In the summertime of 1974, I was sixteen years of ages, coping with my household in the North Texas city of Wichita Falls. I was a good person of a youngster: an Eagle Precursor, a participant of my secondary school’s discussion group, and a cellist in the institution band. I offered at the state psychological healthcare facility with my fellow precursors, reducing yards and cutting bushes, and every Sunday early morning I went to solutions at Fain Memorial Presbyterian Church, where my papa was the priest. When church participants asked me what I intended to do when I matured, I informed them I would certainly more than likely ended up being a priest myself, supplying joyful preachings regarding the happiness of the Christian life.
After that, on the early morning of June 22, I strolled right into the kitchen area and eyed the regional paper, the Wichita Falls Document Information, that my papa had actually generated from the lawn. Spread throughout the front web page, in hefty two-inch-high block kind, was the heading “Millionaire Oilman, Partner Found Dead: Pair Fatally Shot in Home Right Here.”
I felt my mouth go completely dry. The oilman was 53-year-old Bobby Burns, a lean wildcatter that pierced wells throughout Texas. His better half, Abbie, was a previous style version in her very early fifties that was defined in the paper’s culture columns as “lovely” and “eye-catching” and “tiny.”
Everyone in Wichita Falls understood the Burnses– or a minimum of found out about them. They resided in the grandest home in the city, a split-level, five-bedroom manor, greater than 9 thousand square feet in dimension, that they had actually developed on top of a hillside on their twenty-acre estate when their 4 kids were still young. The manor consisted of both an interior and an exterior pool, a prize space consisting of the heads of wild pets they had actually gotten on huge video game searching safaris in Africa, plus 2 shooting varieties in the cellar.
The estate was secured by a high chain-link fencing, attack dog, and a cutting edge alarm system system. If a burglar attempted to compel open a home window, the premises would instantly be swamped with outside lights, a loud bell would certainly start to clang, and one more alarm system would certainly inform the police headquarters.
Obviously, all that had actually not sufficed to maintain the Burnses secure. When the cops reached the manor, they uncovered the pair in their bed room, where they oversleeped different twin beds. Bobby was discovered in his bed using eco-friendly pyjamas. He had actually been fired 3 times– two times in the head and as soon as via the ideal wrist. Abbie, using a blue flower dress from Neiman Marcus, was resting on her back in her bed. She had actually been fired as soon as in the abdominal area, simply over her navel, the bullet accommodations near her spine. A snub-nosed.38 revolver, no question the murder tool, got on the flooring close to her.
At that factor in my life, I had actually reviewed a number of Sherlock Holmes tales and an Agatha Christie story. However I understood absolutely nothing regarding real criminal activity. I do not believe I understood any individual that had actually been detained and required to prison. And I definitely had actually never ever visualized that a person would certainly implement 2 of Wichita Falls’ most noticeable people in their manor, 3 miles from my home.
I was both horrified and paralyzed. Perhaps, I informed pals that collected at my papa’s church for our Sunday evening young people fellowship conference, the awesome was a specialist burglar that had actually gotten into the manor, swiped Bobby and Abbie’s cash and fashion jewelry, after that fired the pair so he might make a tidy trip.
Or possibly, I stated, my voice climbing, the awesome was a specialist assassin that had actually been worked with by among Bobby’s service competitors. “He might still be below hiding!” I virtually screamed.
3 days later on, the region’s primary clinical supervisor went down a bombshell: Bobby and Abbie Burns, he revealed, had actually not been eliminated by a burglar. Forensic examinations and postmortem examinations showed that the pair had actually passed away in what the clinical supervisor called an “evident murder-suicide.” He thought that Abbie had actually unclothed her bed in the center of the evening, got her gun, fired her other half, climbed up back right into bed, shot herself, and afterwards hemorrhaged to fatality.
I merely could not think it. Nobody could. Abbie was just one of those females that appeared to have all of it. She put on gorgeous clothing and styled her hair in a Doris Day– like bob. She tootled around community in Bobby’s Cadillac or Mercedes or in her very own Rolls-Royce, and she flew around the nation in their eight-seat exclusive jet. Along with having a credibility as a knowledgeable huge video game seeker, she was understood for her creative ability: She repainted fragile small landscapes on antique china.
So what could have led Abbie to dedicate such a terrible act? Was it due to something Bobby had done? Was it due to something Abbie herself had done?
I started my very own, amateur examination, bothering grownups at my papa’s church to see if they had any kind of concept of what occurred. When I went swimming that summertime at the Wichita Falls Nation Club with my wealthier pals, I attempted to be all ears on the discussions that the mothers were having while they lay on their easy chair, wishing I might get some reports.
Someday I made a decision to obtain a consider the manor, which I had actually never ever seen. I asked a pal that had his very own automobile– I had not yet passed my motorist’s examination– to take me there. We gradually made our method up capital and came close to the estate’s front gateways, which were flanked by the tusks of a significant bull elephant that Abbie had actually fired on among the pair’s safaris. Instantly I snooped a guard stepping towards us.
” We have actually reached leave below! I believe he’s obtained a weapon!” I sobbed. My close friend banged his foot on the gas pedal and competed pull back capital, his automobile knocking over pockets.
As the summertime endured, I maintained waiting on the cops to launch even more details regarding the capturings. However they closed down their examination. (” Absolutely nothing to suggest Burns was not killed by his better half that after that eliminated herself,” an investigator kept in mind in a transcribed record in July.) Neither did participants of the Burns household or their friends disclose anything openly regarding what may have brought about a murder-suicide. (” I never ever understood 2 better individuals,” the caretaker at the Burns estate informed one Dallas paper press reporter. “They were thoughtful and mindful and very easy to benefit.”) A press reporter for the New York Daily News, after that among one of the most prominent papers in America, also involved Wichita Falls to see if he might show up some solutions. However under the heading “One Weapon A Lot Of,” he confessed that he, as well, had actually turned up vacant. “Your home on capital,” he created, “was an excellent home for tricks.”
I returned to secondary school to complete my elderly year, and in the loss of 1975, I avoided to Texas Christian College, in Ft Well worth, to significant in English literary works. I was a devoted pupil: I check out Shakespeare and all the terrific American writers, and to boost my creating abilities, I functioned as a sporting activities press reporter for the pupil paper. After college graduation, I made a decision to provide journalism a shot. I landed tasks with The Dallas Early Morning News and, later on, with the Dallas Times Herald, where I was mainly designated to brief, cosy attribute tales, which commonly consisted of speaking with celebs that came via community. I talked to the pop vocalist Connie Francis, the renowned storyteller John Cheever, the young star LeVar Burton, and an 88-year-old dining establishment supervisor called Plennie L. Wingo, that was trying to stroll in reverse throughout the whole USA, worn a lovely pinstriped fit. “Backwards came he, in reverse like a crab,” I created in my opening paragraph. “Begin back, Plennie L. Wingo. Back.”
Trying to be kind, my colleagues stated I had a future creating fluff. To their credit scores, they really did not laugh when I informed them that what I truly wished to do was create novelistic real tales regarding those that had actually devoted criminal offenses.
I consumed over Ann Policy’s The Unfamiliar person Close to Me, Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry’s Helter Skelter: Real Tale of the Manson Murders, and, naturally, Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. When the papers’ expert cops press reporters took place trip, I periodically obtained the possibility to cover for them, investing nights in the cops division’s press space, browsing heaps of event records regarding automobile burglars, scam artist, handbag snatchers, panders, counterfeiters, and various other scoundrels.
I created a tale regarding 3 young adults that swiped a pig. I narrated the life and times of 2 bros that wed 2 siblings and afterwards convinced them to join their home-burglary ring. And from time to time, I would certainly reach remain on a front-row bench in a court and cover a murder test, intensely making note as hard-boiled cops investigators, the sleeves of their fit layers extended tight around their arms, affirmed in monotone voices regarding Dallas people that had actually fired, stabbed, bludgeoned, mutilated, infected, sank, or electrocuted their sufferers.
Ultimately I landed a desirable task at Texas Regular monthly, functioning along with a lineup of authors and editors that were renowned for creating precisely the sort of deeply reported stories I desired release. I obtained the possibility to create even more real criminal activity: stories regarding love and dishonesty, blame and retribution, malignance and insanity. I profiled a homicidal Baptist preacher, a homicidal united state Flying force cadet, a homicidal armored automobile burglar, and a homicidal sectarian undertaker. I invested days speaking with a very experienced picture painter in Dallas that late in the evening got sex employees and remove their eyeballs; I consumed alcohol beer in West Texas with a male extensively considered a hellish cult leader; and I complied with a gang of motorbike criminals that were associated with a harmful freeway fight with one more well-known staff.
” Are you a nouveau riche asshole?” the leader of among the gangs asked me.
” No sir, not me,” I responded, sweat rolling down my back.
But the hoodlums that a lot of fascinated me were females. Although a few of them were as set as Texas’s best women lawbreaker, Bonnie Parker, the Depression-era, gunslinging companion of Clyde Barrow, nearly all the others appeared to be good, obedient people living mainly regular lives.
I satisfied a committed better half and mommy from the Houston residential areas that overnight had actually become a determined, knife-wielding awesome. I hung around with a kindly registered nurse from the community of Nocona that daily would certainly consume lunch by herself at the regional Milk Queen prior to heading back to the healthcare facility to murder her clients. I endured a murder test in Ft Well worth of a preferred young adult that had actually chosen that the only method her life would certainly improve was if she infected her papa. I hounded friends of a middle-aged Dallas female that resided in a studio apartment with her mommy and that occasionally spruced up as a cowboy and burglarized financial institutions.
Which’s simply a list. There were numerous others that interested me. I examined the life of an extravagant Houston socialite that appeared to have an ingrained requirement to do away with her other halves, seen with a senior East Texas seamstress that 33 years previously had actually made 5 getaway efforts from jail prior to ultimately fleing permanently, and went seeking an exceptional team of brazen wrongdoers– killers, burglars, burglars, and grifters– that were jailed in the 1940s at the Goree State Ranch, after that Texas’s single stockade for females.
I likewise went into the murder-suicide of Bobby and Abbie Burns, analyzing postmortem examination documents and fatality certifications and reading the clinical supervisor’s composed searchings for in addition to the cops division’s 27-page investigatory record regarding the capturings, the discolored ink hardly noticeable on the web pages. I called a minimum of a loads Wichita Falls homeowners that had actually understood Abbie and Bobby, asking if they had actually ever before been informed why Abbie did what she did. They stated they were sorry, however they had no concept. I connected to participants of the Burns household, however they weren’t thinking about talking with me.
A couple of individuals did hand down one report– that Bobby, that was stated to have had an eye for various other females, had actually been continuing a sizzling romance. According to the report, Bobby wished to wed his girlfriend, however Abbie was having none of it. (” The old expression of ‘if I can not have him no one can,’ might have been going through her head that evening,” Julie Williams Coley, a regional writer, created in her background How Did They Pass away?: Murders in Northern Texas 1926– 1975. “Why else would certainly Abbie eliminate her other half and afterwards herself unless it was due to the fact that her other half was leaving her?”)
Over the years, I got one more brand-new item of chatter– that Abbie may’ve had a secret life of her very own. So why, after firing Bobby, would certainly she make a decision to transform the weapon on herself? According to individuals I talked to, she really did not intend to manage the general public embarassment of an apprehension, a murder test, and a jail sentence. As one wealthy Wichita Falls female informed me, “Abbie undoubtedly had actually determined she was mosting likely to head out her method.”
But I discovered no proof that any one of the chatter held true. When I talked to 88-year-old Tim Eyssen, that was Wichita Region’s area lawyer in 1974, he informed me that cops investigators had actually never ever notified him of any kind of supposed romance. Neither, he stated, had they ever before pointed out any kind of intention Abbie might’ve had for wishing to eliminate her other half.
” So the enigma of the Burnses’ murders appears predestined to continue to be simply that– a secret?” I asked.
” I dislike to claim this, however I’m not exactly sure this instance will certainly ever before be fixed,” Eyssen responded.
I lately went back to Wichita Falls to jab about one more time and see that may accept be spoken with. However I had no good luck. At the end of the day, I made a decision to make my method up Memorial Drive to take one last check out the manor on top of capital. There were brand-new proprietors, naturally. The elephant tusks by the front entrance had actually been removed long earlier, and there disappeared attack dog roaming the premises.
I placed my automobile in park. For a minute, I visualized that I might listen to the shooting originating from Abbie’s.38 revolver that evening– 4 shots that would certainly for life haunt an area. I could not aid however ask yourself: What was Abbie really feeling ideal after that? Was she eaten with craze? Was she bewildered with distress as she grabbed her weapon?
I rested there for a couple of mins a lot more. It was a cozy mid-day. Bugs hummed around my open front home window. A light wind started to rattle the fallen leaves of neighboring trees. Ultimately, I sighed, placed the automobile right into drive, and made my back down capital. The tale that had actually released my long-lasting fixation, I recognized, was one I may never ever have the ability to inform.
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This write-up initially showed up in the October 2025 concern of Texas Monthly with the heading “My Very first Murder.” Subscribe today.
When you purchase a publication making use of a web link on this web page, a section of your acquisition mosts likely to independent book shops and Texas Monthly obtains a compensation. Thanks for sustaining our journalism.
