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Idle hands are the devil’s tools.

“Particularly if they are at the end of the arms of a group of young men who could be considered tools themselves.”  When the prosecutor said those words she sealed the fate of the three on trial for murder.

There had been four of them initially, all seniors from Jim Bowie High School, “Home of the Fightin’ Knives”. But the fourth one was dead and the remaining three were on trial for his murder.  None of the three on trial pulled the trigger.  Mr. Cottle was the one that got the gun, took aim, and shot their friend.  Mr. Cottle was the first to admit to those facts.  But Mr. Cottle was never charged, while the three friends of the deceased were the ones on trial.

Tangled webs we weave, indeed.

This web started spinning the minute the four boys got together early one morning and decided to skip school and have some fun instead.  The original plan had been to skip class, buy some weed, and spend the rest of the day dazed and confused.  But then, it became quickly apparent that none of the four of them had any money and nobody was giving pot away.  “Let’s find something we can steal and turn into some quick cash,” the brighter one suggested.”  And just like that, a plan was hatched.

The four of them walked a few blocks from their homes in RoadRunner Estates to an older neighborhood of Fort Stockton.  Consisting primarily of smaller frame homes from the 30s and 40s, the inhabitants of Pecos Heights were mainly older retired folks on fixed incomes.  The four boys decided they’d knock on doors and ring doorbells until they came across a house where nobody answered.  That would be the one where they’d be able to steal something worth enough to quickly sell and have the money they needed for weed.

Knowing it might be intimidating for someone to open the door to four young males on their doorstep, they took turns going up to the front doors of houses up and down Bexar Street.  Time after time an elderly person would answer the door.  Whomever’s turn it was would feign surprise and explain he was looking for his grandmother’s house and must have knocked on the wrong door.

Nobody answered the door at Mr. Cottle’s house.  That’s how the four boys knew they’d found the place they were looking for.  They went around to the back of the house, the plan being to break into the back door and ransack the house.  But once at the back door, one of the boys glanced into the detached single-car frame garage in the back yard and noticed something more intriguing.  None of them had ever seen a 1959 Chrysler 300E before.  

They didn’t know that Virgil Exner’s Forward Look design language from the 1957 300C had been largely carried over to the 1958 300D and the 1959-only 300E because they had never heard of Virgil Exner.  None of them knew that updates for the 300E included a revised grille with red slats accented by four chrome bars, brake-cooling vents below the quad headlights, a 300 badge mounted on the left side of the hood, quarter-panel trim with 300-branded badges moved ahead of the rear wheels, revised tail lights, and a rear bumper with inset reverse lights.

The four had no idea that Mr. Cottle had purchased the car years ago, restored it as a tribute to his wife who’d recently passed, and hardly ever took it out of the garage.  That’s not to say Mr. Cottle didn’t enjoy the Chrysler.  But as he’d gotten older, he found he could enjoy the bright red coupe from the driver’s seat without ever having to fire up the 413ci Gold Lion V8.  With his favorite black and white photo of Mrs. Cottle propped up against the rearview mirror atop the dash of the “gentleman’s hot rod,” Mr. Cottle found himself spending more and more time in the garage.  In the morning he’d bring his coffee and sometimes his Stockton Telegram-Dispatch from the front porch.  In the evenings, he’d mix a little toddy.  Only ever one; he knew how easy it would be to have another and another and then stop counting.

The big red finned beast was one of the few pleasures Mr. Cottle still enjoyed.

“Would you look at this big sumbitch!”  Todd Culbertson was duly impressed with the massive coupe, though he knew little about classic cars.

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Donny Donley was the one who suggested they attempt to hot-wire the thing and take it for a joy ride.  Bo Edwards and Tommy Fannin, neither ever known for their critical thinking skills, quickly voiced their approval which made the new plan unanimous.  While Donny went about looking for tools they thought might be required, Bo and Tommy walked around the car admiring the lines.  Todd popped open the glove box to see if there was anything inside that might have any value.

Over at Jim Bowie High, attendance records were being updated in the office, showing all four of the boys to be absent.  Inside the house on Bexar Street, Mr. Cottle who’d been in the bathroom when the doorbell rang, saw four punks inside his garage through the glass in the side door and got his shotgun.  The events that followed were easy to piece together, as the people involved eventually all gave the same story.  Those who could, anyway.

Mr. Cottle opened up the big single piece garage door, startling all four of the boys.  Todd Culbertson, being the closest to the opening and the first one to see Mr. Cottle’s shotgun, took off like a spooked jackrabbit and was all the way down the driveway in almost a split second.  He was back at his own house ten minutes later, out of breath and scared to death.

Tommy Fannin, seeing that Todd had made a clean escape by making a run for it, tried to do the same.  Not having the same head start, and not being nearly as fleet of foot, he made an easy target.  Mr. Cottle took aim.  With his heart racing and in a befuddled state of confusion, he pulled the trigger.  Tommy was cut nearly in half and quickly bled to death in the driveway, less than 15 feet from the garage.  Donny Donley and Bo Edwards, in shock, huddled in the back corner of the garage.

The police and paramedics arrived on the scene quickly.  Attempts were not even made to revive Tommy, he was obviously deceased.  Donny Donley and Bo Edwards were arrested without putting up any resistance.  Mr. Cottle was so shaken that he required medical attention from the paramedics. 

And that would have been the end of a tragic situation, except that it wasn’t.

Texas is one of many states that have ‘Castle Laws’ on the books.  Without getting overly technical, the bottom line is that a man has a right to protect his ‘castle’ at all costs, particularly if he feels he is in imminent danger.  Thus, Mr. Cottle was never charged with any crime, although the psychological effects of taking Tommy Fannin’s life in his driveway haunted Mr. Cottle in ways that even his own wife’s death hadn’t.

But the tragedy extended beyond Tommy Fannin’s death and Mr. Cottle’s guilty conscience.

There are also laws on the books in Texas, just like many other states, that stipulate that if a person is killed in the commission of a crime, all of the perpetrators involved in that crime can be tried for murder, regardless of the fact that they did not actually pull the trigger.  And that is how Todd Culbertson, Donney Donley, and Bo Edwards found themselves on trial for the murder of one of their best friends, even though Mr. Cottle readily admitted to being the one who shot the boy.

Being 18 years of age, they were tried as adults.  Being sure a jury would see their innocence, all three rejected the offer of plea deals that would have had them serving sentences till they were in their forties.  The District Attorney, wanting to make a name for herself as she ramped up for elections to higher office down the road, vowed to make an example of the boys.

The trial captured headlines all across Texas.

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