The Lady In The Bathtub

Note: I'm having to blog from a remote computer today because someone keeps taking down our home internet connection. (Could this possibly be related to what is known to be coming with regard to my blogs on illegal surveillance??)

During the many years I dated and was married to my ex-husband, I vaguely remember hearing him and his family and close friends discussing various suspicious deaths that had occurred in the area, but at the time I was not aware there might be anything unusual about these conversations (and I was often distracted by children), so I did not pay as much attention as I now wish I had. This has resulted in my having a great many "snippets" of memories about what I was told about these deaths, and some of them are more complete than others. The conversations about what I'm calling the story of the lady in the bathtub here fall somewhere in the middle: I remember slightly more, was told a little more than usual, and happen (because of where it took place) to have a little more concrete information than in a lot of the other cases that might be able to be confirmed.

A little background is necessary. Many years ago (either when my former husband and I were dating or had just married), my ex-'s family purchased a ranch at Flag Creek in Llano County, where they have close relatives. This ranch has a small wooden hunting cabin and an old one-story house made out of interesting rock on it. My ex-'s family usually rented out the ranch and both structures for hunting, but I believe they also sometimes leased the house out for longer periods. Besides the rock exterior, my other favorite feature of the house was the beautiful old claw-foot bathtub that looked like it was original to the house.

One weekend when the house and cabin weren't occupied, my former in-laws invited longtime friends from Houston up to hunt at this ranch, and we packed up our children and some food and drove out to spend the day eating and visiting with them. Sometime after lunch, my mother-in-law took me aside and asked me what I thought about the woman who had recently been found dead in the house's bathtub. I was horrified to hear this, and I told her I didn't know anything about it and wanted to know more. She told me that the dead woman was a girlfriend of a man they'd been renting the house to, that she'd been found dead under suspicious circumstances, and that her body had been taken to Austin for further examination. I remember being shocked to hear this, and I asked her why no one had told me about this before; she replied that she'd just assumed my husband had told me about it. She asked me if I thought the death was a homicide, and I remember telling her I did believe it sounded like murder. A little later, my former sister-in-law also brought up the subject of this death and also asked me for my opinion on whether it was a murder or not, which I remember thinking was a little odd. I remember telling her the lovely old bathtub in the house had now lost its charm for me and that I was glad to hear the death was being thoroughly investigated. I may also have been told that the woman's death involved antihistimines and alchohol or pills, but I can't remember about this for sure.

I never heard anything more about this death; even when I asked, no one seemed to know anything, and I don't remember seeing anything in the papers about it. Knowing what I know now, I'm hoping someone somewhere will look into this death further and somehow bring justice and/or some closure to the woman's loved ones.