First, it was a millionaire oilman’s mansion and an architectural wonder.
Then, it was a grisly murder scene.
Now, the former Cullen Davis mansion is headed for the wrecking ball.
Within the next year, the 50-year landmark at 4100 Stonegate Blvd. is expected to give way in favor of yet-to-be-determined new development at the home and grounds where police and witnesses said a late-night intruder killed a man and a little girl and shot two more people Aug. 2, 1976.
An insurance company wanted to buy it for a headquarters before the COVID-19 pandemic weakened office demand, he said.
He loves the mansion for its design and grounds, not for the notoriety, he said.
“We shied away from the history,” he said.
Andrea Wilborn, Davis’ stepdaughter, was 12 in 1976 when she was shot dead at the bottom of the basement stairs. Former TCU basketball player Stan Farr, 30, was found dead in the kitchen.
Farr was there as a guest of Davis’ estranged wife, Priscilla. She was living there during her divorce from Cullen.
Priscilla Davis was shot in the chest but survived along with chance visitor Gus “Bubba” Gavrel. (She died of cancer in 2001, Gavrel in 2019.)
Cullen Davis was arrested the same night. He was later acquitted and also acquitted of another criminal charge after a two-year-long series of spectacular trials and retrials retold in the 1995 Heather Locklear movie “Texas Justice.”
Davis is now 87. In 1990, he agreed to pay Farr’s family a civil court settlement.
At the time of the trials, he was the richest murder defendant in U.S. history.
Michael Crain, the Fort Worth City Council member who represents the neighborhood, was 4 at the time of the mansion murders.
But he also knows Fort Worth friends who grew up playing with Andrea.
“I know this was the Trial of the Century before O.J. [Simpson],” he said.
He wants landowners and neighbors to work together on a plan for new development, he said.
The home is a piece of history, he said.
“But is it really a history people want to remember?”
Some of us can never forget.
