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from MURDERED JUDGES of the 20th CENTURY
Copyright © 2001 Susan P. Baker
CHAPTER TWELVE
JUSTICE & MRS. WILLIAM A. PIERSON
AUSTIN, TRAVIS COUNTY, TEXAS
APRIL 24, 1935
Associate Justice William A. Pierson of the Texas Supreme Court (the highest civil court in the state), 64, and Mrs. Pierson, were shot to death on Bull Creek Road about four miles west of Austin, Texas on the evening of April 24, 1935. The couple's son, Howard Pierson, 20, a University of Texas student, said two highwaymen killed his parents in a robbery. Howard was shot in the arm.
Howard Pierson took his parents, William and Lena Pierson, driving on the scenic road en route to a pecan experiment station on the Colorado River. About three miles beyond Bull Creek, two men stepped in front of the automobile and pointed guns at them, forcing them to stop the car.
Howard Pierson said, “One of the men had straight black hair, wore a white shirt, and gray pants while the other had curly hair. The black-haired man held the guns on us while the other man took our wallets, money, and my father’s watch.”
Howard said that Judge Pierson got real angry, grabbed at the guns, and said, "I'll see that you're punished for this!"
One of the men said, "Aw, go to hell."
Judge Pierson told Howard to go for the other man.
Howard jumped on the second man and started choking him. They fell to the ground, struggling. The man pulled out a gun and shot him in the arm. He heard the other man shooting, too, so he got up and ran, hiding in the brush for five or ten minutes.
After the men left, Howard drove back home and called the authorities. He took police to the scene of the shooting on the Bull Creek Road where other police had already recovered the bodies of Judge and Mrs. Pierson.
After nine hours of the police questioning Howard Pierson about the murders, Howard broke down and admitted that he had made up the whole episode. He confessed to his parents’ murders. He said that he had lured his parents to a quiet country road about fifteen miles from Austin, shot them several times, and shot himself. His motive was partly revenge. He wanted to be a scientist. His father wanted him to be an attorney. Howard wanted the $17,000 in insurance money on his father's life to continue his studies at The University of Texas. He had told a friend earlier that he had intended to kill his parents for the money. He wanted to kill his father. He would have to kill his mother as well, or the money would go to her. The friend didn't alert the authorities because the story was just so unbelievable. He later made a written statement.
Howard admitted that he first shot his mother, then his father, then after they fell, he shot each of them in the head just to make sure they were dead. Lastly, he shot himself in the arm. He had bought the gun the previous Saturday in Galveston, Texas, driving fifty miles from Houston, where he had been working, to get it. After he killed his parents, he drove ten miles from where he left his parents, hid his father's watch and his mother's purse. Later, he took police to the hiding place where they recovered the items.
Autopsies showed Judge Pierson had been shot four times. Mrs. Pierson had been shot three times.
The police detained Howard Pierson in the county jail pending an insanity hearing. Dr. Joe Wooten, a friend of the family who talked to Pierson in a jail cell, said Howard suffered from dementia praecox. The doctor described hallucinations that Howard had that his parents discriminated against him in favor of his brother and sister.
Dr. Wooten recommended that Pierson be placed in the state hospital for the insane for observation for a month or two. District Attorney James P. Hart said that in his study of the case he was trying to decide what route to take, charging him for (capital) murder or proving the young man was insane. Howard was indicted for two counts of murder.
Dr. Wooten said, "He held an imaginary resentment against his parents which was based on his mistaken impression they had discriminated against him." Howard believed he was adopted. "He believed his parents favored his brother and sister," Wooten said. When Howard was 12, he and the rest of the family spent a year abroad. Howard attended a French school. He disliked Europe, France, and Paris, and wanted to go home to Texas with his father when his father returned earlier than the rest of the family. His father refused to take him with him.
Physically, Howard was rather small and dark. The year after their return to the states, when Howard re-entered Texas schools after being gone for a year, the other children teased him and called him "Frenchy." That teasing, coupled with an occasion years before when he and his parents had been stopped at the Mexican border and Howard was mistaken for a Mexican child, intensified his belief that he was adopted. Sometimes while he was in the Travis County jail, Howard would write compositions in which he called his parents Judge and Mrs. Pierson.
For a while, reporters interviewed Howard in jail until the judge put a stop to it. One reporter stated: "He also had an idea he could become a great scientist. His failures in school he blamed on his parents, felt they were standing in his way. He wanted to obtain his father's insurance money to resume his studies." He had the idea that as a scientist, he could save the world. He declared that he was a "Special Person like Jesus," destined to save the world by science. He claimed a great "board of scientists" directed his life. The board directed his actions and observed his thoughts and doings by agents and by a special machine, which they focused on him even if he was miles away from them. His greatest future invention, though, was going to be immortality. He talked about the endocrine glands and replenishing the chemicals secreted by them. If that didn't work, he would transplant the brains of old people into the bodies of young people, thereby the knowledge of the older person would be operating with a young body. Howard's idea was that brains could live for hundreds of years. Eventually, he would incubate babies mechanically and operate on their brains when they were small, rendering them feeble minded. When the baby matured into an adult, he would transplant the old brain into the body. There was later evidence that Howard thought that his parents were enemies to his plans and that it would be best for mankind for them to be destroyed.
Howard's insanity hearing was scheduled in the 53rd District Court before Judge C.A. Wheeler. He was examined at Austin State Hospital and found to be schizophrenic. Doctors testified that it was unlikely that he would ever recover from his mental illness. Dr. W.R. Houston testified that schizophrenia might be cured if it was discovered early enough but after it took hold of a person, it was extremely unlikely that the person would ever recover.
During observations of him at the jail, Howard showed no emotion and no remorse for the murders. He did not even request to go to his parents' funeral. And he didn't think he was insane. Experts said that he could distinguish right from wrong in every instance except when it came to his own delusion.
Howard's brother, William H. Pierson, was a medical student at the University of Chicago. His sister was Mrs. Harvey (Alice Lenore) Thomas and lived in Salina, Kansas. William flew into Austin and made a statement in Howard's defense. He said the family had known for quite some time that Howard was mentally ill. They had nothing but sympathy for him.
The bodies of Judge and Mrs. Pierson were taken from the site of the murders to a funeral home. The funeral was later held at University Baptist Church. Both Judge and Mrs. Pierson were active members and volunteers in the church. The pallbearers and honorary pallbearers consisted of judges, justices, former law partners, doctors, the governor, former governor, lieutenant governor, and other distinguished members of the state. Burial was in the Texas State Cemetery.
Judge Pierson was born in Gilmer, Upshur County, March 12, 1871. He was a graduate of Baylor, having received his bachelor’s degree in 1896. In 1898, he graduated from the University of Texas with a Bachelor of Laws degree and was admitted to the practice of law. In 1901, he married Miss Lena Haskell of Evansville, Illinois and Liberty County, Texas.
Justice Pierson, a Democrat, served in the Texas legislature from 1901 to 1905. He passed a bill establishing the College of Industrial Arts at Denton (now University of North Texas). He also led a fight to secure passage of a bill remitting state taxes of Galveston County to the City of Galveston for the building of the seawall after the 1900 Storm disaster. From 1913 to 1921, he served as the judge of the 8th Judicial District Court.
Howard was finally committed to a hospital as criminally insane. He escaped twice, once on the evening of April 15, 1938 and on December 9, 1952. There were two basic problems recapturing him the first time. He had never been fingerprinted, the sheriff said, because he had been from a prominent family and some figured that fingerprinting wouldn't be necessary. Secondly, there was no money to conduct a search. After several years, the sheriff sent out letters and posters, determined that he would find Howard before the end of the year, when the sheriff would leave office. The first time Howard was recaptured in Minneapolis two and a half years after his escape. He worked as a collector for a magazine.
The second time he was recaptured in 1955 in Syracuse, New York, when he went for a consultation with a psychiatrist. An attorney he had consulted contacted Texas authorities. When he was captured, Howard listed his occupations as dishwasher, window washer, porter, and salesman. He had been living in Philadelphia until three months before when he felt people were watching him. He said he worked in Rochester and Buffalo before going to Syracuse. When reporters took his picture, he said, "Please don't let them take my picture for use in the newspaper. I wish they wouldn't write about me in the newspaper. This publicity isn't good for me."
Finally, in June 1963, after Howard had been held in Rusk State Hospital for another eight years, doctors found that he was medically sane. He was, by then, 49. Travis County Probate Judge Herman Jones received a letter from Dr. Charles W. Castner that said to contact the Travis County sheriff “to take Howard Pierson from this hospital and place him in the proper custody.” Since the law didn’t allow doctors to make a determination that Howard was legally sane, a trial on that issue would have to be held.
After transfer to the Travis County jail, a visiting judge from Hillsboro, District Judge Sam Johnson, sitting for the 147th District Judge Mace Thurman, Jr. who disqualified himself because he had sat through the original sanity hearing when he was a law student, presided over the jury trial on September 12, 1963. Howard Pierson was found legally sane.
During Howard’s whole ordeal over the years, his brother and sister, William (known as Bill) and Alice, had stuck by him. Howard’s parents had left an estate of less than $50,000 that had been divided three ways. Howard’s third had been invested for him and had grown considerably between 1935 and 1963. The sum approximated $800,000 when Howard came to trial. Bill and Alice found the best attorney they could to represent Howard in both the sanity trial and the murder trial. That man was University of Texas and Harvard educated Thomas Morrow Reavley. Reavley later said that Howard’s siblings could have been greedy and set Howard up for a guilty plea which is what the district attorney wanted, which included an offer that he would go free after the conviction. Had that happened, however, Howard would have lost all rights to the proceeds of his parents’ estate. Instead, his brother and sister unselfishly wanted the best for him.
As soon as the sanity trial ended, Howard’s murder trial was scheduled, again to be presided over by Judge Sam Johnson. It was tried in November, 1963, before a jury. His defense was not guilty by reason of insanity. Three doctors testified for the defense that at the time of the killings, Howard did not know right from wrong. His diagnosis was paranoid schizophrenia. His delusions included the ability to save the world with his scientific inventions. Dr. D.B. Klein testified that over a year before the murders, he had examined Howard and recommended that he be treated for mental illness. Howard’s parents never got him help. The superintendent at Rusk State Hospital testified that Howard had been sane at the time he killed his parents. The jury of seven men and five women found Howard not guilty of murdering his parents 28 years earlier. He was set free.
Subsequent to his release, Howard had one more court hearing. It involved his estate, which had been managed by his brother as guardian. Dr. William Pierson had seen to it that Howard’s money was put to work in real estate. He received substantial royalties over the years from the mineral rights. There were also cash accounts and bonds. Dr. Pierson petitioned the court to release him as guardian of Howard’s estate so that he could hand over the estate to Howard, but Mr. Reavley didn’t believe that Howard was capable of managing his money. After all, Howard had been locked up most of his adult life and was naïve as to the ways of the world. Mr. Reavley managed to get Howard to agree that the money would remain invested and under others’ control. Howard would receive the income, which was substantial. He made it so that Howard never wanted for anything. The arrangement was so liberal that Howard could purchase a new car every other year.
Mr. Reavley, in an oral history interview, stated that he advised Howard to move to another state and change his name. Howard followed his advice, moving to Seattle, Washington and changing his name to Robert Hamilton. Howard corresponded with Mr. Reavley for a while until he became angry over the money situation. According to Mr. Reavley, a woman noticed that Howard was well off and convinced Howard that he needed to get control of his money. Howard demanded his money and when told that he couldn’t get it, he angrily terminated all contact. Howard Pierson subsequently died in a drowning accident.
After Howard’s death, his estate had grown to about a million dollars. Although his sister and brother had never been interested in his money, their heirs engaged in a huge fight over it.
Thomas Reavley went on to serve as County Attorney of Nacogdoches, Texas Secretary of State, Travis County District Judge, Texas Supreme Court Justice, and Justice of the U.S. Court of Appeals.
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