San Antonio Escorts: Cold Case: The Murder of Officer William M. Lacey
September 17, 2009As I was researching William Lacey’s story, one of the little footnotes that bothered me was the location of Lacey’s burial plot. Back in 1900, the San Antonio Municipal Cemetery was a well-maintained graveyard, an honored place to put the dead to rest. The surrounding neighborhoods were dotted with huge three story Queen Anne-style mansions and wide open horse pastures. It would have been a lovely, serene location–at least back then.
But these days, the Municipal Cemetery is surrounded by some of San Antonio’s roughest streets. From the corner of the facility known as Cemetery #4, where the newspapers said Lacey was laid to rest, you can watch drug dealers and prostitutes walking the streets. You can see the homeless sleeping on bus benches. You can hear TVs blaring from clapboard houses hovering on the verge of collapse. Police cars sprint up and down the streets all day long, their lights and sirens lit up like pinball machines going full tilt. At night, the area echoes with gun fire. To me, it seemed a curious place for a policeman’s grave, and I was struck by a desire to go see him.