Doug Supernaw

“As I travel down that blue bonnet highway /I'm thankful I was born a lucky man /And I know that I will live and die my own way / Somewhere between the Red and Rio Grande”

I'm sitting in the Harris County downtown jail, shouting at Supernaw through a hole in plexiglass. After my aforementioned weeks of e-mails and traipsing around Central Texas trying to find him, I wrote my story. Two days later, I got a tip that Supernaw had just been arrested — in Houston of all places — and was only a few blocks from my office.

Having nothing else to do, Supernaw agreed to see me. The last time I saw anything other than a photograph of him, he was filling my TV screen, singing “Long Tall Texan” with the Beach Boys. It was an apt choice, for he is well over six feet, and back then, in his cowboy duds, he looked as Texas as smoked brisket on grease paper. He was clean shaven and had the features of a guy Hollywood would cast as the white-hatted sheriff who finally ran the bad guys out of Llano.

Today, he looks more like a beardless, blonder version of Rasputin, or maybe a hippie acid casualty in a bad '70s B-movie. As befits a guy who rides his bike all over Texas, there's very little excess baggage on his lanky frame. His movements are a bit jerky and nervous, and the look in his eyes is somehow simultaneously mischievous and frightened. He's got a three-day stubble, and his hair is much longer, blonder, and stringier than seems possible. Under the grim fluorescent lights of central lock-up's visiting area, his skin looks slightly jaundiced. He sees me as a friend, he tells me, a member of the “first family of Texas music” who will help him get the true story out.

Let's back up a bit. Back in February I wrote a column about Supernaw. I couldn't track him down, and the piece was built from other reports. A few days after the column ran, I got my first e-mail from Supernaw. He opened by taking me to task for spreading falsehoods about him, and closed with the following: “Thanx to your column, I just found out that I had bi polar bear or somethin. Guess I'd better go have that checked. Have a wonderful day, regardless of whom you chose to put down today.”

“I am sorry that you have interpreted that article as a put-down, as it is not intended as such,” I wrote back. “The articles I read in the other papers can create the impression that all is not well, though, you have to admit. I have a sincere appreciation of your music and also your huge influence on the younger crowd of Texas country artists.” I closed by inviting him to contact me at any time.

A much mellower Supernaw replied the next day. He said he would love to set the record straight and hinted that we might be the paper that would get the true story. “By the way,” he closed, “you forgot to report that I had sickle cell amnesia.”

About a month later, he sent a very strange e-mail to me and several lawyers and other people. The gist of this tangled diatribe, which he originally penned in October of 2006, was that Supernaw believes that he is a pawn in what he calls “the largest conspiracy in horse racing history.”

According to his e-mail, Victorious, one of his horses, was swindled away from his ex-wife Debbie for $75,000 while Supernaw was in the Potter County Jail. Victorious was then renamed Afleet Alex, whereupon it won the Preakness and the Belmont and finished third in the Kentucky Derby. In addition: “On Sept 10, attempting to see my children for the first time since my release [from Potter County Jail], Debbie [his second wife] called the police and fabricated a story in the fear that I would see that MY horse was not in the barn,” he wrote, before adding that a lot of people had helped his ex “with this scheme” and that he was busy compiling names.

Other messages followed. There was the 4 a.m. St. Patrick's Day missive — also sent to the Texas Rangers — in which he told President Bush to “kEEP YOUR fucking GOONS OFF MY ASS.” Seven hours later, another Supernaw e-mail stated that: “I just had one of Montgomery County's finest (undercover I guess) jump me and break my left arm while walking back to the place that I am temporarily staying. In my profession, my left arm is extremely important..."