Kevin S. Foster cares deeply about law enforcement history and the Fort Worth Police Department, from which he recently retired as a sergeant.
Local historian and professor Richard F. Selcer has a special penchant for unearthing misinformation from decades past and setting the record straight.
Now, the two men have found a way to meld their passions by writing a book, Written in Blood, which chronicles the lives and deaths of 13 early lawmen: police officers, sheriffs, constables and even a police commissioner.
Some died defending law; others were far from heroes.
"The line blurred," said Foster, 50. "The good guys weren't always the good guys and the bad guys weren't always necessarily the bad guys. Sometimes you can look at one of these fellas and you could see how he got killed."
Selcer, 60, insisted upon telling the true story of these lawmen, "warts and all."
"Most of these lawmen memorial volumes have exploded since 9-11," he said. "And most of them sing the praises of the brave heroic officer who, with guns blazing, goes down in a hail of lead from Evil Roy Slade, blah, blah, blah. What we've done is tell the stories of the bad guys as well as the good guys. And sometimes it's hard to tell the difference because all of these officers weren't saints."
Selcer noted that many stories on the Internet are full of inaccuracies.
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