Gordon Wood: High School Football Coaching Legend

 Although I had never been a sports writer during my newspaper days in the 1970s at The Flint (Michigan) Journal and The Houston Post, I added sports features to my portfolio during my years as a freelance journalist from 1980-1997. I thoroughly enjoyed interviewing athletes and coaches in particular. And it was in that vein I quickly encountered one of the most memorable feature subjects of my career: Texas high school football coaching legend Gordon Wood.

I hadn’t even heard of Wood before I persuaded the fledgling sports publication Texas Sports to let me poll a national group of top college coaches in 1981 on the question of trying to identify Texas’ best high school coach. I was pleasantly surprised when a healthy number of college coaches agreed to answer my query, which involved anonymously listing their selections for the state’s 10 best high school coaches and adding a few comments explaining those picks. I figured I’d see a lot of names from the powerhouse high schools in Houston and Dallas. But I was stunned to find one name from rural Brownwood mentioned prominently on every coach’s ballot: Gordon Wood.

In follow-up phone calls with coaches at national powerhouses like Nebraska and Oklahoma, as well as Texas schools, I confirmed their confidence in Wood’s ability to produce players ready for the college ranks. The more I learned about Wood, the more eager I became to learn more. So, I convinced the editor at the Sunday magazine for The Dallas Times Herald (Westward magazine) to assign me a feature story on Wood. I traveled to Brownwood one Friday with a photographer to spend a football weekend with Wood. I even joined him for a haircut in his favorite Brownwood barber shop before the game, a weekly ritual for the iconic coach. We finished the weekend with a lengthy interview session on Saturday following a Brownwood victory on Friday night. I would write about Wood several times in the next few years.

Wood died in 2003 at the age of 89. During a 43-year career as a Texas high school football coach, he won 25 district titles and nine state crowns, finishing with a record of 396-91-15. At least four other high school coaches have topped that win mark. Only three college coaches logged more wins than Gordon Wood: John Gagliardi with 489, Joe Paterno with 409 and Eddie Robinson with 408.

I wrote the story below as Wood was launching his 1983 campaign, two seasons before his retirement in 1985. He would finish the 1983 season with a record of 8-3. Two years before his death, Wood penned a memoir entitled Coach of the Century. Of course, there is a Wikipedia article on Gordon Wood for anyone wanting more details than provided here in my article from the October 1983 editions of Muse Air Monthly.

WORLD'S WINNINGEST FOOTBALL COACH

Gordon Wood, coach at Brownwood, Texas, has a won-lost record that’s the best in football at all levels.

Clearly, the situation looked hopeless. The Stamford High School Bulldogs — Texas state football champs in each of the two previous seasons — had been penalized back to their own one-foot line. The ball sat perched just outside their own end zone. They looked to the sidelines.

There, Coach Gordon Wood explained his plan to reserve Wendel Robinson: “Tell them to wedge block two plays and then punt that ball out of there.” Wood slapped Robinson on the seat and dispatched him to deliver those instructions to the players waiting on the field. But somehow; the message was garbled.

“Coach says for the quarterback to follow me 99 yards on a sneak,” Robinson ordered from the midst of the huddle. Although they were puzzled, the team dropped into position and prepared to follow those instructions. And no one was more surprised than Wood when the play zigged right, then left and then carried through a hole for a touchdown.

“I don't k n ow why he told them to do that,” recalls Wood of the incident during the 1957 season. “But that was a team that just got it in its head they could do anything. Maybe I had underestimated them by telling them to hang on.”

The Good Book promises that faith will move mountains. While many geologists might dispute that claim, most people will agree that faith is still a pretty potent force, particularly in sports. It would be hard to find a more fitting example of the strength in that dictum than Gordon Wood, the classic American high school football coach.

Kicking off his 45th campaign this fall in Texas high school football. Wood has employed a lot of faith to help compile the most successful record any football coach in America has ever enjoyed: 383-77-11 for a winning percentage of .825 with nine state championships to his credit. When the late Bear Bryant topped the record for most wins by a college coach (315), he trailed the Texas legend by about 60 victories. Situated as he's been in the lower visibility arena of high school sports. Wood hasn't been treated to the same sort of national spotlight. Just this year he was honored with election to the Texas Sports Hall of Fame. But those with a firm grasp of the impact of Woods accomplishment have never been shy about expressing their opinion.

“Gordon Wood belonged in there long before I did,” says former University of Texas coach Darrell Royal. “His record is more remarkable to me than Bear Bryant’s.”

Bryant himself paid Wood the ultimate compliment when he once joked about his reasons for leaving Texas A&M: “I just didn't want to be remembered as the second best coach in the state.”

And Texas Tech's Jerry Moore confesses: “I’m a Gordon Wood fan.” The framed portrait of only one coach graces the walls of Moore's Lubbock office—that of Gordon Wood. The image of a major college coach plotting next season’s strategy beneath a portrait of a high school mentor is itself symbolic of Texas high school football.

Gordon Wood's inspirational record is just the peak of his contribution to Texas culture. Wood stands as the measure against which all other coaching efforts must be measured, of course. And he excelled in a realm where he had to rely on the talent presented him, most of the time molding a bunch of squirts into champions. There are at least three other even more significant accomplishments with long range impact attributable to the man.

First, his imprint will forever be stamped on Texas football coaches in general. Many of the men coaching across the state today played their schoolboy football during Wood's golden years in n the 1950s at Stamford. They've carried the Wood trademark into their own systems and undoubtedly will transmit it to the boys destined to grow into the state's coaches of the next generation. In many ways  Gordon Wood is Texas high school football.

Second, Brownwood, Texas, where he has coached since I960, has developed at least some of its community pride from its teams. Brownwood, a pleasant community of 20,000 between Fort Worth and Abilene in northwest central Texas, teems with ambition. The high school, recently moved up a notch to 4A status, and Wood got credit for infusing their little city with spirit and pride. In small Texas towns, the high school football team serves a psychological function. A winning spirit is contagious. The kids bring it home from school and pass it on at the supper table. The parents take it to work with them on Monday morning. Grade schoolers grow up working toward one ultimate goal—to make the team in high school.

Brownwood, before Gordon Wood, had claimed only one district title in 40 years. By most accounts it was a depressing place. Wags at a barber shop joked about the “sissies” on the gridiron. But in his first year as coach, Wood took them to the first of the school’s seven state championships. He never looked back. And Brownwood hasn’t either.

Third, and probably most important, Wood has done much more than pump quality athletes out of his system. High school sports exists to teach more than the intricacies of the game. In fact, 95 percent of the kids who play in high school won't go any further on the football field, but they will carry valuable lessons about discipline, spirit, pride and, yes, faith, into business, agriculture, government and education—all the fields which make this society work. To that end, this is what Gordon Wood is all about. Ask most college coaches to talk about their most memorable players and you'll get a litany of All-Americans and the ones who went on to the pros. Ask Wood and you hear about boys who grew up and went to Congress or one who turned down a coaching job on Wood's suggestion to become a high-powered math professor.

And for all who passed through his locker room, Wood voices only the

same, simple view: “I just hope that I had something to do with teaching that all things are possible if you get a good vision of what you want to be, work hard and get your priorities right.”

Before he died, Bear Bryant offered an equally simple summation of the Brownwood legend: “What Gordon Wood does, is, he helps people be better people.”

But how has he done it? What ingredients have combined to create Gordon Wood? What's the secret of his success?

“The formula,” replies Wood with characteristic brevity “is to get a program and get the kids believing in what they're doing.”

That's faith. And most of all, faith is what Gordon Wood has taught. There’s little complex strategy and rarely any dramatic hellfire-brimstone oratory in a Gordon Wood halftime pep talk. He simply tells each player what specific maneuver to make that should correct the current situation. It works because each player has learned by experience the primary dictum on a Gordon Wood team: If Wood tells them something will work, and they follow his orders, it will. And, if that 1957 Stamford squad believed Wood ordered a quarterback sneak for 99 yards, well, that's exactly what they did—in football's version of a mountain-moving performance.

Wood was born May 25, 1914, on a cotton farm in south Taylor County The youngest of eight children, he learned early that the family watchword was “work.” Their father toiled in the field from dawn to dusk, and he expected the family to do the same. An excellent farmer, Wood's father might have become wealthy except for one flaw, Wood recalls. He did not believe in owing money When disasters struck and crops failed—as they almost invariably do at one time or another—he moved his family on rather than borrow money from a bank. The family never went hungry. But Wood remembers his youth as a time of constant toil. He says the children always looked forward to those times when their father would loan them out to neighboring farms where the work schedule was a more comfortable 10-hour day compared with the 12 hours-plus they knew at home.

Theirs also was the type of environment in which school became a luxury. The brood showed for class on opening day, drew their books and returned only when rain forced them out of the fields. That life left its impression. Wood grew up seeking an escape. He didn't enjoy farming, an existence dependent on the whims of nature with its insects and weather. However, it also brought out the competitor in Gordon Wood. Picking cotton was the only athletic event his family knew, and he worked obsessively to do it better than his older brothers. It was a grand occasion when he could brag at supper about having plucked 400 pounds of cotton during the day.

Strangely enough, the nation's winningest coach played only five football games as a schoolboy athlete. That occurred in the seventh grade when he lived in Abilene with his mother. Rather than borrow to pay off a doctor bill, the family split briefly that year with his father working the farm near Wylie and his mother doing laundry for pay in the city. The young Wood saw some friends playing football and asked if he could try. He was so naive, he recalls, he took literally the coach's instructions to “Go out there and fight.” He failed to make a single tackle because he was too busy pounding the face of the player across the line.

When the family was reunited in Wylie, he tried commuting to Abilene because his local school wasn't large enough to field a team. He surrendered after five games, the combination of school, travel and farm chores overwhelming even his enthusiasm. He never played another down in high school.

But his competitive edge could not be dulled. He played basketball and starred in track meets around Taylor County He was big and possessed a farm-fed strength. Those qualities, plus his desire to win, landed him a general athletic scholarship at Hardin- Simmons College in Abilene. At last, he was freed from the farm—but not entirely from chores. His scholarship covered only tuition and books. To pay for room and board, young Wood brought a family cow to Abilene. Her milk each day earned him quarters at a boarding house.

In 1938, with the Great Depression still in full fury, Wood graduated from Hardin-Simmons clutching degrees in physical education and history. By 1940, Wood had made enough contacts to land a head coaching position at Rule High School. Half the size of Spur, it had lost 20 straight football games, but it offered Wood the perfect laboratory for demonstrating his special talent. It was at Rule that he began to practice the techniques destined to create a legend.

Foremost came an ability to look beneath the muscles and speed when selecting players, to locate those with that special quality known as “heart.” One incident in particular illustrates his jeweler’s eye in this regard. During spring drills at Rule, Wood watched a defensive back miss a tackle that would have prevented a touchdown. Calling the youngster to the sidelines, Wood simply chided: “Johnnie, I don't believe you even tried to tackle that kid.”  He was prepared for a response of disappointment but nothing like the scene that transpired. Johnnie cried all afternoon.

Wood recalls his own feelings: “I knew then in my heart this was something I’d never have to say to that kid again. He was trying as hard as he could. I knew I had me a football player. You’ve got to recognize these things in kids.”

Halftime of opening day found his team behind 25-0. On the way to the locker room he overheard his two largest players grumbling, “It’s nothing.” Wood started the halftime pep talk by telling them to turn in their uniforms. The surviving members of the team returned to the field and carved out Rule's first win in two seasons, 31-28.

By 1942, Wood was able to carry his first head coaching record from Rule into the U.S. Navy: 11 wins and 9 losses. He spent World War II in California, where he served as a chief petty officer for recreation and boxing. He worked part time for some college coaches out there, recruiting, scouting and undoubtedly learning a number of new tricks.

He returned to Texas in 1945, assuming the helm at Roscoe where the student body totaled 113. He overcame car wrecks which injured his stars and a flu epidemic to compile a record of 17-2-2 with one district title. On toward destiny he continued to roll: 1947-1949 at Seminole (20-9-2); 1950 at Winters (7-3); 1951-1957 at Stamford (81-6); 1958-59 at Victoria (12-7-1), and finally, 1960 to present at Brownwood (235-41-6).

It was at Stamford that Wood-led teams began to project a distinct personality, one etched into the face of Texas high school football. Besides nailing down two state football titles there (1955 and 1956) he coached the school's golf team to the state championship one year with the help of his football quarterback. That quarterback,  Charles Coody went on to become one of the country's outstanding professional golfers. At Stamford, Wood polished his expertise in the fine art of preparation.

He called upon graduates to spend Friday nights scouting future opponents. One of the players who benefitted from those reports remembers them as extremely detailed.

“He really wanted to beat Seminole, his old school,” recalls H. L. “Buddy” Gray now a math professor at Southern Methodist University. “We were both 12-0. Before the game, he passed out a sheet to our team with facts and figures about every member of their team. He even had quotes they might have said, comments about which ones were married and which ones could intimidate. I don't know how he collected all that, but we wound up beating them 35-0. We respected him because he planned things and told us they would work. If we did them right, they did work.”

Under Wood, those Stamford teams developed a reputation for using the first play of the game as a boost. Gray recalls that Wood always seemed to know his opponents’ weakest spot, and that spot is where he went to open the offense. But Wood also used those years to develop a precise understanding of dealing with youngsters.

“I’d never been so severely chewed out as when I missed a block,” recalls Charles Stenholm, one of Gray's teammates and now a U.S. congressman from Stamford. “But I've never been so sincerely praised as when I did something good. He just had an instinct for knowing when to rage and when to calm down.”

For any coach, the halftime pep talk is equivalent to a doctor's bedside manner as a key to success. Wood explains his philosophy developed at Stamford: “All that gung-ho, beat ‘em up and kill ‘em stuff is no good. Kids are too wise. But there are times when the worst thing you can do is chew them out. There’s a reason for them doing poorly. Just find it, tell ‘em what it is and let them correct.”

The most important aspect of Wood’s relationship with young players concerns their emotional foundation. Some coaches win because they hate to lose. Wood seems to win because of his love for the kids. His yearbooks yield a thousand different stories, and he built on those relationships to the maximum. He always took the time for personal attention, becoming for many boys the second father they needed in those uncomfortable adolescent years. It was not unusual to find Gordon Wood dipping into his own pocket to help with a doctor bill.

One example of Wood's personal touch was Gray He came to Texas as a refugee from an Oklahoma City street gang. He'd gotten into trouble and moved south to live with an uncle. Gray chuckles now about the size of Wood's Stamford teams: “They wouldn't even have let some of those kids come out for football in the city.”

Once Wood warned Gray about picking on a quieter member of the team, predicting he’d be unable to handle the explosion that was bound to occur. Wood’s

home was the first place Gray stopped to display the black eye that boy had finally presented to him. And years later it was Gordon Wood who got a late night phone call from Gray as he wrestled with a career decision. It wasn’t too late for Wood to listen and advise Gray against accepting a high school coach’s position.

“I remember him being absolutely furious about some other coach,” Gray recalls of another incident which demonstrates Wood's outlook toward helping rather than just winning. “A kid at another school had gotten hurt and Gordon asked the coach how the kid was recovering. The other coach told him the kid wasn't doing too well. He said the kid wouldn't work out, that he wouldn’t follow the exercises given to him.

“Gordon said that was the coach's job. He said he would have taken that kid out to the field by himself and gotten him started. A coach has to show the kid he's interested in him first and then see if the kid will respond. And that’s how he’s treated every kid that’s ever come his way.”

“We try to tell all of our kids that they are better than they think they are,” says Wood. “Maybe not as good as they tell their girlfriends, but better than they really think they are. But none will ever make it up to their potential. And the potential is always there.”

With his Stamford teams to bolster his reputation, Wood decided to move up a notch in 1958, accepting the highest level head coaching job he's ever held at division Four-A Victoria. His two-year experience there paved the way for the triumphs to come at Brownwood. For starters, he recruited as his assistant

Morris Southall, at that time the head coach for Winters. Today Southall is still his assistant, having moved with Wood to Brownwood in I960. They've always lived next door to each other, and Wood is quick to give Southall lots of credit. Indeed, Southall could have moved on to head coaching jobs of his own, but his desire to remain 25 years as Wood’s top aide stands as a comment itself on the attractions of coaching high school football in Texas. In Brownwood he feels he's been a part of the most successful program in America, and the record presents a good argument for that opinion. Southall is the only assistant coach in Texas who has served as head coach of the state's all-star team. Wood's other assistant, Kenneth West, has been with Wood’s program for 20 years—another testament to its magnetism.

But the crucial lesson Wood learned in Victoria concerned his personal goals. He went there as the highest paid high school coach in the state in 1958. Victoria was the big time for high school coaches, perhaps a step to collegiate ranks. When Wood reviewed the stands for a district championship game in 1959, however, he made a decision. Victoria had sold only 200 adult tickets. Something was missing, even if he was coaching in the big league. Just before the opening kickoff, Wood whispered to Southall: “I’m getting out of here.”

At his next stop he accepted the stiffest challenge of his career with a cut in pay worth $2,500 per year. “The retiring coach here told me, ‘Nobody can win at Brownwood.’ I knew Brownwood was not a winner,” Wood recalls. “But no job is ever as good as it looks, or as bad. It’s just what you make of it.”

When he moved to Brownwood in February I960, Wood stopped in a barber shop for a haircut. In there he quickly learned the attitude of the town. Recognized as the “new coach,” Wood immediately drew comments from another customer who said he was already betting on Breckenridge—beaten only once by Brownwood in 30 years and scheduled for the seventh game that season. Wood listened a while, got his haircut, paid his tab and went to the door.

Before he left, Wood offered a taste of his attitude: “If every SOB in this town is as sorry a sports fan as you, you don't ever deserve to beat Breckenridge. When I walk out this door, you can bet your life I’ll never take another step back in here as long as I live.”

Fortunately Brownwood had another barber shop because Gordon

Wood has had many more haircuts in the years since then. His team that year “just got it in their heads they could score on anybody” and by the time the Breckenridge game came around, the first fan in line to buy tickets purchased 373.

Maroon-and-white state championship footballs now line Wood’s bookshelves at home like scalps on an Indian brave's teepee: I960, 1965, 1967, 1969, 1970, 1978 and 1981. It’s a tradition that’s inspired the whole community.

Wood doesn’t cut players who come out for the team. He usually has 90 or more wearing uniforms and boasting about being a Brownwood Lion. “Oh,” he admits, “we may try to discourage some of them a bit, but if a kid had any ability at all and really wanted to play, I couldn't cut him. You have to decide if they are there because they want to be or just to look good. We emphasize winning here. It’s tremendous pressure now, and I don't apologize for it . You’re competing with everyone in life.”

Besides the exercises, weight training and agility drills. Wood and Southall have devised some other routines of note. One is a listening drill in which assistant coaches scout the assembled team to detect wandering eyes or lack of interest. A Brownwood Lion can attract a more serious tirade for daydreaming in a skull session than for missing a tackle.

By the time they're 69, most coaches have retired to the spectator ranks. In 1983, Wood appears to be the very picture of health and enthusiasm. He won't say anything about plans to retire. On the start of his 23rd campaign for Brownwood, his thoughts this year focus on the team. With only two starters returning from last year’s squad, the experts weren't giving the Lions any vote of confidence. With Wood cracking the whip, however, they're always a threat to go all the way.

As for Wood's analysis, well, he seems to look at all his teams about the same before each season starts: “I may just find me a bunch of little nuggets in there somewhere. Who knows?”

Percy Foreman Hands Off To Mike DeGeurin

 Among the most cherished benefits of my career in journalism has been the opportunity to meet some fascinating people. Here’s an article I wrote in July 1989 about several iconic Houston legal legends. It was published in that month’s editions of Houston Metropolitan Magazine.

When Mike DeGeurin inherited Percy Foreman's criminal law practice, he knew his toughest battle would be against his mentor's mythic reputation.

When the late Percy Foreman first arrived in Houston more than 60 years ago, he conducted a private poll of the city's big name law firms. He wanted to talk to the top lawyers here and learn about the practice of law. But every time he asked for the name on the door, the young Foreman drew the same curious response. He discovered many of the city's biggest name partners had actually died years before. Always one to learn from any experience, Foreman quickly determined that prominent attorneys develop their own brand of immortality. Their bodies lie in the grave, but their names stay on the shingle to provide a boost for younger partners who follow.

Foreman's immediate application of that lesson in 1927 has become an often repeated chapter of Harris County Courthouse lore. He laid claim to some of the most famous names in legal history, creating business cards with a long list of deceased partners to boost his credibility: “Moses, Justinian, Blackstone, Webster & Foreman.”

 In 1927, Foreman understood the magic of a deceased partner's name before his own. Today, a year after his death, Foreman still shares space on two business cards carried by 43-year-old Mike DeGeurin. One is a sample of the 1927 collector's item. Its primary value is as an object of cocktail conversation. On the second card, however, Foreman boasts a more ominous role, at least where DeGeurin is concerned. That one reads, “Foreman, DeGeurin & Nugent.” While the first is good for a laugh, the second carries with it a burden.

No one in 1927 expected the young Foreman to someday match reputations with the legal giants he symbolically placed on his first card. But a jury of his peers shortly before his death last August offered a verdict that he had come pretty close. The Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association presented him with a plaque that declared him simply “The World's Greatest Criminal Lawyer”—this from a profession in which ego is second nature. No one could challenge the claim.

Now, just as contemporaries in 1927 had no idea how Foreman might someday stack up against the legendary names beside his, observers of the Houston legal scene are wondering about the young protégé who inherited the practice of the acknowledged master. There's no disputing the differences in style between Foreman and DeGeurin. And the times have undoubtedly changed. True, DeGeurin has already handled some high-profile cases, and he answered one long-running media question in a technical sense. When his staff moved his belongings into Foreman's old office and he began working at Foreman's desk, he became the clear heir to Foreman's practice. But there's more to legendary status than the name of the living partner beside that of the deceased on a business card. Like it or not, folks will be watching DeGeurin closely in the years ahead to see exactly how he measures up.

“I can't fill Percy's shoes,” he snarls quickly when the subject is raised. “No one can do that. There's no way to pretend to be him. But I do have all the benefit of his 60 years of practice.”

To DeGeurin and many other Houston attorneys, such comparisons seem unfair. But the questions remain: Who is this youngster sitting in Foreman's office? Is he tough enough to maintain the tradition that's made Houston a landmark for flamboyant criminal defense efforts?

“I never saw Foreman in practice,” says State District Judge Michael McSpadden, who once offered to “duke it out” with DeGeurin when McSpadden was a prosecutor. Now that McSpadden's a judge, they've healed their differences and he offers a broader view. “The Foreman image is definitely not Mike. But flamboyancy doesn't count any more. Juries are too sophisticated. When people someday look back on Mike's career, he may certainly have the same reputation Foreman enjoyed when he died.”

From appearances, DeGeurin would stand little chance of carrying on in court the way Foreman did in his heyday. At 6-foot-4-inches and 250 pounds, Foreman intimidated with his mere presence. His voice thundered and sarcasm pounded home his points.

“This case was tried by Henry Wade and the Dallas District Attorney's office,”

Foreman once boomed in arguing a criminal appeal to a panel of judges. “In addition to that, I've found three more points of error.” The judges laughed and he quickly had them enthralled. Heads shorter at 5-foot-9 and without the booming voice of the bear, DeGeurin can't use the same kind of intimidation. But he has managed to get his own points across.

“I liked Mr. Foreman’s strength. When he walked into court, everyone trembled,” says Dr. Chris Malone. Her family hired Foreman to defend her brother on attempted murder charges a few years ago. He administered the case and dispatched DeGeurin to try it. “With Mike, they don't tremble, but they certainly looked up. My questions about him were gone quickly. Our problem became his problem.”

Former partner Lewis Dickson recalls how DeGeurin employs cunning and finesse where Foreman would have terrorized with bluster: “Mike decided to introduce some meaningless pictures into evidence once. He purposely stumbled around and fouled up his introductory questions so the prosecutor would object. It left the jury asking, ‘What's the state trying to hide?’ DeGeurin is clever, but he's not consumed by showing it.”

Foreman's methods and lifestyle generated enemies by the dozen. In contrast,  DeGeurin's enemies are harder to find, despite his presence in controversial cases. Some opponents have accused him of leaking information to reporters and others have described him as a mercenary who will do anything to win a case. His defenders dispatch the complaints as “sour grapes” born from the frustrations of being outsmarted by him.

It's outside the city that DeGeurin generates the strongest feelings. While battling Montgomery County in the sensational Clarence Lee Brandley case, DeGeurin had metal shavings poured in his gas tank. Someone also altered the cover of a back issue of Texas Monthly magazine, placing his picture above the headline “The Sleaziest Man in Texas” and posting it on a courthouse office wall. But police and prosecutors in Houston have nothing but compliments for him.

“He's a gentleman,” says Edd Blackwood, a local bondsman who has been around

the courthouse for 20 years in a number of capacities. “Mike can shift gears like

a fine sports car and you don't even notice it. He can be a good old boy one minute

and the next he can point his finger at you and say, ‘This is the way it's going to be.’ He's not too soft. He can take charge.”

He also has other important factors in his favor that can sometimes be taken for granted. He has been handling Foreman's trial work for some time, and no one begrudges him the opportunity to occupy Foreman's office.

“Everybody believes they've earned the link,” says Blackwood of DeGeurin and his older brother, Dick DeGuerin, who worked in Foreman's office, too. “Percy worked their butts off. They were down at the courthouse by 6 or 7 every morning and investigating cases every day of the week.”

Too often forgotten is the fact that DeGeurin was handpicked by Foreman to succeed him. Foreman once called him the only lawyer he would hire, and that  reference alone says plenty. But there's one other factor that overshadows all the

gushing accolades from DeGeurin's pals. He spent 11 years in Foreman's presence,

watching his every move and absorbing his wisdom like an intellectual sponge. DeGeurin summarized the significance matter-of-factly when he began a speech recently at a seminar for defense attorneys: “There are a few things I learned

from Percy Foreman,” he began, immediately capturing everyone's attention.

But anyone watching the situation a decade ago might be surprised at what's taken place today. Back then, DeGeurin was new to the headlines. He was Dick's kid brother. He joined Foreman's practice in 1977, well after Dick had staked his own claim to the title of heir-apparent. Differences in their styles and outlook seemed as distinctive as the difference in their last names. Dick changed the spelling of his to reflect the original French from la guerre, or war. Mike decided to retain the spelling of recent generations.

“Now the police are able to use that against our clients,” DeGeurin quips. “They'll videotape DWI suspects using the phone to call one of us. If the suspect calls my brother and asks for me, they'll say, ‘See, he was so drunk he couldn't even call his lawyer.’”

Dick admits Mike is a “nicer guy,” and the older brother has been one to thrive more in the spotlight. The weekly newspaper Texas Lawyer recently published a  series of articles identifying its selections for the “new Racehorses”—those attorneys most likely to succeed Richard “Racehorse” Haynes and Foreman at the top of the state's defense bar. Dick DeGuerin joined Mike Ramsey as Houston's candidates, with Mike DeGeurin relegated to a mention in the article about his brother.

By the late 1970s Dick had established himself as a flashy, effective and hard-hitting defender who played as seriously as he worked. Mike hit town with a background as a family man, proud of high school elections naming him most popular and class president.

A native of Austin and the son of an attorney, DeGeurin graduated from the

University of Texas and then attended law school at Texas Tech in Lubbock because of the higher salaries there for teachers. Married to his high school sweetheart, he needed her teaching income to complete his education. A fierce loyalty to her and their three children plays as important a role in his life as the law.

“I’m amazed with his schedule that he's been able to coach little league,” says  Blackwood, recalling how DeGeurin recruited him one year to handle an inner city youth baseball team. “He honestly does spend time with his kids.”

He actually came to Houston in 1973, spending two years as a clerk for Justice Wendell Odom on the state Court of Criminal Appeals and later for U.S. District Judge John Singleton. Unlike his brother, DeGeurin rejected the notion of learning  about trial work as an assistant district attorney and instead became one of the first to join the newly established public defender's office of the federal courts in 1975. He's still remembered there as a compassionate defender, who took clients' problems to heart.

DeGeurin found celebrity status thrust upon him immediately after joining Foreman. One of the firm's biggest cases of all time stemmed from the death of Dr.

John Hill. Litigation from that notorious event—immortalized in the best seller Blood and Money—engaged the firm on two fronts. While Dick earned headlines

and praise in the criminal courts for his spirited but unsuccessful defense of a woman accused of setting up the murder, Mike handled the civil defense of a wrongful death action filed by Hill's survivors against the late oil millionaire Ash Robinson. Convincing a jury that the survivors had no cause for action, the younger DeGeurin quickly made local reporters aware there would be two ways to spell DeGeurin and that they'd better learn how to get both of them right.

Differences in the brothers are also revealed in their relationships with Foreman. Both revered the man like a father, but Dick's confrontations with the master over strategy have become the stuff of courthouse legend. While Foreman would bark at Dick—who always barked back—he'd handle Mike differently, making him feel guilty when something had gone wrong. DeGeurin recalls how Foreman would use the competitive nature of the siblings to tease them forward: “He’d say, ‘Dick, yes, but you, Mike? Not you!’ when I'd done something dumb.”

Dick departed in 1982 with Lewis Dickson to launch a separate firm. Mike remained with Foreman, to be joined later by Paul Nugent.

“He’d always been known as my little brother, and I think he was glad to get away from that and become his own person," recalls Dick. Even though he accuses Mike of misspelling their family name and being shorter, the older brother remains fiercely loyal and says he hopes they can practice together again someday. He says, “If Mike has enemies, they’d better not talk to me about it.”

Until Foreman's death the practice followed a standard pattern. Foreman supervised everything, but he spent more time interviewing prospective clients to determine if the firm would handle their cases. That left the energetic youngsters to grapple with opponents in the courtrooms. Since Foreman's death, DeGeurin has had to fill both roles, and that keeps him busy well into the night. Despite the firm's well-publicized reputation for stiff fees, many people in trouble still think first of Percy Foreman and contact the firm. With his recent entry into the national spotlight via 60 Minutes, DeGeurin appears poised to continue that tradition. In the past two years, 60 Minutes has broadcast stories on two DeGeurin cases that promise to keep DeGeurin's name before the public in the months to come.

The influential program first spotted him when it launched an expose of the capital  murder conviction of Clarence Lee Brandley, sentenced to die for the 1980 murder of a 16-year-old girl at Conroe High School. True to his bulldog reputation, DeGeurin has battled for a new trial using every weapon available. The case rested with the Court of Criminal Appeals at press time after a well-publicized path through special evidentiary hearings that culminated in 1987 with a judge's recommendation for a new trial. Along the way, Montgomery County and its justice system attracted allegations of racial prejudice and corruption, making

DeGeurin the target for that community's rage.

60 Minutes also stumbled across another DeGeurin case, the defense of Kelly Jo Koch against murder charges lodged in 1985. Last summer a judge slammed police tactics in obtaining her confession and denied prosecutors its use. The videotaped confession had been aired on 60 Minutes in November, 1987, giving another black eye to Texas law enforcement. DeGeurin produced a psychiatrist to testify that Koch had suffered a nervous breakdown in the questioning process.

Weaving anecdotes from Foreman's career with examples from his own experiences, DeGeurin easily surfaces as the closest link the legal community

will have to the legendary trial master. It's a role he both understands and welcomes: “When I’m 70, the fact I say something might have meaning. But Percy used to say something was true, then he’d add, ‘And I didn't learn it from a book. It was 65 years of distilled experiences.’ I can't say that yet; I'm only 43. The way you leap past people your own age is by finding someone who has already been through these experiences and is willing to tell you the truth as he knows it.”

No one will ever replace Percy Foreman; his times are gone for good. Houston is

too big for just one colorful lawyer to claim all the attention and handle all the high-profile cases. But of the handful of young lawyers who can claim the master as their mentor, DeGeurin emerges in an enviable position.

When Ted Poe Was Houston's 'Hanging Judge'

Serving in the US Congress from 2005 until retiring in 2018, Houston’s Ted Poe is best remembered these days as a wise-cracking conservative Republican lawmaker. But he first made his mark at the Harris County Criminal Courthouse in the 1970s, ‘80s and ‘90s first as a hard-nosed prosecutor and then as an innovative Criminal District Judge.

I met Poe as a young prosecutor when I worked as a reporter for The Houston Post covering that courthouse between 1976 and 1979. Despite his hard line toward criminals, he always displayed a great sense of humor, and we often shared many laughs during his prosecutorial career. We even carpooled while performing our respective duties on a high-profile criminal case moved to Huntsville on a change of venue from Houston in 1977—him prosecuting and me reporting the testimony for The Houston Post. That case received national attention, including coverage by TheWashington Post. 

Although our lifestyles and views differed greatly on everything from religion to nightlife, we always got along well in what I always realized to be more of a symbiotic relationship than a true friendship. For me, he was always good copy and for him, I was a portal for media attention. Nevertheless, I’m sure that symbiotic relationship included a large amount of mutual respect. I know it did from my side of the equation.

So, as a freelancer in the 1980s, I turned again to Ted Poe for story material during his judicial career and he did not disappoint. I wrote several articles about his innovative judicial methods, including this one published in the October 1987 edition of Southwest Airlines’ Spirit magazine. He always kept a framed copy of that cover among the artwork decorating his office walls. Of course, there’s also a Wikipedia article on Poe for anyone seeking details about his congressional career.

HIS BRAND OF SENTENCING MAY BE UNORTHODOX, BUT JUDGE

TED IS LEAVING HIS MARK ON THE TEXAS CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM

Winston Bradley (as we'll call him) was terrified. The young commodities broker had just relocated to Houston in 1983, looking for professional opportunity. He'd found that, all right, but along with it came something else. Admittedly "naive and stupid," he had agreed to help acquaintance deliver cocaine, only to walk straight into an undercover narcotics investigation trap. Fingerprinted, booked and locked in jail for the first time in his life, Bradley then faced an even more horrifying prospect: His case was assigned to the 228th Judicial District, a court notorious in jailhouse circles as the Black Hole of Harris County.

“The other inmates in the jail were scared to death of the judge in that court,” recalls Bradley. “I was briefed fully on Judge Ted Poe. I was terrified.”

At first it appeared his fears had merit. After pleading guilty, he still refused to throw himself on the mercy of a judge who regularly recites his hard-line motto in public: “I just don't think the criminals ought to leave the courthouse laughing.” Instead Bradley chose a rarely used provision in Texas law that allows first offenders to have a jury assess the sentence. Despite the prosecutor's insistence on 10 years in prison, the jurors decided on seven years' probation with a $5,000 fine. Bradley breathed a sigh of relief.

Then Judge Poe took his breath away.

Interpreting Texas laws on probationary control to their most liberal extreme, Poe ordered Bradley to spend the first 30 days of his term in the Harris County Jail as an appetizer for the main course of punishment that would come if he were to violate probation and draw a prison sentence. The judge ordered a urinalysis taken twice a month plus 20 monthly hours of community service projects assigned by the court.

Figuring that his alternatives could be worse, Bradley swallowed his objections, silently cursed his rotten luck and marched off to jail. After his release, he spent his Saturdays working at a retail consignment shop, with the proceeds donated to churches. He joined a crew of fellow probationers from the 228th Judicial District in cleaning the battleship Texas and the San Jacinto Monument, collecting no pay for the time-consuming volunteer duty. He quit drinking and religiously reported for urinalysis. He met with the judge at regular intervals. And slowly a change occurred.

Bradley has been off probation for some time now. He has married and works hard to support himself. The judge holds no power over Bradley anymore. But Bradley still spends some Saturdays volunteering at the church shop. And he has a new attitude about the man in black who took all the fun out of being on probation.

“I now respect him greatly,” says Bradley of Judge Ted Poe. “He made me see the light. When my judgment was set aside, it was like winning a million dollars. He showed me guidance, and it was a strict probation. It changed my whole life.”

Bradley is hardly typical of the “customers” who do business with the controversial figure who laughs off his image as Houston's “hanging judge.” The criminal justice system produces few satisfied customers anyway, and any review of Poe's probation/prison statistics demonstrates his sympathy for old-fashioned, hellfire-and-brimstone punishment. The majority of defendants assigned to the 228th won't get the same opportunity afforded Bradley.

At the same time, however, there's something new and creative going on in his court. For too long, the public has felt powerless about crime, its only response a choice between extremes: ship the offenders off to prison, where they'll probably get worse before they return; or put them on probation, where they can laugh about beating the system. Ted Poe's justice—dare we dub it Poetic justice?—leaves offenders with little chance for beating the system.

Viewed against the backdrop of prison overcrowding problems in Texas and, for that matter, all over the country, Poe's justice looks like a harbinger of the future. By August, the Texas prison system had been forced on 18 occasions to bar new admissions. While halting delivery of prisoners to its front door, the system has accelerated their departure out the back on at least four occasions this year, with the governor's office awarding extra “good time” to precipitate release of prisoners who would not ordinarily have been paroled. The situation has only added to the frustration of critics who view the system as one big revolving door.

Poe isn't advocating more probation as an alternative to prison. Indeed, his court is renowned as one in which prison sentences overwhelmingly outnumber probation terms. But overcrowded prisons aren't limited to Texas. As more judges adopt creative methods to make probation more effective, Poe emerges as a symbol of a new response to the criminal problem.

“I call it contemporary probation as opposed to straight probation, and it's a national trend that's continually expanding,” says Malcolm MacDonald, president of the American Probation and Parole Officers Association. As administrator for community-based correctional programs for the Texas Adult Probation Commission, MacDonald is particularly aware of the pressures on probation in the Southwest.

“Judges are open to a new look at probation,” he explains. “Part of the motivation is that judges aren’t seeing success with people going through the prison systems, which are overcrowded anyway.”

In that context, Poe represents the vanguard of a new and potentially more effective method for confronting crime. But his pioneering efforts haven’t come without criticism. Not yet 40 years old, Poe seems to enjoy his celebrity as a controversial figure. He recalls feeling complimented when an outraged defense attorney offered his description of Poe as a young prosecutor a few years ago: “He can take 12 rational people on a jury and turn them into a howling lynch mob.”

The judge chuckled at a more recent and earthy assessment offered by a killer sentenced to death in his court: “You tell Judge Poe he has a heart like a thumping gizzard.”

Because of Poe's unmerciful record as a Harris County prosecutor, many observers feared for the system when he won his judicial appointment in 1981 at the age of 33. Here was an assistant district attorney who only half-jokingly referred to his job as “the Lord's work.” Here was a prosecutor nicknamed "Toothbrush Ted" because he had once slid a toothbrush across the defense table to a defendant who slumped in his chair after drawing a long sentence. Poe said he brought the toothbrush that day because he figured the defendant would need one for prison after the trial.

Here was a tea-totaling deacon from the Church of Christ who always credited his religious background with fashioning his philosophy: “I believe there are rights and there are wrongs. The whole world is not a mass of grays as some people would try to lead us to believe.”

But things have been a little different from the bench.

“I don't call it the Lord's work from up here,” he says. And he resisted the temptation to campaign for election by distributing toothbrushes with his name on the handles.

“As a defense attorney, I'm nervous about him. All those conditions just give my clients more opportunity to mess up,” says Fred Dailey, one of the city's top criminal lawyers. “But as a citizen, I've come to appreciate his approach. Probation is too often considered a right by people who should learn criminal conduct is serious business.”

For some, however, the challenge is stiff. The judge recalls an occasion early in his term when he watched a defendant wince while discussing the special conditions demanded in the 228th. Finally, the probation officer addressed the judge: “He says he'd rather go to prison.” Within minutes the man was headed for the Texas Department of Corrections, happy to serve his time behind bars.

“Probation for a defendant is a little white box all tied with yellow ribbons,” Poe explains. “When they open that box in my court, they find a long list of dos and don'ts. I'm no sociologist. But the people I see come through here are selfish. One thing to help change that attitude is to get them doing things for other people.”

Building his probation philosophy on that maxim, Poe has constructed a special formula for dealing with all probationers. It's a formula different from traditional courts, where probationers are merely delivered to their supervisory officers and left to follow basic rules set down by the state. Poe personally involves himself with his probationers to the extent that they actually have two supervisory officers—their probation department professional and his honor himself.

All property crime probations in Poe's court begin with a formal apology from the defendant to the victim. It has to be delivered in writing to Poe, who reviews it for sincerity: “The first step in rehabilitation is admitting you're wrong.”

If the probationer hedges on that admission, the letter must be rewritten. One probationer noted in his letter: “If somebody had taken my car like I did to you, I'd probably have shot them.”

He even required a welfare fraud probationer to publish a classified ad in one of the daily papers apologizing to the citizens of Harris County.

While many judges just sign the probation forms and allow probationers to report by mail, he requires weekly personal visits to the probation department. In addition, each probationer must personally visit him in his office every 60 or 90 days.

“I want to see how they're doing. After all, they're my responsibility,” he says.

And winning early release from probation is not necessarily a routine matter in the 228th. Poe requires a written report from the probationer clearly stating the lifestyle changes that have created a “good citizen.”

But these things are merely the surface of probation in the 228th. Poe really waxes creative in two areas beyond paperwork: community service and special terms.

Sounding much like a doting father with a pack of errant children to corral, Poe recalls, “I read somewhere in the papers one Christmas that the Houston-Galveston Food Bank was out of food. I thought, ‘I ought to get my probationers working on that.’ So I had some of them help distribute food. And they threw a Christmas party for the kids at Project Head Start. They collected items for Toys for Tots. That was their three projects for that year.”

He can dispatch his “probation team” like that thanks to some vague wording in his probation term pleadings. All probationers are required to perform 20 hours of community service per month. But Poe retains the option of determining just how that will be done. He reviews the probationer's background and finds an assignment to do the most good.

One example is a probationer who owned two beauty shops. Convicted of criminal mischief, the man was assigned to spend Saturdays cutting hair at the Texas centers for the retarded and the blind. Says the judge: “If you drive past there and wonder why all those kids have such great hairdos, well, that's why.”

DWI (driving while intoxicated) probationers are routinely assigned to volunteer for work in hospital emergency rooms: “So they can see first-hand the effects of drunk driving.”

Once he loaned a 20-probationer work crew to the state's parks department, where they helped with restoration of the Battleship Texas while another Poe probation squad cleaned the historic Founder Cemetery.

If Poe's interpretation of community service authority seems creative, then his penchant for “special terms” is often the stroke of genius. He always finds something that tailors the probation to the crime. He first grabbed headlines by exiling a probationer to Michigan. He orders high school dropouts to return to school or obtain a GED as a special term of probation. Teens and adults who commit property crimes at night are placed under a 10:30 p.m. curfew.

Jokes the judge: “Someone said that would be impossible to enforce, but it's actually the easiest of all. You just have the probation officer call the home. If there's no answer, the probationer has violated the terms. By 10:30 p.m. the news is off TV and they ought to be in bed, anyway.”

Always eager to come down hard on drunken driving offenses, Poe even ordered child support as a probationary term in a manslaughter case. The wreck victim's widow testified about her poverty, and a light bulb flashed in the judge's brain. When the jury placed the negligent driver on probation, Poe ordered the defendant to help with child support for the widow.

Criminal justice philosophers might argue that all this is effective only if a judge can demonstrate lower rates of revoking those fancy probation contracts. Poe can't. In fact, he admits he may have higher revocation rates because the terms are often more stringent. But he counters that the extra effort is worth it if just one case produces results.

At the Harris County Courthouse these days, the impact of creative probation—Ted Poe's justice—is becoming quite a trend. Vying with Poe now for new ideas is another young jurist, Michael McSpadden. Having concocted some creative projects of his own, McSpadden was disappointed when he heard Poe had been first to focus on the Battleship Texas as a target for the 228th. So he warned Poe in a memo: “Keep your hands off the Alamo—it's mine.”

Looking up from the note, Poe offered a predictable response: “How does he know I don't already have people there?”

Do Not Hire This Hit Man

During my career covering crime and courts in Houston, Texas, I interviewed or profiled a number of memorable people. This article from October 1993 in The National Law Journal is about one of them, an investigator named Gary Johnson.  For reasons that should be obvious, I’m not providing any updated information on his whereabouts. I like to believe he’s now retired and living peacefully somewhere.

After Johnson gained some notoriety in the late 1990s, he was approached to serve as the inspiration for both a movie and a TV series. Although those projects failed to materialize as far as I know, Johnson did continue to receive media attention  with articles in 2001 in The Washington Post and Texas Monthly magazine and as recently as 2009 in Slate.

Here’s what I wrote about him in 1993.

HOUSTON—One of the nation's busiest hit men can be found operating openly here, regularly offering his services for sale in an office not far from police headquarters. His name is Gary Johnson, and Houston police know him well. Even the district attorney himself knows about Mr. Johnson’s activities. But he has no plans to arrest him.

No, there’s been no payoff. Mr. Johnson enjoys im­munity for arranging his murder contracts because he’s actually working for the “good guys.” As a veteran investigator with the Harris County District At­torney’s office, Mr. Johnson has developed a rare expertise: He specializes in posing as a contract killer, collecting evidence of assassination plots and then nipping them before they get carried out, When Mr. Johnson closes a deal, nobody dies—but some­one usually goes to jail.

“He knows the rules” of entrapment, says Harris County District Attorney John B. Holmes Jr. “He's every bit as competent as a lawyer in deciding those legal issues, so It's fallen on him more often than not to play the part of the hit man.”

Mr. Johnson says he's played the part at least 37 times. But not every job results in a case. Sometimes the customer loses nerve. Other times the reason for buying a hit is eliminated by circumstances. He re­calls that some bizarre negotiations with a Harris County Jail inmate, for example, ended that way.

“He wanted someone to kill two witnesses to the murder he'd committed. An informant gave him my unlisted number here at the DA’s office, end he called me collect from the jail to solicit their deaths,” re­calls Mr. Johnson.

During the taped conversation, the inmate confessed to stabbing his girlfriend 39 times and said he needed to get rid of the witnesses. Before he could close a deal with Mr. Johnson in the weeks ahead, however, the inmate agreed to a plea bargain in the murder case and decided he no longer required additional deaths.

But Mr. Johnson estimates that a third of the inci­dents have resulted in arrests and convictions on charges of solicitation of capital murder or lesser related offenses. Only twice have Mr. Johnson's “cli­ents” opted to fight their indictments through Jury trials with both receiving lengthy prison terms of 80 years and life. No one who has ever hired Mr. John­son has been acquitted. And the cases have ranged from the potentially bloodcurdling to the near-ridiculous.

Ironically, Mr. Johnson’s first exposure to the world of contract killing occurred when he became the target of two botched death plots while working as an undercover narcotics cop in the late 1970s in Port Arthur, Texas. But his unusual career in law enforcement stretches further back than that. Be­tween 1970 and 1976 he worked as a sheriff's deputy in Calcasieu Parish, La., leaving that job after he helped other deputies gather evidence that got their sheriff indicted for theft.

In Port Arthur from 1976 until 1981, Mr. Johnson polished his acting talents in the dangerous theater of undercover narcotics, On one occasion, an infor­mant warned Mr. Johnson of a plan to blow up his car. The plot unraveled because the clients could not pay, and the hit man claimed he would have just “ripped them off, anyway.” On another occasion he learned that two brothers and their father had hired someone to execute him at his house. Once again, they made the mistake of contacting an informant,

who alerted Mr. Johnson and allowed him to dodge that attempt by faking his own death.

The incidents taught Mr. Johnson a valuable lesson about the difficulties of carrying out a murder con­tract. He says people with murder on their mind routinely approach petty criminals hoping to find a hit man. But small-time thugs often have more fear of murder than of the police, and they end up on the phone with him.

“Most commit property crimes,” he says. “When you start talking about killing people, they don't want to get involved.”

Holding a master’s degree in psychology, Mr. Johnson moved to Houston In 1981 with plans to pur­sue a doctorate. Looking for work, he parlayed his education and police background, with special skills as a hypnotist, into a spot with the district attorney's office here. He doesn’t recall his first performance masquerading as a contract killer but says the en­cores were numerous in the mid-1980s as Houston developed its reputation for spawning murder-for-­hire prosecutions.

“It's something that just, kind of happened,” says Mr. Holmes, noting that agents pretending to be kill­ers must possess special skills. Mr. Johnson seemed to fit the part.

His background in psychology helps him size up potential clients and present them with the kind of image they expect—an image that will differ from one person to another. He gathers background information from his informants before actually meeting with a prospective customer. He usually tries to dress as that person would be dressed, blue-collar worker or business executive. And he takes cues from their mannerisms to put them at ease.

“The more sinister you appear, the less successful you will be,” he says. “They actually want a friend to do the hit.”

Nevertheless, many cases have involved ruthless individuals. Last year, an offshore oil worker hired Mr. Johnson in Galveston to kill his wife, Besides resulting in a jury trial, that case is also memorable for the twisted plot hatched by the client. The oil worker first had filed a mental health warrant against his wife describing her as suicidal. After her release from a hospital, he asked a topless dancer for help in finding a killer. She instead contacted police, and they told her to refer him to Mr. Johnson.

“He called and was going offshore,” recalls Mr. Johnson. “He needed it done immediately, so I met with him in Galveston. He wanted to collect $10,000 in life insurance, custody of his child, and then he want­ed to make more money by suing doctors. He wanted me to cut her wrists and hold her until she bled to death. Then, he believed, he could sue the doctors that released her from the hospital for misdiagnosing her suicidal tendencies.”

In the other case tried before a jury. Mr. Johnson posed as a contract killer for a woman named Kathy Scott who wanted to murder her husband just a few weeks into the marriage. She told Mr. Johnson she had married him with the intention of killing him for his money and offered Mr. Johnson $1,500 to consum­mate the relationship with a pistol.

“She married him and then confided in an infor­mant who had friends in low places. They called me instead,” recalls Mr. Johnson of the case. “She want­ed it to look like a robbery, like a crackhead had picked him off in his car. We met in a bowling alley. She paid some of the money up front and then told me she'd put the rest in a certain page of a copy of the Yellow Pages in a public phone booth. I said. ‘Okay, you're a widow now,’ and that was the cue for the uniformed officers to make an arrest.”

Both Mr. Johnson and Ms. Scott's prosecutor, Assistant District Attorney Dan Rizzo, point to her as an exam^­ple of the sort of psychotic fury bubbling barely be­neath the surface of people who buy someone else's death. They remain convinced that jurors in the Scott case were prepared to place the attractive, thir­tyish woman on probation until she took the witness stand and allowed her anger to take control. The jury ordered 80 years in prison.

“Jurors told me they got chills across their backs when they watched her under cross-examination,” says Mr. Rizzo.

Working with Mr. Johnson on the Scott case, Mr. Rizzo also developed an appreciation for the investi­gator's evidence-gathering talents. Entrapment rare­ly emerges as a defense because Mr. Johnson only gets involved if someone calls him. But he repeatedly tries to persuade prospective clients to drop their plans for murder, continually asking in tape-record­ed conversations, “Are you for real? I don't want to hear you say you never meant it to go this far.”

Says Mr. Rizzo: “That's usually the defense, that the person wasn't serious. Gary is good at getting their intentions out.”

Besides establishing intent, Mr. Johnson also tries to help with punishment. In Texas, most cases include sentencing by jury, so Mr. Johnson discusses philosophy in his tape-recorded conversations, hop­ing the defendant's comments will reflect an attitude for jurors to analyze for punishment if a trial should occur.

“The scariest to me now are the juveniles,” he says. “I've done five or six of those in the last year. They're after everyone from ex-boyfriends to parents in some cases. They exhibit many more anti-social charac­teristics than the adults. They're much more violent and have a poor appreciation of death.”

His youngest client was a 15-year-old recently sen­tenced to life in prison for trying to buy his mother’s death. Meeting with Mr. Johnson in an elementary school parking lot, the lad offered stereo speakers as a down payment on the $3,000 contract price and pledged to sell the mother’s jewelry to pay the rest. Police made the arrest after Mr. Johnson cued them electronically with the phrase, “Okay, you're an orphan now.”

Despite the gravity of his business, one of Mr. Johnson's teen clients recently had him laughing out loud during tape-recorded negotiations for a hit. This 17-year-old computer nerd with an IQ of 131—and “the social skills of a 12-year-old”—offered Mr. Johnson $5.30 plus a couple of Atari tapes for the murder of a schoolyard rival. At one point in his conversation, Mr. Johnson broke down, chuckling, “You want a $3 killing?” and added, “This is about the cheapest I've ever done.” As he counted the nickels and dimes offered as payment, the youngster ob­served, “If you drive back on the toll road, you won't need to get change.”

Then Mr. Johnson can be heard clearly on the tape, suppressing a laugh and responding: “If I drive back on the toil road, I won't make much from this job.”