Born in Guymon, Oklahoma where his father was an itinerant preacher, Thompson’s first and middle names came from towns in Texas.
Thompson’s legal troubles started when he went hunting with two brothers, ages 13 and 18, near Cisco, Eastland County, Texas on the night of September 7, 1928.
During this trip they encountered brothers, unknown to Thompson but disliked for selfish reasons by his hunting companions who provoked a fight.
First encouraged and then pushed into the fray, Thompson ended up shooting each of the brothers, and his comrades otherwise took part in killing them.
The bodies were left in the woods, while Thompson and his accomplices returned home and vowed to keep quiet on the event.
The deaths of the highly respected brothers, one of them age 19 and a student at what is now Tarleton State University, and the other in his twenties, shocked and angered citizens throughout west Texas.
Thompson, a naïve country boy feeling great remorse, signed a confession taking full blame for the murders.
This trial was held in the auditorium of Eastland High School (which is still in use today) because the former county courthouse had been torn down, and a new one was under construction.
While Thompson awaited an appeal trial in the Eastland County Jail, Marshall Ratliff was put in the cell across from his.
A large group of men subdued jailer Pack Kilborn while taking the jail keys, pulled a struggling Ratliff from his cell and lynched him in the street.
Thompson may have met a similar fate, but due to rumors that someone was planning to help him escape, the key to his cell was locked in a safe at the new courthouse.
Again found guilty at his appeal trial, Thompson was sent to death row in Huntsville, Texas in March, 1931.
This commutation had been supported by some leading citizens of Eastland County due to the inequity of his sentence in comparison to 10 years in prison assessed to his older hunting companion and their belief that Thompson was mentally deficient.
A year after arriving at the Retrieve Prison Farm, Brazoria County, in 1932, Thompson took part in an ill-fated escape attempt with fellow convicts Barney Allen and E.L. Lester.
The failure of this attempt was due in part to another prisoner, Tommy Ries, who alerted guards that the other three were making a run for it.
Thompson received a third life sentence in 1935 for stabbing and killing inmate Everett Melvin, who attempted to rape him.
Thompson and others took part in an escape attempt on October 3, 1937, resulting in the deaths of inmates Austin Avers, Forrest Gibson and Roy Thornton.
He was upgraded in status in early 1951 when he was removed from close confinement and sent to the Ramsey Farm in Rosharon (Brazoria County), Texas.
For nine months in 1960, Thompson served as the superintendent of the Manuelito Navajo Indian Children’s Home in Gallup, New Mexico.