Texas Witchcraft Murder Archive Finds a Home

I have diversity right here in the trunk of my rental car, officer.

The first problem on any university campus finding a parking spot. I pulled in behind the Panhandle Plains Historical Museum, which is part of West Texas A &M University, and all the faculty spaces were full.

There was an empty place for the president’s office. Hmmm.

Ah, there! “Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer.” I reckon that by being on their campus, I am bringing types of diversity that this edu-crat never thought of.[1]Put me in charge, and I would fire his/her ass and give all that bloated salary money as pay raises to adjunct professors in the English Department. I call the museum’s research center director, a soft-spoken archivist named Warren Stricker, and tell him that M. and I have arrived. He promises to be right down.

A campus cop drives up, but he is talking to someone else. I am unloading cartons out of the trunk, like I have a perfect right to do so. A timid squirrel sneaks up on a spilled cup of Sonic french fries. The campus cop looks at M. and me, but stays in his vehicle.

Three months ago, I completed an article for the Journal of Religion and Violence on what happened when one of the higher-up figures in the Church of Wicca was tried for murder back in 1980.

The defendant, Loy Stone, and his wife, Louise, were both alumni of West Texas State University in Canyon, Texas — now known as West Texas A & M. [2]The university still plays up the fact that that a young Georgia O’Keefe taught there from 1916–1918. I had approached Texas State University about taking my archive of documents about the case, but Texas is so big that the university archivists (except maybe at UT in Austin) think regionally. TSU’s response was, “We’re all about south Texas. You should talk to the Panhandle Museum.”

And so I did. Warren Stricker was immediately interested.

Dimmitt, Hereford, Plainview — these locales are all right in their front yard, so to speak.

I came away with a Temporary Custody Agreement, but Stricker assured me that his committee had already talked over the donation and wanted it all — the psychic impressions, the private investigator’s reports, the correspondence, the legal depositions, the evidence tags, all of it. Hurray! I am not in the archive business, but I could not bear to just toss all of that in the trash, not after the Stones’ two daughters had saved it all for forty-plus years.

And I like the idea of seeding America’s university libraries with witchcraft materials.

Notes

Notes
1 Put me in charge, and I would fire his/her ass and give all that bloated salary money as pay raises to adjunct professors in the English Department.
2 The university still plays up the fact that that a young Georgia O’Keefe taught there from 1916–1918.