Legends of the Old West - FRANK HAMER Ep. 3 | “Enemies”

Episode Date: January 20, 2021

Later in Frank’s career, he begins a long-running dispute with the notoriously corrupt governor of Texas, “Ma” Ferguson. Frank takes on several assignments, including the hunt for a deadly bomber and the search for an imposter who poses as none other than Frank Hamer. Join Black Barrel+ for bingeable seasons with no commercials: blackbarrel.supportingcast.fm/join For more details, visit our website www.blackbarrelmedia.com and check out our social media pages. We’re @OldWestPodcast on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by card. Other conditions apply. It was a sleepy afternoon in July of 1926. Things were moving slowly in the American Railway Express office in Austin, Texas. The summer shifts were always like this, quiet, slow, and hot. People would come in to send and receive packages and run basic errands, but today nothing much was going on. That is, until a certain customer walked in. The agent in the office, E.I. Bodell, was tending to some business when he saw the customer walk in.

The customer looked official enough. He wore a suit and a hat, and he waited patiently for service. When Bodell was available, he called the customer over. Bodell asked how he could help. The customer wanted to buy traveler's checks. Traveler's checks had fallen out of use, but before prepaid debit cards and credit cards, they were a popular way to ensure that you had money while traveling abroad. They came in a variety of currencies, could be exchanged for cash, and had no expiration date.

So to keep them secure, the checks had to be signed twice, once at the point of purchase, secure, the checks had to be signed twice, once at the point of purchase and once again when using them to buy something. Bodell watched the customer sign. He asked what the customer's name was. The customer didn't look up. He just put a badge on the counter and announced that he was Ranger Captain Frank Hamer. Bodell looked at the badge and then at the customer. He knew what Frank Hamer looked like. Frank was tall and this guy was average height at best. Bodell didn't know what was going on, but he knew the customer wasn't Frank. He said as much to the customer's face. The customer realized the jig was up. He scooped up the badge and ran out of the office. realized the jig was up. He scooped up the badge and ran out of the office. The real Frank Hamer was now on the case. He was about to track a man who'd successfully impersonated lawmen all over

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From Black Barrel Media, this is Legends of the Old West. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer. In this season, we're telling a four-part story about the historic career of Texas Ranger Frank Hamer. This is Episode 3, Enemies. Frank worked a number of jobs in his years in and out of the Rangers, but all in law enforcement or security. And in all that time, no matter what and no matter where, he did it to the best of his ability. Frank was known for several qualities.

He was fair. He viewed everyone as equal under the law. He was patient but swift and even brutal when the time came. It made him a force to be reckoned with, but it also earned him his share of enemies. Sometimes they were simple roughnecks. In 1908, shortly after pulling off the escape from the Beaumont lynch mob, Frank went to Navasota, where he replaced the town marshal.

On one of his first days, one of those roughnecks, a white man named Will Brown, wanted to show Frank who was really in charge. Brown kicked up a ruckus outside the marshal's office and in effect dared Frank to enforce an ordinance against disturbing the peace. Frank knew he was the new guy in town and he sensed this was a make or break moment. So he walked up to Brown, grabbed him by the beard, and threw him into a patch of mud. Then he publicly marched Brown to jail. Prior to that day, it was understood that the town had influential citizens, men like Will Brown, who were not to be arrested. Another Navasota citizen warned Frank about it a week later.

Frank was then given a list of those citizens. He doubled down, and that night he arrested someone on the list for drunkenly shooting up a saloon. Frank also made enemies of local elites. In 1915, when he was 31, Frank went to Kimball County in the Hill country to eliminate a ring of goat thieves. It was just like his old days. The prime suspect was Fletcher Gardner, the son of a wealthy and powerful rancher.

After weeks of stakeouts, Frank caught Fletcher driving the sheep out of the pasture. Fletcher had prevented the sheep from leaving tracks by driving them across a wagon sheet he placed in the gate. Frank arrested him and disrupted the ring of thieves. Some in town felt that even if Fletcher were guilty, a conviction would hurt the family's reputation, and the Gardners agreed, of course. They condemned the trial as a political attack, of course. They condemned the trial as a political attack, but Fletcher was convicted. So when 1924 rolled around, Frank was 40 years old and a ranger captain, and he was used to having enemies in low places and high. But he probably didn't expect that the highest enemy would reside in the governor's mansion. In November of that year, a woman named Miriam Ferguson,

generally called Ma Ferguson, won the governor's race. It was a controversial victory. It was understood by everyone, including Ma, that she was running as a proxy for her husband, James Ferguson, who was known as Pa Ferguson. One of the campaign slogans was, known as Paw Ferguson. One of the campaign slogans was, me for ma, and I ain't got a darn thing against Paw. So what would anyone have against Paw? Corruption, for one thing. Paw was a former governor who'd been impeached during his second term. He withheld funding from the University of Texas because it wouldn't fire a faculty member who was one of his political opponents. Paul was forced to resign and was barred from holding elected office in the state of Texas. Ma admitted that her campaign was, in part, to rehabilitate his image.

She also promised that her victory meant two governors for the price of one. Many expected the same old Ferguson corruption, and it didn't take long for them to be proved right. One of the first orders of business was budget cuts for the Rangers. The size of the force fell from 51 Rangers to 28. And crucially, the Fergusons appointed their own captains for each of the Ranger companies. There could only be six captains at a time, and Frank didn't make the cut. But even the Fergusons knew that if Frank left altogether, it would be a great loss. So they retained him as a private

and named him Special Investigator. It meant that he was assigned primarily to cold case work. Like all his other jobs, he took it seriously. It gave him a chance to work his muscles as a detective again. So for now, Frank was back to tracking. One case in particular held Frank's attention. On November 14, 1923, a man named J.A. Barnes received a package at his Corpus Christi home. It was a wooden box addressed to Barnes and labeled Magazines.

When he opened the box, it exploded. The blast shattered windows and damaged nearby houses. Barnes' wife and the family maid were injured. Barnes and his son Jesse were killed. The only thing investigators knew at the outset was that the package had been sent from San Antonio by the American Railway Express Company. In San Antonio, they found a teenage newsboy named Juan Morales. He was arrested and questioned. Morales recalled that a man in a white Ford coupe

asked if he could deliver the box at the American Railway Express office. Morales had apparently wanted to help. He didn't know how to handle an express shipment, but he went looking for someone who did. When he came back, the man in the Ford was gone. Investigators didn't believe him. Morales eventually confessed that he sent the bomb, but then recanted the next day, saying he only confessed because the police were mistreating him. Further investigation vindicated Morales. Two newsboys at a different train station confessed that they were paid to send a box by someone of the same description,

a man in a Ford Coupe. But after that, the trail went cold, and it remained cold until 1925 when Frank picked it up again. The box itself seemed like a dead end, so Frank focused instead on a possible motive. That led him to Barnes' daughter, Dorothy. Dorothy was a student at the University of Texas at Austin. She was dating a classmate, a young man named Frank Bonner. Dorothy's father hadn't approved of the relationship, and after his death, the couple eloped to New York City, where they were married.

Then more evidence fell into place. Eleven days before the bombing, dynamite and blasting caps went missing from a construction site on the university campus. Bonner knew how to detonate blasting caps with a car battery, as one of his neighbors had testified. According to more witnesses, Bonner frequently drove Dorothy's car, a white Ford Coupe. And finally, despite an otherwise perfect attendance record that semester, Bonner was marked absent from class on the day the package was sent from San Antonio.

To Frank's thinking, it was clear. Bonner was the killer. He could have obtained the materials, and he knew how to construct a bomb. He had the means to take the trip to San Antonio, and a plausible motive. By December of 1926, Bonner and Dorothy had moved back to Texas from New York City, which was all the better for Frank. He presented his evidence to a Nueces County grand jury, and on the night of the 8th, Bonner was arrested and indicted for the murder of J.A. Barnes. All of the evidence was circumstantial, but Frank believed it made for a compelling case. It told a clear story. A young man thought his only chance at staying with his sweetheart lay in killing her overbearing father. Still, a problem arose during the trial.

It wasn't odd that Dorothy testified on her husband's behalf. But Dorothy's mother, the wife of the victim, spoke up for Bonner too. She denied any hostility between her late husband and Bonner. But even if Dorothy's relationship with Bonner wasn't a problem for Mr. Barnes, one thing was clear. Mrs. Barnes bore her son-in-law no ill will. That hurt Frank's case so much that despite the breadth of evidence he'd collected, and despite the expert witnesses who testified for the prosecution, the jury remained in doubt. After 37 hours of deliberation, it was hung. Ten voted to acquit, and two voted to convict. Bonner went free. Frank and the other Rangers attempted another indictment in 1931, but to no avail.

They wouldn't go to trial. Bonner lived the rest of his life with Dorothy in San Antonio. He remained the primary suspect in the murder until his death in 1980 at the age of 81. Frank was frustrated with more than just the court proceedings. The newspapers were a thorn in his side, too. He preferred working in secret. Premature reporting could jeopardize all his work. Like when the San Antonio Light claimed, as early as August of 1926,

that he was about to solve the corpus christi bombing he denied any part in the investigation at the time then in december when he was ready he eventually told reporters that he was about to pursue an indictment in quote a famous case pretty soon detective work was slow it required the patients to gather and organize information over time. And talking to witnesses, hiring informants, and working with local law enforcement all took trust. So he was irked by the papers when they ran articles that he felt hurt his standing, in particular ones that he felt depicted him as a reckless cowboy cop. in particular ones that he felt depicted him as a reckless cowboy cop. It had happened 14 years earlier.

In April of 1911, the mayor of Houston, Horace Rice, fired the chief of police and 13 officers. Frank was appointed as one of the replacements and sworn in as a special officer. He and the other special officers reported directly to Rice. Paul Edwards, the editor of the Houston Press, didn't like the change. Edwards wrote that Rice had appointed Frank and other Rangers to act as a private security force. Another writer for the press called the special officers the Wild Bunch. Things escalated in 1912. Frank and another special officer were walking down the street when they ran into an old friend of Frank's. He was Jim Dunaway, a veteran lawman.

The three stopped into a soda fountain to chat. Once inside, Dunaway saw an enemy named R.O. Kenley. Years before, in East Texas, Kenley had shot Dunaway and killed the Trinity County attorney who was standing next to Dunaway. But Kenley was never convicted of either crime, and Dunaway had borne a grudge ever since. Kenley now sat in the store with his wife and children, but at the sight of Dunaway, he decided to pay the check and go. Dunaway said later that he thought Kenley was reaching for a pistol, so right there in front of everyone, Dunaway pulled out his revolver and pistol-whipped Kenley as he was trying to leave. Frank and the other officer pulled the gun away from Dunaway's hand and arrested him. The Houston Press reported on the story.

The headline read, Man Brutally Beaten While Cops Look On, and it singled out Frank as being complicit in the beating. It turned into a publicized feud between Frank and Edwards, with the pages of the Houston Press as its battleground. Then in April of 1913, the feud reached its climax. The Houston Press ran what it claimed was an interview with the new Houston Chief of Police. The chief purportedly complained that the special officers prevented police from doing their jobs. The implication, according to historian John Bossenecker, was that the special officers were protecting illegal activities like gambling. The chief denied the complaint and said

he wasn't even in town to give the interview. The chief, along with Frank and another special officer, visited the press office to get some answers. Frank promised the next Houston press reporter he saw on the street would be smoked off the earth. Edwards quoted Frank in the paper, and days later, Frank savagely beat two of the press's reporters. Frank was arrested, he posted bail, and paid a fine. It was a blemish on Frank's career. He didn't grasp or didn't care to that in this new world, he and the other Rangers seemed like an old world attraction. The modern police force was taking shape, but you still had lawmen patrolling major cities like they were the little towns of the West. An old school lawman like Frank was a juicy target, and an easy one, for newspaper reporters.

It was true when he was in Houston in the 1910s, and it was even more true now in the 1920s. It wasn't just reputation that followed Frank. It was mythology. And in 1925, someone would take advantage of that, and cause Frank a hell of a lot of trouble. Quelqu'un aurait pu en prendre avantage et causer à Frank un tas de problèmes. Si vous faites vos achats tout en travaillant, en mangeant ou même en écoutant ce balado, alors vous connaissez et aimez l'excitation du magasinage.

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Ou allez sur rakuten.ca pour en avoir plus pour votre argent. C'est R-A-K-U-T-E-N. In 1925, as Frank was picking up the Corpus Christi bombing case, he was also dealing with a financial matter. He was receiving bills in the mail, all for luxury purchases and checks. Taken all together, there were hundreds, maybe even thousands of dollars in debt sitting heavy in his mailbox. Frank wasn't the type of person who let a debt go unpaid, unless it wasn't his to pay. For months now, someone had been using Frank's name, as well as the names of other Ranger captains, to live large around the country. And a few days after Christmas, Frank finally set his sights on the imposter. On Christmas Eve, someone going by the name P.W. Miller checked into the Benson Hotel in Portland, Oregon.

He claimed to be extraditing a prisoner from the Washington State Prison in Walla Walla. It must have seemed impressive. Impressive enough that the Portland Oregonian newspaper interviewed him. In the interview, the man claimed he was Ranger Captain Miller and that he had once led a group of 75 men to put down a skirmish at the border. None of the so-called Captain Miller story added up. First, he claimed to collect a greater salary than Governor Ferguson. And second, he name-dropped a general who died before the events of his story could have taken place. So when Frank caught word of the article, it was obvious to him that this was

the imposter. He wrote a letter to the offices of the Portland Oregonian and let them know they'd been duped. The whole scheme went like this. The imposter arrived in town. Then, probably using the prestige that came along with being a Texas Ranger, he would ingratiate himself to the locals. He was also able to get himself into Masonic lodges and Shriners Clubs. Once he did that, he would write bad checks around town, run up a huge bill on clothes and fancy dinners, and then leave before anyone got wise. The scam came to a halt in the summer of 1926. By now, federal law enforcement had their eyes on him, but he had managed to slip out of reach.

But then in July, the imposter went to Austin. While he was there, he stopped into the American Railway Express station and asked for the price of traveler's checks. When asked for a name, he said Ranger Captain Frank Hamer and flashed a phony badge as proof. The scam had worked everywhere else he'd tried it, but not here. If there was any place that Frank was known on site, it was Austin. that Frank was known on site, it was Austin. Frank lived and worked in this part of the state, and everyone knew that the real Frank Hamer was the strong and silent type. He had an easy, lumbering gait, and he was tall. So if someone this short were to stride in and proudly declare himself Ranger Captain Frank Hamer, it would be clear that they were up to no good.

The railway agent, E.I. Bodell, caught onto the grift. He replied, you're not Hamer, and the imposter knew he had gone too far, so he bolted. It wasn't long before the real Frank Hamer caught up with him. A week after the incident in Austin, Frank arrested the imposter in San Antonio. It turned out that the imposter was a Texas state prison escapee named John Sawyer, who was originally from New Jersey. His attempt to buy traveler's checks was, in all likelihood, an attempt to flee the country. With police and federal officials looking for him, Sawyer probably figured that he would be safer in Mexico. Frank entered the jail and met Sawyer.

Frank was 6 feet 2 inches tall, and Sawyer was 5 foot 6, and Sawyer was hiding behind a desk. Frank immediately understood who he was dealing with. With a laugh, he assured Sawyer that he wasn't going to hurt him, and asked him to come out. He kept Sawyer's pocket watch as a memento. On the back was inscribed, Frank Hamer, Captain of the Texas Rangers. Sawyer was charged with impersonating a law enforcement official and sent back to prison. He signed an affidavit swearing that he had chosen to impersonate Frank simply because Frank was so well-known. For all the headaches that the imposter John Sawyer had given the Rangers,

Frank couldn't deny that he found him charming. When the two spoke, Sawyer seemed to take pride in all his exploits. He was a swindler, but when it was all said and done, he was a small timer. Frank couldn't say the same thing for the Fergusons. He thought they entered, ran, and exited the governor's mansion through graft, and he wasn't the only one who held that opinion. Dan Moody, the state attorney general, was running to replace Ma Ferguson. was running to replace Ma Ferguson. As the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported, Moody had made it a campaign point to attack the governor and her husband for using the state's highway commission, taxpayer money, to reward their political allies.

Additionally, Ma drew criticism for her casual pardon policy. The Austin American-Statesman reported that in 1925 alone, Unfortunately, Ma drew criticism for her casual pardon policy. The Austin American-Statesman reported that in 1925 alone, Ma issued 707 pardons by Christmastime, and a pardon issued the next year was for a man who tried to kill Frank. To Frank's thinking, the Fergusons made a mockery of everything he did and all that he stood for. But that's not to say that he also didn't take advantage. He once used Ma's practices to clear the name of a man he felt had been wronged.

Elmer B. McClure was a fellow Ranger. Frank knew him and respected him. In 1924, McClure was working as a railway agent in Wichita Falls. On the night of May 30th, McClure saw a young black man, Monty Mitchell, in the rail yard. Mitchell was there with three other boys. McClure asked what they were doing. The papers reported that Mitchell said it was none of McClure's business. The papers also reported that Mitchell, at that point, made a move for something in his pocket, and that was when McClure fired.

He was convicted of killing Monty Mitchell. It made McClure one of the few white men to be convicted for killing a black person in the Jim Crow era. Frank believed the conviction was wrong. He believed McClure fired in self-defense. Frank also believed that District Attorney James Allred, who had worked against McClure fired in self-defense. Frank also believed that District Attorney James Allred, who had worked against McClure in the case, was a political climber. So Frank lobbied the Fergusons to pardon McClure.

He bitterly and publicly condemned Allred as overly ambitious. And it worked. Ma Ferguson issued the pardon in January of 1927 on her way out of the governor's office. She had been beaten handily by Dan Moody. It could be said that Frank had an uneasy relationship with the rest of the world, but he was by no means a beleaguered loner. As a ranger, Frank made his share of enemies, but that came with the territory for most lawmen.

But the job was also partly to blame for the breakup of his first marriage. The pay was low and the assignments were inconsistent. And there was a growing need to play politics instead of just enforcing the law, and that was tough on Frank as well. And maybe no other era in American history saw a faster evolution than the first 45 years of Frank's lifetime. When he was a boy in the 1880s, much of the country still felt like the days of the classic Old West. You survived with a horse, a rifle, and a knife. But by the 1930s, it felt like everything had changed. Electricity and telephones were everywhere. Buildings were

taller. Cities were more crowded. And automobiles replaced horses for many people. Motion pictures had revolutionized entertainment. And then radio revolutionized it again. And then the motion pictures added sound and became talking pictures. And another revolution had happened. Then there were other, more sinister revolutions. Machine guns became the favored weapons of outlaws, and extremist groups planted bombs in public places for the sole purpose of killing as many people as possible. For 13 years, America banned the sale and consumption of alcohol, and in the process,

opened the door to unprecedented of alcohol, and in the process, opened the door to unprecedented levels of violence and crime. By 1934, America had new outlaw names to match the fame and infamy of legends like Billy the Kid, Jesse James, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Now names like Al Capone, John Dillinger, Pretty Boy Floyd, and Bonnie and Clyde were in the headlines. In 1934, all the major outlaws of the gangster era fell one by one. First up was a couple from West Dallas who were not much more than kids. Frank Hamer was about to accept his most famous mission,

to track down and end Bonnie and Clyde. Next time on Legends of the Old West, it's the final installment of the story of Frank Hamer, and it's one that needs no introduction. Frank builds his team and lays a trap for two of the most notorious outlaws in America. That's next week on Legends of the Old West. This season was co-executive produced by Stephen Walters in association with Ritual Productions.

Research and writing by Dante Flores. Original music by Rob Valliere. Audio editing and sound design by Dave Harrison. I'm your host and producer, Chris Wimmer. Find us at our website, blackbarrelmedia.com, or on our social media channels. We're at Old West Podcast on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. And you can stream all our episodes on YouTube. Just search for Legends of the Old West Podcast. Thanks for listening.