New headstone marks family's grave

FARWELL - Some know it simply as the old burying ground or potter's field and some struggle to describe how to even get there.

"Is that the one with the guy who murdered his family?" said a gas station clerk answering a question from The News as to the location of the Mt. Olivet Cemetery.

Yes, that's the one. It does not hold George Jefferson Hassell himself, but it does contain the mass grave of his wife, Susie, and her eight children, all of whom he murdered by a combination of ax, hammer, shotgun and strangulation in the closing weeks of 1926. The youngest of them was Samuel, Hassell's 22-month old son; Susie was his brother's ex-wife, and her other children were then his nieces and nephews.

This month marks the 92nd anniversary of the national-headline massacre outside Bovina, but all of that was news just over a year past for the president of the High Plains Historical Foundation, who along with counterparts in Parmer County and other local help has now established a new stone there befitting the depth and historical significance of that carnage.

"I'm ashamed because I've lived here my entire life, 63 years, and I never knew it was here till a year and a half ago," said Patsy Delk. "I feel that we as a community should honor those that are laid to rest there. It seems to be that they were left behind and forgotten, like a lonely grave, and I felt it in my heart."

Delk said her hope is that with a more legible and direct monument at the site, more visitors can quickly recognize and comprehend the uniqueness of that grave site. A ceremony to commemorate the new installation is scheduled for 2 p.m. on Saturday; organizers are "checking the weather and hoping it is going to be fairly decent," but if it's cold and windy then at least it will resemble the Christmas day nearly a century past when the first headstone was established.

Coming from Texico, you make a right immediately after the railroad tracks and follow State Line Road a couple miles southwest, past some feed yards and toward the site where citizen volunteers laid the slain Hassells side-by-side beneath a hand-etched limestone grave marker.

That stone now stands beside a formidable upright marker in grey granite. One side lists the names and dates of birth of Susie - who would have been 41 that Christmas Eve - and her children. Alton, 21, the oldest, was killed last as he was working in Clovis during the week when Hassell dispatched the rest of the family.

The observe side includes a Bible verse from the book of John, chapter 14, which begins: "Let not your heart be troubled..." as well as a simple statement of some context: "Family murdered in December - 1926 by George J. Hassell..."

Delk said the historical societies for Curry and Parmer counties have other projects in mind, including a steel fence around the grave site.

"This is what we're all about, is to preserve history," she said. "It's sad that it had to happen, but people need to know."

Hassell, who was convicted of murdering his step-son Alton and executed Feb. 10, 1928, was the subject of an entire chapter in Lana Payne Barnett's book "Texas Murders." For many years he held the "extremely rare" distinction as an "annihilator" of not one but two families, having choked to death a previous wife Marie and her three children in 1917 in California, Barnett wrote.

"I don't know what came over me. I wish somebody would tell me why I did it," Hassell is quoted. "I don't know why but when I saw what I had done I decided that I had best go on and kill the whole outfit."

Teresa Ancira, with Parmer County's historical society, said the Mt. Olivet cemetery was blessed by Archbishop Michael Sheen from Santa Fe and Deacon Daniel Chavez of Clovis' Our Lady of Guadalupe Church on Wednesday shortly before the new stone was set up.