But we remember her best as the lady at the desk of the Chute, the raucous honky tonk in west Alpine where the cowboys and the cowgirls danced the desert nights away. The Chute s bouncers and watchmen were Robert Chambers and Sam Thomas, son of a former Brewster County judge. The former Chute is now the Alpine Civic Center, rumored to be the future home of the Alpine city government. The city bailed out the building from a bank when the bar folded. Betty Allen s ambitions were directed at Dallas, where she had her eye on Ronald Hughes, Sr, the respected mortician, owner of a chain of funeral homes.
Money is fungible, and the proceeds of drug deals spend like any other money.
Robert Chambers earned the money by smuggling narcotics across the border. In this enterprise he had a lot of help, including that of former Presidio County Sheriff Rick Thompson. Chambers has a petition for a new trial pending right now at the 5th Circuit in New Orleans. Strangely enough, many of the records of his case seem to be missing. How odd we had the same experience when we sued the Department of Justice under the Freedom of Information Act for records of this case.