Cullen Davis, Texas tycoon acquitted in 1970s murder trial, died at 93

A deadly shooting in Fort Worth

In August 1976, Davis and his second wife, Priscilla, were in the midst of a bitter divorce. At their secluded Fort Worth mansion, a gunman in black clothing and a woman’s black wig killed Priscilla’s 12-year-old daughter, Andrea Wilborn, and her boyfriend, Stan Farr, who was 30.

Priscilla and visitor Gus “Bubba” Gavrel Jr. were injured but survived. Gavrel’s date escaped without harm. Davis was acquitted of murder in the case.

A second murder charge

Nine months after that acquittal, Davis was arrested and accused of soliciting capital murder. An FBI informant testified that Davis had asked him to kill 15 people, among them the judge handling the divorce and three survivors of the mansion shooting.

Fortune and later years

Davis’s oil-centered business empire was valued at $400 million, and he was described as the wealthiest person to face a murder trial at the time. By the middle of the 1980s, the empire was falling apart.

In the mid-1990s, Davis attributed his company’s bankruptcy to the oil industry’s collapse, rather than his trials. The account does not provide a date or place for his death.

A change described by family

Trey Davis, whom Cullen Davis adopted after his mother Karen Master became Davis’s third wife, recalled meeting him when Master was dating him in the mid-1970s. Trey said Davis was then “a fairly caustic person,” but that he changed after becoming a Christian. Trey Davis said Cullen became a Christian in 1981 and took his commitment seriously. He described his adoptive father as a man of “virtue, integrity, grit and humility.”