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.”

Gertrude Thomas: Monopoly on Heartbreak

 One day in 1975, my city editor at The Houston Post assigned me to investigate a story he thought held the potential for scandal. He had received a wire story about a Louisiana judge who had ordered disabled children removed from a Houston caretaker because she has failed to provide adequate educational opportunities for her Louisiana wards of the state. He told me to go get her. When I returned with my story, however, the final result proved far different from my editor’s expectations.

Unknown to me at that time, I had participated in a stunning example of unexpected ways the press can trigger progress. My assignment introduced me to one of the most remarkable individuals I had the good fortunate to encounter during my 45 year-career in journalism: Gertrude Thomas. As a freelance writer eight years later I decided to update on her status and produced this feature story for the April 1832 edition of a monthly magazine called Salt. It styled itself as a publication for “grassroots Christians seeking social justice.”

Once again, I’ve searched recently for any updated information into 2019 on Thomas or her home, but could find no leads. If anyone reading this blog post knows anything else, please update with a comment.

Salt April, 1983

The Gertrude Thomas home: Where beauty is never skin deep

An idea ahead of its time is usually worth its weight in gold to the person hatching it. Often, however, the gold is not the sort of wealth you can put in the bank. Gertrude Thomas is a Houston nurse who had an idea ahead of her time. On the surface, it brought her a life of isolation. It dealt her a monopoly on heartbreak. It forced her to live for 30 years uncertain about the source of her next month's grocery-bill payment.

But the gold still came shining through just as surely as if it had been in the bank. You could see it in her eyes as she watched scenes so horrible you had to look away. You could hear it in her voice as she talked about the lives touched by her idea. You could feel it in the special electricity generated when she contacted others. And, in the end you had to ask how she could handle the burden of such an idea.

"I practiced self-hypnosis," says the 71-year-old founder of the Gertrude Thomas Home—without cracking a smile.

Things are bright for Thomas these days. She is one of those fortunate beings favored by fate. She lived to see the day when time caught up to her idea. She saw the whole community finally lift from her shoulders the monstrous burden she had borne alone for 30 years.

Now, there's even a little gold in the bank account for the woman who gave her entire life to the severely retarded and abused children of Texas.

The first children

Her story actually begins in the middle of her life. In 1950 she was employed as a nurse at Houston's large, public hospital, Jeff Davis. Each month the facility swells— even today—with record numbers of births. It's the only place in town where women too poor for private obstetrical care can come for delivery. It also records its fair share of children born with birth defects. Most of them, in 1950, had no place to go.

An ectopic pregnancy had left Thomas unable to bear children. She had come to the city in 1939 from West Texas with her husband, a painting contractor. After World War II she decided to sign up for nurse training at Jeff Davis. She was steeped in her career in 1950 when a couple of doctors made a suggestion destined to change her life.

Two Down's syndrome baby boys, both less than 1 year old, needed a home. Their parents had fled the hospital. So Gertrude Thomas took them home to the wood-frame house she shared in northwest Houston with her husband.

"That first night I didn't sleep," she recalls. "I was nervous. They both had baby beds and I ended up sleeping with them."

They were there to stay. She named them Danny and Tommy and raised them as her own. But they were just the start. With her courageous act of generosity was born the Thomas Home for Exceptional Children. Between 1950 and 1978 it was the only facility in Texas and Louisiana where the severely retarded could be sent. Even today, it remains the sole home in Texas for the kids with absolutely no other place to go.

In those days a place like the Thomas home operated in society's shadows. In 1976 she explained her home to reporters: "Most people don't even know there are children like these. They are the forgotten ones. But all you have to do is see what they are like, and the problems of caring for them are obvious."

Soon after she had accepted Danny and Tommy, Thomas found herself in possession of a state license to operate a center for 12 children. The State of Texas paid $90 per month per child for her services. Sometimes, she'd even receive a little donation from parents.

"I still remember the happiest time as that first Christmas," she recalls. "My family had never gone in for Christmas trees, but for the children we got a tree. We had about 16 kids at the time. They had all drawn names and the children had packages. Everyone was together. There were no parents. Back then, they didn't visit. They'd just call."

Blind to deformities

About a year after its start, the home received its first hydrocephalic child—a baby with a 38-inch head. Over the years, there have been much worse. A tour of the Thomas home—particularly in its original location—was not a pretty sight. It has housed every sort of deformity at one time or another. Many came as results of child abuse and torture. As the home grew and the staff expanded, Thomas plowed everything into what had become her life's obsession.

She obtained a license for 50 children. She borrowed money to expand her home into a clinic with hospital beds, respirators, and medical equipment. She repaid the loan herself—$96,000 worth. Louisiana contracted to send its infant outcasts and paid $11.40 per day.

"I had never been around retarded children," recalls Jim Vaughn, administrator of Cresthaven Nursing Home in Austin. He visited the home in 1975 to help Thomas as a consultant.

"I was appalled. Here were all these bodies side by side in little cribs up and down the corridors. I told a partner I didn't want to get involved. But as you get acquainted with these kids you don't see the deformities. You see the bright eyes and the smiles of kids who cannot do anything for themselves. I had to help."

Her husband had died in 1964, and since then Thomas had bravely run the home alone.

"She totally dedicated her entire existence to caring for these kids," recalls Vaughn. "She was totally consumed. She put in 24 hours per day. And she poured everything she had into the place to keep it going. She lived month to month. It seemed like less than half of the people paid."

But bureaucracy discovered her in 1975 and responded with a telling blow that opened her doors to media attention. Acting on the report of some federal agency investigator, a federal judge in Louisiana ordered the state to remove its 33 children from the home. His reasoning? They weren't getting enough "educational stimulation."

Members of the local press descended on the home in droves, expecting to find an expose of cruelty. The federal ruling had made the place sound like a dilapidated halfway house for sick children run by someone greedy to squeeze a meager profit from public welfare funds. What they found instead was Gertrude Thomas inviting them to come inside and make suggestions as to how she could improve the level of "educational stimulation" among her patients.

"The highest IQ she has out there is 17," a Houston pediatrician chided the press.

As they toured the facility, the reporters quickly realized the ridiculousness of the federal ruling. They also gained respect for the woman who had surrendered her life to care for a family of children with members so fragile they were little more than vegetables.

"She provided health care and love for children who had no place else to go. Doctors had told them they would not live," says Vaughn.

With the Louisiana children headed home—many against the wishes of their parents—a major source of income dried up. Vaughn decided to pitch in and help. He wrestled with a way to get funding from a federally sponsored program for retarded children. But Thomas' expanded home would never pass muster as a medical facility under the required guidelines.

"Finally," he recalls, "we were fortunate. A parent was interested in perpetuating that facility. He made arrangements and contacts with people who owned a nursing home in south Houston."

The benefactor and his partners have avoided publicity about their role. What they did was buy a medical-nursing home and turn it over to Thomas and her staff. The new Thomas Home opened on May 1, 1978.

Patron saint

Besides a gleaming new structure, the new facility boasts a larger staff. Of 35 workers before, only two had been nurses. Now the Thomas Home has an in-house physician, a director of nurses, day and night supervisors, and all the other support troops needed to handle its patient load of 150. Gertrude Thomas is salaried for life and enjoys a status somewhere between director-emeritus and patron saint.

She comes to the facility every day from her home, still located in the original Thomas Home. When some of the children need more specialized emergency care, she helps drive them to Houston's Texas Medical Center where they can get some of the best treatment the world has to offer. She says she plans to live a lot longer and continue building her family. But for now, her memories serve as important lessons for all.

"I remember the night we moved after 28 years in our home. A lot of mental pressure was relieved. But it was hard to go in the old building. Everywhere I looked there was a baby bed," she sighs. "Even today, when it turns cold at night, I'll wake up and wonder if the kids are warm.

"I have brought many a child through some sickness only to think, 'Oh, my God, why did I catch him in time?' But next time, I always knew, I'd do the same thing."

She recalls the first two patients, the boys she raised as sons. Danny died in 1961 at the age of 11.

"He had a bad heart. He was sick for a couple of days and I took care of him at the house. Doctors wanted to put him in the hospital but he kept having massive convulsions. When the convulsions came they would scare him. What could they do at the hospital? I just took him to bed with me and that's where he died."

Her other "son," Tommy, proved more sturdy. He became her right-hand man at the old Thomas Home, "a good stool pigeon. He'd walk around and see a kid that was dirty and run and tell. He'd unload the dishwasher. He was a perfectionist about whatever he did."

But as he grew older, Tommy needed less confinement than the hospital atmosphere of the changing Thomas Home. At age 32, he's now living in a home in Beaumont for people capable of more active lives. When he moved, Thomas refused to go along: "I didn't want him to associate me with the place. He's happy now and he has friends. I'll visit and say, 'You want to go home with Mama?' and he'll say, 'No.' It doesn't make me feel bad. I know he's happy."

The faces of parents

She also recalls her last vacation: "I took one in 1963. My husband was dying with lung cancer. We went to Las Vegas."

But most of all, she says, she recalls the parents. At first glance, they could seem like a calloused bunch offering phone calls instead of visits, apathy instead of help. But most of the children with Thomas over the years couldn't have gone anywhere else. Not even the wealthy could have cared for some of the deformities she accepted.

"They never got too bad for me to take. Some of them didn't even look like human beings. In the last few years if I had a sick kid I'd take it to bed with me."

But facing the parents, particularly the fathers, remains among her hardest chores.

"The parents are the ones who touch me the most," she says. "More than once I've stood here sobbing with a father who has had to hold everyone else in the family up while making arrangements. He's been the rock of strength. Then, here, on the last step he suffers the final straw. He surrenders his child and it all pours out."

Many parents did come often to visit their kids despite their inability to do much more than just hold them. But that might be the most important contribution of all. For of all the different kinds of defects and wide varieties of children, Thomas says one common denominator prevailed among them all.

"Sometimes," she says, "the only response they understand is love. But they do understand that. Every one of them."

There's no doubt Gertrude Thomas has proven she's an adult who understands it, too.