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San Antonio News
'Texas Slave Ranch' offspring made the best of life
By Eva Ruth Moravec,
Reporter
Updated Feb 3, 2013 6:06 p.m.
https://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local/article/Texas-Slave-Ranch-offspring-made-the-best-of-4246636.php


FREDERICKSBURG — He was only 9 when the law raided his family's Kerr County homestead in 1984 and their surname, Ellebracht, became synonymous with kidnapping and torture, and their sprawling property given the nickname “Texas Slave Ranch.”

Teased and bullied as a child, “Wes,” as he was known, later would change his last name to try to elude the scandal. But he realized there was no escape, only redemption, and grew to be the man fondly remembered at his recent funeral for his kindness and big heart.

Killed in a car crash at age 38, Wes went to his grave an Ellebracht, one who overcame the nightmares of his childhood.

On a lunch break from cutting wood at a friend's home in Stonewall, Ellebracht III was en route to Fredericksburg on Jan. 20 when he either fell asleep or was distracted by a pit bull in his SUV and veered into oncoming traffic. He died on the spot.

The dog, which he'd taken in as a favor to a friend, suffered a broken leg.

“My son was a very caring person, and he did whatever he could to help anyone in need,” said his mother, Joyce Esensee, 59, who was among those initially indicted for the crimes at the ranch. “He couldn't help what his father and grandfather did, but he was never anything like that. Wes was always trying to see the good in people.”

Ellebracht III even tried to see the good in his father and grandfather, who picked up hitchhikers and promised them board in exchange for work.

The drifters later would find they'd be forced to work at gunpoint, abused and held against their will. One worker, Anthony Bates, died after being tortured with the cattle prod.

In 1987, the year after his father, grandfather and the ranch foreman, Carlton Robert Caldwell, were convicted and sentenced, Ellebracht III met Bob Walls, who would become his best friend.

“He would talk about some of the arguments and fights, but that wasn't his life,” Walls said. “He said that he saw so much bad in the world that he wanted to look for the good.”

Torture tales emerge

For years before the raid, Ellebracht Jr., his then-wife Joyce and Ellebracht Sr. peddled carved, wooden key chains to dozens of stores near their 3,500-acre ranch in Mountain Home, about 20 miles northwest of Kerrville.

Ellebracht Sr. aspired to be the “key chain king of the Texas Hill Country,” but lost more than he sold, according to a 1986 newspaper article still displayed on the wall beneath four key chains at Bill's BBQ in Kerrville.

Restaurateur Joe Marino Jr. said his parents bought the Ellebrachts' key chains for a quarter and sold them for 35 cents at their former business, Big Joe's Country Store, for years.

His mother, Sharon Marino, 66, recalls the men always were barefoot and dirty when they came to town.

“You just really didn't want to get up and socialize when they came in; they were scary,” she said.

Everyone knew the Ellebrachts drove a blue van and picked up hitchhikers to staff the key chain factory and do other work at the ranch. But details that emerged after the April 1984 raid, triggered by an escaped worker's call to the Texas Rangers, surprised even the family's closest friends.

Some former neighbors still defend the family, despite the 1986 convictions of Ellebracht Sr., Ellebracht Jr., his only child, and Caldwell for conspiracy to commit aggravated kidnapping and murder for the death of Bates, a one-eyed drifter from Alabama.

“They were strange people, but they're not that kind of people,” said Loraine Haynie, 86, who befriended Ellebracht Sr. as a child and cared for him over the years until his death in 2003.

Ellebracht Sr. had big ideas, but was too lazy to implement them, said Joe Smith, 68, a pastor and retired builder who was a friend and maintains the small cemetery in Mountain Home where he is buried.

“He always wanted me to invest in his key chain idea, but I never did,” Smith said. “He'd take me on tours. ... There were a lot of hitchhikers, but they were never held forcibly. They weren't slaves.”

Caldwell, who now lives in a mobile home on San Antonio's South Side, said that after a fire destroyed the factory, workers chopped wood to be sold in San Antonio.

Caldwell was hired as the foreman, first in the field and then in the main residence, where he worked on Ellebracht Sr.'s latest plan: a tile reprocessing machine that could be operated by blind people.

When he first arrived in January 1984, Caldwell watched in horror as the Ellebrachts used the cattle prod on a handcuffed man who had disrespected a family member. The man groveled in the dirt and begged for mercy, but afterward was allowed to leave, though he decided to stay anyway, Caldwell said.

Not long after, Ellebracht Sr. and Jr. were torturing Bates, with help from the workers, who picked on him because they disliked his temperament and the fact that he couldn't do hard labor after he was injured by a chain saw, according to trial testimony.

“I don't think even (Ellebracht) Jr. knew how much abuse he was going through,” Caldwell said. “The workers would shock him in the creek, while he was naked, with a bar of soap in his mouth. It was a way to take out frustration, but there was no premeditated murder.”

The torture went on for hours at a time, while Bates, handcuffed to a tree with his hands behind him, was zapped repeatedly on his tongue, genitals and empty eye socket with the cattle prod.

The sessions, which were often tape-recorded, weakened Bates, who died that February on the manure-covered floor of the bunkhouse.

Caldwell and another worker built a funeral pyre and, as a cassette tape of Johnny Cash's “Ring of Fire” played, burned Bates' remains. The ashes were scooped into two 55-gallon drums, according to published reports. Bones found at the site were determined to be those of a young adult male.

“We used old inner tubes, cedar and gasoline,” Caldwell said. “We used cedar because it burns fast and strong. I knew what I was doing; I had options. But the guy was dead, and there was no bringing him back.”

Caldwell was no longer needed, and in March, one of the Ellebrachts dropped him off at a truck stop with $20. He hitchhiked to San Antonio and found work at a restaurant, where he saw the raid on TV.

By then, according to court testimony, workers were being held at gunpoint and forced to write their own suicide notes and tie nooses and dig ditches in preparation for their own deaths, or so they were led to believe.

More than a dozen cassette tapes with about 40 hours of recorded torture sessions were seized during the raid, along with guns, machetes, an ax, knives, ropes chains, padlocks, bone fragments, the cattle prod and business papers.

To clear his conscience, Caldwell gave a 20-page statement to the FBI. He later was indicted, along with the Ellebrachts, for his role in Bates' torture and death.

A trial not forgotten

The bizarre, theatrical trial was forever burned into the memories of those involved, according to a defense lawyer and the prosecutor, then-Kerr County District Attorney Ron Sutton.

“They tortured a bunch of people, and it was unbelievable that stuff like that could happen,” Sutton said. “But, on the other hand, the people running up and down the highway were gullible. It expanded my knowledge of humanity, that good and bad can live side by side.”

Nine people were initially indicted: Ellebracht Sr., Ellebracht Jr., Joyce, Caldwell and five ranch workers. Sutton prosecuted Ellebracht Sr. and Jr. and Caldwell, and the workers became state witnesses in exchange for immunity from prosecution. Joyce, who divorced her husband in 1988, would neither testify nor stand trial.

Every day of the widely publicized three-month trial, Sutton said, the 150 courtroom seats were filled with spectators, Wes among them.

Ellebracht key chains were selling at a premium, $2. The jurors compiled their favorite recipes, called it the “Slave Ranch Cookbook,” had it printed at the Kerr County Courthouse and sold copies.

Besides the “torture tapes,” also entered into evidence was one worker's poem, titled “The Shack,” and other recordings of the Ellebrachts putting workers on “trial” in the bunkhouse.

“It was some of the worst evidence I've ever seen,” said attorney Dan Cogdell, 56, of Houston, who worked with the infamous Richard “Racehorse” Haynes to defend Ellebracht Sr. “I totally thought we were screwed. This was the craziest case I've ever had, but these were drifters, and they were seen as less entitled to the benefits than the rest of us are.”

To try to desensitize the seven women and five men on the jury, Haynes played the torture tapes often and asked Cogdell to shock himself with a battery-operated cattle prod like the one the Ellebrachts used.

The off-the-wall tactics worked, Cogdell said, and Ellebracht Sr. was given probation. Ellebracht Jr. was sentenced to 15 years in prison and in 1996 was released on mandatory supervision, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

Caldwell also was given a 15-year sentence, but since he'd served nearly three years while awaiting trial, he was released on mandatory supervision in 1988.

By then, much of the Texas Slave Ranch had been sold in pieces to fund the Ellebrachts' defense.

Spring runs through it

The Ellebrachts, descendants of Germans who settled the Hill Country in the 1880s, had inherited land with a robust spring.

The state of Texas obtained rights to it in 1925 and funneled the water through concrete canals to what's now the Texas Department of Parks and Wildlife's Heart of the Hills Fisheries Science Center.

In 1990, the state bought 240 acres of the former ranch and the Ellebrachts' home, which has been used as temporary housing for the center's employees, including Bob Betsill, the research program director.

“It's a great house, a one-story renovated rock house,” Betsill said. “There are several other property owners now around us, but there's nobody around from that era. Those stories have been around for years, but people and things have moved on.”

Another piece of the former ranch was awarded to Joann Loftis, Bates' mother, who sued the Ellebrachts for her son's wrongful death.

In the 1989 settlement, she received 43.1 percent — or 1,318 acres, then valued at $1.7 million — and has since sold the property in pieces.

Joyce Esensee and her husband, Art, now live in a mobile home in Fredericksburg. Wes' eldest daughter, Elizabeth Toby Ellebracht, 18, who'd been living with him in Fredericksburg, has moved in with the couple since his death. The Esensees' home is in foreclosure.

Ellebracht Jr. never returned to live in Kerr County, and while at times he had been close with his only child, the two had grown estranged. When asked to help pay for his son's burial, Ellebracht Jr. reportedly told relatives to “let the county worry about it,” his ex-wife said.

“I've separated my life from my ex-husband,” Esensee said. Wes “suffered from what happened up there, and he didn't deserve that, but Wes always tried to live down the past. He wasn't even 10 years old.”

The decision to change his name in hopes of distancing himself from the ranch didn't last long, Walls said.

“He looked at the past and said, 'I'm here now, nobody can change that,'” he said. “He taught me that family isn't really the people that are blood, but those who accept you for who you are.”

Ellebracht III was arrested as a teen, when a group of friends stole beer from a convenience store and broke the window of a car, but was trying to get the record expunged, Walls said.

Always the dependable friend, Ellebracht III was praised by members of the overflow crowd at his funeral. They told stories of how the man who'd managed restaurants, waited tables and worked at odd jobs helped them through complicated situations.

Nine years ago, her son won custody of Elizabeth and embraced single parenting, Esensee said. He was determined to send his daughter to college.

He hadn't seen his second daughter, Alexis Faith Bockemehl, 17, since infancy, but the two girls met at their father's memorial service.

“They're both wonderful girls, and he was a wonderful father,” Esensee said. “I raised him the best I knew how. Everybody says I'm a strong person for what I've been through. I tried to teach him right from wrong.”

================== 

A Texas Trial: Tale of Death and Torture, 06-01-1986, New York Times
Peter Applebome
https://www.nytimes.com/1986/06/01/us/a-texas-trial-tale-of-death-and-torture.html


Every day the crowds come early, mostly retirees, students and farm and ranch couples who mingle outside the second-floor courtroom with the genial ease of country people gathering before Sunday church services.
The geniality freezes and dies once the testimony begins inside the courtroom where two Texas hill country ranchers and one of their workers are accused of kidnapping, enslaving and torturing hitchhikers on an isolated 3,500-acre ranch in the scenic cedar-and oak-covered hills near here.
Instead, the trial of Walter Wesley Ellebracht Sr., 55 years old, his son, Walter Wesley Ellebracht Jr., 33, and a former ranch worker, Carlton Robert Caldwell, 21, is turning into a ghoulish glimpse of a dark, remote world that seems like the stuff of a low-budget exploitation film.
The defendants, arrested on April 6, 1984, are charged under the state's organized crime laws with conspiracy to commit kidnapping and murder in connection with the death of Anthony Bates, an Alabama drifter.
Promises, Then Torture
The prosecution says the Ellebrachts routinely picked up hitchhikers on nearby Interstate 10, brought them to the ranch after promising them work and then chained and tortured them to get them to go on clearing cedar and oak trees.
Witnesses this week included a former ranch worker, Paul Harvey Hicks, 20, who recounted incidents of workers being chained, handcuffed to trees, assaulted with cattle prods and threatened with shotguns and daggers. He told about one incident involving three workers, chained together, pleading for their lives.
''Someone said something to the effect, 'You're digging your own graves,' '' Mr. Hicks said, and then, referring to the young Mr. Ellenbracht, added: ''Junior said, 'We don't bury them. We burn them.' ''
Prosecutors charge that Mr. Bates was murdered and his body burned on the Ellebrachts' ranch.
The defense, led by Richard (Racehorse) Haynes, a prominent defense lawyer from Houston, has attacked the credibility of the state's witnesses, many of whom are accused of taking part in torture sessions at the ranch. Mr. Hicks, one of six other people charged under the same organized crime indictments, was testifying under a form of immunity in which his testimony can not be used against him in a later trial. Witness Admits Lying
One former ranch worker, Dennis Johnson, admitted Tuesday that he lied on the witness stand when he said he did not return voluntarily to the Ellebrachts' ranch.
Defense attorneys have also questioned the identification of bone fragments found on the ranch.
A forensic anthropologist, Dr. Clyde Snow, testified Wednesday that at least 11 charred bone fragments found on the ranch were human. Dr. Snow said he estimated the fragments were exposed to intense heat ''a few weeks to a few months'' before he examined them May 30, 1984.
Defense attorneys have not said whether the Ellebrachts will take the stand in their own behalf.
The most dramatic moments in the trial, which is in its third week of testimony, came when the prosecution played tapes it said were made of torture sessions recorded at the ranch's bunkhouse.
So far about 15 minutes of the two and a half hours of tapes have been played in court. A victim identified as Mr. Bates can be heard shrieking and groaning as he is assaulted with a cattle prod. In the background, voices identified as that of the younger Mr. Ellebracht and former ranch workers taunt him and narrate what is going on.
The tape begins with a person imitating a radio disk jockey saying, ''Live from the bunkhouse - it's shock time.'' 'Time We Take a Station Break'
At another point, a voice can be heard saying: ''Scream louder. If you don't scream louder, you're going to wish you did.''
It ends with a calm, almost serene voice saying: ''It's time we take a station break. And now a word from our sponsors - Hot Shot. Having trouble with your neighbors? Try Hot Shot. For hours and hours of enjoyment tie them up anywhere and shock the hell out of them.''
The Ellebrachts have sat impassively through most of the trial. They, as well as their co-defendant, face possible 99-year jail terms if convicted.
But the spectators, who often fill the 150-seat courtroom, have at times been voluble and partial to the prosecution, reacting at times with cheers and groans to the proceedings.
Judge Tom Blackwell, a retired judge from Austin who is hearing the case in State District Court here, has had to admonish the audience not to react.
''At first no one knew what to think, but when we heard the tapes that changed everything,'' said Juanita Dowdy of Kerrville, one of the spectators who has sat through the entire trial. ''People can't really believe this was going on and no one knew anything about it.''
Law-enforcement officials raided the ranch after receiving a telpehone call from a man who said he had escaped.
The prosecution is expected to continue its case through most of next week.

===================== 
Subjects Tell of Shackles; Bones Found
Author: Stephen Sharpe, Staff Writer
San Antonio Light – April 8, 1984
https://www.newspapers.com/image/1264532254/


MOUNTAIN HOME — Three members of a prominent Kerr County family have been accused of luring drifters to their home with the promise of a hot meal, then forcing them to work on the family’s ranch under slave-like conditions.
Some of the workers found on the Ellebracht ranch in Mountain Home told authorities that they were shackled to keep them from escaping their captors.
Bone fragments found on the ranch are being analyzed to determine if they are human, Kerr County Sheriff Cliff Greeson said.
In all, five men and one woman were found living in a run-down barn on the 3,500-acre ranch, about 20 miles northwest of Kerrville, bordered by Interstate 10.
Aggravated kidnapping charges have been filed against Walter Wesley Ellebracht, 53; his son, Walter Wesley Ellebracht Jr., 31; and his son’s wife, Joyce Ellebracht, 29.
The Ellebrachts were arrested Friday evening after Greeson executed a search warrant earlier in the day. Each is being held in lieu of a $100,000 bond.
Greeson said he found the conditions in which the workers lived "very unsanitary-looking.”
Authorities initially learned about the kidnapping accusations 11 days ago when a man arrived in Commanche claiming that he had been enticed to the ranch with the promise of a free meal.
Greeson said the people found living in the barn had been hitchhiking along Interstate 10 when they were invited to the ranch by a member of the Ellebracht family.
“These people would stop them and ask them if they wanted to come to the house for a hot meal and they would go, or most of them would," the sheriff said.
Calling the workers "hitchhikers and drifters,” Greeson said they dug ditches, cut wood and fashioned key chains out of varnished cedar that were sold by the family.
In exchange for their toil, the people were given food and in some cases, Greeson said, small amounts of money.
"It could have been several years that this was going on," the sheriff said, adding that the Ellebrachts may have told some workers to leave.
All six of the workers found Friday remain in Kerrville as material witnesses in the case against the Ellebrachts.
Greeson said they are being cared for by an undisclosed local religious group.
Meanwhile, Greeson said, he is investigating claims that a body was burned on the ranch.
Greeson said one of the alleged captives led lawmen to bone fragments in an old campfire.
The charred fragments are being analyzed at the state Department of Public Safety crime laboratory in Austin.
A lawyer representing the Ellebrachts said he will ask that their bonds be lowered Monday.
"I certainly think bail reductions will be pursued,” attorney Richard Mosty said yesterday.
Mosty said he was contacted by the family Thursday night after Texas Rangers and agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrived at the ranch to question them.
Greeson said a search warrant, issued by Kerr County Justice of the Peace Betty Burney, was executed about 3:30 p.m. Friday.
While searching the premises, Greeson said deputies found “filthy" mattresses inside the dirt-floor barn in which the six people lived.
Some of the six, Greeson said, claimed they had been trying to escape but were chained at night and while working.
Others were “complacent,” he said.
"Some of them seemed content to stay there and work under the conditions," Greeson said.
After the search, Greeson said lawmen returned to the ranch about 9:30 p.m. Friday to arrest the three members of the family.
Mosty said the father and daughter-in-law were taken into custody at the ranch. The son, he said, surrendered to authoritites at the sheriff’s office shortly afterward.
Leona Ellebracht, 81, mother of Ellebracht senior, said she does not believe the charges against her son, grandson and his wife are true.
“He (her son) was brought up in a Christian home and if he did this terrible thing he fell from grace,” she said.

==================== 
This news report details a chilling investigation into the Ellebracht family, who were accused of orchestrating a system of forced labor and kidnapping on their Texas ranch. By enticing vulnerable transients with the promise of a warm meal, the suspects allegedly trapped their victims in slave-like conditions, utilizing physical restraints such as shackles to prevent escape.

Subjects Tell of Shackles; Bones Found
Author: Stephen Sharpe, Staff Writer
San Antonio Light – April 8, 1984
https://www.newspapers.com/image/1264532254/

MOUNTAIN HOME — Three members of a prominent Kerr County family have been accused of luring drifters to their home with the promise of a hot meal, then forcing them to work on the family’s ranch under slave-like conditions.
Some of the workers found on the Ellebracht ranch in Mountain Home told authorities that they were shackled to keep them from escaping their captors.
Bone fragments found on the ranch are being analyzed to determine if they are human, Kerr County Sheriff Cliff Greeson said.
In all, five men and one woman were found living in a run-down barn on the 3,500-acre ranch, about 20 miles northwest of Kerrville, bordered by Interstate 10.
Aggravated kidnapping charges have been filed against Walter Wesley Ellebracht, 53; his son, Walter Wesley Ellebracht Jr., 31; and his son’s wife, Joyce Ellebracht, 29.
The Ellebrachts were arrested Friday evening after Greeson executed a search warrant earlier in the day. Each is being held in lieu of a $100,000 bond.
Greeson said he found the conditions in which the workers lived "very unsanitary-looking.”

Authorities initially learned about the kidnapping accusations 11 days ago when a man arrived in Commanche claiming that he had been enticed to the ranch with the promise of a free meal.
Greeson said the people found living in the barn had been hitchhiking along Interstate 10 when they were invited to the ranch by a member of the Ellebracht family.
“These people would stop them and ask them if they wanted to come to the house for a hot meal and they would go, or most of them would," the sheriff said.
Calling the workers "hitchhikers and drifters,” Greeson said they dug ditches, cut wood and fashioned key chains out of varnished cedar that were sold by the family.
In exchange for their toil, the people were given food and in some cases, Greeson said, small amounts of money.
"It could have been several years that this was going on," the sheriff said, adding that the Ellebrachts may have told some workers to leave.
All six of the workers found Friday remain in Kerrville as material witnesses in the case against the Ellebrachts.
Greeson said they are being cared for by an undisclosed local religious group.
Meanwhile, Greeson said, he is investigating claims that a body was burned on the ranch.
Greeson said one of the alleged captives led lawmen to bone fragments in an old campfire.
The charred fragments are being analyzed at the state Department of Public Safety crime laboratory in Austin.
A lawyer representing the Ellebrachts said he will ask that their bonds be lowered Monday.
"I certainly think bail reductions will be pursued,” attorney Richard Mosty said yesterday.
Mosty said he was contacted by the family Thursday night after Texas Rangers and agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrived at the ranch to question them.
Greeson said a search warrant, issued by Kerr County Justice of the Peace Betty Burney, was executed about 3:30 p.m. Friday.
While searching the premises, Greeson said deputies found “filthy" mattresses inside the dirt-floor barn in which the six people lived.
Some of the six, Greeson said, claimed they had been trying to escape but were chained at night and while working.
Others were “complacent,” he said.
"Some of them seemed content to stay there and work under the conditions," Greeson said.
After the search, Greeson said lawmen returned to the ranch about 9:30 p.m. Friday to arrest the three members of the family.
Mosty said the father and daughter-in-law were taken into custody at the ranch. The son, he said, surrendered to authoritites at the sheriff’s office shortly afterward.
Leona Ellebracht, 81, mother of Ellebracht senior, said she does not believe the charges against her son, grandson and his wife are true.
“He (her son) was brought up in a Christian home and if he did this terrible thing he fell from grace,” she said.

============================= 

3 in family held in kidnappings
The Houston Post
April 8, 1984
https://www.newspapers.com/image/1205883059


KERRVILLE (AP) — Three members of a ranching family were arrested after six people said they were abducted while hitchhiking and held in chains as slave laborers, authorities said Saturday, adding that as many as 75 people could have worked at the ranch.
Authorities learned of the slavery allegations last week when a man who said he had been kidnapped and held on the ranch escaped and contacted Texas Rangers in Comanche.
Kerr County Sheriff Cliff Greeson said Walter Wesley Ellebracht, 53; his son, Walter Wesley Ellebracht Jr., 31; and daughter-in-law, Joyce Ellebracht, 29, were arrested Friday night at their ranch in a remote area about 20 miles north of Kerrville. They were being held in lieu of $100,000 bonds.
Investigators were checking a claim by one of the six alleged victims that he was forced to burn the body of a man who died at the ranch, Greeson said.
Paperwork taken from the ranch indicated that as many as 75 people had been there dur- ing the past year, he said.
“But we don’t know that any one of them had been a captive,” he said.
Attorneys for the Ellebrachts, Richard Mosty and Thomas Pollard, would not comment on the case. But Mosty said authorities were "just picking out of the air" the number 75.
The six people found at the ranch said they had been kept in a barn since February, Greeson said. They were being held as material witnesses, he said.
The Ellebrachts were arrested when sheriff’s deputies, FBI agents and Department of Public Safety officers raided the 3,500-acre ranch Friday night, Greeson said.
Bits of bone had been recovered from a charred brush pile where one of the men said a body was burned and were being analyzed in Austin to determine if the bone was human, Greeson said.