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up becoming Jen’s proverbial scapegoat.
CHAPTER 3
I T WAS 7:30 P.M . ON MAY 5, 2004. By most accounts, it had been a quite night in Mineral Wells, Texas. Mineral Wells is a mostly white, bedroom community of about sixteen thousand, located in the northern central portion of the state pushing up toward the Oklahoma border. Fort Worth is the closest major city; Dallas and Irving are not too far east from there.
Before Rick and Kathy Cruz had telephoned the MWPD and reported what appeared to be a murder, the town had enjoyed a near-nonexistent homicide rate: Between 1999 and 2004, for example, there had been three murders. So residents killing one another was not what Mineral Wells worried all that much about. If you asked the locals, the major problems in Mineral Wells dated back to 1973, when the military installation known as Fort Wolters transferred its last remaining helicopters out of the popular base. This action began the economically devastating process of closing. At one time, Fort Wolters kept Mineral Wells bustling with plenty of military money floating around in bars and petrol stations and every other type of financial mainstay holding up a small community.
During what are often called the financial heydays of World War II, some say nearly 250,000 soldiers filed their way through the Fort Wolters Base, with another forty thousand during the Vietnam War. After that last copter and soldier left, however, Mineral Wells felt the hit immediately. All of that military money vanished seemingly overnight. Add to that the collapse of the cottage industry of the Baker Hotel, an icon in Mineral Wells since the 1940s and 1950s.
The Baker Hotel was a resort, a bona fide destination for many tourists and Hollywood celebrities and curiosity seekers from all over the world. The likes of Marilyn Monroe to FDR made visits there. Everyone came in search of some of that old “crazy water” said be tapped in Mineral Wells springs. The town had been founded on a certain type of mineral water that had sprung up and was thought to have some sort of a therapeutic value. It was said to be the cure for everything from arthritis to insanity, hence the “crazy water” name. As a result, the town became somewhat of a miracle cure destination. Everybody wanted what was in that water. The Baker Hotel, a rather huge landmark in town—now run-down and about to fall in on its own building blocks— became the go-to hot spot. There in the center of town stood a high-rise establishment with mineral baths on the top floor.
“People came from all over to soak in the baths and then profess it was a cure for anything they had,” said one local. “So, back in the fifties and early sixties, this was a booming town.”
Throughout that time, the economy was great; the military was rocking and rolling. The Baker Hotel became similar to a little Las Vegas, and all was copacetic in town. But then the military base closed and the bottom fell out. No sooner had that happened than the Baker Hotel imploded as well.
As the years have progressed, Mineral Wells has fallen more in line with the familiar poverty-stricken, jobless brand that has become small-town America. It became ravaged by the horrors of what meth and ice can do, robberies, burglaries, auto thefts, and rapes. Not a trade-off, necessarily, for a low murder rate; but a fact the locals—many of whom were born and raised in Mineral Wells—could not and would not ever deny.
“Still,” one local told me, “Mineral Wells sometimes gets thrown that way”—being a bad place to live—“but it’s really not. Probably just like anywhere else, we have the same problems other communities have. We’re average people.”
Yes, the one fact that MWPD officers and the locals will acknowledge all day long is that, despite the downturns throughout the years, Mineral Wells has “one of the lowest, if not the lowest, murder rates in the state.”
Indeed, murder is not a call the MWPD gets all
CHAPTER 3
I T WAS 7:30 P.M . ON MAY 5, 2004. By most accounts, it had been a quite night in Mineral Wells, Texas. Mineral Wells is a mostly white, bedroom community of about sixteen thousand, located in the northern central portion of the state pushing up toward the Oklahoma border. Fort Worth is the closest major city; Dallas and Irving are not too far east from there.
Before Rick and Kathy Cruz had telephoned the MWPD and reported what appeared to be a murder, the town had enjoyed a near-nonexistent homicide rate: Between 1999 and 2004, for example, there had been three murders. So residents killing one another was not what Mineral Wells worried all that much about. If you asked the locals, the major problems in Mineral Wells dated back to 1973, when the military installation known as Fort Wolters transferred its last remaining helicopters out of the popular base. This action began the economically devastating process of closing. At one time, Fort Wolters kept Mineral Wells bustling with plenty of military money floating around in bars and petrol stations and every other type of financial mainstay holding up a small community.
During what are often called the financial heydays of World War II, some say nearly 250,000 soldiers filed their way through the Fort Wolters Base, with another forty thousand during the Vietnam War. After that last copter and soldier left, however, Mineral Wells felt the hit immediately. All of that military money vanished seemingly overnight. Add to that the collapse of the cottage industry of the Baker Hotel, an icon in Mineral Wells since the 1940s and 1950s.
The Baker Hotel was a resort, a bona fide destination for many tourists and Hollywood celebrities and curiosity seekers from all over the world. The likes of Marilyn Monroe to FDR made visits there. Everyone came in search of some of that old “crazy water” said be tapped in Mineral Wells springs. The town had been founded on a certain type of mineral water that had sprung up and was thought to have some sort of a therapeutic value. It was said to be the cure for everything from arthritis to insanity, hence the “crazy water” name. As a result, the town became somewhat of a miracle cure destination. Everybody wanted what was in that water. The Baker Hotel, a rather huge landmark in town—now run-down and about to fall in on its own building blocks— became the go-to hot spot. There in the center of town stood a high-rise establishment with mineral baths on the top floor.
“People came from all over to soak in the baths and then profess it was a cure for anything they had,” said one local. “So, back in the fifties and early sixties, this was a booming town.”
Throughout that time, the economy was great; the military was rocking and rolling. The Baker Hotel became similar to a little Las Vegas, and all was copacetic in town. But then the military base closed and the bottom fell out. No sooner had that happened than the Baker Hotel imploded as well.
As the years have progressed, Mineral Wells has fallen more in line with the familiar poverty-stricken, jobless brand that has become small-town America. It became ravaged by the horrors of what meth and ice can do, robberies, burglaries, auto thefts, and rapes. Not a trade-off, necessarily, for a low murder rate; but a fact the locals—many of whom were born and raised in Mineral Wells—could not and would not ever deny.
“Still,” one local told me, “Mineral Wells sometimes gets thrown that way”—being a bad place to live—“but it’s really not. Probably just like anywhere else, we have the same problems other communities have. We’re average people.”
Yes, the one fact that MWPD officers and the locals will acknowledge all day long is that, despite the downturns throughout the years, Mineral Wells has “one of the lowest, if not the lowest, murder rates in the state.”
Indeed, murder is not a call the MWPD gets all
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