The Horse Killers
Bored and angry, a group of kids in a small East Texas town took out their hostility on a horse, whose violent death shocked the world.
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On Tuesday morning, the ten children who had been out at the pasture were taken by their mothers to the Hardin County courthouse. With their mothers present, deputy sheriff Darrell Werner questioned the children individually. By Werner’s questions, the ten suspects could apparently tell that the crimes, in increasing order of severity, seemed to be: chasing the horse, throwing things at the horse, hitting the horse while it was standing, hitting the horse while it was on the ground, and, worst of all, causing the horse to fall to the ground. Several of the children adjusted their stories accordingly. When asked, “Who knocked the horse to the ground?” four of them replied, “Oliver.”
Deputy Werner also wanted to know who the leader of the mob was. Several of them said, “Oliver.”
Oliver told Werner that none of this was true. All he did, according to his written confession, “was just chase the horse. I did not hit the horse or take anything from the property.” Werner didn’t believe him. Too many of the others had fingered him as the ringleader.
While each suspect was being questioned, the other children sat outside in the courthouse hallway with their parents. One building employee stepped out of her office and saw two children on their knees in front of a vending machine, reaching up into its guts, and pulling out bars of candy, the mothers sitting obliviously nearby.
The children were released to their parents. But angry callers had already begun telephoning the courthouse. At the same time, Silsbee faculty members and administrators confronted the Hardin County authorities. Why were these brutes being allowed to go back to school, and back to the streets of Silsbee? What kind of message did this send to the other students? Kill a horse, and see you at school tomorrow!
Less than 24 hours after their release, state district judge Bill Beggs ordered Willie, Charisse, Sam, Doyle, Mason, and Oliver held without bail until the conclusion of their hearings (the eight- and nine-year-old boys were too young to be removed from their parents, and the two boys with the dogs were exonerated). Beggs would later explain, “I considered a number of factors, including the safety of the community and the safety of the children involved.” But Beggs, who had been appointed to fill the vacated 88th District post, was doubtlessly considering politics too. An unelected Republican judge who ignored the outcries of angry white community leaders and let black hoodlums roam the streets of Silsbee would feel the voters’ wrath in the 1996 election.
And so the horse killers were again rounded up, driven away from school in marked vehicles, and imprisoned on the third floor of the Hardin County courthouse, in the cramped juvenile detention center. Extra mattresses were dragged in and tossed on the floor of the three-bedroom cell to accommodate the overflow—which was eased somewhat when Oliver and Mason were caught brawling in the cell and were subsequently shipped off to a juvenile center in Conroe.
The severity of their predicament took a while to sink in. Three or four days into their detention, the children were carrying on so loudly that a probation officer was moved to strip the center of all of its televisions, games, and furniture. The atmosphere became less festive after that, but it still did not exactly resemble a prayer-group meeting. Juvenile probation officer Ed Dickens, who had seen more than his share of miscreants during his five years of service at the Hardin County office, became disgusted with the seeming nonchalance of the horse killers. “Don’t any of you have so much as an ounce of remorse for what you did?” he demanded during a visit. Not one of them volunteered a show of contrition. Later, however, they penned notes of apology to Coach Woodard. Through visitors, they learned what was being said about them outside the courthouse. They began to ask Dickens questions about what reform school was like.
On October 5, after two weeks in custody, Willie and Mason were brought before Judge Beggs. Both of the fourteen-year-old boys were already on probation for breaking into Silsbee Middle School, which qualified them for a minimum three-year sentence at a Texas Youth Commission (TYC) correctional facility for juveniles. But because the TYC accepts only so many juveniles from each county, Beggs gave Willie a lighter sentence: six months at a private boot camp facility in Cotulla. With a rap of the gavel, two men in fatigues stepped forward and fitted the boy with shackles.
Mason, whose record included several runaway incidents as well as a citation for “making terroristic threats” and whose confession of the horse killing seemed far less believable than the others’, was sent off to a TYC facility along with Doyle. Doyle’s big brother Sam was sentenced to the Cotulla boot camp. Despite his repeated denial of wrongdoing, Oliver was sentenced to Cotulla as well.
On October 13, Charisse stood before Judge Beggs in the quiet courtroom, while just outside, a throng of TV cameramen and reporters angled for position. The twelve-year-old girl had not been implicated by the others in the actual beating of the horse. On the other hand, no boot camp facilities existed for girls, and Beggs did not wish to consider a lighter alternative, such as a wilderness camp. The judge ordered her to be sent to a TYC correctional institution two hundred miles away. For the first time since the horse killing a month earlier, Charisse broke down into loud, almost terrifying sobs.
Before the children were led away, investigating deputy Darrell Werner made a point of shaking each one’s hand. “Best of luck to you,” he told them.
THEY WILL NEED PLENTY OF IT. ALL six will return home this year, as the TYC needs the bed space for incoming juveniles and Hardin County cannot afford more than five months’ worth of the $237 daily fee charged by the Cotulla boot camp to house Willie, Sam, and Oliver. They will return to a world that considers them sick and twisted, and to a community that deeply resents the negative attention that the juveniles have drawn to Silsbee. It is an open question whether the six children will have learned anything—or, for that matter, whether learning anything will do them any good. For although the boot camps in particular are designed to teach respect for authority and to rehabilitate self-esteem, the lessons do not wear well in the precarious environment that helped spawn the crime to begin with. “It’s hard to come home and say no to your peers,” says Ed Dickens, the probation officer for the six. “And if the parent doesn’t grasp the seriousness of the matter, how can we expect the kid to?”
He manages a rueful smile from behind his desk at the county juvenile probation office and adds, “No, if experience holds true, we’ll see them back here again.”
But for what it is worth, the six are doing well—particularly Oliver, who is a squad leader at the Cotulla boot camp and has been chosen to march with the honor guard at a Texas A&M function. We can hope that the children will somehow beat the odds and somehow give this story a happy ending. For now, the following will have to do:
Throughout the shrill ordeal, Coach Woodard maintained a low profile. Unlike the Silsbee school officials, he made a point of not attending the trials or giving interviews. (“It’s best for the community that I not say anything,” he politely told me.) Letters of sympathy poured in from all over. Some of the envelopes contained checks to help buy the coach a replacement for Mister Wilson Boy, whose monetary value had been set by authorities at $10,000—though Woodard could easily have pressed for more, had he so chosen. The checks totaled somewhere in the neighborhood of $20,000; one check was written for $7,000. Coach Woodard sent each check back with a thank-you note. He wasn’t looking for charity—even though only one of the four families had made any of the $49.41-per-child monthly restitution payments. Besides, things had a way of working out. A friend named Jane Hill phoned the coach one day and said she had a four-year-old gelding that wasn’t getting much attention. How about if the coach kept the horse out at his pasture?
Coach Woodard looked embarrassed, but a little eager as well. “Well, Jane,” he stammered, “how long do you want me to keep him?”
“Just as long as you want,” she assured him.
A more troubling question came to mind. “But what if something were to happen to him out at my place?” he asked.
Take the horse, she urged him. And he did. The coach called the horse Jane, after its original owner. It was a sorrel with a blaze face.
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