These excerpts are from “Breaks of the Balcones” by Alan Stovall. The book is quite rare, but exerpts were forthcoming from a Duke Library in Durham, NC.
A story of the untimely death of a Texas Ranger named Woods in the Uvalde area came “from a man by the name of Jim L_____ who lived on the Dry Frio and who was in jail in Uvalde on a charge of having killed a suitor of his daughter.” Note that throughout this article, Lafferty’s name is written with only the first letter. There is no doubt, however, but that the person Stovall is writing about is Jim Lafferty.
“Lafferty made bond through some of the men whom [sheriff] Baylor suspected of belonging to the gang Woods had turned in. Some time later while Lafferty was working on the Jack Burt ranch south of Uvalde, he was seen in company with one of his former bondsmen, who, as it later turned out, was also implicated in the thievery. Baylor went to the Burt ranch and arrested Lafferty as he was saddling his horse preparatory to leaving the country. He was convicted and given seventy-five years in the penitentiary.
Some months after he was taken to the penitentiary, Lafferty wrote Baylor and offered, in exchange for his freedom, to carry Baylor to the spot where Woods was murdered and body hidden. Baylor was unable to get his release on that condition, but Lafferty drew a plot of the place where Woods’ body was supposed to be hidden on the headwaters of the Dry Frio where his body was thrown in a ravine and covered with brush. Several years later his remains which consisted of his skull and one leg, were found ten miles from the spot where he was supposed to have been buried. It was then that his remains were carried to Rocksprings where they were identified by sheriff Ira Wheat as those of the murdered deputy, Ranger Woods.
Baylor later remarked that he knew some of the men who were implicated in the crime, but had insufficient evidence to bring about a conviction. Baylor concluded by saying that there was no doubt in his mind that Woods had been murdered by Lafferty. These men, no doubt, had Woods a prisoner, promising in return to help him out of his trouble.”