July 29, 2024

Wrapping up our summer Edgars flashback with a look back at Final Justice

the true crime that's worth your time

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Over the course of the summer, we’ve done a look back at the 1994 Edgar Award nominees for Best Fact Crime. These titles, published in 1993, include a classic chronicling one of true crime’s most infamous divorces and its aftermath, a sweeping Texas murder saga, a psychological study of a serial killer and the communities he targeted, and two child kidnapping cases (one extremely well known, the other less so). Are any of these titles worth a read 31 years on?

Our final 1994 Edgar nominee is Final Justice: The True Story of the Richest Man Ever Tried for Murder by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith.

The crime
In 1970s Fort Worth, Texas, the name Cullen Davis conjured an immediate association: wealth, admiration, and prestige. As the heir to an oil dynasty and worth over $100 million, he literally had access to anything money could buy.

Then, on an August night in 1976, an intruder entered the mansion Cullen had built with his estranged wife, Priscilla Davis, and began to shoot. Left dead were two close to Priscilla: her 12-year-old daughter Andrea and current boyfriend, Sam Farr. Priscilla and a family friend were seriously injured. Police arrested Cullen immediately for the crimes, but justice would prove elusive.

The story
This is the second Edgar award nominee on this case I’ve reviewed for Best Evidence. Blood Will Tell: The Murder Trials of T. Cullen Davis by Gary Cartwright was a 1980 nominee. It’s a testament to the authors of Final Justice that 520 pages covering somewhat familiar terrain were a propulsive, quick read.

Naifeh and Smith’s disdain for Cullen Davis leaps off the page as they chronicle his inherent greed, violence, and abusiveness to his wives, stepchildren, girlfriends, and associates. The narrative takes the reader through his first (which ended in a mistrial) and second (moved to Amarillo) trials for the 1976 murders, and it’s impossible not to feel disgusted by the tactics employed by Cullen’s team (led by famed Texas defense attorney Richard “Racehorse” Haynes), which include sullying Priscilla’s reputation, bribing witnesses, tampering with jury members and their families, and trying to pin the murders on a dead man unable to defend himself. All of this is of a piece with the privilege money accords the rich when faced with criminal charges.

The acquittal feels pre-determined, given the jury’s clear desire to please a powerful person and their prejudices toward Priscilla, whom they saw as a low-rent gold-digger from the wrong side of the tracks. And because of her lack of class, she must somehow be responsible for what happened in her home. Lost was any humanity for a woman whose daughter was killed in front of her.

After the not-guilty verdict in Amarillo, Cullen had unfinished business. He approached one of his sycophants with a hit list of 15 that included a witness to the mansion murder, Priscilla, and the judge presiding over his contentious divorce case. Cullen’s finances had become straitened by the drawn-out settlement negotiations with Priscilla, as well as several civil lawsuits initiated by victims of the 1976 shootings, and he wanted an end to it. Despite the fact that Cullen’s voice is caught on tape soliciting the murders and that none of the defense’s plays really seem to land this time, the case against him ends in a mistrial once again.

Naifeh and Smith posit that Cullen was perhaps just impossible to convict given the long shadow his wealth cast. This case, decades later, remains a glaring example of how the rich can manipulate the justice system. Cullen’s ultimate personal demise -- due to bad investments and misuse of the family business’ funds -- feels hollow, but somehow cynically appropriate. Excess and greed were his undoing -- the consequences Cullen felt