#11

After receiving information about a woman that was reported to have a large quantity of cocaine in her home a search warrant was obtained for the residence.
Upon running the warrant, it was found that this person was the babysitter for several families in the area and there were six toddlers running around the house, all of whom were wet and dirty. The woman pointed out the dope right away and of course said she was just holding it for someone.
We were in the process of calling mothers to come and get their kids when we started hearing a muffled sound coming from somewhere in the house. After a search we found a baby in a small closet with the door closed. The baby was in a car seat on the floor of the closet and was completely covered by a thick quilt. When a baby started crying she would just bury them in the closet. It worked really good because even with the baby crying it was hard to find.

When the mothers started arriving they were all disbelieving and mad at us. They said that this woman was a wonderful babysitter and that she was always asking for more diapers so they were sure she changed them often. (she did have another closet full of new diapers) Evidently she changed and cleaned them up just before the mothers came to pick them up in the evenings. The mother’s just would not believe anything bad about this woman. They had to have a sitter and sitters are terribly hard to find in a small town so guess who they blamed for all their troubles.
Just one more notch in the cog toward early retirement.

#10
This is a story about a man who was obsessed with the idea of killing his wife. His wife had obtained a protective order against him which is almost useless except for the fact that it gives law enforcement the right to arrest the person when they violate the order.

The police in our neighboring county where the subject lived had around the clock patrols on the wife’s home and had caught him trying to get to the house twice. Both times he had been armed with a pistol. This man owned his own business and had enough money to make bail so he was right back on the street each time he was arrested.

It’s a catch 22 situation where you know someone is going to commit a murder, but are unable to arrest him for anything but the violation of the protective order and the unlawful carrying of a weapon (which are only misdemeanors) until the murder is attempted or actually happens.

After these episodes they were able to get a warrant that would send him to a mental institution for thirty days for evaluation. When his lawyer informed him of this he decided to run. He dyed his black hair blonde and got a friend to drive him out of town. He was headed out of state but the friend got cold feet and only took him across the county line. At the first town they came to he made him get out. This is where we come into the case.

The police received a tip that he had gotten a ride into our county and notified us to be on the lookout for him. This went out over the sheriff’s department radio so everyone in that community with a scanner (which is almost everyone) knew we were looking for someone. I had not been in the area but a few minutes when a woman flagged me down and pointed out an abandon house that had the screen propped open and the window broken out. She said he might be in there. I thanked her but I was sure that window had been broken for some time, but for appearance sake I circled by in front of the house and than came around the block to the back and got out to take a look. I walked up to the back window and stuck my head in not expecting anything. To my great surprise there he was on the other side of the room looking out the window in the direction in which he had seen me heading and he was holding a large pistol in his right hand. He had not heard me approach because of all the traffic on the highway so I was able to cover him with my pistol. I then ordered him to drop his gun. Upon hearing that he swung around to the point to where he almost had the pistol pointing at me but not quite enough to where I felt I had to shoot him. It was enough however to where I could see the hole in that pistol barrel that looked as big as a shotgun. It took several tense seconds before he made up his mind he wasn’t going to win this battle and he dropped his gun. I think my gun may have looked mighty big to him too. After I had him cuffed I retrieved his pistol and it was not nearly as big or bad looking as it was when he was holding it.

I transported him to our jail and while he was locked up he offered to hire one of the other inmates to kill his wife (did I say he was obsessed). After learning of this we arranged for him to meet with a hit man who was of course a cop. He made a deal with this hit man to kill her for the sum of ten thousand dollars which was all caught on tape. This solicitation of a murder is how we finally managed to get him in the pen for a nice long stretch.

#9
One cold winter night I received a call a little after midnight reporting a kidnapping. When I arrived at the house I was met by a neighbor and the victims twelve year old daughter. The girl told me that someone had came into her mothers house though a window and had attacked her mother. The little girl said that she had gotten a kitchen knife and tried to stab the attacker in the leg but he had knocked her away and had dragged her mother out the front door. The victim’s car that was also missing was a small older Toyota and had out of state tags. I had other deputies called out and notified to be on the lookout for this vehicle. I started searching the county’s back roads and all the secluded parking spots I was aware of. After about an hour of searching I saw the reflections off a cars tail lights on one of the more isolated roads. As I got closer the car started up and began to speed off toward the nearest paved road. I caught up close enough to see the license tags and found that it was the missing car. I had another patrol car on the way and I could see it coming down the paved road that we were headed toward. I tried to time the stop so that we would all meet at the intersection but the car stopped a little to soon. I went up to the drivers side and a girl was behind the wheel. She had both hands on the wheel and was stiff as a board staring straight ahead. I could see she was scared to death. I pushed her forward and aimed my pistol at the male with her. She fell out the door screaming he has a knife, he has a knife, which made me feel real good as I had a gun. The other deputies pulled up and dragged the sorry prick out and took him into custody. She said she was absolutely sure she was going to die that night. She told me much later that she still gets up ten or fifteen times a night to make sure all the windows are locked. A rape like this doesn’t last just one night, I don’t think she will ever get over this encounter. Saving this girl was one of the better nights of my life. By the way, the asshole was sentenced to sixty years in the pen.

#8
I will try to answer some questions that have been raised about the size of my patrol area and why I did not wait for backup. First the county is fifty miles long and over twenty miles wide My patrol area was a good portion of that area. I did have backup, it was just a long way off.
There were only four county deputies, each having their own areas of responsibility. The nearest backup was at least 20 to 30 minutes away. Also when you were called out at two or three in the morning for a family disturbance (way too often) or some other offence, you would be the only deputy out in the county. You learned early to take care of yourself and not get into a situation you couldn’t get out of. You knew you could not count on backup to arrive in time to bail you out.
As I’m sure you have figured out by now my county is very rural with only around eleven thousand residents. You would think there would be very little crime in a location like this. Unfortunately a neighboring county had a city of over a hundred thousand whose city limit signs were perched on our county line. Most cities have a bad side and we were blessed to have the bad side next to us and I was blessed to have that area of the county so I was seldom bored.

#7
Another case while I was still green as a gourd. I received a call of an accidental shooting in a home well out in the county. When I arrived I found a man lying face down by the dining room table with a small hole in his back. The other occupants of the house were his wife and his two sons, a 12 year old and a 14 year old and an 8 year old daughter.

The kids told me that they were in their bedroom which was next to the dining room and that they had dropped their 22 rifle and it had gone off striking their father in the back. I looked the rifle over and could see no way this could have happened that way. I had just enough sense to leave everything alone and call the sheriff. The sheriff contacted the Texas ranger that worked our area they were soon there. The policy of the sheriff was that who ever got the call was in charge of the case so it was my case but I knew enough to keep out of the way.

A couple of days later I was notified by the parent of a classmate of the boys that the boys had admitted to shooting their father and than offered their friend five dollars not to tell. I drove out to the scene of the shooting where the sheriff and the ranger were still working and informed them of this. To make a long story short the boys were brought in and the ranger sat them down and got the true story from them. It seems like both boys wanted to do the deed so one aimed the rifle while the other one pulled the trigger. They also intended to kill their mother and take their little sister with them to wherever they thought they were going to go. Their father was strict but not abusive but both boys hated him anyway. Nether boy ever expressed any remorse, only saying they were glad he was dead.