Final Justice: The True Story of the Richest Man Ever Tried for Murder

An account of the unpunished crime of Cullen Davis describes how the multimillionaire killed a twelve-year-old girl and then, through the strategies of his defense attorneys, was set free. 50,000 first printing. Major ad/promo. Lit Guild Alt.

Most true crime tales are brutal and sad, but the case of Cullen Davis is doubly wrenching because it is also a story of justice miscarried. Cullen was one of three sons of Kenneth ("Stinky") Davis, who built a Texas empire and amassed a fortune by questionable means. Brutalized by his father throughout his childhood, Cullen grew into a shy, introverted adolescent and a monstrous adult. In 1976 in Forth Worth, he was accused of wounding his second wife, Priscilla, with whom he was wrangling over a divorce, and her friend, Beverly Bass, and of killing Priscilla's 12-year-old daughter, Andrea, and Bass's boyfriend, Bubba Gavrel. Acquitted, Cullen was subsequently in the courts again in two murder-for-hire trials, both cases ending in hung juries. He has never been convicted, thanks to a legal staff that eventually numbered 30 and the expenditure of perhaps $20 million, the authors show. Others have written about this classic case, but none so searchingly as have Naifeh and Smith, who previously collaborated on The Mormon Murders and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Jackson Pollock . Cynically, they conclude that Cullen had the right of it when he bragged that "Money can buy anything." Photos not seen by PW .
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Sweeping murder-and-megabucks true-life gothic, Texas-style. On the night of August 2, 1976, police responded to an emergency call in a well-to-do Fort Worth suburb--and found four gunshot victims: two children (one dead and one wounded) of centimillionaire Cullen Davis; Davis's estranged wife, Priscilla, wounded; and a visitor, dead. The survivors fingered Davis as the triggerman. Here, in their fourth collaboration (the Pulitzer- winning Jackson Pollock, 1990, etc.), Naifeh and Smith immediately get to the high stakes: Worth $700 million, Davis was, at the time, the richest man in Texas and was fearful of being picked clean by Priscilla in their upcoming divorce. Charged with capital murder, Davis called in legendary lawyer Richard ``Racehorse'' Haynes, to whom the impossible was routine. A titanic courtroom struggle ensued, with Haynes trying to convince the jury that Priscilla was the perpetrator, not a victim. The authors' detailed examination of Haynes--part Rasputin; part psychologist; part salesman; part legal sleuth and scholar--is hypnotic and fascinating. Also gripping is their cutting back and forth from the courtroom to the dissolute night life that Priscilla (addicted to 25 Percodans a day) led in the slimy Texas underbelly (mixing with characters like the hoodlum with the ``fleshy face of indeterminate age, ruddy cheeks around a drinker's nose, disappearing hair, a screaming-print blue Hawaiian shirt, and a sharkskin suit the color of lima beans''). In this longest trial in Texas history, Haynes, working against almost irrefutable evidence (``a good lawyer is a master of illusion'') got Davis off on all charges. Fine writing, Kodachrome vision, and superintense drama: a real plum for true-crime fans. (Eight pages of b&w photographs- -not seen) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Multimillionaire Cullen Davis was not the richest man ever convicted of murder, having been acquitted in three sensational Texas trials of two Fort Worth murders in 1976. The authors of The Mormon Murders ( LJ 8/88) skillfully portray an amazing miscarriage of justice: juries disregarded eyewitness testimony--including that of ex-wife Priscilla Davis, mother of one of the victims. Instead, flamboyant defense attorney "Racehorse" Haynes cleverly shifted the focus to Priscilla's drugs-and-sex lifestyle. Three books have already been written about the case--Gary Cartwright's Blood Will Tell ( LJ 6/15/79), David Phillip's The Great Texas Murder Trials ( LJ 8/79), and Mike Cochran's Texas vs. Davis ( LJ 1/1/81)--but this richly textured account provides many new details. A Texas classic, the story remains as colorful, shocking, and maddeningly frustrating as when it occurred. Recommended for true crime collections.
- Gregor A. Preston, Univ. of California Lib., Davis
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.