THE RANCHO SANTA FE INSANITY

3/26/1997 - Believing with their deaths that their souls will be transported to a UFO secretly flying behind the comet Hale-Bopp and then taken to a new level of existence "above human," thirty-nine members of Marshall Applewhite's Heaven's Gate cult, including Applewhite himself, commit suicide in the San Diego suburb of Rancho Santa Fe. 

Not Playing With A Full Deck!

Marshall Herff Applewhite Jr. is born to Marshall Herff Applewhite Sr. and his wife Louise Haecker Winfield in Spur, Texas, on May 17, 1931.  Joining two sisters and a brother, Applewhite Jr. grows up in the religious atmosphere of his Presbyterian minister father and his piano playing, choir leader mother.  A smart kid with a good personality, in 1948, Applewhite graduates from Corpus Christi High School (other notable alumni includes WBO super bantamweight boxing champion, Jesse Benavides, actor Dabney Coleman, actress Eva Longoria, and Password TV host Allen Ludden) before attending Austin College (the school's campus is located 60 miles north of Dallas).  Active in several student organizations, in 1952, Applewhite graduates with a bachelor of arts degree in philosophy.  Degree in hand, he then enrolls at the Union Presbyterian Seminary in Richmond, Virginia with hopes of following in his father's footsteps by becoming a minister (around this time he also meets and eventually marries Anne Pearce ... the couple will have two children, Mark and Lane).  Earlier in his studies however, Applewhite discovers he doesn't want to work as a minister the rest of his life and decides to pursue a career instead in music (a delight he has always loved, Applewhite has a fine baritone voice and loves spirituals and the works of legendary German composer George Frideric Handel).  Moving to Gastonia, North Carolina (a medium size town of over 50,000 citizens located near the city of Charlotte), he becomes the director of music for the town's First Presbyterian Church until he is drafted into the United States Army in 1954.  Serving two years (upon leaving the service as a sergeant, Applewhite will receive an honorable discharge), Applewhite spends time as a member of the Army Signal Corps in Salzburg, Austria (the beautiful mountain city made famous by the von Trapp family and "The Sound of Music") and in White Sands, New Mexico.  Out of the service in 1956, Applewhite enrolls at the University of Colorado, where he focuses on musical theater while earning a master's degree in music.

Young Applewhite

The Ministry Or Music?

    Beginning with his move to New York City after finishing his studies at Colorado, in an attempt to find a career as a professional singer, Applewhite spends the next twenty years of his life trying to discover his place in the world.  After New York, he teaches at the University of Alabama (but loses the job after pursuing a relationship with one of his male students ... he also eventually loses his wife over the affair and the two divorce in 1968), and then becomes the chairman of the music department of the University of St. Thomas (located in Houston, Texas).  Also while in Houston, Applewhite becomes a popular local singer, serves as the the choral director at the St. Marks Episcopal Church, sings in a variety of presentations (15 different roles in all) by the Houston Grand Opera, and teaches a summer school class in English literature.  In Houston, for awhile, he also openly lives as a gay man (when he tells his parents he is gay, he is rejected by his father), but grows greatly depressed when a relationship with a woman falls apart under pressure from the woman's wealthy and conservative family.  Citing depression and emotional problems, Applewhite resigns from his position with St. Thomas and moves to Taos, New Mexico in 1971, where he successfully runs a delicatessen called The Sunshine Company (his job resume for this portion of his life also includes a brief stint as an occupational therapist at a tuberculosis sanatorium outside of Boulder, Colorado).  Deeply depressed by the death of his father in 1971 and the state of his finances (he will be forced to borrow money from his family and friends), Applewhite returns to Texas and has his life turned upside-down when meets his "soul mate," a 44-year-old nurse by the name Bonnie Lu Trousdale Nettles.

Applewhite

Leading The Choir In Houston

Bonnie Lu Trousdale is born into a Houston, Texas, Baptist family on August 29, 1927.  Helping others her #1 priority growing up in Houston, after graduating from high school, Trousdale attends the city's Herman Hospital School of Professional Nursing, graduating as a registered nurse in 1948.  The following year, she marries local businessman, Joseph Segal Nettles, in a union that will produce four children, Teresa Ann, Robyn Ann, Rosalyn Ann, and Joseph Christopher.  For several years, everything is good in the family and Bonnie enjoys spending time with her family, her work as a nurse, and the many joys of shopping at Houston's malls.  In midlife she undergoes a spiritual crisis that leads her away from her Baptist upbringing and she begins searching for answers in the world of the occult, astrology, reading the writings of Theosophy founder, Russian mystic Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, visiting multiple fortune tellers (she will claim that they tell her she is destined for great things and that she will soon meet a mysterious man who will help her achieve them that is tall, has light hair, and a fair complexion), consulting a deck of tarot cards, and holding regular Wednesday night seances in her darkened front room that bring forth the advice-giving shade of an 19th-century monk named Brother Francis and cadre of other spirits.  And then, in March of 1972, she meets Marshall Applewhite and the rest of either of their lives are never the same (different tales told over the years, the first meeting takes place when Applewhite visits an injured actor in the hospital where Nettles works, or, they meet when the nurse goes to visit her daughter at a local theater where she works and where Applewhite is teaching drama classes and producing weekend children's shows, or, they meet at a mental hospital when Applewhite has a nervous breakdown and Nettles is assigned to be one of the nurses dealing with his case, or, a heart condition almost kills Applewhite and one of his nurses is Nettles, or they meet walking on a Galveston, Texas beach, or, Nettles takes the shift of another nurse and meets Applewhite while she is working in a hospital nursery for premature born babies).

Nettles

However the pair meet, there is immediate chemistry between the two and by the beginning of 1973 they are living together in an intense platonic relationship in which they create what comes to be called the Heaven's Gate cult (their new religious group will also be called Human Individual Metamorphosis and Total Overcomers Anonymous).  A grab-bag of ideas gathered from the Bible, New Age beliefs and practices, and ufology, the pair come to believe that they are the two witnesses described in the Book of Revelation (they will rename themselves Bo <Applewhite> and Peep <Nettles>, before they change their names to Do <Applewhite> and Ti <Nettles>, pronounced like the Sound of Music song, and as Guinea <Applewhite> and Pig <Nettles>) and that as extraterrestrials, they have been sent to Earth and "divinely authorized" to help like-minded individuals reach a "next level" superior state of evolution and immortality, a state they can get to by doing without sex (as a sign of their devotion, Applewhite and seven other members will "voluntarily" allow themselves to be chemically castrated), alcohol, and tobacco until they are ready to shed their bodies and board a special UFO that will take them to Heaven.  Philosophy worked out between the two (Nettles is quietly the "thinker" and leader of the movement, while the charismatic Applewhite is the face of the cult and it's spokesman), they next put forth their new "religion" by opening a book store called the Christian Arts Center where along with selling a hodge-podge of exoteric books on a variety of topics, the pair teach yoga, theosophy, and pass on a pamphlet they've written about the world's coming future (in which Jesus returns to Earth as a reincarnated Texan) called "I Can't Believe That -- But You Must" (with an emphasis placed on Chapter 11: 3-13 of Revelation).  They also give talks at local churches, but are dismayed that their messages are not well received ... so they decide to leave Texas and search for acolytes elsewhere.

The Toxic Two

So the pair hit the road on a crazy zigzagging spiritual adventure in which they drive about various states and Canada hunting for recruits (one summer month they will travel more than 8,000 miles) while making visits to Oregon's Rogue River, New York, Colorado, California, Utah, Montana, Canada, and Idaho; a hegira away from their past that lasts sixteen and a half months before the couple return to Texas.  Growing even closer as they share their thoughts with each other, when broke, they sleep in a tent, dine on dinner rolls and butter, sell their blood for cash, and temporarily take any menial jobs that are available ... and they also skip out on many dinner and motel room bills.  Back in Texas, their cult gets its first disciple when their friend, real estate agent Sharon Morgan, leaves her husband and two young daughters to join Nettles and Applewhite (before leaving, she writes her husband a note, pockets $25, and gets a baby sitter for her two-year-old daughter), but not for long.  Not happy with her assignment of walking up to strangers (or that she is now called Chela, a Sanskrit word meaning "student" and asking if they'd like to meet two people that can show them how to leave Earth in a UFO or the deceit the pair show skipping out on bills (with her permission, they start using Morgan's credit cards and driving her car), and weary of the travel and feeling guilty at abandoning her girls, Morgan lasts in the cult only four weeks, eventually tearfully returning to her family.   Egged on by Morgan's husband, the pair are arrested within days for credit card fraud, with the charges eventually being dropped ... what isn't dropped though is the charge of theft filed against Applewhite for not returning a Mercury Comet he had rented from a St. Louis, Missouri car company nine months before (he will claim he was "divinely authorized" to keep the vehicle).  The stolen car gets Applewhite six months in jail.  Out and reunited with Nettles, the pair decide to set up shop in California.

Busted Prophets

Recruiting their "crew" for their otherworldly UFO journey to the next level, the couple finally experience some success in April of 1975, when after a meeting with eighty people at a home in Studio City, twenty-five individuals are induced to join the team, and after a lecture at a motel hall in Waldport, Oregon in September of the same year, twenty more souls renounce their previous lives and join up (Walter Cronkite will mention the missing individuals during an edition of the CBS Evening News).  With Applewhite suggesting he is the "Present Representative" of Christ on Earth, and that Nettles is "God the Father" the pair take their group (now roughly a hundred individuals) underground, passing on their "wisdoms" while they and their members sleep in tents and beg on streets as what is described as a "roving monastery."  In April of 1976 the group stops its recruiting efforts and gathers in the Medicine Bow National Forest of Wyoming to meet their ride to the stars, but the UFO doesn't show and the couple is forced to go into damage control mode to explain the failure to the followers that don't leave the group (a similar disappointment will take place when a predicted spaceship doesn't show up over Galveston, Texas).  The "crew" not yet ready for leaving the explanation, the members are split into smaller groups called "star clusters," which move about the campgrounds of the Rocky Mountains and Texas, and follow the directions of their two leaders ... friendships within the group are frowned upon, contact with individuals outside the group is kept to a minimum, friends, family, the media, drugs, alcohol, jewelry, and sex are all renounced, moustaches, beards and long hair are all banned, and new names, all ending in "ody" (and so, someone named Jeff, might become Jmmody), and to instill discipline, arbitrary rituals known as "games" are created by Applewhite for the group to follow.  And there are even more rules to follow to get ready when in 1979, the group receives enough money from a family inheritance one of its members is awarded, to move into rental properties in Denver and Texas.  In houses now, the windows of the homes are covered and the group begins a "boot camp" lifestyle that regiments their daily activities down to minute.  During what is called "tomb time," which can last for days, members of the group are not allowed to talk to each other, when a member needs a car, they must check-out and check-in the vehicle's keys (and the follower's driver's license), sometimes tuning forks are taped to the acolyte's heads to dispel "human" thoughts, each member is assigned a partner with which they are to eat, sleep, and work with (and recognizing the potential for trouble should the partners develop sexual feelings for each other, the partnerships are frequently changed on the whims of either Applewhite or Nettles), the preferred uniform of everyday is loose-fitting, androgynous attire topped off by a matching short haircut, and fun for the group is reduced to singing songs for their leader and watching TV shows and movies (on a 72-inch big screen television) with mystical and science-fiction themes like Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Cocoon, The X-Files, and Star Trek (and of course, there is a seating chart where everybody must sit while watching the entertainment).  The group is still readying itself for imminent departure when Nettles gets cancer in 1983.  Having to have an eye removed, Nettles, believing she can't die until she and Applewhite together ascend to their next plane of existence, scoffs at her doctor when she is told to begin cancer treatments before it is too late.  A big oops for their new faith, using the alias Shelley West, Nettles dies from the disease on June 19, 1985, at the Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, Texas (where JFK was taken after being shot in 1963).  She is 57 when she passes.

Applewhite & Nettles

After having Nettles' "vessel" cremated and her ashes secretly scattered over a Texas lake, Applewhite convinces the remainder of his followers that Nettles had achieved her earthly goals and gone up into the stars where she could help the group from the "next level" and that he is actually Jesus Christ.  That accomplished, he then organizes a ceremony in which he symbolically marries his followers.  Successful, only one member leaves the group after Nettles death and the cult is made up of roughly forty to fifty individuals.  Depressed at Nettles being gone and increasingly paranoid (stopping government raids on the group now becomes a priority and the suicide of the Jews defending Masada from Roman invaders and the Biblical Apocalypse become common topics for lectures), Applewhite adjusts his teachings into a new muddle that gives the enlightened the ability to leave their bodies for transport to the next level UFO, that movement to another existence comes every "two millennia," with the next scheduled for sometime in the 1990s, that no ascension could take place without guidance from Applewhite, and that an evil extraterrestrial called Lucifer and his brainwashed followers would try and prevent the group from leaving (from time-to-time, the group also practices a "master cleanse" diet in which for three month periods of time they only consume a mix of lemonade, cayenne pepper, and maple syrup).  The group also changes names again and now becomes "Heaven's Gate."  Developing a sense of urgency as the 90s arrive and Applewhite's health becomes frail, in 1992 thee group records a 12-part video series featuring Applewhite's belief system which it broadcasts to the world's "universal mind" via satellite.  Warning of a catastrophic disaster about to befall Earth, the group spends $30,000 to publish a full page ad in USA TODAY in 1993.  Forty acres of land purchased near  the rural town of Mountainair, New Mexico (southeast of Albuquerque), in 1995 the group begins building a base compound for themselves (it is referred to as the group's "Earth ship") out of old tires and lumber, but the work is too hard and slow, and will require even more funding (finances now come to the group by way of designing Web pages for Internet under the business name of "Higher Source"), so the cult quits, and relocates to San Diego, California.  They are in "America's Finest City," when later that year, they discover that the comet Hale-Bopp (named for it's twin independent discoverers, Alan Hale and Thomas Bopp) is headed Earth's way, and will be closest to the planet on March 22, 1997. 

Mountainair, New Mexico

Applewhite

Hale-Bopp

Excitement growing within the group once the discovery of the comet is announced, Applewhite hits all the correct belief buttons once Hale-Bopp can be seen both night and day by the naked eye ... the Heaven's Gate ride has finally arrived and is hiding behind the comet's coma (and per Applewhite, it contains Nettles).  Finalizing their plans for leaving, in October of 1996, the group rents for $7,000 in cash a month, a 9,200 square foot, two-story, seven bedroom, seven bathroom Mediterranean-style mansion with a swimming pool, spa, and tennis courts on a three-acre lot (within a gated community of upscale homes) from a real estate agency representing owner Sam Koutchesfahani (who has been trying to sell the home for $1,595,000).  Located on the corner of a cul-de-sac at 18341 Colina Norte (after the tragedy is discovered, to dissuade looky-loos from stopping by the street name will be changed to Paseo Victoria) in the San Diego suburb of Rancho Santa Fe, the group calls the residence "The Monastery."  At around the same time, for each of the remaining members, alien abduction insurance is purchased that pays out $1 million dollars per person for any member of the cult that is abducted, impregnated, or killed by an other-world traveler.  As March of 1997 begins, the group completes their preparations for leaving the Earth, uniforms are purchased, Applewhite tapes a video message explaining his actions he calls "Do's Final Exit, and each member records a goodbye video message for friends and family.  On a Friday night before the leavings, the group gathers at a local Marie Callender's for last meals that are all the same ... thirty-nine portions of iced tea, dinner salads with tomato vinegar dressing, entrees of turkey potpie, and cheesecake with blueberries on top for dessert.  To the staff serving the group, nothing seems amiss and they will describe the diners as all being happy and friendly.  Meal over, the group then heads back to their monastery and begin killing themselves so they can board the Hale-Bopp UFO.

Death Home

Between 3/22 and 3/26, the thirty-nine members of the cult off themselves in groupings of 15, 15, 7, and then two, using a poisonous concoction of applesauce laced with crushed phenobarbital and washed down with a shot of vodka.  Once the mixture is drunk and the individuals begin to drift off into sleep, two cultists secure plastic bags around the members' heads and asphyxiation is induced.  Gone, the remaining living members of the group then remove the plastic bags, tidy up the corpses, and place squares of purple cloth over the faces and torsos of the deceased (Applewhite is in the last group to go, and the two volunteers that commit suicide last and are found as is with plastic bags still covering their heads).  Everyone dressed in identical black shirts and sweat pants, wearing arm patches that read "Heaven's Gate Away Team" (a tribute to their "Star Trek" viewing), sporting brand-new black and white Nike "Decades" athletic sneakers (with the discovery of the deaths, the style will soon sell out and become a collector's item with an unworn pair currently going for $6,660 on Ebay), and carrying in their pockets a five dollar bill and three quarters, a sum that members carried while alive to negate most state vagrancy laws and to call the cult from a pay phone if help is required (the sum of $5.75 is also a match for the cost Mark Twain once said it would take to ride the tail of a comet to Heaven).  On the floor, beside each of the dead is a black traveling bag.  In all, 21 men and 18 women decide to discover their futures in death, a group made up of Applewhite (65), Missouri computer expert Cheryl Butcher (42), environmentalist David Van Sinderen (48), Connecticut commercial oysterman Alan Bowers (45), former farm girl and University of Washington graduate Margaret Bull (54), Minneapolis bus driver Alphonzo Foster (44), California computer network engineer David Moore (40), cum laude University of Massachusetts nursing graduate Julie LaMontagne (45), Utah-based "Dharma Combat" guitarist Darwin Lee Johnson (42), Berkeley, California artist Robert Arancio (45), Modesto, California computer programmer Gary Jordan St. Louis (43), divorced Oregon computer consultant Ladonna Brugato (40), Star Trek devotee Joel Peter McCormick (28), Santa Cruz clothing boutique owner Gail Maeder (27), Thomas Nichols (58), the younger brother of Star Trek Lt. Uhura actress Nichelle, Durango, Colorado real estate developer and the married father of six (ranging in ages from 8 to 18), John Craig (62), UCLA computer science master degree graduate Margaret Richter (46), Los Angeles computer company editor Susan Elizabeth Nora Paup (53), former Desert Storm decorated paratrooper Michael Barr Sandoe (25), Dallas artist Norma Jeanne Nelson (59), Sausalito houseboat dweller Suzanne Cooke (54), Des Moines medical assistant Jacqueline Leonard (72), Oregon outdoorswoman Susan Strom (44), two-child (ages 8 and 6) wife and homemaker Judith Rowland (50), postal service mail sorter and mother of newborn twins and three other children, Yvonne McCurdy-Hill (38), Boston University psychology dropout Denise J. Thurman (44), New Hampshire car salesman Lindley Ayerhart Pease (41), San Antonio masseur Jeffrey Howard Lewis (41), Canadian accountant Erika Ernst (40), Los Angeles computer trainer Lucy Eva Pesho (63), and Oklahoma television personality Joyce Skalla (58).  Madness!

Final Rant

Last Photo Of The Group

Applewhite

Headlines

On Wednesday, 3/26, at 3:15 in the afternoon, the San Diego Sheriff's Department receives an anonymous tip through their 911 system (the call comes from former Heaven's Gate member Rio DiAngelo, who has visited the house after receiving Applewhite's final video) that there are problems at a Rancho Santa Fe home.  Problems indeed, arriving at the residence shorty after 4:00, Deputy Robert Brunk finds the mansion buttoned-up except for an unlocked side door.  Entering without a warrant under "probable cause," Brunk is inside for only moments and exits to call for backup after counting ten bodies inside the home (the stench he is greeted with is overpowering, and he and another officer will go to a local hospital to be checked out after inhaling the fumes from the dead).  And soon the home is swarmed by curious citizens (who block off Rancho Santa Fe's main street, seven media helicopters and a plane that hover overhead, and dozens of individuals from law enforcement agencies that include the FBI, the San Diego Police Department, the San Diego Sheriff's Department, the San Diego Coroner's Department, firefighters, reporters, and members of the county's Hazardous Materials Team.  Later, after the home has been processed by homicide detectives and the members of the Coroner's Department, the bodies are taken to the morgue, and after autopsies, cremated (afterwards, there will be a copycat suicide of a 58-year-old man in Marysville, California not connected to Heaven's Gate, and the leaving of three more members of the group later in 1997 ... to date, two members are still maintaining the group's website on the Internet).  The search for "why" answers begins almost immediately and goes on to this day in the form of books, magazine articles, songs, movies, and television shows about the cult (in 2020, HBO Max will screen a four-part documentary miniseries called Heaven's Gate: The Cult of Cults and in 2021, the documentary series "Dark Side of the 90's will feature an episode devoted to the cult deaths).  

Removing The Bodies

So far, despite Applewhite and his acolytes being gone for over two decades now, no postcards have been received on Earth from any of Heaven's Gate's dead.

Away Team Member

ROY BEAN LEAVES

3/16/1903 - The legendary life of Wild West character, Phantly Roy Bean Jr., comes to a surprisingly peaceful end when the former judge dies from pneumonia in his Langtry saloon at the age of 78 after a bout of heavy weekend drinking in the town of San Antonio and exposure to a sleet storm while chasing a group of cattle rustlers.

Bean

The youngest of five children, Bean Jr. is born to Phantly Roy Bean Sr. and the former Anna Henderson Gore in Mason County, Kentucky.  An extremely poor family, when the youngest Bean is only fifteen, he leaves home, rides a flatboat to New Orleans and after getting into trouble with Louisiana authorities, joins his teamster and bullwhacker elder brother Sam in San Antonio, Texas.  In 1848, the pair open up at trading post in the Mexican state of Chihuahua, but the endeavor is soon left behind when the men are forced to flee west into Sonora, Mexico after Roy kills a Mexican desperado that had been throwing threats about town on how he would soon be killing a "gringo."  The live "gringo" next shows up in 1849 in the Pacific Coast town of San Diego, where he lives in the home of another brother, Joshua (the last Mexican alcalde of San Diego, when the town is incorporated by the California State Legislature in 1850, Bean becomes the first duly elected U.S. mayor of the city, he leaves town and heads north when he is caught illegally selling the town's city hall and some local pueblo lands to himself and his drinking buddy, Lt. Cave J. Couts).  Shortly after arriving in San Diego, Roy is in trouble with the authorities again after he engages in a marksmanship contest on horseback against a Scotsman named John Collins.  Choosing to shoot at each other instead of at stationary targets, Collins is wounded in the right arm but survives the encounter.  Both men arrested and charged with assault with intent to murder, considered handsome and good catch as a youth, Roy receives wine, food, cigars, and flowers from the local ladies as he languishes in jail, languishes that is until he discovers one lovely senorita has hidden a set of knives in the tamales that have been gifted to Bean, knives the captive uses to dig through his cell wall to freedom on April 17, 1852.  Riding north, Roy joins up with his brother Joshua again, this time tending bar for the older Bean at his new enterprise, a drinking establishment and store in the town of Mission San Gabriel called the "Headquarters Saloon."  When 34-year-old Joshua is murdered after getting into an argument about a local lady, Roy inherits the bar, but once more has to flee a successful business when he lets his horniness do his thinking.  In 1854, after courting a local woman who has been promised to an officer in the Mexican Army, Bean challenges the officer to a duel and kills the man, an outcome that is unsatisfactory to six of the dead man's friend, who put Roy on horse and tie a rope around his neck that will set him dancing on air once the horse moves.  And move she does, but before Bean can die, the Mexican girl comes out of hiding and cuts Roy down.  Fleeing town and then California with a permanent rope burn souvenir around his neck (to go along with a stiff neck that will plague him the rest of his life), Roy migrates to New Mexico where his brother Sam has now become the first duly elected sheriff of Dona Ana County.  By 1861, the brothers are operating a combination saloon and store in the Grant County town of Pinos Altos (just north of the town of Silver City) ... advertised as serving liquor and having "a fine billiard table," it is an establishment that Roy decorates with a personal working cannon he places just outside the front door of the store for show (an accoutrement that will come in handy driving off a band of 200 Membreno & Chiricahua Apaches led by Mangas Coloradas and Cochise later in the same year, when the weapon is loaded with nails and fired as the hostiles invade the front door of the store).   

Joshua Bean

Mission San Gabriel

Pinos Altos

A Southern sympathizer through and through, when the American Civil War starts, Bean begins supplying the Confederate Army of Brigadier General Henry Hopkins Sibley, especially after it's supply wagons are seized and the army retreats back into Texas following it's disastrous loss in New Mexico at the Battle of Glorieta Pass (known to historians as the "Gettysburg of the West").  Helping himself to money from his brother Sam's safe, Roy returns to Texas and sets up a supply business in San Antonio.  For the remainder of the war, Bean will help the South and line his own pockets by running the Union's naval blockade of Texas, hauling bundles of cotton to British off the coast of Matamoros, Mexico and then returning to town with urgently needed supplies.  When the conflict ends in 1865, Bean remains in San Antonio and tries his hand at a variety of businesses over the next twenty years ... his lumber enterprise will fall apart when it is discovered that Bean's inventory has come from chopping down the trees of a neighbor, his dairy business craters when it is discovered that Bean is watering down the milk his cows give with moisture from a local stream (caught when minnows are found swimming in some of Bean's leche, the flim-flam artist tries to con his way out of his troubles by claiming he needs to stop the cows from drinking so much minnow tainted water), and his butcher shop fails when it is discovered Bean has been rustling cattle from the ranches of his San Antonio neighbors.  In San Antonio, Bean also tries his hand at being a family man, marrying the sixteen-year-old daughter (Virginia) of a respected local rancher, Leandro Chavez, on October 28, 1866.  Settling in a poor section of San Antonio called "Beanville," the honeymoon soon ends for the couple with Roy arrested for aggravated assault and threatening Virginia's life in 1867 (despite their tumultuous marriage, the union will produce four children ... Roy Jr. (1866), Laura (1872), Zulema (1874), and Sam (1875), and the couple also adopt a boy named John.  His marriage just as big a failure as his business cons, Bean decides to vacate San Antonio and set up shop to the west, in one of the railroad towns springing up along the trestles of the westward heading Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio Railroad (called the Sunset Route, the tracks start in New Orleans and then moves across the Chiuahuan Desert of West Texas, the tracks sharing the scorching land with rattlesnakes, bobcats, and scorpions as they head into El Paso.  Separated and then divorced by Virginia (the children have been farmed out to a San Antonio couple, Mr. and Mrs. Simon Fest, Jr.), running another saloon/store in Beanville, in the spring of 1882, with a nest egg of $900 (provided by a local businesswomen that wants Roy out of town so badly that she buys out his entire inventory) Bean buys a large tent, supplies, and ten 55-gallon barrels of whiskey and follows the railroad tracks west to a grading camp called Eagle Nest (in turn, the spot on the map will be called Vinegarron by Bean for the whip scorpions abounding in the area that emit a "vinegar" smell when alarmed, and then Langtry, when the town moves a short distance away for the engineer, George Langtry, who supervises the teams of Chinese workers building the railroad).

Battle Of Glorieta Pass

Virginia Chavez Bean

Historical Marker

Located in Val Verde County near where the Rio Grande and Pecos Rivers come together (most of the desert land is owned by the railroad or rancher Cezario Torres), what becomes the unincorporated town of Langtry, Texas will sit at an elevation of 1,289 feet above sea level and only average 14 inches of rain a year (from May to September the town averages a daily high temperature of 95.2 degrees).  It's population will never grow much beyond a population of a few hundred residents, but within twenty miles of the city limits when Bean arrives can be found almost 10,000 railroad workers, cowboys, gamblers, and outlaws (the moves to Vinegaroon and then Langtry are made after the saloon he opens in the town of Strawbridge fails, due in large part to a competitor lacing Bean's inventory with kerosene).  The nearest court being located at Fort Stockton, 135 miles away to the southeast (San Antonio is 186 miles away, Austin is 231 miles away, Dallas is 348 miles away, and Houston is 371 miles away), on July 5, 1882, the day after America's Independence Day is celebrated, Texas Ranger Captain Thomas L. Oglesby writes to his commanding officer, Adjutant General Wilburn H. King, that the region needs to have a magistrate appointed to adjudicate the laws of the state.  It is unknown what strings Bean pulls, but with host of offenses on his record over the years, and no formal training whatsoever as a judge or lawyer, Bean is somehow given the job (when deemed necessary, he will consult the one law book he has, the 1879 edition of the Revised Statutes of Texas), with first his tent and then a permanent store and saloon, The Jersey Lilly (named after Bean's boyhood crush, entertainer Emilie Charlotte Le Breton of the English isle of Jersey, better known to the world as Lillie Langtry, eventually, Bean builds a home across the street from his saloon, anticipating that someday Langtry will perform in Langtry at his home, and names his abode The Opera House), and it's denizens, serving as a courthouse filled with potential jurors as they are needed.  With no jail to speak of in town, most cases are settled with fines (most of the time for whatever amount of money the guilty party has on them, or if money is not available, by being assigned with working, "community service," about town), and when matters are more serious, the convicted individual is shackled to a post outside Bean's bar with a heavy log chain (some are also tied to the town's only tree, a large oak near the judge's saloon.  Only twice during Bean's career as a judge will a defendant be sentenced to hang, and that sentence is never carried out, the other time, the prisoner frees himself from the post and vanishes into the desert.  Calling himself and his court the "Only Law West Of The Pecos," Bean becomes a justice of the peace on August 2, 1882 (with a brief hiatus in 1886, when Bean loses an election, he will be Langtry's magistrate until 1896).

The Jersey Lilly - Bean Is On Porch In Sombrero Hat

Langtry

The eccentric court that Bean runs in Langtry will eventually make the judge into a Wild West legend (long after his death, actor Walter Brennan will win his third Best Supporting Actor Oscar in 1940 for playing the judge opposite Gary Cooper in The Westerner, actor Victor Jory will be Bean in the 1969 film A Time For Dying, and Academy Award winning actor Paul Newman will play Bean in the 1972 comedy The Life And Times Of Judge Roy Bean ... and thus far on TV, he will be portrayed over the years by actors Edgar Buchanan, Frank Ferguson, Peter Whitney, Tom Skerritt, Billy Beck, Tommy Duggan, Andy Griffith, Brad Sullivan, and Ned Beatty).  Among the strange moments for the Law West of the Pecos are (one of the first things Bean does upon accepting his appointment is to shoot up the saloon of a rival Jewish businessman):

*When an Irishman named Paddy O'Rourke is put on trial after killing a Chinese laborer, 200 of the man's angry friends threaten Bean with mayhem, so he consults his law book and can find no law within stating it is illegal to kill a Chinaman ... and presto, the crowd breaks up when Bean announces the case is dismissed.

*When new law books are sent to Bean, he uses them not to upgrade the jurisprudence he is offering, but instead uses the books as kindling for the stove in his saloon.

*When a Southern Pacific railroad worker falls to his death from the company's bridge over the Pecos River, Bean finds the death accidental, but fines the corpse the $40 he is carrying for also carrying a concealed revolver (which the judge of course confiscates and from then on uses as a gavel during court proceedings).

*When a train passenger stops at Bean's bar for a beer and pays his five cent tab with a $20 gold piece, Bean refuses to make change for the man and fines him instead ... $19.95 for contempt of court and the threat that the contempt fees will double if the passenger keeps protesting the decision ... which he doesn't, leaving town as soon as the train he came in on is ready to continue west.

*Though not legally allowed to grant divorces (the job of a district court), Bean does anyway, charging $10 for every parting he oversees.

*When a rival barkeep is found guilty of assault by a six-man jury and fined two dozen bottles of beer, Bean rules that the fine must be paid in Jersey Lilly beer.

*When a railroad contractor with some knowledge of the law comes to Bean's court and wins a case using the latest Texas statutes, Bean bans law books from being used henceforth during proceedings of his court.

*During quiet periods where no train tourists are in his bar, Bean often sits on the porch of his saloon shooting off a shotgun while yelling "cold beer" ... the bar usually fills up shortly afterwards.

*Like divorce, marriages are not a function of Bean's court, but for $5 he ties the knot for many couples anyway (also the town coroner, he charges a $10 burial fee for each body that comes his way) and ends each ceremony by stating, "... and may God have mercy on your souls."

*Owed money by a local restaurant owner who is late in paying, Bean sets up outside the door to the eating establishment at its busiest time, and charges everyone for their meals until the money he is owed, plus interest, is all paid.

*Fake hangings are often held by Bean to scare others into swiftly paying their fines, and horse theft charges are often remedied, after fines, by allowing the culprits to escape back to wherever they came from in the first place. 

  *Informed by a district attorney in Del Rio that he is not authorized to grant divorces, Bean gets the lawyer into a poker game.  Down $230 to Bean, Bean is willing to forgive the debt if the attorney will never mention the matter of divorces again ... and he never does. 

*A common fine in Bean's court is that the offender found guilty has to buy a round of drinks for the judge, jury, and anyone else in the Jersey Lilly.

*Popping $2 fines on drunk and disorderly miscreants from the weekend, the judge uses Mondays to clear his docket of pending cases, sending the guilty on their way with words warning them to get out of his bar and not to come back again.

*Bar patrons conned into contributions to help a crippled stranger, when it is discovered that the man's afflictions are a ruse, the miscreant is brought back to Bean's saloon, the money he gathered is confiscated and then he is splayed out on the joint's pool table, where the judge decides the culprit should have a real physical disability and threatens to cut off the man's legs with a rusty saw, but can't figure out where the cuts should take place ... so everyone takes a break to contemplate the matter over drinks, everyone but the former "cripple," who vacates the premise and is never seen in Langtry again.

*Discovering he'd been stiffed by an eastern tourist having beers while the train he is on takes on water at the town depot, Bean board's the train while it waits to leave town, puts a revolver in the face of the stranger, and demands the thirty-five cents he is owed ... which is handed over in the form of a dollar immediately (and just to show what a hale fellow he is, for once in his career as a judge, Bean gives the man back his correct change).

*Finding out in 1890 that financial speculator Jay Gould is touring the area, Bean stops the millionaire's train with a danger flag, then makes Gould and his daughter his guests in the Jersey Lilly for two hours of drinks and story telling about his life from the judge ... enough time to send the New York Stock Exchange into a brief panic when news is received that the missing Gould has perished in Texas train crash.

*Thinking to give himself and the citizens of Langtry some entertainment and some cash, in 1896, Bean organizes a heavyweight championship boxing match between 165-pound former English blacksmith, Bob Fitzsimmons, and Irish world champion, 180-pound Peter Maher for a payday of $15,000 (most of the money coming from swells and gamblers in El Paso).  There is only one problem however, boxing is illegal in both nearby Mexico and in Texas.  Undeterred though, Bean has the fight take place on a sandbar in the Rio Grande River, territory considered to be part of Mexico, but a part that Bean is sure the 200 Mexican soldiers assigned to the fight will not swim out to.  Sandbar converted by forty men into a make-shift fight arena, before hundreds of boxing fans from all over America, a troop of 26 Texas Rangers (ready to arrest Bean if any fisticuffs take place in Texas, filmed for later showings around the nation (an early variant of pay-per-view events), on February 21st, in midnight blue trunks, Fitzsimmons, meets a black trunked Maher for the title, which the lighter man (Fitzsimmons still holds the record as the lightest heavyweight champion in boxing history) wins in the first round, knocking out Maher with a right hand at 1:35 of the match (both men wear five-ounce gloves).  Not much of a fight, Bean is pleased anyway by besting the authorities of both Mexico and Texas, and because the cost of Langtry's food, whiskey, beer and "sporting" girls have all been marked up 100% while the region is hosting the event.  

The Boxing Match

Bean In Front Of His Courthouse

Judge Bean

Brennan As Bean 

And as if Bean's bar and courtroom aren't crazy enough, the judge is also the owner of a pet black bear that depending on the source, is either named Bruno or Sarsaparilla (he is said to be won by the judge in a poker game).  Trained by the judge himself, Bruno is able to catch and chug beers thrown to him (at first by the judge and later by bemused patrons of the bar), uncap the bottles with his teeth, and then down the suds in a single massive gulp.  Kept on a chain long enough to allow Bruno to roam the bar and select places to pee, Bruno proves to be a lucrative business partner for Bean as folks are constantly buying the bear beers ... the judge pockets the money and Bruno is rarely if ever thirsty.  And the bear is also used to convince drunks never to pass out in the bar again when the miscreants awake from their over-indulgence to discover the drooling ursine's claws and teeth only steps away, acting as if he has just found a source for his next meal (Bean keeps the bear just out of reach on it's chain, something that the terrified drunks never seem to discover).  The bear and Bean finally part shortly after a new century has begun ... in one tale a disgruntled customer, a traveling salesman named Sam Betters (the man has fallen prey to Bean's no change policy, with the judge keeping another $20 gold piece; screaming at the magistrate as he runs to catch his train, the judge finds Betters in contempt of court, fines him $20, and declares the beer to have been on the house) who tricks Bean into believing the bear is dead when the men have drinks later in an El Paso bar and Betters convinces his drinking companion to have his dead pet stuffed, not knowing the bear is still alive, alive until Bean sends a telegram to a confederate in Langtry to send Bruno's carcass to a El Paso taxidermist immediately for stuffing, and afraid of disobeying a Bean order, Bruno is shot and skinned by the judge's man (Bean will be incensed for months and keeps an eye out for Betters for the rest of his life).  In the other tale, on his deathbed, Bean bequeaths Bruno to Lillie Langtry, a gift Langtry isn't interested in at all when she is finally able to visit the town after Bean's death, but one that doesn't have to be dealt with when the bear breaks loose of the chain he is on, and after scattering a crowd of citizens, vaqueros, and cowboys, runs off into the desert (for years afterward, people will claim to hear the bear roaring in the night for a beer).

Bruno/Sarsaparilla

      

In 1885, the town of Langtry becomes part of Texas' newly formed Val Verde County, and a local well- digger wins the election for magistrate, beating Bean by a margin of 25 votes to 17.  But Bean is reluctant to give up his gavel, and eventually the well-digger resigns and the judge is officially back in business until 1896.  Feuding with the Torres family once more (the family owns most of the property in town and has tried to get rid of Bean for years, but Bean has taken advantage of a right-away law to build his bar and home on railroad property), rival saloon owner Jesus Torres is declared the winner of the 1896 election when it is determined that Bean has received more votes for judge than there are qualified voters, but as with the well-digger, Bean refuses to hand over his notary public seal or his law book and continues to judge cases.  Eventually, the men come to a compromise and each man rules on cases on their side of Langtry's railroad tracks.  Not content with the compromise, two years later when the men run against each other again, Bean keeps Torres voters from casting their ballots by chasing his opposition away from the town's polling place with a shotgun until the sheriff of Del Rio arrives on the scene and threatens to chain the judge to his pet bear if he keeps interfering in the election.  Free to vote as it chooses, the town puts Torres in office for another term ... which Bean continues to ignore until he is legally elected once more in the magistrate contests of 1900 and 1902 (unbeknownst to those Langtry citizens not in need, the judge uses much of the fine money his court provides to help the poor of the region and insure that the local schoolhouse is stocked with firewood each winter).

Bean - Painting By Charles B. Wilson

Death finally comes calling for the judge on March 16, 1903.  After a drinking binge in San Antonio (the judge is depressed that a modern electrical power station is being built for Langtry on the nearby Pecos River), Bean decides to accompany two Val Verde deputy sheriffs on a search of the region for a group of cattle rustlers, when during their hunt, the judge and his band find themselves suddenly assaulted by a sleet storm for which they are totally unprepared.  Urging a return to Langtry which Bean denies, the men spend a freezing evening huddled together under their saddle blankets.  In the morning, Bean is sick and delirious, babbling on and on about his boyhood in Kentucky.  Arguments about how to proceed negated by Bean's fever, the judge is brought back to the Jersey Lilly and a doctor is wired for from the the town of Del Rio.  Arriving on Monday in Langtry on the next westbound Southern Pacific train, Dr. Donald Taylor Atkinson (the 28-year-old will receive his medical degree from the Hospital College of Medicine in Lexington, Kentucky) will give Bean a shot of codeine and a dose of digitalis for his weakened heart, but it does little good and the judge passes away at 10:03 in the evening, slumped over his desk in the bar.  He is 78-years-old.

Bean

Of course, no tale of Bean's life would be complete without mentioning the judge's decades long crush on the entertainer, Lillie Langtry (her real name is Emilie Charlotte Le Breton).  For years, the judge will sing praises about the beauty and acting ability of his fantasy girl while claiming to be her acquaintance and stating that one day she will perform in Langtry.  As noted earlier, backing up his infatuation with the actress, he names his bar after her, calls his home the Opera House anticipating Langtry will perform there someday, and loves telling how he named the town after her ... and woe be to anyone in the town that scoffs at his claims.  He also claims to frequently correspond with the actress, and purports that in return, she sends him a brace of pistols that he cherishes for the rest of his life.  The truth is that Bean doesn't know Langtry and that Langtry doesn't know him.  When Bean expires in 1903, it is without ever having met the actress.  However, Bean's claim that one day Langtry would visit the town named after her does come true only ten months after his death.  Traveling from New Orleans to San Francisco on the Southern Pacific railroad line, Langtry decides to stop off in the town to meet her number one fan, but discovers instead that the judge has passed away.  Passed away but not forgotten, Langtry visits the Jersey Lilly and the Opera House, watches as the bear she has inherited from the judge escapes into the desert, and listens to the townspeople tell Judge Roy Bean stories.  Smiling as she reboards her west bound train, Langtry will one day write of her stop in Langtry in her 1925 autobiography, "The Days I Knew," stating, "It was a short visit, but an unforgettable one."  Linked forever with her #1 fan, she too dies after an unsuccessful battle with pneumonia in Monte Carlo, Monaco on February 12, 1929.  She is 75 years old at her passing.

Langtry

The Judge

And those are the Bean tales I'm sticking to ... March 16, 1903, and Judge Roy Bean begins his passage into a Wild West legend.

Waiting For Customers - Bronze

Sculpture By Erik Christianson