San Antonio News Express story
By , Staff writerUpdated
On April 6, 1984, Texans learned a horrifying secret in the tiny town of Mountain Home. Federal, state and local authorities raided a 3,500-acre ranch about 20 miles northwest of Kerrville, where they found that a father-son duo had been kidnapping, torturing and killing hitchhikers.
Located an hour north of San Antonio in a small community in unincorporated Kerr County was what came to be known as the Texas Slave Ranch for the ghastly crimes committed there.
The property was owned by 55-year-old Walter Ellebracht Sr. and his 33-year-old son, Junior, who made their income by chopping down cedar trees and selling the wood and cedar key chains to businesses in the San Antonio area.
The two lured hitchhikers to the ranch with the promise of work and then forced them to stay without compensation or freedom by threatening them with death, news articles said. Officials claimed at their trial that they started torturing the workers after Ellebracht Sr.’s wife ran away with one of them years before.
Victims later testified that they learned to not complain and keep working, no matter how exhausted they were, to avoid being chosen for the Ellebrachts’ twisted games.
Ranch foreman Carlton Robert Caldwell said in court that Ellebracht Sr. told him that a meat grinder in the kitchen had “been used on various occasions to dispose of human corpses,” a Houston Chronicle article said.
Another former worker testified that he was forced to stand in a self-dug ditch with a noose around his neck while a coin was tossed to determine whether he would be hanged. The Ellebrachts forced him to write a suicide note and told him: “Welcome to your nightmare,” newspaper articles about the trial said.
The Ellebracht men and Caldwell were convicted in 1986 of aggravated kidnapping but were acquitted of murder in the death of a worker named Anthony Bates due to authorities’ failure to find a body or murder weapon.
On Feb. 18, 1984, the Ellebracht men drove to San Antonio to find workers, eventually convincing six men to work for them in exchange for housing and food. Among the group was Bates, a 28-year-old, one-eyed drifter from Alabama.
Law enforcement officials said Bates injured his leg and was unable to work, so he was allegedly tied up, kicked, beaten, starved and shocked with an electric cattle prod until his death, according to a 1986 Houston Chronicle article.
The cattle prod released up to 4,000 volts of electricity, according to an article by the online publication Ranker. Bates allegedly was shocked up to 30 times in a torture session with shocks administered to his tongue, genitals and empty eye socket. Others alleged that after Bates died, his body was doused in gasoline and set on fire while the father and son listened to Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire.”
The raid on the ranch revealed charred human bone fragments around the property and audiotapes of the torture sessions conducted by the Ellebracht family. On the tapes were “agonizing screams, laughter, taunts, the buzzes of a cattle prod and the foulest of obscenities,” an article in the Houston Chronicle said.
The two Ellebracht men and 21-year-old Caldwell were arrested for conspiracy to commit aggravated kidnapping. Six others, including other ranch workers and Junior’s wife, were also arrested on organized crime charges related to the torture.
During the trial, testimony from former workers painted a horrifying picture of mental and physical torture, rape and death.
Ellebracht Sr. received probation, Junior remained free throughout his 15-year sentence due to appeals, and Caldwell served less than three years of his 14-year sentence.
Ellebracht Sr. died in 2003, and his son followed in 2017. Caldwell is still alive and lives in San Antonio.
