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Speaker 1: This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.

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Speaker 1: There's so much irony over this entire story, a lot

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Speaker 1: of death and a lot of shooting of bad people.

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Speaker 2: Do we consider James Brockman a bad person?

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Speaker 3: I don't, I really don't. I think that he had

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Speaker 3: certainly some questionable qualities, but I think that there's enough

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Speaker 3: in there of the people that he chose to defend.

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Speaker 3: And all the attorneys on both sides of the table

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Speaker 3: came out and said, what a great asset to the

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Speaker 3: Houston legal community James Brockman had been.

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Speaker 1: I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor

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Speaker 1: in Austin, Texas. I'm also the host of the historical

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Speaker 1: true crime podcast tenfold More Wicked, as well as the

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Speaker 1: co host of the new show Buried Bones, both on

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Speaker 1: Exactly Right. I've traveled around the world interviewing people for

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Speaker 1: the show. I've interview some people in person and some

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Speaker 1: from my home studio over zoom, and they are all

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Speaker 1: excellent writers. They've had so many great true crime stories,

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Speaker 1: and now we want to tell you those stories with

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Speaker 1: details that have never been published. Tenfold More Wicked presents

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Speaker 1: Wicked Words is about the choices that writers make, good

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Speaker 1: and bad. It's a deep dive into the stories behind

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Speaker 1: the stories. Author Mike Vance wrote a book about a

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Speaker 1: notorious criminal defense attorney in Houston. It's called Getting Away

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Speaker 1: with Bloody Murder. And Mike's been with us before. I

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Speaker 1: talked with him on the last season of Wicked Words,

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Speaker 1: and I'll let him remind you about that case from

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Speaker 1: nineteen ten. It's the one that led to his discovery

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Speaker 1: of J. B. Brockman, the lawyer at the center of

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Speaker 1: this story.

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Speaker 3: I came to this book because of another case that

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Speaker 3: I found in the previous book, which was murdering mayhem

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Speaker 3: in Houston. It was called the Heights House of Horror,

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Speaker 3: and it was a nineteen ten where a family of four,

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Speaker 3: very young family of four and their border were all

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Speaker 3: killed in the middle of the night. They never really

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Speaker 3: totally figured out who did it, but they honed in

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Speaker 3: on this one suspect who was the lover of the

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Speaker 3: young wife, and he ended up in jail briefly, they

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Speaker 3: led him out. Three years pass he goes back to

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Speaker 3: jail when his alleged accomplice came and confessed to the

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Speaker 3: whole thing. And ultimately, after another year the case goes

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Speaker 3: away he was freed. So in the course of this,

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Speaker 3: I'm thinking, well, that's pretty amazing. Turns out the lawyer

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Speaker 3: was a guy named James B. Brockman or JB. Brockman.

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Speaker 3: And the more I dug and looking in these Houston

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Speaker 3: cases and Houston area cases, Brockman's name came up over

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Speaker 3: and over, and it became a parent that he was

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Speaker 3: the Percy Foreman of his day, or racehorse Haynes, or

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Speaker 3: pick a big defense lawyer that's flamboyant Perry Mason, I mean,

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Speaker 3: he was the Perry Mason in real life of Southeast Texas.

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Speaker 1: Perry Mason, I think, is the one that people recognize

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Speaker 1: the most.

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Speaker 3: I kept digging and digging, and every case I'm going,

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Speaker 3: you've got to be kidding me. It was fiction, but

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Speaker 3: it was not just amazing story. So I ended up

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Speaker 3: pulling that out of the first book to keep it

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Speaker 3: a separate book just about JB. Brockman.

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Speaker 1: I think that the story of the defense attorney is

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Speaker 1: an important one to tell, so I'll be interested in

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Speaker 1: hearing about mister Brockman. But before we do that, we

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Speaker 1: have heard already about turn of the century Houston, but

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Speaker 1: just remind us of where we are and what it

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Speaker 1: was like then when James Brockman was at his peak

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Speaker 1: as a defense attorney.

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Speaker 3: Houston liked to think of itself as a cosmopolitan, up

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Speaker 3: and coming city, and it was growing. It certainly was growing.

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Speaker 3: Four different times in the history of Houston, the population

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Speaker 3: doubled from one census to the next, So the growth

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Speaker 3: was never never slowed in that city, including during the

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Speaker 3: Depression and times when the rest of America kind of

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Speaker 3: came to a standstill, but you're still dealing with a

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Speaker 3: city of about fifty thousand people. The justice system was

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Speaker 3: everything that you would expect a justice system to be

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Speaker 3: in the South in eighteen ninety five nineteen hundred. Segregation

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Speaker 3: was as strong as it would ever be at that

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Speaker 3: time period. And their case after case that I ran

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Speaker 3: across Brockman's and other attorneys where African American defendants are

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Speaker 3: just getting railroaded because hey, we need somebody to put

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Speaker 3: in jail.

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Speaker 1: Can we start with sid Preacher and see where that

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Speaker 1: takes us. So we just know that JB. Brockman is

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Speaker 1: in the back. He will be getting this case at

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Speaker 1: some point, But let's back up and tell me about

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Speaker 1: Sid Preacher.

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Speaker 3: In this case, Sid Preacher had been on the Houston

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Speaker 3: police radar for quite some time. Basically, he's a teenage

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Speaker 3: gang leader. He worked in an area called Fifth Ward

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Speaker 3: that you still hear references to that. It's a racially

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Speaker 3: mixed neighborhood heavy on railroad employment, so a lot of

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Speaker 3: the people there were working class. There were some nicer

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Speaker 3: areas of fifth Ward, but it was the one ward

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Speaker 3: of Houston that was on the north side of Buffalo Yue.

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Speaker 3: As Houston developed, and it was always kind of an

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Speaker 3: outcast in one way or another. Sid Preacher that was

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Speaker 3: his turf and his family had moved from a little

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Speaker 3: town called Liberty, Texas that's about a county away from Houston,

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Speaker 3: and they were hard working people worked in the railroad.

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Speaker 3: Sid not so much. He went off on his own.

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Speaker 3: His brother occasionally would get involved in some of the

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Speaker 3: criminal activities, but there were running buddies and you'd keep

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Speaker 3: seeing their names show up in the police reports. In

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Speaker 3: eighteen ninety five, Sid ended up being involved in a

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Speaker 3: triple homicide, and at the time he's still not of age,

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Speaker 3: he's under eighteen. He had been insulted the best that

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Speaker 3: I can gather, and this is from looking at the

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Speaker 3: newspaper articles and the police reports, such as they still exist.

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Speaker 3: He had gone to an African American theater. There was

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Speaker 3: an area called Peter's Alley and it was this little

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Speaker 3: hodgepodge of rundown shanties where people lived in bars. And

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Speaker 3: there was the back of this theater called the Variety

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Speaker 3: Theater that was a black theater, and people would congregate

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Speaker 3: in the alley back there. And best I can gather,

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Speaker 3: Sid was hitting on one of the African American women.

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Speaker 2: And Sid is black?

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Speaker 3: Or is he Sid is white?

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Speaker 2: Okay?

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Speaker 1: Would white people be welcomed in a predominantly black club

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Speaker 1: or bar at that time.

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Speaker 3: Period inside the bar probably not. The lower you get

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Speaker 3: on the economic scale, the less segregation might exist, and

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Speaker 3: that was certainly the case in fifth Ward in Peter's Alley.

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Speaker 3: On this level Sid whether she responded or turned him down,

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Speaker 3: I don't know, but some of the men that were

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Speaker 3: around there didn't like seeing this white guy hitting on

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Speaker 3: this African American woman, and trouble ensued. He ended up

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Speaker 3: with a knife cut over his ear. He ran down

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Speaker 3: the block to an Italian owned store. We never even

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Speaker 3: get the name of the guy that owned it. It's

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Speaker 3: just referred to as the Daego's store. In a couple

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Speaker 3: of places, he grabs some of his friends. Apparently that's

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Speaker 3: where they all hung out. They armed themselves with a

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Speaker 3: shotgun and an old rifle and a pistol and head back.

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Speaker 3: They're going to confront the person who cuts Sid's ear,

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Speaker 3: and if you're reading the testimony, it's this almost call

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Speaker 3: to arms. He keeps saying, are we men, Well, you're seventeen,

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Speaker 3: so that's debatable, but are we men? Are we going

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Speaker 3: to go back and stand up for our rights? Basically,

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Speaker 3: they go back there and he and his friend, a

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Speaker 3: guy named Lawrence Reynolds, is the other shooter. They end

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Speaker 3: up killing two men and a woman, all African American.

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Speaker 3: And it just so happened that on their way back there,

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Speaker 3: Houston at the time employed a couple of black police

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Speaker 3: officers to better deal with that segregated population, and two

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Speaker 3: of them stop these boys who are walking there with

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Speaker 3: a rifle and a shotgun and said where are you going?

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Speaker 3: And they said, we're going hunting, and they let them go. Well,

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Speaker 3: these two police officers were nearby, so when they hear shots,

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Speaker 3: they come running. Probably ended up saving the lives of

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Speaker 3: Sid Preacher and Lawrence Reynolds and some of the other ones.

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Speaker 2: Because what they were outnumbered, I assume.

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Speaker 3: Heavily outnumbered, and probably would have been killed in returned.

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Speaker 3: It turns out one of the guys that was killed

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Speaker 3: was a mistaken identity that looked like somebody who may

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Speaker 3: have interacted with Sid Preacher earlier, but he shot the

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Speaker 3: wrong person. The woman just was collateral damage who was

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Speaker 3: sitting next to the other guy. So it goes to

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Speaker 3: trial and JB. Brockman, who is a baby lawyer at

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Speaker 3: the time, ends up being Sid's attorney, probably because that's

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Speaker 3: all that Sid could afford and Brockman was just starting out.

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Speaker 3: He's not well known at all at the time. It

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Speaker 3: goes to trial and the stories completely change. They had

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Speaker 3: all kinds of physical evidence and witness testimony against Preacher

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Speaker 3: showing that he had been the aggressor in this entire thing,

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Speaker 3: and by the time it gets to court, everybody else's

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Speaker 3: case was thrown out because the African American witnesses disappeared

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Speaker 3: or didn't want to talk, and some of the physical

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Speaker 3: evidence had gotten misplaced, and it was clearly a predetermined outcome.

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Speaker 3: The one thing that made it actually go back to

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Speaker 3: trial a second time was that the DA or whomever

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Speaker 3: had written up one of the names incorrectly. It was

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Speaker 3: a guy named Rufus Willis and they had written down

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Speaker 3: Willis Rufus, So that had to go back to court

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Speaker 3: a second time. And half an hour after the trial ended,

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Speaker 3: Sid Preachers a free man. He walks out. Brockman forms

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Speaker 3: a relationship with this guy and ends up using him

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Speaker 3: as an expert witness in other criminal cases.

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Speaker 1: How what's the qualification that he himself is a criminal?

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Speaker 3: Well, that's a question that the DA asked on a

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Speaker 3: regular basis. They didn't shy for pointing out, you made

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Speaker 3: the guy that killed three people and got away with

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Speaker 3: it is your expert witness. And Brockman his answer was, well,

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Speaker 3: he knows the criminal underworld and he can tell you

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Speaker 3: that this was not a crime and this was just

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Speaker 3: the way things are. Keep showing up as an expert witness,

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Speaker 3: and at the same time you're seeing reports that Sid

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Speaker 3: Preacher continues to run his criminal gang, and it just

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Speaker 3: gets stronger.

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Speaker 1: What kind of magic did he conduct in this case?

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Speaker 1: You said that physical evidence disappeared. Is this all connected

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Speaker 1: to money.

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Speaker 3: As far as the witnesses go, I think it was

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Speaker 3: probably threats and intimidation were more likely than money. The

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Speaker 3: evidence hard to say. If somebody got paid, I certainly

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Speaker 3: would not put that behavior past any unknown person in

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Speaker 3: the legal law enforcement community in Houston at the time.

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Speaker 3: But it also could be an element of just not

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Speaker 3: wanting racial conflict and whether that was done. What percentage

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Speaker 3: was animosity and what percentage were these people thinking we're

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Speaker 3: going to stave off any potential conflict by not convicting

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Speaker 3: the white guy of a triple homicide.

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Speaker 1: Hard to tell, and if it's questionable, right, there's no

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Speaker 1: cameras to prove that they were the ones who came

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Speaker 1: and there was a confrontation if nobody's willing to talk,

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Speaker 1: and then I'm not sure what the physical evidence would

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Speaker 1: be except people arming themselves where they could just say

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Speaker 1: this was self defense. This seems like a good time

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Speaker 1: to talk about how JB. Brockman ended up in this

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Speaker 1: situation to begin with, where he's defending somebody who is

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Speaker 1: obviously at a lower socioeconomic class than perhaps other clients

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Speaker 1: he would aim for. How did sid preacher afford him

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Speaker 1: or was he affordable as an attorney.

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Speaker 3: Brockman is one of the most fascinating stories that I

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Speaker 3: have ever run across.

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Speaker 2: Let's hear it.

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Speaker 3: I will say, I'm not sure how much of it

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Speaker 3: is it's made up, because you would read interviews with

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Speaker 3: Brockman over the years, and his story completely changed. He

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Speaker 3: was born in Georgia just before the Civil War, so

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Speaker 3: he was a small child when the Civil War happened.

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Speaker 3: His father died during the war, his mother was blinded

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Speaker 3: during the war, and from there there are stories that

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Speaker 3: Brockman would tell about how he ended up in New

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Speaker 3: York and was mentored by an attorney and became an attorney.

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Speaker 3: Other stories put him in Ohio the same thing. Other

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Speaker 3: stories in New Orleans, same thing. None of those are

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Speaker 3: backed up with any sort of evidence whatsoever.

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Speaker 2: But he's the source on all of this.

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Speaker 3: He's the source on all of this. Okay, He's a

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Speaker 3: guy that probably loves sitting around drinking with all the

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Speaker 3: reporters in town, and the reporters love him because he

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Speaker 3: makes up colorful stories and he's certainly covering colorful trials.

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Speaker 3: I know that he worked as a clerk in a store.

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Speaker 3: His brother was with him his next older brother, and

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Speaker 3: there's no evidence that he was an attorney at all.

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Speaker 3: He didn't know an attorney there. He then goes to

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Speaker 3: Fort Worth and lives in Fort Worth for a while.

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Speaker 3: There are a variety of different schemes that he's involved in.

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Speaker 3: At one point he shows up in Waco being arrested

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Speaker 3: trying to break into a hotel. And he finally's in Richmond,

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Speaker 3: Texas today, a suburb of Houston. Back then it's separate city.

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Speaker 3: And that's really the first time that I can really

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Speaker 3: tie him to a law firm at all. And looking

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Speaker 3: through the legal records in Fort ben County, where Richmond is,

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Speaker 3: there's no evidence that he ever actually practiced. I think

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Speaker 3: he just had a job at this law firm. And

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Speaker 3: in eighteen ninety five, miraculously, he's in Houston listed as

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Speaker 3: an attorney with attorneys from this law firm in Richmond.

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Speaker 3: He stayed in Houston. His next case, after that murder case,

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Speaker 3: where he's like fifth chair, the next case is him

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Speaker 3: defending a woman who was accused of performing an abortion,

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Speaker 3: and right after that he hooks up with Sid Preacher.

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Speaker 3: There are stories that Brockman would literally sit in the

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Speaker 3: back of the courthouse and try to stir up business

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Speaker 3: when people got arrested. Brockman would be sitting outside going, hey,

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Speaker 3: do you need an attorney?

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Speaker 1: Well, what else are you going to do? If you're

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Speaker 1: just starting out? Have you got to get clients from somewhere?

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Speaker 2: Right?

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Speaker 3: Yeah? So I don't think that Sid Preacher was out

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Speaker 3: a lot of cash when he hired JB. Brockman to

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Speaker 3: be his defense attorney.

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Speaker 1: So this was a starter client for him, essentially, and

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Speaker 1: a big case, a triple murder to be sort of

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Speaker 1: one of your first big cases seems like a tall order.

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Speaker 2: And then he gets the guy off he.

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Speaker 3: Did, and stuck with Preacher for another five years and

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Speaker 3: defended different members of the gang. There was a guy

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Speaker 3: that or two of Sid's gang had broken into a

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Speaker 3: jewelry store in a broad daylight on a Sunday. This

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Speaker 3: was in Lagrange when everybody else is in church. These

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Speaker 3: guys break in, they rob a jewelry store, and they're

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Speaker 3: caught because it turns out, apparently some people in Lagrange

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Speaker 3: don't go to church on a Sunday.

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Speaker 2: Morning and it's broad daylight.

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Speaker 3: These are not genius criminals by any stretch, no, obviously,

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Speaker 3: So they get these two guys on trial. One turns

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Speaker 3: on the other and one of them has the kind

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Speaker 3: of nickname that as a writer you just can't wait

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Speaker 3: to run across foot and a half Butler.

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Speaker 2: I don't want to. That refers to it all.

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Speaker 3: He had lost part of his foot.

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Speaker 2: Oh okay, well that's okay.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, So that was his nickname foot and a half

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Speaker 3: And he's on trial in Lagrange. Brockman goes there to

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Speaker 3: be the attorney. He's now a gang attorney. I mean,

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Speaker 3: this is like his mafia client, only it's a gang

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Speaker 3: of teenage criminals. And during the trial it's the first

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Speaker 3: time that you see these Harry Mason like tricks that

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Speaker 3: are coming into play. Brockman brings a young girl out

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Speaker 3: from Houston to sit behind the defense table and cry,

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Speaker 3: oh that was her job.

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Speaker 2: That's a good job.

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Speaker 3: She just sits there and cries during the entire proceeding.

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Speaker 3: At one point, he deliberately has the defendant stand up

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Speaker 3: and punch one of the witnesses, the guy that had

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Speaker 3: flipped on him as he comes off the witness stand.

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Speaker 3: The defendant stands up and punches him and lays him

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Speaker 3: out on the floor, just to demonstrate, Hey, this is

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Speaker 3: how wrong that is, and I'm going to stand up

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Speaker 3: for my name. Brockman at one point during the trial

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Speaker 3: gets arrested for a contempt of court for repeatedly violating

303
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Speaker 3: the judge's orders, and the judge puts him in jail.

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Speaker 3: At this point, Brockmann has two law partners. His practice

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Speaker 3: has grown. One of the law partners has to come

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Speaker 3: out from Houston to finish the trial.

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Speaker 2: Wow.

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Speaker 1: So as far as Brockman goes with his personal life,

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Speaker 1: does he have a moral compass in his personal life?

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Speaker 1: Parents or a wife or kids, or anybody who could

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Speaker 1: keep him straight.

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Speaker 3: The parents are both long gone by the time that

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00:16:07,800 --> 00:16:11,080
Speaker 3: he ends up in Houston. His brother is still with him. Apparently,

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Speaker 3: his brother John traveled with him throughout his life and

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Speaker 3: while not an attorney, ended up working as the lead

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Speaker 3: office admin. I guess, so John is there and Brockman

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00:16:22,320 --> 00:16:25,280
Speaker 3: does finally get married during this time period. I mentioned

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Speaker 3: that he has two law partners. One of them is

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Speaker 3: an interesting story, a guy named Henry Kahn, who is

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Speaker 3: one of the few Jewish lawyers in Texas. In Houston,

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Speaker 3: his family had immigrated from Alsace and Brockman took him

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Speaker 3: on as a partner. The big firms in Houston very

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Speaker 3: famously did not allow Jewish lawyers for many decades, and

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Speaker 3: it wasn't until the early nineteen seventies and a threat

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Speaker 3: from Dean Keaton at the UT Law School that he

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Speaker 3: would bar all of those firms from recruiting University of

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Speaker 3: Texas lawyers that those big firms started hiring Jewish lawyers.

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Speaker 3: So Brockman was century ahead of them.

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Speaker 2: So he has quite a reputation. Where are his morals?

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Speaker 3: There are some things that give insight. You can't know

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Speaker 3: for sure because the guy's been dead over one hundred years.

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Speaker 3: But not to foreshadow too much, he gets arrested a

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Speaker 3: few times for getting them fights. Rockman got arrested for

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Speaker 3: carrying a pistol a couple of times. So he's not

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Speaker 3: a choir boy by any stretch. But there's a really

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00:17:24,640 --> 00:17:28,960
Speaker 3: telling story that's a completely different case that involves somebody

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00:17:29,040 --> 00:17:33,080
Speaker 3: in sugar Land where a wealthy landowner had shot a

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00:17:33,119 --> 00:17:38,400
Speaker 3: prison guard over a least convict. Well what a least convict?

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Speaker 3: The convict leasing system that was going on in Texas.

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Speaker 2: Oh yeah, we're gonna have to talk about what is that?

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Speaker 3: Well, right after the Civil War and the end of slavery,

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00:17:48,640 --> 00:17:52,879
Speaker 3: a lot of these former plantation owners and others business owners,

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Speaker 3: manufacturing owners were trying to figure out how to fill

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Speaker 3: that labor gap, and one of the systems that they

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Speaker 3: came up with was leasing prisoners. Much like there was

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Speaker 3: a case in Pennsylvania a decade ago where there was

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Speaker 3: a private prison that had been bribing a judge to

348
00:18:10,440 --> 00:18:13,800
Speaker 3: sentence people for small things to this private prison so

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Speaker 3: they could make money. There is evidence of a similar

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Speaker 3: kind of system going on. They're sending people disproportionately African

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Speaker 3: American by the way, not surprisingly to prison and then

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Speaker 3: in turn the prison. At first it was a private

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Speaker 3: company out of sugar Land, as a matter of fact,

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Speaker 3: that had taken on the leasing system for the entire

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Speaker 3: Texas State prison system. Eventually the states themselves realized we

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Speaker 3: can make a lot of money and they took it

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Speaker 3: over on their own. Basically, you would go to the

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Speaker 3: state and you would pay them a certain amount of

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Speaker 3: money to lease x number of prisoners. Sugar plantations in particular,

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Speaker 3: and that was probably the most brutal work that was

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Speaker 3: out there, would specify we want fifty seventy whatever black

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Speaker 3: prisoners they would specify by race who they were leasing him.

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Speaker 3: Came about in Texas in the eighteen seventies and lasted

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Speaker 3: up until the nineteen tenths.

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Speaker 2: Wow, I had never heard that before.

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Speaker 1: Okay, so now you've got to remind me now that

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Speaker 1: I'm so entrenched in leasing convicts, I can't remember what

368
00:19:12,720 --> 00:19:13,439
Speaker 1: the connection is.

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Speaker 3: Well, one of these guys, and he's actually a descendant

370
00:19:16,880 --> 00:19:20,359
Speaker 3: of the guy that initially had the private contract to

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00:19:20,480 --> 00:19:23,879
Speaker 3: lease convicts all over the state, the Ellis family. In Sugarland,

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Speaker 3: the landowner Ellis wanted the guard to punish somebody for

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Speaker 3: not doing his job, and the guard is saying he

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Speaker 3: did his job, he did exactly what I want him

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Speaker 3: to do, and the landowner is basically saying, whip him anyway,

376
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Speaker 3: and the guard wouldn't do it. It escalated and the

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00:19:41,560 --> 00:19:45,560
Speaker 3: landowner shoots the guard. The guard in turn shoots and

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00:19:45,920 --> 00:19:49,639
Speaker 3: mortally wounds the landowner. So the guard is on trial

379
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Speaker 3: for murder and hires Brockman. Brockman came to sugar Land,

380
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Speaker 3: and when he got off the train, Ellis's family, the

381
00:19:56,040 --> 00:19:59,920
Speaker 3: dead landowner or dying landowner's family, tries to hire Brockman

382
00:20:00,119 --> 00:20:03,880
Speaker 3: way and they offered to quadruple his fee, and Brockman said, no,

383
00:20:04,280 --> 00:20:08,360
Speaker 3: I've already been hired. I've given my word and I'm

384
00:20:08,400 --> 00:20:11,960
Speaker 3: going to defend this landowner. They then offered to give

385
00:20:12,040 --> 00:20:16,159
Speaker 3: him five times the money to just not do anything. Yeah,

386
00:20:16,359 --> 00:20:18,159
Speaker 3: just take your money and go back to Houston.

387
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Speaker 2: Fail on the case.

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Speaker 3: Ye, fail on the case. And Brockman again said no,

389
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Speaker 3: I have given my word, and to me, that says

390
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Speaker 3: a good amount.

391
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Speaker 4: So it's not just about the money.

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Speaker 1: So James Brockman does have his ethical rules. Tell me

393
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Speaker 1: what happens with Sid Preacher, What is up happening with him?

394
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Speaker 3: Brockman continued to be his defense attorney for another five years,

395
00:20:53,080 --> 00:20:56,240
Speaker 3: and finally in nineteen oh one, Sid Preacher is now

396
00:20:56,280 --> 00:20:59,119
Speaker 3: branched out. He's a little older, he's in his early

397
00:20:59,160 --> 00:21:03,679
Speaker 3: twenties unning a gambling operation and this big celebration in

398
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Speaker 3: Houston called Notesuo that was an annual marti grass basically,

399
00:21:07,320 --> 00:21:09,320
Speaker 3: but it happened late in the year was going on,

400
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Speaker 3: and the police cracked down because they didn't want these

401
00:21:12,320 --> 00:21:15,560
Speaker 3: pickpockets and gamblers and all of these people disturbing the

402
00:21:15,720 --> 00:21:19,400
Speaker 3: visitors to Houston. So Preacher gets upset and he has

403
00:21:19,440 --> 00:21:22,720
Speaker 3: a confrontation with the particular police officer. During the course

404
00:21:22,720 --> 00:21:26,199
Speaker 3: of this gets arrested. Brockman springs him from jail. It

405
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Speaker 3: all comes to a head on Congress Avenue middle of

406
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Speaker 3: the afternoon. Preacher is ready to confront these policemen. He's

407
00:21:32,640 --> 00:21:35,119
Speaker 3: just gotten out of an overnight stay in jail. He

408
00:21:35,200 --> 00:21:39,040
Speaker 3: has his guys there and it comes to gunplay on

409
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Speaker 3: the sidewalk. Preacher shoots one police officer three times. The

410
00:21:43,680 --> 00:21:46,760
Speaker 3: other one, an older one, starts toward Preacher and then

411
00:21:46,840 --> 00:21:49,560
Speaker 3: realizes he is unarmed, which is not out of the

412
00:21:49,680 --> 00:21:52,520
Speaker 3: ordinary for police officers at the time, they didn't always

413
00:21:52,520 --> 00:21:55,399
Speaker 3: carry weapons, and when he realizes that, he turns and

414
00:21:55,440 --> 00:21:58,840
Speaker 3: starts running. Preacher takes a shotgun and shoots him in

415
00:21:58,880 --> 00:22:02,600
Speaker 3: the back, and as he's doing that, the first officer,

416
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Speaker 3: who is lying mortally wounded in the gutter manages to

417
00:22:06,280 --> 00:22:09,840
Speaker 3: raise himself up just enough to shoot Preacher three times,

418
00:22:10,359 --> 00:22:14,120
Speaker 3: so they're all three dead on the street there. Brockman

419
00:22:14,480 --> 00:22:19,560
Speaker 3: immediately gets arrested for defending Preacher, and he's accused by

420
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Speaker 3: one of the other HPD officers of encouraging sid Preacher

421
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Speaker 3: to go out and shoot these cops.

422
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Speaker 2: That's what accessory to murder or something.

423
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Speaker 3: They were going to charge him with murder, even though

424
00:22:30,840 --> 00:22:33,480
Speaker 3: Brockman was in his office and nowhere nearby. I say

425
00:22:33,480 --> 00:22:35,800
Speaker 3: nowhere nearby. The office was on the same block. But

426
00:22:36,119 --> 00:22:39,359
Speaker 3: he stayed there for several days, and finally they let

427
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Speaker 3: him go with an apology from the district attorney.

428
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Speaker 1: I can't imagine that the acrimony is not surprising between

429
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Speaker 1: a defense attorney and the police and the district attorney.

430
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Speaker 1: Do you have any sense for what Rockman's response was

431
00:22:52,480 --> 00:22:55,840
Speaker 1: to sid Preacher's death. Was he devastated or is this

432
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Speaker 1: just another resource that's disappeared for him.

433
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Speaker 3: I don't think he was devastat. He did not get

434
00:23:00,960 --> 00:23:03,240
Speaker 3: to go to the funeral because he was in jail

435
00:23:03,400 --> 00:23:07,560
Speaker 3: at the time. He made several statements. On a regular basis.

436
00:23:07,560 --> 00:23:09,760
Speaker 3: The press was allowed to come to the jail and

437
00:23:09,800 --> 00:23:12,600
Speaker 3: to go sit next to the cell to interview anybody

438
00:23:12,600 --> 00:23:15,880
Speaker 3: of interest, and Brockman loved those moments and would give

439
00:23:15,920 --> 00:23:19,640
Speaker 3: these very fiery and flowery statements to the press. And

440
00:23:19,880 --> 00:23:22,240
Speaker 3: he went on at length about how he shouldn't have

441
00:23:22,280 --> 00:23:24,159
Speaker 3: been in here, and it was a travesty that they

442
00:23:24,160 --> 00:23:25,400
Speaker 3: had put him in jail and it.

443
00:23:25,440 --> 00:23:28,840
Speaker 1: Was well, they just gave him a soapbox obviously, and

444
00:23:28,880 --> 00:23:31,040
Speaker 1: I bet he got many more clients just from that

445
00:23:31,240 --> 00:23:34,480
Speaker 1: experience of being able to court the press from a

446
00:23:34,560 --> 00:23:35,360
Speaker 1: jail cell.

447
00:23:35,840 --> 00:23:37,719
Speaker 3: There are a couple of cases later on in his

448
00:23:37,800 --> 00:23:40,520
Speaker 3: life and with every passing year he's getting more and

449
00:23:40,560 --> 00:23:44,320
Speaker 3: more money. He continues to do some low income clients,

450
00:23:44,520 --> 00:23:47,280
Speaker 3: but he also was getting fees as high as thirty

451
00:23:47,359 --> 00:23:50,640
Speaker 3: thousand dollars for defending some of the high end people.

452
00:23:50,640 --> 00:23:52,800
Speaker 3: And we're talking about in the first decade of the

453
00:23:52,840 --> 00:23:56,840
Speaker 3: twentieth century. Wow, twice he defended people. One was the

454
00:23:56,880 --> 00:24:00,879
Speaker 3: brother of the sheriff and one was the brother of

455
00:24:00,960 --> 00:24:03,880
Speaker 3: one of the judges. So when it really came down

456
00:24:04,000 --> 00:24:06,280
Speaker 3: to time to choose an attorney and somebody that you

457
00:24:06,359 --> 00:24:09,760
Speaker 3: wanted to defend your loved ones, well the animosity kind

458
00:24:09,760 --> 00:24:10,280
Speaker 3: of went away.

459
00:24:10,480 --> 00:24:12,080
Speaker 2: Yeah, your enemy becomes your friend.

460
00:24:12,320 --> 00:24:15,240
Speaker 1: Well, so where does Charlie Meadows fall in on that

461
00:24:15,320 --> 00:24:18,760
Speaker 1: spectrum of clients who have a lot of money versus

462
00:24:18,800 --> 00:24:19,800
Speaker 1: those who don't have any.

463
00:24:20,040 --> 00:24:23,880
Speaker 3: Charlie Meadows was a nineteen oh eight case, and it's

464
00:24:24,000 --> 00:24:27,760
Speaker 3: just a great case to illustrate the progression of Brockman's career.

465
00:24:28,040 --> 00:24:31,680
Speaker 3: Meadows was a stationary engineer, which I think is more

466
00:24:31,720 --> 00:24:34,400
Speaker 3: like a mechanic. Basically, he had worked at the Rice

467
00:24:34,440 --> 00:24:37,000
Speaker 3: Hotel and he ultimately ended up working on an ice plant,

468
00:24:37,160 --> 00:24:39,439
Speaker 3: keeping the machinery going and all of that. So he

469
00:24:39,480 --> 00:24:42,400
Speaker 3: didn't have a lot of money. He certainly wasn't impoverished.

470
00:24:42,560 --> 00:24:46,480
Speaker 3: But what appeal to Brockman was probably the notoriety of

471
00:24:46,520 --> 00:24:49,439
Speaker 3: the way this came down. It all started there was

472
00:24:49,480 --> 00:24:52,040
Speaker 3: a guy named will Washington who was working at a

473
00:24:52,040 --> 00:24:56,240
Speaker 3: sawmill out near Harrisburg, downstream from Houston on Buffalo Yue.

474
00:24:56,320 --> 00:25:00,359
Speaker 3: And Will Washington, right at dusk, the last light of

475
00:25:00,400 --> 00:25:03,359
Speaker 3: the day is going and he's walking along the bayou

476
00:25:03,480 --> 00:25:06,000
Speaker 3: near where he worked, and he saw this trunk, a

477
00:25:06,040 --> 00:25:09,440
Speaker 3: big steamer trunk, bobbing along in the slow current of

478
00:25:09,480 --> 00:25:12,440
Speaker 3: Buffalo Bayou. And he went out there, managed to catch

479
00:25:12,480 --> 00:25:14,800
Speaker 3: it and drag it up to shore. But by then

480
00:25:14,880 --> 00:25:17,240
Speaker 3: it was pitch dark, and we're talking about an era

481
00:25:17,359 --> 00:25:19,720
Speaker 3: that there was no street light to be.

482
00:25:19,760 --> 00:25:21,720
Speaker 2: Found, starlight, moonlight, and that's it.

483
00:25:21,920 --> 00:25:26,240
Speaker 3: Yeah, So he ties it off to a bush, this trunk,

484
00:25:26,320 --> 00:25:28,159
Speaker 3: and he figures, I'll go back in the morning and

485
00:25:28,160 --> 00:25:30,679
Speaker 3: see what's in it. He did open the trunk. He

486
00:25:30,760 --> 00:25:34,160
Speaker 3: described it as busting open like a spring, and it's

487
00:25:34,240 --> 00:25:37,639
Speaker 3: the body of a naked woman. She is wearing nothing

488
00:25:37,680 --> 00:25:41,280
Speaker 3: but her shoes and stockings, and she'd been in there

489
00:25:41,320 --> 00:25:44,359
Speaker 3: for a couple of days. As bad as the bayou

490
00:25:44,480 --> 00:25:48,879
Speaker 3: may have smelt, it was still overwhelming. Not surprisingly, he

491
00:25:49,040 --> 00:25:52,879
Speaker 3: runs off yelling for somebody to come help. They find

492
00:25:52,880 --> 00:25:55,280
Speaker 3: the trunk, and it wasn't very hard to find a

493
00:25:55,320 --> 00:25:59,480
Speaker 3: suspect because Charlie Nadow's name was quite literally plastered on

494
00:25:59,520 --> 00:26:02,399
Speaker 3: the inside of the trunk. There were papers that belonged

495
00:26:02,440 --> 00:26:04,440
Speaker 3: to him, receipts, and various things that were in the

496
00:26:04,440 --> 00:26:07,440
Speaker 3: bottom of the trunk, and police go and arrest him.

497
00:26:07,600 --> 00:26:11,680
Speaker 3: His story never changed throughout the entire process. His story

498
00:26:11,840 --> 00:26:14,919
Speaker 3: was that this woman who went by several different names,

499
00:26:14,960 --> 00:26:19,919
Speaker 3: Alice east Up, Alice Biffle, Alice Meadows. He told the

500
00:26:19,960 --> 00:26:22,200
Speaker 3: story that he had first met her in Fort Worth

501
00:26:22,440 --> 00:26:26,000
Speaker 3: when he had lived there. She was attractive but also

502
00:26:26,080 --> 00:26:29,080
Speaker 3: an opium addict, and she had had a couple of

503
00:26:29,119 --> 00:26:33,240
Speaker 3: drug overdoses and she latched onto Charlie Meadows, even though

504
00:26:33,280 --> 00:26:35,359
Speaker 3: she had been married to a couple of other guys

505
00:26:35,520 --> 00:26:38,440
Speaker 3: over that period of time. Followed Charlie around. At one

506
00:26:38,480 --> 00:26:41,040
Speaker 3: point he moved to Oregon just to get away from her,

507
00:26:41,280 --> 00:26:43,840
Speaker 3: ultimately ended up back in Houston. I don't know how

508
00:26:43,880 --> 00:26:45,960
Speaker 3: hard he was trying to get away from her, because

509
00:26:46,200 --> 00:26:49,400
Speaker 3: there's no evidence that she'd just found him. It's more

510
00:26:49,520 --> 00:26:51,680
Speaker 3: likely that Charlie had written to her and said, Hey,

511
00:26:51,720 --> 00:26:54,280
Speaker 3: I'm living in Houston now. She showed up in Houston.

512
00:26:54,480 --> 00:26:56,560
Speaker 3: Charlie put her in a hotel and they kind of

513
00:26:56,600 --> 00:26:59,720
Speaker 3: shocked up for a week or so, and Charlie's story

514
00:26:59,840 --> 00:27:01,959
Speaker 3: was that she had then decided that there was no

515
00:27:02,040 --> 00:27:05,199
Speaker 3: future here. I'm going back to Fort Worth and that

516
00:27:05,359 --> 00:27:08,800
Speaker 3: was a discussion one evening. The next day, Charlie came

517
00:27:08,840 --> 00:27:11,320
Speaker 3: back to take her to the train station and found

518
00:27:11,320 --> 00:27:14,160
Speaker 3: her body on the floor of this hotel room. Charlie

519
00:27:14,160 --> 00:27:17,200
Speaker 3: didn't want any scandal. He was trying to establish himself

520
00:27:17,240 --> 00:27:20,840
Speaker 3: as an upstanding citizen of Houston, so in a panic,

521
00:27:21,080 --> 00:27:23,600
Speaker 3: he put the body in this trunk that he had

522
00:27:23,600 --> 00:27:27,359
Speaker 3: loaned Alice and hired a guy to help him carry

523
00:27:27,400 --> 00:27:30,800
Speaker 3: the trunk down to the Bayou, rented a rowboat, taken

524
00:27:30,840 --> 00:27:33,040
Speaker 3: the trunk out in the rowboat, and tipped it over

525
00:27:33,240 --> 00:27:36,800
Speaker 3: a few miles downstream. That's Charlie's story and it never varied.

526
00:27:37,000 --> 00:27:39,560
Speaker 3: He hired Brockmann to be his attorney. And there's a

527
00:27:39,720 --> 00:27:42,600
Speaker 3: famous Percy Foreman quote, and I know I'm going to

528
00:27:42,800 --> 00:27:46,720
Speaker 3: forget part of it, but Percy described his defense approach,

529
00:27:47,080 --> 00:27:50,119
Speaker 3: and it was, if a man is accused of his

530
00:27:50,320 --> 00:27:53,640
Speaker 3: dog has bitten somebody else, the first one is that

531
00:27:53,720 --> 00:27:56,960
Speaker 3: dog didn't bite you. The second one is the dog

532
00:27:57,000 --> 00:27:59,520
Speaker 3: didn't mean to bite you. Well, maybe the dog bit

533
00:27:59,640 --> 00:28:02,920
Speaker 3: you and it didn't really hurt you. And if none

534
00:28:02,960 --> 00:28:07,359
Speaker 3: of that works, that's not my dog. And that's kind

535
00:28:07,359 --> 00:28:10,840
Speaker 3: of Brockman's approach. Here. Brockman goes in and he said, well,

536
00:28:10,880 --> 00:28:13,720
Speaker 3: we think that Alice died of an overdose, or it

537
00:28:13,760 --> 00:28:16,440
Speaker 3: could have been an accident, or if it was neither

538
00:28:16,480 --> 00:28:19,399
Speaker 3: of those, there's no evidence other than the fact that

539
00:28:19,440 --> 00:28:22,040
Speaker 3: she was in Charlie Meadow's trunk. There's no evidence that

540
00:28:22,119 --> 00:28:25,120
Speaker 3: indicates it was anybody else in Houston that had an

541
00:28:25,160 --> 00:28:27,640
Speaker 3: equal shot at coming over there and killing her and

542
00:28:27,720 --> 00:28:30,080
Speaker 3: leaving her body on the hotel room floor. They had

543
00:28:30,200 --> 00:28:35,200
Speaker 3: two trials that were almost identical, same witnesses, same testimony,

544
00:28:35,440 --> 00:28:38,320
Speaker 3: and in both cases hungury.

545
00:28:37,960 --> 00:28:39,920
Speaker 2: What how is it even possible.

546
00:28:40,200 --> 00:28:44,200
Speaker 3: Well, that's a great question. In both cases, people try

547
00:28:44,200 --> 00:28:46,640
Speaker 3: to speculate what the count was. In the jury room,

548
00:28:46,760 --> 00:28:50,240
Speaker 3: they're saying it's nine to three for acquittal in both cases.

549
00:28:50,480 --> 00:28:53,040
Speaker 3: So the DA a lot of times would give up

550
00:28:53,080 --> 00:28:54,800
Speaker 3: at that point, and in this case he did not.

551
00:28:55,040 --> 00:28:57,680
Speaker 3: You can imagine body floating in the trunk. This is

552
00:28:57,840 --> 00:29:00,360
Speaker 3: a lot of press. The public is eating this up.

553
00:29:00,560 --> 00:29:02,680
Speaker 3: He ends up bringing it to trial a third time.

554
00:29:02,800 --> 00:29:06,200
Speaker 3: Brockman presents yet again the same exact case, and this

555
00:29:06,400 --> 00:29:08,600
Speaker 3: time at the at the end of the trial, the

556
00:29:08,680 --> 00:29:11,680
Speaker 3: jury says, well, before we go back to the jury room,

557
00:29:11,960 --> 00:29:14,400
Speaker 3: we're all kind of hungry, we'd like to go out

558
00:29:14,400 --> 00:29:16,840
Speaker 3: to eat. So the county pays for them to go

559
00:29:16,880 --> 00:29:19,840
Speaker 3: out to a restaurant. They have a great meal, they

560
00:29:19,920 --> 00:29:22,640
Speaker 3: come back, and ten minutes later they hand in an acquittal.

561
00:29:22,960 --> 00:29:25,400
Speaker 3: So apparently the jurors all thought, you know, we can

562
00:29:25,480 --> 00:29:27,280
Speaker 3: get a good meal on the county dime.

563
00:29:27,120 --> 00:29:29,440
Speaker 1: Out of this. What convinced them though, I mean, what

564
00:29:29,720 --> 00:29:32,440
Speaker 1: was it that he said that made what seems to

565
00:29:32,480 --> 00:29:35,600
Speaker 1: me pretty clear evidence that made them doubt it.

566
00:29:35,680 --> 00:29:38,440
Speaker 3: I went back and read the newspaper reports and what

567
00:29:38,480 --> 00:29:41,880
Speaker 3: court records are left never changed. It's the same exact

568
00:29:41,920 --> 00:29:44,680
Speaker 3: case three times, two hung juries and then a very

569
00:29:44,760 --> 00:29:48,280
Speaker 3: very fast acquittal. Charlie Meadows ultimately ended up getting married

570
00:29:48,440 --> 00:29:50,680
Speaker 3: to a woman that worked at the ice plant that

571
00:29:50,760 --> 00:29:53,520
Speaker 3: had been a character witness for him in the murder trial.

572
00:29:53,760 --> 00:29:58,000
Speaker 1: So he is now known Brockman for getting people out

573
00:29:58,040 --> 00:30:01,560
Speaker 1: of what seemed to be impossible. It looks to me,

574
00:30:01,640 --> 00:30:04,200
Speaker 1: if I'm doing the math right, that Sid Preacher happened

575
00:30:04,240 --> 00:30:06,840
Speaker 1: in eighteen ninety five and then Charlie Metta is in

576
00:30:06,920 --> 00:30:10,080
Speaker 1: nineteen oh eight. So there's a thirteen year difference there.

577
00:30:10,280 --> 00:30:14,920
Speaker 1: Where does Brockman's career and ultimately his life, Where does

578
00:30:14,960 --> 00:30:15,480
Speaker 1: that end?

579
00:30:15,840 --> 00:30:19,840
Speaker 3: Brockman got involved in more and more high profile cases.

580
00:30:20,120 --> 00:30:23,200
Speaker 3: He ended up doing a pellet work when it got

581
00:30:23,240 --> 00:30:25,920
Speaker 3: to the point by nineteen oh five nineteen oh eight.

582
00:30:26,240 --> 00:30:28,560
Speaker 3: There are cases in other parts of the state that

583
00:30:28,800 --> 00:30:31,680
Speaker 3: somebody would get convicted with a different attorney and they

584
00:30:31,680 --> 00:30:34,520
Speaker 3: would come and hire Brockman to appeal their case, and

585
00:30:34,840 --> 00:30:38,600
Speaker 3: more often than not, Rockman was successful. He became an expert.

586
00:30:39,000 --> 00:30:42,560
Speaker 3: He was obviously a very smart guy with no legal training.

587
00:30:42,760 --> 00:30:45,440
Speaker 3: He was never a member of a bar association anything,

588
00:30:45,480 --> 00:30:47,440
Speaker 3: but he became an expert to the point that he

589
00:30:47,440 --> 00:30:51,200
Speaker 3: could have these cases overturned. He ended up getting involved

590
00:30:51,360 --> 00:30:54,080
Speaker 3: in a few cases that came to Texas from New

591
00:30:54,160 --> 00:30:58,440
Speaker 3: York where there was an interstate connection, and one of

592
00:30:58,480 --> 00:31:01,240
Speaker 3: those was the William marsh Rice's case.

593
00:31:01,680 --> 00:31:04,680
Speaker 1: Now, let me remind everyone about this case because Paul

594
00:31:04,720 --> 00:31:07,760
Speaker 1: Holes and I covered it in Buried Bones. William Marsh

595
00:31:07,840 --> 00:31:11,240
Speaker 1: Rice died mysteriously in nineteen hundred. He had a lot

596
00:31:11,280 --> 00:31:13,440
Speaker 1: of money that he was planning to use to build

597
00:31:13,520 --> 00:31:17,720
Speaker 1: a great private university called Rice University. But when he died,

598
00:31:18,000 --> 00:31:21,920
Speaker 1: two people were accused of conspiring to kill Rice and

599
00:31:22,000 --> 00:31:25,560
Speaker 1: steal all his money. One was Rice's valet, Charlie Jones,

600
00:31:25,880 --> 00:31:29,400
Speaker 1: and the other was an attorney named Albert Patrick. Patrick

601
00:31:29,560 --> 00:31:33,000
Speaker 1: was in prison for Rice's murder and Patrick's family wanted

602
00:31:33,000 --> 00:31:33,960
Speaker 1: to hire Brockman.

603
00:31:35,000 --> 00:31:38,360
Speaker 3: They end up hiring James Brockman to try to find

604
00:31:38,520 --> 00:31:42,840
Speaker 3: witnesses and in particular try to locate Charlie Jones, who

605
00:31:42,960 --> 00:31:46,800
Speaker 3: was Rice's vallet who allegedly had murdered him. The DA

606
00:31:46,800 --> 00:31:48,960
Speaker 3: in New York had kind of deal with Jones, never

607
00:31:49,040 --> 00:31:51,680
Speaker 3: charged him at all, and there's all kinds of evidence

608
00:31:51,680 --> 00:31:54,280
Speaker 3: that he was then paid to go away and hide,

609
00:31:54,600 --> 00:31:58,200
Speaker 3: and so the Patrick family is hiring Brockman to find him.

610
00:31:58,360 --> 00:32:01,680
Speaker 3: And it's in the midst of that that Brockman becomes

611
00:32:02,000 --> 00:32:05,120
Speaker 3: I won't say paranoid, because there's ample evidence to say

612
00:32:05,160 --> 00:32:07,800
Speaker 3: that he was right that people are after him. There's

613
00:32:07,840 --> 00:32:11,080
Speaker 3: correspondence that was pulled from the mail where Brockman would

614
00:32:11,080 --> 00:32:13,520
Speaker 3: mail something back to the family and the letter would

615
00:32:13,560 --> 00:32:15,680
Speaker 3: never get there. There's the evidence that he found that

616
00:32:15,680 --> 00:32:17,920
Speaker 3: he would mail off and it would get taken from

617
00:32:17,920 --> 00:32:20,479
Speaker 3: the US Post. All kinds of things like that. Well,

618
00:32:20,520 --> 00:32:22,520
Speaker 3: the mayor of Houston at the time was a guy

619
00:32:22,600 --> 00:32:25,960
Speaker 3: named Baldwin Rice, and he's the nephew William marsh Rice.

620
00:32:26,560 --> 00:32:30,400
Speaker 3: And while Captain James Baker, that's the attorney that's running

621
00:32:30,440 --> 00:32:32,920
Speaker 3: everything in Houston. He's a lawyer. He looks at this

622
00:32:33,040 --> 00:32:35,880
Speaker 3: from I'm working for my client. He's not taking this

623
00:32:36,080 --> 00:32:39,720
Speaker 3: on a personal level. Mayor Baldwin Rice is this is

624
00:32:39,760 --> 00:32:42,240
Speaker 3: my family. He went to New York and made all

625
00:32:42,320 --> 00:32:44,960
Speaker 3: kinds of statements about these people in Houston better be

626
00:32:45,040 --> 00:32:47,400
Speaker 3: careful of They're going to get what's coming to him.

627
00:32:47,680 --> 00:32:51,480
Speaker 3: At one point, and it happens to coincide with nineteen ten,

628
00:32:51,600 --> 00:32:54,480
Speaker 3: so we're back to that Heights murder of the five

629
00:32:54,520 --> 00:32:55,480
Speaker 3: people in the house.

630
00:32:55,800 --> 00:32:59,080
Speaker 1: So there's a crime wave happening in Houston of really

631
00:32:59,200 --> 00:33:00,360
Speaker 1: high profile crime tis.

632
00:33:00,800 --> 00:33:03,880
Speaker 3: Around that same time period, there is a shootout between

633
00:33:03,960 --> 00:33:08,280
Speaker 3: two police officers in Houston and a deputy chief gets

634
00:33:08,360 --> 00:33:12,040
Speaker 3: killed by another cop in a Houston bar restaurant. There's

635
00:33:12,040 --> 00:33:15,760
Speaker 3: an outcry about lawlessness in Houston, and Mayor Rice ends

636
00:33:15,840 --> 00:33:19,720
Speaker 3: up hiring these two fired Texas rangers at the time.

637
00:33:19,800 --> 00:33:22,240
Speaker 3: One of these rangers was a guy named Henry Ransom.

638
00:33:22,480 --> 00:33:25,960
Speaker 3: Ransom had been fired from a few law enforcement jobs

639
00:33:26,200 --> 00:33:30,320
Speaker 3: for brutality. Basically, he's now working as a special officer

640
00:33:30,640 --> 00:33:33,720
Speaker 3: for the mayor. Even the police department doesn't like him

641
00:33:33,720 --> 00:33:37,320
Speaker 3: being there because he's this extra territorial guy that the

642
00:33:37,400 --> 00:33:40,040
Speaker 3: mayor has brought in. And there were a couple of

643
00:33:40,040 --> 00:33:42,160
Speaker 3: them that he had brought in, but Ransom's the main one.

644
00:33:42,400 --> 00:33:46,880
Speaker 3: And they again dark Streets hid behind a pole near

645
00:33:46,920 --> 00:33:50,120
Speaker 3: where JB. Brockman always caught the street car back to

646
00:33:50,160 --> 00:33:54,080
Speaker 3: his house and waited for Brockman. It was about midnight.

647
00:33:54,360 --> 00:33:57,360
Speaker 3: Brockman had been in Galveston on another case, came back,

648
00:33:57,480 --> 00:33:59,840
Speaker 3: worked for a few hours at his office, went around

649
00:33:59,840 --> 00:34:02,400
Speaker 3: the corner to get on the street car, and Ransom

650
00:34:02,440 --> 00:34:05,720
Speaker 3: stepped out from behind the pole and shot him four times.

651
00:34:06,000 --> 00:34:08,839
Speaker 2: Wow, I just can't believe a mayor would order that.

652
00:34:09,040 --> 00:34:12,600
Speaker 3: But yeah, the mayor of course denied it. But the

653
00:34:12,680 --> 00:34:16,480
Speaker 3: question in my mind is there's no proof that the

654
00:34:16,520 --> 00:34:18,879
Speaker 3: mayor did it. But question in my mind is why

655
00:34:18,920 --> 00:34:20,359
Speaker 3: else would Ransom have done it.

656
00:34:21,480 --> 00:34:24,279
Speaker 2: I'm assuming that Ransom never goes on trial for this.

657
00:34:24,520 --> 00:34:24,680
Speaker 4: Oh.

658
00:34:24,760 --> 00:34:27,920
Speaker 3: Ransom went on trial in one of the more inexplicable

659
00:34:27,920 --> 00:34:30,880
Speaker 3: things that I've ever run across. The two opposing legal

660
00:34:30,920 --> 00:34:35,040
Speaker 3: teams made a deal to stipulate that James Brockman was

661
00:34:35,160 --> 00:34:38,560
Speaker 3: a dangerous man because he had had a weapons charge

662
00:34:38,600 --> 00:34:42,480
Speaker 3: against him before carrying a pistol, and they stipulated that

663
00:34:42,680 --> 00:34:46,000
Speaker 3: Henry Ransom was an upstanding citizen. So none of that

664
00:34:46,200 --> 00:34:48,520
Speaker 3: ever came out in the trial. They had made that

665
00:34:48,600 --> 00:34:51,120
Speaker 3: agreement to not talk about it, and this included Brockman's

666
00:34:51,160 --> 00:34:54,960
Speaker 3: law partners that were involved in the case against Ransom.

667
00:34:55,000 --> 00:34:58,200
Speaker 3: So Ransom was acquitted. A little side note, he went

668
00:34:58,280 --> 00:35:02,640
Speaker 3: on the entire text his border issue. Around nineteen fifteen

669
00:35:02,760 --> 00:35:04,800
Speaker 3: is when it probably came to a head. The Mexican

670
00:35:04,840 --> 00:35:08,719
Speaker 3: Revolution was raging across the border, and a detachment or

671
00:35:08,719 --> 00:35:11,040
Speaker 3: two of Texas Rangers were sent down to the valley

672
00:35:11,239 --> 00:35:16,080
Speaker 3: to supposedly stop insurrection. There were some insurrectionists down there,

673
00:35:16,120 --> 00:35:19,600
Speaker 3: but by any account that you read, bar none, the

674
00:35:19,719 --> 00:35:22,920
Speaker 3: rangers ended up killing from two hundred to one thousand

675
00:35:23,239 --> 00:35:27,319
Speaker 3: Hispanic citizens of the United States and Mexican citizens that

676
00:35:27,400 --> 00:35:31,360
Speaker 3: had lived in the valley for decades, just indiscriminately. Ransom

677
00:35:31,480 --> 00:35:34,120
Speaker 3: was the one in charge of that ranger company, to

678
00:35:34,160 --> 00:35:37,360
Speaker 3: the point that there was a term among law enforcement

679
00:35:37,440 --> 00:35:41,440
Speaker 3: officials that somebody had been ransomized. So that's the kind

680
00:35:41,480 --> 00:35:44,239
Speaker 3: of guy we're dealing with here. He ultimately met his

681
00:35:44,440 --> 00:35:46,560
Speaker 3: end by getting shot in a hotel room out in

682
00:35:46,560 --> 00:35:47,240
Speaker 3: West Texas.

683
00:35:47,440 --> 00:35:50,560
Speaker 1: There's so much irony over this entire story. You have

684
00:35:50,600 --> 00:35:53,520
Speaker 1: a defense attorney whose whole job and career has been

685
00:35:53,680 --> 00:35:57,759
Speaker 1: getting really dangerous people out of scrapes and getting them

686
00:35:57,800 --> 00:36:00,759
Speaker 1: out of prison. Then he himself is murdered by a

687
00:36:00,880 --> 00:36:03,520
Speaker 1: very dangerous person who has a defense attorney who gets

688
00:36:03,600 --> 00:36:06,359
Speaker 1: him off. And then this dangerous person has now been

689
00:36:06,360 --> 00:36:08,560
Speaker 1: shot and killed. The lot of death and a lot

690
00:36:08,560 --> 00:36:11,800
Speaker 1: of shooting of bad people. Do we consider James Brockman

691
00:36:11,880 --> 00:36:12,640
Speaker 1: a bad person.

692
00:36:13,040 --> 00:36:15,480
Speaker 3: I don't, I really don't. I think that he had

693
00:36:15,520 --> 00:36:19,359
Speaker 3: certainly some questionable qualities, but I think that there's enough

694
00:36:19,440 --> 00:36:22,520
Speaker 3: in there of the people that he chose to defend

695
00:36:22,719 --> 00:36:25,319
Speaker 3: and the people that stood up for him later when

696
00:36:25,360 --> 00:36:28,840
Speaker 3: he was shot. He was so well liked among the

697
00:36:28,840 --> 00:36:32,080
Speaker 3: Houston legal community that they shut down courts for the

698
00:36:32,160 --> 00:36:35,040
Speaker 3: day to come to his funeral. There was this enormous

699
00:36:35,200 --> 00:36:38,839
Speaker 3: outpouring of support for Brockman. There was a resolution from

700
00:36:38,880 --> 00:36:42,280
Speaker 3: all the judges and all the attorneys on both sides

701
00:36:42,320 --> 00:36:44,680
Speaker 3: of the table that came out and said, what a

702
00:36:44,719 --> 00:36:47,879
Speaker 3: great asset to the Houston legal community James Brockman had been.

703
00:36:48,120 --> 00:36:51,040
Speaker 1: So people recognize what my father said, which is that

704
00:36:51,320 --> 00:36:54,520
Speaker 1: everyone deserves a defense, and that's your job as a

705
00:36:54,520 --> 00:36:56,840
Speaker 1: defense attorney is to work as hard as you can

706
00:36:57,239 --> 00:36:59,759
Speaker 1: on behalf of your client. I just think it's so

707
00:37:00,520 --> 00:37:04,040
Speaker 1: that he has left without justice or his own murder.

708
00:37:04,360 --> 00:37:08,600
Speaker 3: The legal community certainly recognized that, the public maybe not

709
00:37:08,680 --> 00:37:09,120
Speaker 3: as much.

710
00:37:09,440 --> 00:37:13,120
Speaker 1: What is this man's legacy? Did you determine anything?

711
00:37:13,480 --> 00:37:16,919
Speaker 3: That's the bizarre part. This was huge news at the time.

712
00:37:17,000 --> 00:37:20,520
Speaker 3: As you could imagine, he disappeared from the record entirely.

713
00:37:20,840 --> 00:37:24,240
Speaker 3: Nobody that I talked to, even among the old lawyers,

714
00:37:24,440 --> 00:37:27,080
Speaker 3: had ever heard of James Brockman before. Now I would

715
00:37:27,080 --> 00:37:29,799
Speaker 3: think I've mentioned Percy Foreman a few times, and he

716
00:37:29,880 --> 00:37:34,120
Speaker 3: became a national standard in defense law. Percy Foreman was

717
00:37:34,160 --> 00:37:37,480
Speaker 3: probably old enough to have grown up hearing about Brockman.

718
00:37:37,760 --> 00:37:39,920
Speaker 3: I have no proof of that, but the time certainly

719
00:37:39,960 --> 00:37:41,600
Speaker 3: fits and the place certainly fits.

720
00:37:41,840 --> 00:37:42,440
Speaker 2: It's interesting.

721
00:37:42,440 --> 00:37:44,920
Speaker 1: And then James Baker goes on to have Baker Bots,

722
00:37:44,920 --> 00:37:47,480
Speaker 1: which is of course a massive law firm here in Texas,

723
00:37:47,640 --> 00:37:51,040
Speaker 1: international law firm too. So you have people walking out

724
00:37:51,040 --> 00:37:55,520
Speaker 1: of this time period with really illustrious careers and legacies.

725
00:37:55,560 --> 00:37:58,160
Speaker 1: But not this man, this defense attorney who seemed like

726
00:37:58,200 --> 00:38:01,880
Speaker 1: he really did make his mark on the field of law.

727
00:38:02,120 --> 00:38:04,720
Speaker 3: I think so too. And like I said earlier, James Baker,

728
00:38:04,840 --> 00:38:07,799
Speaker 3: Captain Baker, he was a lawyer, and he did not

729
00:38:07,880 --> 00:38:11,920
Speaker 3: approach this as any personal vendetta. It was I'm representing

730
00:38:11,920 --> 00:38:13,839
Speaker 3: my client and he was brilliant at it well.

731
00:38:13,880 --> 00:38:15,279
Speaker 1: And the system of law that we have in the

732
00:38:15,360 --> 00:38:17,680
Speaker 1: United States is adversarial. It's the way it's set up.

733
00:38:17,840 --> 00:38:21,440
Speaker 3: Even Albert Patrick, as much of us leaves as he

734
00:38:21,520 --> 00:38:25,160
Speaker 3: turned out to be. Even Patrick was hired by Houston

735
00:38:25,200 --> 00:38:28,279
Speaker 3: Firms to do work. That's what led to his association

736
00:38:28,440 --> 00:38:30,600
Speaker 3: with William marsh Rice in New York. In the first place,

737
00:38:31,400 --> 00:38:33,520
Speaker 3: he had been run out of Texas and was then

738
00:38:33,600 --> 00:38:36,840
Speaker 3: practicing in New York, and Houston Firms turned to Albert

739
00:38:36,920 --> 00:38:40,279
Speaker 3: Patrick to dig up evidence to prove that Rice and

740
00:38:40,360 --> 00:38:44,000
Speaker 3: his wife considered themselves Texas residents and not residents of

741
00:38:44,000 --> 00:38:46,799
Speaker 3: New York. So forgive and forget. He's an attorney. They

742
00:38:46,840 --> 00:38:49,560
Speaker 3: thought he could do the job. So even Patrick was

743
00:38:49,600 --> 00:38:51,880
Speaker 3: not written off by his fellow attorneys at Houston.

744
00:38:52,280 --> 00:38:52,800
Speaker 2: Interesting.

745
00:38:53,320 --> 00:38:56,840
Speaker 1: So I'll ask you this final question, how do you

746
00:38:57,040 --> 00:39:01,319
Speaker 1: write about a man who just seems mostly sleazy to

747
00:39:01,360 --> 00:39:04,000
Speaker 1: be honest, I mean, you've written a book about someone

748
00:39:04,280 --> 00:39:08,040
Speaker 1: who is not the most savorious of characters. So how

749
00:39:08,040 --> 00:39:11,360
Speaker 1: do you make him or can you make him into

750
00:39:11,440 --> 00:39:13,960
Speaker 1: someone who people want to reach the end of the

751
00:39:13,960 --> 00:39:16,959
Speaker 1: book to learn about, because there is something I hope

752
00:39:17,000 --> 00:39:18,240
Speaker 1: redeeming about him.

753
00:39:18,719 --> 00:39:22,440
Speaker 3: I find the if there is redemption for James Brockman.

754
00:39:22,680 --> 00:39:25,880
Speaker 3: He was a family guy that by all accounts, loved

755
00:39:25,880 --> 00:39:30,120
Speaker 3: his family. He defended his clients with a fierceness, and

756
00:39:30,560 --> 00:39:33,640
Speaker 3: if you look at it from a dispassionate like you said,

757
00:39:33,680 --> 00:39:36,560
Speaker 3: you're doing your job. Then Brockman was very good at it.

758
00:39:41,239 --> 00:39:45,000
Speaker 1: On the next episode of Wicked Words, Patricia Pearson on

759
00:39:45,120 --> 00:39:48,440
Speaker 1: writing with her high school boyfriend about the murder of

760
00:39:48,480 --> 00:39:49,279
Speaker 1: his sister.

761
00:39:50,560 --> 00:39:53,560
Speaker 5: John Phonemy from North Carolina, and he said, you know,

762
00:39:53,719 --> 00:39:56,360
Speaker 5: when you think back to when Trvisa died, you know

763
00:39:56,480 --> 00:39:59,160
Speaker 5: she was found in her bronze panties, her clothes were

764
00:39:59,160 --> 00:40:02,680
Speaker 5: not nearby. She was face down in a creek in April.

765
00:40:02,880 --> 00:40:05,120
Speaker 5: Do you think that was a drug overduce? And now

766
00:40:05,120 --> 00:40:07,080
Speaker 5: that I was a crime journalist, I was like, ah,

767
00:40:07,120 --> 00:40:09,640
Speaker 5: you know, that just kind of sounds like a sex murder.

768
00:40:21,440 --> 00:40:24,360
Speaker 1: My new book, All That Is Wicked is available now,

769
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775
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