loading cattle in the pens at the old Cleburne Livestock Auction,” Brittain says. “I’d heard about Shawn Linville the entire 15 years
I was stationed in Weatherford,” Brittain says. “He had such a reputation that people blamed him for stealing whether he had anything to do with it or not,” he adds. In March 2002, Brittain worked a case where Lin-
ville was convicted of stealing 18 head, for which he received 4 years probation. But soon after the proba- tion ended, Brittain heard Linville’s name come up yet
weekend. “I had since changed phones and remembered that I might still have that picture from when our friends visited. So I fl ipped through my old Blackberry and there it was — a photo of one of the calves that were recovered — the one where our friend was petting it,” Jones said. All the points in the white markings in his photograph matched perfectly to those on one of the calves found at Logan Ranch. When the DNA results fi nally came in, the bull was a confi rmed sire to the 2 identifi ed calves.
again. “He has a long criminal history, and I wanted to cover all my bases and send him away with this cattle theft,” Brittain says. Detective Shaw talked to all of Jones’ neighbors. He
obtained lease agreements and got information about every property in the area Linville claimed to have leased. “I had to show that he didn’t have any cattle in that area, period — no matter how much Linville wanted to say he did and bring in people saying he did. He only had horses. Any cattle he had in the past were long gone,” Shaw says. In the midst of the investigation, Jones happened to remember a cell phone photo he took on Memorial
tscra.org
Though investigators scoured the countryside, the
branded cows were never found. “I suspect the cows were sold to someone who knew they were stolen, or they were taken to a property we didn’t know about and that’s where they are to this day,” Brittain says.
The trial Three years later the case made it to trial and into
the capable hands of Nicole Crain, assistant district attorney for Hill County. “Whenever you try a crimi- nal case you are relying on 12 people agreeing. That is always a diffi cult thing. That being said, I think it was a well-investigated case,” Crain says. Linville’s
June 2014 The Cattleman 97
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