Redneck Crime

A 45-year-old South Texas woman scheduled to face negligent homicide charges will not show up for her trial tomorrow morning—the sixth trial date set for the case. Brazoria County District Attorney Jeri Yenne has dismissed the charges for lack of evidence. The woman has not and apparently will not be convicted, so her name will not be appear here. But how could any self-respecting redneck reporter resist sharing a few juicy details of a death-by-enema case?

Yep, that’s right… A gal stood by her man in May 2004 at their home near Houston and administered an enema of not one but two large bottles of sherry. Her 58-year-old machinist husband died of alcohol poisoning as a result, but she swears she was just doing what he told her to do. According to police, the man’s blood alcohol level rose to 0.47 percent, nearly six times the level considered legally drunk in Texas.

The widow told the Houston Chronicle that her husband had been addicted to enemas since childhood and often used alcohol in that manner to get drunk. Supposedly, a throat ailment left him unable to drink booze.

In a telephone interview with Reuters, District Attorney Yenne said the dead man had “a severe alcohol issue,” and it was not clear that his wife had committed a crime. A charge that the accused had burned her husband’s will a month before his death was also dropped, she said. “We were never able to verify there was a signed, executed document.”

Guess this guy liked to literally booze it UP. (Sorry, couldn’t resist.) Thought I’d heard or read it all when it comes to methods of mayhem and murder, but this one sure never popped up on my screen before. The possibilities downright blow my mind. And just think of what that poor lil’ widder-woman had to endure at cocktail hour each day.—Tex

My friend Helen Ginger, writer and publisher of a great ezine for writers called Doing It Write, recently tagged me to share eight things about my writing that few people know. Since I’m not quite world famous (yet), that’s not a tough order to fill. Here goes…

1) Started this illustrious career by writing plays in school in lieu of themes or essays. They weren’t particularly good plays, but I usually could count on an A for originality from teachers sick to death of reading encyclopedic data. For fun, we even staged one or two.

2) Chased the big bucks (not 2 or 4-legged ones, just the good ol’ green stuff) for a few years after college by working in public relations. Yeah, right.

3) Wrote numerous freelance articles for such exciting publications as a ping-pong magazine, a senior citizens’ newspaper, and some corporate newsletters.

4) Played Lois Lane for a while as a reporter and lifestyles editor for a daily newspaper, chasing down such exciting stories as school lunch menus, singings on the grounds, and dairy festivals.

5) Founded LifeSketches, a company dedicated to preserving in various formats the extraordinary stories of ordinary folks.

6) Had a blast working with over 200 veterans of WWII, Korea, and Vietnam to preserve their heroic stories for their families and for the Library of Congress Veterans Project.

7) Balancing my workload now as an entrepreneur, freelance writer/editor, book review website partner, blogger, public speaker, writing teacher, and (in my spare time) event planner.

8 ) My favorite projects today include writing a memoir, Growing Up Redneck, and digging for ridiculous stories for my RedneckCrime.com blog.

Whew! Think I’ll go take a nap now. Thanks, Helen… Without your little nudge, I wouldn’t have realized what a busy gal I am. For more about Helen, who’s probably even busier, check out her blog Straight from Hel.

I enjoy your blog and thought I’d share a couple of redneck crime ditties:

Our family lived for a number of years in a very small, southeastern Oklahoma town. We’d moved there from an eastern city of over a million people. It was delightful to live in a place where the worst crime listed in the weekly newspaper was the theft of eleven calves. One week, the paper reported that a man named Mike Smith (also my husband’s name) had stolen the tires off of the Vo-Tech jeep. We never discovered who that other Mike Smith was, and my husband was eyed with humorous suspicion by some local folks for the duration of our time there. People greeted him with, “Hey Mike, can you get me a set of tires cheap?”

Also, a friend of mine owned a farm near Beaver, OK. One day, he discovered that someone had pulled a truck up to one of his pastures and had stolen a small herd of cows, all of whom were pregnant. He reported the theft along with his brand. Several weeks later, he found the herd back in the pasture. By then, they had delivered their calves. The conscientious thief was never caught.

Ahhhh, life in Redneck Country… There just ain’t nothing else like it! Thanks for this, Katherine, and welcome to our HORES posse (Honorary Ornery Redneck Endurers rounding up great stories). A big grin for the brass cajunes of that cattle thief since I can’t imagine anything more challenging than dealing with a herd of pregnant females of any sort, much less overseeing labor and delivery. No big surprise that he soon returned them. –Tex