Clint Peoples was a real-deal lawman of the old school. The same school Frank Hamer matriculated from a few years before. A Texas Ranger and U.S. Marshal, Peoples knew his duty and he did it. In true Texas Ranger style, when he got on a trail, he stayed on it — even if it took 23 years and led to a President of the United States.
It’s a helluva note when you’ve got a narcissistic sociopath for a president, a man for whom EVERYTHING is a transaction; whose associates are corrupt money-grubbers, mobsters and fellow sociopaths; a man who treats women as mere objects for sexual gratification and brags about it.
Yep, ol’ Lyndon Baines Johnson was a no-good SOB.
OK, back up a few years, to when LBJ was Vice President of the United States and hated his boss’ guts.
One of Johnson’s scumbg associates was a feller with the fine southern name of Billie Sol Estes. And Estes was running into trouble with an honest man. Let the Dallas Morning News pick up the sordid tale:
Henry Marshall… was a U.S. Department of Agriculture inspector in Texas. As 1960 came to a close, he began investigating a scheme by Estes to acquire lucrative cotton-planting allotments from 116 Texas farmers.
In January 1961, Marshall met with Estes company lawyers and threatened them with prosecution if they proceeded with the questionable enterprise. According to newspaper reports at the time, Estes and his associates approached advisers to LBJ and complained that Marshall was interfering in their business.
To remove Marshall from the scene, Agriculture Department officials offered him a promotion to Washington. He considered it a bribe offer and turned it down.
Billie Sol Estes.
Marshall was found dead on his Robertson County farm on June 3, 1961. He’d been shot five times with his own bolt-action .22 rifle, which was found next to him. A head injury showed blunt-force trauma. Incredibly, a justice of the peace ruled the death a suicide, and the county sheriff agreed.
It was, by any reasonable standard, a botched investigation. Marshall’s relatives and colleagues didn’t buy the finding of suicide and pressed for a real investigation.
Clint Peoples, Texas Ranger, drew the case. He would stay on it for 23 years.
“He never thought it was a suicide, and it troubled him for years,” said Sam McClendon, Peoples’ son-in-law.
Peoples eventually befriended Estes after the swindler went to prison for fraud in the 1970s. Peoples convinced Estes to testify before a Robertson County grand jury, which reopened the Marshall murder case in 1984. The Dallas Morning News reported that Estes, in his grand jury testimony, implicated Johnson in Marshall’s death.
According to The News’s story, Estes testified that LBJ was concerned that Marshall had information implicating Johnson in the illegal acquisition of cotton allotments. Estes told the grand jury that Johnson ordered Malcolm E. “Mac” Wallace, a Johnson family friend, to kill Marshall and make it look like a suicide.
Mac Wallace.
Johnson had been dead for more than 10 years at the time of Estes’ grand jury appearance. Former aides to LBJ denounced Estes as a pathological liar and unrepentant schemer. They accused him of concocting his story to boost sales of a book that Estes’ daughter had written about her father’s exploits.
A year later, in 1985, a state district judge in Austin heard two days of testimony on the case and ordered the Texas Department of Health to change the official cause of Marshall’s death from suicide to homicide.
After the hearing, Peoples said he was satisfied with the ruling — even though no one was ever charged with the murder. One day, the Ranger added, the truth would come out.
“It’s going to have to be some changing of the guard in some places,” he said cryptically. “You have to read between the lines.”
*
Yeah.
Some folks think Mac Wallace was Johnson’s regular button man, and that he was in on whacking JFK for his boss. I ain’t wading into the Big Muddy on that one — not yet at least.
Peoples was involved in a whole bunch of badassery in a Texas that was still wild and woolly. He even shut down the Chicken Ranch outside La Grange. You know what I’m talkin’ about…
They got a lot of nice girls there. Hawhawhawhaw.*
Dallas Morning News:
(Peoples) helped root out illegal gambling rings in Galveston and worked on political corruption cases involving George Parr, the “Duke of Duval County” who helped LBJ become a U.S. senator in 1948 by stuffing Box 13 in Jim Wells County with Johnson votes.
Toward the end of his career, Peoples became a prodigious fundraiser for the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum in Waco and helped guide its opening in 1968.
He retired from the Rangers in 1973 and immediately accepted an appointment from President Richard Nixon as U.S. marshal for the Northern District of Texas, a post that he held until he retired in 1989.
Peoples died in 1992. A few years back there was an auction featuring some fancy pistols he was given through his career. Texas Rangers call those fancy guns “barbecue guns” — for wearing at ceremonial events and parties and such.
Yep. Pearl.
* Went to a ZZ Top show at the L.A. forum in 1984. The Eliminator Tour, when ZZ Top was the hottest thing in the biz. Bad and nationwide, you might say. Imagine a 10,000-woman lingerie convention. Lord take me downtown…Hawhawhawhaw!
Keith West says
I’m inclined to believe Estes. Of course, I think LBJ was one of our worst presidents, so my opinion does have a bit of bias.
JimC says
That he was a bad man there is no doubt. His domestic policy is open to debate and varying perspectives depending on where one stands on the political spectrum. But he owns the Vietnam War, from the Gulf of Tonkin to the micromanagement and incremental escalation. His handling of Vietnam irreparably tore the fabric of the nation.
Keith West says
“His handling of Vietnam irreparably tore the fabric of the nation.”
Agreed.
Robert P. Morrow says
LBJ Expert Essay on the murderous psychopathy of Lyndon Johnson http://robertmorrowpoliticalresearchblog.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-murderous-psychopathy-of-lyndon.html
RLT says
You gotta figure that when the same guy who played Walter White is lauded as a primo choice to depict LBJ, something was definitely off in the post-Kennedy White House. It also, of course, raises some questions about what went down in Dallas…
JimC says
You win the Frontier Partisans commentary for the day. That’s SO META (as the nerds say)…
RLT says
Hey, now that ain’t no participation trophy. I’ll take it!
JimC says
Jim Morrison’s dad was commander of U.S. Naval Forces in the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964. I always found that a “trippy” little tidbit of historical trivia.
Rick Schwertfeger says
Perfect article! Ol’ Billy Sol Estes, stuffed ballot box, “mob” hit and ZZ Top! Certainly agree about LBJ owning The ‘Nam. But a film at the LBJ Ranch Historical site was surprisingly revealing: that war took an enormous toll on him. My late father pointed out that in the film you could see him aging rapidly during those years. I think that he may not have had the skills to get out of something that down deep he knew was wrong. Somewhat complicated man, certainly a SOB; but there must have been some humanity in there.
JimC says
Thx amigo. Have to admit I was rather proud of working ZZ Top and lingerie in there… Hah!
LBJ’s decision not to run in 1968 intrigues the hell out of me. Like you, I see some sense of pain and remorse (humanity?) in him; he certainly had a lot of blood on his hands. Apparently, he was also haunted by the fact that all the men in his family died in their 60s. He had a sense of mortality closing in on him. Both he and Nixon are strangely compelling figures in their mix of venality and (at least purported) high purpose, their paranoia and will to power.
The period 1961 to 1974 was quite Shakespearean.
lane batot says
Descended from Texan settlers on mah Paw’s side, and growing up in the ’60’s, I got to hear PLENTY about old LBJ(and like a lot of less-than-likable presidents, he had a very likable wife–good ole Lady Bird Johnson!). I always heard the rumor that LBJ most assuredly had SOMETHING to do with the John F. Kennedy assassination, and that supposedly there was some kind of secreted time capsule that would be revealed and opened telling the whole conspiracy one day, long after all involved or implicatable parties would have long been in their graves–it’s a good story, at least? One thing I personally remember well about LBJ is a good friend of mine in the Third Grade got up during class the “show-and-tell”(do they even allow such expression in school classes anymore? That used to be one of my favorite things–both to perform, and to witness! You never knew WHAT THE HELL was gonna happen during “Show-And-Tell”!) and drew three straight vertical lines on the blackboard, and asked the class if anyone could make a DONKEY(i. e. “Ass”) out of those lines, which no one could figure out; whereupon he simply made the lines into three letters–you guessed it–L B J! Boy howdy,did he get in trouble! Denigrating our current President of the U.S.A. like that! But he was a rogue hero for it for some days after! And still is, in my memory!
JimC says
Love those legendary acts of rebellion. Like the kid who posted his high school for sale on Craig’s List.
Flashman says
Labeling LBJ as a bad man may be a bit harsh. I felt the same after reading the first two volumes of Robert Caro’s biography (through the 1948 Senate campaign) however it is rare a person is totally bad or good. Johnson did a lot of good things in the Senate and as President but made many bad decisions and destroyed a lot of people. There were a lot of others complicit in what happened in his presidency plus a historical progression of heavy handed foreign policies. It was Eisenhower who let loose the CIA to overthrow foreign governments followed by JFK with many unintended consequences. Johnson was around for all of it. And remember something which is conveniently forgotten today, we were in the Cold War which was very real, dangerous and scary.
My view is that although he perhaps is the best politician our country produced he was very uneducated. He went to substandard small teachers college in Texas but more importantly didn’t read books. Sound familiar (except the Ivy League education)?
JimC says
Thanks Flashman. You’re certainly right that there was plenty of bad acting to go round in those weird and wild times. Allen Dulles was a Dark Eminence, and you’re absolutely correct that Ike, dazzling smile and all, turned the CIA loose on regime change, election meddling and outright assassination. As my bro said, they were “Strange Days.” And they came pretty close to destroying our casual joys, too..
john roberts says
In my third Gabe Treloar mystery, “Desperate Highways,” I created a character named Jasper Holt. He’s an utterly hardass Texas Ranger who went to D.C. with the Johnson administration as a federal marshall. I had no idea he had a real-life counterpart. By the time of the book (the ’90s) Jasper is a bounty hunter who is more than happy to pull the trigger.
Concerning LBJ. He got the Voting Rights Act of 1965 passed, even though, as he noted, “This will cost us the South for the next hundred years.” It was the most significant Civil Rights legislation of the 20th Century. As near as I can read the man, he did it because it was the right thing to do. That redeems him in my estimation.
JimC says
The Voting Rights Act certainly weighs heavy on the scales in his favor. That’s the juice in studying history for me: Here you have a deeply corrupt man who does something righteous. And there you have a fundamentally decent man who does a terrible thing. Sorting through that kinda thing and carrying around the unresolved paradoxes is endlessly interesting to me.
And Jasper Holt is an excellent Texas Ranger/Bounty Hunter name.
Thom Eley says
Back in the day my grandparents were living in Texas during the Billie Sol Estes times. My grandmother was a bit of a character and she used to tell funny stories about “B.S. Estes as she called him. She sent me a 45 rpm record called The Ballad of Billie Sol Estes. It is still available on YouTube. Give a listen, it is a hoot. My grandparents met Billie and Marshall at some social events. My grandfather was an Agent/Inspector for the Interstate Commerce and he work with Peoples. I asked grandmother about what she thought of Estes and she replied “he is a fxxking snake.” Not words you usually hear from your grandmother. When I was visiting once, I met both Estes and Peoples—an interesting experience.
JimC says
Whoa! Get down here to Oregon for a full debriefing. I’m All in.
Judy Gunn says
This is a hack job. Stick to facts, or refer to resources for what you say. Johnson didn’t hate Kennedy, and there are other statements that are nothing but gossip. I knew the captain, since I was 11 years old. He was my father’s first Ranger Captain.