William Burroughs - The importance of Joan Vollmer

He marries Joan.
When his wife Joan became pregnant with their son Billy in 1947,
Burroughs developed a seemingly failsafe idea how to support his growing family. So he had an idea: to rented a farm in Texas, grown marihuana there, and sell the crop on the New York drug market.
He did rent a farm, grew the crop, but did not dry it the proper way, and thus was unable to sell it in New York.
So he moved from Texas to New Orleans with his family. There he was detained for posession of dangerous drugs, and fled the country to Mexico City. Here Burroughs and his wife became heavily addicted to all the drugs available.

But the worse was about to happen.
In 1951, Burroughs shot and killed Joan in a drunken game of 'William Tell'.
He spent 13 days in jail before the killing was ruled "criminal imprudence", and was released on bail.
He was never the same ever since.



Joan Vollmer in 1946, at the time of her marriage
with Burroughs.