The Cadillac Ranch 
Big Feud at Cadillac Ranch
For years Stanley Marsh 3 has been sticking it to the up-standing Whittenburg clan. But his latest practical joke could land him in jail, and no one in Amarillo is laughing anymore.
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Marsh’s supporters say he was doing the boys a favor by not having them arrested. (Marsh told those who were caught stealing that if they would work for him for a single day putting up more signs, he would not file criminal charges against them.) But some parents didn’t find Marsh’s antics funny. After Marsh made an evening raid on the home of one boy, the boy’s father, a beefy Amarillo carpenter, told the sheriff’s department, “If that lunatic Stanley Marsh sets foot on my property again, I’m going to blow his brains out.” To show that he was serious, the carpenter bought a new shotgun.
But the controversy over Marsh’s behavior didn’t publicly erupt until October 1994, when Marsh learned that George Whittenburg’s son Ben, then an eighteen-year-old high school senior, had stolen a sign showing a rabbit with the word “Rapid” written underneath it. The sandy-haired Ben says he didn’t steal the sign to goad Marsh. He and other members of a First Presbyterian Church youth group took it because they had been led to believe that Marsh didn’t mind the thefts. When Marsh learned that Ben had put the sign on some Whittenburg property outside the city, he and his cohorts arrived one morning to retrieve it—and found Ben alone taking a nap in a van. (Ben’s church group had been there the previous night for a camp-out and had already left.) “The only thing I remember is Stanley Marsh banging on the window, waving this hammer, and screaming at me, ‘You little shit, get out of there!’” Ben says. “He was red in the face and trembling with anger, and I have just never seen anyone in my life who was that scary. He was screaming, ‘The goddam Whittenburgs! Y’all should have gotten out of Amarillo when y’all sold the newspaper! All of you are scum! You’re trash! You don’t have any money! I ought to break your f—ing arms and your f—ing legs and smash your goddam feet!’”
According to Ben—and Marsh’s lawyers do not deny the story—Marsh ordered Ben out of the van and then locked him in a smelly dog-run that had been converted into a chicken coop. One of Marsh’s employees took Ben’s photograph, and then they left. Fifteen minutes later, a Whittenburg employee happened by and found Ben.
Although Clint Pierce, who was present during the incident, says Marsh had no plans to harm Ben—“Stanley couldn’t physically hurt a flea”—George Whittenburg was outraged. During a telephone call with Marsh, he asked, “Was your antagonism toward me and my family enough to do this to my son?” According to Whittenburg, Marsh never apologized but did ask that Ben return the sign to its original location (which Ben did).
Still, Marsh could not leave the Whittenburgs alone. He made several copies of the photograph of Ben in the chicken coop and had teenagers who worked for him pass the copies around Amarillo High School to humiliate Ben. When a high school debate team came to Marsh to ask him to help sponsor a debate tournament, Marsh said he would give them $5 for every egg they threw at the Whittenburg house. Ben got prank phone calls. Notes were left on the windshield of his car calling him the Chicken Man. When Marsh confronted other boys who had stolen signs, he would tell them what he had done to Ben. At one point he said he had forced Ben to spread chicken manure over his lips. “If George Whittenburg and his money can’t handle me,” Marsh said to another group of boys who had stolen signs, “what makes y’all think your parents’ money can handle me? I have all the power.”
Finally, after a year of experiencing what he said were Marsh’s “vindictive, Rambo-like tactics,” Whittenburg sued. John Montford, a respected Lubbock state senator and one of four attorneys hired by Marsh to defend him, told the press that the legal fight was the result of a long-lasting family feud that by now had become “an American institution.” Other Marsh supporters told reporters that Whittenburg was going broke and desperately needed money. “A complete fabrication,” Whittenburg replied, saying that he and his son would donate to the First Presbyterian Church whatever money they won in the lawsuit. (When it was revealed that Whittenburg planned to take 50 percent of any winnings for his own legal fees, he said he deserved the money because he and his firm’s lawyers were giving up other business to concentrate on Marsh. “I have four kids in college and I have to earn a living,” he told the Houston Chronicle. “Nobody takes on Stanley Marsh without having to count on a long, drawn-out battle.”)
But it was clear that Whittenburg was relishing the chance for a confrontation. After he filed the lawsuit, he received phone calls from a couple of young men who told stories about Marsh’s sexual proclivities. Whittenburg not only brought them into his office to take their statements but asked them to tell their stories to reporters and to the Amarillo police. One teenage boy who had been caught stealing signs said Marsh ordered him to skinny-dip with him in a small lake on Marsh’s ranch. The boy also said that one of Marsh’s assistants tickled him on the back with a blade of grass when they were standing in the shallow part of the lake. A 16-year-old boy said Marsh tried to fondle him while they were riding in a truck. Chris McDonald, a 23-year-old Amarillo man who had been raised at Cal Farley Boy’s Ranch outside of town, said he went to Marsh’s office every Monday afternoon for several weeks to participate in sexual activity with Marsh. In that same interview, however, McDonald also described himself as someone afflicted with schizophrenia and “fractures of the mind.”
Marsh’s attorneys insisted that all three young men were chronic liars who hoped to get money from Marsh. Meanwhile, nearly a dozen teenage boys who had worked for Marsh gave sworn statements that he never acted inappropriately in their presence. “Heck, it’s tradition that we all go skinny-dipping at the end of a work day,” says Ben Periman. “But all Stanley likes to do when he skinny-dips is recite poetry.”
The grand jury apparently agreed. Marsh was indicted for the assault and kidnapping of Ben, but not for any sexual misconduct. Whittenburg, however, insists that beneath Marsh’s whimsical personality “is a sadist who gets a perverse gratification out of abusing boys.” “Let me tell you,” adds Whittenburg’s wife, Ann, “Stanley has set up a trolling operation. He uses those signs to get a lot of kids into a compromising position, and he takes advantage of those one or two who are prone to homosexuality or who are from broken homes, are emotionally vulnerable, and just want some kind of affection.”
FOR NOW, WHITTENBURG KNOWS HE has Marsh on the run. He says Marsh’s lawyers have come to him asking for an out-of-court settlement, which he will not accept: “This issue needs to be aired out in court, so that parents of this area will be forewarned about Stanley Marsh.” Whittenburg’s critics, however, say he is simply using the publicity surrounding this case as a way to lead the Whittenburgs back into Panhandle prominence. “Poor George was raised by his father to be the leader of some great dynasty that just doesn’t exist anymore,” says Amarillo lawyer Dorothy Ann Kinney. Meanwhile, the citizens of Amarillo are eagerly keeping tabs on the latest rumors, debating whether it’s George or Stanley who is the true hero. In their eyes, the Chicken Coop War is like the last Western duel between two great families. Indeed, for all of its silliness, the fight encompasses all the traditional themes of a Louis L’Amour novel: adventure, revenge, justice. It is also hard to miss the irony that the freewheeling Marsh finds his fate in the hands of a man who prides himself on decency and order. “An eccentric never lasts long because he is always a lightning rod for conservative, moral forces in society,” says Ramsey, who believes Marsh is an unappreciated genius. But Ramsey’s opinion does not seem to be shared by many Amarillo citizens. They are convinced that Marsh’s eccentricity is taking on a cranky, possibly degenerate edge. “Stanley might be Amarillo’s version of Picasso, but he’s a maddened Picasso,” one person says.
For now Marsh remains secluded on his ranch like an ancient Fisher King with his relics, hoping that this storm will blow over. He has told some friends that regardless of what happens in the court cases, he will continue with his “stunts.” He wants to construct what he calls “The Great Farm Hand,” a giant hand-shaped field of maize, which will be followed by “The Great Cow Hand,” a hand-shaped fence to hold cattle. But rumors abound that another art project is in the works designed to commemorate the Whittenburg-Marsh feud. No one seems to know exactly what the project will be. Just don’t be surprised if, a ways down the highway from the Cadillac Ranch, a gigantic chicken coop someday looms over the flat West Texas landscape. “Believe me,” Ramsey says, “Stanley isn’t one who’s going to ride gently off into the sunset.” And in this odd drama, where a lawsuit has replaced a six-shooter, that might be as Western an ending as you can get.
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