T. Cullen Davis — the Texas oil tycoon who walked free after two murder trials despite three eyewitnesses identifying him as the gunman — died Friday at 93, proving once again that in America, a big enough bank account is its own legal defense.
Davis died at his home in the Fort Worth suburb of Colleyville, according to the Associated Press. No cause was given. His son Trey Davis announced the death Monday.
The name won't mean much to anyone under 50, but in the 1970s, the Cullen Davis case was the trial of the decade — a story about what money can buy in American courtrooms. At the time of his arrest, Davis's oil empire was valued at $400 million, making him the wealthiest man ever to stand trial for murder, according to the AP.
Here is what happened: In August 1976, during a bitter divorce from his second wife, Priscilla Davis, a gunman dressed in black and wearing a woman's wig entered Davis's secluded Fort Worth mansion and opened fire. He killed 12-year-old Andrea Wilborn, Priscilla's daughter, and Stan Farr, 30, her live-in boyfriend. Priscilla and a visitor, Gus "Bubba" Gavrel Jr., were wounded but survived. Gavrel's date escaped unharmed.
All three survivors identified Cullen Davis as the shooter. That was not enough.
Davis hired Richard "Racehorse" Haynes, one of the most prominent defense attorneys in Texas. The first trial ended in a mistrial because of juror misconduct. The second ended in an acquittal in 1977.
Nine months later, Davis was arrested again — this time for allegedly hiring a hitman to kill 15 people, including the judge overseeing his divorce and the three survivors of the mansion shooting. An FBI informant swore under oath that Davis had ordered the hits. Davis was acquitted again.
The Daily Beast framed the story around the true-crime entertainment it spawned. The Mechanicsburg Patriot News led with the 1995 TV miniseries adaptation starring Heather Locklear. Only the New York Post bothered to mention the FBI informant's role in the murder-for-hire case. None of the outlets pressed on the obvious question: how does a man identified by three eyewitnesses at a shooting he had clear motive to arrange walk free twice?
The answer is Racehorse Haynes and $400 million. That is the whole answer. In the American legal system, the quality of your defense is determined by the depth of your pockets. Davis had the deepest pockets in the country. Ordinary Americans go to prison on far less evidence with far worse lawyers.
Davis always maintained his innocence. His son Trey, adopted from Davis's third marriage to Karen Master, described him as someone who "stood with his arms wide open, willing to lovingly accept you regardless of where you stood in life." Trey told the AP that Davis was "a fairly caustic person" when they first met but changed after becoming a Christian in 1981, calling him "a man of virtue, integrity, grit and humility."
Priscilla Davis died of breast cancer in 2001 at 59. She never saw justice.
Davis's empire didn't last. By the mid-1980s, his oil-based fortune was crumbling. He said in the mid-1990s that his company went bankrupt "because of the crash of the oil industry, not because of my trials." Maybe. Or maybe the same system that protected him in the courtroom had no use for him once the money ran dry.
The books and TV shows treated the Davis saga as entertainment — a Texas-size spectacle. But the real story is the one nobody wants to tell: three people identified a shooter, and the wealthiest man in the room walked. That is not a plot twist. That is the system working exactly as designed.
