The Mystery of Henry Dietz

“Broke jail” – these two words, a notation made in the Winkler County Jail’s Register of Prisoners on January 3, 1930, are the last known documentary record of Henry Dietz’s life.  No family member was ever to hear from him again following the events of that first Friday of the new year.   If his escape caused any consternation in the vicinity of Kermit or Wink, there is no record of it, not even among the Court records that still exist for his case.  Henry Dietz’s slipping away into the night came just three days before the scheduled commencement of his trial on the charge of robbery with firearms.  Allegedly brandishing both pistol and rifle, Henry, with a certain A. W. Taylor as an accomplice, hijacked a vehicle transporting a certain O. W. Meeker.  Henry, so the grand jury indictment charges, relieved Mr. Meeker at gunpoint on April 22, 1929 of the sum of thirteen dollars and a watch.  For this alleged crime, Henry was arrested on April 23, 1929; he was to spend several months in the Reeves County jail, held there in lieu of a five thousand dollar bond.  Upon reduction of the bond, Henry made bail and remained in the Kermit area, awaiting his trial now set for the following January.

            How very different from the sand blown landscape of West Texas was the place of Henry Dietz’s origins.  Born in the Hohenlohe wine region of Württemberg, Germany,  Henry grew up surrounded by vineyards that had been worked by his ancestors for hundreds of years.  For reasons that are not clear, at the age of fifteen Henry left for America to settle with several relatives in the farmlands of Illinois.  Here he was to marry and father nine children.  For reasons that elude his family to this day, on a Sunday in October of 1927 Henry left his family, taking with him one of his sons, a boy of fourteen.  The lure of quick prosperity probably guided this pair to the oil boom excitement of Wink, Texas.  Sometime during the period of 1928 to the Spring of 1929, Henry apparently came to associate with the more “colorful” side of Winkler county’s populace.  Perhaps it was the attraction of that life that led him to make a fateful decision that Friday in January of 1930 – there were other adventures to be had, so he took a step into the night.

 Submitted by the Descendants of Henry Dietz. 

        Last Updated: Monday, January 15, 2007

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