Even though the Texas Rangers quickly closed their investigations of the violent deaths of Hal Bynum and his wife Connie, concluding that he brutally murdered her with a knife then shot himself with a shotgun, someone thought it was a good idea to have a double memorial service for them. Three hundred people came out to the Junction High School football stadium to pay their respects.
There were the usual statements by locals that no one would have expected anything like this to happen, that they were the perfect couple, in love, even “lovey-dovey.” Roy Cooper, publisher and editor of the Junction Eagle, said the Bynums were well respected in the community for years. “He was strictly a law man through and through – and a good man. And she was a fine lady.”
Rumors started almost immediately after news of the deaths spread. Ron Sutton, the Kimble County District Attorney, even felt compelled to deny that he was a suspect. He and Bynum had just flown into Junction from Del Rio the night Connie Bynum was killed. Sutton told a reporter “some people in Kerrville apparently heard an interview I did (on a San Antonio radio station) and didn’t listen closely enough and think I’m being investigated in this case…. I’m not and I didn’t kill O.J. Simpson’s wife either.”
Sutton added, in what turned out to be an understatement, a large part of the investigation would reveal that there was a “tremendous difference” between the public and private lives of the Bynums.
Separate grand juries investigated their deaths and concluded that Bynum killed his wife by stabbing her twice in the vagina on May 28, 1994 then killed himself with a shotgun blast to the heart the next morning. And some truly bizarre things came in during the investigation.
Bynum was 51 when he died; Connie was only 43. They lived in Muleshoe, in the Texas Panhandle, before coming to Junction. He was a sheriff’s deputy and she was a confidential informant who assisted him with drug investigations. There were rumors they had to leave Muleshoe because Bynum was under investigation for sexually molesting a juvenile girl. Bynum also apparently had a penchant for bringing female trustees home from the jail.
After coming to Junction, Connie had an affair with a local pilot. He and Bynum had words and almost came to blows, and at the time of his death Bynum was investigating him. Connie told Hal that her ex boyfriend “could and would get a hitman to take care of him.” Although the affair was over, Bynum couldn’t let it go, and would beat Connie and hold a pistol to her head and threaten to kill her.
Connie was also sort of a freethinker for a rural Texas county – her religion was Wicca, the white magic, not black magic kind.
Unanswered questions
The Rangers discussed searching the Bynums’ house but decided it would be a waste of time and resources since they already knew what happened. If this had been a CSI episode or Grisham novel, investigators would have gone into the house, taken fingerprints, found drugs and other evidence of criminal activities. None of that happened. This writer wonders how could a middle aged couple in a county of about 3,000 people have been so bizarre – the sheriff claiming his wife had sex with Rottweilers, the wife a self professed witch, the sheriff investigating her old boyfriend, who had the contacts to hire a hitman – and there not be serious drug abuse or some other pathology involved?
And how did the shell get half ejected from Bynum’s pump shotgun when he shot himself?
It could be the base for a mystery best seller!
