Murder in Austin.
In July of 1896,, a large, rambling Victorian boarding house, graced the corner of 9th and Brazos. This was retail property for William Eugene Burt, his wife, Annie 27-years, and their two daughters Elinor, age 2, and Lucile, 18 months.
Although Eugene was described as a loving husband and sweet father to his children, he was not a good provider. He couldn’t hold down a steady job, not even at the shoe store the 600 block of Congress Avenue run by his two brothers. They even loaned him money to start a cigar store in New Orleans. Eugene gambled the money away, lied about it, and begged for more, only to be refused. So, it was decided that the family would pull up stakes and move to Dallas, where Eugene would look for work from different relatives.
The day of the big move came, But when the family’s housekeeper, many woke up that Saturday, only Eugene was in the house. He said there had been some trouble the night before and that he had put his wife Annie and the 2 children on the 5:00 AM train to San Antonio. They were to wait there while Eugene set up housekeeping in Dallas. Much of their furnishings were being sold to Miller’s furniture store, and a wagon was arriving in the afternoon. So, Eugene and Minnie sorted through the sellable goods and pack up what they were taking with them.
When Minnie was preparing breakfast, she noticed the pump handle to the well or cistern was missing. Eugene said he had removed it because he saw a cat fall into the cistern the night before, and didn’t want anyone using the water.
While packing, Minnie observed that Eugene was sometimes overly cheerful, at other times red faced and bursting into tears as she wouldlater testify.
Knowing that Mr Burt wanted to sell the picture frames, she asked Eugene what she should do with the photographs. Eugene told her to put them in the trash pile. This also was suspicious.
Minnie was relieved when Mr Miller’s wagon arrived. She got her final wages, and left the Burt household, Sorry that she never was able to say goodbye to Annie and her sweet children.
When she saw Annie’s mother Mrs Powers after mass at St Mary’s Church the following day, she told Mrs. Powers the same thing, she wished she had been able to say goodbye to the children and Annie before they went to San Antonio. Mrs Powers was mystified. They didn’t know anyone in San Antonio? Any time there had been trouble between her daughter and Eugene she and the children always came to stay with her. At that moment, the memory that Annie had told her that she would awaken in the middle of the night to find Eugene standing over her, staring blankly.
The very next day, Mrs Powers asked the police to go to her daughter’s house and survey the property.
They walked around the property and found nothing suspicious except a weird smell coming from the basement door. By Tuesday, she was frantic. There had been no word from her daughter, or Eugene. She went to the Burt shoe store and pleaded with the the Eugene’s brothers Roscoe and Silas to check the inside of the house for clues. She knew that Roscoe had a spare key.
The brothers reluctantly left the store and after running into an acquaintance on Congress, the two gentlemen walked. The few blocks to the house and unlocked it. Almost immediately, they were overcome by the stench. In the silence, they could hear the humming of hundreds of flies through the floorboards in the basement. Bravely descending the stairs, they removed the lid of the cistern. And instead of finding a dead cat, they discovered the bound and bloated bodies of Annie and the two children.
Handkerchiefs were tied tightly around the victims necks. It was thought at first that this was meant to mercifully strangle them, but it was actually to limit the flow of blood after blunt force trama to their heads. The autopsies of Annie and the children were performed, ironically, at Miller’s furniture store, where their caskets were made, surrounded by all their former possessions.
The funerals and burials were done by Thursday, with Annie and her children buried in her parents family plot at Mount Calvary Cemetery. under her maiden name of Powers, not the married name of Mrs William Eugene Burt.
A manhunt began for the prime suspect, Eugene. He was found in Chicago on August 10th, whensomeone pointed him out to the police who was a former resident of Austin and knew the family. They had read about the murders in the Chicago newspaper. Eugene was arrested and put on a southbound train to Austin.
An angry crowd was waiting at the train station. But the smart sheriff and his prisoner disembarked a few miles down the tracks where a carriage awaited. By the time the train pulled into Austin Station, Eugene Burt was booked at the old Travis County Jail where the Greer Building is today.
The trial.
Eugene’s trial was nothing short of sensational. The court room was packed each day and citizens absorbed every detail of the trial’s account in the newspapers. All the lurid details, the description of the bodies, opening the packing cases he’d sent to Chicago that contained bloody bedclothes, draperies and the hatchet still smeared with brain matter. The entire time Eugene’s countenance was calm and emotionless. Each day, moments after the proceedings would start, his eyelids would flutter shut, and he would sit there, as though in a trance.
Justice was swift. The verdict was guilty. The execution date set.
But Eugene’s brother Roscoe appealed for a stay of execution on the grounds that Eugene was insane. A second trial was scheduled, and a parade of psychiatrists, psychologists, phrenologists who measured his head to see if his brain was abnormal, took the stand. His guards were questioned to report on his behavior, but no evidence was found that indicated he was insane, and the trial ended in a hung jury.
He was given a third trial, and another guilty verdict. An execution date was set. Roscoe almost intervened again, but it was Eugene himself who said enough. “Let it be done. I want to be with my wife and children”.
The night before his execution, he spent a long time sitting at the table in his cell, writing. He went through many drafts of his final statement until he was pleased with what would be published in the paper. He denied anyone to take any of his organs for examination, especially his brain, as had been requested. And then he wrote one last letter to his brothers.
When dawn came, he ate a hearty breakfast. He was led to the courtyard to face A hundreds of witnesses. He remarked calmly. O, my. There are so many more here than I expected. When asked for any last words, he said, with the exception of the disgrace attached to this scene, this is the happiest moment of my life.
The trap was released, and William Eugene Burt’s neck snapped with the fall.
There was a quiet burial at Oakwood Cemetery in the Burt family plot. The time of it was kept secret from the public at Eugene’s request. And yet, a heavily veiled woman who remains unidentified, showed up, laid a bouquet of flowers on the casket as it lowered and left. In his last letter to his brothers, Eugene gives us a glimpse into what can only be described today as schizophrenia.
He wrote of the killer and 3rd person saying: Great God be thanked, the hellish brute that took from me the sweets of my life, who snapped the human cords of my heart, that took from me and sent to heaven. My loved ones, will never see the fulfillment of the ends of lawful justice. How happy to lay and dream, to hear the howls and shrieks and screams of his tortured soul.