Fayette County

Just as he'd done after murdering Claudia Benton, he stole the schoolteacher's car and headed 100 miles west.

It was a white Honda, and it was taken and driven to Fayette County near Schulenburg, small community of Dubina, where he then murdered Josephine Konvichko.

He toyed with law enforcement at that scene by displaying a toy train, displaying newspaper articles about the cases, the murders.

This is like reading an article that says, I am the railroad killer, and I'm leaving this here for you to know and make sure that you know it is me, nobody else.

So Tommy, if you would like to do your introduction, that would be wonderful.

Yes, I'm Tommy King in Central Texas, Fayette County, Texas.

I got into business when I started with Dr. Dodd in 1988.

And for him, I went to College Station, I guess it was 2006.

My great-great-grandfather, Xavier Bruner, and his wife, Apollonia, made the journey from southern Germany in the 1870s across the Atlantic, settled in Ohio, and applied for meeting some family and applied for a land grant in Texas.

And they were awarded 660 acres in Fayette County, in an area of Fayette County, which is kind of near Shiner, Weimar, Schulenburg, Flatonia, that kind of, you've maybe heard of some of those little small cities, of course, Shiner, Beer, right? All the Germans came there.

I was going to say, a

lot of Germans in those cities, yeah.

And my grandfather, he grew grains and wheats.

I'm sure he supplied some of the breweries there.

But yeah, they came over and basically started their American dream in Fayette County, Texas, just 70 miles east of Austin.

And it's always something to me that I always think about as a young girl is like, What was that moment that was what was happening in Germany? What was in the moment of Xavier's mind to say, I'm going to uproot my family, bring five children, my wife across the Atlantic and come over here and to and to come and settle what then was still, you know, at that time in the 1870s, there was definitely conflict.