 The National Broadcasting Company presents Joe McCrae in Tales of the Texas Rangers Tonight transcribed from Hollywood another authentic reenactment of a case from the files of the Texas Rangers Tales of the Texas Rangers starring Joel McCrae as Ranger Jase Pearson Texas more than 260,000 square miles and 50 men will make up the most famous and oldest law enforcement body in North America Now from the files of the Texas Rangers come these stories based on facts only names dates and places are fictitious for obvious reasons The events themselves are a matter of record case for tonight Deadhead freight it is shortly before midnight August 27th 1938 at the Santa Fe Frey yards in Lubbock, Texas a Deadhead freight hauling empties back to the west coast from Galveston has just pulled into the yard The breakman and a railroad detective are making a routine check of the cars for free riding hobos If I was a yard dick, I'd be snoozing in the roundhouse. You ain't found a free rider in months Yeah, so what I get paid to check and I check all you know boz on the freight's always hop off before we pull into the yards I ever think one of them might fall asleep in the car and not have anybody to wake him up. Well, it could be Yeah, flesh you like this. Okay Hey, she nobody Now the car up ahead is the last of the boxcars. I walked the flats and gondolas while we was rolling so I know that they're clear Hey, hey, where's the door roll set on this one? Well, I don't know now. It shouldn't be let's get her open So you later on Nobody right Oh on your feet Right on Well, no wonder it didn't move just an old double bag. Yeah, what's a duffel bag doing on a deadhead freighter? Hey, hey, come here feel this All right feels like a body. You got a knife on you. Yeah here That's a good thing. We didn't pass this car Top of the bag showed up tighter and to cut right here in the side Yeah, what it's a young woman. Yeah tabbed to death And throw that light around the car. So what are you looking for? No blood any place. She wasn't killed on the train. Somebody must have loaded the body on to get rid of it Yeah, so the murder can't be pinned down any definite area It where'd you stop last before you pulled in here aside and west of sweetwater Body must have been put on someplace between there and Galveston then We better call the police. They can notify the Texas Rangers After a brief but penetrating study of the situation Ranger Captain Stinson had the body removed to a Lubbock funeral parlor He then requested Texas Ranger Jayce Pearson to take over the case Well, there it is Jayce Pretty brutal job of stabbing you figure it happened a good piece from here a couple of reasons for that Here's a map shows the route the freight train took Spot circled in red shows where it made stops and at what time I see No stops after it left the siding outside sweetwater, huh, right and most of the stops were made much further east hmm Well according to the time of these stops body must have been loaded on the train between Presby here and Turner City here Well, how do you arrive at that? Train made all its night stops between these points isn't likely the killer loaded the body on by daylight Too much chance of being spotted by the train crew. That's a good reason in Jayce. You may be right You said the body was sewed up in a duffel bag. Yeah, you better look at it before I send it on to the lab. I Had the undertaker lock it in this cabinet and give me the key Yeah, here it is Regular opening at the top of the bag is sewed up tight the draw cord is missing see Good thing the man who found the body cut into the bag instead of ripping out those new stitches Yeah, see what you mean kind of funny stitching It may have been made by somebody with a special trade where that kind of stitching is used Lab gets a look at it. Maybe able to tell us what trade. I hope so the bag itself won't help much I'm afraid I'm probably picked up in war surplus could belong to anybody Hey, look at this the bottom of the bag. It's kind of soiled Whoever cornered it around with a body and it must have set it on the ground to rest He sure did on riddish brown earth blood seepage made some of it stick Let's have a look at that train map again. I Think that earth stain kind of narrows down our search captain. Oh, how come I know the country that train passed at night I've been over it plenty only place I've seen earth that color is right around this area and a few stream beds Cotton belt runs parallel to the railroad for about 40 miles through there Well, I've seen all I want to see unless you have something else. No, let's go. I'll get this bag off to Austin Body gonna be held here for identification. Yeah, if she isn't identified We'll see if we can run down something by her clothes any laundry marks or anything on them Fred Nadia's homemade and home laundered no dental work to help us either and her fingerprints aren't on the fire I have a man check on the shoes. He was wearing they weren't homemade. Yeah, we'll try it You've got any ideas about what you're gonna do if it's all right with you I'd like to take a crack at that cotton belt area Toe charcoal down in the horse trailer and then ride parallel to the railroad tracks and see what I can find Well, that's a lot of territory. How about Steve Clark riding with you? Good deal We get anything from the lab. I'll let you know I'll radio clock and assign him and you can pick him up on the way Good luck, Jase. Thanks captain. You'll hear from me. I Met Clark we drove down to the beginning of the area I wanted to check left the car and use our horses for the long ride along the rail bed By noon of the next day. We'd covered 15 miles Horses are getting tired Jase. I know there's a sighting a little ways ahead freight stop there Yeah, look another covered coming up. Yeah Banks pretty steep watch your horse Careful boy easy charcoal Steep climb out of here Jase. Maybe if we're right. Hey, what are you looking at? Oh the ground, huh? Yeah Same reddish brown color. We've been checking for don't see anything else. So want to ride through the ways. Yeah, come on, sir I don't want to be a killjoy Jase, but we've done this in a dozen crick beds Yeah, but none of the others were as close to a train stop sightings only about 50 yards further up that Oh, whoa charcoal boy Find something Jase. Yeah, come here Marks in the sand trace of a couple of footprints not enough to make a cast but look at this other mark around impressions Yeah, what made it might have been somebody setting that duffel bag down Yeah, well that would have gone for the dirt you found on the bag We'll find out get a glass jar from your saddle pack. Okay gonna cut a core on that mark Yeah lab contested for blood trace earth this color. We can't tell anything by sight Here's the jar. Thanks You empty cans around here Jase those marks might have been made by a hobo. I don't think so. Bindle Stiff's travel light They don't carry duffel bags. What's the nearest town to here? Bowlville about a mile further on. Let's get there We can phone for a highway patrol car and they can drive you back and pick up our car All right, you're gonna check around Bowlville with a fine tooth comb The cotton crop around Bowlville was good too good migratory pickers were jamming the town I had photos of the dead girl and tried to find somebody who might have seen her No, no ranger never saw her around the gin here Towns full of though Possible one of their pickers saw someplace. You know anybody who comes in contact with a lot of the pickers No, no, I'm afraid you have to tackle them crew-by-crew. That's what I was trying to avoid Yeah, yeah, must be a couple of thousand migratories around You mind if I ask your man at the weighing platform to check with the haulers when they bring cotton in for ginning Think there is somebody who gets to see a lot of the pickers Mexican woman names old Rosie Drives a junkie old truck around peddling soda pop in the fields. You know where I can locate her Haulers give you lift up the fields and somebody else dear yacht to her Everybody knows old Rosie Somebody kill that poor girl. That's right Rosie. You ever see her you find who killer you're going to put him in a jail That's my job. How about it? You ever seen her around here? See one time where at the bus station in the town She was with a man. You know who the man was No, senior. Why'd you hesitate? Is that the truth? Why should I tell lies, and you're I don't know who the man was She described the man a vague stumbling description that might fit anybody While she described him I had a feeling she was lying a feeling that was strengthened by a faint odor of whiskey coming from the truck Whatever business Rosie was in it wasn't limited to the sale of soft drinks Pretended to swallow her story then I got a lift back to town where Steve Clark was waiting with our car Better hop in Jay's just had a call from Austin. They check the earth sample and in a jar Yeah, blood trace. All right same type as the victims. I got a line on a few other things, too The shoes on the dead girl have been traced through the manufacturer to a store in Sheffield You know wrote down the name of the store and the address better get over there and see if we can establish identity Yeah shoes will be waiting at the Sheffield Airport Isn't likely that a shoe clerk is gonna remember who he sold them to though. I saw the shoes They've been repaired recently whoever fixed them might remember. Well, that's a chance any information on that duffel bag Yeah, lab ties it in with a semen. Oh Stitches used to show up the bag or the kind semen used to mend a torn sail Chase you look like that throws you it does a little I was beginning to have a sneaking suspicion about an old Mexican woman But she's no semen What made you suspect her she said she saw the dead girl with a man She gave me kind of a phony description not only that but she's supposed to be selling soft drinks to the field hands from an old truck It reeked a liquor bootlegging, huh Hey, that could mean something what I'll report from Austin mentioned liquor stains and that duffel bag Naturally, they just figured that a bottle had been broken in the bag at one time or another But yeah, but it could be something else, too Yeah, that bag might have been used for hauling moonshine Stop the car. Hey, Jayce. What's the matter? Slide out. I'm going to Sheffield alone. You stay here. Okay, Jayce. What do you want me to work on? Tell ol Rosie the Mexican woman while I'm gone check on any special contact She makes whoever she sees find out who they are see if you can run down any who worked as semen I burned up the road to Sheffield the clerk who'd sold the shoes couldn't help But I got the information I was after in a repair shop my show show I fixed it is all right Look, here's the way I saw the broken a strap. You see I remember because of something else the two I never get a pay for the job. Who shoes are they Mrs. Watson? She's a little blocks up a brown wood house. Mrs. Watson, huh? Is her husband around? Oh, no, no, no, is it go away month ago? That's why she got no money for pay for the show See I know you're bad. She lived with her mother and a little baby's a one-year-old any idea where her husband went Oh, no, sometimes she says to go away for work or some place with the cotton Sometimes to Galveston to work for the boats. Oh, you've been a sailor, huh? So everything Whatever he is. He's a no sender money last week. She'll come in she says she's gonna meet him and then she's gonna pay me when she's a Come back, but this is no come back Hey Just a minute Why ask me all these things and how come you got it the shows because Mrs. Watson doesn't need him anymore She's dead You are listening to tales of the Texas Rangers starring Joel McCray as Ranger Jayce Pearson We continue now with tonight's case dead head freight an authentic story from the files of the Texas Rangers It wasn't the kind of news you enjoy breaking to a dead girl's mother and the girl's baby crying in the next room Help it any See that they'd split up about a month ago and then last week her husband wrote to her from Bowlville Said he was sorry and you wanted my daughter Helen to come to me Looks like she was for a while. Oh, he promised Helen everything in the letter said he had a lot of money for her and their baby He was never any good Now the babies left me and I'm just too old. I'm sorry ma'am Can you give me your son-in-law's full name and his description? But Watson is his name They call him bird her bird bud Watson about how tall would you say you? Better pull yourself together ma'am somebody's at the door. I'll call out the wind and send them away I don't want to see anybody What is it ma'am? What's the matter? It's him my son-in-law, but all right ma'am open the door and let him in go ahead Let him go ma'am and stand back what range you what get your hands up and turn You got the girl to come in with your own baby crying John. What is this kill who? Helen Where's Helen? Where is she? Don't you know Watson? Or did you think she'd never be identified? Helen's been murdered. Oh No, no No, I gave her money told her to come back home and I'd meet her here today Who is going to take the kitten? Make a fresh start how much money did you give your wife? A thousand dollars that's a lot. Where'd you get it? Come on. I Was bootleg into the pickers how long you've been getting away with that started at last season Did old Rosie sell any of this stuff for you? How did you know about that? I didn't for sure until now Come on or going back to your place of business in Bowlville. Hi Jay Steve And I got your message to meet you here Rosie's over there. Want to get her off the truck? Yeah, she can talk from there Come on you two Watson Okay, but Watson murdered girls husband and bootleg in here Rosie's been moving some of the stuff for him Why you keep me from my work, sir your work isn't as legal as it could be Rosie so sit tight Yeah, you ever seen this man before you know, she's seen me before they didn't ask you How about it Rosie see? All right Rosie Now is he the same man you saw at the bus depot with a girl whose picture I showed you He's the man at the bus depot, but that ain't so I was never with Helen at the bus depot You didn't meet her when she came down here. No, I tell you I didn't know what bus She was coming in on or even if she would come after she got my letter First I saw she turned up here at the shack. How about when she left to go home? She only stayed two three hours all told Let it go back to the bus depot alone because well, it was getting dark near time for the pickers to be coming there to Buy drinks you hear that Rosie that means one of you is lying Rosie tell you truth, and you know you don't always tell the truth Rosie the first time I asked you about the man You saw you said he was a stranger man. You'd never seen before I see a lot of people every day in the fields. Yeah, you're trying to kid me you've been selling liquor for this man You couldn't mistake him for a stranger. I do say you're I make mistake. You wanted help. I give you help Rosie tell you all she knows that's all Now it was obvious that Rosie was lying just as I'd suspected her lying the first time Had to be a reason for it. We took Bud Watson in the Bowlville jail and then went back to search his shack. I Can't figure something chase Why won't Watson admit it if he was at the bus station with his wife? That wouldn't hurt him Yeah, it wouldn't that's why I think he's telling the truth Rosie must be covering up for something Covering up for somebody's a better guess. She might have done it herself Yeah, I don't think so. She's too old to cart a body across the country to the railroad You figure she really did see Mrs. Watson at the bus depot with a man, huh? Yeah The man who killed her to get the thousand dollars, but Watson had given her and what's Rosie's angle and lying to us That's an easy one Steve. Shake down Hey Chase, you're right Couldn't be anything else. Oh, I'd be worth the cut for her to forget seeing the man and say it was Watson instead Only one thing wrong with it. What? Well, I watched her while you were gone. She didn't make any suspicious contacts Nothing that could have been a payoff She might have gotten her payoff right after I showed her the Watson girls picture and told her she'd been murdered That was before you started a tailor. Yeah, I didn't think of that. She had time Well, we comb this shack Jay's nothing here. What do we do now go back to Taylor and Rosie again? If she squeezed hush money out of the man once she's liable to try it again. They all do We'll start by watching her house when she comes in from the fields tonight We staked out near Rosie's adobe hut. It got dark and she didn't come in I left Steve on watch and went out to look for keeping an eye out for her old truck I found it about five miles out surrounded by a group of men carrying torches Hey, what's going on here? Yeah, what happened So the truck here by the side of the road thought maybe it broke down so we started to call for old Rosie Then one of the boys spotted the blood on the ground blood. I show you over here Must be old Rosie's a wrecking because we found her over here in the cotton row She's dead ranger. Somebody cut her throat from ear to ear Rosie had tried to shake down a killer once too often with the usual payoff I sent a rush call to Steve Clark to tow his horse out and join me We followed the trail which led to a deserted picker shack way off in a field that looked like it hadn't been cultivated for years The shack had been occupied though recently occupied But whoever'd been there was gone There's a lamp there Steve light it yeah It's clean as a whistle J. Yeah, it's too clean that floor has been scrub mighty hard for a shack like this It sure has Especially for a place nobody's living in must have been cleaning up blood. Yeah, and there are two other things What's that whoever was hiding here was mighty handy with a knife Look at the inside of the door circle drawn on the wood Wood chipped where somebody practiced throwing a knife at it. Yeah, good aim All the marks right smack inside the circle Now what else take a look at the lamp you just lit the cord it's hanging by Just an ordinary hunk of rope except for the knot holding the lamp a running bowling So the light could be raised or lowered toward the table a running bowling as a seaman's knot Yeah, and that cord is just about big enough to be the draw cord from a duffel bag Our seaman was here. All right. Well, it couldn't have been watson jay. He was safe in jail when rosie was killed Yeah, whoever rosie saw with mrs. Watson at the bus depot must have met the girl After she left watson after she had the money. Yeah Married woman on her way home to her baby isn't liable to leave a bus depot with a stranger Is she chances are with somebody she knew watson's been a sailor Think it might have been an old shipmate of his let's go see if he remembers one who was handy with a knife You say somebody killed old rosie. Yeah The same man who killed your wife now think and think hard The killer was a seaman. We got reason to think it could be an old shipmate of yours who knew your wife Oh, but hella new shipmates of mine all along the gulf I introduced her to lots of them the one we want had a habit of throwing a knife Hey drew targets on a door never missed Matt corbett It was matt corbett. How do you know any reason for him to be around here? He was my partner last year Bootleggin here business got bad and he left I wrote to a month ago asked him to come back for this pickin, but he never answered me Did rosie know him? Sure. She did from last year. That's it. Clark Rose he'd seen corbett with mrs. Watson. That's why he couldn't run with the money after he killed her He had to wait to see if the body was found and identified and when we moved in and she knew about the murder She really had him pinned down. He used to be my best friend. That's never mind that now. Where would he run to? I don't know. He was always roman like me. You wrote to him someplace. You said you must have an address here Yeah, it was General delivery at Port O'Connor has no bait shag there He lived in it whenever he had enough money to stop moving for a while. He's got enough now What he got from your wife. Come on, Clark. Let's get him We headed for Port O'Connor made it by morning and found the abandoned bait shag Nobody inside jays can see through the window. He isn't here He's probably traveling by freight to avoid being spotted. He couldn't have beaten us here. We rolled too fast Gonna stake it out and wait Yeah, our car's out of sight where we left it. He won't spot it come along the wharf Come on. Let's go inside Yeah, it looked like matt corbett's the man we're after all right same trademarks here We found on that picky shack at bullville. Yeah knife marks in a circle on the door same running bull and holding the lamp Draw that burlap sack across the window. That'll make it pretty dark in here jays You want it dark when you're throwing a surprise party Steve steve wake up. What? Somebody coming on the wharf. It's dark. What time is it a little after midnight? Steps are coming closer. Yeah, it must be corbett not going to bring anybody else this way at this time of night He's heading for here. All right. Yeah Let him get all the way inside and remember he's got that knife and he's handy with it. I know shoulder corbett Keep your fingers on that knife for a while Come on get up. Do you think you're jumping jays? I felt that knife passing my ear Look bird in that wall a good inch Rangers I thought you were a couple of crooks What's she doing here? Just dropped into arrest you for the murder of helen watson and old rosie up at bullville It'd be nice if you could prove it I haven't been near bullville. I think we can prove you were My mark she left on the door and a few other things How'd you come back freight? Are you kidding? No, i'm serious You should have rode pullman. Yet your shoes shined on a pullman Would have taken that reddish brown earth off your shoes Our lab can match that with bullville Watch out for that shoulder Yeah, that's better corbett Want a cuff and jays? No, I think you'll come quiet All right corbett, let's move Herbert bud Watson served the required term for his bootlegging activities and matt corbett was tried and convicted of murder The sentence of the court was carried out on february 20 at 1939 when at huntsville penitentiary matt corbett died in the electric chair And now here again is the star of our show joel mccray with another interesting story about the texas rangers In the early days of texas major disturbances were not infrequent It was a lusty brawling growing territory and as happens in such a territory There were days when the streets were not safe for the good citizens An easterner happening into a texas town at such a time found shelter in the house of a minister Everything will be all right soon. He was assured Later that same afternoon the minister who'd been looking out the window said Well friend the streets are safe now. You may go about your business The easterner looked out the window But all he saw was a lone figure riding casually down the main street on a horse What makes you think it's safe for me out there now? He asked in bewilderment The minister pointed to the horseman Because that fella on the horse is a texas ranger. He said Only folks that aren't safe in this town now are the ones who started the trouble And when he finds them they'll wish they'd been peaceable Good night folks. See you next week Next week joel mccray and another authentic reenactment of a case from the files of the texas rangers Only seen starring in the mgm production stars in my crown Tonight's cast included tony barrett, ferb Ellis, tom holland, Byron kane, tom mckay, and lily and byer This story was transcribed and adapted by joel mercott and the program was produced and directed by stacy keats Hal give me speaking Three times being good times on nbc