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A TEXAS WITCH ON TRIALChas S. CliftonColorado State University, Pueblochas.clifton@csupueblo.edu0.5840/jrv20191959Abstract: Although Wicca, or contemporary Pagan witchcraft, is by all definitions a new religious movement, it lacks many of the characteristics the NRMs often display, such as a charismatic founder(s), millenarian prophecies, or new forms of social order. Nor have Wiccans been identified with commonly studied forms of violence with NRMs, such as mass suicides, violence against former members, or attacks on surrounding populations. In 1980, however, as Wicca was on the verge of both a growth spurt and increased media attention, Loy Stone, a leader of one organization, the Church of Wicca, was tried for murder in Texas. The victim, a 15-year-old girl, was one of a large group of teenagers who had been committing acts of harassment and vandalism during October 1977 at the farm inhabited by Stone, his wife, and his elderly mother, actions I would categorize as falling into the folkloric definition of “legend trips.” The Stone case makes clear the persistence of abusive stereotypes of “devil-worshipers” in America. Finally, it challenged members of the Wiccan community to decide whether the Stones should be supported or rhetorically cast out.Keywords: Wicca, witchcraft, murder, Texas, violence, legend tripThe colorful calendar that hung on Loy and Louise Stone’s kitchen wall was a promotional item from Parson Rexall Drug of nearby Dimmitt, Texas. For the first months of 1977, there are few notations on the dates. In October, that changes. For example, on Sunday, October 2nd, is written “Car in yard several times.” On Sunday, October 9th, “2–4 a.m. harassment of Mom.” On the 10th and 11th, simply “Harassment.” On Friday the 14th, “Pur s gun” [purchased shotgun] and “Harassment. Big S call 4 red M stakeout.” On Friday the 21st, “Some harassment small 8 p.m. and 9 p.m.”Louise Stone, 47, who made the notes, would expand on them in a letter to some Pagan friends in Albuquerque: The harassment was in the form of cars and pickups driving slowly by the houses (particularly Mom’s house) and honking, shouting obscenities, throwing bottles and cans, racing in and out of the hard, and shooting into the yard as they drove by (Stone 1977).center635The home of Ruby Stone, 77, Loy’s mother, sat next to the road and took most of the punishment, such as being hit by a shotgun blast earlier in October (Moseley 1980c). There are no notations on the 29th and 30th. Then on Halloween night, violence exploded. Despite the Stones’ best efforts to present their religion in a non-sensational way, to the teenagers of Castro and Deaf Smith counties, they were now the “devil-worshipers” on FM 2397. Multiple car and pickup-loads of high school-aged youths started cruising past the farmstead, which consisted of Ruby Stone’s house, Loy and Louise’s house (set further back from the road), and a large metal barn. A concrete-block pump house sat in a clump of cottonwood trees across the drive from Ruby Stone’s home. Over the course of the evening, a high-school student died, and the Stones found themselves charged with murder.Wicca, NRMS, and ViolenceAs British historian Ronald Hutton wrote in The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft, Wicca is indeed a new religious movement, yet in many ways it stands apart. “It is new in the sense that it has appeared or surfaced only in the relatively recent past, and it is certainly both religious and a movement of sorts”(Hutton 1999, 412). When referring to the work of Eileen Barker, a leading British scholar of NRMs, he notes,[Pagan witchcraft] is not a religion to which she and her colleagues have devoted any research, preferring to concentrate upon Christian sects and religious groups of Eastern provenance. . . . [Pagan witchcraft] is remarkably unlike most of the other movements in this category [NRMs]. It does not depend heavily upon one or a few charismatic leaders. It does not appeal overwhelmingly to a particular age group or cultural group. It does not offer a radical break with existing family and social relationships, and does not openly challenge the wider culture. Nor is the essence of its message an assured means of personal salvation. (Hutton 1999, 413)When confronting this issue’s theme of NRMs and violence, I, like Hutton, find myself saying “Not that. Not that.” Wicca (using the term broadly to indicate the idea of Pagan witchcraft as religion) is not millenarian. It does not glorify martyrdom. It does not encapsulate its followers within walled compounds—or s nor within walled compounds of the mind. Wicca does not require extreme ritual or personal purity, nor does it countenance ritual suicide as with Heaven’s Gate or the Solar Temple movements. Wiccans have not released poison gas in subway cars nor died in shoot-outs with federal authorities. Although this accusation has been leveled against the new Pagan movements of Eastern Europe and parts of the former Soviet Union, Wicca is not particularly nationalistic. Ronald Hutton does express some national pride when he writes that “the unique significance of pagan witchcraft to history is that it is the only religion which England has ever given the world.” But as a neophyte world religion, popping up not only in Britain, Ireland, and North America but in much of Europe, plus Brazil and Mexico to name a few other countries, Wicca generally avoids “blood and soil” appeals to its followers.At this point, I should make it clear that I write as a Wiccan scholar. In journalism, my first career, I encountered new religious movements such as the Way International and Summit Lighthouse (later the Church Universal and Triumphant), then headquartered in Colorado Springs, where I worked. My newspaper writing on new religious movements led me to graduate school and into a second career in academia. My wife and I were also friends of Loy and Louise Stone, whom we met a year before the incidents described in this article. We continued to be friends with them for the rest of their lives. And like all of their friends, we had to face the question, “Did one of them shoot Roxanne Casas?”When I study such books as James Lewis’s edited collection Violence and New Religious Movements, the violence described—mass suicides, for example—seems foreign to the Wiccan experience (Lewis 2011). Instead, the violence that I witnessed or heard about generally took the form of name-calling, vandalism, and even attempted arson at homes, shops, or communal houses occupied by members of Wiccan groups. In several cases this harassment escalated to gunfire; in the Colorado case with which I am most familiar, that included the shooting of two milk goats with rifles and the blasting of a building’s porch light with shotgun pellets and, in retaliation, a shotgun blast fired into a harasser’s car. Some of these cases—but not all—involved small town or rural settings, but in at least two cases they occurred in major cities. While many of the types of violence attributed to various new religious movements are not appropriate for discussing Wicca, Wiccans, however, are frequently victims of what James T. Richardson labels “atrocity tales.” These tales serve to permit or justify attacks upon groups or individuals. David Bromley and colleagues defined an atrocity as an event that is perceived as a flagrant violation of a fundamental cultural value, generally characterized by the following elements: (1) some sense of moral outrage and indignation in relation to the perceived value violations; (2) the authorization of some sort of punitive sanctions; and (3) the mobilization of control efforts by the offended or injured part against the apparent perpetrators. (Richardson 2011, 43)Ronald Hutton, quoted above, admits that he was troubled by “the sheer scale of the ignorance concerning Paganism and the wildness of the hostile assumptions readily made about it, even among highly educated, sophisticated, influential, and generally well-informed individuals.” Even such people, he writes, perpetuated the stereotypes of “blood sacrifice, child abuse and sexual orgies, following a general stereotype of antisocial behavior which had prevailed in Europe since the beginning of history and become linked to witches by early modern demonologists” (Hutton 2003, 274). As Norman Cohn famously wrote in Europe’s Inner Demons: An Enquiry Inspired by the Great Witch-Hunt, similar accusations were made by ancient Romans against “Oriental” cults (such as that of Dionysus and early Christianity), by later Christians against various heretical movements, and by Christians against alleged witches (Cohn 1977). They remain part of our culture’s mental furniture, ready to be set out and occupied whenever a new group is suspected, such as daycare providers during the “Satanic Panic” of the 1980s.Although I will discuss the attacks on the Stones below in the context of “legend trips,” it is worth remembering the suddenness with which the attacks began. Nor should we assume that the teenagers involved acted without a sense of tacit adult sanction; the district attorney’s attitude during the trial would imply as much. Likewise, Adriana Rangel, one of the participants, testified that in school that day, her math teacher, Libby Cleveland, talked in class about devil worshippers, although not about the Stones specifically (Rangel 1978, 10–12, 60–61).Summarizing Castro County attitudes three months later, in preparation for the defense’s request for a change of venue, defense investigator William Sneed of Allstate Security Industries, Inc., Amarillo, noted that “approximately 90% of the people [in Dimmitt] had formed the opinion that the Stones were guilty of murder . . . Approximately 10% of the people were no sure about who killed Roxanne Casas and some of them suspected the Sheriff as the murderer. Approximately 10% of the people were of the opinion that the Stones would receive a fair trial . . . the people in the community knew them as good people” (Sneed 1978c, 72). The Stones and the Church of Wicca2888615-55880In a movement dominated by young people in coastal states, the Stones were exceptions. Both were native Texans: Loy described himself as a “oil-field brat” whose parents had moved onto their three hundred Panhandle acres in 1943, in an area dominated by grain and cotton farms. Louise had grown up in the area, Castro County, attending high school in Dimmitt, population about 5,000. Although both came from agricultural families that attended the local Baptist church, both were social outsiders and questioners of received wisdom. “I got into mysticism when I was 8 years old, “ said Loy. “A friend of my dad’s, a 32nd Degree Mason, had been to the Near East and started telling me about Egyptian mysticism. It intrigued me.” Then came Bridey Murphy and its arguments favoring reincarnation, in which the Stones believe. Next was Edgar Cayce, the “godfather” of psychic religion and proponent of clairvoyance. Loy and Louise studied hypnosis, ESP, and in 1961, joined the American Society for Psychical Research. (Slagle 1979b) 2887980-48260Loy and Louise met in high school. He enlisted in the Navy, served his hitch, and then they married. Both attended West Texas State University (now West Texas A & M) in nearby Canyon. She earned a BS in history, he a BS in biology and an MA in counseling. Not interested in farming, they leased their land to neighboring farmers for a steady income. Loy taught high school briefly and also maintained a small counseling practice. Louise worked as a commercial and industrial photographer and also sold plastic irrigation pipe-repair gear to the cotton farmers. They spent much of their time on study of the paranormal, reincarnation, psychic development, and similar topics (Jubera 1981). They also raised two daughters, who were in their twenties at the time of the trial and living in Amarillo. Knowing of their interests, a friend showed them an advertisement for the School of Wicca in Mensa magazine in the early 1970s. They signed up for the mail order lessons, completed every one through the “Doctorate of Celtic Wicca” level, and were designated flamen and flamenca (“lightbearer,” equivalent to high priest/ess) in the Church of Wicca. The Church of Wicca and the School of Wicca—for a time combined as the Church and School of Wicca—were created by Gavin (1930–2016) and Yvonne Frost (b. 1931) in the 1960s. Despite the name, they were not directly connected with the form of Wicca originated and named by Gerald Gardner, Doreen Valiente, and British Wiccans of the 1950s, nor did the Frosts create a fictive magico-religious pedigree to the extent that many British non-Wiccan witches did. In one of their later books, they write, “Wicca is an alternative spiritual path based on Witchcraft” (Frost and Frost 200711, iv n1). Gavin, who was born in Staffordshire, did drop vague references to magical practitioners whom he had met in England and in Germany, but without naming names.Gavin Frost’s first career was in the aerospace industry, which he entered after advanced study in physics and math in the UK. During that time, working in several countries, he continued his occult studies. Eventually, after splitting with his first wife, he would marry Yvonne Wilson, who had a background in Buddhism and Spiritualism and shared his interests. They moved from southern California to Missouri, supporting themselves for a time as back-to-the-land hog farmers. (Gavin had grown up in rural England, so this life was not totally new to him.) Subsequently they relocated to New Bern, North Carolina, and Hinton, West Virginia. After writing and teaching their form of Wicca for several years, both in person and by correspondence, they sought legal status as a church and were eventually given federal status as a tax-exempt entity in 1972. In its application, the Church of Wicca listed these core principles: (1) The Wiccan Rede—“If it harm none, do what you will” (2) Power through knowledge (3) The Law of Attraction and Threefold Return (4) Harmony with the Universe (5) Reincarnation (6) The circle representing Spirit and Deity Theologically, the school taught that the Source of all was non-gendered, but that humans had created the many images of gods and goddesses—and that these were now real beings with attributes. The school’s lessons did not emphasize devotional practices but were more concerned with such ideas as meditation, astral travel, developing a healthy and financially secure lifestyle, and the raising and magic as a natural force in the universe.In 1986 a panel of federal judges in the 4th Circuit affirmed a lower court’s ruling that recognized Wicca as a religion, something contested by Virginia state prison authorities in a case brought by a prisoner seeking to have Wiccan ritual tools for his own use, including an athame (ritual dagger) (Dettmer v. Landon, 799 F.2d 929). But whereas the lower court had supported the plaintiff, the appellate court said, in effect, “Yes, Wicca is indeed a religion, but prison authorities may still prohibit those items.” Because the court used the Church of Wicca’s materials in defining Wicca as a religion, the Frosts regarded the decision as a victory for Wicca pleting all the School of Wicca coursework up to the “Doctor of Celtic Witchcraft” level, the Stones became the number-two couple in the organization, heads of the Church of Wicca (when it was a separate entity) and in charge of the process of chartering member churches. Nevertheless, reading the correspondence flowing between Dimmitt, Texas, and New Bern, North Carolina, makes it clear that authority always remained with the Frosts.In the mid-1970s, the Stones took on the task of organizing some of its annual “Samhain Seminars,” mini-conventions with classes and workshops held in a hotel over a long weekend at the end of October. Since the Stones lived in the Texas Panhandle, they chose hotels in Amarillo, roughly equidistant between Dallas and Fort Worth to the east, Albuquerque to the west, and the Colorado Front Range cities to the northwest. In September 1977, they invited an Amarillo television station to interview them about that year’s Samhain Seminar, to be held at the Howard Johnson East in Interstate 40 in Amarillo.Five Teenagers in a Pickup Truck: “We Were Talking about Devil-Worshipers”By giving an interview to an Amarillo television station, intended to publicize the 1977 Church of Wicca Samhain Seminar—which was open to the public for a small registration fee—the Stones found themselves the objects of teen “legend trips.” As a reporter for the New York Daily News framed the event,It was the teenagers of Dimmitt and Hereford who were struck by the revelation of witchcraft in their midst, and it was the teenagers who set out by car and truck that Halloween Eve [sic] to “find some witches,” to catch a little devil worship, to harass, and in one case, to die. (Slagle 1979a)Adriana Rangel, 15, one of the teens, said in her deposition in a civil case against the Stones that she and other kids about been “talking about devil worshipers” during the week before Halloween and that another student said that she had cruised by the Stones’ house with her uncle looking for devil-worshipers in the past. (Rangel 1978, 16–17)In nearby Hereford, whose high school was the other major source of harassment, student Paul Andrew Bell described a drive-by earlier in October, “I [and four other Hereford HS students] decided to go see the devil-worshipers or Old Man Stone’s house. We drove down to his house, slowed down when we got to it, to look at the ‘S’ on the door and the picture of an eye in his window.” He turned around for a second pass, saw a man standing in the “bar [borrow] ditch,” thought he heard a shot but found no damage to his 1977 tan Chevrolet Monza. Another girl who made repeated trips to the house thought someone chased her car and shot at it but did not hit it. Other kids admitted to multiple trips and to “asking questions” of Loy’s mother, who was closest to the road.A “legend trip,” writes sociologist Jeffrey Victor, is a “widely practiced teenage custom . . . .a form of recreational entertainment” (Victor 1993, 137). Most common among rural, small-town, and suburban youths, such trips involve fear, law-breaking (at times), and sexuality. Victor was studying the “Satanic ritual abuse”moral panic of the 1980s, epitomized by the McMartin preschool trial, the longest and most expensive in American history, in which mental health professionals, social workers, lawyers, and law enforcement figures together pushed a narrative of “inter-generational Satanism,” conspiracy, and the breeding of children for sacrifice. In the Stones’ case, “atrocity tales” already present within the culture—not just youth culture—fed the legend trip. A legend trip is a clandestine group activity, in which the presence of any adult is definitely not desired. One reason is that a legend trip functions as a kind of ritual for adolescents to prove their courage, much like some [American] Indian adolescents used to prove their bravery by stealing horses from another Indian tribes. Another reason is that a legend trip usually involves deliberately transgressing the rules of adult society and even breaking laws, in order to enhance the exciting risk of danger. . . . In a sense, adults are the other “tribe” for teenagers on a legend trip. (Victor 1993, 138)In books such as Aliens, Ghosts, and Cults: Legends We Live (Ellis 2003) and Lucifer Ascending (Ellis 2004), the American folklorist Bill Ellis used the term “legend trip” to describe a variety of trips in which youths may visit macabre sites of crime, death, and high strangeness. Most the elements that he described were present on FM 2397. The teens taunted adults by transgressing property boundaries, yelling obscenities and threats, honking horns, and firing guns.The group in the red Ford pickup met at a Halloween carnival in Dimmitt.Carlos Garza, 18, had lived near Hereford about three years, dropping out of high school partway through the eleventh grade to go to work. At the time of the incident, he was a janitor at Plains Memorial Hospital in Dimmitt. His family’s residence was about a mile from the Stones,’ and they at times bought eggs from Ruby Stone.After taking his younger siblings trick-or-treating in Dimmitt, Garza went to the carnival, where he bumped into his friend Arthur Hererra, 18. They also encountered three girls whom they knew casually: Roxanne Casas, 15, Adriana Rangel, 15, and Maria Trevino, 15. The truck belonged to Casas’ father; Trevino testified that they invited the boys “in case they had car trouble” (Moseley 1980a).They set out at an undetermined time: Arthur Hererra was driving with Adriana Rangel sitting next to him, Roxanne in the center, and Carlos on the right with Maria in his lap, facing toward the others. Arthur Herrera had dropped out during his senior year of high school to go to work. He knew Adriana Rangel slightly, he said, Maria Trevino hardly at all, and he had not met Roxanne Casas until that night (Herrera 1978, 11). He said they were just “riding around” at first, including visiting a pond “that everyone goes to,” where they met another carload of Hispanic youths, one of them Trevino’s older brother, who would end up leading them to the Stones’ house. As in many legends, there was an erotic element. As folklorist Elizabeth Bird puts it, the template of legend trips is for girls to “remain in the car, hang back, egg the boys on, plead with them to stop, or all of the above.” The boys prove their masculine daring, and the girls validate it. “In addition, the goal of the males is often to scare the girls, and then assert their sexual power over them . . . .the arousal produced by fear just might translated into sexual arousal” (Bird 1994, 206).A Timeline of Halloween Were this incident to occur today, there would be multiple smartphone videos of everything, as well as better law-enforcement record-keeping. Such was not the case in West Texas in 1977. When reading this timeline, it must be understood that with one exception, it was re-created from the participants’ memories. The exception is 8:45 p.m., the time at which the wounded and dying teenagers arrived at Plains Memorial Hospital in Dimmitt, as testified by Mitzie Brockman, RN, the charge nurse, and Rosa Lee Neal, LVN, who assisted her. And even they were busy treating patients and summoning the on-call doctor; paperwork was completed later. “It was between 8:00 and 9:00, somewhere around 8:45 or something like that,” Neal recollected (1978, 5), while Brockman testified (1978, 6), “All I know is it was dark. So, it must have been—it should have been between—probably between 8:00 and 9:00 o’clock. Well, here, [on Roxanne Casa’s treatment record], here’s 8:45 P.M.”At the sheriff’s dispatch desk, which also dispatched the Dimmitt police, dispatcher Gene Stroud, 21, failed to meet even the sheriff’s minimum procedures, telling defense attorney James Doores in response to a question about record-keeping,Well, [the records consist of] just whatever we write down on the log. But on this one—we have a big scratch pad underneath it, and I got into a habit of writing on it, and we can’t find that piece of paper that came off of that log. (Stroud 1978, 6)The sheriff’s department did not record radio traffic between the dispatcher and units in the field. Consequently, the timeline below is reconstructed from various people’s memories, and no one seems to have looked at a clock or watch.7:15–7:20 p.m. (Louis Stone): Ruby Stone calls her son’s house to report a vehicle in the yard outside her home. (Stone 1977a)7:20 p.m.(Louise Stone): “Pickup and car stopped in front of our house and starting yelling and honking.” (Stone 1977a)7:30 p.m. (Louise Stone): One of the Stones calls the sheriff’s office and also Fred Moulton, a deputy whom they liked, at home. Unfortunately, he tells them that he had resigned from the department that very day. The visits continue “about every 10–20 minutes. . . .We really don’t know at what time the [Casas] pickup was in the yard. It was when this pickup was in the yard that Loy fired a shot into the air to scare them off.” (Stone 1977b)About 8:00 p.m.: Sheriff Martin tells Stroud that he will respond to the Stones’ home. He is at least fifteen miles away, but there is no traffic, and speed limits do not apply to him. He stops briefly, however, to talk to a carload of teens coming from the direction of the Stones’ home. His notes on names and license plate are lost. (Martin 1978, 26)8:10 p.m. (Stroud): Louise Stone calls to see why no sheriff’s car has arrived in response to her previous call. Immediately after, Sheriff Martin radios to say that he has sent a carload of kids from Hereford home. (Stroud 1977)About 8:20 p.m.: Sheriff Martin’s estimate of when he left the Stones’ residence, after shining his bright lights into the trees but not seeing or talking to Loy and Louise. He never exits his car. His wife, Thelma, was riding along. He drives west about eight miles and then gets another radio call. (Martin 1978, 35)8:30 p.m. (Sheriff Martin at trial): Martin makes a second trip to the Stones’ residence after being notified by radio that a girl had been killed. This statement contradicts the nurses’ oral depositions, which put the group’s arrival at Plainview Memorial at 8:45. He talks with Loy and Louise. Loy is carrying a shotgun and says he fired once in the air. Louise is extremely upset, pointing out a pickup and two or three cars on the road, saying, “They’re the ones who are giving us trouble.”8:45 p.m. (Stroud) : The hospital reports the arrival of the pickup and its occupants. Dimmitt police chief Joe Ben Mitchell responds. He photographs the truck, noting a hole in the right side of the pickup bed and also that the glass in the passenger-side door is shattered.8:55 p.m. (Stroud): Louise Stone calls again with “angrier tone.” She is fed up with the harassment and demands that “the patrol cars” come to her house. Sheriff Martin reports that he is a few miles down the road and proceeding to the Stones’ farm. Shortly afterwards, Chief Mitchell radios from the hospital that “the shooting supposedly had taken place at the Stones’ house.” Yet according to the sheriff, he had already visited the Stones. (Stroud 1977)Around 9:00 p.m. or “two hours after dark” (Herrera): Arthur Herrera testifies that it was then that the five teens arrived at the Stones residence, a time that does not gibe with any other account. He claimed to see someone, heard one of the girls scream, and then heard a sound that he thought was rocks kicked up by the tires, followed by breaking glass in the passenger-side window as he backed up. (Herrera 1978, 20)About 9:30 p.m. (Louise Stone): “The sheriff drove in and told her [Louise] he would take care of the situation and for us to go on into the house. So we did. About an hour later the sheriff and several deputies came back. The sheriff told us that there had been a report of some shooting and asked to take our shotgun, which we gave to him. The deputies and one highway patrolman stayed here, drinking coffee and watching the cars and pickups go by” (Stone 1977b).10:40 p.m. (Sheriff) Martin obtains a search warrant from Justice of the Peace Marshall Young. (Martin 1978, 62)12:15–12:30 a.m. (Louise Stone). Sheriff Martin and a county judge return with a search warrant and inform the Stones that a girl was killed. The Stones sign a Permission to Search form, negating the need for a warrant. Both houses are searched. He tells the Stones to take Loy’s mother with them and stay in a motel. The search turns up another shotgun in the barn, but it is described as rusty and inoperable. At the hospital, the nurses find that Roxanne Casas has a severe head wound and no pulse. Maria Trevino suffered pellet wounds to her upper back that would take some time to heal and leave a permanent scar. Carlos Garza had a few superficial pellet wounds to his head and neck. Arthur Herrera and Adriana Rangel were unharmed.On Tuesday, November 2, the Stones, including Ruby, go to the Castro County sheriff’s office where they were questioned separately. When they return home, they find Dimmitt Police Chief Joe Ben Mitchell, a deputy sheriff, and the county probation officer walking around their property, taking measurements, etc. The rusty shotgun is seized. Sheriff Martin returns later and questions Ruby Stone (Sneed 1978a).Around noon, on Thursday, November 3, the Stones are arrested at their home, read their rights, and booked at the county jail. Bail is set at $50,000 each (“Stones Charged” 1977). Meanwhile, hundreds gather at Immaculate Conception Church for the requiem mass of Roxanne Casas. In his eulogy, the Rev. Raphael Chen says: “She was never in any trouble until Monday, when, just like other teenagers, she went out to have some fun” (Slagle 1979a).While two articles and two photos of Loy and Louise took up much of the county newspaper’s front page, another article noted that Jimmy Davis, 34, had been appointed county-district attorney until the next election after the previous officeholder died. The Casas murder case would be at the top of his agenda.Ethnic TensionInvestigator William Sneed located and interviewed dozens of teens who admitted to cruising by the “witch house” during October 1977. He identified twenty-eight by name who were there specifically on Halloween. Going by surname, of those twenty-eight, two-thirds were Anglo and one-third Hispanic. While the witchcraft-plus-murder angle ensured national coverage, the issue of ethnicity also played a part, as in the lead of a story that appeared in the New York Daily News: “But this [trial] has a twist. The victim was a little Mexican girl. The defendants are witches.” The same article describes Catholic priest Raphael Chen as “a leader in the town’s Mexican-American community” and noted the presence of members of the militant Brown Berets at her funeral:Roxanne’s classmates, seated in the front row, cried, and at one point six men wearing the uniform of the militant Mexican-American Brown Berets slipped quietly into the back of the church, leaving before the service ended. Some authorities said they believed the men had come from Lubbock, 90 miles to the southeast, and reports circulated that Paul and Karen Casas, Roxanne’s parents, had received calls from Brown Berets offering “justice” if no arrests were made. (Slagle 1979a)Sheriff Martin felt that pressure: “I did have a lot of Spanish people wanting to know why we didn’t make an arrest,” he told the New York Daily News. After the trial, the Brown Berets threatened a lawsuit but did not pursue one (Moseley 1980b).Psychic EvidenceA week after the Stones’ arrest, their mailbox began to fill with small donations to their defense fund (mostly in the $5–$25 range), and a variety of psychic impressions from friends elsewhere in the country. In addition, they performed their own divination using the pendulum method. On November 10, 1977, Louise asked the pendulum “Was the girl killed here?” No. “Did they go from here to hosp[ital.]?” No.Another twist in the case is the response of the Stones’ psychic friends who sensed something had happened and began calling immediately after the shooting. Stone said that some of them related details of what actually had happened. (Associated Press, 1980b)A Tarot card reader in Phoenix wrote to the Stones on November 4, 1977: “Both the cards and my psychic impressions indicate that you will not, repeat, NOT be convicted of any major crime in connection with this incident.”Some “readers” took a conspiratorial tone, such as this: “I think [the killing] was done for a much, much deeper reason, and the fact that you’re members of the Craft was just a convenience for the people who did it.”Several diviners sent in marked maps and drawings of the “real” murder site. One especially detailed description, accompanied by a hand-drawn map, began, “Area she was killed in: there is a grove of large trees like cottonwoods. There is a gravel road to a dirt lane over a culvert that leads there. A single unbroken fence is on your left as you travel on the gravel road.” The psychic, it continues, “feels this place to be within 2–5 miles of Stones’ place.” Louise Stone photocopied all the impressions that were sent to her (Was Roxanne pregnant? Was she killed by a jealous boyfriend?) and passed them on to others in her network.Pendulum-dowser Bill Finch and his associate, Sedona, Arizona psychic Mary Atkinson, visited the Stones in February 1978 and worked with investigator Sneed to blend psychic and shoe-leather investigative techniques. Finch dowsed each of the teens from the pickup, for example:Arthur Herrera—Self-centered, not trustworthy, possibly been in trouble before. More distrustworthy than not. Thinks about sex all the time. Did possibly give a shotgun to someone else. Possibly borrowed a shotgun. (Sneed 1978b, 44–49)Sneed and the psychics visited an empty house a few miles from the Stones’ residence that the psychics suggested might be the actual murder scene. He obtained permission from the owner to search it and discovered mattresses upstairs, numerous empty beer and liquor bottles, and evidence of target-shooting outside.A few days previously, Sneed had visited another site near the abandoned house, which he learned of from Joe Riojas, 20, the friend who had driven ahead of the group’s pickup to show them exactly where the Stones lived. This location, an abandoned gravel pit, was known to the locals as “Shotgun Canyon,” and was a site for illicit partying and target shooting. He reported seeing “all kinds and sizes” of expended shotgun shells, a shot-up old car body, and other items (Sneed 1978b, 73).Ultimately, none of these other locations produced any substantive evidence for an alternative murder scene. After the trial, Louise summed up the Finch-Atkinson investigation:I think that [Mary Atkinson] could not produce under the pressure and made up a story to satisfy what she thought we wanted to hear. There were aspects of her story that later proved to be true, such as the kids driving all over the county before the girl was killed and the girl being the renegade of the group. [Bill Finch’s] assessment of the personalities of the kids Sneed was interviewing were right on, according to Sneed. Much of what he said about the killing and location of the gun could nor or has not been proved or disproved. I feel he honestly did his best. His [pendulum] readings concerning the jurors seemed to be quite accurate. (Stone 1980)A Witch on TrialTwenty-seven months would pass between the death of Roxanne Casas and a verdict. First, the defense requested a change of venue, which was granted—the trial was moved to Plainview, 45 miles to the southeast, and the court room of Judge John T. Boyd, 64th District Court. The prosecution, in particular, seemed to have trouble locating witnesses, including some of the professional experts who were to testify. Arthur Herrera, the driver, disappeared completely after giving a deposition in August 1978 and was never located. Eventually, after numerous postponements, jury selection began in early January 1980. By January 15, a panel of thirty-five prospective jurors had been chosen, thirty-one of Anglo heritage and four Hispanic (Associated Press 1980b). During the jury-selection period, Judge Boyd agreed to a defense request to sever the two trials, since the Stones had been charged together originally. Loy Stone would go on trial for murder and two counts of aggravated assault—the injuries to Carlos Garza and Maria Trevino. Louise would be tried afterwards. District attorney Jimmy Davis made this decision even though two witnesses described seeing a woman near the truck, and one, Carlos Garza, said that she carried a gun (Baker 1980).Witnesses or not, Davis had to proceed with a case that he admitted was based on circumstantial evidence. Furthermore, he argued, Loy Stone had brought trouble on himself by becoming a “public curiosity due to his own acts [news media interviews]. . . . Calling yourself a witch or a Martian—it may be the usual thing for you, but it is something else to others” (Moseley1980e).To defend themselves in court, the Stones had hired Amarillo lawyer James Doore and also a noted West Texas trial lawyer—Travis Shelton of Lubbock. Shelton was highly qualified as a legal strategist. He had served as a prosecutor in Lubbock but was also a charter member of the Texas Criminal Defense Lawyers Association as well as a past president of the State Bar of Texas (Langton 2003). His and Doore’s successful defense and their fees would cost the Stones their farmland.Shelton could not argue that his client had an alibi, of course, since Loy Stone admitted being at home on Halloween. The attempts to locate an alternative murder scene by psychic means were inconclusive, to say the least. He could possibly have accepted the prosecution claim that Loy had fired the fatal shots—one striking the bed and rear window of the truck, and one blowing out the passenger-side door window and striking Roxanne Casas in the head—and then argued for justifiable self-defense. As one reporter speculated, “the trial may revolve around a law that permits use of deadly force to protect property in certain cases — including malicious mischief” (Associated Press 1980b). In fact, he did call both Loy and Louise to testify to the history of harassment, their fear of arson, and their concern for the safety of Ruby Stone, among other things.More than that, Shelton hammered Sheriff Martin’s lax management of the investigation and at inconsistencies in the testimonies of the teenagers in the Ford pickup truck. The sheriff had failed to supervise the investigation well, leaving deputies and officers from other agencies to pick up bits and pieces of evidence at random. When he seized the Stones’ shotgun, he did not record its serial number, leading to a failure to identify it in court. Chief Mitchell, who had taken photos and investigated the pickup as it sat outside the emergency room, collecting shotgun pellets and bits of flesh, claimed Martin was not really interested in what he had found; meanwhile, Martin’s questioning of the teens consisted of a few throw-away questions: “Are you the kids in the pickup?” “Have you been shot?” To Garza, “Are you OK?” Shelton tried to make Martin’s testimony about the first night’s search inadmissible because the Stones had not had their legal rights read to them, to which prosecutor Davis responded it did not matter, since they signed a permission form before the search (but Ruby Stone had not).Shelton suggested that Martin could have prevented the shooting if he had notified the Stones that he was in the area and left room for self-defense claim:Shelton claimed Stone did not “intentionally or knowingly” shoot Roxanne Casas. “It was dark. A lot of dust and gravel flew when the pickup pulled out of his driveway. He had reasonable apprehension about the threat of fire.” (Guy and Nelson, 1980b)It could be possible to use the confusing timeline of the case to suggest that nearly an hour passed between the shooting and the arrival at the hospital, yet the hospital was only about eight miles from the Stones’ farm on ruler-straight Panhandle highways. Where had the teenagers been? If the teenagers arrived at the hospital in Dimmitt at 8:45 p.m., why was Louise Stone still calling for help and why did no law enforcement person contact her until 9:30, two hours after her first distress call? If the Castro County Sheriff Granville Martin, out on patrol, had radioed the dispatcher around 8:20 p.m. that he was near the Stones’ property, why had Louise Stone called at 8:35 p.m.to ask if he was coming or not? Likewise, both Loy and Louise testified that Loy fired once into the air while shouting at the intruders to leave. Yet the pickup was hit twice. One firearms expert testified that he found both number 6 and number 7? pellets in the truck, while the shotgun shells taken from the Stones’ home were loaded with number 6 pellets (Baker 1980). Mrs. Stone said she overheard one of the passengers in the pickup say, “If we light a fire, we could probably see them.” “Then I heard a noise like a shot. The truck started spinning its wheels and backed out. I stepped back into the trees, where he [Loy] was standing with me,” Mrs. Stone said. “[Later] I went up to our house, and Loy said he was going on down to Mom’s.” (Guy and Nelson 1980b)The sheriff and Mrs. Granville, who was riding along for the evening, arrived thirty to forty minutes later, she said.At least one of the teenagers in a different car nearby testified hearing a single shot, yet she also said that a white car (apparently Sheriff Martin’s) was parked by the road at that time.Terri Moore, 19, now a hairdressing student at Hereford, told of seeing a white car in the vicinity when she drove past the Stone home on Halloween night 1977.She said the white car was parked nearby when she saw a pickup come out of the Stones’ driveway at a fast clip.The driver of the white car stopped the car in which she and three other teenagers were riding, she said, and proceeded to identify himself as Sheriff Granville Martin of Dimmitt and to tell her and her companions that “someone had been shot and you’d better leave.”Miss Moore said she heard a sound but did not know whether it was a shot or the sound of the pickup backfiring. (Moseley 1980c)Terri Moore’s testimony almost seems to make Sheriff Martin himself a witness, or at least it places him quite close to the time and place of the shooting. Sitting at the passenger-side window, Carlos Garza had the best of a poor view. The Stones’ farmstead entrance was not well-lit, although some light shone across the driveway from the windows of Ruby’s house. The moon, four days past full, would not have risen until later in the night. Contrary both to the prosecution’s narrative and the Stones’ statements, Garza testified that he saw a woman with a long gun. “I looked ahead of me and there was a lady. . . .old, in her 40’s,” wearing a scarf, heavy jacket and glasses, carrying a gun.When the pickup first pulled in, Garza testified, he told his companions, “This isn’t the place—we buy eggs here.” Then “the lady” came out and “She started walking toward the pickup, and I pushed Maria down in the pickup. Roxanne started screaming. . . I pushed Maria down, then I ducked down, and somebody shot. Then the lights [of the pickup] went off . . . The next thing I remember, we already headed to town. (Guy and Nelson 1980a)Emilio Sandoval, Jr., a passenger in the Riojas car, which guided the five teens to the farm, testified that he saw “two shadows,” that a woman’s voice threatened him, and that he saw the Ford pickup head toward Dimmitt (Moseley 1980a).After nine days of testimony, Judge Boyd instructed the jury that they could acquit or else find Loy Stone guilty of either murder or voluntary manslaughter. Boyd’s charge also included the law on the use of force in defending one’s property as well as laws covering circumstantial evidence. After two and a half hours, the jury found Loy Stone innocent on all counts on February 1, 1980. Raul Casas, Roxanne’s father, who had a small welding business in Dimmitt, said he felt “pretty bad” about the verdict. “I know dern well he shot her—at close range too. I know from the reports given on the angle of the shots. . . . I think it would have been different if there had been some Mexicans on the jury” (Moseley 1980e). In a post-trial statement Stone said, “For Casas’ sake, I really would like to know who did it.”Charges against Louise Stone were dropped on June 5, 1980, as Davis admitted a new trial would be too expensive. Three civil suits filed against the Stones were settled after the acquittal. Maria Trevino asked $200,700 for medical bills and mental anguish but accepted $2,250. Adriana Rangel asked for $125,00 and got $750. Raul and Karen Casas had sued for $77,000 plus $556.71 in truck repairs. They settled for $2,000, the cost of Roxanne’s funeral. After the trial, the Stones’ financial situation worsened. Louise continued to sell irrigation pipe repair equipment, but then Loy was diagnosed with cancer in 1982 and died in 1983. Louise moved to Amarillo and worked another decade for a market-research company. She died in Albuquerque in 1997 at the age of 67.Two months after Loy Stone’s acquittal, a brief item appeared in Texas Monthly, a slick magazine of Texas lifestyle and politics, reading in part:Stone, it seems, belongs to a fringe cult, known as the Church of Wicca, that no self-respecting witch would touch with a ten-foot broomstick. Or so say members of more traditional covens, who were upset at the nationwide publicity Wicca got from the trial. Wicca’s debunkers [sic] describe it as mail-order witchcraft, and they object that the coven’s Witch’s Bible, unlike most witch literature, does not recognize a female deity. (“State Secrets,” 1980, 212)The item finishes with a humorous suggestion that Texas establish a “State Board of Witchcraft Examiners.”For American Wicca, using the term in its broadest sense, 1980 was a cusp year. A movement that was small, underground, and largely initiatory was about to change and grow, a change marked by the creation of large festivals around the country and by “do it yourself” books like Starhawk’s The Spiral Dance (1979), Scott Cunningham’s Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner (1989) or Raymond Buckland’s Complete Book of Witchcraft (1986). But in the 1970s, it was still common to hear the School of Wicca dismissed as “mail-order witchcraft” by members of other groups (Stevens 1980). Herman Slater (1935–1992), owner of Magickal Childe, an occult bookstore and supply shop in Manhattan, had carried on a feud with Gavin Frost in the letters column of the Pagan magazine Green Egg and was quoted in the New York Times as saying “[the Church of] Wicca’s members are not witches” (Associated Press 1980a).In rhetoric, such an argument is called “No true Scotsman” (or the “appeal to purity”), one of the traditional rhetorical fallacies. It serves as a way for speakers to disassociate themselves from persons who appear to be part of their group but who are an embarrassment. The definition of Wiccan, in this case, is modified ad hoc to exclude those whose actions might threaten the group. While the Stones had many supporters, there were Wiccans who saw in Loy’s trial another reason to think that there was something suspect about the School and Church of Wicca.BibliographyAssociated Press. 1980. “Occultists Decry ‘Witch.’” Colorado Springs Gazette-Telegraph, January 13. 1980b. “Jury Seated in Stone Trial, Opening Arguments Presented.” Amarillo Globe-Times. January 21. Baker, Buddy. 1980. “Prosecution ‘Rests’ in Stone Trial.” Plainview Herald, January 29.Bird, S. Elizabeth. 1994. “Playing with Fear: Interpreting the Adolescent Legend Trip.” Western Folklore 54 (3): 191–209.Brockman, Mitzie. 1978. “Oral Deposition.” August 23. Author’s collection.Cohn, Norman. 1977. Europe’s Inner Demons: An Enquiry Inspired by the Great Witch-Hunt. New York: Meridian.Ellis, Bill. 2003. Aliens, Ghosts, and Cults: Legends We Live. University Press of Kentucky.2004. Lucifer Ascending. University Press of Kentucky.Frost, Gavin and Yvonne. 2007. Good Witches Fly Smoothly: Surviving Witchcraft. Hinton, WV: Church and School of Wicca.Guy, April, and Don Nelson. 1980. “Defense Testimony Underway.” Castro County News, January 31.1980b. “Jury Finds Stone Innocent.” Castro County News, February 7.Herrera, Arthur. 1878. “Personal Deposition.” December 19. Author’s collection.Hutton, Ronald. 1999. The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft. Oxford University Press.2003. Witches, Druids and King Arthur. London: Hambledon & London.Jubera, Drew. 1981. “Trapped in a Halloween Tragedy.” Dallas Times Herald, September 6.Langton, Elizabeth. 2003. “Shelton, Former Lubbock District Attorney, State Bar President, Dies at 82,” Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, July 12.Lewis, James R., Ed. 2011. Violence and New Religious Movements. Oxford University Press.Martin, Sheriff Granville. 1978. “Oral Deposition.” August 23. Author’s collection.Moseley, Earl. 1980. “Witness: ‘Lady’s Voice’ Threatened at Shooting.” Amarillo Globe-News, January 22.1980b “Witness Tells Jury in Stone Trial ‘They Killed Roxanne.’” Amarillo Globe-News. January 24.1980c. “Stone Says He Was Scared, Doesn’t Know If He Fired Fatal Shot.” Amarillo Globe-News, January 31.1980d. “Stone’s Wife Testifies He Fired Shot into the Air.” Amarillo Globe-News, January 31.1980e. “Stone Acquitted; Casas ‘Resentful.’” Amarillo Globe-News, February 2.Neal, Rosa Lee. 1978. “Oral Deposition.” August 23. Author’s collection.Needham, Danny M. 1977. Memo: “State v. Loy and Louise Stone.” Author’s collection.Rangel, Adriana. 1978. “Oral Deposition.” August 22. Author’s collection.Richardson, James T. 2011. “Minority Religions and the Context of Violence: A Conflict/Interactionist Perspective.” In Violence and New Religious Movements. Ed. James R. Lewis. Oxford University Press, 31–82.Slagle, Alton. 1979. “In Texas, A Tragedy of Witches and Murder.” (New York) Daily News, August 6.1979b. “Are Witchcraft Beliefs Also on Trial in Texas?” (New York) Daily News. August 7.Sneed, William E. 1978. “Report of Investigation.” Report. January 8. Author’s collection.1978b. “Report: Conferring with Psychics Bill Finch and Mary Atkinson in Reference to the Stone Investigation.” March 2. Author’s collection.1978c. “List of Witnesses and Evidence That May Be Presented by the Prosecution.” Report. March 15. Author’s collection. “State Secrets.” 1980. Texas Monthly, March 1980.Stevens, William K. 1980. “Witchcraft Is Key Element in Texas Murder Trial.” New York Times, January 31.Stone, Louise. 1977, “Events of Monday, Oct. 31, 1977.” Undated notes. Author’s collection.1977b. Letter to Jesse and Susan. December 15. Author’s collection.1980. Post-trial Notes. Author’s collection.“Stones Charged with Murder.” 1977. Castro County News. November 10.Stroud, Gene. 1977. “Voluntary Statement.” November 2. Author’s collection.1978. “Oral Deposition.” August 23. Author’s collection.Tucker, Libby. 2006. “Legend Quests.” Voices: The Journal of New York Folklore 32. , Jeffrey S. 1993. Satanic Panic: The Creation of a Contemporary Legend. Chicago: Open Court. ................
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