Women, Whiskey & Sin (Part One) is an historical account of the first twenty-five felony, district court cases filed after Tom Green County, Texas was organized in 1875. The thirty chapters, 73 photographs and 209 pages also include details of the "vice crimes" that Justice of the Peace E.A. Nimitz dealt with in his court. This is not a "dirty" book. The title comes from a description of the small village known as Santa Angela that was established across the river from the United States military post - Fort Concho - on the Texas Frontier. The village grew into what is now a major Texas city known as San Angelo. A visitor from New York wrote in the 1870's, "San Angela is overrun with drink saloons, gambling dens and dances houses of the very lowest class. It is the most immoral town I ever was in... every crime known to the calendar is committed there." This work was done to define what crime was really like in a time when civilization was just starting to show itself on the Texas frontier. Women, Whiskey & Sin (Part One) offers the reader transcripts of the handwritten documents that were the court records, the district court minutes and writs of the day. There are photographs of the handwriting that is at times hard to read or understand. There are dispositions that just might surprise you, especially if you watched many of the old westerns.
About the Author: Russell S. Smith was born in Uvalde, Texas. He started writing poems and short stories long before he graduated from high school in 1969. He attended Southwest Texas Junior College, Howard College and Angelo State University; the majority of his classes dealt with criminal justice. His law enforcement career began as a reserve deputy with the Tom Green County Sheriff's Department in 1977 and ended when he retired as the San Angelo's Police Chief in 1999. This experience spurred his professional writing career when he sold his first article to a police trade magazine in 1980. Russell was appointed as a Tom Green County Justice of the Peace in 2003. Unopposed in the following elections, he retired December 31, 2010. From 1998 to 2003, Russell was an outdoor columnist for the San Angelo Standard-Times and several magazines. The Gun That Wasn't There was his first non-fiction book. His second was No Reason to Kill; about the murder of Sheila Elrod, a 20-year-old San Angelo girl killed during a jewelry store robbery in 1980. His third was One Policeman's Lights and Siren which is a collection of short stories about his early police career. His outdoor memoirs "Steps into God's Country" comes after writing in the outdoor field for nearly 30 years. His fifth book, How I Published 4 Books in 6 Years came after people kept asking, "How did you do it?" Russell has received numerous awards over the years for his writing and photography from the Texas Outdoor Writers' Association. He now writes a periodic outdoor column for the San Angelo Standard-Times as he researches other projects and writes from his home in San Angelo, Texas. He and his wife Linda have been married 41 years. They have two married children and four grandchildren.