ustxtxb_obs_1970_10_16_50_00011-00000_000.pdf

Heart Downtown Dallas 24-HOUR COFFEE SHOP No Charge for Children Under 18 Radio-Television Completely Air Conditioned FREE INSIDE PARKING HOTEL ottilitaa Commerce-Murphy-Main Streets Telephone: 742-6431 Dallas, Texas Gatesville revisited Waco, Gatesville State Rep. Curtis Graves’ recent hearing on Gatesville and Mountain View state schools for boys was pretty much of a bust. The Houstonian was on legislative committees that looked into allegations of brutality at the reform schools in 1967 and 1968 \(Obs., committees heard gruesome accounts of alleged brutality, but no official action was taken concerning the allegations. Graves, who believes the committees whitewashed the situation, decided to hold an unofficial hearing at his own expense. State Sen. J. P. Word accused Graves, a Negro, of trying to “blackwash” the schools, because the two scheduled witnesses who appeared at the hearing were black. Graves said he had lined up 12 witnesses for the hearing, but only three, two he had invited and one who showed up on his own, appeared, and so the session was cut from two days to one. The legislator said three Gatesville employees who had promised to testify changed their minds after their jobs were threatened. He said another man failed to appear because he was promised a state job if he didn’t testify. In announcing the hearing, Graves promised employees who would tell of brutality and misuse of state funds. The closest a witness came to alleging mismanagement, however, was Silas Collins’ testimony that boys in the Mountain View auto repair shop were made to overhaul an old Chevrolet belonging to a friend of a member of the Texas Youth Council. Only cars owned by employees of the T.Y.C. are supposed to be worked on in the school shop. Collins said he does not know who, if anyone, paid for the work done on the Chevy. COLLINS, a former teacher at Mountain View, the maximum security unit, also testified that more than a dozen times during his tenure there he or the boys he was training as janitors had to clean up small rooms where inmates had been tear gassed as a form of punishment. \(T.Y.C. Director James Turman insists that tear gas is never used, but Graves says that one Richard Vargas, an epileptic, was tear Collins said two brothers from Waco, Norman and James Livingston, were gassed approximately four times each. He declined to name the attendants who did the gassing because “they were only following orders.” Mack 0. Morris, the assistant superintendent at Mountain View, was named by Collins as the man who must have authorized the punishment. Collins said he would name names to a grand jury. Graves said he had hoped to look at the files on Vargas and Richard Hardy, a Houstonian whose skeletal remains were found two miles from Mountain View on Nov. 2, 1969. Gatesville officials say that Hardy and a friend escaped from Mountain View early in 1968. They were apprehended and put in the back of a pick-up truck to be taken back to the reformatory, but Hardy is said to have jumped out of the truck and escaped again. After the remains were found, the Department of Public Safety examined the body but did not fix the cause of death. Some officials speculated at , the time that Hardy might have perished of snake bite. Hardy’s parents were not notified of their son’s death until two months after the body was found. The boy’s body was returned to them in an expensive sealed metal casket. \(Graves pointed out that the T.Y.C. does not usually splurge on expensive caskets for its wards, and that fact leads him to believe “that there’s “I submit that it is impossible for the skeletal remains to remain in an open field for two years in an area where bloodhounds are often used and where there are , hunters,” Graves said. “I think there is more to this story. Hardy’s clothing had not completely decayed when he was found. Laundry marks were still on them.” Graves added, “I’m concerned with the condition Jerry Hardy was in when he jumped off the truck. That’s the part I want to look into.” He said he wanted to find the name of the other boy apprehended with Hardy and get an interview with him. THE LEGISLATOR, his aides, and four reporters traveled to Gatesville, 35 miles from Waco, to try to see Hardy’s records, and to tour Mountain View. Gatesville-Waco state Rep. Bob Salter followed in his own car. \(Salter, a vigorous supporter of the Gatesville administration, appeared at Graves’ hearing with a tape recorder. After the first witness, John L. Sanders, a San Antonio attorney, spoke in favor of setting up a number of regional rehabilitation centers for juveniles, Salter questioned him in a hostile tone. Graves then accused his fellow legislator of “browbeating the witness” and denied him and everyone else, except the press, the right to question witnesses. “Mr. Salter,” Graves said, “if you want to hold a hearing, When the three automobiles reached Gatesville, Graves pulled up alongside Salter and asked him directions to the Gatesville administration building. Salter refused to tell him, insisting he did not know the way. So, with the press car in the lead, the three cars made their way to Gatesville, only to be stopped at the reformatory door. M. B. Kendrick, the Gatesville superintendent, told Graves that since he was not conducting an official legislative investigation the records on Hardy and Vargas could be obtained only through a court order. Meanwhile, Salter conferred by telephone with Mountain View superintendent George Adams concerning the question of allowing Graves and his followers a tour of the institution. Adams asked Graves to wait after Salter explained to him that Senator Word of Meridian had requested the courtesy of being allowed to accompany Graves through Mountain View. \(Word was driving down from Dinosaur Valley State Scenic Park where he and Gov. Preston Smith had been attending a ceremony in which the Atlantic Richfield Co. presented the park with four life-size replicas of a 70-foot brontasaurus, a 50-foot tyrannosaurus rex, and two baby The group was stalled for about an hour and a half until Senator Word arrived. Graves, his aides, the reporters, Word, Salter, and Mountain View assistant October 16, 1970 11