Daughter of Scarface I

By LaDawn Cusimano

This is a true crime and corruption story. I was born in California. My father killed someone and went to jail, so my little sister Charlotte and I were adopted by a wealthy aunt and uncle in Fort Worth, Texas. My father beat his case in court by self-defense and joined us in Texas, but we were still adopted. We went to the best schools, wore the best clothes, and took music and dancing lessons. We had the best home any child could have with all the opportunities in the world. As teens, my sister and I worked in one of our adoptive father’s office. However, I grew rebellious and became a stripper and eventually got with gangsters and became one myself. I was married to three mob bosses and became one myself as they did prison time. Eventually, I got a fifty-year prison sentence by crooked cops who murdered a young man after robbing his parents of $3 million in jewels. There was a cover-up, and they are yet to be arrested for it. My prayer is to see them pay for that murder.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 20, 2021
• ISBN: 9781664171114

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Copyright © 2021 by LaDawn Cusimano.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,

recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Thank you to Brandon Bennett of Albuquerque, New Mexico

for the Cover Design

Rev. date: 05/20/2021

Xlibris

844-714-8691

www.Xlibris.com

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CONTENTS

Chapter 1 End Of The Year 1889

Chapter 2 Two Days Later

Chapter 3 Gone With The Wind

Chapter 4 The Ride

Chapter 5 Goree Welcoming Party

Chapter 6 Home Sweet Home

Chapter 7 Outside Prison Bars

Chapter 8 Pipeline

Chapter 9 Bluebonett Justice

Thanks to Kristine Jacobs for giving me the

extra push to publish this book.

The door marked JURY slowly opened as I looked up. The jury members walked in a single file to the jury box that swayed to a smooth yet unheard beat. I searched each face for a ray of hope, but none was there. They all worked hard to avoid my stare. I trusted you! my mind screamed out to them. Suddenly, I knew. They were the ones to be left here to deal with these unfair people, this town’s law enforcement. I almost felt sorry for the people, not for what the town can do to them but for the lack of decency. They allowed themselves to be intimidated enough to hang me, for not having the guts to give me what the law insists I get—a fair trial. Not even a glance from one jury member, I could feel and see my crimson fluid of life seeping through the fingers of a clenched fist. My mind’s eye watched as it ran down an arm from an upheld fist. My mind raced back to the crucial time just before deliberation. The judge called each woman on my jury into his chamber.

A reliable source of information tells me there has been contact between a jury member and a nonjury member. If so, I want you to know that it is unlawful and punishable by a prison sentence. Was it you?

One by one, they went into his chamber, and one by one came out of his chamber and returned to the jury and sat in the seat they sat in daily.

Not one man on my jury was called into the judge’s chamber. Only the women on my jury was intimidated. The judge called for the bailiff to retrieve the jury decision. I silently wondered how this trial could have continued after my attorney claimed the lead agent was a heroin addict with a snake tattooed in the fold of his arm to hide needle marks. The agent claimed it wasn’t true and refused to show the jury his arm. Because of this, the judge said Agent Bradwell wouldn’t be allowed to testify. He wasn’t needed. His partner did his dirty work for him. My trial should have ended there, yet it continued.

At that very moment, I promised myself I would take both these crooked narcs down. It won’t be tomorrow, maybe it will be five, ten, or twenty years, but I will spend the rest of my life after them. And I will bring them down and in their own playground—the courtroom.

The judge calling my name brought me out of my thoughts. He was asking me to stand. I did so, and my three attorneys stood with me. My knees were about to buckle, but I steadied myself with my trembling hands placed on the defense table before me. In his black robe and crisp white hair and collar, he looked over his black rimmed glasses and spoke directly to me. LaDawn Cusimano, this court sentences you to fifty years in the Texas Department of Corrections for Women. Down went his gavel.

I couldn’t believe it. What the judge put that jury through, they would have convicted Mother Saint Teresa. JUSTICE IS BLIND, not so, she wears that rag around her head because she’s ashamed to show her face.

***

To understand me, you need to know my bloodline history.

In the 1800s, the world came alive. It started developing on all fronts. Most of the Indian wars were over, but the buffalo had been hunted down and killed just for the fur. They were almost extinct. This was no accident. Unfortunately, the Indians depended on the buffalo to survive. They provided food, clothing, blankets, and even housing, considering they lived in A-frame structures, which they wrapped with buffalo hide. They called them tepees. This was a strategy to drive the Indians to extinction. A new railroad was being built through Indian land, and the land had to be safe for the workers. The workers were mostly Chinese because labor for them was cheap. The first railroad cars were pulled by horses so the Indians called the railroad the iron horse before locomotives were invented and used.

The mid-1800s was when all the mighty millionaires of all time stoop to levels that would put them on death row today. As a child, I was told about the lives of these men by another millionaire, my adoptive father Gene Gibbis. My uncle who by then was my father. Had he lived back then, he would have given John D. Rockefeller and his Standard Oil, also James Paul Getty with his oil, J. P. Morgan with his financial abilities, and Andrew Carnegie with his railroad steel, a run for their money. Gene Gibbis built towns. He built the residential DFW metroplex connecting Fort Worth to Dallas. The first project he and his two partners donated Little Fossil Creek Park. Today there is a historical marker saying he and his partners (Bob Black and my uncle Wiley Slayton) My adoptive father also owned two insurance companies, not agencies but companies, American Health and Accident and Texas Hospital Insurance Service. He owned oil wells, gas wells, and part of the Continental National Bank (located Downtown Fort Worth, Texas). His offices were in a building that only leased to cattle barons and tycoons of some industry. Gene Gibbis was all this and more. Just as important, he was as smart, cunning, and more dangerous than all the others put together.

Sometime in the mid-1800s, my great-grandfather Henry Taylor met and married Martha Applewhite. Her father, Mr. Applewhite, gave them six head of cattle, six horses, and ten acres of land. Great-Grandmother Martha was half Indian and looked it. She was a small woman with long dark hair. She was a handsome woman but not considered beautiful. She rarely spoke because her eyes spoke for her. She was well understood. She was a hardheaded but hardworking woman. She was also brave. She passed through land even men were afraid to enter. She was also known to carry a pistol on each hip, and word had it she wasn’t afraid to use them.

Great-Granddaddy was just as unique. He set goals high, but his determination usually superseded them. He was a tall good-looking man of his word and well-respected.

After nine years of marriage and six children, my hotheaded great-grandmother left my great-grandfather—for good reason. According to Great-Grandfather, to Great-Grandmother, it was the principle of what he did.

CHAPTER 1

END OF THE YEAR 1889

My great-grandmother was a small woman with great strength, super courage, and self-respect who fought to maintain that respect and taught her children not to be quitters but persons who had earned self-pride and would not be mistreated by anyone because she could make it whatever she had to do.

One day she had taken the wagon into town. While she was there, she saw a red dress she wanted in a store. It caught her eye like nothing ever had, and she wanted it as bad as she wanted anything in the world. So she bought it.

When she returned home, she put it on for my great-grandfather and told him she felt beautiful in it. To wear it made her smile. He said very little, but she was so happy to have it, she didn’t notice his displeasure.

Great-Grandmother removed her new dress and hung it up after putting on one of her older dresses. It was like most of her dresses, old and faded. She then went outside to hang wet clothes to dry.

When Great-Grandmother returned, she saw that Great-Grandfather had put her new dress in the wood-burning stove. Stunned and speechless, she watched as the most beautiful dress she had ever seen melt into the yellow and red flames of ember ashes. Great-Grandfather watched her from another room. She expressed no vocal emotion, but he could see the reflection of the fire in her flood of tears streaming down her face. Suddenly, she turned her back to the fire and started gathering household items and taking them to the wagon. She even packed the wagon with food, water, and clothes. Her calmness worried my great-grandfather. He said nothing but began to worry what she was up to.

Finally, the wagon was packed. She put her daughters Mary and Betty in the back. My grandfather was only three months old, but she held him in one arm and pulled herself up into the wagon by the leather horse reins with the other. My great-grandfather ran to the wagon. What are you doing? It is harvest time! he yelled at her.

That’s why I’m leaving the boys. They work hard and will help. I’ll be back for them after harvest when I get settled, but for now, I have all I need—my girls, my baby, and both pistols. She held my grandfather in one arm, slightly slapped the horses with the leather reins, and yelled, Howaaa!

If Great-Grandfather had not jumped out of the way, she would have run him over. Stunned, standing in the dirt between the wagon wheel tracks, he watched as the wagon puffed off dirt behind. It got smaller and smaller as it got further and further away. He wished he had never seen that damn red dress that looked so pretty on her.

Great-Grandmother herself had no idea where she was going. All she knew was she wanted to get far away from Great-Grandfather. She was known to cross lands men dare not pass on horseback with her two pistols.

After about three hours, the girls were getting restless, her arms were sore from switching my grandfather and the horse reins back and forth. She felt the horses needed a rest and the girls needed to eat and play a little, and she too needed a break.

On both sides of the wagon were beautiful shade trees not real close together. The space allowed her to keep an eye on the girls as they ran and played after they ate. My grandfather was breastfed and ate whenever he wanted. So she pulled over in a beautiful spot. The girls jumped out of the wagon as she told them they could as she unhooked the horses to give them some freedom.

She spread a large blanket out on the ground for everyone to sit or lie on. She told the girls they were having a picnic. After everyone ate, she watched the girls played, and my grandfather slept. She thought about what she was going to do. Her eyes searched for the horses and saw them close and eating grass.

What in the world am I going to do? How can I feed and shelter my kids? she wondered.

As she wondered, her eyes landed on a stack of diapers and small blankets. She concocted an apparatus that would save her arms from getting sore but still satisfy my grandfather’s ride. She took the diapers and made a makeshift swing. She attached it under the wagon’s driver seat. My grandfather cooed, kicked, smiled, and really enjoyed the swinging ride.

Great-Grandmother mostly traveled at night and rested with one eye open in the day under the trees and a cool breeze. It was during a nighttime drive when she thought