The Coward Cowboy
He’s a lifetime sex offender. So why are public officials in West Texas letting Quinten Stanford flaunt real justice?
WARNING: The photos are graphic, and the stories are shocking.
We went to confront Quinten, THE COWARD COWBOY because that’s what we do here at Dolcefino Media.
The Coward Cowboy
Listen to the song on the car radio.
Treat me right.
The guy inside this car should’ve paid attention to the words.
We’re headed to West Texas to confront a serial abuser, a real tough guy.
“We had only been married two weeks. He pulled me out of a truck by my hair and was kicking me with his boots in my ribs,” said Erinn Patillow.
“This is my house,” Quinten Standford shouted.
He’s an Abilene, Texas cowboy. And he doesn’t just hit women, apparently, he’s a convicted child molester too.
“We’ve heard some things about you, sir. We want to get your side of the story,” said Andrea Palacio.
A former ranch hand says Quinten Stanford is really a coward.
“He runs his mouth, he automatically backs down, and then he wants to run to Mom and Dad to see how he can wiggle his way out,” said David Vejil.
Will he run from Dolcefino Media?
Because he thinks he’s got some kind of protection out here?
“Everybody in Pecos knows who the Stanfords are from that community. There is a lot of protection going on right there,” said Brent Leffingwell.
We’re here to pull back the curtains, expose the injustice.
Check out a guy named Quinten Stanford on social media.
“I’m a fun guy,” said Quinten Standford in a clip.
He seems like a real fun guy.
“I’m a fun guy,” said Standford in a clip.
“Bullshit. This is bullshit,” said Standford in a different clip.
Here he is buying his current girlfriend a new truck, takes her to fun events.
“On the Uber ride to the hockey game,” said Nova Nixon in a clip.
Erinn Patillow says Quinten was real fun when she married her, too.
“Two weeks after we married, he strangled me. I saw stars. I thought I was going to die,” Patillow said.
She didn’t know she had just married an apparent serial abuser.
“I mean, he’s never had a consequence for any of his actions,” Patillow said.
Erinn is really the first to push law enforcement in West Texas to enforce the law against this guy.
“I’m the only woman who’s gone through with it, and I know for sure that he has beat one, two, three, four, five of us,” Patillow said.
Erinn married Quinten in 2018. She was his fifth wife.
“He had been divorced nine years from wife number four before me, so he had told me all of this happened when I was young and we just didn’t get along,” Patillow said.
A school teacher who moved to Abilene to be with this guy.
“He would tell me I’m his dream girl, you know. He had always prayed for someone like me. And I honestly thought, this man loves me. And he is so good with my girls. I trusted him because it had that hometown kind of trust. You know, he’s from Pecos,” Patillow said.
The Stanford Ranch is well known around these parts.
They breed horses worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
And Quinten’s mom, her roots go even deeper.
She’s a Collier, one of Pecos’s pioneer families.
Quinten’s great grandfather, Harold, his name is here on a plaque for the first rodeo in world history.
“He had lots of money, and he is willing to pay whatever it takes to get out of trouble,” Patillow said.
She forgave Quinten after he beat her up the first time, because she wanted to save her marriage.
A lot of women make that mistake.
But 18 rocky months later, Erinn says divorce became the only option, to save her life.
“He strangled me again and beat me pretty bad. That next day when I came home after work, he had stabbed my bed where I sleep. He had come to our house, stabbed it, and left it right where I sleep,” Patillow said.
She went to the police this time, pressed charges.
Then she learned the scars from her marriage may have been worse for her daughters.
“About a week later, after I filed for divorce, is when my daughter, my daughters, told me he had touched them inappropriately,” Patillow said.
Her middle daughter said Quinten had molested her private parts under her shirt. Her youngest daughter under her pants.
And Erinn said Quinten often wore no underwear in front of the girls, literally naked from the waist down.
“They just kind of belittled it, like they downplayed it. They thought that we were trying to get money from him and make up this whole scandal,” said Mikalya, Paillow’s daughter.
The police investigation made the girls relive all that.
We have got the police records.
Erinn’s youngest kept telling the investigators she thought Quinten was going to kill her “to make my mom sad because I told.”
But the D.A. refused to prosecute him. “Touching the buttocks” he said “is not a crime.” And there was a “vague statement on the issue of penetration.”
“I said, so a grown man can rub a eight-year-old’s naked rear end and get off on it, and that’s ok? And he said, ‘I’m sorry to say that, but the defense will say he was spanking her. So we are not going to pursue that case.’ And he never got arrested for that one,” Patillow said.
But prosecutors did arrest Quinten for what the 14-year-old told them.
It took five years to get justice. In February, Quinten Stanford finally pled guilty to indecency with a child by contact.
No prison time, just 5 years deferred adjudication and probation. He had to register as a sex offender.
“I’m shocked that he got probation, that he got up there and admitted it, because if he didn’t have the money, I honestly- if it had been me or anybody else on the street. Your ass is looking at 25 years easy,” Vejil said .
David Vejil was Quinten’s ranch hand and friend for a long time, but he says not anymore.
He says he witnessed Quinten beating Erinn too, then he told us Quinten told him to lie about it—to cover it up.
“To say the opposite, that she was coming after him and he was just defending himself, and she tripped and fell down the steps,” said Vejil.
“Did you agree to do that?” Palacio asked.
“Hell no, I’m not going to lie,” said Vejil.
Quinten pled no contest to that charge.
Again, Quinten got another light sentence… no jail time.
4 years deferred adjudication.
So we drove the 360 miles to Abilene to have some fun.
“We’ve heard some things about you, sir. We want to get your side of the story. Can we talk?” Palacio said to Standford.
“And I thought maybe he was going to try to run us down with the ATV, but he didn’t,” Palacio told the camera.
“We’ve heard some things. We want to ask you your side of the story,” Palacio said to Standford.
He just ran.
Wouldn’t stand and face the music.
Treat me right.
“Instead he drove off into the sunset,” Dolcefino asked.
“He drove off into the sunset, but he is not a hero,” Palacio told the camera.
“That they got, you know, uh, some pull with a judge. That’s just my opinion,” said Vejil.
A big name and big money apparently go a long way in small towns.
Judge Paul Rotenberry agreed to combine her daughter’s criminal protective order with her mom’s divorce case, even though they were totally separate.
Rotenberry also signed a protective order that allowed this violent offender to keep his guns.
When Erinn complained about this to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, she claims federal agents told her they had never seen such a thing.
Even the weak protective order turned out to be a joke too.
“He violated that protective order. They arrested him two times in Jones County for it, one time here in Taylor County, and then they ended up dropping all of those cases,” Patillow said.
Erinn says the justice systems in Taylor and Jones County add to her pain every day, constantly looking the other way, she says, for Quinten Stanford.
“You guys are not doing your job. So he got to keep his guns the whole time I’m thinking I’m gonna be killed. I’m so angry, not being protected and dismissed like I mean nothing,” Patillow said to prosecutor.
“I understand that you don’t agree with that,” Arian Christian said.
“No, because it’s not harassing to you. He didn’t molest your children, and he didn’t beat you up and strangle you. He did that to me,” Patillow said.
On this call in February, Erinn learned Taylor County would not prosecute violations of her protective order.
Quinten is being allowed to serve his two light sentences at the same time.
His probation is assigned to be monitored here in Jones County, overseen by Jon Cook.
Cook is supposedly a high school buddy of Quinten’s brother.
Small town.
“We wanted to talk to him about Quinten Stanford. I tried to call Mr. Cook a couple of times and haven’t been able to get a call back,” Palacio said at the Probation Department.
“We called him, left messages saying, ‘We wanted to talk about Quinten Stanford. We heard you are getting reports about probation violations. What is going on with that?’” Palacio told the camera.
“Taxpayers in Abilene should demand to know why the local authorities seem to be ignoring these reports of alleged probation violations,” Dolcefino told the camera.
“Super fun,” Nova Nixon said in a clip.
“I’m a fun guy,” said Quinten Standford in a clip.
Take the girlfriend Nova Nixon, she posts about Quinten all the time.
She’s a convicted felon.
“Under the terms of one of his plea deals, Quinten Stanford was told he couldn’t associate with people with criminal records, and he couldn’t leave Jones County,” Dolcefino told the camera.
Did he get permission to go to the Dallas Stars hockey game?
“On the uber ride to the hockey game” said Nova Nixon in a clip.
That’s out of the county.
One of Nova’s photos even shows Quinten sitting at a bar—another violation.
He’s also been seen at the local Torchy’s in Abilene drinking alcohol.
“I knew it was him right off the bat. And as I got closer, I saw the alcohol,” said Brent Leffingwell.
Brent Leffingwell, Erinn’s boyfriend, made sure the Torchy’s manager documented Quinten drinking on surveillance video
“Did you see the video?” Palacio asked.
“Yes,” said Lalo Barron, Torchy’s manager.
Brent reported it to Mr. Cook, but Cook apparently never called Torchy’s to ask for the tape.
“The probation officer would have to request it,” Barron said.
Brent finally heard back from the probation officer 2 months later, but it wasn’t about the Torchy’s incident.
A court order signed in February does not allow Quinten to have guns.
But David Vejil says he’s reported the violations.
“Everything from him having weapons, drinking liquor, and driving while intoxicated,” said Vejil.
“It’s time for the officials in Jones and Taylor County to come clean on this deal, because it kind of looks like they may be playing favorites,” Dolcefino told the camera.
“Why do we have protective orders and laws if y’all aren’t gonna follow them?” Patillow said to prosecutor.
People who know Quinten Stanford say he’s protected by money and a well-known family.
“That’s all they’ve ever done, Ms. Palacio. All their lives is cover up for Quinten’s shit shows,” said Vejil.
“I’m a fun guy,” said Quinten Standford in a clip.
“A lot of the women don’t want to get involved, because it’s the past. And they don’t wanna deal with his anger and his access to money,” Patillow said.
A previous girlfriend pressed charges against Stanford in Brewster County, but told Erinn she dropped the charges because prosecutors weren’t doing anything.
Sounds familiar?
“Is my life in danger? Probably. Yeah, it probably is. But I’m not going to shut up. I will not—I refuse to be quiet. I don’t want anyone else to have to go through what I went through. It was horrible. It still is horrible,” Patillow said.
Her boyfriend hopes her efforts to blow the whistle on this West Texas injustice will help other women who deal with abuse, and force law enforcement out in West Texas to do its job.
“These people that are getting ignored and they’re not getting protected, they do fear for their safety. You know, and Erinn’s putting herself out there on the line. She is in harm’s way because she’s not afraid to report the incidents,” Leffingwell said .
“He’s going to do this again. He’s going to hurt another woman. He’s gonna hurt another child, if he hasn’t already,” said Mikalya, Paillow’s daughter.
“And he is abusive. I’m standing up to him because he’s gonna do it again. And this next time he’ll kill someone. He’ll kill someone,” Paillow said.
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