T. Cullen Davis, Named By Three Survivors As His Mansion's Masked Gunman, Dies Free At 93
T. Cullen Davis, once the richest man in America ever tried for murder, died Friday at 93 — free, wealthy, and decades removed from the night three survivors swore under oath he was the masked gunman who killed a 12-year-old girl in his own mansion.
Case at a glance
- T. Cullen Davis — Texas oil tycoon, acquitted twice, accused
- Andrea Wilborn — 12-year-old killed in the 1976 mansion shooting, victim
- Stan Farr — 30-year-old boyfriend of Priscilla Davis, killed in the shooting, victim
- Priscilla Davis — Wounded survivor, later died of cancer in 2001, victim
- Gus "Bubba" Gavrel Jr. — Wounded survivor of the mansion shooting, victim
Next: There is no pending hearing or appeal — both of Davis's trials ended in final acquittals decades ago, and prosecutors dropped the remaining charges after the 1979 verdict. The only thing ahead is the historical record itself: Davis died Friday, November 6, 2026, at his home in Colleyville, Texas, and the case remains closed, revisited mainly through books, documentaries, and retrospectives like CBS's 2017 "48 Hours" episode.
The night at Stonegate Mansion
On the night of August 2, 1976, Priscilla Davis and her boyfriend, Stan Farr, came home to Stonegate Mansion, the sprawling Fort Worth estate sitting on more than 100 acres that Priscilla shared with her estranged husband, oil heir T. Cullen Davis, during their contentious divorce. Waiting inside was a gunman dressed in black, wearing a woman's black wig.
The gunman shot Stan Farr dead. Reports differ on his age — The Independent puts him at 30, NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth at 20 — but every outlet agrees he was Priscilla's live-in boyfriend and a former TCU basketball player. Priscilla Davis was shot too, but survived and escaped the house.
Investigators found Priscilla's 12-year-old daughter, Andrea Wilborn, dead in a basement utility room. A third victim, Gus "Bubba" Gavrel Jr., had arrived at the mansion that evening with a date, Beverly Bass. Gavrel was shot and left paralyzed from the waist down. Bass ran and escaped unharmed.
Priscilla Davis, Gavrel, and Bass all identified Cullen Davis as the gunman, according to the Dallas Morning News. He denied it from the start and never stopped.
Who was in that house
T. Cullen Davis was a vice president of Kendavis Industries International, the oil business his father built into a fortune the Houston Chronicle and The Independent both put near $400 million. At the time of his 1977 trial, he was described as the wealthiest man ever to stand trial for murder in the United States.
Priscilla Davis was his second wife, locked in a bitter divorce with him when the shooting happened. She died of breast cancer in 2001 at 59, according to The Independent.
Andrea Wilborn, 12, was Priscilla's daughter from a prior relationship — Cullen Davis's stepdaughter. Stan Farr was Priscilla's boyfriend. Gus Gavrel and Beverly Bass were guests at the mansion that night, with no reported connection to the Davis divorce.
Trey Davis, Cullen Davis's son — later adopted by him when Trey's mother, Karen Master, became Cullen Davis's third wife — confirmed his father's death to multiple outlets, including the Associated Press and the Dallas Morning News.
"He became a Christian in 1981 and a lot of things changed... He was a man of virtue, integrity, grit and humility." — Trey Davis, to The Independent
Two trials, two acquittals
Davis was charged with capital murder in Andrea Wilborn's death. His first trial ended in a mistrial during jury selection in Fort Worth because of juror misconduct, and the case moved to Amarillo. Defended by prominent Texas attorney Richard "Racehorse" Haynes, Davis was acquitted on November 17, 1977.
Nine months after that verdict, Davis was arrested again — this time on a charge of soliciting capital murder. An FBI informant swore that Davis had ordered him to kill 15 people, including Judge Joe H. Eidson Jr., who had presided over the Davis divorce, and the three survivors who had named Davis as the mansion shooter.
That case went to trial twice. The first ended in a hung jury; a 1979 retrial, with Haynes again at the defense table, ended in a second acquittal. Prosecutors then dropped the remaining charges tied to the mansion shootings, including the charge in Stan Farr's death, according to the Dallas Morning News.
Davis was never convicted of any crime connected to that night. By 1987, his oil empire and the family business were both in bankruptcy proceedings. He later sold the mansion.
What he said, what his family says now
Davis maintained his innocence for the rest of his life. When CBS's "48 Hours" revisited the case in 2017, he again denied shooting any of the four victims, according to the Dallas Morning News.
He pointed instead to a religious turn. He told interviewers in the mid-1990s that his business collapsed "because of the crash of the oil industry, not because of my trials," as reported by The Independent.
His son described the change directly: "He became a Christian in 1981 and a lot of things changed," Trey Davis said. "He took that very seriously, his dedication to Christ. He was a man of virtue, integrity, grit and humility," he told The Independent.
Trey Davis also recalled meeting Cullen Davis in the mid-1970s, before the conversion, when he was "a fairly caustic person" — a contrast Trey drew explicitly between the man before and after 1981, per The Independent.
What happens next
There is no pending hearing or appeal — both of Davis's trials ended in final acquittals decades ago, and prosecutors dropped the remaining charges after the 1979 verdict. The only thing ahead is the historical record itself: Davis died Friday, November 6, 2026, at his home in Colleyville, Texas, and the case remains closed, revisited mainly through books, documentaries, and retrospectives like CBS's 2017 "48 Hours" episode.
How this plays in court
A prosecutor looks at this case and sees the eyewitness problem in its starkest form: three separate people who were in that house — Priscilla Davis, Gus Gavrel, and Beverly Bass — each identified the same man as the shooter. That is normally the kind of corroboration a prosecutor dreams of. It wasn't enough here.
The defense's path to two acquittals ran through reasonable doubt on identification in low light, under gunfire, by people who knew Cullen Davis personally and may have had motive to name him given the ongoing, bitter divorce. Richard "Racehorse" Haynes didn't need to prove Davis innocent — he needed one juror, twice, to hold onto doubt about whether a wig and darkness made eyewitness certainty unreliable.
The second case — the murder-for-hire charge built on an FBI informant's word — shows why jurors are instructed to weigh paid or cooperating witnesses with extra skepticism. An informant's account of being told to kill 15 people, including a sitting judge, is explosive, but a jury has to believe that witness beyond a reasonable doubt, and twice they didn't.
What a jury ultimately weighs in a case like this is the gap between strong suspicion and legal certainty. Three witnesses naming the same man is powerful, but not automatically conclusive — and when it fails to convict twice, the law's answer is final: not guilty, regardless of how the public record remembers the night at Stonegate Mansion.
- Newswav: T. Cullen Davis, Named By Three Survivors As His Mansion's Masked Gunman, Dies Free At 93
- D Magazine: T. Cullen Davis, One of Fort Worth's Most Notorious Residents, Is Dead
- Dallas News: Fort Worth oil heir T. Cullen Davis dies 50 years after mansion shootings
- Houston Chronicle: T. Cullen Davis, acquitted in a nationally watched Texas murder case, dies at 93
- NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth: T. Cullen Davis, Texas oil millionaire acquitted in Fort Worth mansion murders, dies at 93