Haunting the Collin County Prison
I don’t believe in ghosts personally, but I can understand why some people do.
I’ve visited places before that are just plain creepy. Some places have a deep, dark, history, and knowing about it makes the place seem ominous. Some places just have a creepy vibe, due to the architecture or design of the building itself. But every now and then, you come across a place where the source of the creepiness is hard to identify. The place just seems like it doesn’t want you there, or maybe like it wants you there a little too much. In these cases, it’s easy for me to understand why such a place would be called haunted.
One such place exists in my hometown of McKinney, Texas. On the historic downtown square sits the old Collin County Prison, at 115 S. Kentucky. The large building was constructed in 1880 by F. E. Ruffini. It was made out of rough-cut limestone blocks, mined from a local quarry. This is, in fact, a prison, not a jail. It was constructed to house up to 50 full-time inmates, and had a live-in jailer named Claude West at the time of its official opening. Mrs. West lived at the prison with her husband, and she cooked and did laundry for the inmates at the jail.
The prison was a normal, necessary structure, located just a few hundred feet from the Collin County Courthouse at the center of the square. Through the years, the prison has held hundreds of inmates, most unknown, a few famous. Among the famous were Frank James and a couple of outlaws from Bonnie and Clyde’s gang. But, on November 17, 1922, history happened here.
On September 2, 1921, a man named Hardy Mills got out of bed before sunrise, and headed to work around 5:00 am. Mills lived on the Elsy Stepp farm with his wife and four children. He had gotten a job in town, helping construct a new brick building, but he never arrived at work that morning. Hardy Mills was never seen alive again.
His badly decomposed body was discovered wrapped in bailing wire at the bottom of a water well on Will Baxter’s farm on September 21, 1921, two weeks after he went missing. Baxter was out riding in his field that day, when he noticed that the cover of his well was lopsided. He stopped and got off his horse to fix the cover. When he leaned over to replace the cover, he glanced into the well and saw the shadowy outline of a human head in the dark water below.
Baxter promptly notified the authorities, who pulled the body of Hardy Mills from the contaminated well. They soon arrested William Ezell Stepp, who went by Ezell, and his nephew Arlie Stepp for the murder. The Steppes were soon transferred to a Dallas jail, because the local authorities feared that there would be mob violence against the pair by the horrified and outraged community.
A few days after the arrest, Arlie Stepp admitted to the authorities that his uncle Ezell had committed the crime. He told them that his uncle had bludgeoned Mr. Mills to death with a hoe and hid the body in a cornfield until nightfall. Arlie confessed to helping his uncle dump the body in the well after nightfall.
There are a few theories as to why this murder occurred, but none have been verified. One is that Ezell was having an affair with Mills’ wife, and Ezell killed him in a fit of rage when the affair was discovered. Another is that Mills had knowledge about Ezell Stepp’s moonshining hobby, and Mills was killed to prevent him from exposing the operation . A third theory is that Arlie Stepp was the one having the affair, and was actually the one who committed the murder and then pinned it on his uncle. Despite the lack of confirmed motive, Ezell Stepp was charged with the murder, based mainly on the testimony of his nephew.
The resulting trial was a sensation in the small town of McKinney. Hundreds attended the court proceedings each day at the courthouse. According to records, no physical evidence linking the defendant, Ezell Stepp, to the heinous murder was presented, and no firm motive for the crime was recorded during the trial. Despite this, Stepp was found guilty, and was sentenced to death for the murder of Hardy Mills on October 21, 1922.
Ezell Stepp professed his innocence from the moment he was arrested to the moment he died. Witness accounts at the trial say that Stepp was confident throughout, believing that he would be acquitted for the crime. After the verdict was passed down, he appealed the decision, and even requested that the governor of Texas consider his case for a pardon. No one intervened in the decision, so Ezell Stepp remained in his cell in the Collin County Prison. A temporary scaffold for the public hanging was constructed in the courtyard, between two second-story windows. Stepp could watch the construction of the instrument of his death from his cell window.
On November 17, 1922, during a heavy rainstorm, about 100 Collin County residents turned up at the courtyard of the prison to witness the execution, and a large crowd of bystanders gathered near the prison entrance. Stepp again professed his innocence as he was lead up a ladder to the second floor, makeshift scaffold, where the executioner slipped the noose over his head. He did not protest, and dutifully stepped off the platform. He was pronounced dead at 11:22 am.
Stepp was buried in Horn Cemetery in McKinney. His grave can still be seen in this small cemetery adjacent to Erwin Park. No mention of the circumstances of his death appear on the small, nondescript marker, which bears only his name, the dates of his birth and death, and an engraved flower.
Ezell Stepp was the third, and last, man to be executed in Collin County.
On August 31, 1923, the state government instituted a new law mandating that all executions in Texas from that point onward would be conducted by use of the electric chair at the Texas State Penitentiary in Huntsville. The Collin County Prison closed in 1979, when prison reforms were passed outlining minimum prison standards, which this building apparently did not meet.
Since its closure, the building was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983, and has been extensively renovated. It has housed two different restaurants, a children’s bookstore, and an art gallery. Today, it is home to an accounting firm.
On dark nights, it is said that the ghost of Ezell Stepp can be seen hanging in the courtyard of the old Collin County Prison. Strange, metallic footsteps can also be heard in the halls of the old building. The legend of the ghost is so strong and well-reported that some of the modern occupants of the prison building had permanent window coverings installed over the windows so that they couldn’t see Ezell Stepp from their offices anymore. But, the story lives on.
Is the prison haunted? I don’t know. I can certainly understand why Ezell Stepp would be angry enough to haunt the place where he was put to a possibly unjust death. I’ve never seen a ghost, but I would like to, if they exist. At the very least, I love a good ghost story, and the legend of Ezell Stepp certainly haunts the Old Collin County Prison.
