Due to recent events, I have reason to believe that I will not be here much longer on this earth. I’ve decided to write down the truth behind San Gutierrez Texas. All of the mysteries and questions will be discussed in the end, so bear with me. This story regards the true crimes, and other unexplained events of our city. I figured the best way to tell the story would be in chronological order, or at least the order when certain key details were discovered.
Before I begin this story, I should give a little context to our small town. It was around 1863 when a group of settlers entered the town. They arrived at a small plain just north of the Mexican border. It started off small, and dirt poor on top of that. Around five or so years later was when the first documented “anomaly” occurred in our town. A small child that belonged to the Walker family was found murdered and hung on a wooden board. To this day, the tensions between the five original families can still be felt. These five families are of course: The Walker Family, The Smiths, The Davisons, The Coopers, and The Winchesters.
After the disappearance of the Walker child, the tensions in the town grew. This was until a man known as Scott Anderson came in and revitalized the spirit of the community. He was extraordinarily wealthy, and highly intelligent to say the very least. He ended up marrying Elizabeth Walker, and the two had eight children. The Walker Family and the Coopers are currently the only remaining families in the town. The Smiths eventually died out, the davisons supposedly moved out to the east coast, and the Winchesters were found dead in the rubble of a fire on March 9th, 1932.
Our story starts when I was around fourteen years old. As of now, I’m almost fifty, so I’ve lived long enough in my eyes. Anyways, this would have been the summer of 86’ when I witnessed the first string of unexplained deaths in our city. It was a hot summer night with temperatures above one hundred degrees. Power would frequently go out and air conditioning was expensive. I was walking home from baseball practice when I first heard the news.
I was almost home when a police car stopped next to me. At first I thought I was being arrested, but I recall the officer telling me to head home and keep the doors shut. I panicked and sprinted home like I had just hit the ball. When I finally made it to my house, I pounded on the door which frightened my parents at first. They let me in, and my mom was quite concerned about what was going on. I just told her that the police told us to stay indoors. I could tell she was confused as to why, but I insisted on it. We locked the door and headed into the closet with the radio turned on.
All we could hear at first from the local radio station was an old Hank Williams song. Then, it cut off and we heard the voice of the radio dj telling us to stay indoors for the next couple hours. I asked my mom if she had a clue as to what was going and she shook her head. I was in a state of pure terror that night. I got maybe two or three hours of sleep before heading to school the next morning.
When I first entered the building, nothing seemed off. I went to my homeroom, and the first three periods were usual, until we had a surprise assembly around fourth period. I assumed it would be the typical “Don’t do drugs” kind of thing, so I headed to the bleachers in the gym. I recall sitting next to my best friend Tommy, and he was as confused as I was. Once the principal started speaking, I could tell exactly why we were urged to stay inside last night. Johnny Morrison, Daniel Morrison, Katherine Morrison, James Morrison, and Nancy Morrison were all dead. Both parents and their children. Lifeless and dead.
We held a remembrance ceremony the following week for the Morrison family. While I was walking home from baseball practice, the bodies of the Morrison family had been found, chained and mutilated in the basement of their home. I recall that one of the seniors was expelled for sharing photos of the dead bodies to the other students. I caught a glimpse, and it was nothing short of horrific. They all had this look, like the life was sucked right out of them. Even for a corpse, they looked dead. I didn’t understand what had happened, but it was strangely reminiscent of the murder of the Walker child that had happened over a hundred years ago. I figured that whoever was involved with that was most likely dead, so I figured there must have been another explanation.
When I was able to see the autopsy reports for the Morrison family, there was one strange detail: the bodies had certain organs extracted from them, in an almost surgical manner. I suspected that they were being farmed for organs, but that didn’t make sense considering how few organs were missing, and the death seemed too personal. The bodies were displayed as trophies, with a large X painted over each face. The hands had nails hammered through them, which suggested that it was possibly a religious or occult killing. The family was religious and attended church every Sunday, so religion was considered a possible motivation.
My research on the crimes of our city started around 94’ when I was tasked to write a book by a man named Henry Vanguard. Henry was around sixty five when he commissioned me to write this book. He passed away around 2013 from heart failure or something, so this will be written in his honor in a sense. He hired me as a ghostwriter, and gave me the job to research our local anomalies. I would later find this to me a grueling and unpleasant task, but it sure as hell kept me going over the years.
Henry was a true crime author who had published books about sensational crimes across the United States. I read a couple of them before working with him, and I gotta say they weren’t the greatest. At the time I had no idea what made him choose me, or choose to write a book about some lesser known crimes. It felt out of character considering all his other books were about the more well known crimes: Charles Manson, Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, etc. I had traveled all over the country and not once had someone ever mentioned my town. It wasn’t a particularly interesting place despite the numerous crimes that had been documented. I wasn’t sure why at first, but we’ll get to the discoveries later.
When I first started my research, I decided to look into the town’s history before the settlers came in. South of the border there were a few Pueblos and some farmland, and there were a couple of Native tribes in the area. I couldn’t find much details on them since they were supposedly driven out of the land around when Scott Anderson arrived. Scott Anderson was a bit of a mystery, and from what I had learned, he was of Dutch origins. According to a diary written by Elizabeth Walker, he had told her about his life in the Netherlands from when he was a kid. I looked for days, trying to find any information on the Anderson Family, but it was useless. All I had known is that they were possibly Dutch, and that they had no known family members.
All I could find in terms of possible connections was a wealthy family in the Netherlands who had the same name. At the time I was still getting used to digital technology, so there was a slight margin of error. There were a few thousand Dutch immigrants who had arrived between 1770 and 1860 with the last name Anderson. Looking through each and every one would be a near pointless task, so I decided to stop looking for information on Scott.
It had been well documented that the original five families mistook Texas for California when they arrived. This was around the time of the gold rush, so it made sense why they had come here. My guess is that they were conned into thinking that they were in California so that someone else would go there before them. I’m genuinely unsure of what made them think they were in California, but that’s a mystery that’s still unsolved I guess. My father had a saying that you could “never assume that there’s a limit to stupidity”. Ironically, it was someone’s stupidity while drinking on the road that had him killed at the ripe age of thirty six. That was one of the only explained deaths I could find in this town.
I started with the bare minimum on information, and during the first several months I was considering calling it quits. I told Henry about the lack of substantial information. Instead of telling me to “dig deeper” or something, he told me to try to focus on the killings after the Walker child. There were four documented killings, all of which had the same crime pattern. First the walker child, nailed to the board. Then there was the killings of Tommy and Harriet Nash in 1903, both of whom were nailed to the board with rather sloppy surgical cuttings. In 1957, Julia Anderson was found dead, nailed to the board with organs missing. Of course, there was a X painted on each of their faces, all painted in red. At the time I had assumed that this was all done by different unrelated people. I had no idea how deep this all went at the time, and as of now I am not sure if I should have dipped my toes into such dark waters.