By Jerry Flook
Pete Welk’s run-ins with the law began when he was arrested in January 1921 along with friends Roland Ayler and J. E. Page for operating a 60-gallon moonshine still on lower Rowlett Creek. John Sidney (“Pete”) Welk was born in 1893 in Sachse, son of German immigrant Nicholas Welk and his wife, Cynthia Richards. By 1900 the Nicholas Welk family were tenant farmers somewhere between Rowlett and Rose Hill. Apparently, Welk’s 1921 arrest was no discouragement to his lucrative bootlegging business. It was, after all, during Prohibition.
On 21 Dec. 1922, Welk and three of his friends were surprised at their still that was in the woods by sheriff’s deputies Hilliard Brite and Tom Wood. A shoot-out ensued and Wood was fatally shot. Welk and his partners were arrested and jailed in Dallas. Deputy Wood’s funeral was attended by most Dallas County officials and a large contingency of the Ku Klux Klan. Welk, Clayton Coomer and Henry Belcher were charged with Wood’s murder. Welk’s sentence was 40 years, and Coomer and Belcher, each got 10 years. Belcher’s sentence was overturned on appeal. While Welk was being held in the Dallas County jail he formed a close friendship with Charles E. Gaines, a postal bandit, who had already been sentenced to death in the electric chair. Welk had many friends and someone smuggled two pistols and ammunition into his cell.
On Sept. 26, 1923, Welk and Gaines attempted an escape by overpowering the night guard, Deputy W. G. Champion. Champion and Gaines were killed in the ensuing firefight and Welk was shot in the face and upper chest. Welk recovered from his injuries.
The person who smuggled the weapons to Welk and Gaines was never identified but the rumor was that it was a deputy who had been bribed with $1,000. Even before the appeal of his 40-year sentence for the Wood killing had been heard, Welk went to trial for the murder of Deputy Champion. He was convicted of the Champion killing Oct. 22 1923, and was sentenced to execution in the electric chair.
On Feb. 29, 1924, the Garland News reported that Pete Welk, still in county jail, was seriously ill. Three months previously his mind had become affected. He refused to speak to anyone and apparently didn’t recognize his wife. Shortly thereafter he was pronounced insane. Now during the night he had suffered some sort of seizure and began calling out for Gaines, his accomplice, in the attempted escape. The next day he would not talk, but he mumbled to himself. The date of Welk’s appointment with the electric chair at Huntsville was set for April 3, 1925. The State Board of Pardons refused to intervene and a last-minute petition for a writ of habeas corpus to the federal court of appeals was rejected.
By the time of his execution Welk’s infamy had spread nationwide. But perhaps as much newspaper coverage was given to his pitiful family as to his crime. Welk and his wife, Willie, had five children at the time of the execution: Olan, 11; Pauline, 9; Vera, 7; Talmadge, 6; and Joy, 3. The family were tenants on a farm in the Chiesa neighborhood owned by Millard Flook, of Garland, and occupied what a visiting newspaper reporter called a “ two-room shack” on the property.
There were wide cracks between the wallboards and broken windowpanes which allowed the elements in, but the reporter remarked that the interior of the house and the children’s clothes were clean.
Only a few days earlier Flook had announced that he had rented the farm to someone else and the Welks would have to vacate.
Willie Welk told the reporter, “I have done all I could. No one can say that I haven’t stood by Pete in his troubles. I have sold everything that we owned to try to save the poor boy’s life—and all for nothing. And only three years ago I could name my last baby ‘Joy’!”
The family had recently returned from a visit to Welk in the Huntsville State Prison and little Joy wanted to go back to see him.
“I know we haven’t got a car, but we could walk since it is not very far,” she said.
And Vera asked, “How are we going to have a funeral for Daddy, Ma? I thought funerals were for dead people.”
Stories like this in the Dallas newspaper touched the hearts of readers and donations to the family began arriving from far and wide. The Rowlett bank set up a trust fund for them.
On the day before his execution Welk was visited by Dallas County Sheriff, Schuyler Marshall, who hoped to persuade him to reveal who supplied him with the gun used in his attempted jail break. Welk presented the sheriff with a red rose and another for Murray Fisher, chief jailer at Dallas. He asked the sheriff to deliver to Willie his parting request that she not remarry until the children were grown. But he told the sheriff nothing else. Welk, who was said to be “inordinately proud” of his long, wavy black hair had requested that his head not be shaved until the day before his execution.
Governor Miriam Ferguson denied a last minute reprieve. As Welk was conducted to the execution chamber, he asked to say goodbye to Lavannie Twitty, a black man, also on death row. He shook Twitty’s hand through the bars and wished him better luck than he himself had.
As Welk was seated in the electric chair the sheriff again asked him to reveal the source of the smuggled weapon, but he replied that he wished he could but that he could not. The metal cap was placed on his head and his eyes blindfolded.
As attendants strapped him in the chair Welk said, “Take your time and have the best of luck.”
At 12:15 a.m., Friday, April 3, 1925, Warden N. L. Speer threw the switch sending the current through Pete Welk’s body. After the second electrical jolt Welk slumped in the chair, and four minutes after the third jolt he was pronounced dead. Willie Welk awaited the time of her husband’s execution in the prison ward of the Dallas County jail. The attending matron reported that Mrs. Welk at the dreaded moment shook convulsively and wept. It had been feared that Welk’s aged and sick mother, who lived in Rowlett, would not be able to survive the shock of his execution.
It was said that at the time of his death his mother sobbed, “They’s killed my baby. I wanted to go and be with my baby, but I reckon I will have to stay here. But I’ll be with him some day.”
Cecil Williams, the Garland undertaker, donated his professional services. At first a funeral was planned for the Rowlett Christian Church, but later, probably because of the predicted size of the crowd, plans were changed to a graveside funeral at the Big A Cemetery northeast of Rowlett. A committee of the women’s auxiliary of the Dallas Ku Klux Klan supplied the Welk family with funeral clothing and groceries.
At the cemetery two wash tubs were placed at the entrance for visitors to drop donations for the destitute family. The whole proceeding had a circus atmosphere, vendors selling soda pop and hot dogs. It was estimated that 6,000 cars were parked within a mile and a half of the cemetery. When the hearse arrived several women in the crowd fainted. It took over two hours for all the curiosity seekers to file by the open casket. By the time Pete Welk was lowered into the ground the wash tubs at the cemetery entrance had collected $799.59. J. Sidney “Pete” Welk’s small granite tombstone may be seen at Big A Cemetery, Rowlett.
