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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I find it interesting that Cullen mentions Saul of Tarsus, the angry Pharisee in the New Testament who persecuted Christians before finding God on the road to Damascus and becoming the Apostle Paul—a turnaround that must have been as astonishing to early Christians as Cullen’s is to modern Christians. But the Apostle Paul publicly admitted his past sins. I ask Cullen about whether we should follow Paul’s example. “Let’s pretend I’m a murderer,” I say, “and then I become a Christian later in life. Do I then have a responsibility to turn myself in to the authorities?”
He thinks for a few seconds, and his response is something I’ll think about for a long time myself. “My off-hand answer is no,” Cullen says. “You have a responsibility, if you rob somebody, to return what you stole. But you don’t have a responsibility to go public with any confession. There’s only one mediator for sin, and that’s Jesus Christ. What you tell anybody else is of no consequence.”
It’s mid-December, and Cullen and Karen have invited me to tag along to a Christmas party thrown by some of their Colleyville friends. The other guests chortle when they see Cullen, who is clearly a beloved figure in the group. On this day he’s wearing bright red socks that play “Jingle Bells” when you touch them and a necktie decorated with Bugs Bunny, the Road Runner, and other cartoon characters. “That’s my life,” he says with a shrug. “Looney Tunes.” The crowd roars with laughter. I can see why Cullen likes it out here in a suburb where everyone has come from somewhere else, where no one dwells on anyone else’s past, where all is forgiven. Later in the evening, I ask him if he ever gets asked about the old murder charges. “To be honest,” he says, “the only thing people will say to me is that they were behind me during that time and that they knew all along I was innocent.”
Cullen insists that he too has put the past behind him. He says he has not read the books written about him, though he is always glad to sign one when someone asks. “I always write next to my autograph, ‘I hope you enjoy this fiction,’” he says, chuckling. He did see the miniseries, however. He even invited friends over to watch it with him, including his pastor and his pastor’s wife. While it was showing, he wore a huge cowboy hat. “They made me out to be this big-talking Texan in boots and cowboy hat who calls every woman honey darlin’,” he says, chuckling again. “So I thought I had to look the part. The truth is I’ve never worn a cowboy hat in public or called a woman honey darlin’ in my life.”
For a while, he admits, he toyed with the idea of writing a book himself. He wanted to set the record straight; to do so, he was going to reveal the contents of 160 boxes of what he calls “never-before-seen privileged information” collected by his lawyers during their investigation. He went so far as to hire a ghostwriter—of all people, it was Joel Gregory, the former pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, who quit the ministry in 1992 after rumors surfaced that he had had an affair—and they wrote an opening chapter. I’ve read it, and I have to say that it’s bizarre. Cullen and Gregory invent a scene in which the man in black, whom Cullen continues to insist was either a drug dealer or a hit man associated with a drug dealer, describes how he murdered Stan Farr and explains that he did so over unpaid drug money. But at one point he seems to have a beef with Priscilla too: “Stan Farr and the bitch were gone,” the man in black says. Referring to Andrea, Cullen’s stepdaughter, the man in black adds, “I never meant to kill the little girl. She had baked something in the kitchen. Surprised me… She was tall for a little girl. She never knew it happened. I dragged her into the basement closet.”
The book was never finished. A few years ago Cullen threw the 160 boxes in the trash, saying he felt that God wanted him to move on in his life. “It’s not like we have any reason to defend ourselves,” Karen says. “Do you know that during the trials, we kept getting letters, probably ten thousand total—and all but one was supportive?”
There is no question that Cullen and Karen have people who deeply believe in them—and not just Holy Roller fundamentalists. One evening I call Randy Gunnip, a respected Fort Worth financial adviser who is a Christian author and has been a friend of Cullen’s since they met in the mid-eighties at meetings of the Full Gospel Business Men’s Fellowship International. “All I can tell you is that I’ve been a Christian for a long time, and I’ve been around people for a long time, and I know that you can’t pretend to be a Christian forever,” Gunnip says. “At some point, the cracks in your armor will show up.”
“And there have been no cracks with Cullen?” I ask.
“None. Not once in the nearly twenty years I’ve known him. Cullen has read the Bible through many times, he has picked up all the Christian values in there, and he’s said, ‘This is the way my life is going to be.’” Gunnip tells me he kept a close watch on Cullen soon after his conversion to see if it was genuine. He was also there with Cullen during his financial downfall. “When a person gets squeezed like that, you usually see what their hearts are really made of,” he says. “But there were still no cracks.”
What’s interesting is that Gunnip is one of Cullen’s few friends who know the other side of the story. He went to TCU with Stan Farr, and before he was Cullen’s friend, he was close to Priscilla’s ex-husband, Jack Wilborn, the father of the dead girl. Gunnip knows that Wilborn, whom he describes as “a delightful person, a man as honest as the day is long,” is convinced Cullen murdered Andrea. “I love Jack, who’s broken-hearted over his daughter’s death, and I love Cullen,” he says. “It’s unfortunate the situation between them is unfixable.”
“But what do you think?” I ask him. “Do you think Cullen did those murders?”
There is a silence. “I haven’t been asked that question in a long time,” Gunnip finally says. “All I know is that he was found not guilty. But knowing is not important to me. Only God knows the answer to the secrets men keep—mine, yours, and his. What’s important to me is that when I see Cullen now, I see the new man. I don’t see the old man.”
I have to admit that I don’t see the old Cullen either. As much as I was prepared to despise the man, I was totally comfortable in his presence. He’s no longer cocky, callous, or overbearingly self-confident; he’s funny and disarming, and it’s touching to watch him care for his handicapped stepson.
Still, I cannot shake my belief that he committed those murders and tried to hire a hit man to commit more. Even in one of our last conversations, I find myself trying to corner him. “When you were arrested on conspiracy charges,” I ask, “why didn’t you tell the police that you believed you were working for the FBI?”
“You don’t talk to the police about anything if you are under arrest,” he replies. “That’s just the rule I was following.”
I ask him again to explain the incredible story he told about why the hit man wanted him to make an audiotape incriminating himself. He tries to remember the details, then gives up. “You’re taxing my memory,” he says with a shrug. “That was a long time ago. I know it sounds silly, but that’s what it was.”
That Sunday, when I come to Shady Grove Church to observe Cullen, the pastor begins sermonizing about sin. “If we sin,” says Olen Griffing, “our heart condemns us. When we confess our sin, however, God will say, ‘I will remember your sin no more.’” This is why people come to church, of course: to be told that they have a chance at a new start. “But if we sin,” Griffing predictably continues, “we find ourselves hiding, separated from fellowship with the Lord.” Suddenly, he veers in another direction. “Some of you right now are living with a persistent sin, a sin that besets you. I don’t care who you are or what you’ve done. If there is a persistent sin that you’ve been living with all your life, then you have good reason to question whether you’ve been saved. If you have a persistent, besetting sin, you need to question your relationship with God.” I take a quick look at Cullen. He is listening intently.
“I believe that this morning, God is going to reveal that sin that besets you,” Griffing says, then asks all of us in the congregation to stand, close our eyes, and pray. “Those of you who are still beset by a sin, I want you lift your hands in the air and ask God to forgive you. I want everyone to keep their eyes closed. If there is something you need to confess to God, I want you to confess it now.”
Naturally, I keep one eye open to look at Cullen. Around him, some people begin to lift their hands to God. Others murmur prayers. One lady cries. But Cullen, his shoulders straight and his hair swept back, stands with his hands around his Bible. On his lips is the smile of man who is very much at peace with himself.
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