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In addition to the changes in Wilson’s behavior in the performance of her duties, employees began noting other
changes m her personal life and behavior. For example, she always seemed to have large amounts of cash in
her purse. Whenever coworkers went shopping with her, she always paid cash. Another time when the office
personnel had to attend a seminar in Waco, Wilson pulled several twenties out of her purse and said she was
going to “let the county pay for our meals” yet she never filed a voucher requesting reimbursement for the meal.
Wilson and her husband, who was a local chiropractor, took a lot of trips to different locations during the year
and during the summer, they would go to their beach-house nearly every weekend.

Suspicions Aroused

In September, 1993, Wilson’s husband Charles became very ill which necessitated her being off work for a week
so she could be at home with him. During this time, Wilson’s work was performed by other employees within
her department. Nothing unusual was noted with the cash sheets, deposits, or reconciliations. However, on
Monday of the following week, employees began realizing something had occurred during the weekend. Upon
arriving at work, employees noted the computer had a strange message on it like it had been turned on during
the weekend and not turned off properly. Since Wilson was the only one who would come into the office on
Saturdays to enter the tax receipt information into the computer, they realized that Wilson had been in the
office on Saturday. Then, the clerk who had prepared the cash sheet on Friday noticed that changes had been
made on the cash sheet. It seems the clerk’s original numbers had been “whitedout” and changed to reflect lower
balances. Although the clerk was curious about the changes, she had seen similar changes before on previous
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cash sheets that she had prepared. Normally, when she questioned Wilson about the changes (since it had been
preached to her the cash sheet had to be 100% correct, with no changes showing), Wilson told the clerk that
the clerk had made a mistake which was changed by Wilson and she should not worry about it. However, this
time she was certain she had not made a mistake on Friday since her cash sheet and the cash receipts counted
by another clerk had balanced. She was also disturbed by the fact that whoever had made the changes was
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trying very hard to make it appear that the handwriting in the changes looked just like the handwriting on the
unchanged numbers. The clerk decided to ask Blanchard, the director, why the change was made. Blanchard
indicated she had no idea why a change had been made over the weekend. Wilson was subsequently approached
as to why the change was made? and as before, simply commented that a mistake had been made and she had
changed the numbers. The second clerk informed Blanchard that everything had balanced on Friday and still
balanced on Monday, except the numbers were different, showing the office had taken in less cash than had
been shown on Friday. Blanchard became suspicious. She began checking tax receipts taken on auto transfers
against the amounts shown on the computer printouts. On several of the tickets, Blanchard noted the amount
on the receipt was $500 or $1,000 greater than what had been recorded on the printouts. Since Wilson was
responsible for the data entries, Blanchard realized that her close friend was responsible for stealing a great deal
of money. Finally, she contacted the Coryell County District Attorney (DA) who instructed her to tally as much
of the losses that she could while the DA’s office would initiate an investigate. When Blanchard discovered that
for 1993 alone, Wilson had taken over $100,000 from the Coryell County Tax Assessor-Collector’s office, she
had no choice but to swear out a complaint against Joan Wilson with the county sheriff’s office. Finally, on the
afternoon of November 8, 1993, before television cameras, Joan Wilson was arrested in her office. On November
15. 1993, she committed suicide.

Results of the Investigation

Even though the accused was now dead, the district attorney’s office and the state Comptroller’s office decided
to conduct an investigation. The investigation turned up a great deal of evidence against Joan Wilson. For
example, when Wilson would make the deposits for the county with the bank that handled both the county’s
account and her family’s account, she would always make the deposits inside the bank lobby. However, when
she made personal deposits, she went through the drivein bank teller. The bank teller noted that when Wilson
made these deposits, they were always either into the joint account or into her son’s account. These deposits were

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