Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum book launch 12.30.2022
 |
 |
Captain Barry Caver served as the commander and Jess Malone served as the negotiator for the 1997 standoff in the Davis Mountains between members of the Republic of Texas militia and 300 law enforcement officers. https://youtu.be/sFew1ti2rDo?feature=shared
I began work on this book project in September 2017 following a public signing for my first book, The Broken Spoke: Austin’s Legendary Honky-Tonk, also published by Texas A&M University Press. I soon became intrigued with a story told to me by Jo Ann Canady Turner, who twenty years earlier, had helped to start a war for Texas’ independence.
Texas Secessionists Standoff: The 1997 Republic of Texas “War” is divided into three sections: Part I—Before the ROT War, Part II—The ROT War, and Part III—After the ROT War. ROT stands for the Republic of Texas militia group that declared Texas an independent nation and fought a seven-day war to secede from the United States beginning on April 27, 1997, within the Davis Mountains.
Chapter 1 begins with Jo Ann Canady Turner’s arrest because that event triggered the seven-day war fought between ROT militia members and three hundred law enforcement agents in the Davis Mountains. Her phone call to her friend, the self-proclaimed ambassador of the ROT, Richard “Rick” Lance McLaren, from Travis County Jail on April 22,1997, helped to incite a standoff that began five days later. To provide insight into Jo Ann Canady Turner’s motivation for joining up with a Texas antigovernment militia, Chapters 2 through 4 provide a flashback into her background. An impoverished childhood and abusive father, a brief courtship and marriage to an alcoholic husband seventeen years her senior, and the foreclosure of their family home all contributed to her poor choices. Chapters 5 through 7 deal specifically with Jo Ann’s association with McLaren, the ROT, and her subsequent forty days of incarceration. Provocative personal stories about Jo Ann Turner's life provide the thread that begins each of the remaining chapters in this book.
Chapters 8 through 18 describe the happenings of each day during the seven-day siege within the Davis Mountains, beginning April 27, 1997, and ending May 3, 1997. Seventy-five primary sources, including Texas Rangers Barry Caver and Jess Malone, other law enforcement officials, attorneys, residents, and FBI agents, provided me with firsthand knowledge about the siege and a four-month manhunt for an ROT escapee that followed. Former FBI consultant at the siege Gary Noesner, wrote this book's forward.
These ROT events subsequently ruined Jo Ann’s otherwise unremarkable life. Chapters 19 through 24 describe her release from jail, her fearful life on the run for fifteen years, grief, and finally absolution