From First Word to Last – Eighty Years Ago Today

As I turned a yellowed newspaper page, immediately the words “Brutal Murders” caught my eye and were emblazoned across a top headline of the Lubbock Morning Avalanche-Journal on October 27, 1943. It was like I froze in time. Then the photo below the headline of two little girls grabbed my attention immediately and became engrained in my memory.

On October 26, 1943, the discovery of the bodies of Dr. Roy and Mae Hunt in their blood-soaked bed in the small town of Littlefield, Texas had occurred 24 hours prior. I became engrossed in the story, reading how their bodies were a tangled mess, one was shot, the other brutally beaten. The little girls were in the house at the time of the murders.

As I continued reading, questions started popping up in my mind. Who murdered them? Why were they murdered? How exactly were they murdered? Why did the killer not kill the daughters inside the house?  

How I came upon these murders is a story in itself as I was searching for answers to my own family history. This initial headline and photograph captured my interest enough for me to make copies of some of the newspaper articles and then head to the courthouse to copy court documents.

Then life took over.

Later I became involved in the West Texas Historical Association (WTHA) while trying to save a historical ranch on the Llano Estacado. Fantabulous historians, yes, they were and are fantabulous, like Dr. Fred Rathjen, Dr. David Murrah, Dr. Paul Carlson, and Dr. Monte Monroe guided my research and writing of history. Back then I was not a historian in any manner. Heck, I was barely a writer.

Following the foundational guidance of these historians, I quickly learned how to research, write, edit, and put facts together to make history come alive. Under their tutelage, I caught the bug of writing, researching, and presenting. When the ranch preservation project fell through, I turned back to my old files and discovered I had enough information to write a ten-page paper on the Hunt murders that had caught my attention.

Thanks to Ray Westbrook, former Lubbock A-J Reporter, he wrote a story on me and my paper that forever changed my life. At a WTHA historical conference, my paper session became one of the most attended presentations ever for the organization—all thanks to Ray.

From that moment on this story and book became a winding path of several coincidences for me to follow. That ten-page paper has now turned into a book. Along this journey, some of the stops I made gave me new directions to follow in my research.

The paramount stopping point on this journey was interviewing the Hunt daughters. Jo Ann Hunt only told her story to me during two interviews. Bound in Silence reveals for the first time her story of the events that occurred the night her parents were murdered. When I hear her voice in my head or read her words, chills run through me.  

Eighty years ago, today the unthinkable happened in a rural community. Two lives were viscously taken. Lives upended. One daughter was bound in silence for seventy years.

From the first word to the last, this journey of discovering the answers to my initial questions has been over a decade. Life happens. Bound in Silence was not easy to research or to put together with all the complex facets that not only dealt with the murders but attempted murder as well. There were six different trials that had to be intensely researched, including four appeals.

Researching history, especially true crime, becomes a passionate expedition where it leads to a single thrill of a discovery. Then, maybe, just maybe you get one answer, which leads you to ask another question or takes you further down the research journey path.

Bound in Silence evolved with one paper, then one research discovery at a time, with some life hiccups along the way, never before gotten interviews, to a publishing contract.

I hope readers will come away understanding that children should always have a voice and that even investigators back then were not perfect. I hope it is a story that will envelop readers, especially if you are a history buff and true crime fan.

Thanks to Ray, for never making my life ever the same again. You connected to people in your interviews and in turn, helped your interviewees connect to the world. May your soul rest in peace.