Vengeance Is Mine: The Scandalous Love Triangle That Triggered the Boyce-Sneed Feud

The John Beal Sneed Wars Continue: Combat in the Courts, Firefights in the Streets

226 The John Beal Sneed Wars Continue Combat in the Courts, Firefights in the Streets JOHN BEAL SNEED walked out of the Vernon courthouse a free man on February 25, 1913. For almost two years he had soldiered on through physical, mental, and emotional ordeals that would have worn out the body and crushed the spirit of an ordinary man— all the confrontations, the bloodletting, the killing of two human beings, and then being run through the emotional wringer during four murder trials—in three of which his own life hung in the balance . On top of all of that, his family life had been devastated. In the end, John Beal Sneed’s iron will, his callous disregard for anyone except himself, and his grim determination to prevail, whatever the cost, did prevail. He had succeeded in ending the love triangle between his wife and Al Boyce; he had publicly vindicated his wounded pride by killing Colonel Boyce and Al Boyce; he had forced a woman who hated him to remain his wife and live with him; and finally, he had defeated all the criminal charges lodged against him. It would seem that any mortal man who had been through all that John Beal Sneed had just endured would have been more than 12 C H A P T E R The John Beal Sneed Wars Continue 227 content to lead a life of peace and quiet forever after—devoted, if not to family, at least to his agricultural pursuits. But not John Beal Sneed. He was not content unless he was fighting with somebody over something—in court or out of court. And, as he had candidly admitted earlier to a reporter, if he got into a fight, he intended to win it. By whatever means it took. <= John Beal Sneed’s vendetta against the Boyces nearly ruined him financially. He had ignored his father’s sensible advice to simply throw Lena out: divorce her and be rid of her. But, as we have seen, that didn’t satisfy Beal Sneed’s rage for vengeance. Although he had gone against his father’s advice, still his father agreed to finance his defense in the first Fort Worth trial—the one that ended in a mistrial. However, he warned his son that if he didn’t divorce Lena after that trial was concluded he would cut Beal out of his will. Fortunately, for Beal Sneed, one of his father’s tenant farmers shot and killed Joseph Tyre Sneed, Sr., on March 6, 1912, before the Fort Worth retrial of Beal Sneed, and before Beal killed Al Boyce, and before the two murder trials that followed that killing—and before Beal’s father got around to rewriting his will and disinheriting Beal. Even so, Beal had to fork over a king’s ransom for all those expensive lawyers, witnesses, and court costs incurred in the last three murder trials. Consequently, Beal was forced to liquidate most of his holdings , including his mansion in Amarillo. Beal did manage to salvage one asset devised to him through his father’s unrevoked will: a large tract of land in Cottle County, Texas, some 130 miles southeast of Amarillo and some eleven miles south of Paducah, Texas. In 1887, Joseph Tyre Sneed, Sr., had purchased this block of land located along Buford’s Creek, a tributary of the North Wichita River. Although rainfall was scanty there, still the land was fertile, and, except in droughty years, it usually produced good cotton crops. Over the years following the elder Sneed’s purchase of the large farm in 1887, a small rural community developed. They named it 228 V E N G E A N C E I S M I N E “Sneedville.”1 Soon it boasted a school, a cotton gin, a general merchandise store, and a post office, and by 1915 Sneedville had a population of 100. After the last murder trial in 1913, John Beal Sneed established a modest home for himself, Lena, and their two daughters in Sneedville. The tiny, remote farming village of Sneedville on the parched, desolate, windswept plains must have seemed— particularly to Lena—quite a comedown from vibrant Amarillo, the bustling “Queen City of the Panhandle,” but John Beal Sneed had no time or inclination to waste indulging in such sentimental claptrap: he immediately built a few shacks for farm laborers and launched into raising cotton and buying and selling rural properties. Since Beal spent considerable time traveling and making land trades, he hired a young man by the name of David “Wood” Barton to manage his Paducah farming operation. He was Beal Sneed’s kind of guy—an arrogant, overbearing, and violent bully whose idea of dispute resolution was to issue an ultimatum and then enforce it with a good, old-fashioned pistol-whipping (or worse) if the directive was not promptly executed to his satisfaction. In 1921, Wood Barton, age thirty, married Beal and Lena’s youngest daughter, Georgia, age sixteen. It didn’t take Barton long to earn an unenviable reputation for himself in the Paducah community. A neighboring farmer, Ed Carnes , would later say that he was so appalled by Barton’s mistreatment of his Mexican cotton pickers that he voluntarily appeared before the Cottle County grand jury and testified that Barton was beating his workers. When Barton heard about it, he jerked Carnes off his wagon seat one day in downtown Paducah and beat him soundly. Not satisfied with that, Barton proceeded to bite a chunk out of Carnes’s ear.2 Next, he got into a squabble with another neighboring farmer and Baptist minister, Rev. Albert A. Green. Barton had imported a large number of illegal Mexican immigrants to help harvest Sneed’s cotton crop. The workers were housed in some shacks on Sneed’s farm, and Sneed’s manager hauled them to town every Saturday for groceries and supplies. So naturally, Sneed charged the Mexicans for “lodging and transportation” expenses. They were paid a The John Beal Sneed Wars Continue 229 penny or two a pound for picking the cotton, but not before Sneed deducted the “lodging and transportation” expenses from their meager earnings. Meanwhile, Green hired some of these workers to come over to his farm and pick cotton for him. Problem was, at least according to Barton and Sneed, these cotton pickers still owed Sneed $150 for housing and transportation—such charges supposedly accruing while they were still picking Sneed cotton. On January 18, 1920, Barton demanded that Reverend Green deduct $150 from the wages he owed the workers and reimburse Beal. An argument erupted, ending with Barton pistol-whipping Green and knocking him down. Then he threatened to kill Green if he didn’t pay up immediately. Green protested that he didn’t have any money with him. A bystander, J. E. Etheridge, interceded on Green’s behalf and wrote a $150 check on his own account, payable to J. B. Sneed.3 The next day, however, Green filed charges of “assault with intent to rob” against Wood Barton.4 On May 9, 1920, a Cottle County jury found Wood Barton guilty and sentenced him to two years in prison. Barton appealed and the appellate court reversed his conviction, sending the case back for a retrial. It was during this time frame that Barton assaulted Scott Jolly, one of the jurors who had voted to convict him. Jolly later testified that he was in a drugstore buying a soft drink when Barton slipped up behind him and knocked him down, exclaiming, “By God, I’m not a robber.”5 A frightened Scott Jolly fled the scene. Retrial of Wood Barton on the assault with intent to rob charge never happened and for a very good reason: Wood Barton did not live that long. Barton didn’t learn from his experience with Reverend Green. Perhaps he was also emboldened by his successes in and out of court. Anyway, he soon got into another cotton-picking dispute with yet another neighbor. But there was a decidedly different outcome. C. B. Berry, a Cottle County farmer and Paducah businessman, dealing with Wood Barton, bought Sneed’s cotton crop in the fall of 1922 for $2,000. He secured some Mexican pickers to harvest the crop. Barton sent some additional workers to help. Later, Barton claimed that Berry owed him $38 for some unspecified expenses. Berry declined to pay. A few days later, an angry Barton confronted 230 V E N G E A N C E I S M I N E Berry in the Campbell barbershop in Paducah in the presence of witnesses. Barton threatened Berry, but Berry again refused to accede to his demands. One barbershop witness later testified that after Berry departed Barton said, “By God that ___________ will pay me that $38 or I’ll kill him.” Another said he heard Barton make this threat: “I believe I’ll go and beat the brains out of that ___________.”6 The witness said that he communicated this threat to Berry. Two or three days later Barton encountered Berry’s twenty-one-year-old son, Charles Berry, on the street. He called young Berry over and said, “I’m going to get that $38 one way or another and you can tell your old man that I said so.” Other locals communicated threats that Barton had made against Berry. Then a few days after the barbershop encounter, Berry testified that he saw Barton standing across the street. “He had one glove off and was slapping it against his hand. He looked at me sneeringly, started walking toward me, but then turned and walked off.” After that episode, Berry armed himself with a .32-caliber pistol. A few days later, November 11, 1922, he again encountered Barton at the entrance to the First National Bank in Paducah. Berry was talking to another man and tried to ignore him. Barton said, “Come out here Berry, I want to talk to you.” Berry followed him a short distance down the sidewalk. Barton stopped with his back to the wall of the bank building, put his right hand under his vest near his armpit. “Berry, when are you going to pay me the money you owe me?” “I don’t owe you anything.” “You’re a s___________ and a liar.”7 With that Barton pulled his hat down with his left hand and, according to Berry, thrust his right hand deeper under his arm. Berry stepped back, pulled his .32 automatic and fired twice. Then his pistol jammed. But twice was enough. He hit Barton once in the heart and once in his stomach.8 Berry walked away. Soon John Beal Sneed arrived at the scene and ordered the undertaker to examine Barton’s body and clothing. No weapon was found. He had been unarmed. Berry would later testify that he was aware of the prior episodes of violence in Barton’s brief career. Barton was thirty years old when killed. Berry was forty-five. The John Beal Sneed Wars Continue 231 Naturally, Beal Sneed sought revenge and did so in the way he knew best. Some four months later, on March 7, 1923, while Sneed was standing on the corner of a crowded downtown street in Paducah visiting with his friend and courtroom defender, A. J. Fires, he saw C. B. Berry walk past. Sneed drew his pistol and shot Berry five times while Berry was walking away from him. Berry was hit three times in the right arm, once in the left arm, and once in the right leg. Although badly wounded, Berry took refuge by lurching into an adjacent store.9 Quick action by A. J. Fires in grabbing Sneed as he was blazing away saved Berry’s life. In its next edition, the nearby Quanah Tribune-Chief weekly newspaper gave this account of the shooting: Sneed stopped [on Main Street in Paducah] to talk to Judge A. J. Fires, and his left hand rested upon Fires’ shoulder when Berry passed them. [Berry] had not gone half a dozen steps when Sneed drew his revolver and began shooting. That such a good marksman did not kill his man outright was wholly due to Fires’ quick wit, which spoiled his aim.10 After the shooting, Fires scolded his former client, saying, “Now you’ve played the devil!” Sneed shrugged it off. He said, “Didn’t you see [Berry’s] gun?” Fires told him that he hadn’t seen any gun. The Quanah Tribune-Chief’s account of the shooting also mentioned Sneed’s legal and financial reversals over the preceding few years, and ended by noting that Sneed had become “heavily indebted to the merchants of neighboring towns.” Meanwhile, the Cottle County district judge, J. H. Milam, alarmed by the escalating violence that inevitably followed in the wake of John Beal Sneed, summoned Texas Ranger Red Burton in hopes of quelling any more outbreaks.11 Ranger Burton came, but he failed to stop the bloodletting. Berry survived, although he spent several months regaining enough strength to get out of the Quanah hospital. When he did, however, he came after Beal with a vengeance. Berry slipped back into Paducah unannounced and secreted himself in a small unoccupied brick shed behind the First National Bank building. The 232 V E N G E A N C E I S M I N E hut had a view of the main street of Paducah. There Berry stashed food, water, a blanket, a six-shooter pistol, a Winchester rifle, and a .12-gauge shotgun loaded with buckshot—and patiently waited. On July 2, 1923, Beal eventually showed up in downtown Paducah and parked near the bank building in sight of the brick hut where Berry was hiding. About noon Beal returned to his car and was about to open the car door when the first shotgun blast roared. Buckshot pellets hit Beal in the back of the head and neck. Dazed, but still standing, he thought at first there had been a blowout of an automobile tire. Then he realized he had been shot, and drew his .45-caliber automatic pistol. However, he didn’t know where the shot came from, and he couldn’t locate the shooter. About that time Berry fired a second blast. This one hit Sneed in the back and legs. In all some twenty-five to thirty buckshot pellets penetrated him, one of which punctured a lung. Nevertheless, Beal still didn’t go down. He staggered across the street to the Ellis tin shop and collapsed. He was rushed to the hospital in Quanah some forty-five miles away.12 Meanwhile, the attention of a ten-year-old boy, Wayne Smith, had been attracted by the first shotgun blast. He looked across the street and saw C. B. Berry with the shotgun standing in front of the door of the brick building at the rear of the bank. The boy watched Berry fire the second shot. He told authorities, and the Cottle County Sheriff W. T. Patterson was summoned. Sheriff Patterson knocked on the locked door of the brick shed. He got no answer. After kicking the door open, he discovered C. B. Berry inside, hiding behind some bales of hay. He also found the shotgun, the pistol, the rifle, the blanket, and the cache of food and water. The sheriff arrested Berry and took him to jail.13 A shotgun, especially when loaded with buckshot (large-size pellets ), is an awesome weapon and the shooter doesn’t have to worry much about taking a fine bead on his target. Still, the shotgun does have one distinct limitation: the shooter must be fairly close to the target to do lethal damage. Berry, unlike Beal when he bushwhacked Al Boyce, Jr., failed to get close enough to his victim before firing. Although Beal was splattered with multiple buckshot pellets, he was The John Beal Sneed Wars Continue 233 not critically wounded. His wounds were serious enough, however, to keep him hospitalized for approximately two weeks. <= Berry was indicted for murdering Wood Barton;14 Beal Sneed was indicted for assault with intent to murder Berry;15 and Berry was indicted once again, this time for assault with intent to murder Beal.16 All indictments were returned in Cottle County. Venue was changed in all three cases—the murder case against Berry was transferred to Seymour in Baylor County, and both of the assault with intent to murder cases were transferred to Benjamin in Knox County. The trial of C. B. Berry for the murder of Wood Barton began in Seymour on July 10, 1923, in the Baylor County District Court, and it made headlines all across Texas.17 John Beal Sneed was unable to attend because he was still in the hospital recuperating from Berry’s shotgun attack. However, Sneed hired the old courtroom warhorse, A. J. Fires of Childress, to assist District Attorney J. Ross Bell of Paducah . Sneed also hired a local lawyer, Joe Wheat of Seymour, to assist in the prosecution. Not to be outdone, however, Berry got his own renowned trial lawyers: the imposing former district judge Jo A. P. Dickson and the former district attorney Isaac O. Newton, both popular hometown Seymour lawyers. Berry also added to the defense team J. B. Shirtliffe, who, ironically, had been a college classmate of John Beal Sneed. The Baylor County courthouse couldn’t accommodate the crowd of spectators who wanted a ringside seat to hear a detailed account of the killing of Wood Barton. The little village of Seymour couldn’t accommodate all those spectators plus the eighty-nine witnesses who had been subpoenaed to testify. Many were forced to camp out in the tourist park at the edge of town.18 The first thing that District Judge J. H. Milam did when he called the court to order was to direct the sheriff and his deputies to search all spectators, witnesses, and parties for weapons. That accomplished, the trial began.19 The prosecution’s case didn’t take long. The state called two eyewitnesses who had seen C. B. Berry 234 V E N G E A N C E I S M I N E shoot Wood Barton on a street in downtown Paducah on November 11, 1922. The prosecution also proved that Wood Barton was unarmed at the time of the shooting. The defense didn’t challenge any of that, but Berry’s lawyers did parade a host of witnesses to enlighten the jurors about the background of the deadly feud and to prove that Barton had instigated it. In addition, many Cottle County farmers and businessmen plus the sheriffs of Cottle and King counties were called to attest to Wood Barton’s bad reputation as a dangerous man with an explosive temper and that Barton was the kind of man who would likely carry out any threats to kill. Then the defense called witnesses who were in a position to give the jury specific examples of Barton’s brutality—witnesses who had been the target of Barton’s wrath: Reverend A. A. Green: told of being pistol-whipped and knocked down by Barton over a $150 cotton-picking dispute and then being threatened with death if he didn’t immediately pay up. J. E. Etheridge: told of witnessing Barton’s attack on Green and saving Green from further attack or death by paying Barton the demanded $150. Scott Jolly: told of being waylaid by Barton in retaliation for Jolly’s service as a juror who voted to convict Barton for his attack on Green. Ed Carnes: told of the retaliation Barton had administered when he discovered Carnes had told a grand jury about Barton’s brutal mistreatment of his cotton-pickers; how Barton jerked him off his wagon seat and soundly thrashed him and then bit a chunk out of his ear. Carnes created such an outburst from jurors and spectators that Judge J. H. Milam had to gavel them down when Carnes backed up his testimony by exhibiting his partial ear.20 In the end, it all came down to the classic “unwritten law” defense in frontier Texas murder cases: “the sorry SOB needed a damned good killing anyhow” defense, thinly veiled, of course, by an obligatory nod in the direction of a legal defense—statutory self- The John Beal Sneed Wars Continue 235 defense. To that end, C. B. Berry took the stand and testified that he thought (mistakenly as it turned out) that Barton was armed during the fatal encounter and that, just before he triggered the fatal shot, he witnessed Barton “thrust his hand under his vest” and therefore assumed he was reaching for his pistol. Special prosecutor Joe Wheat would later, during final jury arguments , sarcastically remark: “Now that’s a new wrinkle in an old suit. It is usually a hip pocket play.” A news account of the trial noted that the recently widowed Georgia Sneed Barton displayed much emotion during the trial, often hiding her face and “making frequent use of her handkerchief .” Lena also attended the trial. The same news account had this to say about Lena’s demeanor: Mrs. Sneed sat motionless and listened attentively, only permitting herself to be disturbed by a tug on her skirt made by her grandchild , the eighteen-month-old child of Wood Barton.21 As a criminal defense lawyer, A. J. Fires was almost unbeatable, having won acquittals in 121 out of 124 murder cases in his long and illustrious career. But old Judge Fires just wasn’t cut out to play offense. More likely, however, in view of Wood Barton’s unsavory reputation, coupled with the unsavory facts of this case, there probably lived no trial lawyer in the whole United States who could have persuaded that West Texas jury to convict C. B. Berry. Prosecutor Isaac O. Newton summed it up for the jury this way: A bad character can get by for some time. He can hit a man over the head with a pistol; he can strike a man while his back is turned; and he can jerk a young man off a wagon and bite off a piece of his ear; but sooner or later he will reach his grave through such actions, and that is what occurred in this instance.22 At the conclusion of the trial, the jury took only twenty-five minutes and one ballot to come back with a not guilty verdict.23 <= 236 V E N G E A N C E I S M I N E On February 27, 1924, after John Beal Sneed had recovered sufficiently to stand trial, he was tried in neighboring Knox County for attempting to murder C. B. Berry. The shooting had occurred on a downtown street in Paducah on March 7, 1923. Prosecution witnesses said that Beal Sneed and his friend and attorney, A. J. Fires, were standing on a street corner talking when C. B. Berry walked past them. Berry was only a few feet past Sneed and Fires, still walking away, when Sneed suddenly drew his .45 automatic and shot Berry five times. Although Berry was armed with his own pistol, the witnesses said he never made any attempt to draw it. Fires, meanwhile, when Sneed began firing, grabbed Sneed by the shoulder and spoiled his aim, resulting in Berry escaping with five non-fatal wounds. The Wichita [Falls] Daily Times reporter covering the trial noted that throughout the trial, John Beal Sneed maintained a “calm and quiet attitude” and that he seemed “confident and at ease.” To no one’s surprise, Sneed, when he testified, claimed self-defense; said that after Berry passed him, he turned and made a motion with his right arm indicating that he was reaching for his pistol. Sneed testified: I know positively that he was going to kill me. I knew it was going to be a swap out game, and I pulled my gun and started shooting.24 Sneed added that “numerous persons” had told him that Berry had been making threats to kill him. However, he did not explain what motive Berry could have had to go gunning for him. Then Beal Sneed’s testimony took the same cloying blend of self-pity and self-aggrandizement that he had so masterfully perfected during his three prior murder trials. Still believing that Berry, for whatever reason, had it in for him, Sneed told the jury that he had done all in his power to avoid meeting Berry. Beal added: I wasn’t afraid of him, but I had been in trouble enough during my lifetime and I didn’t want to get into trouble and thought that by avoiding meeting him face to face I would not be inviting trouble. Besides I had further responsibilities now because you might say I had a little child to bring up.25 The John Beal Sneed Wars Continue 237 The Daily Times reporter added this observation: “Tears came to his eyes as he explained that he meant his little grandchild, the Barton baby.” That Beal Sneed would play his “poor little child” card sometime before the trial ended would have been a sure bet. Sneed called his friend and lawyer, A. J. Fires, an eyewitness to the shooting, but Fires’s testimony seemed more harmful that helpful to Sneed’s cause. Perhaps Sneed thought—hoped—his friend would provide a more defense-friendly version. In any event, Fires testified that immediately after the shooting he said to Sneed, “Now, you have played the devil.” He said Sneed replied, “Didn’t you see that gun?” But Fires testified that he told Sneed that he hadn’t seen any gun. Berry’s version was very different. He had passed Sneed on the street and was walking away when Sneed began firing at him. No words had passed between them before the shooting. He further denied he had made any prior threats to kill Beal. When Berry took the witness stand to testify, he looked Beal directly in the face. The Daily Times reporter described it this way: Just before the examination began, the eyes of Berry and Sneed met. Both fixed their gaze for fully two minutes when both turned their heads simultaneously. The little bit of play was noticed by all those who happened to be inside the far railing.26 The brief trial came to a halt later that same day, and the jury left to make a decision. Twenty-five minutes later the jurors filed back into the courtroom with their verdict: “Not guilty.” The trial of C. B. Berry for assault with intent to kill John Beal Sneed was set to begin the next day, February 28, 1924, in the same courtroom.27 Beal Sneed, for the prosecution, testified that he was ambushed— shot twice with a shotgun and had been penetrated by twenty-five to thirty buckshot pellets in his head, neck, back, and legs. He never saw his attacker, he said, and had not drawn his pistol until after having been hit by the first shotgun blast. He never got off a shot, however, since he couldn’t locate his attacker. Sheriff Patterson testified that he had been informed that the shooter was hiding in the 238 V E N G E A N C E I S M I N E brick shed at the back of the First National Bank building and, when he kicked open the door, he discovered C. B. Berry hiding inside with his weapons, including a .12-gauge shotgun. C. B. Berry took the stand in his own defense. He admitted shooting Sneed, but said he did so in self-defense. He claimed that Sneed had attempted to draw his pistol before he fired his shotgun the first time. Nobody else saw that. It was the third Paducah shooting episode in a row where the defendant testified that his adversary had attempted to draw a pistol before the defendant fired his first round. And it was the third trial in a row where there were no corroborating witnesses who saw the victim pull a pistol before being shot. Nevertheless, Berry had another arrow in his quiver this time. He pled that at the time he fired the first shot he was in “real or apparent danger” of being killed by that known and experienced killer, John Beal Sneed. And he cited Beal’s ambush-style killings of Colonel Boyce and Al Boyce, Jr. Berry testified: I shot to save my own life. I knew that Sneed was going to kill me. I just raised my gun and fired twice. I knew that he had threatened to kill me at the first opportunity. I knew how he had killed A. G. Boyce, Sr. and Al Boyce, Jr. and the methods he had resorted to in hunting them down. I just had to shoot, that was all.28 Testimony was concluded in one day. The jury began deliberating the next morning, February 29, 1924. The jurors returned to the courtroom thirty-five minutes later, finding C. B. Berry “not guilty.”29 It was apparent that juries in both the Sneed and Berry trials felt that the two dueling shootists came out about even and hence no judicial interventions were appropriate. <= As time passed, Beal Sneed focused more of his time and boundless energy on his land-trading enterprise, leaving most of the farm management duties to Wood Barton—at least until Barton earned his comeuppance. Cottle County deed records prove that Sneed pursued his real estate ventures with his customary vigor and determination. The John Beal Sneed Wars Continue 239 Meanwhile, the Cottle County district court records attest that Beal pursued that endeavor with his customary combativeness. From 1919 through 1924, in Cottle County alone, Sneed was involved, either as a plaintiff or as a defendant, in twenty-two civil lawsuits, some of which involved multiple parties.30 Land-trading disputes were the subject of most. Although in the first years after his return to Paducah most of his civil litigation seemed to turn out favorably for Beal Sneed, nevertheless , from 1922 through 1924, he suffered serious reversals, leading to the surmise that Beal’s contentious and overbearing ways were at last beginning to wear pretty thin with the locals. Plus, it became increasingly obvious that his unending civil and criminal courthouse wrangling had just about drained Beal’s financial well dry. In October 1922, a bank recovered a judgment against Beal in the Cottle County District Court for almost $8,000 on a past-due loan.31 (The judgment was by default, meaning that Beal put up no defense.) Shortly thereafter a cottonseed company took another default judgment against Beal for almost $2,500 on another bad debt,32 and in April 1924, P. M. Fields obtained a judgment against Beal whereby he won title to a ninety-acre tract of land and monetary damages of approximately $12,500 on delinquent notes.33 Another default judgment for $2,118.16 was taken on March 6, 1923, in the Hardeman County District Court for the purchase in 1920 of seed wheat.34 All those Cottle County suits were small potatoes compared to a federal lawsuit filed by Nicholas Bilby against Sneed in 1921 in the U.S. District Court in Abilene, Texas.35 Bilby, owner of the famous O Bar O Ranch, which encompassed more than a half million acres with headquarters near Spur, Texas, sued Beal to recover possession of approximately 100,000 acres of the ranch land plus damages of $1,212,435. He alleged that he had leased Beal the 100,000 acres beginning June 1, 1919, but Beal had not paid him any compensation for the use of the land through October 1, 1921, yet still retained possession of the land and refused to surrender it back to Bilby. In what one may surmise was one of Beal’s tried-and-true trial tactics, he attempted to assure courtroom success by bribing a juror. 240 V E N G E A N C E I S M I N E The arrogant Beal Sneed, no doubt emboldened by past successes, must have felt he was bulletproof. His bribery efforts were crude and direct. He and his codefendant, Jack Renfro, lured a juror, H. J. Patterson, to Renfro’s Abilene hotel room during the trial where they plied him with generous portions of whiskey before offering him $1,000 to hang the jury. He agreed. Although the corrupted juryman did succeed in causing a hung jury—eleven to one in Bilby’s favor—nevertheless, Beal, for the first time, ended up getting himself indicted, tried, and convicted for bribing the juror36 when Patterson had an attack of conscience and confessed his sin to the judge.37 (Bilby, in a retrial of the civil suit, eventually succeeded in recovering possession of his land plus a $25,000 judgment against Sneed.)38 In October 1922, Sneed and Renfro were each sentenced to two years in the federal penitentiary.39 Patterson, the bribed juror who rolled over and testified for the prosecution, got off with a relatively light thirty-day jail sentence for contempt of court.40 Of course, Beal Sneed did not give up. He appealed—first to the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans and then to the U.S. Supreme Court—but lost.41 Next he petitioned federal officials from U.S. Senator Morris Sheppard to the U.S. attorney general to intercede with President Calvin Coolidge, pleading for a pardon. But to no avail. Finally, in August 1924, after years of constant legal wrangling, Beal ran out of options and, at last, was shipped to the federal penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas. The Abilene Reporter, in telling of Sneed’s federal bribery trial, informed its readers (in what has to be a classic understatement) that John Beal Sneed was “well-known” throughout West Texas.42 Actually, by this time, nearly everybody who was anybody in West Texas had either been shot at or sued by Beal Sneed—or vice versa. John Beal Sneed served only nine months’ hard time of his two-year federal sentence for bribing a juror before being paroled. Considering all of Sneed’s misdeeds, that brief stint behind bars seemed hardly more than a wrist slap to many . . . mighty light indeed. <= The John Beal Sneed Wars Continue 241 In 1923, before his incarceration, Beal and Lena had packed their bags and departed Paducah (where Beal had undoubtedly worn out his welcome) and moved to Dallas. After his release from prison on parole in 1925, Sneed settled comfortably in an upscale neighborhood in North Dallas and promptly set about recouping his fortune. The irrepressible John Beal Sneed was a resounding success and soon became a wealthy independent Texas oilman, drilling in the fabulous East Texas oilfield and other oil-rich areas.43 For the next thirty-plus years, he and Lena lived together in style in North Dallas in what had to have been one of the most curious and symbiotic relationships of all time—lived together until Beal died of bone cancer on April 22, 1960.44 Lena survived until March 6, 1966, when she died of heart failure.45 Neither of their obituaries printed one word about the scandals, the killings, or the trials that had devastated the three pioneer Texas families almost a half century earlier. Except for serving nine months on the federal bribery conviction , John Beal Sneed escaped punishment by the law, although, as one wag later pointed out, it cost him: he had succeeded in sentencing himself to life without parole . . . with Lena. Vengeance may have been John Beal Sneed’s long suit, but apparently he didn’t have a monopoly on it. He may have succeeded in forcing Lena to live with him until death did they part, but he couldn’t force her to love him or like him, or to make life pleasant for him—whether she was sane or insane, morally or otherwise. As Clara Sneed, a great-niece of John Beal Sneed, reflected years later in recounting Sneed family lore: “[Lena], did not, by all accounts, give Beal an easy time of it.”46 Beal and Lena—in peace, at long last—now rest, side by side, in the Hillcrest Cemetery in North Dallas. All of the Boyce family is buried in the Llano Cemetery in Amarillo where Colonel Boyce and Al Boyce, Jr., have rested since 1912. Mrs. Boyce was the last of her family to die, having survived not only her husband but all of her children as well. Back in 1912, Annie Boyce must have agonized over a choice of words to carve on the gravestone of her son, Al Boyce, Jr. Finally, she settled on this plaintive epitaph: “Jesus knows all about our struggles.” 242 GRAVESTONE OF ALBERT GALLATIN BOYCE, JR., (1875–1912) in the Llano Cemetery in Potter County, Texas. Epitaph selected by his mother, Annie Boyce, reads: “Jesus Knows All About Our Struggles.” Photograph by Allen Kimble in author’s collection. GRAVESTONE OF ALBERT GALLATIN BOYCE, SR. (1842–1912), AND WIFE, ANNIE E. BOYCE (1850-1929) in the Llano Cemetery, Potter County, Texas. Photograph by Allen Kimble in author’s collection. ...