Final Justice: 2the True Story of the Richest Man Ever Tried for Murder

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 . (Sept.)