Timmy Overton of Austin and Jerry Ray James of Odessa were football
stars who traded athletics for lives of crime. The original rebels
without causes, nihilists with Cadillacs and Elvis hair, the Overton
gang and their associates formed a ragtag white trash mafia that
bedazzled Austin law enforcement for most of the 1960s. Tied into a
loose network of crooked lawyers, pimps and used car dealers who became
known as the traveling criminals, they burglarized banks and ran
smuggling and prostitution rings all over Texas. Author Jesse Sublett
presents a detailed account of these Austin miscreants, who rose to folk
hero status despite their violent criminal acts.