Darkness Falls on Terlingua | Badlands, Texas

I'm the sheriff of Brewster County, the largest county in the state of Texas. It covers some 6,198 square miles. We have several communities; they all have different thoughts and different attitudes.

Especially in Terlingua, we had a crime. We had a guy who sells cactus on the side of the road in little pots. You go by; it's an honor system. You're supposed to put a couple dollars in and pick a cactus you want. Somebody came and stole his jar with his dollars in it. Well, he knows how much he got to be in it because he knows how many cactuses are missing. He calls the deputy. The deputy shows up, goes to the Starlight Lounge, and makes the announcement that jar better show back up.

And it does! It's missing $2, but it shows up. Those are the little kind of things that people do in Terlingua. People who live there police themselves pretty well. For us, Coring was sparsely populated. You get really attached to the people who have been there a long while, but there's just a handful that are actually born and raised there.

Folks have moved in from different parts of the country, different parts of the world. They go, "Wow, look at this place! It's fantastic! We got to live here!" I know in your mind you're probably thinking there's nothing here, but they find a way, and they're happy and they're content doing it. Most of them are very nice folks, you know, every living soul.

But as peaceful as it is, Terlingua has had, recently, a couple of murders, and that has been disturbing. And it's like I said before, you have feelings for the people. It makes you question yourself all the time: what the hell happened there?