Saving Austin’s History

Last year I had the pleasure of working with the staff from PBS's History Detectives for the upcoming History Detectives Special Investigations: Texas Servant Girl Murders.  The cast and crew came to Austin last summer; they did a number of…

Unidentified albumen print. One morning before dawn in the summer of 1883, a strange persistent cry echoed through a west Austin neighborhood and caught the attention of two women, Sophia Phillips and Sallie Mack, both of whom lived nearby. They…

The Hancock Inquest is a fascinating document filled with peculiar details, opinions and suspicions about the murder of Susan Hancock that were never published.  I thought it would be worthwhile to transcribe the handwritten document in full in order to…

Once there was a killer in nearby Austin who was still at large.  He had chloroformed his victim (rather humanely, I thought) before chopping her head off with an axe.  Fear that ‘dat debblish axe-man’ might strike again, in only…

I've often been asked if I know where Eula Phillips is buried and my answer has always been that I don’t know the exact location, just that she was buried in an unmarked grave in the oldest section of Oakwood…

"Officer Sendry reports that someone entered Gov. Ireland's room last night and stole a pair of pants and one dollar in the pockets." -- 17 MAR 1885. Austin Police Calls. Gov. John Ireland The above incident is the perfect metaphor for…