F.M. Snow had recently moved to Erath County from Palo Pinto County. Sometimes this month in 1925, he killed his wife, her son and mother. The bodies of the women were dismembered and partially burned in the fireplace. The 16-yer old boy’s head (some say all of their heads) was severed and hidden in a burlap bag in an abandoned cellar near Chalk Mountain. A hunter was drawn to the bag by his dog and the head(s) were taken to Stephenville, and displayed in a store window. Soon recognized, the authorities went to the Snow cabin (now on the Stephenville Museum grounds) and arrested Snow. He confessed to similar murders before moving to Stephenville. I was told by C. Richard King, that Snow agreed to confess if he was spared hanging. Since the electric chair had just become the mode of execution in Texas, the authorities agreed and he was the first person in Texas to be executed in the electric chair.

Boyce House, “The Head in the Burlap Bag,” Startling Detective Adventures, copy in the Tarleton University Library.