"A Hanging on Backbone Creek: Unraveling Texas' Antiquated Death Investigations"
Storytelling CATEGORY — SHOWCASE silver winner
KXAN
KXAN Investigates
11/18/2024
The mysterious death of a quiet, young girl haunts the town of Marble Falls, Texas, nearly 60 years after her body was discovered hanging by a jump rope in a shed behind her family’s home along Backbone Creek. Quickly ruled an accidental strangulation by a local justice of the peace, questions linger not only about this case and others nearby – but also an antiquated process still used in most Texas counties, giving certain elected officials the power to determine cause and manner of death with scant training and often without autopsies or forensic expertise. KXAN investigates efforts underway to strengthen and modernize this system – after two centuries – as our discoveries also reveal potential gaps in its oversight and prompt a new review of the last day Daynon Lewis was alive.
INNOVATIVE METHODS
The resulting multi-platform project – anchored with a four-part docuseries called “A Hanging on Backbone Creek” – launched on November 18, 2024 – the 59-year anniversary of Lewis’ death. It was created by “Catalyst,” a specialty unit within the KXAN investigative team focused on “digital-first” storytelling that aims to make a positive change in society.
We tailored the project’s landing page to be an immersive experience – customized for each type of device – using a fullscreen video trailer with directive buttons scrolling a user down to an illustration of the banks of Backbone Creek with a 1965 map of Lewis’ neighborhood, project summary and more. Viewers can click through the signs on the tree trunk – navigation buttons to the docuseries, a four-part companion podcast, an inside-the-investigation article and four other supplemental stories with video features and interactive map and data components.
Our team fielded viewer questions in a livestreamed discussion about the investigation. We also produced a half-hour special edition of KXAN’s weekly statewide politics program, “State of Texas,” to take a closer look at the project and its potential impact across Texas.
INVESTIGATIVE FINDINGS
The mystery still surrounding Lewis’ death now brings to light concerns over the influence some in the Texas judicial system have to determine cause and manner of death with only hours of training and sporadic oversight. KXAN’s year of research foreshadowed a renewed debate among state leaders in the 2025 legislative session, revealing the following discoveries:
Records KXAN obtained showed a pattern of the justice of the peace in the Lewis case signing off on other “unattended” deaths, mostly suicides, without ordering autopsies. Officials say, today, such circumstances — especially those involving children — would be cause for careful consideration and an expert, medical opinion. There were at least six cases, including one man who held a shotgun to his own head.
According to our team’s analysis, in the past 25 years – the timeframe of data readily available to the public online – the State Commission on Judicial Conduct has investigated and administered more than 400 disciplinary actions against Texas justices of the peace – including sanctions, suspensions and resignations. Some were related to death inquests – a potential dilemma no other state faces in quite the same way.
According to the U.S. Center for Disease Control’s Collaborating Office for Medical Examiners and Coroners, most states primarily use either medical examiners or coroners with specific training to conduct death investigations. KXAN’s analysis of this data showed that responsibility in six states, including Texas, falls mainly on other elected county officials, like the county attorney or sheriff. But Texas is the only one to use the multi-faceted role of justice of the peace.
KXAN learned recent reporting has highlighted problems with justices of the peace in unnoticed murders and suicides, flawed COVID-19 death findings and unidentified migrant remains, while academic studies have pointed out justices’ failures in nursing home foul play and oversights with state death data.
KXAN’s historic research through centuries of newspaper archives and state legislative records showed justices of the peace have existed in Texas since 1824, largely operating today as they did then. Though more training is available now – with 80 hours required upon taking office and 20 hours for each year after – the amount of knowledge to make medically-based decisions about death is little to none.
Texas has a hybrid death investigation system. Only 14 of the state’s 254 counties have medical examiners. The rest rely on justices of the peace – who have discretion to order an autopsy from a county with a medical examiner. Often, that doesn’t happen. For instance, in the last five years in Burnet County where Lewis died, justices of the peace have investigated nearly 800 deaths, sending less than half to medical examiners elsewhere for autopsies.
REPORTING CHALLENGES
Oversight of justices of the peace, death inquests and autopsy orders may be lacking in Texas. KXAN discovered there is no central repository for the public to request related information, with each county maintaining its own records – which we learned are sometimes incomplete, heavily-redacted or costly to obtain. We filed individual open records requests with the more than 900 precincts across the state. A common theme emerged from numerous justices, especially those in smaller, rural counties – fulfilling our requests would be “almost impossible” given their resources, manpower and lack of automated record- keeping.
In recent years, the Texas Department of State Health Services implemented a new electronic death registration platform called the Texas Electronic Vital Events Registrar or “TxEVER.” KXAN obtained DSHS data for the number of deaths certified by a justice of the peace for each Texas county since 2019. Of the Texas counties operating under this system, justices have medically certified over 140,000 deaths since 2019. Although beneficial, the data still provided no context for the specific precincts within each county or what caused these deaths.
Tracking any potentially troublesome trends was challenging, even by securing individual death certificates – which are sealed by state law from the public for 25 years after each death – as KXAN found. That meant the most recent death certificates available in Texas date back to 1999. For deaths prior to that year, our team obtained individual certificates for dozens of cases we aimed to highlight. Lewis’ death certificate is the only record left from her case. When KXAN requested further details, officials even searched offsite storage, but any evidence or additional documents from that precinct in that timeframe have disappeared.
REACTION & IMPACT
As the state’s population increases, so does its death count. Some observers have suggested justices of the peace in some counties may be overworked and overburdened with massive caseloads, ready to relinquish the inquest part of their jobs to medical examiners completely. KXAN learned of one regional medical examiner district made up of four North Texas counties sharing cost and services. After our questions, a state lawmaker began exploring potential policies to introduce in the 2025 Texas legislative session to pave the way for more counties to enter regional agreements, opening up medical examiner services regularly to more places in need across the state. The model is something experts predicted to be a promising idea in the future – for autopsies, county budgets and the already-stretched justice of the peace system in Texas. Following our investigation, another state lawmaker filed two measures to increase penalties against justices for misconduct.
During our reporting, which was also highlighted by NPR stations statewide through Texas Public Radio, the justice of the peace presiding today over the district where Lewis died agreed to look over KXAN’s findings and to research the process to re-classify her death from “accident” to “undetermined.” In December 2024, that death certificate update was underway. Some of Lewis’ family and former classmates told KXAN they saw the judge’s change as a way to ensure her dignity would not be forgotten.
MAIN LINK to content online
Additional links to content online:
Docuseries / Main Digital Story
Companion Catalyst Podcast Season
Inside the Investigation
Supplemental Digital Stoires/Continuing Coverage:
Unraveling the autopsy expertise of Texas medical examiners
Texas justices of the peace date back 200 years, still investigate deaths today
As patchwork of U.S. death investigations evolves, Texas’ JP system remains unique
Growing Texas counties face renewed death investigation debate
Submitted by Josh Hinkle.