"His son, Brad, called her and left a message," Cryer said. "And she, knowing the family, called him back. His son asked her what she could do and she essentially said, 'There's nothing I can do. He owes a debt to society and he's going to have to pay for it.'"
The Pharrs, Cryer said, also later corresponded with the governor. "There is a letter from Brad Pharr to the governor's office that says 'Thank you for taking my phone call.' But that's all. There's a letter from [William] Howard Pharr to the governor that says 'Thank you for calling my son. It dampened his spirits but we are plugging on.' Or something along those lines. And it goes on and talks about how rotten the prison system is. And that's the extent of it."
So, did the governor know how Pharr got out of prison early? "She doesn't have anything to do with parole," replied Cryer, who blamed the policies of former Republican governor Bill Clements for the convict's early release.
"The parole board met in 1990," Cryer explained, admitting his grasp of exact dates was sketchy, "and a three-member panel voted, as I understand it, 2-to-1 to release him in 1994. In 1992, the policy of [the staff of the parole board] was to accelerate parole releases. The staff accelerated the parole of Pharr as they accelerated a lot of paroles, one of the things Ann Richards stopped when she found out about the policy. So they accelerated it to that January, and then of course he went immediately down and committed his two murders, and was arrested and put back in prison, where he is today."
Cryer's account differs from newspaper stories of the time in some respects. According to a 1992 Chronicle report, a three-person parole board committee actually voted 2-1 to move Pharr's release date from 1992 to 1994. But, according to the newspaper, Pharr was released by the parole board's staff, without the knowledge of the board and in contradiction of its expressed wishes.
Cryer maintained that Richards has been completely candid about the Pharr case. "My policy, from when the first reporter asked me about it two years ago, is to pull the correspondence files and show them everything they want to see. And that's been the extent of it. When they see the correspondence file, they say almost universally, 'There's no story here. Good-bye.'"
Richards strategist Shipley claimed there's indeed a story in the Pharr saga -- one revealing how the rank-and-file of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice tried to undercut Richards by spreading the story.
"The prison system is Chinatown," Shipley snapped. "It is a conspiracy wrapped inside of a plot. And Ann Richards has been a reformer, and at times has imposed things on the system they don't like."
Shipley said Richards angered prison and parole officials by insisting that inmates be enrolled in the kind of 12-step therapeutic program that helped her escape alcoholism.
"This has not made her popular with the guards and some of the hard-core establishment at Huntsville," claimed Shipley. "So the prison system would have a motive [in furthering the Pharr story]. If you are a good political reporter, and R.G. Ratcliffe is very good, but you don't have a background in the prison system and don't understand those politics, it is very easy to see how a story could be shopped, by state employees and by Republican operatives, that would seem to be plausible."
Pardons and Paroles Board chairman Jack Kyle did not return a call for comment on the Pharr release. And a spokeswoman at the board's Austin office seemed in no hurry last week to help clear up questions about how Pharr was paroled two years early. "You know," she explained, "we had another inquiry on this and we are still waiting for the file. The file is in Huntsville."
And when was the other inquiry made?
"About three weeks ago," she answered. "The file's been moved and I don't know that anybody followed up on that. Let me take your number and we'll follow this file around and see what we can do."
We were still waiting for her call as voters went to the polls on Election Day.
