A Texas Feud

This episode of Family Lower contains spoilers for the novel before we turn to dust by

Clarice Need. Please take that to consideration before listening. In this episode, we're going to hear a story that touches on something we haven't talked about yet in this show.

“But it's an important category in the world of Family Lower.”

Today, we're going to hear about a family feud. The idea of a family feud or a blood feud has been around forever, safe to say the phenomenon predates recorded history. And some of these protracted familial battles have become famous, the Hatfields and McCoyes, for example.

Other service plot elements in our most celebrated works of literature, like Romeo and Juliet's monogues and capulets. The story we're going to hear today concerns two cattle ranching families in the Texas Panhandle. The Sneeds and the Voices.

Their feud took place in the early 1900s, but there are still voices and steeds out there today. In one of those descendants, happens to be an old family friend of mine, who has recently published a novel that is based on this feud. Her name is Clara Sneed and the novel, which I highly recommend, is before we turn to dust.

It is based on a nonfiction book, also written by Clara, called "Because This is Texas." Clara Sneed, welcome to Family Lower. Thank you very much, boy. It's good to be here. Who would have ever dreamed of this years ago?

“Do you remember the first time you heard this story?”

I'm guessing it wasn't all at once. Could you hear sort of whispers of the story? Was it a secret? Was it something you talked about all the time? What's your first memory of coming to know this? You know, as I said, I really don't remember not knowing some version of this story. I have a really vague memory of somebody saying to me at a certain point, "Did you know

your great uncle killed somebody?"

And I'm not even sure about that, because it was always floating around.

My grandmother did not want to talk about it, because she thought it reflected so poorly on the family, but everybody else wanted to talk about it, because it was pretty sensational. But I think it took me a while to find out he actually killed two, not just one. As you hear the rest of this story, you won't have any trouble understanding how a family feud begins.

“The more challenging question is, how does a family feud end?”

I'm Lloyd Lockridge, and this is family lore. Okay, let's take it from the top. The great uncle that Clara is referring to is a man named Beal Sneed. This is her grandfather's brother. Beal was born and raised in Central Texas. He came from a pretty well-established family and as a teenager he went off to Princeton and got a law degree, though he stopped

practicing law and became a successful cattle broker in Amarillo. Beal was married to a woman named Lina Snyder. The Snyder's were also a prominent family with a proud ranching legacy. Beal and Lina lived in Amarillo with their two daughters. And they'd been living his man in life for ten years, and they had built a fairly pretty nice house in a pretty nice section of Amarillo. And I'm sure on the surface, things looked

fine, but obviously there were some troubles in paradise. There was big trouble. Lina was madly in love with another man, the guy named Albois Jr. And Albois Jr. was the son of Albert Boyz Sr. who was a huge deal in Texas. At one point he ran the XIT Ranch, which is the biggest ranch in Texas history. At its

peak, the ranch covered three million acres in the Texas Panhandle. That's an area of land

twice the size of Delaware. Lina's family, the Snyders, Beal's family, the Sneeds, and Al's family, the Boises, were all friends. They were prominent Texas families who ran in the same social circles and whose business interests often overlap. And now, one member from each family found themselves in a love triangle.

Lina was married to Beal, but her heart was with Al. And her heart was pretty damn sure about that. This was just crazy love. There's no way to explain why they behaved the way they did without assuming it was one of those things that just took their heads off. It's so passionate that they can't hide it.

married. I actually think stories more complicated but what Beal claims is that he had no idea there

“was anything wrong with his marriage until October of 1912. I think it was right about their”

tenth wedding anniversary. She took him out onto the gallery and told him that she wanted to get a divorce and go away with Al boy's junior. And he thought everything was completely fine before that. Blindsided. He said it was absolutely blindsided.

There's a world in which the story ends here. Beal devastated, furious, humiliated, ultimately

accepts that his wife not only doesn't love him anymore, but is deeply in love with another man and cuts her loose. As George Strait said, "Easy come, easy go." But with the characters in this story, there would be no easy come, easy go. Instead, something remarkable took place. The families of each person in this love triangle arranged a meeting.

The meeting included Beal's father Joseph Sneed, Lena's father, Tom Snyder, and Al Boyce's father, Al Sr., who everyone called the Colonel, and various brothers and sisters were present along with Beal Sneed. Notably, Lena and Al, the two unsanctioned lovers, did not have a seat

“at the table. All these families get together. What are we going to do about this?”

And Beal's father says, "Let her go." She has been true to you. She's not worth it. Let her go. And Beal doesn't want to do that. And I think the Colonel probably agreed with Beal's dad just let her go. Let her get her to divorce. Tom Snyder didn't see it that way. You know, it says something about her virtue if she goes and gets a divorce. So what's the solution? If Lena's father forbids a divorce, but Lena herself is adamant about

getting one. How do you move forward? Ultimately, what they decided to do was never

committed to a sanitary event for a war, which wasn't difficult to do back then on the husband's say so. After her own father objected to the divorce, Lena was committed to a sanitarium, the kind of mental institution. Now getting committed against your own will is one thing, but on what medical basis could Lena remain institutionalized against her own will? They brought her in and they stuck her with a hypodermic and took away her clothes and she couldn't

have a bath and I think we're going to say she's morally insane, which even at the time I don't think they considered it a truly, it's not a truly reputable diagnosis, but it was one that

“got used and that's what they diagnosed her as morally insane. And here again is another potential”

ending to the story. There is a world in which Lena says this isn't worth it. They've forced me into

a sanitarium. They've discovered I have a terrible case of moral insanity. My own father does not support my divorce. I have two kids with Beal. Maybe I should just try to make it work. And that's exactly the mindset she projected to Beal while she was in the sanitarium. She was writing letters to Beal. Say I'm just so sorry. You didn't tell me what the cattle brought and of course I wanted to know. And will you remember to drain the radiators and make sure that somebody or

another takes care of the pony and please please don't let Dr. Turner come see me again. That man don't know anything about me at all. And I think he's the reason I'm not seeing you and the children. So she's sending that letter to Beal. But those weren't the only letters she was sending. While writing to Beal posing as the home sick wife, she was also writing to Al Bois. She begged Al to somehow rescue her from the sanitarium so that they could run away together.

But Al was laying low in Santa Rosa, New Mexico. And even if he wasn't, they wouldn't let him anywhere near the sanitarium. Lina would have to take matters into her own hands. So she persuaded a nurse to see her side of the story. Which I imagine wasn't that difficult. And so she and her nurse went on a supposed outing based on her good behavior into Fort Worth on November 8. And there she met Al. And they got on a train. And as far as Beal was concerned, they just flat out

disappeared. While Lina and Al were on the land, Al Bois was actually charged with abduction under something called the Man Act. And the logical follow-up question there would be, how was it abduction if Lina was dying to go with him? The Man Act was transportation of a woman across state lines for immoral purposes. And the woman's consent was absolutely irrelevant. So the

Eventually, Al and Lina were found, and Al was arrested. They had made it all the way up to Canada,

“where they had hunkered down in a hotel. Beal took a train up to retrieve his wife, but he couldn't”

get Al Bois extradited. And Al stayed in Canada. Once she got back to Texas, Lina pleaded with her father, expressing to him that she could not be married to Beal's need any longer, and that she was irreversibly in love with Al. She thought her father could approach Al's father, the Colonel, and get him to see that supporting the divorce so that Lina could be with his son, as shameful as it may have been, was the only possible course of action.

Because at first, the Colonel believed that this was Al and Lina's fault entirely,

and that Beal had every right to defend his marriage, and frankly, every right to go after the Colonel's own son. He apparently said, if Beal comes after and kills Al, I won't open my mouth or open my head, but if anybody else gets involved, there won't be a greasy spot left. So in other words, he wouldn't have been happy about it, but he felt like Beal had some right to go after Al. And then, with the help of his attorney, Beal had state criminal charges brought against Al.

The charges were rape, kidnapping, and theft. Colonel Bois was really offended that Beal had charged his son with rape and kidnapping and theft. Right, these charges were bullshit. You thought your

“bullshit and I think he thought they were cowardly. Yeah, cowardly. Be a man, you know.”

Be a man. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Go face him yourself. Don't get the DA to launch these bunk charges on Al. This is chicken. Right. Exactly. And so the Colonel turned against Beal, which ingratiated him to Lina and Al. A unified front of Bois' and sniders against Beal Sneed seemed within reach. But then something unfortunate happened. When Al's parents were in Fort Worth fighting the state criminal charges, they gave an interview to the Fort Worth star

telegram. In which Mrs. Boison particular sounded very negative about Lina and said that she was

spoiled and her trouble was she'd always had everything she ever wanted from her husband and that

she'd hypnotized both these men. Otherwise, one of them wouldn't want to run off with her and the other wouldn't be spending so much money to find her again. It was a very unfortunate saying public and of course her father just wasn't having it. But I will not allow my daughter to be talked about in those terms and that was the end of that. The alliance was dead in the water and the love triangle remained locked at the joints. Nobody would budge. Lina was recommitted to

“the sanitarium and Al remained in Canada. And so the question is what is Beal going to do now?”

He is basically sequestered his wife. He's trying to get Al put in jail. But his wife and her lover are

showing no signs of breaking up. So back to the question, what is Beal going to do about this?

Beal's behavior surprised people. Nobody would have anticipated what happened you couldn't have anticipated. Right. What happened? It is not hard to destroy a college. Last season, the podcast camp is files brought you stories of fraternity drug rings, stolen body parts, camp is colds and more. And now camp is files is back for another season. Every week is a new episode and a new story. Listen to and follow camp

as files. Available now wherever you get your podcasts. So as you can probably imagine, thanks for already very tense between the snids and the voices. And in the midst of that tension, the Colonel and Beal were both in Fort Worth at the same time. Beal was getting leaner back in the sanitarium and the Colonel was working on getting those state charges dropped against his son. And he was successful. The state charges of rape,

kidnapping, and theft were dropped. And one night, Beal and Al's father, the Colonel, crossed paths at the Metropolitan Hotel, the fanciest hotel in Fort Worth. And the Colonel is sitting in a big chair in the lounge getting ready to go home because he's gotten the state charges dismissed. Beal walks in with Atwell. Beal's lawyer. After a few minutes, Beal and his lawyer left to go to dinner.

And after dinner, for reasons that aren't entirely clear, Beal decides to return to the

Colonel was heading out of town. But the Colonel is there. Beal had bought a gun. He had it in

the pocket of his overcoat. And he walks through the revolving doors and sees the Colonel just sitting there, probably about as close as I am to you. And he just shoots him. And he dies shortly afterwards. Shoot some in public in front of a bunch of people. And a bunch of people who panic. And then he sees, didn't take an off to jail. But no one could have seen that coming. Personally, I doubt Beal sought coming. You know, my father snapped. He snapped. He had a gun in

“this pocket when he did it. And my dad said he felt, and I think my dad was probably right about this.”

I think that's the one time where Beal totally lost his head because it's a stupid thing to do. I mean, you got else sitting in front of you, that when you can make some kind of sense, but this was a dumb thing to do. And all the public opinion was against him after he did it. And this is when the story became something more than a messy marital drama, gossiped about by those in the know. After Beal shot and killed not his wife's lover,

but the father of his wife's lover, the story became a sensation. Headline after headline and papers across Texas. There were diagrams of the killing. Profiles on the killer, ulogies for the victim who was a towering figure in Texas. Needless to say, the boy's family was distraught. The Colonel's wife, Annie, was devastated. As brothers, wanted Beal dead. And Al was up in Canada, oblivious to what had just happened.

When news finally made it across the Canadian border, Al was actually in the middle of

writing a love letter to Lena. Mid-letter, an officer walked in and told him that Beal's need had shot and killed his father. Can you imagine? I mean, you're setting up there in the frozen waist of the north and you're writing, you know, pouring your heart out and his letter to your

“beloved who's been ripped away and saying it's the worst thing that I ever experienced when they took”

you from me and then you get this. Now, after killing the Colonel, Beal's need geared up for his murder trial. He hired the best defense attorneys money could buy and began working on his argument. There was no question that he did it and that he did it on purpose. So the defense had to get creative. I mean, what does Beal's needs case? What does his main argument in this trial? What did they tell in the jury? The defense was a very scatter shot defense. You know, they try one

thing and then they try another, but what it really boiled down to was they kind of ignored the facts of the case. They really did. They ignored the facts of the case. They presented the Colonel as trying with his son, they compared it to a cow like a cow transaction. You would try to

“corralina for your family. They wanted to steal her for their family and it was a big kind of”

conspiracy in a way that they gave him money so he could do it because they just wanted to

destroy Beal's need in his family for reasons that were never very clear. That was essentially

the argument and because of that he was entitled to kill him because he was defending his home and his family and to a certain extent the virtue of his wife, but the defense was in a terrible position because Lina refused to testify for him so the defense had to explain why she was not the stand and make it not because she's not willing to testify for him. Why wasn't Lina able to testify? She wouldn't testify for him. She couldn't legally testify against him because she was

married to him so they were stuck. So the issue of whether a spouse could testify against her husband had been debated by the courts for years. The United States Supreme Court struggled to make up its mind, often saying that testifying could be appropriate in certain cases. But the precedent was based on the idea that spouses were not "competent witnesses." So it was a bit of an open question as to whether a wife could testify against her husband and in Texas the answer to that question

was no. What was more concerning to the defense was that Lina refused to testify in support of her husband. Her absence would speak volumes to the jury and the defense needed to come up with a reason for her absence. They had to say she's just crazy. She's been seduced by this chain-smoking, hard-drinking, man-act violating guy. She's hypnotized to use Mrs. Boyce's word and she can't think for herself and Bill is saving her from the ravages of this terrible man and his terrible family,

what it boiled down. The trial lasted about three weeks with daily coverage and newspapers across

Texas. The proceedings were gripping and at times explosive. At one point, Lina Boyce, the Colonel's son and Alice brother, lept over the barrier in the courtroom and tried to attack Bill's defense attorney. Obviously, the prosecution had a strong case. There was no question that Bill shot and killed the Colonel and in response to the idea that the boyce had somehow made Lina crazy. The prosecutors humiliated the sanitarium doctor for diagnosing Lina with

moral insanity, arguing that not only was the diagnosis utter nonsense, but that she was a perfectly sane woman who simply wanted to leave her husband and be with someone else. But in 1912, Texas,

that wasn't so simple. In the trial, actually sparked a public debate about marriage and what

“society expected from a husband and a wife. What are the rights and obligations of each spouse?”

While the killing of the Colonel made the trial happen, it's these social issues that made the trial relevant. When things like that happen, it's indicative of a much bigger struggle in the zeitgeist or whatever you want. That is being worked out in a personal trial to what extent can a decent woman decide she doesn't want to be married to her husband. How do we feel about divorce? There was a big sidebar thing with three different people, women are weighing in on

his divorce proper for a woman around this time. This is very up as a topic. And then there's

the question or the debate of what is a man entitled to do when something like this happens to him.

What is a man entitled to do if something like this happens to him? Does he bear any responsibility beyond being not a drunk and a decent breadwinner, which was true? Right. He wasn't drunk. There's no evidence that he beat her. So they're presenting him as being good husband in the kind of classic provider I provided for or I provided for my children. You know, I put the house together to wish, you know, blah, blah, blah. As you might expect,

the defense argued strongly that Bill fulfilled his marital obligations and Lena did not. In killing a member of the boys family, one who, according to the defense, was part of a larger conspiracy to rip Lena away from her due to a husband. Bill was simply defending his home.

“The defense appealed to the emotions of the all-male jury. What if someone stole your wife?”

What if this happened to you? Do you not have the right to defend your home? And that argument resonated. The trial resulted in a hung jury. According to at least some of the members on that jury, when Bill's need shot and killed a defenseless old man sitting in a lounge chair minding his own business, he did not commit murder. He was defending his home. Bill wasn't quite off the hook. There would be a retrial.

And in the meantime, he was free to go. Essentially, the trial accomplished nothing other than it made every faction in this family feud even more entrenched and enraged. Lena still refused to be with Bill. Bill resented Lena for that and despised Al for being the reason she wanted to leave him. The boys family, the brothers in particular, wanted to avenge their father's death.

“At the end of each day, people breathed a sigh of relief that one of the voices had not killed”

one of the sneeds, or vice versa. Despite all that, Al and Lena were still hell bent on being together. But Al was still stuck in Canada because while his father had gotten the state charges dismissed, the man-act charges remained. Those were federal charges. And re-entering the country would come with a risk of being arrested. So at the advice of her lawyers, Lena decided to move to California. She could establish residency there and then file a divorce from California where she

might have a better outcome than in Texas. And the idea was to signal to Bill that, "Look, you're in Texas, I'm in California, Al is in Canada." We've all gone our separate ways, it's over. Let's read the writing on the wall and just get a divorce. And Bill agreed, except he didn't. He sent somebody to keep an eye on her, so she's not alone. She was this relative that's with her who's Bill probably paid that woman's way. And she's just keeping an eye

on Lena. And then it becomes clear that the male is being watched. And she's having all sorts of, we would have to say now psychosomatic symptoms. You know, she's got terrible headaches. She said, "I hurt so badly, I couldn't move my neck and I couldn't sleep." And, you know, she's a mess. I mean, she's just a mess. And the watch on the male was a problem because Lena and Al were still exchanging love letters and now they had to stop. So Lena was just stuck out in Long Beach, California,

living under surveillance. She was miserable and she hated California and she was somehow able to

and sprung into action. Manact charges be damned. Al snuck across the border from Canada and

“to Montana and made us wait a long beach, California. They couldn't find a way to meet and”

person without being seen by Bill's spy. So Al secretly boarded the train that Lena and the spy were taking back to Texas. And on that train, Lena and Al were united. We don't know what happened between them exactly. We're not sure what was said or done. All we know is that they did not get off the train together. Al got off somewhere prior to entering Texas, we think. And Lena got off in Texas, we know. Lena goes back in a very bad way to Texas, which was really a huge mistake

in terms of a happy outcome for the two of them. And she feels so terrible that she checks her self into a sanitary. Then Lena got out of the sanitary and she moved back in with her husband.

At first they were staying in hotels and then finally they rented a house in Dallas.

And then at some point in the spring or summer of 1913, Al boys returned to Texas.

“He must have decided that if the feds were really serious about the manact charges,”

then they could arrest him. He was willing to take his chances and he came home. And by the end of that summer, Lena had some interesting news to share. She claims that at some point in there shortly before August 12, she's gotten pregnant and not by Bill. So I can't imagine. I mean, everybody's acting like they're out of their minds. Like truly out of their minds. Like what are

you thinking? Wow. All of them. If things weren't already incredibly tense, they sure as I'll wear now. Everyone was back in Texas. Beal, Lena, Al, the Sneeds, the Voices. Lena was apparently pregnant with her lover's baby while living with her husband who had just

killed her lover's father. It was a Tinder box. Everybody wondered who would like the first match.

And the dynamics were complex. If one of the boys brothers were to kill Bill, then they would probably be tried and convicted. In the eyes of the jury, it was their brother, Al, who started this whole mess by having an affair with a married woman. If Lena tried to kill Bill, she would be portrayed as a lunatic who killed a husband that did nothing other than provide for her and, quote, defend his home. If Bill killed Lena,

it would undermine his argument that he loved his wife so much that he was willing to kill anyone who threatened their marriage. And if Al killed Bill, he'd be lucky to get a trial before being hanged. Once you gamed out all of the scenarios, there was really only one option. Bill would have been extremely aware that in order to make it really certain I get acquitted for killing the colonel, I need to finish the job. That's obvious. I mean, he was going to increase his

chances of getting acquitted for killing the colonel if he killed the son. Because the son is the real problem. So if you're really serious about, you know, defending your honor and your home and everything

“else, I mean, you just, that was the warm-up act. You need to go get the main purpose here.”

Right. And the prosecution could say, if that's what you really care about, then why haven't you killed this other guy? Exactly. While awaiting his retrial, Bill took Lena and the kids to his childhood home in Mylim County. Some hoped Bill would just lay low in Central Texas and let everything cool off for a bit. But hopes like that were a bit naive. Everybody knows it's not over. Everybody. The whole state knows it's not over. While on the farm in Mylim County,

Bill grew a beard and died at black with a shoe polish. He traveled to Amrillo by himself under a pseudonym. He rented a cottage if he blocks down the street from the boy's house, where Al was living with his grieving mother Annie. So he just waits. He has an alias and he just

waits. And on the third day, here comes Al, strolling up the street. He stops and has a word with

the minister with a methodist church. And he they're just having a little bit of chat chat about the weather and Bill comes out and he has a box with a shotgun and opens up the box and just starts firing. And he filled and pulled a box out. He fell on the sidewalk in front of the methodist church supposedly took some dings out of the stained glass on the methodist church. And now, basically unconscious by the end of that, Bill starts walking down the street to go turn himself in.

The shooting might not have killed out instantly but it didn't take long. Al boys, the love of Lena's life, died on the steps of that methodist church in Amrillo. In addition to the minister, there was a second witness to the crime. A young artist doing

Magnolia Hotel, a few blocks down. And she wrote a little letter about seeing this rancher

had just shot somebody that was Bill. And Mrs. Boyce comes running down the street and collapses over

“her son's body. It's told me who did this, show me the man who did this thinking I think in part”

that it might have been somebody who'd been hired. You know, right? Show me the man who did this and they take his body back to her house. And meanwhile, Bill has turned himself in. I know that there's another trial but I just want to cut to the chase is Bill ever convicted of anything regarding these killings. No. And this is the part that really got me as a reader. Bill and Lena stay married. For the rest of their lives, he died in 1960 and she died in 1965.

And they're buried together in Hillcrest Cemetery and Dallas.

After the killing of Al boys, Bill and Lena not only remained married. They live together for the rest of their lives. And as for Lena's pregnancy, we have no idea what happened. Clara thinks the most likely explanation is that the stress Lena was experiencing around that time may have caused her to miscarriage, but we're not sure. And that's for the family feud between the voices and the sneeze. The killings did not continue. There was no interminable

tit for tat between these two families. And why do you think the voices didn't retaliate after he killed not one but two of their family members? Henry Boyce said it wouldn't bring either one of

“them back and our mother could not stand it. And I think that was right. And that poor woman”

outlived every single one of her children. They all died, but that woman I can't even imagine what she must have gone through. It's devastating. While there was no more violence, there was certainly a legacy of animosity. The voices and the sneeze, once friends were now enemies. But over 100 years, after Bill Sneed killed the Colonel and Albois Junior. Clara Sneed found herself standing in a room filled with members of the Boyce family. There was yet a final chapter

to the Boyce's need feud that had not been written. Back in the mid-90s, Clara was in the process of writing her book. Actually, the problem was that she was not writing her book. She had hit a wall. She wanted to tell the story from the perspective of the key characters, Lina, Diel, and Al.

“But she didn't have any material from Al's family, the Voices. And frankly, she didn't have”

much material on Lina. She only had material that was publicly available like court transcripts and newspaper articles and whatever archival material she could glean from her family. But Lina was not allowed to testify at trial. She avoided the newspapers, and her family did everything they could to bury the story. And when it came to getting material from the Boyce family, this novel presented a unique challenge. Clara needed information from a family that had hated

her family's guts for a hundred years, and besides, she couldn't find any living Boyce descendants. So, in a moment of desperation, she solicited help from a Boyce who had already passed away. The Voices are all buried out at Lano Cemetery, which is the old cemetery out in Amorollum. So, I went to the graves, and I was there at Al's grave, and I said, "Al, I really need some help with your family. I can't find anybody."

The very next day, Clara got word from some people in Channing, Texas, who run the old XIT headquarters, the ranch that the Colonel used to manage. And they wanted to know if Clara would like to come by to check out recent restorations to the headquarters. And I said, "Yeah, I would love to see that." And I walk in and there's the picture on the wall that is the picture you see a lot of Colonel Boyce, and I said, "Oh, wow, you have that picture." And he said, "Yeah, that's Pete Boyce out in

Manteca, California. Do you know him?" And I said, "No, but I would really like to." I gave the man my card, and I said, "Tell him, I'm very sympathetic to what happened to his family, and I would really like to talk to him." Two weeks later, Clara was back at work when she got a call. It was Pete Boyce. The Colonel's great nephew.

And he said to me, "Hey, he never met me, never laid eyes on me. I was a snake. He said, "You know,

we have a bunch of her letters." And I said, "No." And those letters were the research crew of the

These letters included the love letters that Lena and Al had exchanged during their passionate affair.

“It was the missing piece. Now Clara had what she needed to properly write her book. This time,”

with not only Lena's perspective, but the first hand perspective of Al. So when you read the novel

before we turned to dust, you'll get a very real and unfiltered look at what Clara calls crazy love. And I don't care how sex positive you think you are. Lena and Al will make you blush. When Clara finished her novel and got word that would be published, she wrote a letter to Pete Boyce, but while the letter was in route, Pete passed away. He lived long enough to help Clara write the story, but not long enough to read it. And so when the boyces had a memorial for Pete

and Manteca, California, Clara wouldn't miss it for the world. But at this point, Clara's relationship to the Boyce family was limited to Pete. Now she was in a room full of boyces. She wasn't sure how that would go. And then she bumped into a woman named Cameron Moore. So my father was the grandson of Lynn Boyce, and Lynn Boyce was Albert Junior's brother, the youngest brother. Cameron is a boy spy blood. Her great grandfather was Lynn Boyce. You may

“remember Lynn as the brother who jumped over the barrier in the courtroom and tried to attack”

Beale's defense attorney. Like Clara, she's known about the story basically her whole life. Her mother, Suzanne Bassett, however, married into the Boyce family. And she says that her husband

had never been all that interested in talking about the feud. Mainly, he just remembered

there being rules he didn't understand as a kid about who he couldn't play with. And that kind of made him mad because he did not understand the circumstances. So he could not play with a snee when he was a little boy. But despite her husband's lack of interest in the subject, Suzanne found a willing storyteller in her mother-in-law. Her mother-in-law knew quite a bit about the feud. And that's because she was partially raised by her grandmother, Annie Boyce,

the Colonel's widow. She really felt strongly about the story and about her family's position in Texas at that time. And Colonel Boyce had been in charge of head of the XIT Ranch, which was the largest ranch in the world at that particular point in time. So she was very, very proud of being a boyce and really wanted to pass that history down to me. But I would say that my grandmother carried just a sense of prevailing loss. There was just

a lot of sadness and loss in her life as relates to her family. Was that sense of loss also connected to an enduring resentment for the Sneed family or at least Beal Sneed?

Oh, I think the in-laws just detested him. I always felt so sorry for her. For Lina,

that was my reaction to the story. Seems like she got the short end of the stick by being in those assilums and then also having to go back and live with somebody that had murdered your true love.

“I, yeah, yeah, I felt great sorrow. I just remember that my mother-in-law never had a nice”

thing to say about anybody connected with the Sneeds. Now, fast forward to the fall of 2019, Pete Boyce, who had given Allen Lina's letters to Clara, had just passed away and Cameron was attending the memorial and she was seated at a table with someone she didn't recognize. And I noticed that her name tag said Clara and later as I was chatting with other members of the attendees at Pete's celebration. Someone said, oh, yes, Clara Sneed is here and I recognized that the woman that I was

sitting at the table with was Clara. I approached her and asked her if she was Clara Sneed and she said she was and I let her know that I was, you know, I was a voice. So we made contact a bit later and she let me know that she was working on a kind of historical fiction piece. And as the novel was set to publish, Clara went out on a limb and invited Cameron and Suzanne to Amarillo to attend the book launch. At first, they weren't sure how to respond to that invitation.

We don't know Clara Sneed. I'd spent 15 minutes with her at Pete's funeral. You talk about

After I said I'd go, I thought, do I really want to do this? I just moved halfway across the

“country. If you want to do it, we'll do it. So Suzanne and Cameron made their way to Clara's”

book launch in Amarillo. They visited some old familiar spots like former family residences and places they'd used to hang out with relatives and prior to the actual book launch event, Clara asks Suzanne and Cameron if they'd be game for a little outing. Well, Clara made the suggestion that we meet at Lano, the cemetery, where Colonel boys and Albert boys were buried. And I said to them, if you wouldn't mind, I would like to go

to the cemetery and we can put roses on the graves. And we almost didn't do it. We were running late. We almost said, I don't think we really have time and then we just looked at each other

and said, you know, we'll probably never get to Amarillo again. And we certainly won't be here

with Clara. So we're going to do it. Can you tell me what you were expecting on your way out there do you remember the drive out there? I was expecting a lot of walking. I don't walk really great these days. I don't think I expected anything. I just expected we put the flowers down and maybe say a few prayers silently. And it was probably one of the most powerful moments in my life to have seen these beautiful cream-colored headstones. Clara laying flowers on them, my mother and my

self laying flowers on these headstones. Colonel boys, Albert boys, there was just a sense of peacefulness about it. Yeah, I remember just looking at it and just hit it really joked up feeling about, wow, maybe we've come full circle here. It felt like we could lay it all down and that was

“over that that had ended. The longer I live, the more I see, the more I think, we just don't”

understand the way the world works. There are so many mysterious, mysterious movements that happened over time and we see things in such a blink of an eye and we're very limited by our personal perspectives, but it has to be a really good thing that that kind of violence and trauma has now generations later has some family members who are in good contact with each other and have had some kind of emotional, I didn't want to say catharsis necessarily, but emotional, I don't even know the right word.

Maybe closure is a good word. There was a sense of healing. Yeah, healing is probably just as good a word as any. We went into this episode wondering how a family feud ends.

“I think this is how it ends. It ends 100 years after the feud began with three women representing”

both families coming together to place roses on the graves of the victims. It's worth pointing out that it took the snids and the voices a long time to heal and perhaps there's truth to the old saying time heals all wounds and maybe the resolution to every feud is aided by time. But the resolution of the snid voice feud shows us that it takes more than time. It also takes action. It takes humility and compassion and a genuine effort to know and understand

the pain of the other side. In above all, the snids and the voices have shown us that it is never

too late. It is never too late to do this. It's never too late to write a novel and it is never too late to heal. Earlier in this episode I mentioned a George straight lyric, easy calm, easy go. There's another lyric in that song that goes, we tried to work it out 100 times, 99 it didn't work. Well here's to the one time it did. Thank you for listening to family lore. If you have stories you'd like to share about your family, please email me at [email protected]

That's [email protected]. Familyloor is an Odyssey original podcast. It is written and narrated by me Lloyd Lockridge. Our executive producers are Leah Reese Denison I. Our lead producer and sound editor is Zach Clark. Our story editors are Maddie Sprung Kaiser

support by Sean Cherry. Special thanks to more occurring Josephina Francis, Kurt Courtney,

“Hillary Schuff and Laura Berman. Thanks again for listening to family lore.”

And if you have time we'd love for you to rate and review the show.

For years, gone south has been a podcast about crime in the American South, but for our new season

“we're widening the lens. Through deeply reported narrative driven stories, we're digging into”

the myths, scandals, and power structures that still shape the South. In in a lot of ways,

the country itself. Follow and listen to gone south season 5, an Odyssey podcast, available now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your shows.