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PART II OF A FOUR PART STORY.

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Six weeks after the discovery of Deb Granbury’s body, with no murder weapon, no eyewitnesses, and no clear motive—other than being the husband—Dane Granbury was arrested for her murder.

The warrant was signed at dusk, with Chief Martin himself leading the arrest, his shirt sleeves rolled up to show both conviction and forearm hair. Dane stood on his own porch, watering a patch of Bermuda grass that never took, when the handcuffs were slipped on. His reaction, according to the arrest report: “stoic.” According to the neighbor across the street: “guilty as sin.”

The town had been holding its breath. Now it exhaled.

The charges might have been built out of duct tape and suspicion, but the story underneath them? That was pure kerosene.

It started with a leak—not to the Stockton Telegram-Dispatch, which held the line on decency—but to the town itself, which had no such qualms. Someone on Chief Martin’s force let it slip that among the items seized from the Granbury home were a film projector, a tripod, and a set of 35mm reels. Of what? “Material” best left undescribed. But that didn’t stop anyone.

By week’s end, Fort Stockton had collectively decided that Deb Granbury’s greatest sin wasn’t being murdered, it was being interesting. The reels—though never publicly shown—were said to depict things no God-fearing Baptist would admit to recognizing, let alone describing in a court of law.

Brother Bob of Second Baptist Church spent that Sunday sermon dancing around the subject like a man avoiding a fire ant mound. He cited the Book of Proverbs, the Book of Romans, and a misapplied passage from Leviticus, all leading to this conclusion: “Those who drink liberally from the well of sin will surely be poisoned.”

In other words: she had it coming. And maybe her husband did too.

The DA knew the case was weak, but politics makes fools of many. Mayor Goodman, never one to pass up an opportunity to stir a pot that wasn’t his to clean, declared Dane guilty in a soundbite delivered from the Piggly Wiggly meat counter: “You take a man who sells tools to roughnecks, spends every other night in a motel, and has a dead wife and no alibi—and you’re telling me he didn’t do it? Please.”

The townsfolk nodded. He had a way of making the worst take sound like community spirit.

The only one who seemed to care about the truth was Lucinda at the Grounds for Divorce diner, who told the lunch crowd: “I don’t like the man, but you don’t cook a chicken just because it’s in your yard.” Nobody laughed. But nobody argued.

Dane was denied bond until a figure was finally set at half a million dollars. In 1965, that was as good as no bond at all.

He tried to sell the house in RoadRunner Estates. No takers. A fresh coat of paint and a staged living room couldn’t cover the fact that a woman had been murdered in the master bedroom and the Thunderbird had never returned. A local pastor’s wife looked at it during an open house, then called it “unsuitable for resurrection.”

Meanwhile, Rusty Hammer at the hardware store cleaned out his stock of deadbolts, chains, and window locks. People lined up to protect themselves against the vague possibility of a killer, even as they agreed they already knew who did it.

Enter Franklin Danbury, the only man in the county with both a juris doctorate and a Blaupunkt stereo.

He drove a 1965 Mercedes-Benz 220SE Coupe, painted a strange metallic blue with a black roof and chrome so polished it looked smug. The car was special ordered through Austin German Imports, and it glided through town like it didn’t care what anyone thought—which, incidentally, was Danbury’s default expression.

The VFW crowd jeered every time he parked near the courthouse. “How can a man claim to know American law if he drives a German car?” one veteran asked, loading Coors into a Styrofoam cooler.

Danbury didn’t respond. He had a talent for ignoring anyone who hadn’t paid for his attention. Besides, he knew they didn’t hate him—they hated the idea of Dane getting a fair trial.

He studied the evidence, such as it was. No fingerprints, no blood trail, no murder weapon. The films were damaging to reputation, sure—but not admissible proof of anything beyond poor taste and marital improvisation. The case against Dane was paper-thin.

He agreed to represent him, whispering in court, “Don’t worry. This’ll play.”

The trial began on a Wednesday in July, the kind of day that makes asphalt ripple and tempers rise. The Pecos County Courthouse had no air conditioning—it wouldn’t for another year. People fanned themselves with church bulletins and folded-up copies of the Stockton Telegram-Dispatch, though the paper still refused to cover the trial in detail.

The prosecution leaned heavily on character, which in Fort Stockton was a currency more spendable than fact. They painted Dane as a cold, remote husband who spent too much time on the road and let his wife drift toward depravity. They did not explain how this translated to murder. They didn’t have to.

The judge allowed the jury to view the “films” in private. No cameras. No transcripts. No public airing. And yet, by that evening, everyone from the Dairy Twin to the Naughty Pine Lounge seemed to know the running time, the reel count, and the approximate runtime of each sin.

The jury foreman was overheard outside the diner saying, “Well, it was obvious Mrs. Granbury didn’t gag, why should we?”

No one knew exactly what that meant, but it got repeated with snickers anyway.

Danbury mounted a defense rooted in fact and soaked in sweat.

He introduced mileage logs, receipts, and timestamps that placed Dane hundreds of miles away during the estimated time of the murder. He called expert witnesses. He subpoenaed the motel clerk in Lawton, Oklahoma. He showed how easy it would’ve been for someone to enter the Granbury home, commit the crime, and take the Thunderbird—an easy car to spot, but still unrecovered.

“What you have,” Danbury told the jury, “is a dead woman, a grieving husband, and the assumption that what a man watches in his bedroom is reason enough to fry him.”

It was a solid argument. And it might have worked—somewhere else.

The verdict came back the next morning in less than three hours.

Guilty.

Judge Runnels waited exactly one week to pronounce the sentence: death by electrocution.

Execution was set for the fall, and until then, Dane Granbury would sit in the Pecos County Jail, stare through a barred window, and listen to the whispers of a town that had made up its mind the day he bought that house in RoadRunner Estates.

That night, Franklin Danbury drove his Mercedes home without turning on the radio. He pulled into his carport, shut off the ignition, and sat in silence as the heat of the day radiated off the hood.

He didn’t cry. He didn’t scream.

But he didn’t sleep either.

Because even the best lawyer in West Texas had to admit—justice hadn’t won.

Only prejudice had.

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