Tales of The Texas Rangers Daily · Stacy Keach Sr.

Texas Rangers - Cover Up

April 12, 2026·30 min·2 clips

A neighbor walks into his best friend's farmhouse on the Fourth of July to find a stranger scrubbing blood off the floor and refusing to let anyone inside.

The opening has a few rough edges. Business-broker copy repeats before the old program frame brings in Joel McRae as Ranger Jace Pearson. Then the interrogation tightens. Mendoza denies taking anything, while the sheriff and Gaynor press him about forty dollars and the wallet. Pearson stays procedural. He orders written statements, separates Mendoza from Gaynor, and tells deputies to hold the ground. Gaynor thinks the arrest has wrapped things up, but Pearson radios KTXA for a lab crew at the Himes farmhouse on Farm Road 306. He wants evidence before the story hardens. Gaynor asks why they need more when they already have the man, and Pearson answers with plain caution. The case is not closed. From the car, Gaynor catches movement in the brush and points Pearson toward a mesquite. It is Russ, bloodied, down, and apparently left for dead rather than dead. That discovery knocks the robbery story sideways. Now the statements and the lab work have something real to answer. The closing gives the legal end. On September 9th, 1946, the guilty finding is for burglary and assault with intent to commit murder. Phillips gets fifteen years at Huntsville. The episode works because it keeps its head down: accusation, field evidence, radio procedure, and one wounded man found before the wrong answer sticks.

As heard by us

A payroll quarrel turns into a spare Ranger hunt with blood in the brush.

Cover Up opens on a payroll dispute at Hines Farmhouse and narrows fast once the Ranger spots blood in the brush. What works is the plain method: Jace Pearson asks direct questions, gets one answer too many, and follows the evidence where it leads.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

A payroll dispute, a brush search, and a Ranger who follows the facts to the end.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from Tales of The Texas Rangers Daily