Nicole Ricardo (44:48)
Shaw building was constructed by John A. Webb, who with his brother moved to Austin in 1872. Hardware business. Initially it was located on the south side of 6. They built a larger space across the street after 1877, expanding to sell agricultural supplies, carriages, bicycles, other things. Now today the building is actually two connected sections. We have the west side of the building, which is where Voodoo Donuts is, and we have the east side of the building which is where BBGs and happy chicks is now. Because the east side has that prominent cornice with the name J A Web and brother, most people don't know know that these two sides were actually the same building. However, the original maps of the city show that these two sections were once one large store connected by archways, which actually if you go in there today and you know to look for these, you can still see the now bricked in archways inside of Voodoo Donuts that connected these two sections of the building together. So the hardware store operated until about 1914, after which the building hosted various businesses including a furniture store, auto repair shop, feed stores and restaurants. And the name Webb Shaw comes from the Shaw Furniture store, which operated in the west side of the building from 1931 to 1953. By 1926, the building was split between O.W. wilson Furniture, which again was on the west side, which is now voodoo donuts, and C.J. martin & Sons, which was a dry goods store selling seeds, tools, feed. That was on the east side of the building, which is where BBG's, Happy Chicks, Eaton, Sunset Strip are now. So JW Stevens Jr comes into play here because he was in fact working as a bookkeeper for the Wilson Furniture Store. And remember, this is a store that was housed on the west side of the building, which is where Voodoo Donuts is now located. So we also know that on the afternoon of July 23, 1926, something awful happened. There's a lot of conflicting stories about what happened that day, but whatever actually occurred, Stevens was left dead. The official death certificate, as you know, states that Stevens died at the Emergency Hospital at 4:15pm the official cause of death written on the death certificate was self administered Lysol poisoning. According to the death certificate, Stevens had symptoms consistent with Lysol poisoning and Lysol was found when doctors pumped his stomach. But here's where it gets interesting when you start looking into this. The newspaper articles describing his death actually tell a completely different story. On July 24, the day after he died, the Austin American ran a story titled Austin Man Dies Suddenly. And here's the wild part. The article says he died in a car accident at the emergency hospital. There was no mention of Lysol or suicide at all. So the story says that Stevens crashed his car at the 4300 block of Alice Avenue, which is now Medical Parkway, near Central market. Back in 1926, this was the edge of town with not much around. And we found this out by looking up the original Sanborn map of the city. So we're on the edge of town. And according to this article, a motorcycle officer, E.M. freund, showed up to find Stevens in the wrecked car. The engine was sitting on an axle and a spring was broken. Freund said that Stevens looked dazed and asked him to get out. But when Stevens tried, he collapsed. Now, for some reason, instead of rushing him to a hospital, the officer decides to flag down a passing truck and tells the driver to take Stevens. Not to a doctor, not to a hospital, okay, but to Wilson Furniture Store, his workplace, which was four miles away. So instead of getting medical care, he got a ride to work. So the article then says that Stevens was met at the furniture store by doctors who'd been called to examine him. Once they realized he was actually sick, they rushed him to the emergency hospital, which by the way, was only one block away. And then the paper reports he died at 4:35. But his actual time of death was 4:15, which was 20 minutes earlier. But just in case all of that wasn't confusing enough, the doctors told the newspaper that Stevens had low blood pressure and that he died of paralysis of the heart. Basically that his heart stops. So no mention of suicide, no mention of Lysol. So that was the first newspaper article. Now, the second article was also published on July 24. This one is the in the Austin American Statesman, it was much shorter and it had two key differences. First, it claimed that he died shortly after 4pm versus the Austin American recorded 435. So of course it's not unheard of, especially given what word of mouth relaying of information, that there could be discrepancies here. However, combined with the differences like say he died in a car accident versus Bron Lysol poisoning, it's just strange. Now, the safeman also named Dr. Will Watt as the physician who treated Stevens at the furniture store before sending him to the emergency hospital where he died minutes later. Dr. Watt was a respected local doctor with a practice inside of the little field building, which is just a block away from the Furnit furniture store. But the question that kept coming up for me is if this is also true and he got into a car accident the day he died, why was he sent to his workplace after the crash? So when Taylor and I went down to the research center, we were actually able to pull out the original Sanborn maps of the city. And we mapped out the exact route that they were reporting. And that truck passed at least two hospitals on the way to the furniture store. It passed Seaton Hospital Hospital, which was only two miles away from where the crash reportedly happened. And they also passed the Physicians and Surgeons hospital, which was 2.8 miles away. The furniture store, which is where they took him to, was four miles away, so double the distance. Even the city hospital, which was three miles northeast, was closer than taking him the furniture store. So that already just is not adding up and seems really off. And then when we combine that with the fact that none of the newspaper articles mention anything about Lysol poisoning or suicide, it's pretty obvious that something weird is going on here. Our personal opinion was that something was being covered up either because a somebody just didn't want people to know that Stevens had committed suicide or baby, and we're going to get juicy here, was that somebody didn't want people to know that Stevens was murdered, which might seem like a huge leap. However, there's another piece of information here. Something that makes something like murder seem within the realm of possibility, especially when we're taking this time period into account. So there is a historical document written about the Webshaw building by A. Benny Hoffman. And this document was compiled from various sources of information found in the Travis county archives and was included in the zoning change application from 2012. But this document states that back in the 1920s, the owner of the Wilson furniture store, O.W. wilson had accused a manager of his store named Stevenson of embezzling from him. And as a result, the article states that Stevens shot himself under the interior stairs of the store. Then only three months after he dies, the Wilson Furniture store announced they were going out of business. So if this is accurate, if you remember from the beginning when I mentioned the Wilson Furniture store is actually on the west side of the building where Voodoo Donuts is. Now, that means that that is actually where his death would have taken place. Which is important to note because I know the story that has developed is that it was in that bathroom under the stairs in Eden. However, when I personally went in there and did my walk of the location, I didn't feel anything there. And I know that when you took Jeffrey and Alexis there, they also didn't feel anything under there. So that would probably be why. Because if this under the stairs story is actually true, it would have happened in the space that Voodoo Donuts now occupies. So now we have articles saying he died from a car accident. We have a death certificate that states he died from Lysol poisoning. Now we have this historical document stating he was embezzling and then he shot himself under the stairs of the furniture store. But just in case we weren't all confused enough already, I'm going to add another layer to this that we discovered when we were looking at the original maps and directories of the city. So if he actually did get into a car accident and the addresses we were given in the newspaper articles were accurate, he was a mile and a half south of his house when he crashed his car, south and on the outskirts of the city, which at that time, you're not really going to be going that far unless you are literally leaving town. So again, if those addresses are correct, that could be indicative of. Of he was trying to leave town. So seeing this on the map brought up so many more questions for me, like, was he trying to get away from someone? And the more that we dug into this, we were getting way more questions than answers that we, we researched more into John Waller Stevens Jr. Story to see if that would give any more clues. So when you look into who he actually was, he was born into a really wealthy and well connected Texas family. And, and his father, John Stevens senior, was actually the state comptroller in the early 1900s. So that family was really active in social circles and they were often featured in the local newspapers. JW was the oldest of six siblings, but he seemed to be kind of the black sheep of the family. Unlike his brother, he didn't attend a university. He stayed single until he was 33, which back at that time was. That was really old to still be single. And he also lived with his parents until he finally married beulah Wilcox in 1922. Now, the reason that I say black sheep is because there are signs that JW Was estranged from his family. For example, he wasn't mentioned in his sister Sydney's 1913 wedding announcement, even though the rest of his family was and played prominent roles. And then another piece of damning evidence is when Stevens died in 1926, he was not even buried in the family plot in Limestone county where his parents and all the rest of his siblings were. Instead, he was buried alone in Austin. And then when we look into Stephen's marriage to Beulah, it also raises questions. So when we started digging into Beulah, we found out that she actually had a previous marriage. She was previously married to Fred L. Horner, with whom she had three children. The census and marriage records suggest that Beulah left Fred around 1922, taking her daughters Mazzella and Barbara to Austin, but leaving her son Jack with Fred. Now, while Beulah and Stevens married in 1922, there is no evidence that we could find that she ever got divorced from Fred. So after Stephen's death in 1926, Beulah actually ended up moving to San Jose with her daughter Barbara, possibly to be back near Fred and her son Jack, who had actually relocated to San Jose as well just a few years earlier. Earlier. Now, back in that time, getting divorced on its own was shameful enough, let alone getting divorced and also having children, let alone being someone from a very prominent family who then marries a divorce, say, who also has three kids. Right. So this is something that absolutely would have brought a lot of shame upon the family at that time. And him being left out of the articles when the entire rest of his family was mentioned to me indicates that his. His family likely essentially cut him off in order to save their own reputations and not kind of be involved with that scandal. Obviously, the circumstances of this death are extremely suspicious. And the historical records leave us with way more questions than answers about what truly happened to J.W. stevens on 7-23-19. And obviously, the likelihood of us ever getting a definitive answer about what happened is next to impossible. So you can come up with your own opinion as to what you believe happened. I mean, I certainly have mine, but I am really interested to see if you are able to dig anything else up on this.
