Howard Tod Granger was surrounded.
Armored truck at his front gate, sheriff at the back, helicopter in the sky, and a sniper in the yard.
The body was buried in his shed: Benjamin Gill Clements, former governor's son, millionaire from Dallas.
Clements, 69, purchased tracts of land like other men bought cattle. Granger's five acres in Henderson County had been surrounded by the retired CEO's metal fences, private lakes and planted pines for years before the police encircled Granger on Oct. 22.
That afternoon, the law called out for Granger. He stepped out of his little blue house and answered with an AK-47.
Police say Granger unloaded 30-plus rounds into the armored truck before a sniper shot him dead. And sometime between the first bullet and the last, they heard him scream what likely were his last words.
"I'm not going to sell my land!"
More than a week after the shootout, authorities still don't know why Clements turned up dead in Granger's yard. There had been rumors of conflict between the men for years, but no proof. Interviews reveal that Granger, a quiet and reclusive man, had become increasingly fearful that Clements was part of a conspiracy to kill him and take his property.
Clements' holdings
The way you tell Clements' land is by the pine trees. They grow all over his thousand-acre property, a vacation ranch a few miles outside of Athens, in East Texas.
In the south, on the first tracts he bought around 2000, the trees he loved to walk among stand thick and tall. Some sit like giant reeds in the lake he built.
In the north, upon his newest acquisitions, younger pines stare across cracked asphalt and dusty driveways at the few houses, trailers, junk heaps and pasturelands that Clements didn't buy.
And between north and south, at the dead end of a county road that punctures Clements' vast estate, Granger's five acres sit like a puddle in the middle of a forest.
Starting about 10 years ago, Clements had bought up all the land to Granger's south and east, a few years later to his north, and finally his neighbor on the west.
In Granger's harrowed mind, his brother says, Clements would have killed him for his five acres.
'A strange guy'
Granger, 46, was a quiet man - "strange," many neighbors say.
Authorities say he had no criminal record, and there were no records of previous calls to his home.
He used to work delivering auto parts in Athens, but in recent years had stayed home while his wife of nearly 16 years, Terri Lynch Granger, brought the paychecks. One woman remembers him as a good neighbor who would clear brush from her road and check in on her safety, but almost never came inside her house.
Other neighbors say they had met Granger only a few times in a decade, at times glaring with his AK-47 when they strayed too close to his fence line.
"That old boy, he was a strange guy," says John Laster, a longtime neighbor who wouldn't let his grandkids play on Granger's end of the road. "You'd be afraid to say good morning to him."
To relatives, Granger was a simple, private man - a Christian who liked nothing more than reading the Bible and skeet shooting.
Among the private clubs and gated mansions across the highway, he was known as a "sasquatch legend," the recluse at the end of the road.
But few really knew the man in the little blue house.
'Had to be something'
Cobwebs hang in the branches above Granger's home of 18 years, where he lived with his wife and raised a son from a previous marriage.
It's barely a cottage, surrounded by barbed wire and "No Trespassing" signs - dwarfed by Clements' pines across the road.
Granger's brother and a neighbor say Clements offered $50,000 for the property a few years back, as the retired oil executive was expanding his estate north from the lake, buying out Granger's neighbors left and right.
The price would have been above market value, but Granger always said he refused to sell - and his brother says that Clements began to hound him for it.
Clements' friends and family deny that.
"Gill never mentioned this to me. Ever," says Bubba Woods, one of Clements' closest friends.
Former Texas Gov. Bill Clements Jr., 93, says his son had no social contact with Granger whatsoever. Attempts to reach Bill Clements III, Gill Clements' son, were unsuccessful.
Even the county's top lawman is unsure what escalated things between the men.
"There had to be something between Granger and Mr. Clements that brought this on," says Ray Nutt, Henderson County sheriff and a former Texas Ranger who worked with the elder Clements while he was governor. "We don't know what that is. Hopefully someday we will know."
And in the absence of fact, rumors of some deep conflict between the two men have spread across the tiny neighborhood at the fringe of Clements' estate.
Some say Granger, who liked to shoot targets at night, had killed a deer on Clements' land. Others say Clements had made a rude joke about Granger's wife.
'Klan' conspiracy
But even the locals' wildest rumors pale against what Granger believed.
Across State Highway 19 from Clements' lake, where the pines and long-bricked farm houses give way to larger homes, there is a storied fishing club where, since the turn of the last century, some of Texas' richest families have kept a residence. The Clementses are one such family.
This place is now called Coon Creek Club, but into the 1990s newspaper articles would still refer to it by the old spelling: Koon Kreek Klub. Unfounded rumors of ties to the Ku Klux Klan still exist in some parts because of the name.
About a year ago, Granger began to tell his family that not just Clements, but "the Klan" was trying to take his land.
He eventually came to believe that even the sheriff was involved in the conspiracy.
Granger, who as a boy in Kemp needed his older brother to fight his fights, and who sometimes liked to dress in rings and a bolo tie, began to wear a flak jacket.
"I hadn't seen my brother in a year," says Richard Granger, "because he wouldn't leave his property for fear someone would burn his house down.
"He felt someone was going to drive by and shoot him."
This was the year that neighbors say they began to meet Granger and his gun at his fence line - the year that, according to his family, he told his wife that he loved her and that "they're going to kill me soon."
A week later, Gill Clements disappeared.
The last day
On a sunny October morning, Granger drove off his last visitor, an officer looking for Clements.
The previous evening, Clements' SUV had been found - keys in the ignition - parked next to Granger's back gate. Police had searched the surrounding pines the whole night through.
Then three officers on horseback met Granger from across his fence line. Granger allegedly pointed his AK-47 at them and told them to leave.
They did, and for a few hours all was quiet inside Granger's fence line.
At some point that day, a truck dropped off a mattress.
At some point, Granger prayed with his wife.
And then they came at last - with warrants, guns and gas canisters, by armored truck and helicopter. They came from the north, the south, the west, and there was nothing in the world that Howard Tod Granger could do to keep them off his land.
Staff writer Avi Selk reported from Athens.