part 1:
https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/16eeisl/my_town_is_a_slaughterhouse_part_1/
I’ve mentioned that history is written by the victors. I grew up thinking Columbus was a great explorer, until I learned that he was a genocidal rapist. We all thought that our country came from a noble history back then, until I learned of the history of genocide, slavery, and other unrelated forms of brutality. To this day that shit still happens. Whoever has enough power to silence people will always be the one who decides how they will appear in history books. However, it’s not just famous historical figures that this rule applies to. It’s everyday people and even the lesser powers who play a part in dictating the written history. I say all this, because I would learn just how much of our town’s history was complete and utter bullshit.
Anna Winchester was added to my list of unexplained deaths, if she was dead that is. I had a feeling that her death was unrelated to the rest, but still, all possibilities had to be considered. The whole “gray man” story seemed like a classic boogieman type of thing to me. The only problem with the story was that I couldn’t find a single thing about the “gray man”. I presumed it was local folklore, and proceeded with the investigation.
At the time, Henry Vanguard had been more obsessive than ever when it came to the unexplained deaths. I asked him what he thought of the murder of the Nash family, and he said that there had to be some sort of connection. I then told him about the disappearance of Anna Winchester, and at first he was shocked. “I’d never heard that she disappeared. From my understanding, she had been crushed under the rubble” he said. I told him that a body couldn’t just disappear under the rubble. I still couldn’t figure out why none of these strange events hadn’t been researched further. It felt like whatever was responsible for all of this had the power to control the public or something. It seemed likely that the public wouldn’t have an interest in such events. I just found it strange how little historical information there was.
Around 1996, I adopted my daughter Stacey. I had no interest in marrying or falling in love. To be honest, I still don’t and I’m not entirely sure why. I never got the appeal I suppose. Looking back on it, Stacey was one of the few good things I had going on back then. Work was grueling, and felt like searching for an invisible force of some sort. Police records were often missing, or somehow contradicted with the information I had found. For instance, in the reports on the death of the Winchester Family, I had found a paragraph mentioning that Anna Winchester was found dead in the bathroom, yet the plague in front of the house said that she was never found in the rubble. It made no sense to me. Either the public perception had been warped, or the police had been paid off by someone.
Our police force was notably corrupt, with ties to the KKK, drug dealers, and even human trafficking in some cases. It seemed that every other year someone with a badge would be thrown in prison. I had managed to put together the fact that somehow the police records were skewed. At this point, it was just a matter of discovering how and why. I couldn’t find a single reason as to why there would be misinformation on the death of a four year old girl. I decided to shelve this case for a little bit, and head on to investigating the death of Julia Anderson.
Julia Anderson was around twenty nine years old when she died in 1957. This was the “third” case in the series of X murders. She had died just like everyone else. Before discussing the death of Julia, I figured I should give a bit more context involving the Anderson family. Scott Anderson was relatively mysterious in terms of his previous career. Some said he was a bank robber, and others said he was the heir to a wealthy Dutch family. He had become one of the biggest cattle farmers in Texas when he arrived in San Gutierrez. It had been written that he peacefully came to an agreement with the local native tribes, and bought a large amount of land. The Anderson family was highly wealthy, and owned several meat processing factories, and hundreds of acres of farmland. Around 1996, they spent most of their time trying to prevent a highway from being built in their farmland. They put up a hell of a fight against the government, and eventually lost though. Still, they remained the wealthiest family in San Gutierrez.
Julia Anderson had apparently come from an orphanage in north Texas. I couldn’t find any information regarding which orphanage, but I knew that she was definitely adopted. She was blond, unlike the other members of the Anderson family who all had dark brown hair. Some said that she came from an affair, but her father Paul Anderson was strictly religious and almost celibate, so I doubted that. Her murder was just as brutal as the others, but there was one thing slightly different. On the board that she was nailed to, the words “I’m sorry” were written. Julia was incredibly beautiful, which gave me an uneasy feeling about these words. I had three possible hypotheses for what the words “I’m sorry” meant. The first was that the killer had uncontrollable impulses, and felt a small sense of guilt for his killings. The second was that he wrote it to mock the Anderson family. The third was that he did not mean to kill Julia Anderson, and that somehow it came from some sort of struggle between the killer and Julia. I had to look into the following days before the murder if I was to find some sort of connection.
Julia had been a heavy drinker, and spent a lot of time at the bar on saturdays. She was promiscuous supposedly, which gave me the feeling that there could be a sexual aspect to the crime. Almost every serial killer kills so they can feel power over their victim. What was strange is that there was no sign of violation or torture prior to the murder. The surgical removings of the organs would have had to be done either while she was sedated or post-mortem. They were too clean, which indicated that there was no sign of struggle. She was suffocated, which could be seen by the large handprints around her neck. I could tell that there was a missing piece that could not be found just by looking in police records.
She was found dead outside of the Anderson house, which made the members of the Anderson family suspects of this murder. There was no blood in the house though, so the murder had to have been done somewhere else. Once again, something was clearly missing. I couldn’t find shit about what had happened to her before she was found outside the house, except for the fact that she had reluctantly taken a ride home in a car with a stranger. The stranger was described as appearing old, pale, and hairless. The car belonged to her, but nobody could find anything about this man. Fingerprints were found in the car, but they didn’t belong to anyone. It was like she had been killed by someone who didn’t exist.
The bar where she was murdered was in a small town around five miles away from Anderson’s house. I looked for any other information on the night before her disappearance, but nothing was there. I just couldn’t figure out why there was a stranger who A, knew where she was, B, had the keys to her car, and C, she chose to get in the car with. My guess is there was either something shady going on between the two, or that this man was a friend she called to pick her up when she was drunk.
I recall the night when I was driving home after investigating the bar that she was murdered in. The night was dry, and every tree in sight looked like there was something hiding behind it. I headed home to my daughter and the babysitter. I had spent the whole day looking through the site, police records, and any other miscellaneous bit of information I could find. To me the empty fields are some of the scariest things about living in a rural area. San Guitierrez had a ton of empty fields with nothing but sour brown grass and weeds. I hated the fields and all the animals that lived in them. I never felt comfortable when driving alone in the middle of the night, despite there being no sensible danger.
When I made it home that night, my daughter and the babysitter were safe and sound. I thanked her for taking care of her, and tipped her an extra five dollars. It had been a year since I had adopted Stacey, and she was around four years old by then. Her babysitter, Lacey Cross, felt like a third family member after a year. She was a fairly cordial woman, and we got along well. Besides a handful of friends and my mother, I didn’t really have much in terms of company at the time. I felt like one of those detectives from TV shows back then. Every day I would put on music that made me feel like a badass before working on these cases.
I took the week off from my investigation/writing to spend some time with Stacey. It was the summer so she didn’t have school to keep her busy. We played games, went to the zoo, and all of the other things we had time to do. For the first four days, everything was going great, until I got a letter in the mail, with a very clear message written.
The letter had a well drawn image of a child on a wooden board with an X painted across the face. Below there was a message written in ink reading “You are headed in the direction of a very dangerous road. I know how to find you. I know how to find your daughter. Cease your investigation, and everything will be perfectly fine”. After getting that letter, my full parental instincts kicked in. I kept a shotgun in a locked cabinet, and I had the key with me at all times. “Stacey, stay with me” I said. She had no idea what was going on, and was clearly confused. “This is important,” I told her. She was clearly scared, but I was beyond terrified. I couldn’t allow who or whatever this was to touch my daughter. I called the police, and showed them the note. After hearing that they could not find a match for the fingerprints or handwriting, I froze. Whoever was behind this note, somehow didn’t exist.
For the next couple of weeks, my house had two officers outside it at night. I didn’t dare let my daughter out of sight, and I barely got any sleep those nights. I called Henry to let him know that due to personal reasons I wouldn’t be able to work on the book anymore. I didn’t bother to explain why, but I think he could tell that something was off. That month there was a lot of news involving the construction that had been going on where the old Anderson meat factory had been. They had dug up the dirt, which revealed something so shocking, so incredibly disturbing, hundreds of skeletons and corpses, supposedly of the natives. Something occurred to me: when our town was built, there was no agreement with the native tribes. They were slaughtered, and this whole time we had been living on a burial ground.