To Ride a Rocking Horse

In Southeast Texas a murder is big news. A double homicide is a crime wave. When five family members are abducted and killed it’s time to buy all the ammunition you can find for every gun you have in the house. That was the fear and attitude that swept the area between Houston, Texas, and Lake Charles, Louisiana, when five members of the Bishop Phillip’s family disappeared over a July 4th weekend.

A cold blooded murderer was on the loose. But the residents had nothing to fear. The biggest threat to the area was a short, petite housewife who weighed less than a hundred pounds. She was just out having a little fun at the expense of the Phillips family. But fear was rampant because Linda May Burnett and Joe Dugas had conceived and committed the perfect crime. There was not one bit of evidence anywhere to tie them to the murders. They had even cleaned the shovels used to dig the grave with cotton swabs.

There is only one problem with the perfect crime. You can not take credit for it if no one knows you did it. The perfect crime began to unravel when Joe started to talk. As he led investigators to the camouflaged grave he made the comment that “Linda told me to look for a sign and the number 13.” At that point the law officers had no idea there were two people involved in the murders. It was a slip of the tongue that led to Linda’s arrest and the creation of new law in Texas.