New Leads in an Infamous Corpus Christi Cold Case

Editor s Note Bellingcat Investigator Peter Barth who grew up in Texas researched and disclosed this story in collaboration with the Texas Observer Listen to a teaser for this story produced by Staff Writer Michelle Pitcher William Bill Asher Richardson Jr pulled into the driveway of his upscale Corpus Christi home late on a Sunday night at the end of summer The wealthy Texas oilman was unloading his Winnebago RV as his wife and stepson walked inside Their housekeeper watching through the front window saw them first two men armed with sawed-off shotguns and wearing jumpsuits running toward Richardson from the shadows Without a word they fired four shells of No buckshot sending pellets into Richardson s head neck chest and arms The shooters were gone as fleetly as they arrived fleeing in a getaway car Richardson s wife tried to call for help but the phone line had been cut Her son ran to fetch a neighboring medical expert It was too late Richardson died sprawled on his driveway Richardson s murder on August remains unsolved The event is one of an overwhelming number of unsolved homicides in the United States The Murder Accountability Project MAP counts almost cold cases of homicide between and likely an undercount since numerous homicides from the earlier decades are excluded and not all police departments record to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting Operation on which MAP is based Clearance rates for U S homicides generally defined as the percentage of cases closed via arrest or the death of a suspect or ruled to be justifiable have been declining for years Meanwhile online crowdsourcing efforts have sprung up to tackle cold cases including Uncovered with almost unsolved murder and missing persons cases and Solve the Scenario a nonprofit founded by Aaron Benzick a detective with the Plano Police Department You highlight these cases and people come forward Benzick narrated Bellingcat Even if that doesn t happen just organizing these cases helps law enforcement In the Corpus Christi Police Department CCPD with two detectives on its cold scenario squad began reviewing unsolved homicide cases dating back to April including Richardson s But the city has refused to release nearly all of its files BASS AND OTHERS IN RICHARDSON S INNER CIRCLE HAD ALLEGED TIES TO ORGANIZED CRIME ACCORDING TO NEWLY UNCOVERED DOCUMENTS Bellingcat a Netherlands-based investigative research organization has independently uncovered new information about the murder that s never been made general In a years-long open-source review of Richardson s murder conducted in collaboration with the Texas Observer the outlets examined digitized newspapers online archives genealogy services and declassified FBI records The outlets also filed residents record requests with local and state law enforcement agencies the FBI and the National Archives and Records Administration NARA Two men including one who did prison time for a prior murder were charged with Richardson s death but not convicted The outlets study fleshes out the failed situation against those two individuals and contributes new details to the population record of what happened the night Richardson was killed including the workable identity of a getaway driver The assessment also reveals alleged links between Richardson s social circle and organized crime and certain evidence of another promising participant in the crime The findings illuminate violent collisions between jet-setting Southern playboys at the highest rungs of the social ladder and the murky criminal underworld that gripped Texas in the s and s Community records shed light on this peculiar clash of worlds though enormous Freedom of Information Act FOIA request backlogs the loss of historical documents and the unwillingness of law enforcement agencies to release all files make the full story elusive Crucially a large number of players with firsthand knowledge the eyewitnesses the alleged accomplices or killers casualties police lawyers reporters and family members are either dead or unwilling to speak Richardson s colorful life in a South Texas oil and ranching family was illuminated in older articles like The Death of a Sportsman a feature published in the San Antonio Express and News But other than a single chapter in a book about a Texas Ranger there are scarce modern media reports on the unsolved s murder Family members have described the young Richardson as a troublemaker who attended three different high schools before dropping out By age he had joined the U S Marine Corps and fought in the Korean War where he was wounded and later decorated for his amenity His father William Asher Richardson Sr had founded the Richardson Petroleum Company Richardson Jr built his own company Richardson Petroleum Enterprises Inc He spent weekends playing high-stakes poker attending prestigious shooting tournaments and on fishing trips in the Gulf of Mexico He flew around in a customized P- Mustang fighter plane to manage his oil business Tragedy struck in when Richardson s father having fallen into financial strain died by suicide Lynn Richardson Bill s daughter and William s granddaughter who was only at that time remembers hearing about her grandfather s death A little boy came to the house with a grocery order for and he was so broke that he couldn t pay that so he went upstairs and shot himself she recounted Bellingcat Eight years later her father was murdered in his Corpus Christi driveway It s been really tragic They say there are generational curses There s just been a lot of violence in our family In his final years of life Bill Richardson s oil business dried up and in he filed for bankruptcy owing about million around million in the current era Roughly half of those debts were owed to unsecured creditors lenders that have no right to a borrower s assets if they declare bankruptcy Various were his enemies business associates later advised investigators Richardson turned to the sport of Columbaire-style pigeon shooting for income A bloodsport popular in Spain Mexico and Argentina it involves a skilled thrower a columbaire pitching live birds that are intricate for the shooter standing behind him to hit Richardson was named one of the sport s best shooters and was three times selected to represent America by its governing body CHAPTER THE MURDER OF A TEXAS OILMAN A previously unreleased offense description obtained by Bellingcat in response to an information request adds texture to newspaper narratives of the chaotic minutes before and after the murder Richardson lived with his family in a new four-bedroom house with a Mediterranean-style courtyard in Country Club Estates an upscale neighbourhood in Corpus On the night of August Richardson s housekeeper Mary Chavez was helping the family settle in after a pigeon shoot in McAllen A stranger had called the Richardsons house to ask when the family would return Chavez later described personnel and she and others had seen suspicious-looking men around the neighborhood Police who identified a packet of cigarettes and empty beer cans in bushes near Richardson s house theorized that the gunmen had been lying in wait Around p m Richardson and his -year-old stepson James LaBarba were unpacking their motor home when Chavez from a front window of the house saw two men running across the lawn with shotguns Both were wearing baseball caps and sunglasses She later described one as tall and lanky the other as shorter and heavyset Bill Richardson with his P- Mustang Courtesy Richardson family After the first shot James turned and saw the men firing sawed-off shotguns at his stepfather The coroner later logged entry wounds Investigators described the murder as a professional killing When shown attainable persons photographs Chavez allegedly pointed to two men from Fort Worth Odis Thomas Hammond and Sam Mena Both of them were arrested for the killing Hammond was a career criminal with an arrest record for burglary and a reputation with police for promoting prostitution Richardson was the third person Hammond had been accused of killing according to a Bellingcat review of Texas Department of Populace Safety electronic records and detailed reports obtained through general information requests Hammond confessed to killing a friend and fellow pimp in a shootout outside a bar in Fort Worth in but he was never prosecuted after a witness failed to appear Two years later he was convicted of the murder of a Houston car salesman during an armed robbery But surprisingly Hammond had done little prison time He was sentenced to years in but was paroled in April Hammond had reportedly been arrested more than times in Fort Worth when he was nearly killed by a woman who shot him in the stomach at a bar in He and two others also had been accused of opening fire on a man during a failed Midland robbery In response to a FOIA request from Bellingcat NARA disclosed a -page FBI file on Hammond from a White-Slave Traffic Act Mann Act inspection in detailing FBI agents unsuccessful efforts to locate a woman they maintained Hammond had trafficked out of state Sam Mena also had a considerable criminal history including arrests for burglary and robbery and a jail escape newspaper articles and records show While jailed for Richardson s murder Mena allegedly tried to use a cellmate to recruit a contract killer to kill Richardson s housekeeper before she could testify as a witness against him and Hammond According to Corpus Christi police officers testimony the contract killer was Tommy Gibbs But a cellmate tipped off police to the plot Detectives were watching Chavez s house when Gibbs drove to Corpus Christi shortly after Mena s arrest Police followed and Gibbs apparently abandoned the plan Six weeks later Gibbs was shot to death in Fort Worth His murder remains unsolved Despite all of the assertions about Hammond and Mena including the documented attempt by Mena to arrange to kill a witness who linked them to Richardson s murder neither man was ultimately convicted of the notorious Corpus Christi killing CHAPTER THE SUBJECTS AND THEIR GETAWAY DRIVER Tommy Gibbs the would-be hitman had another never-before published connection to Richardson s murder Police suspected he had been the getaway driver according to Gibbs homicide file which Bellingcat obtained from the Parker County Sheriff s Office Gibbs was a professional underworld operator who used multiple names according to an analysis of newspaper reports birth and death certificates census material prison records and a prisoner-run newspaper His real name was Paul Adams Gibbs and he used the aliases George Edward Thomas and Tommy Gibbs A former Marine wounded at Tarawa Gibbs was arrested in for stealing a car and by was serving a prison term for theft In he and two associates were arrested for beating and robbing a man then throwing him out of a car Gibbs was later detained in Dallas as part of a nationwide sweep of drug traffickers and did time for armed robbery He s described as an alleged hitman in the book by author Lee Paul about Jim Peters a Texas Ranger who worked on the Richardson matter Illustration of Odis Thomas Hammond Gibbs himself died mysteriously only months after failing to carry out the hit on Richardson s housekeeper On November a deer hunter in a wooded area near the town of Weatherford stumbled across a man in a suit and tie lying in a pool of blood Police supposed Gibbs had been executed and that his body had been dragged there from the trunk of a car He d been shot six times in the face with a cheek wound delivered at such close range it caused gunpowder burns The Parker County sheriff s newly disclosed files on his homicide include a handwritten investigator s note that says Tommy Gibbs Lived at Ridgeway Azle Texas with Sam Mena who pimps and in jail in Corpis sic for shooting down Bill Richardson with Odis Hammond Also in jail Gibbs was susp to have been driving the car Certain journalists speculated that Gibbs death was tied to a feud between members of the so-called Dixie Mafia a loosely knit group of underworld crime figures that operated in Texas and other Southern states Curiously only two weeks before his murder Gibbs had been shot in the leg but described personnel the injury was self-inflicted Police bureaucrats never revealed that they suspected Gibbs had been an accomplice in Richardson s murder By the time of what would be a botched trial he was already dead CHAPTER THE FAILED MURDER TRIAL Odis Hammond was tried for Richardson s murder on August Hammond s lawyer moved successfully to have his client tried separately from Mena because he argued the evidence against Mena which included statements he d arranged for Gibbs to kill Richardson s housekeeper could harm Hammond s event The prosecution called spectators who placed Hammond near Richardson s hotel in McAllen during the shooting competition and later at Richardson s home on the night of the murder A hotel clerk recalled that Hammond stated her he d made the -mile drive to McAllen from Fort Worth in a car customized to run on both butane and gasoline Chavez and LaBarba Richardson s stepson both identified him as one of the killers But then the scenario fell apart Hammond s defense attorney questioned how spectators could have seen the men clearly in the dark He also called an FBI firearms expert who testified that spent shells from the scene could not have come from the type of shotgun LaBarba claimed to have seen the killers fire Illustration of Sam Mena The court blocked prosecutors attempts to show similarities between Richardson s killing and a murder for which Hammond had been convicted In that occurrence Hammond and an accomplice gunned down a Houston car salesman in his apartment Hammond was paroled months before Richardson s murder Other spectators testified that Hammond had been in Fort Worth the weekend of the murder One woman claimed she d spent the night with him there Hammond was discovered not guilty and walked out of court before the handcuffs he d been wearing for trial had been unlocked wearing sunglasses and a smile on his face By he was arrested again for robbing a pharmacy in Dallas He appeared to be wearing a wig when he pulled out a pistol swiped narcotics and escaped on foot with an accomplice from the Houston murder records show Nueces County prosecutors having failed to convict Hammond never prosecuted Mena for Richardson s murder But as a felon Mena also had been convicted of illegal possession of a handgun and did time in prison By he was accused of accepting a contract to kill Tarrant County District Attorney Tim Curry a plot that failed Ten years later Mena then was arrested in Houston this time for dealing cocaine to an undercover policeman The police statement obtained by Bellingcat describes Mena sporting a moustache an all-denim Canadian tuxedo and carrying a loaded revolver Both Mena and Hammond spent the rest of their lives in and out of prison before dying in the s Neither ever confessed to Richardson s murder While the Corpus Christi police identified those two men as hired killers prosecutors admitted to being at a loss for who had contracted them or the motive Later more leads arose from the seemingly unrelated murder analysis of yet another wealthy Texan CHAPTER ANOTHER CORPUS MILLIONAIRE KILLED AND CHAINED TO A BLOCK OF CONCRETE On June almost a year after Richardson s murder a corpse washed ashore on Mustang Island across the causeway from the mainland portion of Corpus Christi A fisherman was shocked to find the corpse chained by the neck to a concrete block The police fleetly identified the dead man as -year-old George Randolph Randy Farenthold a local millionaire whom Texas Monthly called a playboy euphemistically described as a sportsman Farenthold had befriended Richardson through the high-stakes gambling and pigeon-shooting scenes He was the stepson of Francis Sissy Farenthold a prominent state legislator Randy Farenthold was also a key administration witness He d been scheduled to testify in a federal fraud trial against four men accused of swindling from him in an elaborate scheme involving the purchase of Treasury notes the men claimed were owned by the Mafia His murder came weeks before the trial was due to start Without the key witness the affair collapsed Two of the men accused of defrauding Farenthold Bruce Lusk Bass III and Tharel Smith were partners in a Corpus Christi construction firm Bass was part of the same pigeon-shooting and gambling clique as Richardson and Farenthold Richardson was involved with bookmaking a Corpus Christi police captain stated reporters Farenthold was hanging around with the same people A break in the Farenthold murder affair came when Robert Little Bob Walters a man in prison for helping with a jailbreak agreed to testify against Bass Walters notified a grand jury that he helped Bass and Smith dispose of Farenthold s body after the two had kidnapped and fatally beaten and strangled him Walters also testified that Bass had confessed to being a participant in Richardson s murder It s unclear if Walters knew more since the rest of his grand jury announcement remains under seal In several other cases such jailhouse snitch testimony has also often proven unreliable Portions of Walters grand jury report are located in the book about Ranger Jim Peters and in newspaper articles According to Walters Bass was furious with Richardson because he thought he was being pushed out of a high-stakes gambling operation the two participated in After pigeon shoots and on private jet flights to the Bahamas this unique circle allegedly placed bets of up to at present on games of dice IT WAS HIS PRACTICE TO FLY A BUNCH OF GAMBLING MEMBERS TO THE BAHAMAS According to Walters message Bass called him on August and explained he planned to kill Richardson later that day After Richardson s murder Walters stated Bass inquired him to dispose of a shotgun and he threw parts of it into a storm drain and into Oso Creek near Corpus Christi Despite a search of Oso Creek executives never unveiled any evidence to advocacy the assertions Bass pleaded no contest to Farenthold s murder and was sentenced to years on June Smith his business partner also implicated by Walters was never charged and died of a heart attack in Neither was ever charged in the Richardson murder Lynn Richardson Bill s daughter advised Bellingcat her father knew Bass well He was a pigeon shooter They were all in the pigeon shoots together she announced Bruce Bass was in fact a pretty good shooter A photo published in a Corpus Christi newspaper presented Bass and Richardson shaking hands after a tournament She recalled an episode at a hotel following a pigeon shoot in McAllen in the early s when as a young child she jokingly pushed an apparently drunk Bass into the pool Her father promptly jumped in pulled up Bass and scolded his daughter Bass was published from prison in after serving six years for murdering Farenthold a year later he was seriously wounded in a shooting in a Jackson Mississippi motel bar Two months later on the th anniversary of Farenthold s body washing ashore Bass argued with the owner of a Corpus Christi club and was gunned down in the parking lot The shooting death was ruled a scenario of self-defense CHAPTER ALLEGED ORGANIZED CRIME CONNECTIONS Bass and others in Richardson s inner circle had alleged ties to organized crime according to newly uncovered documents including FBI records posted online and documents provided to Bellingcat via FOIA requests In July five years before the Richardson murder FBI investigators raided the offices of Kress Manufacturing Company in Tulsa Oklahoma The owner Jack Edward Kress was wished on gambling and conspiracy charges issued in Biloxi Mississippi a center of Dixie Mafia activity Kress Manufacturing had been producing and distributing illegal gambling equipment including loaded dice and altered playing cards which were being shipped nationwide FBI investigators on the development looked at two Texans Bruce Bass and James Jerry LaBarba Bass and LaBarba were Richardson s friends and shooting companions LaBarba was also the ex-husband of Richardson s wife and the father of Richardson s stepson the young man who had witnessed his murder FBI documents circulated for LaBarba and Bass include a mysterious account of a violent episode involving illegal gambling years before Richardson s murder On December two Portland Texas policemen spotted a car stopped along Highway at about a m Five men were in and around the car including two in the front seats near loaded pistols A man in the backseat was bleeding from a head wound that he attributed to a slight misunderstanding and scuffle All five were arrested and a search of the car turned up nearly sets of dice chosen described as crooked along with handwritten lists of Louisiana nightclubs While the FBI redacted the names the assessment s inclusion in LaBarba s FBI file suggests he may have been one of them and the presence of an inventory of the confiscated dice in Bass FBI file suggests he may have been another Defense attorneys for Hammond claimed during the Richardson murder trial that LaBarba had explained them he knew who had really committed Richardson s murder LaBarba separately testified that he had tried to protect his son by telling lots of people that James saw nothing on the night Richardson was killed In apparent reference to Randy Farenthold s murder only two months earlier LaBarba stated the court this was because It seems like bystanders have a real hard time staying alive in Corpus Christi LaBarba died in and his son James died in An unnamed informant communicated an FBI agent in that Jerry LaBarba and Tharel Smith Bruce Bass business partner and alleged accomplice in Farenthold s murder had been working as money men for a prominent Dallas nightclub owner Anthony Tony Francis Caterine Caterine was an associate of Jack Ruby another Dallas nightclub owner who gunned down JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald in Caterine was investigated by the FBI for racketeering and links to infamous New Orleans Cosa Nostra boss Carlos Marcello The FBI informant was identified only as HO -PC Their relationship with the FBI was ultimately terminated for being unproductive However his accusations line up with other FBI documents published under Bellingcat s FOIA requests which connect Bass and Jerry LaBarba to gambling and suggest that Richardson s friends and associates were involved in gambling and racketeering both before and after his death A final tantalizing line of inquiry into the criminal intrigue surrounding Richardson Bass LaBarba and their pigeon-shooting and dice-rolling associates concerns a Georgia banker briefly mentioned in newspaper reports and the book about Jim Peters the Texas Ranger Peters is dead and any reports he may have written on the Richardson situation have not been disclosed The banker Lamar Hill frequently chartered planes in the s to Texas Las Vegas and the Caribbean reportedly to gamble with friends In Hill was convicted in a massive embezzlement occurrence after stealing more than million about million in the modern day from his bank over years When demanded by reporters how he d spent it Hill replied I just don t know That s a hell of a lot of money In the Texas Ranger book the author asserts that Peters claimed Richardson and Bass belonged to the same secretive gambling circle as a man who fits Hill s description an influential banker in Georgia prosecuted for embezzlement The author wrote that the banker testified that it was his practice to fly a bunch of gambling members to the Bahamas and they would gamble on his plane spend a couple of days in the sun and fly back LOOSE ENDS POLICE FILES LIKELY CONTAIN MORE CLUES It is likely that law enforcement agencies files hold more clues that could help solve Richardson s murder The FBI for instance has more than pages and more than two hours of audio recordings related to Bellingcat s request for records on Bruce Bass But it distributed only pages The waiting period to receive all of these files a spokesman stated is six-and-a-half years And the FBI has more files on Tharel Smith and Jerry LaBarba too Corpus Christi PD which advised Bellingcat it was reviewing the Richardson episode to determine whether it can should be considered closed likely holds the the greater part relevant cache of documents Bellingcat and the Observer have argued to the Nueces County district attorney that those documents should be published in the society interest but the outlets are still waiting for a response The post New Leads in an Infamous Corpus Christi Cold Development appeared first on The Texas Observer