Just before dark on November 12, 1905, Joe Gilbreath crept into Mrs. Wallace Gregory’s bedroom. In her statement she said, “The children was playing out in the pasture,” “I just sent the little girl Effie out with the baby and told her to stay until I called her.” Wallace Gregory was watching through a window as the couple embraced, it was then that she saw her husband at the window. Gregory rushed in and shot Gilbreath to death. Usually, the claim of adultery was the best guarantee a man could use before an all male jury, but twenty character witnesses showed up to describe Gilbreath as a “chaste and virtuous man.” So the January 12, 1906 verdict declared Gregory “guilty of murder in the first degree.” Gregory appealed and was given a three and a half year sentence.

James Pylant, Sins of the Pioneers: Crimes and Scandals in a Small Texas Town, Stephenville: Jacobus Books, 2009, 154-156.