Outlaws & Scorned Women Stef & Steph

Austin, TX - Millionaire media mogul Steven Beard wakes up one night to find his belly had burst wide open, with no idea how it happened. The truth would involve a love triangle, a shotgun, and a whole helluva lot of money. **Bonus - conversation with a real-live lawyer about just what the hell "capital murder" is.

Cisco, TX – 1927, the Golden Age of Crime. Two days before Christmas, Santa Claus walks into the First National Bank, kicking off a hailstorm of bullets and the biggest manhunt Texas had ever seen.
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Sources:
Pilcher, W.F. Santa Claus Bank Robbery, Texas State Historical Association
Sault, Spring The Santa Claus Bank Robbery: This Texas Town's Bloodiest Crime, TexasHillCountry.com
Fear, Force, and Leather: The Texas Prison System's First Hundred Years, 1848-1948, Texas State Library and Archives Commission
"Santa Claus, Why Did You Rob That Bank?", HometownByHandlebar.com
Site of the Santa Claus Bank Robbery, AtlasObscura.com
Coppedge, Clay The Dead Bank Robbery Bounty, TexasCoOpPower.com
The Fugitive

Austin, TX 1885 - A fiendish killer stalks the night, cleaving the skulls of women with his axe and dragging them from their beds into a darkness filled with knives and terror. As the nation's first serial killer, this guy inspired some poetic prose. Also, we dive into the toe-curling history of the Texas prison system.
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Sources:
Hollandsworth, Skip (4/5/2016). Esquire.com, How Police Failed to Find America's First Serial Killer.
Henley, Lauren & Dell'Omo, Augusta. 15 Minute History, Episode 102: The "Servant Girl Annihilator". Liberal Arts Development Studio. 1/17/2018
Psencik, Katey (11/7/2014). Kvue.com, The Servant Girl Annihilator: Austin's oldest unsolved murder case.
Vatomsky, Sonya (4/25/2017). Mentalfloss.com, How the 'Servant Girl Annihilator' Terrorized 1880s Austin.
Bueche, Shelley (10/10/2018) The horrifying history of Austin's infamous Servant Girl Annihilator
ServantGirlMurders.com
Citydata.com, Austin, TX crime statistics
Walker, Donald R. TSHAonline.org, Convict Lease System.
Texas State Library And Archives Commission, TSL.Texas.gov. Fear, Force, and Leather - The Texas Prison System's First Hundred Years, 1848-1948
Ariens, Michael. (2011) Lone Star Law: A Legal History of Texas. Lubbock, TX. Texas Tech University Press.

Houston, TX - Two people are hideously murdered with - of all things! - a pickaxe. The murderers are quickly brought to justice, but when one of them turns out to be a woman and she ends up on Death Row ... well, suddenly the eyes of the whole daggum world were on Texas.
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Sources:
Siemaszko, Corky. "The day the pickaxe killer Karla Faye Tucker was executed in 1998". NYDailyNews.com, Feb 3, 2016
King, Larry. "Karla Faye Tucker: Born again on death row", CNN, posted March 26, 2007
"USA: TEXAS: Karla Faye Tucker Execution Looks Set To Go Ahead", AP Archive, July 21, 2015
ClarkProsecutor.org
Murderpedia
Wikipedia
Justia

Austin, TX - On August 1, 1966 a lone man with a rifle held an entire city hostage for 96 minutes. We tell the story of our nation's first mass shooting, ponder nature vs nurture, and hash out the legal what-if's. Then we, I dunno, hug some puppies or something, cuz lawd this one is dark.
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Sources:
Lavergne, Gary M. "A Sniper In The Tower: the Charles Whitman Murders"Denton, TX 1997
Colloff, Pamela. "96 Minutes", Texas Monthly, August 2006
Rosenwald, Michael. "'He was looking straight at me': The brave officer who helped stop Charles Whitman", Washington Post, August 1, 2016
KTBC FOX 7 Austin. "UT Tower Shooting Video | Austin, TX 1966" Youtube. August 1, 2016

The first in a two-part deep dive into the long, monstrous history of lynching in Texas. Because no exploration of the crime in this state would be complete, or honest, without taking a long, hard look at this particular atrocity. So hug a puppy, y'all, and let's get into it.
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Sources:
Frontier Times Magazine, June 1950
Texas State Historical Association
Lone Star Law: A Legal History of Texas (American Liberty and Justice), by Michael Ariens
See No Evil Speak No Evil: a history of mob violence in the Texas heartland, 1869-1904, by Ross McSwain
"Lynching In Texas", by David L. Chapman, B.A.