inches tall and barely weighed one hundred pounds.
She had recently moved to tiny New Chapel Hill from
Dallas; Ed had returned home from Oklahoma a few
months earlier. Since then he’d made his living as
a handyman and landscaper, taking care of several
properties in the neighborhood, including Griffi n’s.
Sitting at the table, Ed recalled how he’d gone to her
trailer the week before to see about clearing out a
wasp’s nest in the back and had talked with her again
just a day prior about doing some weed-trimming in
the yard.
Earlier in the evening, the Ates brothers and their
grandmother had been questioned by various depu-
ties from the Smith County sheriff ’s o ffi ce, who, after
analyzing the crime scene, concluded that Griffi n had
been killed the night before. The investigators took
statements from them, as well as from other neighbors,
drawn by the lights and sirens, but nobody seemed to
know anything—until a deputy talked with a friend of
Griffi n’s named Cubia Jackson, who said that she’dnight in July 1993, 25-year-old Edward Ates sat at the
kitchen table of his grandmother’s house, talking with
her about the dead woman next door. Ed’s brother,
Kelvin, was there too, along with a friend. They lived
in rural New Chapel Hill, just east of Tyler. That eve-
ning had been a terrible one. A few hours earlier, Ed’s
grandmother Maggie Dews had discovered the body
of a neighbor, Elnora Griffin, in her trailer. Griffin
was naked and facedown on the fl oor, her throat slit
to the bone. An investigator would later say that she
had almost been beheaded.
Ed hadn’t known Griffi n very well. She was 47, a
dainty, energetic woman who stood four feet four PRAYER^ CIRCLE:MICHAELHALL;ED,^ MARGIE,^ ANDKELVIN:^COURTESY^ OF^ THEATES^FAMILY;RUFF^AND^ ATES:^ COURTESY^OFBOB^ RUFFLATE ON AMUGGY FRIDAY88 TEXAS MONTHLY