Page 9 - Heritiage Guide 2016

2016 HERITAGE: HISTORY OF BEAUTIFUL LAKE LIVINGSTON Page 1
Lake Livingston gives up sinister deeds
By Martha Charrey San Jacinto News-Times
Teditor
hroughout the years, a few at- tempts have been made to dispose of
bodies in Lake Livingston, but those attempts were twarted when the lake, as if in de ance, spat them out from their watery grave, revealing the sinister deeds that had been done.
Perhaps the two most infa- mous murders involving the lake was one about a Houston drag queen and another about a disgruntled husband who killed his wife with a cast iron skillet, then dumped her body in the lake, but not before wrapping her completely in duct tape.
On March 23, 1986, the body of a young woman, clad in a nightshirt and wrapped in a quilt, was found oating in Lake Livingston, at Cape Royale Marina.
According to former San Jacinto County Sheriff Robert “Bob” Brumley, the wrapped body was sewn into a com- forter, a pillowcase placed over one end, and tied completely around with pantyhose mate- rial and one piece of owered, multicolored cloth, then placed in a blue nylon drawstring bag and attached to two concrete cinder blocks by a decorative chain and a blue-gray work shirt.
slash cut 31 times and stabbed eight times.
The examining pathologist considered three of the stab wounds to be the fatal wounds, estimating the wounds had been in icted with a sharp, thin-blade knife or knife-like instrument. He estimated that LeBlanc had been dead a minimum of 14 days, putting the time of death at March 10, 1986 or earlier. Decomposition had rendered blood typing of the deceased no longer pos- sible.
Clifford Youens, 32 in
1986, was known in gay clubs around Houston as Brandi West. Youens was arrested and charged with
the brutal
murder.
LeBlanc had been
living with Youens in Houston since the Fall of
1985 in an apartment on Timmons Lane.
of ooring containing human blood of an undetermined type found under the carpet that had recently been installed after the oor had been covered with blue paint.
Youens’ parents owned a lake house on Lake Livings- ton at Cape Royale, as well as a boat, which was docked at Cape Royale marina, and Youens had access to both.
A piece of gold-colored dec- orative chain was obtained by police from a nail where it was hanging on the garage wall of the lake house. The chain was similar in color and design to that attaching the body to one of the concrete cinder blocks.
(L-R) Brandi West, Clifford Youens and Patrice LeBlanc.
Oklahoma man kills wife, dumps body into Lake Livingston
Among items seized from the apartment and analyzed by a chemist with the Houston Police Department were three items found to be stained by human blood: one of Youens’ cowboy boots bearing a stain of Type A human blood,
a wood scraping from the bedroom closet door stained
Scratch marks in the berglass on the bow and right alumi- num railing contained what appeared to be yellow or gray paint.
Other evidence presented during the trial by the late San Jacinto County Prosecutor Joe Price included the peach- colored comforter in which
By Martha Charrey in the boat dock of Summerlin the water.”
Marina, 11 miles west of Liv- ingston on Highway 190.
According to marina owner George Summerlin, the couple had been shing and come
in off the lake. “As they had tied up their boat and were walking along the ramp, they noticed something oating in
As though spotlighting an historic era gone by, the sun shines brilliantly over Lake Livingston and the Highway 190 bridge where the Trinity River once grandly owed, but now lies hidden beneath the glimmering waters of the Lake, covering the many secrets the land once held.
Early settlements once thrived along the Trinity River
Not realizing it was a body at the time, the couple went inside the marina and talked
to an employee. The three of them went back out to the boat stall to have another look, no- ticing a gap in the tape where a nger was visible and decided the oating object was a body or parts of a body. Returning to the marina, they contacted the Polk County Sheriff’s Depart- ment.
An investigation by former Polk County Sheriff Joe S. Nettles revealed the body of a woman, thought to be around 43 years of age. An autopsy report indicated the 110-pound woman had died as a result
of skull injuries from a blunt object. The body was in a fetal position, with her knees drawn up to her chest, one arm was pulled to the side and the other arm was behind her back. Her lower legs were bound together with a woven, nylon-type cord. The head was wrapped in a towel, which in turn had been wrapped and secured with more silver tape.
The body, identi ed as
20-year-old Louisiana beauty with human blood of an un- the body was wrapped that Patrice LeBlanc, had been determined type, and a piece was identi ed as LeBlanc’s.
n June 3, 1977, a body was found oating in Lake
What lies
BENEATH
The accumulated evidence was sent to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) labora- tories in Washington D.C. for scrutiny.
The evidence list included the silver tape cocoon which contained the body, the towel which surrounded the head, some hair, ngerprints taken from the corpse, photographs taken at the recovery site and of the body itself from various angles, a length of rope and a concrete block recovered at the site, the autopsy report and an offense report compiled by the sheriff’s department.
Uncertain how the body arrived in the boat stall, some summarized it was dropped somewhere and the wind and water currents carried it right into the stall.
It would be about a week later before Texas Rangers arrested and charged Monroe “Monty” Bauchannan Boyd, Jr., 30, of Idabel, Oklahoma, a high school band director, for his wife’s murder.
The woman, Phillis Carol Holley Boyd, 25, of Idabel, Oklahoma was rst identi ed by dental records. She had been reported missing May 25, following a trip to Dallas by the couple. She was never to be seen alive again.
After dumping her body and leaving the Lake Livingston area, Boyd drove to Houston Saturday morning, June 4, and rented a stall in a ea market to sell some of the home furnish- ings he had packed in his car and trailer before leaving Okla- homa with his wife’s body.
Texas Rangers located Boyd at the ea market Friday and
An inspection of the boat re- vealed numer- ous fragments of concrete and chips of yellow paint similar in ap- pearance to the yellow paint on the con- crete blocks retrieved with the body.
Although a body was weighted down wih cinder blocks, the strong undercurrents in Lake Liv- ingston brought it to the top and laid her to rest on the shoreline at Cape Royale Marina, revealing the sinister deed.
The blue drawstring bag was identi ed as Youen’s laundry bag. The quilt, also kept in the apartment, belonged to Youens.
Youens’ former roommate
testi ed that the owered material used to wrap the body came from his belted, orescent-green owered bathrobe. Youens wore both
regular pantyhose and “Dan- skin” pantyhose, whereas the deceased wore neither. One of Youen’s neighbors spotted
cont. pg. 2
San Jacinto News-Times editor
O
Livingston wrapped mummy- style in silver duct tape by a Pasadena couple at a boat stall
By Martha Charrey San Jacinto News-Times
F editor
lowing from Fort
Worth, Texas and winding its unhur- ried way through
the outskirts of Point Blank on its way to the Gulf of Mexico, the Trinity River served as a means of transportation from the beginning of the settlement of Texas until the mid 1870s. Today, much of it lies hidden beneath the waters of Lake Livingston, covering its his- toric banks and any evidence of the pioneers who once lived here and the struggles they
faced for survival.
In the 1800s, steamboats
regularly made their way to and from coastal ports with stops at Drew’s Landing, Cedar Landing, Swartwout, Johnsons Bluff, Patrick’s Ferry, Geneva, Jones Bluff, Velpo and other ports, carrying with them loads of cotton, hides, wood and lumber, and returning with pas- sengers, bolts of cloth, barrels of whiskey, our, salt, coffee and other supplies.
Old timers recalled their forefathers saying the steam- boats started running on the River in the early 1800s.
At one time, it was said there were 98 steamboats known to
have operated on the Trinity River between 1835 and 1875. Some of the steamboats were the Black Cloud, Branch T. Archer, Ruthven, Early Bird, Graham, Cjolonel D.S. Gage, Trinity, Brazos, Kate, Ida Reese, Belle of Texas, Correro, Neptune, Scioto Bell, Friend, Mary Clifton, Nora, Wanderer, C.B. Lee, Vesta, Pioneefr, Ellen Franklin,Wren, Indiana, Molly Hamilton, and many more.
By 1834, settlers, with Mexican Land Grants, began settlements on the banks of the Trinity River.
Among those settlers was Issac Jones who moved his
family from Vicksburg, Mis- sissippi, to the west side of
the river near Point Blank. By 1858, Jones had a port and a ferry called Jones Bluff where steamboats made regular stops.
Another Texas settler was George T. Wood, who later became the second governor of Texas. Wood moved his family with 30 slaves from Georgia
to Houston in 1839, where he studied law, passed the bar, and later purchased a plantation on the West bank of the Trinity River near Point Blank.
The Woods established
a boat landing and when
a steamboat whistle was heard, night or day, the whole
household hurried to enjoy the excitement an arriving boat created.
In 1858, Mary Wood, daugh- ter of George and Mrs. Wood, went to Galveston for a visit and a month later returned to Point Blank on the luxurious Bayou City Steamboat.
Alfred A. Aden came from Kentucky to Anahuac by boat and caught a steamboat there, arriving at the Port of Swart- wout in 1849.
Swartwout, established in 1836, was the largest of the early settlements on the Trinity, and an important steamboat
cont. pg. 2
cont. pg. 4
CMYK