THE MURDER OF BILLY MERRIMAN

When I was about 5 years old there was a murder/suicide in our extended family on my mother's side.  The murderer was related to us only by marriage to my mother's older sister.  At the time, there was much discussion and conversation about this event between my parents and aunts and uncles.  They were so wrapped up in themselves and this unseemly family crime drama that they never tried to hide the gory details from me and spoke very openly about it within my hearing range.

Basically a drunken hillbilly who was married to my maternal aunt was looking for his wife because he wanted to kill her.  The wife was hiding from her abusive drunken hillbilly husband at her daughter and son-in-law's house.  Of course, that was the first place the drunken hillbilly husband looked for her.  He drove to their house and got out of his vehicle brandishing a shotgun and calling loudly for his wife to come out.  The son-in-law, Billy Merriman, came outside and confronted the agitated drunk man.  The drunken hillbilly shot his own daughter's husband square in the chest, killing him, in full view of the daughter and her two children.  The muderer then drove a little way down the road and "turned the gun on himself" as my mother would say.

Anyway, that's the story I learned by eavesdropping.  It is safe to say that those particular cousins of mine have had much more trauma in their lives than I have.

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