On September 14, 1938, three men robbed a filling station owned by Ben Pritchard in Cherokee County, Texas. The men came away from the robbery with $3.80. Two local men, Samuel Curbow (also referenced as Samuel Curbo) and J.F. Strickland (also referenced as J.C. Strickland) had recently been arrested for stealing a car, although it later came to light that only Strickland, and not Curbow, had been involved in the car theft. Due to their alleged involvement in this recent theft, police had Ben Pritchard and his wife look at Curbow and Strickland to see if they were the culprits. The Pritchards identified the men as two of the robbers. Strickland and Curbow were tried and convicted in Cherokee County in February 1939. Strickland was sentenced to five years in prison, while Curbow was sentenced to thirty years. Throughout the arrest and trial, Curbow had reiterated to Leon Halbert, the deputy sheriff of Cherokee County, that he was innocent. As Curbow and Strickland labored in prison, Halbert reinvestigated the robbery of Ben Pritchard’s filling station. He obtained information indicating that the three men who had robbed the filling station, two of whom closely resembled Curbow and Strickland, were in prison in Oklahoma. Halbert traveled to the two Oklahoma prisons where the three men – Richard Johnson, Noah Tucker, and Tom Hollis – were incarcerated, and obtained confessions from the men. Halbert then brought Ben Pritchard and his wife to view these Oklahoma prisoners, and both the Pritchards confirmed that Johnson, Tucker, and Hollis were the men who had robbed their filling station. Both Strickland and Curbow were pardoned by Texas Governor W. Lee O’Daniel on March 25, 1940, after spending eighteen months in prison. - Meghan Barrett Cousino
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