The Bride Wore Crimson and Other Stories Read Free

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    For a 20-year-old woman in the midst of the Great Depression, Dorothy had been well-fixed. A year before her own death, her father had committed suicide, leaving a note addressed only to her. He also left her a $14,000 life insurance policy and several pieces of real estate, including an interest in the family home. He left his widow less than $3,000. Ralph inherited nothing.
    Dorothy had put her money in a trust fund with the insurance company. A week after she and Toy married, they bought their new house on Ellsworth Avenue for $5,650. They paid $3,150 in cash, and signed a note, payable in 30 days, for $2,500. Both the cash and the note were paid from Dorothy’s trust fund.
    Dorothy also had paid for the car that Toy drove, most of the food they ate, and the shotgun with which Toy killed her. When she died, about $6,000 remained in her trust fund. Her checking account had a balance of about $300.
    On Wednesday, Toy met with Mrs. Joynes again. This time he offered to relinquish his interest in two pieces of real estate and give Mrs. Joynes $2,000 if she would give up any claim to the rest of Dorothy’s estate.
    â€œI told him I would accept the settlement,” Mrs. Joynes said. “The next day, he kissed me and told me he had decided to give me $2,500 in cash instead of $2,000.”
    But at 1 p.m. that day, when Toy was walking on South Akard Street, a pair of Dallas police detectives approached him, flashed their badges and arrested him. They took him to a room in the Jefferson Hotel, where they and investigators from the district attorney’s office questioned him for six hours.
    At 7 p.m., they took him to the Dallas County Jail, and at 9 p.m., they charged him with deliberately planning the murder of his wife. District Attorney Bob Hurt wouldn’t agree to bond. Toy was locked up.
    Two nights earlier, J.J. Cantrell, described in the newspapers as “a wealthy landowner from Comanche County,” had telephoned the Dallas police. He said the shooting of Dorothy Marie Woolley “might have some unpleasant angles” that they should investigate. The police asked him to come to Dallas.
    Mr. Cantrell and his daughter, Mae, had arrived Wednesday by bus. He handed over to the police a packet of letters that Toy had written to Mae.
    â€œI don’t want to talk to anybody,” Toy told the reporters at the jail. “There are lots of things that have got to be straightened out.”
    Mae Cantrell was born on a farm three miles from the farm where Toy was born, near the tiny community of Lamkin in Comanche County. She was two years younger than Toy. As they grew up, they knew each other well. Indeed, they were first cousins once removed. Toy’s grandfather was Mae’s uncle.
    â€œWere you sweethearts as boy and girl together?” the prosecutor would ask her.
    â€œNo,” she would reply.
    In 1926, when he was 21, Toy moved to Dallas. He studied accounting at a business college, then got a job as an auditor with Trinity Universal Insurance Co. During his first three years in Dallas, he lived with James and Georgia Godfrey, his brother-in-law and his half-sister, on Madera Street. Then he rented a place of his own.
    In 1924, when she was 17, Mae finished high school and enrolled at what was then John Tarleton State College in Stephenville, where she was very popular. When she finished Tarleton—it was a junior college then—she enrolled at Texas Tech and earned a degree in psychology. In the fall of 1930, she moved to Dallas, too. She took a teaching job at Winnetka School in Oak Cliff for $40 a month and registered for graduate work at Southern Methodist University.
    She hadn’t seen Toy for eight years. But when she was settled, she wrote a note inviting him to call on her. He did.
    Sometime that fall, Toy brought Mae to the Godfrey home and introduced her to James and Georgia, and they would get together from time to time to play bridge. About a year