Small as he was, after graduation Burke enrolled here at the University of Texas and became a BMOC. No, really! He was named "Outstanding Student of the Year" at UT, received the Pershing Award as top Army ROTC student and served as assistant director of Boy's State (Burke and I attended Boy's State together our Jr. year). A few years later, Burke was elected to two terms as Texas State Representative for the 22nd District. So he was the real deal.
Burke tragically died in an auto accident in 1992, and after finding the picture, I was searching online for his obit and for information about his death, when I came across several references to Burke in, interestingly enough, a lengthy Saturday Evening Post article published in December, 1966, entitled "The Case of the Missing Millionaire." What's more, much of the story takes place in Breckenridge, my home town, and references a number of people I knew and places I have been.
It's an 8-page article, and really quite bizarre; if you are interested, here's a link to a PDF of the whole thing. Meanwhile, I'm going to try to make a long story short.
It seems that a really bad woman named Pearl Choate, ostensibly a nurse and caretaker, took advantage of a very wealthy elderly couple in Los Angeles while working as their care provider, and began to systematically transfer all of their wealth to herself.
When friends and acquaintances of the pair became concerned about what was going on, Pearl bundled up the couple, Estelle and Otis Birch, and spirited them away - first to Mexico, then to Midland Texas, then to Breckenridge, where she had family. [It dawned on me at that point that I knew some of the Choate family in Breckenridge.]
Shortly after Pearl and the Birches got to my hometown, Estelle, who had advanced cancer, passed away. There was a brief funeral at Melton Funeral Home, conducted by the "minister of the Walker Street Church of Christ" [uh, that would be Jim Cox] and her body was promptly shipped back to LA by Melton's.
An investigative reporter, James Phelan, got wind of all this, and tracked Pearl and the now-single Otis Birch to Breckenridge and notified various interested parties along the way. When he got there, after checking in to the Ridge Motel [about his only choice] he met with Virgil Moore, editor of the Breckenridge American [remember all those "carrier of the year awards I got?] trying to get some information about the death of Estelle, and what might be going on.
He then met with Ben Dean, Jr., an attorney [and husband of the director of the Boy's Choir, of which I was a member until my voice changed] who had been hired by a group in California after Phelan told them where Choate and Birch were. Choate had tried to hire Ben earlier, but he wisely passed.
Ben got Chase Booth, the Sheriff, involved [note that I had no acquaintance with this sheriff, but I can tell you about the one in Albany], and someone finally got around to investigating Pearl Choate's background, and found that she was indeed, a very bad person, having served time in Huntsville for murdering a man! When Phelan and Choate's current lawyer tried to meet with her and talk to Mr. Birch, she threatened them with a butcher knife and chased them off!
Somehow, Burke Musgrove, at the time State Representative of the 22nd Congressional District, ended up involved in all this, and he promptly called in two units of the Texas Rangers and sent Chase Booth out to bring Pearl in. When she arrived in custody, there was a kerfuffle and Pearl somehow managed to kick Burke in the leg. Twice!
Pearl Choate was a big woman. She was 6 feet tall and weighed 200 pounds (she carried frail Otis Birch around like a doll). Did I mention that Burke was, uh, small for his size? My guess is that Pearl drop-kicked Burke across the street.
There's more. Much more. At the conclusion of the article, it appeared Pearl won - she hauled Otis to Oklahoma, got a marriage license using 2 newly-acquired fishing licenses as proof of age(!!) and got a minister named Joe Laird [yes, of the CofC] to come out to her car and marry them. Never mind Pearl had 6 previous husbands and some appeared to still be wed to her at that time. She had a license, and she and Otis rode off into the sunset (or sneaked out in the dead of night to Wichita Falls, I learned later.)
And that's how my good friend Burke Musgrove ended up in the Saturday Evening Post.
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MY BOYFRIEND AT THE TIME MARK OLESH AND I WERE FRIENDS WITH BURKE, WE USED TO HANG OUT AT THE HOUSE ON THE HILL WITH HIM, HE WAS QUITE THE CHARACTER. HOW DID THE ACCIDENT HAPPEN? HE DID NOT DRIVE. I KNOW HE WAS DEVISTATED THAT MARK PASSED AWAY IN MARCH OF 1993. WAS HOPING FOR MORE INFORMATION.
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