Part 17
Wade Hamilton Brown was never tried and the cases against Lusty and Daniel were dismissed, following Maultsby's. Sellman moved on and lived near Rochelle where he made a living grubbing prickly pear and farming. He died October 22, 1946. Brown lived until 1959 when he accidently down in a fishing accident in a swollen Cherokee Creek, closing a chapter on the figures tied to the 1933 tragedy.
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Probable Scenario
With no trial transcripts or Texas Ranger reports in the Texas State Archives, the most probable account is pieced together from various newspaper sources. After the dance held at the Legion club room, it was probable that Will Robertson may have stayed after the dance and perhaps was playing cards/ gambling into the early hours of the morning with fellow legionnaire Rupert Maultsby. Robertson’s remaining descendants were always told that he was thrown out of the upper floor of the building over a card game.
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Afterwards, Robertson and Maultsby went across the street to a nearby vacant lot where he approached a car with Sellman, who was a deputy sheriff at that time, Daniels, Brown, and Lusty inside. It was here that Robertson and Brown had words over money owed him money. Angered, Brown jumped from the car with a pistol and with the but struck Robertson. Then Sellman jumped from the car and struck him with an unknown object knocking him to the ground. This was the fatal blow. Maultsby and Lusty were witness to the tragedy.
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Following the incident, the men attempted to wash him up and revive him at a nearby filling station. When their efforts failed, they decided to drag his body across the street and prop it against a lamppost on the east side of the building, in front of a barber shop, staging it to look like he had fallen eighteen feet from the window, striking an awning, and then a lamppost. Since Maultsby was a member of the Legion post, he would have had a key to the upstairs club room. There, they opened a window, and placed Robertson’s hat and a bottle of medicine nearby to suggest he had fallen asleep and tumbled out. Daniel then drove Sellman home, with Sellman instructing everyone to keep quiet. The deception held for some time until the Texas Rangers arrived the following year to investigate.
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