Justice Antonin Scalia Dies Near Marfa Lights Location

Breaking: The Drudge Report, on Valentine's Day, posted the dramatic headlines, "Scalia Found Dead With 'Pillow Over Head.'"

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has died at the age of 79. Antonin Gregory Scalia was born on March 11, 1936, in Trenton, New Jersey, and died in his sleep on February 13, 2016, after a day spent hunting quail at Cibolo Creek Ranch, 33 miles south of Marfa, Texas. This is an intriguing area, a specific location known for a reoccurring unexplained phenomenon.

Owner of Cibolo Creek Ranch John Poindexter speaks to reporters the day following the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia at his west Texas resort ranch, February 14, 2016, in Shafter, Texas.

Who is John Poindexter?

Friends of John B. Poindexter present a $250,000 check to establish an Endowment for Desert Quail Research at Sul Ross State University’s Borderlands Research Institute. From left are Nelson Puett of Nelson Puett Foundation, Roswell Vaughan, Poindexter and Dennis Murphee at the Coronado Club in Houston during a luncheon in Poindexter’s honor. (Photos courtesy Louis Harveson/Special to the Daily Planet) 

Poindexter is a third-generation Texan and a military veteran who lives in Houston and the Big Bend region. He holds a Ph.D. in eonomic and finance from New York University, and was a highly decorated officer in the U.S. Army. He is chairman of the board and CEO of J.B. Poindexter & Co., a member of the Borderlands Research Institute Advisory Board and of the Museum of the Big Bend Director’s Advisory Council.
Poindexter is most at home at his historic Cibolo Creek Ranch, which is used by cultural, academic, business and civic organizations for meetings and other functions. He restored the ranch and has written a book describing its history and the life of the region’s principal pioneer in “The Cibolo Creek Ranch.” He has also written about historical, military, genealogical and economic subjects. Source.

Houston businessman John Poindexter seen in these photographs was honored by President Barack Obama in 2009. Poindexter, a Texas millionaire businessman noted for being a donor to the Democratic Party, was receiving an award from Obama related to his military service in Vietnam.

Poindexter told the media that he tried to awaken Scalia about 8:30 the morning of February 13, 2016, the judge's door was locked and he did not answer. Three hours later, Poindexter returned after an outing, with a friend of Scalia who had come from Washington with him.

"We discovered the judge in bed, a pillow over his head. His bed clothes were unwrinkled," said Poindexter.

A map appeared to be set under a bottle of water.
“When I went to straighten his room up after he was removed this morning, I noticed he had a map of the property next to his bed,” Poindexter said. “He had obviously been looking at it before he went to bed.”

Cibolo Creek Ranch is located 33 miles SW of Marfa, Texas. The "El Presidente" suite where Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was found with a "pillow over his head" in "perfect repose."

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia

Marfa was founded in the early 1880s as a railroad water stop. The town was named "Marfa" at the suggestion of the wife of a railroad executive. Although some historians have hypothesized that the name came from a character in Fyodor Dostoevsky (November 11, 1821 - February 9, 1881) novel The Brothers Karamazov, etymologist Barry Popik found that Marfa was actually named after Marfa Strogoff, a character in the Jules Verne (February 8, 1828 - March 24, 1905) novel Michael Stroganoff.

The area is famous for the Marfa lights, also known as the Marfa ghost or spook lights. They have been observed near U.S. Route 67 on Mitchell Flat east of Marfa, Texas, in the United States. Onlookers have ascribed "spook lights" to Fortean phenomena such as UFOs or will-o'-the-wisp. 

"One of the best-known [ghost lights] occurs in the mountains of the Trans-Pecos region of far West Texas, between the small towns of Alpine and Marfa, where the Marfa Lights have been seen by” many generations of West Texans, wrote Rob Riggs (September 7, 1945 - November 3, 2015) in his In The Big Thicket. 

“The Marfa Lights are seen regularly south of Hwy 90 about eight miles east of town toward Alpine. So common are sightings that the Texas Highway Department has a sign marking the best vantage point from which to view the lights from the highway. There have been multiple sightings of the lights for generations, and their fame has spread beyond West Texas through extensive media coverage, including the CBS Evening News," Riggs wrote.

The first published account of the lights appeared in the July 1957 issue of Coronet magazine. In 1976, Elton Miles' Tales of the Big Bend included stories dating to the 19th century, and a photograph of the Marfa lights taken by a local rancher. 

The earliest anecdote commonly cited for the observation of the Marfa Lights is that of the cowboy Robert Reed Ellison in March 1883. This was while he was herding cattle through the Paisano Pass southwest across the Marfa plain. Then the lights are seen again in 1885 by Joe and Anne Humphreys. Both stories appear in Cecilia Thompson's book History of Marfa and Presidio County, Texas 1535-1946.

Bunnell lists 34 Marfa lights sightings from 1945 through 2008. Monitoring stations were put in place starting in 2003. He has identified "an average of 9.5 MLs on 5.25 nights per year," but thinks the monitoring stations may only be finding half of the MLs in Mitchell Flat. Source.

Family Guy’s "Meet the Quagmires" is the 18th and final episode of the
fifth season of the animated comedy series Family Guy. It originally aired
on Fox on May 20, 2007.

Numerous plot-points are derived from Back to the Future.

In the opening scene of the episode of "Meet the Quagmires", Horace the bartender is suddenly knocked unconscious after falling off a ladder [footnote: see below for the meaning of "Scalia"], causing Death to appear. 

In the alternate reality, Death refers to the Dick Cheney hunting accident, explaining that the "Chairman of Halliburton" accidentally shot and killed Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, political campaign advisor Karl Rove, and conservative media consultant Tucker Carlson. Brian groans that Peter and he can't change this wonderful future, but Peter flatly says "I don't know who any of those people are". The main plot of the episode, complete with the scene in which Peter and Brian are in the living room, with Brian explaining to Peter what happened using a chalk board, is a reference to the alternate universe scene in Back to the Future Part II. Source.

Have we been this way before...

The Family Guy scene was based on the real-life event that happened in the same part of the country, Texas, as the actual death of of Scalia - the Cheney hunting party accident.

Family Guy had parodied the Cheney shooting other times.

Dick Cheney's hunting accident had occurred while quail hunting in Texas.

Scalia (above and below) was well-known as a hunter, and had been to Texas before.

On February 11, 2006, Dick Cheney shot Harry Whittington, a 78-year-old Texas attorney, while participating in a quail hunt at Armstrong ranch in Kenedy County, Texas. Secret Service agents and medical aides, who were traveling with Cheney, came to Whittington's assistance and treated his birdshot wounds to his right cheek, neck, and chest. An ambulance standing by for the Vice President took Whittington to nearby Kingsville before he was flown by helicopter to Corpus Christi Memorial Hospital. On February 14, 2006, Whittington had a non-fatal heart attack and atrial fibrillation due to at least one lead-shot pellet lodged in or near his heart. Because of the small size of the birdshot pellets, doctors decided to leave up to 30 pieces of the pellets lodged in his body rather than try to remove them. Source.

Political cartoons followed in the wake of the Cheney hunting accident that had been covered up - as far as when it happened - right after the incident.

Scalia engendered criticism in the past over his choice of partners on hunting trips. In 2001, he went on a pheasant hunting trip with the dean of a Kansas law school who was the lead attorney in two cases that were about to come before the Supreme Court. And in 2004, he went duck hunting with then-Vice President Dick Cheney — flying with him on a plane that served as Air Force 2 — while the high court was considering a case that challenged the secrecy of an energy task force led by Cheney. Source.
Since Dick Cheney and Antonin Scalia had gone hunting together before, this has lead to sharp comments and questions in 2016 after Scalia died about whether he had been shoot by Cheney.

And, in the movies...

The 1956 film Giant, starring Jame Dean, was filmed on the Ryan Ranch, west of the town of Marfa. Warner Bros. Pictures

Several movies have been filmed in the Marfa, Texas area, including No Country For Old Men, There Will Be Blood, Andromeda Strain, Fandango, Marfa Girl, Far Marfa, and The Good Old Boys. Source.

The hat...

Justice Scalia made a statement at the President Obama’s second Inauguration by wearing a stunning replica of the hat worn by St. Thomas More in the famous Holbein portrait.
Sir Thomas More (February 7, 1478 - July 6, 1535), venerated by Catholics as Saint Thomas More, was an English lawyer, social philosopher, author, statesman and noted Renaissance humanist.

In 1533, Thomas More refused to attend the coronation of Anne Boleyn as the Queen of England. Technically, this was not an act of treason, as More had written to Henry acknowledging Anne's queenship and expressing his desire for the King's happiness and the new Queen's health. Despite this, his refusal to attend was widely interpreted as a snub against Anne, and Henry took action against him. He was brought to trail, and the jury took only fifteen minutes to find More guilty.

After the jury's verdict was delivered and before his sentencing, More spoke freely of his belief that "no temporal man may be the head of the spirituality". He was sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered (the usual punishment for traitors who were not the nobility), but the King commuted this to execution by decapitation. The execution took place on July 6, 1535.

Footnote: The name...

Scalia
Recorded in many forms including Eschelle, Echelle, Deeschelle (French), Scala and Scalera (Italian), and Escala, Escalera, and Escalante (Spanish), this is a very interesting and aristocratic surname. However spelt it is of Roman (Latin) pre 4th century a.d. origins, and derives from the word 'scandere' meaning 'to climb'. Various directories suggest that the name was originally topographical for a person who lived in a village or house on a terraced slope, or one where the entry was by an outside ladder. Another suggestion is that the name was occupational and referred to a maker or seller of ladders, whilst a further suggestion is that it is a nickname for the only person in a village who possessed a ladder! Our opinion is that it is, or rather was, sometimes at least, a military term for a soldier who was responsible for the scaling ladders, which paid such a major part in all warfare in the ancient times before the use of firearms. This would seem to be confirmed by the coat of arms as recorded below, since this was granted for military deeds. Source.