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Bartee Haile
Last week the Mitchells saved the Truitts from certain death. Finding the starving strangers at the foot of Comanche Peak, whitehaired patriarch Cooney took care of them until they could fend for themselves.
But the newcomers turned on their benefactors, and a bitter land dispute culminated in a confrontation that took the lives of two Truitts. A Hood County jury convicted Cooney Mitchell of murder on the testimony of Reverend Jim Truitt and sentenced him to hang. With his last words, the old man called upon his fugitive son Bill to avenge his death.
For weeks after the execution of Cooney Mitchell, the fear of retribution haunted the Truitts, who lay awake at night waiting for the dreaded return of the dead man’s son. To make it harder for Bill Mitchell to find them, family members scattered across the state and rarely corresponded.
Acting more like a hunted animal than a preacher, Jim Truitt stayed on the move. From Hood County he went to Waco, then Waxahachie and Centerville before drifting into East Texas. His nine-year flight ended at the Shelby County community of Timpson, where in 1884 he gave up the pulpit to become a newspaper editor.
During those same nine years, Bill Mitchell dodged the law and planned his revenge. Following the runin with the Truitts, he hid out in New Mexico. Calling himself John W. King, he toiled as a teamster hauling freight back and forth to El Paso.
About the same time Truitt felt secure enough to settle down in one place, Mitchell decided it was safe to return to Texas. Changing his name to John Davis, the wary fugitive lived off the land in the remote countryside west of San Antonio.
By 1886 Jim Truitt had shed his paranoia. Looking back on the years he wasted cringing in the shadows, he wondered what in the world had possessed him. Bill Mitchell was probably dead or in prison and likely had given up the search long ago.
Mrs. Truitt looked up from her needlework to see a total stranger standing in the parlor. Her husband sat on the other side of the room, his nose buried in a book and oblivious to the fact that his worst nightmare had come calling.
“Is this the Reverend Jim Truitt?” asked Bill Mitchell. Even mortal enemies age, and he had to be sure.
“Yes, it is,” the puzzled woman answered. “What do you want?”
Mitchell slowly drew his giant six-gun and shot Truitt once in the head. He eased the pistol back in its holster and calmly walked to his horse. Old Cooney could rest easy. The debt was paid in full.
Since the murder was a product of a faraway feud, the Nacogdoches sheriff could have dropped the case after a cursory investigation. But A.I. Spradley objected to any killing in his jurisdiction and vowed to bring the culprit to justice.
The lawman picked up Mitchell’s trail in Hood County, where he had stopped long enough to let his kin know the deed was done. Spradley tracked him to South Texas before finally giving up the chase and going home.
Twenty years passed, and the Mitchell-Truitt feud faded into folklore. The sheriff of Hood County put little stock in the anonymous tip that purported to pinpoint the exact whereabouts of the legendary Bill Mitchell but decided the information warranted a trip to New Mexico.
For a 59-year-old fugitive, Mitchell put up a heck of a fight before the sheriff and two strong deputies succeeded in subduing him. When they arrived at Granbury, the Hood County seat, townspeople gawked in disbelief at the grizzled prisoner.
Following Mitchell’s indictment for the 1874 slayings of the two Truitt brothers, he was handed over to Sheriff Spradley to stand trial for the more recent murder of the former preacher. But the jury deadlocked, and he was returned to Hood County.
Tried in the same courtroom where 34 years earlier his father had been condemned to death, Mitchell was cleared of all charges. Another hung jury in East Texas seemed to pave the way to freedom, until outraged Truitts insisted upon an all-or-nothing third trial.
Mitchell seemed to have the rap beaten, when the prosecutor unexpectedly proved that the woman, who testified he was in Chicago the day Jim Truitt died, was in fact his sister. Defiant to the end, he did not bat an eye as the judge sentenced him to life imprisonment.
The model prisoner spent two uneventful years in the state penitentiary before suddenly vanishing. The guards had not considered the 66 year old convict an escape risk and simply turned their backs once too often.
That was the last the law ever saw of Bill Mitchell. Constantly changing his identity and address, the accomplished fugitive eluded capture until his heart gave out in Arizona in 1928.
After 53 years, the Mitchell-Truitt feud was finally finished.
Read all about the wild and crazy years of the oil frenzy in “Texas Boomtowns: A History of Blood and Oil” Order your copy for $24 by mailing a check to Bartee Haile, P.O. Box 130011, Spring, TX 77393.