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

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

Steven Naifeh. Dutton Books, $24 (480pp) ISBN 978-0-525-93452-3

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.)