Gene Paul Norris

Gene Paul Norris and Tinsley Eggleston quarrel over the division of a Cuban arms deal rip-off.  Tinsley will be fished out of a well, dead, of course.  Gene Paul Norris was probably the most prolific killer in American history and he is unknown today.  This happened on Fort Worth's Jacksboro Highway.

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The first killer I ever interviewed was Gene Paul Norris, a notorious badass in Fort Worth in the mid-fifties. He had been hauled in on some vague charge and had requested to talk to a reporter, any reporter. I was a cub on the police beat for the Star-Telegram, raw as a lamb chop, but I was the only guy available in the pressroom. Norris was a high-profile player in what was known as the Dixie Mafia, and every newshound in town would have given his trench coat for an interview. Envisioning a page-one byline, I grabbed a fistful of notepaper and rushed to the holding cell. Norris was seated in a chair, the only piece of furniture in the room, and he smiled and offered me his seat.
In his mid-thirties, Norris was an angular, rawboned man, taller than his mug shots suggested, more cordial than I had expected, and far less menacing. His cat-gray eyes had a soothing effect, and he talked with such apparent sincerity that I ran out of paper before I could ask a question. Later, when I reviewed my notes, I realized that the only straight thing he’d told me was a telephone number to call, with the message that he was back in jail. An older and more experienced newsman eventually informed me that I had fallen for a scam Norris regularly pulled on young reporters. It was his way to get word to his lawyer. (In those days, the Fort Worth police weren’t big on civil rights.) A few months after our chat, Norris was ambushed and shot to pieces by a posse of several dozen lawmen, at which time the police wrote off forty-something unsolved murders, most of them gang related. Gee, and he had seemed like such a nice guy.

Gary Cartwright, Texas Monthly, 2002 

Gene Paul was killed while on his way to rob the Carswell AFB payroll.  This guy was bad news.  He had already killed a husband and wife that morning and had coffee in their house.  It was said that every old well in North Texas had one of his victims in it.