Last Gangster in Austin: Frank Smith, Ronnie Earle, and the End of a Junkyard Mafia by Jesse Sublett

Abstract

Reviewed by: Last Gangster in Austin: Frank Smith, Ronnie Earle, and the End of a Junkyard Mafia by Jesse Sublett Jason Mellard Last Gangster in Austin: Frank Smith, Ronnie Earle, and the End of a Junkyard Mafia. By Jesse Sublett. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2022. Pp. 212. Illustrations, notes, index.) Jesse Sublett's Last Gangster in Austin hinges on a single dramatic incident: an armed robbery gone bad in an Austin salvage yard in 1976, leaving one man in a monkey mask dead on the floor. That is not what the book is about, though. This singular crime becomes a kaleidoscope through which to view the intricate and intersecting biographies, criminal endeavors, and political fortunes of the figures in the subtitle, underworld character Frank Smith and crusading district attorney (DA) Ronnie Earle. Frank Smith was a bail bondsman, auto parts dealer, and ne'er-do-well, a "Don Corleone as reimagined for Hee Haw" (16). Ronnie Earle was a 1970s reform wunderkind, the youngest municipal judge in Texas before his DA election put him in place to prosecute Smith. A constellation of [End Page 604] associates and nemeses swirl around the two, a cast plucked from the noir genre that Sublett renders so well as hardboiled nonfiction. Ike Rabb is the owner of the Austin Salvage Pool and target of Smith's ire. Sherriff Raymond Frank had been a reformer in his own right before ties to Smith exposed his corruption. A real star of the book, whom Sublett often channels, is Austin American-Statesman beat writer Bill Cryer, whose articles testified to the quality of writing and depth of relationships that local journalism once fostered. Beyond this cast, "significant" Texas history figures cameo throughout, including LBJ's brother Sam Houston Johnson, Allan Shivers, Ann Richards, and Willie Nelson. When such figures appear on the page, they put the book's accomplishment in high relief. It is a rollicking narrative of a criminal underworld, yes, but Sublett's attention to characters otherwise invisible in the celebratory accounts of modern Austin shows that histories aiming to capture the life of a Texas city miss much when they fixate on who performs on its central stages rather than, say, who guts out a living in a salvage yard. Earle is the protagonist here in bringing Smith to justice, but the work of telling history from Smith's vantage point on the margins (or in the shadows) fills in the blind spots of so many other Austin stories. Last Gangster in Austin adds to what has become Sublett's extended literary universe of nightlife and hustles, shenanigans and sleaze, across mid-century Texas. Individuals from his other books put in appearances here: the Overton Gang from Austin Gangsters, co-author Broadus Spivey of Homer Maxey's Texas Bank War, Eddie Wilson from Armadillo World Headquarters, and even allusions to the tome that started it all, Sublett's own memoir Never the Same Again. In fact, the origins of this book lay in that first, as Smith's legal troubles swirled in the newspapers in which Sublett was researching his own experiences of 1976, when he had been wrongfully suspected of a violent crime. That experience, and a familiarity with the journalistic sources of the time, helped spark this book and led Sublett to engage in extensive interviews with surviving principals that he deploys to good effect. On its surface, the book reads as true crime and succeeds as such. It is also an exemplary microhistory with close attention to currents that broader accounts of modern Austin have missed, if not outright ignored. Historians may reflect on moments where the book could have aimed for larger themes—the Smith case as emblematic of the institutional failures and political corruption of the 1970s—but that can be the work of other studies and is typically implicit in Sublett's telling. A riveting character study, The Last Gangster in Austin stands out as is, as bold and individual as Smith's bright green Cadillac speeding away from the scene of the crime. [End Page 605] Jason Mellard Texas State University Copyright © 2022 The Texas State Historical Association