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The Texas Rangers constitute the oldest state law enforcement organization in North America, dating to 1823.
You can read more about the Texas Rangers’ history and influence on popular culture on our blog at the True Crime Reporter®website.
Robert and Bill interview retired Ranger Captain Bob Prince, a legendary modern-day Texas Ranger, about his most memorable case.
Our story begins with the rescue of 13-year-old Amy McNiel of Alvarado, Texas, from five kidnappers in mid-January of 1985.
It captures the frontier spirit and courage of the officers who wear the distinctive 5-star badge of the Texas Rangers.
The teenage daughter of Don McNiel, a pioneer in the development of the first hand-held calculator, was snatched at gunpoint on the way to school.
Kidnappers ran a jeep driven by her 17-year-old brother off the road and put a sawed-off shotgun to his face as they grabbed his sister.
They demanded a $100,000 ransom for the seventh grader’s safe return but had no intention of releasing the teenage girl alive.
Throughout McNiel’s abduction, the five kidnappers snorted and injected drugs and talked about “driving” to Hawaii with the ransom money.
The teen defiantly insisted that her captors feed a hungry dog in their backyard before she would cooperate.
Their ringleader, 34-year James Wesley Foote, lived near the McNiel’s mansion and his son was her school classmate but unknown to her. Foote’s son had once stabbed a fellow student in the arm with a knife.
Two weeks before McNiel’s abduction, Foote who was wanted for attempted murder had burst into the home of a prominent businessman in Arlington near Fort Worth, Texas to kidnap his two young children.
The family’s housekeeper wrestled Foote’s gun away from him and fought him in a bloody 45-minute struggle.
The gun discharged near her head, and Foote fled.
A few weeks later, Foote and his accomplices then abducted 13-year-old Amy McNiel
In this episode of Texas Ranger Files, retired Ranger Captain Bob Prince remembers a tension-filled 48-hour, 600-mile game of cat and mouse and a 100-mph running gunbattle.
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I watched it in FbI Files. Wonderful men. Every one of them. These days, there would be a thousand young people lining up to pick apart every little thing these heroes did imperfectly —(such as how Amy’s father’s car ran out of battery due to the surveillance equipment the FBI rigged up to it . People with a fantasy that n their brains of being. ‘entitled’ to everything, God bless them, seek the mistakes of others. I was riveted watching that episode of The FBI Files— because I didn’t know the story or if the little girl survived. My father was that kinda man. Left his comfortable loving home in 1941, to protect our country, after the Japanese had bombed it. He was captured and imprisoned in the evil Japanese prisoner of war w, the Burma Railway, starved and tortured for three and a half years. I have a credo for the people who ‘cancel’ (can you believe that they even HAVE such a concept in their minds)— people, when they find something they don’t like being said to their poor selves. It is the following: ‘When you have put down your selfish pursuits snd worked fir absolutely nothing for four years, and im s death zone, and then come home and gone straight into working and paying for your mother’s upkeep , then — you are allowed to whinge.”. And I’m not joking. Im not interested . I tell them I will sign a document agreement with them to that effect . I wonder where Amy is now ? I hope she’s ok. Live to those FBI agents. And to every sniper who hid in the cold fields waiting, and all the engineers who helped set up the whole sting,