The day after the England murders, Montague County Attorney Avery L. Matlock arrested a neighbor, his friend, and a sixteen-year-old boy. Ben Krebs, James Preston, and Aaron K. Taylor had all spent the previous night at Krebs’s home, located a half mile distant. In a deathbed declaration, Selena England positively identified Krebs as one of her attackers. Despite numerous protestations of his innocence, Krebs was taken into custody and transported to the county jail in Montague with Preston and Taylor. Since three men had committed the murders, County Attorney Matlock reasoned that Preston and Taylor must have been Krebs’s accomplices in the heinous deed. The Krebs cabin on the south side of Denton Creek no longer stands, but it was located by this oak tree.
