Stephen G. Michaud - Roberts Story: a Texas Cowboys Troubled Life and Horrifying Death

PRAISE FOR
ROBERTS STORY

Roberts Story: A Texas Cowboys Troubled Life and Horrifying Death proves once again that when it comes to crafting gripping, real-life tales of dark, inhuman schemes, nobody does it better than Stephen G. Michaud. After reading about the abominations inflicted on dying Texas rancher Robert East, you may have trouble trusting anyone again. Its typically great storytelling by a master writer.

JEFF GUINN, author of The New York Times best seller, Manson

Roberts Story tells the tale of a Texas rancher who never aspired to be anything other than a real, true-to-life cowboy. Nearing the end of the trail, he finds himself awash in a sea of serious oil money and literally doesnt know what to do with it. He learns too late that his medical and legal consultants, estate plannerseven his foremansnarling wolves and circling vultures cloaked in benign business suits and Stetsonshave plans of their own. Stephen G. Michaud has once again displayed his signature ability to join engaging prose and sense of story with meticulous research into a read meant for lovers of Western lore.

CALEB COKER, author of The News from Brownsville

Roberts Story is a timeless tale of folly, duplicity, and greed. A descendant of the cattle baron Richard King, Robert East was an extraordinarily wealthy, but mercurial South Texas cattleman. This page-turning account describes how human coyotes betrayed Roberts trust, destroyed his health, and conspired to steal his fortune.

WALTER E. WILSON, Captain, USN (ret.), author of Civil War Scoundrels and the Texas Cotton Trade, The Bulloch Belles, and co-author of James D.Bulloch: Secret Agent and Mastermind of the Confederate Navy

Get ready for a Texas family saga set on a stage of millions of dollars worth of livestock grazing on sprawling ranchlands the size of some small countries. Toss in diabolical forces plotting to rob a dying man of his fortune and proud legacy, and youve got Giant on steroids. Author Stephen G. Michaud has crafted a well-researched and finely written tragedy the Greeks would most certainly envy.

CARLTON STOWERS, two-time Edgar winner and inductee into the Texas Literary Hall of Fame

Stephen G. Michaud tells the story of Robert East, his family, and their ranches in compelling detail. Overcoming the reluctance of the regions seigneurial families to disclose their internal differences, Michaud recounts the remote landscapes, plain manners, dynastic families, and rigorous work ethic that characterize the borderlands of deep South Texas. He shows how wealth, rather than rewarding lifetimes of hard labor, contaminates and corrupts relationships of loyalty and trust. This is a powerful book, made more so by the economy and incisiveness of Michauds writing.

STEPHEN FOX, Fellow, Anchorage Foundation of Texas

The emotional, psychological, and legal manipulation Robert endured, and which the East family suffered, is a real tragedy.

LLOYD J. JASSIN, New York City-based publishing and entertainment law attorney

This is a true story. The events in this book all took place, and the conversations are based on deposition transcripts, recordings, public statements, and interviews. Some names and other identifying details have been changed to protect the individuals privacy. Any resemblance between these characters and a real person is strictly coincidental. Stuttered speech, vocal tics, and repeated words have been edited in quoted dialogue for readability.

Published by Coyote Publishing

Lutherville, MD

Copyright 2022 by Coyote Publishing, LLC

All rights reserved.

Thank you for purchasing an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright law. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the copyright holder.

Distributed by Greenleaf Book Group

For ordering information or special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Greenleaf Book Group at PO Box 91869, Austin, TX 78709, 512.891.6100.

Design and composition by Greenleaf Book Group and Mimi Bark

Cover design by Greenleaf Book Group and Mimi Bark

Cover photograph courtesy of the East family from their private collection.

Cover images used under license from Shutterstock.com/pingebat

Publishers Cataloging-in-Publication data is available.

Print ISBN: 979-8-9852650-0-2

eBook ISBN: 979-8-9852650-1-9

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

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First Edition

For Tom and Alice

PROLOG

I n May of 2007, Helen Kleberg Groves, of Kleberg County, Texas, received the dire news that her 87-year-old cousin, Robert Claude East, was failing rapidly. Roberts nephew, Mike East, informed Groves by telephone that he had not been allowed to see Uncle Robert, the aged patrn of the San Antonio Viejo cattle ranch, deep in the South Texas brush country, for weeks. But hed learned from reliable ranch employees that Robert was not receiving adequate medical treatment and was next to death.

Helenita, as Mrs. Groves is known, had also been trying to reach her cousin without success. Mike told her that, on his last visit to the ranch, Robert had seemed to be in steep decline. He appeared to have suffered a stroke, had been diagnosed with pneumonia, and developed atrial fibrillation, or AFib, a potentially fatal irregular heartbeat. The ranch hands said he was sleeping poorly, had lost considerable weight, and was depressed and often disoriented.

Distracted as they were by the old mans serious medical and mental issues, Roberts family and close friends did not know that, as his health failed, hed also signed away control of his estate, lately swollen to hundreds of millions of dollars by a vast natural gas strike on East lands.

When someone at the ranch finally answered Helenitas calls, she was told that Robert wasnt taking visitors. Mrs. Groves was not to be deterred. At the suggestion of her friend and lawyer, Dick DeGuerin, she at once turned to Ed Hennessy, a civil attorney in Houston, with instructions to get her into the ranch house at once, by whatever means necessary.

Her driver, Hctor Muoz, also took the matter to his brother-in-law, Richard Kirkpatrick, then an investigator with the South Texas Specialized Crimes and Narcotics Task Force. The two lived next door to one another in Kleberg County.

Can you talk to Mrs. Groves? Muoz asked the lawman. Just listen to her, and see what she says? Maybe you guys can help them out.

Kirkpatrick called Helenita, a great-granddaughter of Captain Richard King, founder of the King Ranch. She put him in touch with Mike East. We dont know whether Roberts alive and well or whether he has been dead for some time, East told the investigator. No one has been allowed to go out there, to the ranch.