Thomas Cullen Davis (born 22 September 1933 in Fort Worth, Texas[1]) was an American oil heir. He was arrested for, and later acquitted, of the murders of his step-daughter and his estranged wife's boyfriend, then hiring a hitman to kill his estranged wife and a judge.
In August 1976, Davis was charged with the murder of his wife's boyfriend, Stan Farr, and her daughter, Andrea Wilborn. Davis' wife, Priscilla Davis, had filed for divorce in 1974, but in 1976 the divorce proceedings were still ongoing and the divorce had not been made official.[2] Farr and Wilborn had been shot dead, and Davis' wife Priscilla Davis injured, by a gunman who entered their home in Fort Worth on 2 August 1976.[3] In November 1977, after what has been called "one of the most expensive murder investigations and trials in Texas history,"[4] a jury found Davis not guilty.[5] The children of Stan Farr later sued Davis for wrongful death and were awarded $250,000 in a settlement.[citation needed]
In 2004, Billy Vickers, a man sentenced to death in an unrelated case, claimed that he had been the one who murdered Farr and Wilborn. [6]
In 1978, Davis was arrested again, this time for allegedly hiring a hitman to murder his wife Priscilla, as well as the judge overseeing their ongoing divorce litigation.[7] The case hinged around a tape-recorded conversation between Davis and an undercover employee posing as a hitman, during which Davis was alleged to have asked the undercover employee to murder his wife; this trial, Texas v. Davis, has been called one of the first uses of forensic discourse analysis of tape-recorded evidence in a legal setting.[8] A discourse analyst testified that Davis' words in the tape did not constitute solicitation of murder;[8] and Davis was ultimately acquitted.[9]
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