90 TEXAS MONTHLY
and Kelvin loved living in the country,
where the pine trees hugged the roads
and the land sloped down into the brush
and creek bottoms. They fished often
in those creeks, and they started work-
ing at a young age for a nearby rancher
who had a couple hundred cattle. By
age fourteen, Ed was baling hay, groom-
ing horses, and riding four-wheelers
through the meadows looking for stray
calves. He was a hands-on kid, stoic like
his father; if there was a job that needed
to be done, he could do it.
School, though, was another story. Ed
wasn’t a good student and often got in
trouble; he was suspended twice, once
for fighting a white kid who called him
a racial slur. He dropped out his senior
year and joined the Gary Job Corps, a
government job training program that
took him to San Marcos. He returned
to New Chapel Hill, got his GED, and
played basketball in city leagues, enter-
ing tournaments and traveling to Hous-
ton, Dallas, and Austin. Sometimes he
and his friends engaged in petty thiev-
ery—of candy or gasoline—and othertimes they bought new Nikes and Guess
jeans from hustlers on the street.
One afternoon at the courts, Ed’s
old high school coach saw him and said
that he could probably get a basketball
scholarship at Western Oklahoma State
College, in Altus, a small town in the
southwestern part of that state. So in
the fall of 1989 he drove to Oklahoma
with two friends from Chapel Hill High
who became his roommates.
Far from home, Ed soon found him-
self in trouble again. As they had donein Tyler, he and his two roommates
would buy stolen Calvin Klein shirts
as well as toilet paper and deodorant.
One day that October, Ed and one of his
roommates were busted for concealing
stolen property. Ed was also charged
with stealing from a clothing store that
had, strangely enough, been set on fire.
Ed was charged with arson. He admitted
to possessing stolen clothes but denied
everything else.
The local DA offered Ed’s lawyer a
plea bargain: if Ed pleaded guilty to
arson, burglary, and concealing stolen
property, he would be sentenced to ten
years but get out in two if he behaved
himself. Ed mistakenly thought he was
getting probation and took the deal. He
was sent to a succession of reformato-
ries and work camps, then was arrested
again for trying to escape from one of
them—another felony—though Ed in-
sisted he and his fellow inmates had just
gone across the street to play basketball.
He finally wound up at a halfway house
in Oklahoma City, from which he was
released in the spring of 1993. He hadIT WAS PAST 1
A.M., AND HUKILL
BRIEFED WALLER ON
HIS CONVERSATION
WITH ED. THEY
BEGAN PIECING
TOGETHER WHAT
THEY BELIEVED TO
BE POSSIBLE CLUES.