The True Story of the Texas Slave Ranch - How a Degenerate Ranching Family Got Away With Murder

by Richard L. Ellison, Chief Ellison (Photographer)

“You’re digging your own graves,” one of them said. “We don’t bury them,” Junior said. “We burn them.” “A Tale of Death and Torture” KERRVILLE, Tex., May 29— Two Texas hill country ranchers and one of their workers are accused of kidnapping, enslaving, and torturing hitchhikers on an isolated 3,500 acre ranch in the scenic cedar-and oak-covered hills near here . . . [T]he trial of Walter Wesley Ellebracht Sr., 55 years old, his son, Walter Wesley Ellebracht Jr., 33, and a former ranch worker, Carlton Robert Caldwell, 21, is turning into a ghoulish glimpse of a dark, remote world that seems like the stuff of a low-budget exploitation film. New York Times, June 1, 1986Newspapers as far away as Moscow called it the “Texas Slave Ranch case.” This is the true-life account of how famed trial lawyer Richard “Racehorse” Haynes persuaded a West Texas jury to give his kidnapper/torturer/murderer client probation. Out of a dozen indicted, only two ever saw the inside of a prison. If you have enough money, and the right lawyers, you can get away with murder.

Genres: True Crime

60 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 15, 2013