Cullen Davis, Texas Oil Heir Acquitted in 1976 Murders, Dies at 93
Thomas Cullen Davis, the Fort Worth oil heir acquitted in two separate criminal cases arising from shootings and alleged murder plots, has died at 93. He died Friday at his home in Colleyville. The report of his death did not give a cause or an exact date. His name remains tied to the 1976 killings of his 12-year-old stepdaughter, Andrea Wilborn, and Stan Farr, as well as to a later case in which he was accused of trying to arrange the deaths of his second wife and a judge.
Key Takeaways- Davis was acquitted in the 1977 trial over the 1976 shootings that killed Andrea Wilborn and Stan Farr.
- He was also acquitted of attempted-murder charges in a separate case in 1978.
- The first trial lasted 13 weeks and was moved to Amarillo; defense lawyer Richard “Racehorse” Haynes faced Tarrant County District Attorney Tim Curry.
- Davis was born into a prominent Fort Worth oil family and later lost most of his fortune during the 1980s recession.
- The available account does not report a cause of death or the exact date he died.
What happened
Davis was born in Fort Worth on Sept. 22, 1933, into a family whose wealth was built on oil. His father, Kenneth W. “Stinky” Davis, was an oilman who founded Ken Davis Industries International. Cullen Davis became known as a Texas oil tycoon and, at one point, was described as one of the richest men in the United States.
That money and status formed part of the public image that surrounded Davis. They also made the criminal cases involving him unusually visible. But his wealth did not establish what happened in the shootings, and it cannot substitute for the verdicts reached by juries. The legal record described here is defined by two acquittals, not convictions.
In August 1976, Davis was in the middle of a divorce from his second wife, Priscilla Davis. He was charged in connection with a shooting at the couple’s Fort Worth home, the Stonegate Mansion, a 13,000-square-foot property on the city’s Southside. Andrea Wilborn, Priscilla’s 12-year-old daughter, and Stan Farr, her 30-year-old boyfriend, were killed. Priscilla and a friend were shot in the chest but survived.
The reported details establish the identities of the people who died and the two survivors, but do not provide a complete account of the events inside the mansion. They do not set out a full timeline, identify all witnesses, or describe the evidence presented to jurors. Those gaps matter. A high-profile case can invite certainty in public discussion even when the available record does not support it.
The size of the mansion and the circumstances of a family dispute gave the case the elements of a dramatic story. Yet the human consequences were not a plot device: a 12-year-old girl and a 30-year-old man were killed, and two others were wounded. The account identifies Andrea as Priscilla’s daughter and Farr as her boyfriend. It gives no further biographical detail about them, and it does not report how the survivors later described the night.
The prosecution of Davis became a major public event. In 1977, the 13-week trial was moved to Amarillo. Haynes, a prominent defense attorney known as “Racehorse,” represented Davis against Curry, then the Tarrant County district attorney. The trial was said to be the most expensive murder trial in Texas history. No cost figure is available in the account, so the description should be understood as a characterization of the case, not a verified accounting of its expenses.
Davis was found not guilty. The verdict ended the prosecution on those charges without a conviction. It did not erase the deaths, resolve every public question about that night, or establish a different person’s guilt. The verdict is the controlling legal outcome for Davis in that case.
The story around Stonegate Mansion later reached a wider audience through the 1995 television movie Texas Justice, for which the case became a backdrop. A dramatization can bring a decades-old case to new viewers, but it is not a substitute for court records. Films make choices about pace, character and dialogue; those choices should not be mistaken for evidence or for a jury’s findings.
Davis’s life after the trials was also shaped by a fall in fortune. He lost most of his oil wealth during the recession of the 1980s and declared bankruptcy. The account does not give the date of the bankruptcy, the size of his remaining assets, or a breakdown of the financial losses. It also does not establish that the cost of his criminal defense caused his financial collapse. The recession and the decline of his fortune are reported; a direct connection between the trials and bankruptcy is not.
Legal context and charges or proceedings
The 1976 case and the later case were separate proceedings. In the first, Davis was charged in connection with the shootings that killed Wilborn and Farr. After the trial in Amarillo, a jury found him not guilty. In the second, he was accused of hiring a hitman to kill Priscilla Davis and the judge in his divorce case. He was acquitted of attempted-murder charges in that matter as well.
The allegations in the second case should not be presented as established facts. The available account does not identify the alleged hitman, describe how the plan was said to have been arranged, or detail the evidence offered at trial. It reports the accusation and the acquittal. That distinction is basic to fair coverage: an accusation describes what prosecutors alleged; a verdict records the court’s resolution of the charges.
An acquittal means that a jury did not find the defendant guilty of the charged crime. In a criminal trial, the prosecution must prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. The verdict does not necessarily explain what jurors believed about each piece of evidence, and it should not be expanded into claims the jury did not make. For a general explanation of the term, see Cornell Law School’s Legal Information Institute entry on an acquittal.
That distinction is especially important in cases that remain part of public memory. Davis was not convicted in either proceeding described here. It would be inaccurate to write about him as if the allegations had been proved in court. It would also be inaccurate to say that the acquittals settle every historical question about the shootings. The verdicts settle his criminal liability on the charges tried; they do not provide a complete narrative of all that happened.
The first trial’s move to Amarillo is another point that calls for precision. The available account says the 1977 trial was moved, but does not state which court ordered the change, the arguments made by either side, or the reason the new venue was selected. Venue changes can be used to address concerns about selecting an impartial jury, but without the court’s order or a detailed account of the motion, it would be speculation to say that this was the reason in Davis’s case.
The trial’s length and its public attention do not alter the standard of proof. A 13-week proceeding may involve complex evidence and extensive testimony, but the length alone tells readers nothing about the strength of a case or what jurors concluded. The reported outcome is clear: Davis was acquitted. The account does not describe the jury’s deliberations, provide a transcript, or quote the verdict form.
The later acquittal also cannot be merged with the first. The two cases involved different allegations and separate proceedings. Davis’s acquittal in the 1976 shooting case did not determine the later attempted-murder allegations; those were resolved in their own case, where he was again found not guilty. Keeping the proceedings distinct avoids turning a sequence of accusations into one continuous claim of guilt.
Law enforcement or court response
The named figures at the center of the 1977 trial were Haynes for the defense and Curry for the prosecution. Curry was then the Tarrant County district attorney. The case’s move to Amarillo and the trial’s 13-week duration are reported facts; details about the judge, the specific filings, jury selection, and the arguments presented are not provided here. Those missing details should not be filled in by inference.
A change of venue can serve a practical purpose in a high-profile prosecution. Public attention may make it harder to seat jurors who have not formed fixed opinions, and courts can consider whether a different location would help secure a fair trial. The constitutional right to trial by an impartial jury is set out in the Sixth Amendment. But the general purpose of venue rules does not establish why a particular court moved a particular case. That requires the case-specific record.
The trial placed two kinds of public attention in tension. Davis’s wealth and prominence made the prosecution a subject of intense interest, while the jury’s work was to decide the criminal charges based on the evidence and the law. The account describes the proceedings as drawing the world’s attention. It does not show how much that attention affected the courtroom, whether potential jurors were excluded because of publicity, or what instructions jurors received.
There is no reported posthumous legal action in the account of Davis’s death, and no new court ruling is identified. His death does not change the verdicts in the cases. Nor does it provide a new answer to unanswered questions about the 1976 shootings. The available account also does not identify a statement from law enforcement, prosecutors, the court, or Davis’s family about his death.
A responsible summary therefore needs to keep three things separate: what prosecutors alleged, what juries decided, and what remains unreported. In Davis’s first case, the allegations concerned the deaths of Wilborn and Farr; the verdict was not guilty. In the later case, the allegation concerned a plot against Priscilla Davis and a divorce judge; the result was an acquittal on attempted-murder charges. No additional finding should be attributed to the courts without a record supporting it.
Community and policy implications
The case raises enduring questions about wealth and criminal justice, but it does not answer them on its own. A defendant with substantial resources may be able to retain a prominent lawyer and devote more time to a defense than a person who depends on appointed counsel. That broader disparity is a legitimate subject for policy debate. The information reported about Davis, however, does not provide the terms of his legal representation, the amount he spent, or evidence that his fortune changed the verdict.
The right to counsel and the ability to obtain effective representation are central to a fair criminal process. Those rights matter regardless of whether a defendant is rich or poor. A high-profile case can make unequal resources visible, but visibility is not proof that a particular outcome was bought or that a jury failed to follow the law. The appropriate question is how courts and governments ensure meaningful representation for every accused person, not whether a verdict in one famous case should be treated as a measure of guilt.
Venue decisions also have implications beyond a single courtroom. Moving a trial can help protect impartiality when local publicity is intense, but it can impose burdens on witnesses, families and community members who must travel. In Davis’s case, the trial was moved to Amarillo; the account does not describe the effects on participants or the legal rationale. That absence makes it important not to turn a general policy discussion into a claim about what happened in this case.
The people harmed should remain at the center of any account. Andrea Wilborn was 12. Farr was 30. Priscilla Davis and a friend survived gunshot wounds. The available information supplies little about their lives beyond those facts, but their names and experiences should not disappear behind descriptions of a wealthy defendant, a large house, a famous lawyer or a television movie. The case’s notoriety does not make the victims secondary to its courtroom drama.
The 1995 film Texas Justice is part of the case’s afterlife in popular culture. Adaptations may preserve some names and broad events while altering chronology, dialogue or emphasis for dramatic effect. Viewers should not treat the film as a court transcript. The distinction matters in true-crime storytelling, where a screen portrayal can become more familiar than the limited facts available from a legal record.
Davis’s financial decline complicates the image of the oil-rich defendant. He was once described as among the country’s wealthiest men, but later lost most of his fortune during the 1980s recession and declared bankruptcy. The contrast is striking, yet it should not be turned into a morality tale without more information. No reported accounting explains the causes and timing of the losses, and no evidence in the account ties them directly to his trials.
His death closes a life that became inseparable from a pair of highly publicized criminal proceedings. It does not convert allegations into findings or change the acquittals. The most useful record is a careful one: name those who died and survived, state what Davis was charged with, report what the juries decided, and mark the limits of what is known.
Frequently Asked Questions
What was Cullen Davis acquitted of?
Davis was found not guilty in the 1977 trial over the 1976 shootings that killed Andrea Wilborn and Stan Farr. In a separate case, he was acquitted of attempted-murder charges after being accused of hiring a hitman to kill Priscilla Davis and the judge in his divorce case.
Who died in the 1976 shootings?
Andrea Wilborn, Priscilla Davis’s 12-year-old daughter, and Stan Farr, her 30-year-old boyfriend, were killed. Priscilla Davis and a friend were shot in the chest and survived.
When and where was Davis’s first trial?
The trial took place in 1977, lasted 13 weeks and was moved to Amarillo. The available account does not specify the court order or explain why the venue was changed.
Did the acquittals establish what happened at Stonegate Mansion?
No. The acquittal means Davis was not found guilty of the charges tried. It does not, by itself, provide a complete account of the shootings or establish facts beyond the verdict.
What was reported about Davis’s death?
Davis died Friday at his home in Colleyville at age 93. The available account does not identify the exact date or cause of death.
Davis’s story is likely to remain part of Texas legal history, but its lasting account should rest on the distinction between accusation and proof. The juries acquitted him; the victims’ names remain part of the record; and details not reported should remain unanswered until reliable records establish them.