Chapter XXXV: The Conditt Murder Mystery

A TERRIBLE CRIME AT EDNA, TEXAS. MONK GIBSON'S ARREST AND ESCAPE. THE GREATEST MAN-HUNT IN HISTORY

It was during the latter part of 1905 and the spring of 1906 that Ranger Captain McDonald was engaged in unraveling a mystery which gave opportunity for the employment of his natural talent for detective work, combined with the skill and experience acquired during a long period of following criminals and uncovering crime.

On September 28th, 1905, two miles from the little town of Edna, Jackson County, Texas, during the temporary absence of J.F. Conditt--employed in rice harvest, seven miles distant--his wife and four young children, ranging in ages from a baby boy of three to a little girl of twelve, were murdered in broad daylight--their bodies left as they had fallen in and about the premises. The murders were committed in the most brutal and bloody way, with knife, adz, and such household tool and implement as came to hand. Three of the murdered children were boys. The little girl of twelve had been violated. Only an infant of a few months had been left alive. The story of that ghastly crime--its motive; its commission; its detection and the punishment of its perpetrators--can only be epitomized here, for its details would fill a volume and belong only in the official records; neither are they yet complete. We shall attempt, therefore, no more than the outlines, with such particulars as will show the scope and the importance of Captain McDonald's work in solving a mystery and fixing the guilt, not only without the assistance of those most interested, but in the face of their bitter opposition.

The Conditt family had but recently moved to Edna. They were working people, respectable but poor, and had taken a house formerly occupied by negroes. This in itself was an offense to their immediate neighborhood--a negro settlement--and when Mr. Conditt repaired his fences and thereby shut off from public use a windmill where the negroes had been accustomed to go for water, his offense in their eyes became a crime. They did not want him there and resolved to get rid of him. How many or how few were concerned, directly and indirectly, in the conspiracy to drive out or destroy the white family that had settled among them, will perhaps never be known. That negroes seldom betray one another, and that a negro conspiracy is the most difficult of all plots to illuminate, are facts only too well established by our recently recorded history. The Conditt murder plot furnishes an unusual example of this peculiar African phase.

The negroes were sullen, at first, in their manner toward the Conditts. Then one of them--a certain Felix Powell--spoke insultingly to Mildred Conditt, the little girl of twelve. Then came September 28th--nine o'clock in the morning--the day and hour of destruction.

It was one o'clock in the afternoon before the crime became known. Monk Gibson, a colored boy of sixteen who had been plowing for Mr. Conditt in a field about two hundred yards from the house, carried the news. He ran to the house of a white man named John Gibson, some distance away, and reported that he had just seen Mrs. Conditt being chased around the house by two men. John Gibson went on a run to the Conditt premises; found no trace of the two men, but did find the murdered family, a house like a slaughter pen, and in the midst of this horror, a wailing infant. Gibson, the white man, hurried the colored boy off to bring Mr. Conditt from the rice field, and set out to spread the alarm. In a brief time the country was aflame. Monk Gibson, returning with Mr. Conditt, was put under arrest, and it was now found that he was smeared and splashed with blood. He explained the stains by saying that his nose had bled and that he had hurt himself creeping through a wire fence, but there were no indications of his nose having bled, and he could show only the merest scratch of a wound. That he was concerned in the crime was never doubted, but only the unreasoning then believed he had committed it alone. Questioned, he told conflicting stories, finally stating that men whom he did not know had dragged him to the house, compelled him to view their work, splashed him with blood and set him free.

Of course these statements were not believed. The whole country round about Edna, now terribly aroused, was determined to have the truth. If Monk Gibson was alone in the crime, and there were many who soon reached this conclusion, his punishment would not wait the slow process of the law. If he were one of several, he must reveal the names of his associates. He was put through the severest ordeal of examination, but he would utter nothing more than the confused contradictory stories already told. Every method was tried to extort information, yet he only repeated his conflicting stories and refused to tell names.

It was now pretty generally assumed that he had nothing to tell and that he alone had committed the crime. A lynching mob was forming, and a report came from Bay City that two hundred men had chartered a special train for Edna and were coming to destroy the boy murderer that night. Sheriff Egg of Edna and his deputies resolved to remove the prisoner to a place of safety, and quietly arranged their plan. As soon as it was dark they had swift horses taken to the back of the jail, one for Gibson and others for the officers who would accompany him. Then quietly they got him out through a back window; mounted him, unfettered, between two officers, and slipped away toward Hallettsville, where it was believed he would be safe.

They never reached Hallettsville. While galloping at full speed along an open road they came to a curve. The officers had no thought that Gibson would try to escape, and he was riding free. But at the curve, Gibson did not turn. He kept straight on, drove his animal over a fence and disappeared in the thick darkness. When the officers recovered themselves and made their way into the field, they found the horse he had been riding, but their prisoner had vanished. They came back to Edna crestfallen and discredited. The people at first declared that the deputies had put Gibson in hiding. Then, only half convinced, and fiercely angry, they joined in what was, perhaps, the greatest man hunt ever known in Texas. Every available horse and gun was secured--every available man was presently in the saddle.

But this was only a beginning. Within a brief time fresh car-loads of horses were shipped to Edna; ranchmen sent their cowboys; every pack of blood-hounds in south Texas was mustered into the service; commissary camps were established; leaders were appointed for the various bands; business was suspended, the country became one vast encampment and all for the purpose of running down a single boy of sixteen who had slipped away from the deputies and was believed to be hiding in the swamps. In the midst of all this, Governor Lanham ordered Adjutant-General Hulen with four companies of State troops to invest the place; whereupon Edna became a military camp in fact.

Captain McDonald was working in another part of the State when he first saw the reports of the Conditt murder. His headquarters being now at Alice, the scene of the crime was in his territory, and before many days he was notified by General Hulen to report at Edna with men and blood-hounds to join in the search. Arriving at the front he found such a turmoil of excitement and animosity and trouble of many kinds as is not often gathered in any one place. Men and groups of men, each more distracted than the other, were rushing hither and yon on a hundred fruitless and mainly imaginary errands. Nobody was really doing anything; everybody was blaming everybody else; everybody was mad at the soldiers, mad at the arriving Rangers, mad at each other; and meantime Monk Gibson was still at large.

Captain McDonald looked over the ground, as quietly as they would let him, and gave it out as his conclusion that no one man could have committed all that crime in open daylight, let alone a boy of sixteen. The sentiment was almost wholly the other way by this time, and the Ranger Captain's opinion was bitterly opposed from the start. What the people wanted was a victim. If they could capture Monk Gibson they would have a victim, and they did not want any complication that would interfere with this elementary proposition and the summary idea of justice which lay behind it. The presence of military and especially of Rangers was a menace, and for Bill McDonald to try to confuse matters with his detective theories, which might result in Gibson going clear, even if captured, would not be lightly borne. He was given to understand that the people of Edna knew what they wanted, and when they wanted Rangers they would invite them.

Captain Bill, however, followed his own ideas. He felt sure that Gibson was only one of several that had perpetrated the crime, and was doubtless a tool of older men. Moreover there were bloody hand-prints, left by one or more of the Conditt murderers, and these he could not believe had been made by the hand of a boy of sixteen, small for his years as Monk Gibson was declared to be. He further believed that Gibson was somewhere in hiding near his home, for by long experience he had learned that the hunted negro will always go home, regardless of risk.

Meantime, Monk Gibson's parents were in jail, and their premises had been searched more than once. Other negroes had been arrested on suspicion, only to be discharged for lack of any tangible evidence. Captain McDonald went his own way, holding to the theory that the negro boy would be found in the neighborhood of his own home. His two blood-hounds, Trouble and Rock, he took there repeatedly to try to pick up the trail, yet always without success. He believed the boy would come home for food, and to the nearby windmill for water. The barn near his father's house was searched daily, and while for some reason Captain Bill did not attend to this detail himself he was assured each time that the search had been thorough.

Yet Monk Gibson was hiding in that barn all the time. There were some unthreshed oats in the barn, and he had found a place where he could work himself under the straw, leaving no trace on the outside. Sometimes at night he had crept out to a pig-pen for water, and had picked some ears of corn in a nearby patch. One morning when he could stand it no longer he came out and called to a negro named Warren Powell, whose brother, Felix Powell, already mentioned, was to play an important part in this tragic drama. Warren Powell immediately took charge of the boy, Monk, tied him and notified the officers. General Hulen, Captain McDonald, Sheriff Egg and others responded quickly, and putting the boy in a buggy made a wild gallop for the jail, by a circuitous route, to avoid the crowds. He was landed safely inside, tossed from man to man between a line of bayonets, and when the infuriated populace gathered they were driven back by a cordon of armed officials.

Captain McDonald now got himself disliked in more ways than one. For one thing he persisted in his theory that Monk Gibson alone could not have committed the crime; for another, he urged that Gibson be taken to a safer, quieter place for protection. Furthermore he would not permit them to obtain testimony from the prisoner by torture. Approaching the jail one night he heard screams of agony. Entering, he found an assembly of examiners in Monk Gibson's cell, with Gibson tied up by the thumbs, the boy screaming, but refusing to tell anything more than the conflicting incoherent stories told at first.

"Take that boy down," said Captain Bill. "Don't you know that anything you get out of a witness by torture is not evidence enough for a mob, let alone a court of law?"

Meantime, the Ranger Captain had been picking up threads of evidence of his own. For one thing he had observed that two negroes--Felix Powell, already mentioned, and one Henry Howard--had taken a curiously intense interest in all the investigations--seemingly fascinated by every movement of the officers, especially of the Rangers. He noticed, too, that certain other negroes of the settlement were acting in a manner which to one with a special knowledge of their characteristics, appeared suspicious. He made carefully guarded inquiries, and learned that while Powell and Howard claimed to have been working for a man named John Young all day on the day of the murder, they had in reality worked for Young only during the afternoon. When he spoke to them about it their answers were contradictory. Finally Powell acknowledged that he had not worked for Young during the forenoon, and could give no satisfactory account of his whereabouts for the morning. It was generally believed, at first, that the murder had been committed about one o'clock--the time of the alarm by Monk Gibson--but the condition of the bodies when found made it evident that the crime had occurred much earlier--Captain McDonald believed as early as nine o'clock. McDonald finally questioned Powell directly, and believed he detected guilt in his every look and word. Powell denied knowing Monk Gibson at all, though the two had been raised in the same neighborhood. Gibson on the other hand had already acknowledged that he knew Powell, and had always known him. Finally Captain Bill said:

"Well, Felix, I think I will put you in jail awhile to refresh your memory."

The suspected man nearly collapsed at this and protested his innocence. Searched, a knife was found on him, which had a rusty, inoffensive look on the outside and according to its owner was very dull and used only for cutting tobacco. But when this knife was opened it was found to be of razor-like sharpness, and when a match was passed through the jaws and blade recesses, the end of the match brought up blood! Two of the Conditt children had died of ghastly knife wounds. Captain McDonald believed that this knife had made them.

* * * * *

Evidently he was alone in that belief. The arrest of Powell was condemned generally as a diversion, to aid in clearing Gibson--it being widely declared that such was the Ranger Captain's purpose. To this, however, he paid not much attention--his one desire being to get as much evidence as possible and bring the guilty to justice. He did not feel warranted in arresting Howard and the others at this time, though fully believing them concerned as accessories, if not as principals, in the plot to kill. That Monk Gibson had not been alone in the crime he was quite positive. The prints of the bloody hand-mark sawed out of the Conditt house could not be made to fit Gibson's hand by any stretch or adjustment of that member. Neither did it look as if it would fit Powell's hand, though the actual fitting was not then tried, for Powell was wary, and must be entrapped into a test that would require such nicety of adjustment. But there had been one more suspicious circumstance. A shirt had been found tucked away under a bridge over a creek where it had been washed, though it still bore evidence of blood stains. Captain McDonald approached Powell with the shirt in a small bundle under his arm. "That is not my shirt!" declared Powell quickly, before a word had been said, and before it was possible to tell what the folded garment was.

Yet the grand jury then in session refused to listen to McDonald's evidence, or to indict any one but Gibson, who was charged by that body with the entire crime.

By this time the soldiers had gone back to Austin and only the Rangers and local officers were in charge of the jail. When the indictment was found, Captain McDonald demanded that the prisoner be removed to San Antonio for safety and the District Judge consented to the removal. Threats that such a removal would not be permitted were plenty enough, but the Rangers, without announcement or manifestation of any sort, made ready, and when the train was about due quietly and swiftly hurried him to the station and put him aboard. He landed in San Antonio safely and for the time the Conditt case was quiescent. Felix Powell was turned out of jail as soon as the Rangers were gone, evidently as an affront to McDonald, and to show the community's disbelief in his theories as well as their general disapproval of his efforts. McDonald with plenty of other work crying to be done was not eager to continue a thankless task, though it was work of a kind he loved. That winter, when Gibson's trial was coming on in San Antonio, he urged the prosecutors to try him as one of several and not as the one alone, who had committed the crime. They would not listen to him, and they would not let him testify, declaring that his theories and so-called evidence would spoil their case. They tried Monk Gibson for the entire killing and a rational jury naturally failed to convict, though Felix Powell and Henry Howard were brought from Edna as witnesses and did their best to aid the prosecution. The jury was divided and Monk was taken back to jail.

It was not until the spring of 1906 that Captain McDonald was again actively concerned in the Conditt case. Early in the season, while attending the Stockmen's Convention at Dallas, he met prominent men from the South Texas districts and reviewed with them the story of the crime and the progress that had been made, or rather had not been made, in convicting the guilty. He stated freely his theories concerning Powell, Howard and other negroes and went over the details of his evidence.

The stockmen began by opposing Captain Bill's theories and ended by joining in a movement to have the State continue the investigation at Edna under his direction. They employed a young lawyer named Crawford to bring the matter before the Governor, who agreed to reopen the investigation, but suggested that it be done by another man than McDonald for the reason that the citizens of Edna were prejudiced against the Ranger. The stockmen's answer to this was, that unless McDonald could be sent they would have nothing further to do with the matter.

The Governor agreed, then, and Captain Bill made ready to go to Edna and remain there until he should succeed in establishing his theory or be ready to acknowledge himself baffled.