\/p>\n\nA writer friend gave me Bill Cryer\u2019s number. A few minutes into our first phone interview, we were like old pals. A whole lot of this book draws directly from the great writing that Bill did for the Statesman, and that also goes for a handful of other reporters I quote in the book.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve had Ronnie Earle\u2019s phone number for many years. When I was ready to start the book, I called the number. Twila answered. It was a little awkward, as Ronnie was days away from dying, but it turned out to be one of the most important calls I\u2019ve ever made as a writer. Twila Earle is an impressive human being.<\/p>\n
If not for her input, I don\u2019t think you\u2019d be reading this book.<\/p>\n
Michael Barnes writes about the people, places, culture and history of Austin and Texas. He can be reached a mbarnes@statesman.com.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n[ad_2]Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"[ad_1] If you pick up just one new Texas history this summer, make it “Last…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":32972,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32971"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32971\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32973,"href":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32971\/revisions\/32973"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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