Even after Justice Antonin Scalia did not respond to a knock at the door of his suite at the Cibolo Creek Ranch at 8:30 a.m. Saturday, John B. Poindexter, the property’s owner, was not alarmed.
Perhaps the 79-year-old justice was attending to Supreme Court business, Poindexter thought, or simply did not wish to be disturbed on his first morning at the remote ranch in West Texas. It was less than three hours later, when Poindexter tried again, that he found Scalia’s body.
Scalia had no pulse and was clearly dead, Poindexter recalled in an interview on Sunday.
'It was just like he was taking a nap'
“His hands were sort of almost folded on top of the sheets,” said Poindexter, a manufacturing executive from Houston. “The sheets weren’t rumpled up at all.”
He added, “It was just like he was taking a nap. He just went to sleep and didn’t wake up.”
Scalia had arrived at the 30,000-acre ranch on Friday to participate in one of the weekend gatherings that Poindexter, who has owned the Cibolo Creek property since 1990 and restored its three historic forts into a secluded retreat, hosts a few times each year. Scalia and Poindexter had met just once, in Washington, and the justice had traveled to Texas after a friend of Poindexter’s suggested inviting him, the ranch owner said.
The day leading up to his death
In the day leading up to his death, Scalia was “very congenial, very convivial,” Poindexter said, as the party roamed the property and some hunted for quail. Scalia did not participate in the hunt, but he did observe.
“I don’t think you’ll find another place like this in Texas that has such quiet, such fantastic star shows at night and simple luxuries,” said Shelby Hodge, a former society columnist with The Houston Chronicle who is now editor at large at CultureMap.
Many of those at the ranch during the weekend, Hodge said, were from Washington, but others were from San Antonio, Houston and Kerrville.
'I knocked on the door loudly'
At 9 p.m., after the conclusion of a cocktail reception and dinner, Scalia, who had flown to Texas early Friday, told Poindexter he was going to turn in for the night, and went to the property’s presidential suite.
The next morning, Scalia did not appear for breakfast, and Poindexter went to look for him.
“I knocked on the door loudly,” said Poindexter, who said Scalia and the other guests had been staying at the ranch free for the weekend. “I had him in a very large room — a suite — and I thought he might be in the bathroom.”
Just after 11 a.m., after a morning of activities, Poindexter and a friend of Scalia’s tried the door again, again to no answer. They entered the spacious room, and it took no medical training, Poindexter said, to recognize that Scalia was dead.
Called hospital first, then U.S. Marshals
Poindexter called a hospital and, without identifying Scalia, reported what had happened. A hospital official, Poindexter said, assessed that it would be impossible to resuscitate Scalia, and ranch officials contacted the United States Marshals Service.
That call set into motion hours of intense discussions at the ranch, and among local and federal officials, about how to navigate the protocols associated with the death of a Supreme Court justice outside the Washington area. The sprawling, but sparsely populated, nature of Presidio County did not help: The two justices of the peace were both busy when they learned of a death at the ranch.
Not just 'another body found by hunters'
“No identity or clue was given that this was not another body found by hunters in the desert,” David Beebe, a justice of the peace, wrote in an email Saturday night.
Beebe said County Judge Cinderela Guevera had ultimately pronounced Scalia dead by telephone and “ruled it natural causes based on credible information.” She did not respond to messages on Sunday.
As the authorities grappled with the Scalia’s death, the Rev. Mike Alcuino of the Santa Teresa de Jesús Church in Presidio was summoned to the ranch to administer the last rites to Scalia, a Catholic.
“It was just proper to call in a Catholic priest for the last rites,” Alcuino said on Sunday. He said he was alone with Scalia when he performed the rites, which took about 10 minutes.
About midnight Sunday, a hearse carrying Scalia’s body left the ranch property, bound for Sunset Funeral Homes in El Paso, the West Texas city more than 200 miles away.
About the Author
