LAST GANGSTER IN AUSTIN

How a creepy Texas crook with lots of friends was taken down by a valiant public servant and a dogged newsman.

Sublett, a revered Austin musician and mystery author, found the seeds of his latest nonfiction book on Austin-related topics when researching his affecting memoir Never the Same Again (2004), in which he recounted the 1976 murder of his girlfriend by a serial killer while he was out at a gig. The author kept encountering news stories about a guy named Frank Smith, who turned out to be "Don Corleone as reimagined by Hee Haw.” As Sublett describes him, Smith’s “criminal record and unsavory associations did no apparent harm to his wrecking yard business. He thrived on being quoted in the media, and reporters happily accommodated him. He was a six-foot-two, XXXL loose cannonball of contradictions….The son of a Baptist preacher, he often quoted the Bible, even in response to a message that a murder-for-hire contract had been fulfilled.” Among other misdeeds, Smith engineered an outrageous crime against the Rabbs, a sweet family who ran a junkyard, paying them $15,000 in cash for a group of vehicles and then sending gunmen over to steal the money back. The hero of Sublett's narrative is the late, great Ronnie Earle, longtime Travis County district attorney. Even though he held many left-leaning beliefs, “Earle was no coddler of criminals, and he came down on Frank Smith like a ton of bricks, using every weapon at his disposal." Also integral to the pursuit of Smith was Austin American-Statesman journalist Bill Cryer, whose crime reporting Sublett quotes admiringly and to great effect. This may seem more like fodder for a magazine article than a book, and there is more repetition of the facts than necessary, but readers interested in Austin history and quirky true crime will find plenty to enjoy.

A vividly detailed and stylishly written portrait of an Austin long gone by.