T. Cullen Davis, the Texas oil magnate who was acquitted in two sensational 1970s cases—one involving a deadly shooting at his secluded Fort Worth mansion and another alleging a murder-for-hire scheme—has died at 93.
Davis, who consistently insisted he was innocent, died Friday at his home in Colleyville, a Fort Worth suburb, his son Trey Davis said Monday.
The case began in August 1976, during Davis’ bitter divorce from his second wife, Priscilla. A gunman dressed in black and wearing a black wig reportedly entered the mansion and killed two people: Priscilla’s 12-year-old daughter, Andrea Wilborn, and her 30-year-old live-in boyfriend, Stan Farr.
Priscilla Davis and a guest, Gus “Bubba” Gavrel Jr., were wounded in the attack but survived. Gavrel’s date managed to flee without injury.
All three survivors identified Cullen Davis as the shooter. He was charged with capital murder in Wilborn’s death and represented by renowned Texas defense attorney Richard “Racehorse” Haynes. Davis’ first trial ended in a mistrial after allegations of juror misconduct, while a second trial concluded with his acquittal in 1977.
At the time, Davis’ oil fortune was estimated at $400 million, making him widely regarded as the wealthiest person ever to face a murder trial.
Nine months after his acquittal, authorities arrested Davis again, this time accusing him of soliciting capital murder. An FBI informant claimed Davis had hired him to kill 15 people, including the judge overseeing Davis’ divorce and the three survivors of the mansion shooting. With Haynes again leading his defense, Davis was acquitted in that case as well.
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The mansion shooting later became the subject of several books and numerous true-crime television programs. The story was also dramatized in the 1995 TV miniseries “Texas Justice,” which starred Heather Locklear as Priscilla Davis.
By the middle of the 1980s, Davis’ predominantly oil-driven business empire was collapsing. In the mid-1990s, he said his company had filed for bankruptcy because of the oil industry’s downturn—not because of the trials surrounding him.
Priscilla Davis died from breast cancer in 2001. She was 59.
Trey Davis was adopted by Cullen Davis after his mother, Karen Master, married the oil executive as his third wife. He remembered Davis as a man who “stood with his arms wide open, willing to lovingly accept you regardless of where you stood in life.”
Trey Davis said Cullen Davis was “a fairly caustic person” when he first met him in the mid-1970s, while Davis was dating his mother. According to Trey, that changed after Davis became a Christian.
“He became a Christian in 1981 and a lot of things changed,” Trey Davis said. “He took that very seriously, his dedication to Christ. He was a man of virtue, integrity, grit and humility.”