Before I begin I'd like to thank all of
those who have shown my channel so much love and support over the last five years. On September 26th this year I reached the 100,000
subscriber mark, which is something I thought might take me another 12 months
or so to accomplish. But due to a sudden rise in interest in my channel, it
happened a lot sooner. This may simply be down to YouTube's algorithm, but I like
to think that my viewers and subscribers and the support you've shown me has
played a big part. I love making these videos, and as long as I have your
support, I will continue to do so. So, sincerely, thank you. From a violent murder and lynching in
19th century Atlanta, to a grim discovery amidst an ever-growing modern
neighborhood in Houston, here are five disturbing tales from the state of Texas. This first tale comes from Atlanta, Texas.
The year is 1891. John Lowe was a well-known planter residing with his
wife and two children; a young son and a two-year-old daughter. On the evening of
Saturday October 24th 1891, he returned home to an empty house. Sfter searching
for his family and finding no trace of them, he ran out of the house, called for
help, and a search party was formed. But it wasn't until the following morning
that the fate of his family was revealed. At the bottom of a well sat outside of
the Lowe household was the planter's dead wife and baby daughter. His son was
also down there with them, barely clinging to life. The young man was pulled from
the well, and it was then that he told his father, his neighbors and the sheriff
about the events of the previous night. While his father was away, a man named
Lee Lewis, who was an employee of John Lowe entered the family home brandishing
a shotgun. He approached Mrs. Lowe and demanded that she hand over all the
money the family had. When she refused Lewis riddled her with buckshot. Mrs.
Lowe, still alive and attempting to escape, was chased down by Lewis who had by now grabbed her husband's Winchester rifle from the wall. He shot her through
the heart and carried her body to the well outside. He dropped her in and then
returned to the house where he heard the two-year-old girl crying. He snatched the
Lowe's daughter from her cradle, took her outside, and threw her into the well on
top of her mother. When the boy, who until now had managed to hide from Lewis, began to cry and call for help, he was chased from the house. Trying to
escape his pursuer, who was now welding an axe, he ran to the well and threw himself
in. Lee Lewis then took an iron pot from the house and threw it on top of the boy,
followed by large stones. Satisfied that the boy was dead, Lewis fled the scene. After hearing about what had happened, a search party was
formed and Lewis was eventually tracked down to Kildare, thirteen miles south of Atlanta. When he was captured, the sheriff took charge of
his prisoner and threw him into a cell to save him from being lynched by the
angry mob. At 2:00 a.m. the following Monday, not willing to accept the murderer's easy treatment, a gang of armed men from Atlanta forced their way into the
jail, taking the keys from the guards. They dragged Lewis from the cell and
took him to the Lowe household where he confessed to the murders. It was decided
by all that hanging was too good for Lee Lewis and all agreed that he would be
burned at the stake. More than a thousand people gathered to witness a lynching
and to help gather dried wood. A tall stake was driven into the ground and the wood was piled up four feet high at the foot of it. Lewis was then bound to the
stake and the fire was lit. His begs for forgiveness were met with curses from
the crowd, and as the flames grew higher Lee Lewis was lost in the smoke and
flames. His body was reduced to ashes. It was 10:30 a.m. on the morning of June
27th, 1930 as Mrs. Eva Payne drove along Line Avenue in Amarillo in her husband's
Durant Coupe with their son; 11 year old Alfred Payne Jr. She had driven just
a few blocks from their home when smoke began to fill the car. Moments later the
car exploded, seriously injuring Alfred Jr. and killing his mother, who was
thrown to the sidewalk. There, her badly mangled body was found
surrounded by shattered glass from nearby buildings. When an ambulance
arrived they found Alfred Jr. sitting against an alley fence 30 yards from the
car, crying. His clothes had been burnt and the skin on the left side of his
face and arm had been torn away. His father, 38-year-old Alfred Paint Snr, a
respected attorney, was at his office when he heard the ambulance pass by.
Shortly after, he received a phone call telling him that his wife was dead and
his son probably wouldn't survive. A client of his then drove him to the
scene of the explosion. He was said to have shown little emotion when faced
with the mangled figure of his wife, and told police officers that his son had
recently played with firecrackers, and had boasted about his plans to use
dynamite instead of fireworks on the Fourth of July.
"He probably carelessly left some about the car", he said. When the police
investigated the incident they found that the car, which had cleared the curb
and sidewalk, crashing into a house, still had its engine intact. It was found that
three sticks of dynamite, placed under the driver's seat, had been detonated
by what was described as a "crude but infernal machine".
Alfred Payne Snr. offered a reward of around $1,000 for any information on the
death of his wife and attempt on his son's life. When police failed to find
any leads, he turned to the editor of the Amarillo News Globe, Gene Howe, asking that he carry out an independent investigation. As a matter of fact, the
newspaper was already well and truly on the case with the help of journalist
A.B McDonald of the Kansas City Star. During Gene Howe's
investigation he spoke to Alfred Payne's secretary, Verona Thompson.
The young woman claimed that she and Alfred were having an affair, and that he
was going to marry her once he'd taken care of his wife. If Alfred Payne's cover
wasn't unraveling fast enough at this point, Gene Howe and his team soon
discovered that Payne had been romantically involved with a number of
other women in the city, and had not only taken out a life-insurance policy on his
wife, but his son and eldest daughter too, the previous year. In less than three
days a case that still had the Amarillo police scratching their heads was all
but solved by journalists Jean Howe and A.B McDonald. On the morning of August 5th they presented their findings to the
Mayor and District Attorney. That same day Alfred Payne was arrested, along with
his secretary Verona Thompson. However, she ultimately only served as a
witness, and was later released without charge. When two of the three Payne
children were interviewed Alfred Jr. said that their father had walked to
work on the fateful day, taking his youngest daughter with him. The older
daughter had a play date that morning, leaving only Eva and Alfred Jr. with the
car. Alfred Payne Jr's version of events was damning and put his father
even more clearly in the frame when he explained what happened before the
explosion. He said that when smoke began to fill the car, his mother turned to him
and said: "Daddy told me to drive faster when the car smokes like that, so that
the wind will whip it out". Moments after she accelerated, the Durant Coupe
exploded. Alfred Payne Snr was arrested, but
denied any involvement. By the time he was taken into custody he had two
identical letters on him, stamped and addressed. One to the Sheriff and the
other to the Chief of Police. In the letters he claimed that an underworld
informant had told him that a gang of what he called "safe blowers" had killed
his wife by mistake, rigging the wrong car with dynamite. This last-minute
attempt at freedom was of no consequence and Alfred Payne was locked up, ready to
stand trial. On August 9th 1930 he wrote a 63-page confession from his cell at
the Hutchinson County Jail. In it he admitted to the murder of his wife and
attempted murder of his son. He also claimed to be communicating with his
wife through the spirit world, and said that he had seen her in his room on the
night of July 7th, describing her mangled and twisted body as she stooped in the
doorway. However, he waived all efforts to commit him as insane and begged to be
sentenced to death by electric chair. He also penned a strange, taunting letter to
journalists Gene Howe and A.B MacDonald. He wrote: Payne was eventually moved to a cell in Potter County, and on
Saturday August 29th 1930, the same day he was found guilty of murder, he had a
brief emotional visit from his eldest daughter and now crippled son. A little
before midnight that same day he said good night to his cellmates and walk to
another part of the jail. There, alone in a cell, he laid down and ignited
nitroglycerine. As well as obliterating his body, the
blast shattered the cell and damaged a large portion of the prison wall.
Law enforcement have always been at a loss as to how he managed to obtain and
conceal the explosives. Alfred Payne claimed to be a direct
descendant of John Howard Payne, who wrote the 1823 song Home Sweet Home,
and requested that the song be sung at his funeral. He also expressed his wishes
to be buried next to his wife, but this was not granted. She was buried at
Memorial Park Cemetery in Amarillo, and he, fifty miles south at Rose Hill
Cemetery in Tulia. The entire story of Alfred Day Payne's crime was chronicled
by Harry Montgomery in his 1930 book Destruction The Strange Case of A.D. Payne. 67-year-old John Parkes was said to be a
reclusive man with few associates. He lived in an apartment in Houston with
his mother, Ann Morgan. John had cared for the elderly woman since the early 1970s.
Prior to this she had shared the apartment with her brother - that is until he shot
himself dead inside their home. That's when John took over his mother's care, and being the protective son he was, dedicated little time to anything else.
The only family member they kept in regular contact with was John's brother
Karl, who lived in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. In mid-October of 1986 John
wrote to Karl telling him that their mother was doing
well and that she was grateful to have someone there to care for her full-time.
At this stage though it had been almost two years since Ann Morgan was seen by
anyone else outside of her home, and a week after John's correspondence with
his brother, the Texas Department of Human Services received an anonymous
claim that Ann Morgan was being neglected. That same week a welfare
worker by the name of Laura Friedman paid a visit to the apartment. John Parkes
was furious at the intrusion, told miss Friedman to leave, and threatened her
with a cane. However she eventually persuaded him to let her in. On entering
the property Ms. Friedman saw Ann Morgan sat in a rocking chair in the
small living room. She was unable to get a clear look at her because she was
partially obstructed by blankets hanging from a clothesline. Unsatisfied but not
wanting to put herself in further danger and Ms. Friedman left. She then secured
a court order to re-enter the home at a later date. A week later, on Wednesday
October 29th, this time accompanied by police officers, she returned. After letting themselves in they were faced with the long-dead body
of Ann Morgan. She was propped up in the same rocking chair. Her virtually
mummified corpse was dressed in only a nightgown and rubber boots. Moving
through the living space to the bedroom, police found John Parkes sprawled out on
a bed with a single gunshot wound to his head
and a .38 caliber pistol in his hand. It's believed that following the death of his
mother, who would have been 89 at this point, John Parkes went into shock, and
unable to face living without her, he left Ann Morgan in the same spot she had died, which the medical examiner said could have been as long as two years ago.
According to neighbors, Laura Friedman from the Department of Human Services
was probably the first person allowed to enter the home in ten years.
The autopsies were carried out on Thursday October 30th. John's death was
ruled a clear suicide, while his mother's death was not determined. However the
medical examiner strongly believed it to be a natural cause, as there was no
signs of trauma, but couldn't understand why her body had mummified. Sergeant J.C. Mosier, who was among those who found the pair, said: "She's almost totally mummified.
For whatever reason she didn't decompose. There certainly was a lot of
deterioration, but not like you'd think". The Sergeant also exclaimed that the
scenario was similar to the film Psycho. "She looked very much like Mrs. Bates to
me, f you've seen the movie. That's the first thing I thought of". John's brother
Karl mentioned that he and other family members often requested to speak to Ann,
but were always ignored or sent away. He said: "They loved one another and he had lived with her most of his life. I'm sure he couldn't cope with the fact that she
was gone after all these years. I'm just sorry that we didn't know in time".
A calendar hung on the wall of the now empty apartment. The last entry was dated
September 22nd, 1986. It simply read 'picnic with mama'. the Houston Heights in central Harris
County, Houston has been described as a historic neighborhood. Over the years,
like many other communities, it has seen a large number of old houses swept aside
to make way for modern buildings and apartments. One of the older buildings
still standing is this 1930s bungalow once belonging to 61-year-old Mary
Cerutti. Ms. Cerutti he bought number 610 Allston Street in 2001, but became
frustrated with the development of modern housing. Over a number of years
she made a record of the ever-changing face of the old neighborhood she once
knew, and in February of 2013 she eventually voiced her concerns to the
Houston Planning Commission after work began on an apartment complex directly
behind her own home. Her pleas were not taken seriously though and nothing
changed. In fact things got worse. As the builders moved in construction equipment
often blocked her driveway, and at one point her water supply was even cut off.
Then in 2015, she disappeared. Having heard nothing from her for some time, one
concerned neighbor called the police after she noticed that one of Mary's
windows had been smashed and mail had begun to pile up outside. When police
entered the house on a welfare visit they were met with a rancid odor. They
found that six of the eight cats Mary owned were dead, and attributed the smell
to them, but Mary was nowhere to be seen. It was assumed by some that the distress
caused by the new construction and the high probability that she would lose her
house drove her away. The last time Mary was reported to have been seen was in
March of 2015. At around the same time her bank filed a petition for
foreclosure on the property, as she had defaulted on a number of mortgage
repayments. The judgment for the foreclosure was signed on September 25th
the same year. On September 28th a missing persons notice was put out by
the Houston Police Department, but there was no immediate investigation. Neighbors
did attempt to make an official missing persons report, but were turned away because they were not related or thought to be closely
associated with Mary. Her house sold at auction on November the 3rd 2015 for the
sum of $261,000 to a property developer who modernized the building and put it up for rent. In May of 2017 new tenants
Mr. and Mrs. Mueller moved in. One day as he explored his new home, Mr. Mueller
ventured into the attic. After moving some boxes he noticed that a single
floorboard, measuring around 8 inches in width, had fallen into a space behind the
wall of the bathroom below. As he peered down into the space, he was shocked to
see what looked like a human skull surrounded by dirt and rubble. Looking
closer he noticed other bones scattered around, as well as items of clothing. Mr.
Mueller was so worried about telling his wife about what he had found that he
waited a full day before calling 9-1-1. When police arrived and began pulling the
human remains from the wall, along with a pair of tennis shoes, glasses and other
items of clothing, it was decided that Mary, if that's who it was, had been the victim of a tragic accident, falling through the floorboard
in the attic and dying in the wall cavity. But her neighbor Roxanne Davis
questioned the theory. In 2018 she told local TV channel KHOU: "Mary was certainly very frail, but it's hard for me to believe that a person could step on a
board and their entire body would go down a crack that is two inches wider than
a dollar bill". Police said that there was no sign of foul play, but admitted they
didn't have much to work with, as the bones were so badly damaged. The autopsy report stated that because the remains were partially eaten by rodents, the
cause of death was impossible to find, and was listed as undetermined. A cousin
of Mary's, a woman by the name of Nancy Stewart Stoddart from Amarillo, came
forward following the discovery. She had recently attempted to find Mary through
a family genealogy project, but instead came across the missing persons poster
online. So instead of reconnecting with her long-lost cousin a she had hoped,
Nancy Stoddart found herself giving a DNA sample to police for analysis. That
sample was compared to DNA taken from the teeth of the unidentified body.
Everybody involved in the case thought it was likely that a match would be made,
but when the results were revealed in February of 2018 and there was no match,
police were only left with circumstantial evidence. A spokesperson
for the Harris County Medical Examiner's Office, Tricia Bentley, stated that it was not uncommon for DNA between cousins to not match, and more time would be needed to confirm an identity with the help of
other evidence. The medical examiner, Sharon Derek, reported that after the
bones were tested they were said to have belong to a woman over the age of 40. She
also pointed out that in the 2013 video of Mary speaking to the Houston Planning
Commission, Mary appeared to have difficulty moving her jaw when she spoke.
To the medical examiner it appeared slow and labored. A condition she said matched the way the jawbone fitted the skull. This, along with
the fact that the glasses found next to the skeleton was strikingly similar to
those worn by Mary Cerutti was enough, according to the Houston Police
Department, to give a comprehensive identification. As far as they were
concerned Mary had been found and the case was closed. Not everyone shared that
same conviction though, and some neighbors, including Roxanne Davis, still
believed that murder was a strong possibility. In the small town of Venus, 30 miles
southeast of Fort Worth, lived a man named Freddie Mack. He occupied two and a half acres of fenced off land and a trailer home, which he shared with his
eighteen dogs. According to reports he was registered
as disabled, suffered with seizures as well as other physical conditions, and in
recent years had rarely ventured out or spoke to his family.
The main reason given for this was his dogs. Described only as crossbred, the
dogs were said to be aggressive and made it difficult for family or anyone else
to check up on the 57-year-old. Deputy officers were faced with the same
problem, when on May the 6th 2019, they paid a visit to the home on a welfare
check. Mack, who hadn't been seen or heard from since April 19th, was reported
missing by his family. The officers eventually managed to
distract the dogs long enough to search a small portion of the land, where they
found no sign of Mr. Mack. They returned three days later on May the 9th with a
drone, which they used to survey the area without fear of attack. Still there was
no sign of the occupant. The next day Freddie Mack was registered as a missing
person, and a warrant was issued to remove the dogs to allow the police a
thorough search. By this time only sixteen dogs remained, two of them having been
killed by the others. This search began on May the 15th and
continued for several days. Again having failed to locate Freddie, or find any
clues to his whereabouts, the deputy's attention was drawn to the long grass
around the property. In the grass they found dog faeces containing human hair,
clothing and small fragments of bone. The strands of clothing did match those said to be worn by Freddie, but needing to be sure, police sent the bone fragments to
the University of North Texas for a DNA analysis. On Tuesday July 9th it was
confirmed that the DNA matched that of Freddie Mack. It's unknown if the dogs
killed Freddie first or if they'd eaten him after he died. But when the case came
to a close all that remained a Freddie Mack were a
few two to five-inch fragments of bone. thirteen of the remaining sixteen dogs were
euthanized due to their aggressive nature, and the remaining three were put
up for adoption. Sheriff's deputy Aaron Pitt said: "Never have we, or anyone we've spoken to, heard of an entire human being consumed by dogs. The bones were
completely broken up and eaten". Freddie's family told the press of how he loved his dogs, and would often sit outside the trailer home with them. He referred to them
as his babies.
