How a 5-year-old’s poisoning in 1957 escalated concerns over dog killing
When little Rickie Moses looked down at his front porch step in Valentine, Texas, in January of 1957, he noticed what appeared to be some kind of candy, later described as a “yellow wafer” sitting on the concrete. He was only 5, and he did what seems natural to kids at that age.
“I found some candy on the front porch,” he told The Big Bend Sentinel in the January 31, 1957, edition. “I tasted it. It did not taste good, so I threw it away.” Unfortunately, the damage was done, and within hours, Rickie began vomiting and convulsing, suffering from what doctors later verified was strychnine poisoning.
The Sentinel laid out what happened next with Rickie’s mom — Mary Moses — giving her account of what the newspaper called “the Black Friday in which the mad poisoner almost succeeded in murdering his first human victim.”
“I was so frightened I didn’t know what to do,” Mary said. “The only thing I could think of was to run to our neighbors — Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Petty — for help.
“His condition continued to grow worse. That’s when I ran to the Pettys. They seemed to know that Rickie had been poisoned, and Rickie was placed in their car and rushed to Dr. Stover’s office in Marfa. It took us only 17 minutes to reach Marfa. Meanwhile Rickie’s convulsions had stopped and he had become stiff as an ironing board.
“We went immediately to Alpine where Rickie’s condition remained critical until later that night when he showed signs of recovering. I stayed all night with him and in the morning his condition was greatly improved and we were able to take him home later in the day. Since his return from the hospital he has been in good spirits, but at first, he had a little trouble maintaining his balance. Once he fell and bruised his nose.”
“I believe this is the work of the dog-poisoner, and I will do anything I can to help authorities apprehend him, or to expose his evil work. There have been many cases of dog poisoning in Valentine since we’ve lived here.”
The Sentinel added, “Two of Moses’ dogs have been poisoned. Mrs. John T. Foley had a cat poisoned. Mrs. Bill Brown lost a dog several days ago and believes it was poisoned.”
A dog poisoner it certainly was, as evidence would later show. But Rickie’s ordeal led to a considerable concern that children could end up victims as well. The Sentinel uncharacteristically screamed a headline in giant bold font across the top of the paper: “CHILD VICTIM OF MAD POISONER.”
It continued with a bold paragraph pulled from the text. “This poisoning shocked the entire community of Valentine and there was a steady stream of visitors who offered help to the Moses family. Mr. Moses is a railway employee at Sanderson. The family has lived in the Valentine area for about eight years.”
To the credit of the 1957 Sentinel team (not named in a staff box anywhere), it scoured newspapers back to 1952 and found dog poisonings were indeed a problem in the Marfa area with 14 recorded officially and several others mentioned as likely. Also reported was that while many of the poisonings were from chunks of meat, several others were from “weiners” and “candy.” Given that young children are prone to eat a lot of weird stuff, it was alarming.
1957 was a hard time for the area after years of drought stifled agriculture and ranching. Still, with fancy items like new cars and trucks and a $144 Remington typewriter on display in The Sentinel advertising, there was still prosperity flowing, at least to some. Valentine was a thriving, close-knit community, and things were looking up. Rumors hit the paper about a new military radar center that might be built there — it never was. Valentine student James Everett Jr., 13 and a 4-H member, hit a grand slam with a $10,000 prize bull at a Houston livestock show.
Rickie’s sister, Tammy Blue — now living in Giddings, Texas — wasn’t born until almost exactly two years after the poisoning, but she told The Sentinel this week that the story has swirled around her family through the years. Her parents eventually moved to Sanderson where her father Paul worked for the railroad, but they kept the Valentine house for many years. Rickie graduated from Sanderson High School and went on to a variety of jobs, including working for the railroad at one point.
Tammy said authorities never did find out who was responsible for the poisonings, which she considered abhorrent, but she also could understand the reasoning behind them. “Well, I tried to explain to my kids that once a dog starts running sheep or whatever, they’re not going to stop once they’ve had that taste of blood,” she said. “And the ranchers are going to kill them, because that’s their livelihood.”
From descriptions in The Sentinel, however, it appears that the killings were widespread and maybe indiscriminate — with chunks of strychnine-poisoned food showing up all over Marfa. Of course, there’s no way to know if the Valentine perpetrator was the same one in Marfa or even in Fort Davis and Alpine where other poisonings were reported.
Tammy told The Sentinel that she has many fond memories of Valentine and Marfa and is continually thinking about returning, but that practical matters, like access to healthcare for her husband with stage-4 cancer, make it more of a daydream. One picture burned into her memory is a somewhat different account of what her mother Mary did after the onset of the poisoning.
“My daddy was on the train, and they were switching there in Valentine, and she said she was out there in her slip waving and trying to get my daddy to notice her, and everyone on the train thought she was just waving at my daddy — so they just all waved back. My mom said she was trying to get them to stop so that they could get Rick to El Paso.”
While dog killings have always been part of living in ranching areas, the case of Rickie Moses showed the danger they could lead to and how they could spark a campaign to stop what was perceived as a crazed killer on the loose.
The very top of the page of the February 7 Sentinel included a large-type story on a reward, peppered with colorful language:
“Congressman J. T. Rutherford of Odessa expressed the feelings of thousands of Big Bend residents today with the offer of $100.00 to the person responsible for the arrest and conviction of the Mad Poisoner. He sent a check to The Big Bend Sentinel made out to the ‘Mad Poisoner Fund (Reward).’ Meanwhile scores of Big Bend area residents told Sentinel representatives that the Mad Poisoner must be apprehended so that the terror would stop. There appears to be unanimous opinion that the poisoner, who last week added his first human victim to a long list of poisonings, is demented. It is doubtful, most people concluded, that an individual could have perpetrated these deeds without being of unsound mind.
“No clue has thus far been uncovered as to the Mad Poisoner’s identity, but as in all crimes there ARE clues and it remains for an alert public to report them. Law enforcement officers in Brewster, Jeff Davis and Presidio counties will be glad to interview anyone who believes he has knowledge of the Mad Poisoner’s identity.”
While the madman apparently was never found, Rickie continued to suffer effects from the poisoning, according to Tammy. “It did affect his nervous system in some ways. He would go to open the door, and then he wouldn’t open it. Things didn’t click.” Later in life he was arrested on numerous drug and alcohol-related charges, with drug and alcohol abuse also leading to his death in 2013 in Giddings at age 62.
Editor’s note: Public records show Frederick Bernard Moses going by “Rick” and “Ricky.” We chose to use how the Sentinel recorded him in 1957, “Rickie.”
