Christmas Killings

The vast King Ranch ("almost as big as Delaware"--1,250,000 acres) near Corpus Christi, Texas has had a standing war with poachers. In 1936 Texas was stirred when Luther and John Blanton "crossed the wire" to shoot ducks, were never seen again. One night last week Game Wardens Dawson R. Murchison, Jack McCarley and Jim Robinson were patrolling the mesquite for night poachers--Mexicans or "plain whites" who sneak in after dark and shoot deer which they blind with car headlights or with jacklights fastened on their caps. Seeing two lights weaving through the brush, the wardens crouched until the poachers were a few paces away, then challenged them. The lights went out, a shotgun blared. Warden Murchison fell, torn with buckshot. He died before reaching the hospital, 14 miles away at Alice.

>William Case, 84, of Strongsville, Ohio was called "Santa Claus" for his long white beard, his practice of giving nickels to children at Christmas, and for the groves of Christmas trees he had planted and tended on his farm since boyhood. Each year he sent one of his tallest and best trees to decorate Cleveland's public square. This month The American Magazine wrote him up as an interesting American. Fame brought the world to William Case's evergreen groves: people who came at night and stole his trees by the truckload. One night last week he heard someone chopping down a tree that grew near the road. Old William Case seized his shotgun, slipped up on two figures tying the chopped tree to their rickety automobile. With no word of warning, outraged old "Santa Claus" fired twice. William Rousseau, 37, fell dead. His wife, Minnie, 29, weltered in her blood. Explained old William Case, calmly: "The tree was theirs for the asking. . . . But when people steal them it's different."

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