He was just incessant. Who is Bonnie Harkey? For Bruce, the following decades would turn into a blur of shifting relationships and jobs. First of all, I wouldnt hire Forrest Gump to commit murder, you know what Im saying? he told a deputy. She is a white female registered to vote in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. We didnt know he had stolen them, said Shawn Oliver. Bonnies caretaker, a fifty-year-old redhead named Karen Johnson, was sprawled facedown just inside the front door, atop the floral doormat. She never said anything about it, but I could tell by the way she acted.. Daniel Vaughn is the countrys first barbecue editor, and he has eaten more barbecue than you have. Bruce said he wanted me to get rid of her and take herhell put money in my bank account., According to Carl, Bruce had come to see him on Friday to propose a deal. Bruce was Bonnies step-son. (He did. had ceded oversight to Riley in his thirties, moving out of the red-brick house and into town. Over the years, he had started to wonder whether Eric might have lived if Bonnie hadnt been the one watching him. Dont tell anybody I had anything to do with it. Bruce gave him $100, with the promise of depositing $350 more in his bank account on Monday, once the deed was done. At the trial, held in Burnet, Bonnies relatives and a handful of San Sabans watched as Bruce sat coolly through the proceedings, convinced there was nothing hed be found guilty of. As Price would later put it, Carl has not been accused of being very intelligent.). Trending on Oxygen. There arent any Harkeys left.. If you fill out the first name, last name, or agree to terms fields, you will NOT be added to the newsletter list. Another time, when Bonnie refused to buy him a set of new tires, Carl blocked her car with his truck and refused to let her leave. Who owns the largest pecan orchard in the world? Who is the leading producer in pecans in the united states? Bonnie Harkey was reported missing on March 26, 2012, after Johnsons body was found at Harkeys home. The jury deliberated for about an hour Tuesday, and Bruce Harkey received an automatic sentence of life in prison. Is there a shortage of pecans in the united states? What's the average lifespan of a pecan tree? How many years does it take for a pecan tree to produce pecans? At least 1 dead, 5 injured in Massachusetts house party shooting, 2-year-old daughter of Tampa Bay Buccaneers player drowns after falling into pool, Tornado strikes Virginia coast, leaving behind trail of damage, AI-generated music growing exponentially, sparking debate. John Wilkerson, an investigator with the San Saba County Sheriffs Office.He asked me to forgive him, made comments about burning in hell for the actions that he did.. After talking the matter over with her pastor, Bonnie finally agreed. And when the jury read it out, his mouth dropped open and his shoulders dropped. The gravestone for Bruces firstborn, Eric Harkey, in the San Saba City Cemetery. Today pecans are central to the economy of San Saba, which produces up to five million pounds a year and claims to be the Pecan Capital of the World (a title contested by Albany, Georgia, and Chandler, Oklahoma). What had been his fathers hobby became Rileys livelihood. They set up a sting operation, in which an informant provided Bruce with an illegal silencer and federal agents then arrested him, charging him with possession of a firearm in connection with a crime of violence. Theres an epic tale of greed and betrayal in the heart of Texas. But the guardian for Bonnie Harkey, who was still living on the land, turned down the offer, saying Mrs. Harkey had a right to receive interest from the sale of the land, McAfee said. Karens son retreated to a spare bedroom to play, and Bonnie settled into her maroon recliner in front of the television with her beloved cat, Miss Kitty. kxan.com 'Pecan Queen's' grandson gets life in prison for her death | KXAN.com The late afternoon of March25, 2012, a voice crackled over the police scanners that perch on the coffee tables or hang on the belts of many residents in San Saba: an ambulance was headed out to Harkey Pecan Farms. Her reading glasses were resting on the floor beside her head, and she was cool to the touch. In exchange for a lighter sentence, Carl and Lillian agreed to testify against Bruce, and jurors also heard from two inmates, including one former Aryan Brotherhood member, who claimed that Bruce had tried to hire them from jail to kill both Carl and Spinks. At Bonnies invitation, the young family stayed out on the farm for several days as they got the hang of new parenthood. But he said theyd gone to the San Saba Rivera lie that caused Lillian to break down and spill the real details as soon as Price tried to cross-check the story. Bruce had taken in two of Jennifers granddaughters, and his money from the wheat field sale was going rapidly. The fourteen-day-old infant was buried in the city cemetery the next day; two of Bruces wedding ushers were among the pallbearers, and Riley helped Bruce pick out the gray granite headstone. There would also, of course, be the payout from the estate. It became the county seat in 1856. Investigators focus on one of Bonnie's stepsons, Bruce Harkey, as the mastermind behind the plot to kill Bonnie Harkey. If you asked him what time it was, hed tell you how to build a watch, said Steve Boyd, a former Texas Ranger who succeeded Allen Brown as sheriff in 2013. The sentencing hearings for Carl and Lillian took place a couple of weeks later at the San Saba County courthouse. Read our feature on the case from January. For almost three years after her death, the house remained exactly as Bonnie left it. He paused, then gave a heavy sigh. Riley would tell her something wasnt right, and she would say it was, and theyd get in a big fuss over it.. House in Roubaix, Hauts-de-France, France Contact. Your California Privacy Rights/Privacy Policy. Connie, who had married after college and moved to Fort Worth, adopted an eight-month-old in 1984, a baby that she and her husband named Carl Pressley. With no money from Tommy Lee Jones and no authority to care for the orchards, Bruce was left to pine for his stake in Harkey Pecan Farms from a distance. There was a payment made to Carl Pressley and of course there were some arrangements to be made that further payment would be made to Carl Pressley for killing Bonnie Harkey, said Wilkerson. Afterward, one San Saban whod witnessed all the proceedings expressed his towns pleasure in the outcome. Bonnie Harkey was still living on the farm, and her guardian believed she deserved more than the $44,000 the brothers were offering from the sale of the land, McAfee said. Riley, for his part, began turning his thoughts to the future, and in 1991 he purchased a third pecan grove, a 94-acre plot of young trees called the Prichard Orchard. But Bruce Harkey tells a different story. Bruce moved into an upstairs bedroom, where he was joined by his ex-wife Jennifer Karnes, with whom hed renewed a relationship after divorcing Kami. Riley had his own way of doing things, recalled Winston Millican, a great-great-grandson of Edmund Risiens who maintains his own pecan orchards in San Saba. Bonnie, too, was grief-stricken. Oops, this content can't be loadedbecause you're having connectivity problems, By Associated Press - Wednesday, April 30, 2014. Family, friend, or fan, this family history biography is for you to remember Connie N Harkey. IE 11 is not supported. That December, she won second place for her pie and cookie entries in the San Saba County Pecan Food Show; the next year she was on the front page of theNews & Starholding a plaque for her champion pecans. Friendly beer nerd. The investigation into the murder of Bonnie Harkey and her caretaker broadens as lawmen look for a motive in the familys history. Both testified at Bruce Harkeys trial about the murder-for-hire arrangement. I thought Bruce was my best friend. A few hours after Carls confession, news reached Bruce that the investigation was tightening around him. House District: 103 Senate District: 42 County District: Board Of Commissioners District 5 School Board District: School Board Dist 5. Surgical assistant in periodontal practice. When I arrived at the historical marker for Harkeyville, I stopped the car. And several years later, when their son planted 2,000 acres of walnuts in Australia, the Stahmanns became the world's largest walnut producing family. When she and Riley were introduced, in early 1963, the tall, 36-year-old brunette was working as a telephone operator in Waco, a divorce trying to make ends meet. I know things are crazy right now, but I might have some information about where Bonnie Harkey is, the friend told the dispatcher. Bonnie says she lost just about everything in the blaze at the home . Except there was one wrinkle. Bruce Harkey, who had been taking care of the orchard, was fired sometime during 2011, McAfee said. But Im the mayor of Harkeyville now, Hibler continued. by 2Paragraphs in Culture | April 23, 2015. House in Roubaix, Hauts-de-France, France Contact. SAN SABA, Texas (KXAN) - At 85, Bonnie Harkey was loved by her neighbors in San Saba County and affectionately known as the Pecan Queen because of the sprawling and fertile farm of nut-bearing trees that had been in her family for years. The Johnsons and the Harkeys became great friends, going out to dinner and traveling to gospel concerts in Marble Falls and Burnet. John and Bruce reached out, and after some negotiation through an intermediary, Jones put down a $541,822.50 offer on the orchard. House in Marcq-en-Barul, Hauts-de-France, France Contact. Over generations, a family feud was brought on by a lust for land. The investigation into the murder of Bonnie Harkey and her caretaker broadens as lawmen look for a motive in the familys history.April 24, 2015. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser. The question reverberated across living rooms, cafes, and hair salons around San Saba. By this time he and Jennifer had moved to his grandfathers house in town, and to anyone who would listen, he complained loudly about Millicans work, finding fault with everything from the way he trimmed branches to how he irrigated. Shelled walnuts are available in halves, chunks and halves of topping (native nut). One afternoon, he showed up at Oliver Pecan Company an hour before closing time to ask for a job. Pressley and his girlfriend, Lillian King, face charges in San Saba and Leon counties. His late father left the family estate in Bonnies control, but Bruce was set to inherit a large portion of the estate upon his stepmothers death. He called Sheriff Brown. He needed an address to satisfy probation requirements, so he sent letter after letter to Bonnie, begging her to let him live on the Harkey farm. Family members have fought a long battle in court over who would inherit those lands after the death of Bonnie Harkey. Left: The entrance to the Harkey homestead off U.S. 190. Nobody else did that after the seventies., Perhaps it was Rileys work ethic and stature that first caught the attention of Bonnie Sawyer Compton. Wild pecan trees, Carya illinoinensis, haveflourished throughout the South for millennia, and thousands grow along the rivers of Central Texas; when the explorer lvar Nez Cabeza de Vaca was held captive by Indians on the Guadalupe in 1532, he christened it the river of nuts. But human cultivation of pecans in Texas began in San Saba in 1874, with the arrival of Edmund E. Risien. His conviction carries an automatic life sentence without parole, the Austin American-Statesman reported (https://bit.ly/1iIE72W ). The entrance to the Harkey homestead off U.S. 190. But those who knew Bonnie best say members of her family just couldnt wait for her to die. I still have the scar where my brother kicked me. Bruce and John, however, with their inheritance in sight, had already begun some wrangling over the property. One thing theyd disagreed on was the day-to-day operations of the farm; Bruce wanted Spinks to pay him a salary to manage the orchards, but Spinks leased the property to Winston Millican. The Harkeys were one of the first families to settle the area, before pecans were an industry. Her husband, Riley had passed away, and she relied on a caretaker, Karen Johnson, for help around the house and getting around town.. Before the Great Depression shuttered most of the town, the racehorses and mules bred by Riley were known to attract crowds of spectators from all over Texas. She had been hit in the head and then drowned, said McAfee. I needed to shift the risk to the lessee.). Read More. They'd made a fortune in pecans, but a double murder would expose a vicious power struggle. Certified twitter advocate. It also uncovered a dark tale of family, greed, and hate. Six months earlier, she had been diagnosed with an aortic aneurysm, and it was only a matter of time, everyone knew, before it claimed her. Hed planned to smother Bonnie with a pillow at naptime and then sneak out, but when Karen spotted him as she answered the door, he panicked, tackling her in a bear hug and throwing her to the floor, where he suffocated her beneath his body weight. For almost three years after her death, the house remained exactly as Bonnie left it. He sped down U.S. 190 in his white truck, passing neatly tended rows of pecan trees and the cattle auction barn, then crossed the San Saba River and rumbled down the caliche road to the two-story house. Riley did die, in July 1997, after succumbing to advanced bone cancerthe result, a few townspeople speculated, of exposure to the chemicals he sprayed on his pecan trees. The three kids did not take well to one another, and John and Bruce treated their stepmother unkindly from the outset. John packed up in the fall of 1965 to attend Texas Tech University, in Lubbock; Connie enrolled there two years later after being named San Sabas homecoming queen. But he was bleeding her dry, said her niece Teresa Cook. How much can you make off one pecan tree? Bruce could con you into doing anything he wanted you to do, he said mournfully in his prison whites. McAfee said he thought jurors were swayed by testimony from several witnesses who said Bruce Harkey had told them that he would be out of town one weekend. Humans lose their hearts, their souls, and their ability to act like anything other than monsters., In August I went to visit Carl at the Telford Unit, in New Boston. When Bonnie Harkey, the 85-year-old matriarch of a prominent San Saba family, was brutally murdered in 2012, her death spelled the end of a legendary pecan dynasty. Bonnie entertained often, volunteering her home for garden club and church functions, serving up sandwiches, cakes, and other dainty refreshments on fine china. Top: The door to the Harkey familys historic house. It didnt help that Bonnie was showing signs of dementia. But on their walks, O.B. San Saba County Just after eight-thirty in the evening, a call came in. My grandfather assumed that if anyone were to take over the farm, it would be me. While admitting to the kidnapping and murders, Pressley says he did it because his uncle, Bruce Harkey, paid him to do it. Bonnie quit her job at the telephone company, and she and Connie moved into the Harkey house. Jun 1986 - Dec 200115 years 7 months. Today, the land and orchard are owned by the Millican family, and six generations have worked in the pecan business. Still, in 1957, O.B. By 1956, Leonard Bend Pecan Farm had 3,300 acres of orchards on the peninsula and had become the largest contiguous walnut orchard in Texas and the second largest in the United States. When the caretaker came to the door, Pressley sneaked up behind her, killed her and then kidnapped his grandmother. Pressley was in police custody hours later, confessing to the crimes., He did say he was sorry repeatedly, said Sgt. He would choke her, pull her hair, and eventually even hold a gun to her head, threatening to kill her for a perceived slight such as not having dinner on the table by six oclock. You get rid of that kid or Im going back to Waco, he claims she told Riley. Her pecan-based desserts were legendary, often earning her first place at the countys pecan food show and a front-page mention in theSan Saba News & Star. The three got into Carls carhe insisted that Lillian drive because his license had been revokedand headed to the campground in Normangee, where a friend from his motorcycle club had loaned him an RV.
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