Texas Slave Ranch

The Ellebrachts were figures ripped straight-out of a low-budget scary film. This twisted family members lived in the Texas Hill nation, cutting straight down trees and offering the lumber. However, their particular company relied on slave-labor. Plenty of unfortunate hitchhikers finished up on their ranch, bound in stores and obligated to work . . . and not them survived.

The Entire Bushel

The Ellebracht clan lived in the woody hills of Kerr County, Texas during the 1980s, as soon as they drove into nearby hill Residence, it was like the Sawyer family members had arrive at town. Walter Ellebracht Sr. and his 33-year-old child, Junior, weren’t partial to bathrooms, in addition they usually strolled around inside their bare foot. The Ellebrachts made cash cutting straight down woods and offering the timber to San Antonio businesses. Additionally they marketed little do-it-yourself key stores to nearby gas stations, and it also ended up being Ellebracht Sr.’s dream in order to become the “key string king for the Texas Hill nation.” But becoming a king, you will need some servants.

With the help of their particular foreman, Carlton Robert Caldwell, the Ellebrachts obtained hitchhikers and supplied all of them lodging in return for work. It sounded like a good idea, although drifters quickly learned when they checked in, they could never ever keep. The males had been placed to function cutting straight down woods, at evening, they were chained with their bedrooms inside of a dilapidated, old bunkhouse. The Ellebrachts threatened their slaves with weapons and knives, when two men asked to leave, these people were chained together and obligated to dig their particular graves.

While most of the prisoners suffered, Anthony Bates had it the worst. Caldwell and Ellebracht Jr. took special pleasure in tormenting the one-eyed Alabamian and encouraged other slaves to get involved. Bates was bound and zapped with a power cattle prod. His tormentors surprised his genitals and tongue, whilst goading him to scream louder. Some one taped the torture sessions, therefore the recordings began with all the frustrating announcement, “Live through the bunkhouse—it’s surprise time!” In the course of time, Bates was electrocuted to demise, along with his human anatomy was burned as the Ellebrachts played Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire.”