Cocoposts

They found her broken body on Easter morning, 1949. Like other Sundays, they were hunting rabbits on the mesa after church.

The village of Mesquite is 12 miles south of Las Cruces, New Mexico. The cemetery was remote but familiar to the three boys who spotted her body partially buried in a shallow arroyo.

A couple of reporters are why the story didn’t die. Justice was pursued based largely on their work. Cricket’s killer was never found but coverage uncovered a cover-up.

The efforts Sheriff “Happy” Apodoca made to destroy and ignore evidence and witness testimony was the start. Reporters interviewed witnesses who described what hadn’t made it into the Sheriff’s reports. The boys who found her body described how he appeared to deliberately drive over tire tracks at the scene. A man told the Sheriff he had seen Cricket getting into a car with official state plates and a car matching the description was later found burned. These didn’t make it into the official report either. Cricket’s body was buried without ceremony and when she was exhumed, they found that lime had been used to speed decomposition.

The Sheriff tried to frame a popular college football player who’d been seen with Cricket. When that didn’t work, he tortured a Black veteran to get a confession. That resulted in a ground breaking civil rights case and made the cover of Time.

The involvement of New Mexico sheriffs in illegal gambling had become obvious by 1949. A Grand Jury convened in Dona Ana County hired their own lawyers and got hold of Sheriff Happy Apodaca’s bank records. They found the gambling money. Then they drove down to the gambling joints in their pickup trucks, confiscated illegal slot machines, and dumped them on the Dona Ana courthouse lawn.

The Sheriff went to prison for some, but not all, of his crimes. Sadly he was pardoned by President Truman. He served as a Justice of the Peace until his death in 1981. He and Cricket are buried in the same Las Cruces cemetery.

The Sheriff’s Deputy got the worst deal. He didn’t get a pardon and after serving his full sentence he publically vowed to solve the murder and was shot dead. The official report said it was suicide but the coroner told a reporter the bullet entered the back of the deputy’s head.

Cricket’s death created upheaval but was never solved. People that knew the killer have likely all gone to their graves with that secret. The story is not unique. Secrets protect evil men. Hopeful views say their careless deceit makes them vulnerable, eventually. Until then, we’re cut by sharp sad pieces of a construction, like a wind chime of razor blades.