Blood Will Sell
Two decades after his acquittal on multiple murder charges shocked Texas, Cullen Davis is alive and well and living in Colleyville, where he has repackaged himself as a devoted husband, a devout Christian, and a determined peddler of skin cream.
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When the same cast of characters gathered again for another trial, Racehorse Haynes uttered the now-memorable line “You know what they say. The opera ain’t over till the fat lady sings.” Called to the stand, Cullen said that the informant had told him during one of their unrecorded conversations that it was actually Priscilla who had hired hit men to bump him off. The informant went on to say, Cullen continued, that the hit men would be happy to turn against Priscilla if Cullen paid them more money; all they required was for Cullen to incriminate himself on tape, so they would have insurance in the event that Cullen ever turned on them. Why would Cullen ever go along with such a patently absurd plan? Well, he explained in his testimony, he had received a telephone call from a man who had identified himself as an FBI agent. The man told him that the bureau had learned that the informant was trying to extort money from him; he said Cullen should play along and talk about killing people so the feds could gather evidence. Now that it was all over, Cullen told the jury, he realized that he had been tricked by the informant and that the FBI wasn’t involved after all.
The story seemed preposterous. Did it make any sense that a man who clearly distrusted law enforcement after his first arrest would have gone along with the plan without ever meeting the agent in person—or at least without some kind of immunity agreement? And if Cullen really did think that he was working with the FBI, why didn’t he tell the police that when he was arrested? Why, instead, did he hide his face as the authorities swooped in to nab him?
For a second time, though, a jury wasn’t troubled by the evidence presented against Cullen. In November 1979 he was acquitted again, and he and Karen got to repeat their triumphant wave as they left the courthouse.
Just when it seemed that there were no more surprises left in the story, Cullen announced in the spring of 1980 that he and Karen had been meeting with Dallas-area evangelist James Robison and that they had decided to turn over their lives to Jesus Christ. Cullen hosted a revival on the lawn of the mansion, which he had taken back from Priscilla as part of the divorce settlement, and he and Robison later destroyed more than a million dollars’ worth of jade, ivory, and gold objects because they honored what he called false gods. He began giving his testimony around the Metroplex; he even gave a speech to a packed crowd at Reunion Arena.
I remember that I roared with laughter when I heard about it: Was anyone on earth going to believe that Stinky Davis’ kid had found God? Yet here I was, twenty years later, sitting in Cullen’s living room, listening to him say, “All I care about is living for Jesus and doing what the Bible says to do.”
Of all the twists and turns in the Davis saga, Cullen’s conversion is the one that perplexes me the most. At first I assumed he was using religion to cleanse his conscience. Or maybe he had made some kind of desperate prayer years ago when he was on trial, promising that he would live the rest of his life in loyal service if God would keep him out of prison. Maybe he thought that if he acted like a Christian, people would decide that he couldn’t have been a murderer after all. Whatever he was doing, I figured it was only a matter of time before he went back to his old ways.
Yet Cullen kept at it. He became president of the Fort Worth chapter of the Full Gospel Business Men’s Fellowship, and he founded the Fort Worth chapter of the Religious Round Table. He started delivering lectures on such subjects as creationism. Within a few years, he was leading seminars on “spiritual warfare”—how to combat demons or comfort those who were suffering from “spiritual calamity.” Some fundamentalists swore they had heard demons “cry out” when Cullen prayed for them and touched them. “Satan,” he would have people shout, “I declare myself loose from you and your demons! I break off all curses!”
In the mid-eighties, largely because of falling oil prices and a depressed real estate market, Cullen’s entire financial empire underwent a startling collapse. A federal judge wrested Kendavis Industries from the hands of Cullen and Ken and gave it to a consortium of banks that were owed $400 million. Cullen himself filed for personal bankruptcy, claiming he had $200 million in unpaid loans; he had to sell everything except his home and his Cadillac. It was a devastating series of events—in one fell swoop, his entire net worth was gone—but when I ask him about those dark days, he tells me, “The Lord brought me down financially as a blessing. He broke me of my worship of work and money. For too long, all I thought about was business. My idol was business. I needed to be humbled. And this was how God did it.”
Even though Cullen eventually sold the mansion—one of the subsequent owners, morbidly hoping to make a buck off its horrific history, turned it into a steakhouse and then a Mexican restaurant, both of which failed—he and Karen remained in Fort Worth, living at the edge of a country club golf course on the eastern part of town. By the nineties, reporters had tired of writing about “born-again Cullen.” Because his novelty on the Christian circuit had also worn off, he was no longer making as many appearances at churches, though he was still doing curious and interesting things: He went to Eastern Europe to do missionary work, for instance, and he and Karen flew to Los Angeles to spend a day preaching the gospel to John DeLorean, another multimillionaire miraculously acquitted of what seemed to be airtight criminal charges.
In 1994, after a fire damaged the attic of the Davises’ Fort Worth home, they moved to the rapidly growing suburb of Colleyville, a city of 19,500 or so near DFW Airport. Their new neighbors were mostly young upscale couples who didn’t recognize them. They joined the Chamber of Commerce and, according to Colleyville’s mayor, Donna Arp, “quickly established themselves as very positive influences in Colleyville, committed to contributing to our town.” Karen volunteered for several civic organizations, became a member of the Colleyville Woman’s Club, and participated in various Christian women’s groups.
For his part, Cullen began a new career: selling skin cream. He set up an office in his home and started visiting various companies so he could peddle his wares to their employees. During my evening at his home, when I ask if I can see the cream, he shoots me a boyish look and says, “What if I give you a demonstration?”
He walks to the kitchen table and puts a sheet of tinfoil over a plastic cup, then pours some acid from a small medicine vial onto the foil. Immediately, the acid burns a hole through it. “Do you realize that the same acid would burn a hole in my hand in five seconds?” he asks. Then he starts rubbing an aloe vera-fortified cream called Skin Pro-Tec II all over his hands. “But this cream,” he says, “can protect a worker’s hands from all chemicals for a limited period of time, from all detergents, from too much sun, from poison ivy and poison oak, and from bites from insects such as fire ants, mosquitoes, and ticks.” He pours the same acid onto his hands that he poured onto the tinfoil. Nothing happens. Thirty seconds later, he washes off his hands with a wet tissue, smiles contentedly, and holds the bottle of Skin Pro-Tec II in front of me. “This cream is perfect for everyone from mechanics to outdoor workers,” he says.
I cannot believe I am witnessing this scene. Cullen Davis—one of the four hundred richest Americans in 1983, according to Forbes magazine—is acting like a salesman putting on one of those cheesy shows at the State Fair of Texas. Yet as much as I want to laugh, I’m a little awestruck that he could do something so humbling.
“Do you ever miss your old life?” I ask during another visit to his home. “Do you ever miss those days when you and your brothers ran a billion-dollar corporation?”
“None of that interests me now,” he says with a patient smile. “I’m in such a different place than I was twenty years ago; I’ve been so transformed by God’s grace that I’m not sure I can even remember the person I used to be.”
“You mean God has cleansed you of your past sins?”
“Yes.”
“You confessed your sins to God, and He forgave you?”
“That’s right.”
I pause, and then I decide to ask him the question I’ve wanted to ask for a long time. “Did you ask God to forgive you for being a murderer?”
I have no idea what will happen next. I wonder if he will explode and order me out of his house. At the least, I’m waiting for the cold, glassy stare he used to give all the witnesses who testified against him. Yet he doesn’t seem to be the slightest bit offended. He smiles at me benevolently, like a loving father tolerating an impertinent son. “You don’t have to ask God to forgive you for something that you did not do,” he says, and then he smiles at me again.
I try one more time. “Well, let’s just say you did commit murder. Would God forgive such a significant sin?”
“He forgives any sin,” Cullen says. “He forgave King David of murder. He forgave Moses of murder. He forgave Saul of murder. If you ask for forgiveness, you are forgiven.”
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