Boss Brooks: A True Story of Fraud, Family, and Forgiveness from Tennessee to Texas

by Kathy Bingham Turner, Leon Alligood

Kathy Bingham Turner, with the help of journalist Leon Alligood, has written an account of her grandfather and his crimes. In 1915, a man named Boss Bingham from Saltillo in Hardin County, Tennessee, faked his own death from a fiery auto accident and fled west. Bingham was the head cashier of the Hardin County Bank, and the state auditor was due to pay the bank a visit in only a few days. Under allegations of fraud and embezzlement, Bingham left behind a wife and three children, all of whom believed he was now dead. He found work as a rancher in the small town of San Angelo, Texas, and started a new family under the name Marvin Lester Brooks. Two families, and two tombstones, would only be put together from a death bed confession after Brooks suffered a stroke in 1972, more than forty years after faking his own death. Turner and Alligood explore the wild story of Bingham/Brooks, the history of rural Tennessee and Texas, and two families’ understanding of a complicated man.

232 pages, Paperback

Published November 25, 2025

Reviews

[Melba Beasley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is very well written and so interesting. I heard several stories about men leaving during the depression.