Witness to an Execution

by investigative reporter Kathy Cruz

On the December night that I witnessed the execution of Bobby Wayne Woods, I asked that I be allowed to be in the witness room designated for his family members, rather than in the room reserved for the family of the young girl he had sexually assaulted and brutally murdered. I had been with a couple of other reporters in the office of the prison system's public information officer when the phone rang with word that last minute appeals had been denied, and the execution would be carried out immediately. As we followed briskly behind the PIO to the building that houses the execution chamber, I felt as if I might hyperventilate from the gravity of watching a man being put to death. Though I felt he had earned his fate, I felt sad for the choices he had made, and compassion for his family. It was that compassion that made me want to report on how they were affected by the execution of a man many considered a monster because of what he had done. The other reporters chose the other witness room.

Watching Woods die was a surreal experience, but what happened next was perhaps stranger. To my surprise, I felt fine. In fact, I felt hungry. I wrote a story about the execution on my laptop computer over a patty melt at the Huntsville Denny's. After filing the story and speaking by phone to my editor, I slept fine.

Go figure.

But after Darlie Routier popped into my head one Sunday afternoon in April 2012, I did not sleep well. For whatever reason, the case grabbed me by the throat and only let me go when, two Aprils later, I turned over a rough draft of a book manuscript to TCU Press. While the manuscript was under review, I continued working, adding several more chapters. The following April - three years after my initial random thought about Darlie Routier - the paperback edition of Dateline:Purgatory was in my hands and tears were in my eyes.

Dateline: Purgatory is not a book about the evils of the death penalty, but rather the dark side of our justice system. I am able to sleep just fine when someone who is guilty is held accountable. It's when their guilt is not so clear that I toss and turn.

Praise for Dateline: Purgatory

"Everybody knows the Texas criminal justice system doesn’t work, but few know why and how. Kathy Cruz does, and Dateline: Purgatory proves it. This richly detailed and well-narrated book affords a view of the Texas system rarely seen by the outside world. It shows how ambitious prosecutors, compliant judges, and naïve jurors can make for a lethal combination. It also shows the terrible human cost involved when justice becomes what it is in Texas: a team sport in a rigged game. Anyone who wants to understand the true nature of Texas injustice should read this book. Ms. Cruz has done the world a favor by writing it."

~Jeff Blackburn, founder and chief counsel, 

Innocence Project of Texas

"Dateline: Purgatory will make you feel. Then, it will make you think. And hopefully, after that, you will want to act. I did, because once an execution is carried out, there’s no correcting it."

~Michael Morton, author of Getting Life: 

An Innocent Man’s 25-Year Journey from Prison to Peace

An Interview with Marcia Hatfield Daudistel

As the editor of Grace & Gumption: The Women of El Paso, did you learn anything new while working on this project? Is there any one story that especially stuck with you?

MHD: As the editor of Grace and Gumption, I was inspired by the adaptability and courage of the women on both sides of the border in creating the city of El Paso. The women living in Mexico suddenly found themselves citizens of another country when the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo changed their lives forever. The women who came West and South to the raw, frontier town of El Paso were faced with a very different, frequently harsh climate in a town known for legendary gunfighters and lawmen. These groups of women set about to address the issues of establishing more schools, creating cultural programs and increasing medical care in this fledgling city in the Chihuahuan Desert of West Texas. Their efforts were to transform El Paso into a city that would allow their families to thrive. Their legacy is an enduring one. 

Is there any woman (or group of women) from history who has particularly inspired you?

MHD: I learned many new things while working on Grace and Gumption, but perhaps the most surprising realization I had was that the nuns in the early history of El Paso were actually the first feminists. Acting as communities  of women without the supervision of men, except infrequently by the Bishop, they set about to establish hospitals, schools, and orphanages. The several orders of nurses, social workers, and teachers were also administrators with their direct supervisors being the Mothers Superior of their orders. The orphanage they established in El Paso was the only one that took in Mexican children, many orphaned by the Mexican Revolution. Their hospital, Hotel Dieu, continually operated in El Paso until the late 1980s. They had a level of autonomy that married women did not have and were frequently more highly educated than the majority of the women of their time.  

Come Spring...

Many years ago I was part of a Western Writers of America project to compile an anthology of profiles of women of the American West. My subject was Dr. Georgia Arbuckle Fix who practiced medicine on the western frontier of Nebraska in the late nineteenth century. I had a medical background of sorts and wondered why a woman would choose life in a dugout alone and drive her carriage miles and miles across the prairie to see patients. The story fascinated me and set a pattern for my writing for many years to come.

Dr. Georgia Arbuckle Fix

When I first turned my hand to fiction, I wrote a novel based on Dr. Fix’s life, only to learn later that the great Mari Sandoz had already done that and done a better job than I did. Still, my version, Mattie, won a Spur Award from Western Writers of America, an award that angered some male members who thought it should go to a men’s adventure tale.

I went on to write about more women of the American West—a young girl in East Texas (not really the West but….), a young orphan living on the streets of Fort Worth and crossing paths with Long Haired Jim Courtright and Luke Short. These short novels were sold through the Doubleday Double D Western Book Club, mostly to prison libraries.

I grew ambitious and wanted to do a long novel that would sell in bookstores. I proposed a fictional biography of Elizabeth Bacon Custer, wife and widow of General George Armstrong Custer who died at Little Bighorn. Bantam/Doubleday put major publicity behind it, and it probably sold better than any book I’ve ever written. I followed it with fictional biographies of Jessie Benton Frémont, Wild West Show cowgirl Lucille Mulhall, and Etta Place, the Sundance Kid’s girlfriend. And then there was a young-adult book called Extraordinary Women of the American West, a collection of short biographies of sixty-eight women, from pioneers to contemporary.

I admired these women and loved investigating their lives, finding out why, in many cases, they’d left family and comfort behind to strike out for adventure. Many came with husbands, but some did not. All came with a sense of breaking bonds and leaving constrictions behind. They had a curiously optimistic outlook—a favorite saying was, “Come spring…” Come spring, the crops would make, the cattle would produce, life would be better. Always looking toward spring, they minimalized the hardships of life in a dugout or on the cattle trail or an isolated ranch.

“Come spring” is a great motto for all of us.

~Judy Alter, author of Extraordinary Texas Women, contributor to Grace & Gumption: Stories of Fort Worth Women, and many more