Bad Boy From Rosebud (2 page)

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Authors: Gary M. Lavergne

Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #General, #Law, #True Crime, #Murder, #test

BOOK: Bad Boy From Rosebud
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Page xi
very good questions, and provided valuable suggestions on how to improve the manuscript. Other colleagues, Martha Salmon and Frances Brown, on their own time looked over portions of this work with the eyes of experienced English teachers. I am very lucky to be surrounded by such talent on a daily basis at my real job.
I am truly indebted to each of the persons I interviewed (listed in Notes on Sources). Beyond sacrificing their valuable time for an interview, some of them helped me secure other forms of information. My very good friend J. W. Thompson of the Austin Police Department, who would rather not see his name in printanywherepatiently accepted my frequent calls to his office and home. His dear wife Julie graciously endured my year-long disruption of their lives. Our mutual friend, Charles Meyer, has an astonishing eye for detail and a first-rate memory.
Travis County Assistant District Attorney Buddy Meyer helped to expedite my securing the statement of facts of the Reed Trial at a time when he was a lead prosecutor of some of the most high-profile crimes in Travis County. In Bell County, Tim Steglich took the time to show me the area where McDuff hung around. Tim would have made a great teacher; he taught me a lot about the subculture I have written so much about.
It was a joy to meet and become friends with Charles Butts of San Antonio. Charlie read each chapter and provided written, very insightful suggestions and observations. I shamelessly exploited his brilliant legal mind. Crawford Long and Mike Freeman of the McLennan County District Attorney's Office met with me on a Saturday for a lengthy interview. They also lent me their copy of the statement of facts of the Northrup Trial. Crawford also kept me informed throughout the course of McDuff's appeals process.
On June 15, 1998, I had a telephone conversation with Chief John Butler of the United States Marshal's Service office in San Antonio. After explaining my project to him, he assured me that the Marshal's Service would cooperate with me in any way. They could not have been more generous. Chief Butler made my interview with Mike and Parnell McNamara possible. Additionally, on their own time, Mike and Parnell, along with Bill Johnston, took me to many of the locations described in this bookplaces I could never have found and would never have ventured into alone. If this book has imagery and power, it is due in large part to my good friends: The Boys from Waco.
 
Page xii
Texas Department of Criminal Justice Investigator John Moriarty has a vast knowledge of ex-cons like Kenneth McDuff. His observations were very valuable.
That I am an author would never have happened had it not been for the courage of Frances Vick, the Director of the University of North Texas Press. All writing successes I enjoy come from her sponsorship. Charlotte Wright, the Associate Director and Editorial Manager of UNT Press, crafts outstanding literatureeven books about murders. It was easier for me to work on this manuscript through many sleepless nights knowing that a truly artistic book would result.
My friend, Robert Draper, a writer at large for
GQ Magazine
, could not have been more helpful and generous in helping me refine a book of which I am very proud. And this was the second time he has helped me make a manuscript better. I am also indebted to Gary Cartwright of
Texas Monthly
, for the time he took looking over portions of this book, and for his words of advice. Jim Hornfischer of the Literary Group International, my agent, has endured my impatience through two books now.
Last, but certainly not least, I wish to thank Brenda and Richard Solomon, Lori Bible, and Jack Brand. They are the survivors. They are the ones with courage. My interviews with them included painful, and at times tearful recollections. All Robert Brand did was go out on a date with a good and decent girlfriend; all Melissa Northrup did was go to work; and all Colleen Reed did was wash her car. Kenneth McDuff devastated their families, and yet, these remarkable people greeted me with kindness and respect. I am a better person for having met them.
No doubt there are others. For those whose names I forgot, be assured it was due to a fatigued mind, and not my heart.
GARY M. LAVERGNE
CEDAR PARK, TEXAS
 
Page 1
Prologue
Rosebud
"He was the bad boy from Rosebudalways has been."
Ellen Roberts, Former Justice of the Peace, Falls County
The rolling hills of central Texas cradle a hamlet called Rosebud. It lies in the Blackland Prairie. With the luck of ample rain, the dark, rich soil supports a diversity of crops. But the land can be unforgiving as well. During periods of drought the waves of brown grain, chest-high dead cornstalks, or emaciated cotton plants prove that nature rules and serve as witnesses to the death that can overshadow the otherwise lush and living countryside.
The inhabitants of the Blackland Prairie are as diverse as their homes. Sprawling ranch-style houses exist alongside crumbling trailerssome with elaborate steps, porches, and roofs that cost as much as the trailers. In some cases, almost within arm's length, expensive satellite dishes bring the world, good and bad, to televisions in small living rooms with rotted particle-board floors.
Once, the hamlets of the Blackland Prairie catered to small family-owned farms. Today, the hamlets evidence the merger of those farms into fewer, larger, self-sufficient agricultural giants. Numerous old, dried-out, useless barns and sheds lean dangerously, ghosts of a simpler and perhaps better time.
When those barns and sheds stood erect during the post-World War II agricultural boom, Rosebud's Main Street bustled with business activity. A sign greeted visitors entering the small town: "RosebudWe call it home." It betrays a simple lifestyle. According to a local brochure, visitors on their way into town drove by stately "homes that made Rosebud beautiful." The Tarver Home, the Nicholson Home on South First Street, the palatial ''Rosebud Castle," the Reichert House on Second Street and several others nestled in quiet neighborhoods among mature, magnificent trees.
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Rosebud was "a town of good people working together for the betterment of their community" extolled the Chamber of Commerce.
 
Page 2
In an effort to encourage residents to plant a rose bush in every yard, the
Rosebud News
, and later the Chamber of Commerce, gave away cuttings to anyone who did not have a bush. "The City of Rosebud has a lot to be proud of, but Rosebud is not remembered instantly for its excellent hospital, rest home, businesses, library, schools and friendly people. The name and the reputation for having a rose bush in every yard is its main claim to fame." On the other hand, lore said there was also a saloon on every street, and as a result, women never went into town on Saturdays.
2
On Sundays everyone went to church and some worshipers, like those attending services at the Rosebud Church of Christ, were greeted by signs offering homespun wisdom: "Don't pray for rain if you plan on complaining about the mud."
Rosebud, now a bedroom community populated by workers commuting to Temple, Marlin, and Waco, is one of the few remaining places where markets close on Saturdays. Empty, dusty store fronts line Main Street.
The first indication to travelers that they are near Rosebud is a huge gleaming water storage tank, large enough to meet the needs of a far larger city. The water system and tankwith "Rosebud" painted on the north side above a huge stemmed red roseand the accompanying sewer system, are a result of the tenacity of Ms. Wanda Fischer, who lives in the Reichert House, one of the homes that made Rosebud beautiful. After serving on the City Council and then as City Manager for ten years, Ms. Fischer retired from public service in May 1996. She has lived in Rosebud most of her life.
One of Ms. Fischer's friends said that "every little town needs a benevolent despot." And Rosebud had Ms. Fischer. Residents were known to knock on her doors or windows at all hours of the night with their problemsranging from serious city-related issues to family arguments only Ms. Fischer could mediate. She is a graceful and dignified woman who remembers an earlier Rosebud. She watched sadly as some of the "homes that made Rosebud beautiful" were torn down and the Blackland Prairie farms grew larger and fewer while Main Street grew quieterand more storefronts covered polished glass with ugly knotted plywood.
Ms. Fischer is the symbol of a nice little town populated by decent people. But her eyes narrow at the mention of Rosebud's most infamous son: Kenneth Allen McDuff. "He was just a vicious killer," she said venomously.
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Page 3
To many Rosebud oldtimers, the name Kenneth Allen McDuff brings to mind a rowdy, downright mean, bully on a loud motorcycle. He liked to fight and he liked to scare the small and the weak. Sometimes he hurt people, but the only time he ever fought someone with a reasonable chance of fighting back, he got kicked around a ravine traversed by a bridge where school children crowded in order to relish the long-overdue administration of "justice for McDuff." But the name McDuff conjures up more than just a school yard fight between two ninth graders. People remember the horror of the 1966 "Broomstick Murders" of three teenagers for which McDuff was arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced to death by electrocution.
"Only a few people from Rosebud ever went to prison, and one of them was for stealing two turkeys," lamented the former editor of the
Rosebud News
.
4
"He was the bad boy of Rosebudalways has been," confessed Ms. Ellen Roberts, a former Justice of the Peace and one of Kenneth's teachers. She remembers him coming from a hard-working family headed by a stern mother and a father who worked so much it seemed that was all he did. Other neighbors said that the McDuffs were hard to figure. They were not overly loud and obnoxiousbut they were not warm people either.
5
In October of 1989, in a twist of history that many in Rosebud, indeed, in all of Texas and throughout the nation, still cannot believe, the State of Texas set Kenneth Allen McDuff, the Broomstick Murderer, free. It was not just some incredible ruling by an activist bleeding-heart judge. No trial error dismissed his case. No suspicious California or New York conspiracy set him free. He was
paroled
by Texans!
All of a sudden the fear returned. "A lot of people around here are scared, and they have a right to be," said Texas State Trooper Richard Starnes. Rumors ravaged an already tremulous little town. In nearby McLennan County, Detective Richard Stroup reported that his office had been getting calls from housewives afraid to leave their kids by themselves during broad daylight. Schools took precautions, and bus drivers were warned by school administrators to be alert for the bad boy from Rosebud. The very sad irony was that, thirty years after he had dropped out of school, Kenneth McDuff was still scaring school children and giving principals trouble. Rosebud, and the world, would soon discover that he had never grown up; he had only gotten frightfully larger and much more dangerous.
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