Mullendore Murder Transcription

Chapter 01–1:03 Introduction

Announcer: He was 32 years old and deep in debt. E. C. Mullendore III was murdered on September 26,1970 at his home on the Crossbell Ranch, by far the largest ranch in Osage County. There was a $15-million life insurance policy taken out on his life, which would bE. C.ome the largest life insurance claim in the history of American Underwriting.

Chub Anderson, Personal Assistant to E. C. Mullendore III, was in the house at the time of the murder and bE. C.ame the prime suspE. C.t. Osage County Sheriff George Wayman led the investigation of what turned out to be a botched crime scene leaving no evidence, which would lead to a conviction. Chub Anderson’s version of the story is not believed by Sheriff Wayman, who tells us how he believes the crime was committed.

Chub Anderson was never charged with the murder, which makes it one of Oklahoma’s most famous unsolved crimes. Listen to 91-year-old Sheriff George Wayman tell with intriguing details the story of the Mullendore Murder heard on voicesofoklahoma.com.

Chapter 02–9:26 Sheriff George Wayman

John Erling: My name is John Erling. Today’s date is September 16th, 2014. Sheriff, state your full name please.

George Wayman: George Sanford Wayman.

JE: Your date of birth?

GW: August 5th, 1923.

JE: That makes your present age?

GW: Ninety-one. I was born the way the crow flies about seven miles northeast of here on Doggie Creek, North Doggie. It’s about seven miles southwest of Burbank.

Mullendore Murder

Sheriff George Wayman recalls with intriguing detail the story of the Mullendore Murder.

JE: There was a house there, I suppose.

GW: Yeah, there was a house. It wasn’t a very good one, but there was a house.

JE: Tell us where we’re recording this interview.

GW: At my home in Fairfax.

JE: Here in Fairfax, Oklahoma. Joining us is Holton Payne and the two of you have been friends for a long time. Holton, your date of birth and your present age.

Holton Payne: April the 25th, 1927, and I’m eighty-seven.

JE: And where were you born?

HP: Out in the country on Little Beaver Creek; two miles from where I live.

JE: On the banks of a creek or in a home or where?

HP: Well, in a home, it was on the banks of the creek.

JE: We’re here to discuss one of Oklahoma’s most famous unsolved crimes. From the book The Mullendore Murder Case, by Jonathan Kwitney, he opens up by saying, “The Osage dwarfed it’s settlers as if they lived in the palm of a great hand. And as Sheriff George Wayman stood near the entrance of the Cross Bell Ranch that September day in 1970, he could almost feel the fingers of the hand closing in. This was the day E. C. Mullendore would be buried.”

We’re here to tell the story of the Mullendore Murder, also called Murder at the Cross Bell, which is the name of the Mullendore Ranch. The murder took place on Saturday, September 26th of 1970. Sheriff, tell us a little bit more about yourself. You were the Sheriff of Osage County for how many years?

GW: I was in the office thirty-five years. Four years as a deputy, seven years as under sheriff, and twenty-four as sheriff.

JE: Then when World War II breaks out you served our country.

GW: Yes, sir.

JE: Where did you go?

GW: I went from here to Fort Knox, Kentucky for basic training. From there to Baltimore, Maryland and from there to Virginia; loaded on a ship and landed in North Africa… Casablanca, North Africa.

JE: What battalion were you with?

GW: I went over as a replacement. I was with the 645th Tank Destroyers.

JE: It was there that you won the Bronze Star for valor.

GW: Yes.

JE: You knocked out a Nazi Panzer tank. So, then you were discharged in 1945 and then you were reactivated during the Korean conflict.

GW: That’s right.

JE: Then you fought in the well-known battle of Pork Chop Hill; several movies have been made of course about that. After the Korean War you return here to Osage County.

GW: Yes, sir.

JE: How did you get into law enforcement?

GW: Well, I was trying to ranch and I wasn’t doing a good job of it; didn’t have much money.

After I got back from Korea, I went to work rough nE. C.king in an oil field and I didn’t like that very much. We got a new sheriff here and I dE. C.ided I wanted to try it. And I went over to Hominy–he was from Hominy. I went over there and interviewed for the job and he hired me. I worked this West side by myself for eleven years.

JE: What was his name?

GW: Dick Streetman.

JE: So then you worked as a deputy.

GW: Under him.

JE: I guess you were chasing bootleggers and all sorts of things in the early ‘50s.

GW: Yes, sir.

JE: You could write a book about just that part of your life.

GW: Yes, sir.

JE: So then you were promoted to under sheriff.

GW: I was the under sheriff.

JE: Then…

GW: He died in office and I was appointed Sheriff. I ran in ’66 and had four opponents and I won it. It was a run off. Then I ran nine times all together. Had opponents the last race I had.

JE: But prior to that you didn’t have any.

GW: Didn’t have any, the first time in history.

JE: While you had and earned a great reputation you also were recognized as the best Sheriff’s department in Oklahoma; by both the State Legislature and the Professional Policemen’s Association. In fact, you started getting phone calls from people around the country asking for help with investigations.

GW: Yeah, I had an old rancher friend over in Noble County. Somebody stole his cattle over there. They told the Sheriff over there to get a hold of the Sheriff over in Osage County to come over and help you catch him; he can catch him.

JE: What do you think it was about you, that you were more intense, ready to work than other people?

GW: No, you got to like what you’re doing. I’m fortunate. I had a little experience in the ranching business and I had a little experience in the oil field business. Then this natural experience in life, all that comes in handy, and you got to know people. I knew about everybody on this West side; where they lived and their kids and everything.

I was well known on this side of the County, but I wasn’t well known on the East side of the County. When I got to be Sheriff I started concentrating in Pawhuska and Hominy

and Skiatook, where I wasn’t known very well. I spent a lot of time down there and got acquainted and then I had a lot of friends at Roundover County, because I was President of the Roundup Club here for several years and a lot of those people from Denismere come over to the rodeos. I got acquainted; I knew a lot of people.

It’s was in the ‘80s in Pawhuska when they ran against me in Pawhuska and one from Skiatook and one in Winona. I had a pretty field of opposition from all over the County.

I surprised myself. I had friends here tell me you ought to spend some time over here. I said, “Boy I was raised over here. I got to get over to where people don’t know me,” when I was campaigning.”

JE: You won that last elE. C.tion.

GW: I won every one of them I run.

JE: Right, you’ve never lost an elE. C.tion.

GW: Never lost. Now I did after I retired; I lost two for Mayor here and I got elE. C.ted once, and they beat me and I ran again and I won again. I have lost elE. C.tions, but not in the Sheriff’s office.

JE: President Jimmy Carter invited you to the White House following your efforts in solving the deadliest gangland style bombing and murder in Oklahoma history. Which was in 1964 when Muskogee Police Chief Earl Newton’s car was blown up; then a few days later the offices of the local newspaper, The Tahlequah Press, were dynamited followed by the office of the Cherokee County District Attorney. You solved that, but we have another story to talk about here. You were with the President in the White House?

GW: I had lunch with him.

JE: How was that?

GW: I don’t know what we had to eat. It was fancy, but it was good.

HP: That Roundup Club that he was talking about, it was something else. How many races did you run down there George?

GW: I don’t remember. It was a lot of them.

HP: It was Fairfax Roundup Club and it was quite a place.

GW: We had the largest amateur rodeo in the country. At first, one started roping steers, we even roped deer, had a deer roping.

JE: You had to be quick for that one, didn’t you?

GW: Yeah, but you know what? They’d put me in the penitentiary today for doing that.

JE: Why?

GW: Cruelty to animals.

JE: They’d put you in the penitentiary?

GW: Yeah for putting on that deer roping they would today, I think.

JE: Oh, they would today.

GW: They would today, not then, but today they would.

JE: How did you round up deer to even bring them to the Roundup Club?

GW: Well the ex-governor of Oklahoma was over there at Ponca, Marland he had deer out there.

JE: Was that E.W. Marland?

GW: Yeah.

JE: The Governor, okay.

GW: There was fellow here that helped us with the rodeo. He was friends of Marland’s. When they settled Marland’s estate we got to talking about what about putting on a deer roping. He said I think I can find the deer. We trapped those deer and hauled them over here.

JE: That would have been fun to have seen that.

GW: About all I remember about it was the first deer; Merle Davis was the first roper. He roped that deer and when he went to meet him that deer met him with all four feet right in his belly. I forgot who won it. When I was talking to Henry Hunsinger down here a while back at the barbershop and he told he said, “Well, I won that ropin’.” I’d forgotten who won it. Henry won it.

HP: So, it was quite a place. It had a fence, how tall, six, eight feet tall?

GW: We done that for the deer, to hold them deer.

JE: Then the deer were released to the wild I suppose.

GW: No, I’ll tell you what happened to the deer. We put on a barbeque ever follow after the rodeo was over. What we didn’t lose we barbequed. We had deer all over the hill out there at what time. They’d got out on us.

Chapter 03–3:06 Background to Murder

John Erling: E. C. Mullendore, III was murdered in his ranch home on the Cross Bell Ranch in Osage County near Pawhuska, Oklahoma about 18 miles northwest of Bartlesville, and to this day it is officially an unsolved crime. E. C. was 32. Eugene Claremont Gene Mullendore was his father born in Cleveland, Oklahoma in 1905. His mother, Kathleen Boren, born in Caney, Kansas in 1905. Her parents registered her birth at the Osage Indian Agency, which made her eligible as an original allottee to rE. C.eive Osage headright.

Each allottee rE. C.eived 640 acres and an interest in the mineral rights owned by the tribe. The main Cross Bell headquarters are located on that original 640 acres. Kathleen and Gene were married in Caney, Kansas, DE. C.ember 21, 1926 and together they built an empire, which at one time covered more than 130,000 acres along the Kansas, Oklahoma

border–90 oil wells. Quarter horses were a spE. C.ialty of theirs, also mules at one point. 600 head were sent to Kansas City to be sold to the government to be used in the war.

They had one of the few remaining herd of bison in the United States. They raised hogs, goats, dairy, cattle, sheep and they had farmland which produced wheat, corn, apples, pE. C.ans and potatoes. They bought a small plane which Kathleen flew over the ranch. If animals were on the loose, she would radio Gene. She would fly to town, to

Pawhuska to buy groceries and other supplies. They built a school on the ranch for their children. Daughter Katsy and son, E. C., III, their classmates were children of the cowboys who worked the ranch.

Then in 1960, because of failing eyesight, Gene handed the ranching operation over to his son, E. C., III, who operated the ranch for 10 years until his death, September 26, 1970. E. C.’s father Gene took over the ranch again until his death in 1973 and Kathleen took over the ranch until she passed away in 1998 at the age of 93. Who is operating and owns the ranch today?

George Wayman: Well, it’s Katsy, her daughter; the granddaughter.

JE: The granddaughter is Kathleen?

GW: Yes.

JE: And Katsy was married to John Mecum, Jr. and he was the owner of the New Orleans Saints football team?

GW: Yes.

JE: And then let’s do another piE. C.e background to the story. A 15 million dollar life insurance policy had been taken out on E. C.’s life, the United Family Life, and they shared the risk of several other companies. E. C. had run through nearly 10 million dollars of borrowed money and the annual premium on the life insurance policy was coming due which was $253,500. He was using the life insurance as a means to get new loans and he was turning to people of all types, which we’ll talk about.

It’s my understanding E. C. was drinking heavily. He drank beer, but he also kept Chevis Regal under the seat of his car. Prohibition laws were in effE. C.t in Oklahoma at the time.

Chapter 04–6:07 Leading to Murder

John Erling: Sheriff, when did you get the call indicating a murder had taken place?

George Wayman: Seemed to me like it was about 10:30, 11:00 when I got a call.

JE: What did you do?

GW: I lived in Burbank at that time, so I started over there and I stopped in Pawhuska, and picked up the assistant DA, he went up with me. When we pulled into the ranch, we met the ambulance coming out with the body. That was somewhere around midnight, I

imagine.

JE: Did that bother you, that before you…

GW: Oh, did it bother me? Yes, it bothered me. Everything went wrong from the beginning. I went on down to the house and made sure that that was the body, looked around a little bit and at that time I had some deputies that arrived on the scene. I went on into the hospital.

JE: Let me just ask you, who would have authorized that the bodies should be removed?

GW: They under Sheriff of Washington County. He ordered the bodies be removed. Which I never did criticize before, because I was always believed if a mistake was made, you had to work around the mistake, and what good is it going to do you, it’s already done. You’ve got to work around it. At that time, I thought I could work around it, but it haunted us from that time on. Washington County got the call.

JE: Wasn’t there confusion as to who they should call? Whether it’s Osage or Washington?

GW: Whoever called in, I think they of course called the Washington Sheriff’s Office. They go out on the call, which wasn’t unusual for Washington County deputies to go out there.

Because Mullendore’s had ‘em patrol the ranch sometimes. And they was kind of on the payroll some of them, so they rushed out there, him and a policeman from Washington County, Bartlesville. The ambulance, they arrived, and this policeman later bE. C.ame Sheriff over there. George Hughes was the under Sheriff. George Hughes taken the responsibility to transport it. Well, had a hole in the back of his head that big. Wasn’t no life there, he was dead. You wouldn’t have to be a medical examiner to tell it.

JE: What you’re saying there was no reason to be rushing to the hospital.

GW: No! There wasn’t any reason for him to rush it. An officer goes out there on the scene, he’s supposed to use common sense. Then when I got to the hospital, they had Chub in a room over there.

JE: Ok, introducing a character now. Chub Anderson, and he was a ranch hand.

GW: He was a bodyguard and ranch hand.

JE: He started as a welder, I understand, and been with him, and also developed quite a sorted background as a matter of fact.

GW: They had E. C. in there, so I went in there and looked at him. They’d called the funeral home. We called the medical examiner’s office, and we going to do the autopsy at the funeral home. We get to the funeral home, and I said, “Now don’t do anything to his body. Leave it like it is, don’t wash it, don’t do anything.” Well, they cleaned up the body. The funeral home did.

JE: Arnold Moore.

GW: Arnold Moore, you might think that’s odd, it is odd, because Arnold’s was an odd fellow. He had dollar signs coming out his eyes. I liked Arnold, but he was something else. When he cleaned up that body, and the body had been moved. Everything was downhill from

there on. But there wasn’t any use for me of saying anything about Arnold Moore or the police department or the Sheriff’s office. I felt like we had to work around it, and we’d done our best, but it didn’t work.

JE: So, when you observed E. C.’s body, where was the bullet hole?

GW: Right between the eyes, and he was beat to death before he was shot. His head was beat into nothing.

JE: What do you think they used?

GW: The evidence showed that E. C. kept an old .38 pistol, an old Army style pistol. It had a ring in the butt of it, in the van. What I think happened, they was having trouble. Let me back up a little bit. E. C.’s wife had sued him for divorce.

JE: That was Linda.

GW: Linda. An attorney brought the papers to my office to be served. And I knew E. C., knew him well. I told the attorney, I said, “Now it’s 30 miles up there. It’s going to cost something to get him served.” I knew he would, but I wanted to make sure you’re going to pay the bill on this. “Yes, sir. It’ll be paid.” I said, “OK.” Later, he became her husband.

JE: The attorney.

GW: Yeah.

JE: John Errington.

GW: John Errington. I sent deputies up there and they never could catch him. I said, “I’ll tell you what you do. You get a hold of Chub, and see if he won’t set him up for us. Tell him that it’s running up a lot of money and he’s broke, and it’d make it easier on everybody for him to setup service.” He got Chub, and Chub wouldn’t agree to nothing, he just listened. Well, Saturday Chub called the office. Saturday he was killed that night, and talked to this deputy and told him to be up there on highway 10 to drive going into the ranch at a certain time that night.

They’d be coming out of there, him and E. C. would be coming out of there going to the car races. The deputy was there, and when he came out he wouldn’t stop. So, they go on over east there and take a county road back up through the ranch. The dust was so bad that the deputy quit him. A little while after that is when the call come in.

Chapter 05–16:37 The Murder

George Wayman: But what I think happened, they come back to that house, he was getting served the divorce papers. He’d been drunk for months and him and Chub was fussing. And Chub had about all of it he could take. Chub was mean. When they go in the house, I think E. C. got that pistol out then. And I think he shot Chub in the shoulder. E. C. shot

Chub in the shoulder. Then I think Chub took that pistol away from him, beat him to death and then shot him. Chub always carried a .25, a good ole .25 pistol. And he’d made up the story where he shot through those glass doors at the getaway man.

John Erling: Well the story that Chub said when he was questioned about this, that he was actually upstairs–

GW: That didn’t pan out. I’m telling you what I think happened.

JE: So, I’m just relating what Chub said.

GW: Yeah. That’s what he said.

JE: Right. He said he was upstairs drawing bath water and then he said he heard gunshots downstairs.

GW: Yeah.

JE: But we should also point out here’s this multi-million dollar ranch and the phone service had been cutout to the ranch, because they couldn’t pay the phone bill.

GW: Wouldn’t pay it.

JE: Or wouldn’t pay it. There was a dispute about it. So if you had to call from there you had to drive what, seven miles or so to get to a phone. Then Chub says I go down stairs, and he was looking over E. C., and that’s when he says he got shot in the shoulder. And you believe that shot actually came from E. C.

GW: Yeah.

JE: And then when he turned he says he saw two intruders run out the glass doors and he shot at them and, of course, didn’t hit anybody. I guess the question would be that if they were there to shoot E.C, why wouldn’t they shoot Chub as well?

GW: We dry-runned that again just like Chub said it happened. It didn’t work that way. You couldn’t hear that bath water running upstairs, you couldn’t hear the shot down there.

JE: So you recreated that scene.

GW: Yeah.

JE: You had somebody standing up there drawing water, and then shot downstairs. The Deputy, I suppose, upstairs, could not hear the shot.

GW: That’s right. We dry run it time and time again. That didn’t happen.

JE: So, you probably did that four or five times–

GW: Yes.

JE: To make sure-

GW: Yeah, sure did.

JE: You couldn’t hear it.

GW: It was a case, if everything would have went right, it would have been worked before daylight.

JE: You would have had it solved before daylight?

GW: Yeah. If the body hadn’t had been moved, they hadn’t cleaned up the body, it’d have been worked before daylight.

JE: How would you have tied Chub to it?

GW: Just like I’m saying here. When you got a murder and you just got two people there, one of them is dead and one of them don’t talk, you got a problem. We had to prove what he was telling us didn’t jive with what happened.

JE: So that part, the upstairs water and the shot downstairs, you could prove. What else could you prove?

GW: I think Chub had a 50-50 shot of being found innocent because E. C. didn’t have too good a record, you know.

JE: Tell us what that meant.

GW: Well lot’s of people didn’t like him. He had trouble with a lot of people.

JE: And he was in financial trouble.

GW: He was in financial trouble and you could line that wall three times up and down there of people who had a reason to kill him. We had to eliminate all them people because, he

either owed them or something. E. C. and I got along great. I never had any problems with him. Oh, I had a problem with him, but it was over a Deputy he didn’t like or something.

Holton Payne: His neighbors all hated him that I talked to.

GW: He had all these thugs hanging around him and he was dealing with all of them. I had a District Attorney, he was a new District Attorney. He’s a fine fellow, but he wasn’t a

prosecutor. Believed everything everybody told him. He’s a newsman’s dream. He didn’t help matters any. He wanted to get the mafia in right off. Well, it wasn’t a mafia deal.

JE: I was going to ask you that. Do you think, and everybody said, maybe the mafia thugs were hanging around him.

GW: It wasn’t the mafia. Mecum, his brother-in-law.

JE: John Mecum from New Orleans.

GW: John Mecum. They were in financial trouble at the same time. See they lost half of their assets over in Iran or somewhere over there in one of those countries, just took half what they had overnight. That happened just a little while before. But Mecum, little John, took

E. C. and went to New York and tried to talk to the mafia who was wanting $15-million. The mafia wanted a cut off the top. It made E. C. mad. He wouldn’t do it. And John says E. C., I’m not going to try to help you no more. You get the money here, just get it and get out here and get it taken care of.

JE: So the mafia says if we get you the money we’re going to take some money off the top of that as a service for getting it for you.

GW: Yeah.

JE: And he said no.

GW: Yeah. He got up, mad, and stomped out. John says, I told him I’d never try to help him

again. Now that’s what the mafia had to do with it. These people was hanging around him here, they was just stealing what they could steal. Everybody around him was stealing.

JE: Stealing cattle maybe?

GW: Stealing cattle, stealing feed, stealing whatever’s loose. I’m going back further. Oh, six months probably before this happened, E. C. called me up there, so I was up there at daylight and he had a boy, number four, I don’t know he was a small kid, he see’s his number four, come go with us, says I’m going to take the sheriff up here and show him some cattle, says I’m going to drop you off up there where they’re loading them hogs.

They was loading hogs, the trucks was there. He said number four you get out here and get a count on them hogs. Four gets out and we go on up there, coming back I said

E. C. why don’t you run off all these people you got working for you, hire you a foreman and let him run this? I said you can’t run all this deal. He said, “Sheriff, I don’t want anybody up here in sink. He says all I want is guys if I put out there digging a corner hole this morning, I want him digging when I get back.

He had that kind of attitude and he was sober. Now he didn’t stay sober long, but he was sober when I got up there, everything was fine. I was up there probably two hours before he said well let’s go over to the house. And we go over there to the house. Of course he had this maid there. He said fix us a drink. We went in there and in his office and sat down and he had three or four cases of whiskey stacked up over here. I said I don’t want any. So, she comes back with that glass full of scotch and water, Chevas and water. He drank that and we talked and visit. Every little bit the phone would ring or somebody would ring the doorbell.

And while we were setting there he made an appointment to meet a fellow at the Holiday Inn in Oklahoma City the next morning at 4:00. There wasn’t a lazy bone in that boy’s body and everybody wants to give him hell for everything. But he done a good

job on a lot of things there at that ranch. He done a lot of things for those cowboys. He improved your homes and had two Caterpillars running 24 hours a day. Good thing, but it cost money. Everything he was doing was going out and nothing coming in. There were probably extras, there was a lot of other people. It wasn’t all that bad of shape. He was in debt big, but he owned a lot.

JE: Didn’t he run through about $10-million worth of money?

GW: Well I imagine, but it was going out.

JE: Yep.

GW: Them women flying to Dallas every week to get their hair fixed, that all costs money. In his last years of his operation, he operated out of his hip pocket.

JE: Out of his hip pocket.

GW: Yeah.

JE: He didn’t keep any records?

GW: No. And I said E. C. get you a good bookkeeper, get you a foreman, but he finally did it. He finally hired in a foreman and a bookkeeper, but it was too late. It was just mis-management and he was on that booze. Even the banker’s was all scared of him.

JE: Why would a banker be afraid of him?

GW: They didn’t know what he had.

JE: Meaning?

GW: Back them days banking was different than it is today. You went to the bank in those days you had a financial statement. Present that and you get the money if it qualifies you. It’s hard to beat a bank today. They know more about you than you know about yourself.

JE: So they couldn’t trust him if he came with a financial statement? GW: That’s right they couldn’t trust him. He was stealing his own cattle. JE: He was stealing his own cattle?

GW: Well he was selling his cattle, I call it stealing. He was selling his own cattle and wasn’t turning it in. So everything he did was wrong.

JE: Well, he ran the Ranch for ten years. I mean at the beginning he was doing all right do you think?

GW: No. He never wanted for money in his life. And they turned that Ranch over to him too young.

JE: He was 22 years old.

GW: He was 22 years old. And wilder than a deer. Just give him too much power, too much money, too much. And the old man encouraged it. I went to a deal down at John Zink’s Boy Scout. John Zink was putting on a feed out there for a bunch of people, not always but most of the time, I was invited. I’d go down there and they had all the ranchers in the county and they was talking about selling the Chapman-Barnard then.

JE: The Chapman-Barnard ranch.

GW: Yeah. The land was in bad shape. Cattle was cheap and the land was cheap. The main thing I thought, most ranchers thought it, because they had that thing sold and the ranchers thought it was too cheap. They owed more on their land than they was going to sell that for and that’s the reason they didn’t want to sell it. I don’t know that, that’s just my thinking. They didn’t want it to sell.

But Gene, old Gene, gets up and says my son controls more land than any one man in Osage County. Now I thought that was a terrible place for a man to get up and make that statement. That was just me thinking it, and I don’t think I was the only one. And Gene was always good to me. I bought buck and horses off of him and never was treated any nicer in anybody’s home than I was in theirs.

JE: But as time went on didn’t Gene and Kathleen see the way E. C. was mis-managing the ranch?

GW: In my opinion and this is my opinion, I think they kept it from him as long as they could.

JE: Kept it from Gene?

GW: Yeah. Gene was cranky. He couldn’t see. Kept an old loaded pistol right there beside his chair. He’d recognize people by their voice. He was in bad shape. But I think they kept it from him as long as they could.

Holton Payne: Well George, him a clearing them trees with them bulldozers was a good thing to do.

GW: Yeah, but he didn’t have any money. Like I said everything he did to that ranch he improved it, he done a great job of doing that. But he didn’t have any money, spending more money than—

JE: Spending, spending.

GW: He was bringing in. Right. Yeah, I always gave him credit for doing what as good for the ranch, but Gene never would put running water in them cowboy’s house. E. C. did. Made it modern. But them cowboys stealing off of him at the same time.

JE: Let’s bring it back to the scene of when it happened and Chub says he was shot in his shoulder. Does he then run off to seek medical help?

GW: Yeah.

JE: So, then Chub ends up at the same hospital where E. C. is?

GW: Yeah.

JE: I read accounts where Chub almost was delirious and talking about mafia and all that kind of thing. According to your theory then, if Chub was the one, he was already trying to put people off the trail that would have pointed at him.

GW: Now I never could get this out of the nurse, but the nurse was supposed to have heard said Chub say, “E., don’t tell them what I did to you.”

JE: Who was E.?

GW: E. C.

JE: He was just talking out loud. E. C. don’t tell them what I did to you.

GW: Yeah. Had them both right there for a while. When I got there, Chub was in the room.

JE: How did that come to you?

GW: This nurse was supposed to have told somebody else, but I couldn’t get it out of her.

JE: She wouldn’t repeat it to you.

GW: No. But another employee there in the hospital thought he heard her say that Chub said that to E. C., “don’t tell them what I did to you.”

JE: Chub apparently was standing, you feel, when he was shot in the head.

GW: No. He was beat to death, he was on the floor, up against that couch. I think Chub just shorted out and beat him to death. When he seen what he’d done, he just pulled him up there and put that pistol right up there between his eyes and pulled the trigger.

JE: Chub’s story in saying the two men took off, then a couple of Rangers, I guess the next morning, they said no, it was only one set of footprints at the scene in the dew of the grass.

GW: When I got back out there from the hospital there was a big dew on the ground that night. The only footprints was around there was leaving E. C.’s house, went over to Dale Cord’s house, that’s the Foreman, left his house and went over to the Cadillac automobile sitting out in front of the old man’s house there, and from it crossed back over to E. C.’s house. That was the only footprints around there. I asked Chub one time when I was interviewing, I said, “Why did you go to Dale’s house and then go back to that Cadillac? I want to know why you went over to that Cadillac. He wouldn’t answer me.

JE: Why do you think he did?

GW: I don’t know. I don’t know.

JE: Is it true there was a signed commitment to approve a $12-million loan that was found in

E. C.’s clothing? GW: That was bogus. JE: It was bogus? GW: Yeah.

JE: He had $999 in cash in his pants.

GW: Yeah.

JE: Six groups of lacerations, they say, in E. C.’s head. Some say they were inflicted with a knife or a broken bottle, but you say it was—

GW: An old pistol.

JE: A pistol. Was it true that a Deputy found a bone fragment stuck to the brim of Chub Anderson’s hat?

GW: Yeah.

JE: Tell us about that.

GW: Well, that’s another mistake was made. This Deputy when he found this bone fragment on Chub’s hat, somewhere, some how, that fragment fell off, from E. C.’s house to the Sheriff’s office, that bone fragment fell off. And it was a pretty good size, it’s as big as the end of your little finger.

JE: So that would have been a bone fragment from?

GW: E. C.’s head.

JE: What I read the Deputy put it on his desk and when he returned the fragment was gone.

GW: Well I don’t know about that. The way I always put it was, it was lost somewhere between the scene and the time it got into the property room.

JE: The murder weapon never found.

GW: Never found. JE: Never found. GW: No.

JE: So, if Chub did this how he could have gotten rid of that weapon so fast or when he left , the ranch on his way to the hospital.

GW: I thought Chub knew where the weapon was. But all of us that worked on it, we discussed it and the theory was he threw it in the creek or something going into the hospital. But

I always felt like Chub kept that gun. He was nutty over guns. I just felt like he had it hid somewhere.

JE: He was a good-looking guy wasn’t he?

GW: Oh yeah.

JE: There was some talk that Chub and Linda had some interest in each other.

GW: I never did believe that.

JE: Okay.

GW: I don’t think he was fancy enough for Linda.

JE: He may be physically, but not his background. I mean he was arrested for the largest marijuana bust in the state. Seventeen years on the run living in Montana under an assumed name, working as a subcontractor for Ted Turner, building buffalo pens.

GW: I thought we had a shot to find that pistol when they caught him with that marijuana.

I thought we might find it. There was some guns there, but it wasn’t them.

JE: No.

Chapter 06–5:08 The Funeral

John Erling: We referred earlier to the funeral. What do you remember about the funeral?

Interesting, I suppose because you had people of all levels of society that were there. You had lawyers, law men. Unsavory characters were hanging around the ranch and they were probably just causally talking to each other. Is that true?

George Wayman: Yeah.

JE: They all had an interest in something in the funeral. Did Chub attend that funeral?

GW: Yeah.

JE: In your mind the man who committed the crime was attending that funeral?

GW: Yup.

JE: Was it a large funeral?

GW: Oh yeah. Yeah. That road was full of cars. I was up there the night before the funeral and the Makems was all there. The old man Makem and little John and all of them were there. Lots of people coming in. Body was there. Was nothing for some of us to do. Gene wanted to take us up to the burial site.

JE: On the ranch.

GW: Yeah.

JE: The funeral was there at the ranch.

GW: Yeah. I don’t know. Ten of us went up there to the burial site. They had a big wagon wheel in the living room with lights. The story went there lots of spurs hanging on that wagon wheel. They guys that was working there when World War II come along, they got drafted. They left and hung their spurs up there on that light. When that was over there was very few spurs up there.

Holton Payne: When the funeral was over…

JE: People were taking souvenirs.

GW: I don’t know if that’s good horses. Pallbearer were on six gray horses. Oh, seven horses with E. C. horse’s was empty.

HP: That was something.

JE: An eerie feeling.

GW: Yeah.

JE: How was Linda on that day? She keep her composure?

GW: Yeah. I seen her but I didn’t talk to her. I never talked to Linda.

JE: Oh you didn’t?

GW: No. I already talked to her.

JE: Why not?

GW: Well, a couple reasons. She wasn’t there and I didn’t want to get into talking to her about something she didn’t know anything about. She knew about their finances but I knew about their finances. I didn’t see any reason meet her, get from her. I was getting it from the old man and his barn door.

JE: Those people were certainly answering the question that you asked. Who were his enemies? Who could have done this? You asked those people those questions.

GW: Yeah.

JE: You didn’t need to ask her. She wouldn’t have known any more than they would have.

GW: I didn’t feel like I should bother her. I respected her. I just didn’t feel like I wanted to do that. I didn’t think she knew a thing in the world about it. Sure don’t.

JE: There a couple hundred you think were there?

GW: More than that. I imagine it’s 500.

JE: Because the Mullendores were known certainly throughout this county and counties beyond.

GW: You ever been to ranch?

JE: No.

GW: Well, four miles I think it is from Highway 10 up to the ranch house. That road was flowing full of people. There was lots of sightseers. There was a lot of friends. A lot of people just wanted to be there.

JE: This is a story that a movie could have been made our of. Isn’t it true that there were those shortly after who wanted to do a movie?

GW: Yeah. That’s what I was told.

JE: The Mullendores said “No” to that.

GW: Mhm (affirmative).

JE: Yup. Didn’t Gene want to build a huge statue there on the burial site of E. C.?

GW: I don’t know about that.

JE: It was never built but I understood he wanted to…

GW: I’m sure he wanted to.

JE: What was Gene’s demeanor then? He was a crusty old man you said. Was he broken? Was he mad at that day of the…

GW: He was mad. He was mad. He blamed it all on Linda. Linda hadn’t of left, it wouldn’t have happened.

JE: Why did she leave him?

GW: Well, because she just got fed up with him. He was just drunk all the time.

JE: She had the four children. Took them with her. And then I read she really didn’t want to leave him but wanted to make him sit up and take notice.

GW: I don’t think she wanted a divorce or nothing. I think she just trying to get him to straighten up. There’s a lot of people who thought like you said, thought she and Chub, they was interested in one another. I don’t believe that for a minute. Never have thought it. Chub was awful close to those boys. The next to the oldest was closer to him than any of them, but those boys he was really close to.

JE: They were probably with him. He showed him the ways of the ranch. They learned a lot from him probably.

GW: Yeah. Outside of that I just don’t think there’s anything there. I think Linda didn’t want a divorce but she’s at the end of her road. She thinks she could of straighten him up.

JE: Did Gene carry that against Linda for a long time that he blamed it on her?

GW: Yeah.

JE: If she had never left that day this wouldn’t have happened.

GW: Yeah.

JE: Those could say something else would have played out one way or another anyway.

GW: It was getting down to the end where something was going to have to give.

JE: Linda said in newspaper accounts that she and E. C. had been threatened over some financial dealings, borrowed money. It was said that E. C. had quite a few enemies, loan creditors and loan operators and so she felt that, and probably was threatened.

GW: Yeah. I know that. That’d be it.

Chapter 07–27:49 Sheriff Talks to Chub

John Erling: Some characters that are around him. Kent Green.

George Wayman: Kent Green.

JE: He had served three prison terms, was building an apartment complex in Kansas City suburb when Mullendore first went to see him in July of 1970. He was asking Kent Green to find some money for him.

GW: What happened was E. C. was playing those guys. They’d called themselves money finders. Kent Green was one of them, he’s the one that had the dummy note, E. C. had in his pocket. Kent Green signed that, that he loaned him 12 million dollars.

JE: But it was bogus.

GW: It was bogus; Kent Green didn’t have 12 dollars. He had all those kind of people around him, you know. They was picking him just like picking chicken, he was drunk, and he had a cow trader or two around there that I liked, good fellows, but I wouldn’t trust them too far when there’s a lot of money sticking out there.

JE: Then there’s George Aycock of Prague, Oklahoma. He suggested he visit with Kent and Green gave the Ponca City Production Credit Association a 3.6 million dollar check to pay off the Mullendore obligations but the check bounced. It was to have been covered by George Aycock. And then, Kent Green and the female companion were actually staying at the Mullendore Ranch a good part of September, but had left the ranch a day or two before the murder.

GW: Yeah.

JE: Was he brought in for questioning?

GW: Yeah.

JE: And, did you question him?

GW: Yeah.

JE: But did you determine fairly soon that he was not?

GW: Like I said, he’s a money finder, broke and they needed a place to hide. JE: Just a ballpark number, how many people do you think you questioned? GW: I don’t remember.

JE: A hundred?

GW: Oh, I imagine, yeah.

JE: So, then there are different theories, and you can poke holes in them. Now, there’s a private investigator by the name of Gary Glanz. Gary was called in to the scene fairly soon because a law firm asked him to come in to be a bodyguard for Linda. What was

your association with Gary? Did you work together at all on it?

GW: No, I didn’t know Gary, I never meet Gary.

JE: He’s a cousin to Stanley Glanz, the sheriff of Tulsa County?

GW: Yeah, there’s two private eyes that got involved in this thing. One of them is from Bartlesville and Gary in Tulsa. The other one, I talked to him a lot.

JE: Buffalo Dale is the name he went by.

GW: Yeah, Buffalo Dale.

JE: Some characters around him, Kent Green.

GW: Kent Green.

JE: He had served two prison terms, was building an apartment complex in Kansas City suburb when Mullendore first went to see him in July of 1970. He was asking Kent Green to find some money for him.

GW: What happened was E. C. was playing those guys. They’d called themselves money finders. Kent Green was one of them, he’s the one that had the dummy note, E. C. had in his pocket. Kent Green signed that, that he loaned him 12 million dollars.

JE: But it was bogus.

GW: It was bogus. Kent Green didn’t have 12 dollars. E. C. had all those kind of people around him, you know. They was picking him just like picking chicken, he was drunk, and he had a cow trader or two around there that I liked, good fellows, but I wouldn’t trust them too far when there’s a lot of money sticking out there.

JE: Then there’s George Aycock of Prague, Oklahoma. He suggested he visit with Kent and Green gave the Ponca City Production Credit Association a 3.6 million dollar check to pay off the Mullendore obligations but the check bounced. It was to have been covered by George Aycock. And then, Kent Green and the female companion were actually staying at the Mullendore Ranch a good part of September, but had left the ranch a day or two before the murder.

GW: Yeah.

JE: Was he brought in for questioning?

GW: Yeah.

JE: And did you question him?

GW: Yeah.

JE: But did you determine fairly soon that he was not?

GW: Like I said, he’s a money finder, broke and they needed a place to hide. JE: Just a ballpark number, how many people do you think you questioned? GW: Oh, I don’t remember.

JE: A hundred?

GW: Oh, I imagine, yeah.

JE: So, then there are different theories and you can poke holes in them. Now, there’s a private investigator by the name of Gary Glanz. Gary was called in to the scene fairly soon because a law firm asked him to come in to be a bodyguard for Linda. What was your association with Gary? Did you work together at all on it?

GW: No, I didn’t know Gary. I’ve never met Gary.

JE: He’s a cousin to Stanley Glanz, the sheriff of Tulsa County.

GW: Yeah, there’s two private eyes that got involved in this thing. One of them is from Bartlesville and Gary in Tulsa. The other one, I talked to him a lot.

JE: Buffalo Dale is the name he went by.

GW: Yeah, Buffalo Dale.

JE: But his real name is Dale Lewis.

GW: When they caught Kev this last time, they called me and wanted to know if I wanted to interview him and I said, “You bet I want to interview him.” Well, I get one of the deputies and we go up to Kansas penitentiary, Dale was there, for some other deal. But Dale practically lived with him until he died.

JE: With Chub?

GW: Yeah.

JE: Then he was out of the penitentiary when he died?

GW: Yeah. He was in a home there in Sedan.

JE: So, Buffalo Dale was with him a lot.

GW: Yeah, also Dale saw me, and I thought Dale was trying to pressure me to get my District Attorney to file on him.

JE: To file on Chub?

GW: Yeah. The District Attorney and I are good friends and we’d visit about it and we talked it all over and how we was finally going to handle it. But he was on his deathbed, Chub

was, the medical bill on him was dialysis three days a week, it’s not cheap and Kansas had him. It wasn’t costing us nothing and wasn’t getting nothing. But we went up there, I think we went up to the penitentiary twice, went up to his home where he was living up there three times, I think. And when he come back from Kansas, I thought I had him.

Of course, I hadn’t seen him in 20 years. I was there waiting on him and I wouldn’t have known him if I had met him on the street. But when he come in there, I had my hand out to shake hands with him. He looked at me and he said, “I thought you’d be six foot under before now.” I said, “No, Chub, I’m still around. I’m here to visit with you.” I took him in the room there and I started off with him. I said, “Now, Chub, I’ve read your story over and over and it don’t jive.” Anyway, I talked for quite a little while and he just setting there, you know.

Finally got around and I said, “Chub, do you believe in God?” He said, “Yeah.” I said, “Well, you know he forgives and I’d like to clear this thing up for once and for all. Now’s the time, if you’ll just confess it. I’m not interested in sending you to the penitentiary. A man in your shape, I don’t know if it will get you in the penitentiary or not. But I want to clear it up before I die. We can work out some kind of deal. We’d have to take you back to Oklahoma, and you’d have to plead guilty and I don’t know that I can do all this, but I’ll work on it if you’ll tell me the truth.” And I thought he was going to tell me. He sat there quite a little bit. He said, “Sheriff, I don’t know how you figured it out, but I didn’t do it.”

JE: But I didn’t do it.

GW: I didn’t do it.

JE: You followed up that with who did it?

GW: Yeah.

JE: And what did he say?

GW: He didn’t say. I’ll tell you what else I know about Dale.

JE: Dale?

GW: Buffalo Dale.

JE: Dale? Okay, the other private detE. C.tive.

GW: Yeah, he called me, told me he had this tape that Chub had confessed and he wanted to know if I wanted to look at it, I said, “Yeah,” he said, “I’ll bring it over.” So he come over here and we watched the tape.

JE: It was a video recording?

GW: Yeah. I didn’t know about Glanz being on it, it was just Dale showed it to me. The only difference in what I think is what Chub said there in that tape. I don’t believe this part of it. He said he’s ex-brother-in-law was out in the pen behind the house. Had been in

there all day, after he’d shot E. C. he got him to shoot him through the shoulder. Well, the deputy then, that I was working with, they thought that was a big deal. I said, “It’s nothing, he’s lying to you. But you go ahead and run around and see what you can find out.” Well, they find his brother-in-law, and his brother-in-law told him to go to hell, he wasn’t talking to them.

JE: Was that Lonnie Brown?

GW: Yeah, so they never did talk to him. I said, “Why should he talk to you? You don’t have anything on him. You got a dead man saying that, what are you going to do with it?”

JE: So you couldn’t corroborate Chub’s story again?

GW: No. I don’t know what he was reading for was, and Chub said, “I beat him.” Said, “He’s the toughest little son-of-a-bitch you ever saw.” He said, “I beat him and he just kept coming back.”

JE: So he does say that in that video recording?

GW: Yeah, yeah. The only thing different in what I said had happened is Chub says that his ex-brother-in-law was out there in the pen, he was going to take him to Bartlesville.

Well, I never found anybody around there when this all happened, if there was anybody around there. Then the deputies, later, they checked around and didn’t nobody know him. They never seen him out there at the ranch. So I think it’s just one of them things Chub’s thrown in there to kind of muddy the water a little bit.

JE: Lonnie Brown was never there then, probably.

GW: No.

JE: Have you tried to talk to him?

GW: No, the deputies did, I didn’t.

JE: So Chub admits then that he was beating E. C. and that’s when he says he got shot?

GW: No, no he tells it just like I think it happened. The only thing he’s adding to the story is I say that E. C. had shot him in the shoulder. He’s saying that he done it just like I said he done it, but he had his brother-in-law shoot him in the shoulder and make it look like, you know…

JE: Those two guys that were supposedly in there shot him.

GW: What he’s telling don’t add up.

JE: Chub was never brought to trial?

GW: No, you had to have, trial is three days a week. I had to sell the judge, the District Attorney that we was going to do this. I don’t know that I could sell them that. The District Attorney says, “I’ll go along with you, I believe you’re right.” But when you go telling the judge, then what are you going to do with him? You can’t send him to the penitentiary.

What if they bring him over there and he’s on dialysis, you got to take him to the hospital, he could say anything he wanted to, really and change his mind when he gets to court. I’m getting ahead of myself a little bit here.

Way back, way back after the old man Mullendore died. I had a friend of mine, he was an investigator for the DA’s office, go to Chub and see if he could make a deal with him.

He found him over there in a beer joint at Dewy and he told him, he said, “I lied to the Sheriff. If you ever catch me on my deathbed, I’ll tell the whole story.” Well, he came back and told me. I sent him back. He goes back and Chub told him he said, “I tell you what I’ll do. I’ll plead guilty to add on the butt.” He put it similar to that, I don’t know if that’s the word. But that’s what I took out of it.

So, I think about that for a few days, the old man had died so I thought, well I’ll go up and talk to Mullendore’s. I went up to Mullendore’s and John ME. C.om, and his wife was there, Mrs. Mullendore. Johnny’s wife was living out there at Rodeo Court and I told

him what I had. I believe I can get a guilty plea out of Chub on this murder, but I want you folks behind us because I’ve got to sell it to the D.A. and the judge. I knew that my D.A., at

that time, was thinking about running for Senate. And I didn’t know whether I could sell it to them and a judge without having the Mullendore’s on board with me.

So, we visited a little while about it and Patsy and Mrs. Mullendore, they wouldn’t go for it. John, I think he’d a went for it. The only thing I can figure out about those two Mullendore ladies, they had all the publicity they wanted. They didn’t want anymore of

it, it was all over and nothing changed. So I never did approach the D.A., at that time, and the judge because I didn’t know what I could sell them. Well, that was in the back of my mind all these years. Then it came down to where we were and it was up to me and the District Attorney, I think, to see that the charges were filed. And we just dE. C.ided there was too many risks for what we’d get out of it if we done it. We just didn’t file.

JE: When you think about what evidence you had, what evidence did you have?

GW: Didn’t.

JE: It was none.

GW: It was going to be him, he was going to send himself to the penitentiary.

JE: He’d have to admit it?

GW: Yeah.

JE: And that’s the only way you’d bring it in to court, is if he’s agreed that this is what I’m going to do? Because if you had brought it in and he didn’t admit, you would have lost your case.

GW: Yeah. If we just brought him back to Pawhuska there, we’d had all expense it was there. And he’s one that wasn’t too good to change his mind. He wasn’t no dummy. But I told him, I’d promised him that he wouldn’t go to the penitentiary. I felt like I could keep that, the D.A. had went along with me on it, if he’d just clear it up because he was dying, he was on his deathbed.

JE: Well, you interviewed Chub in 2009, I watched it and Chub says, “You’re late.” You say, “Late?” And Chub says, “I’m just going to take it to my grave. I don’t see how I can profit from it. I know there’s been books written about it, but it’s just going to be one of those deals that remains unsolved.”

GW: But he changed his mind after that to Dale. But I said, “Dale, I can’t use that. You didn’t advise him of his rights, you never done anything. You just let him tell you. We can’t use that.”

JE: He probably should have had somebody like you there to have caught that confession.

GW: Well, he should have. Yep. Because I always advised him of his rights when I talked to him.

But Dale didn’t advise him of his rights. All he had to do when he got over to Pawhuska is say, “I’m not guilty.” It was a no-win case. And he just died a few days after that. If we wanted to gamble, that’s what he would do when he got to Pawhuska.

JE: Do you think that Chub Anderson told anybody else?

GW: No. Dale Court was the only one I kept was thinking, Dale Court. If there was anybody

knew about, Dale Court. Because when he went to E. C.’s house, over to Dale’s house I asked Dale, I said “What did he tell you when he come over there?” “Well, he just told me there had been a shooting.” I’ve known Dale Court for quite a while. He come down here from Colorado. And I had an Uncle was their neighbor up there. By my Uncle, I kind of knew of him. But I don’t think Dale knew. I don’t think he told Dale. I don’t think he told anybody. Only on that tape.

JE: And then I think I read about Kent Green. He was quoted while in prison, if he knew who killed E. C. He says, “We’re in the penitentiary, gentleman. If I did the thing you’re asking me to, I couldn’t make it to the front gate without three knives sticking in me.” But you believe that Kent Green didn’t know.

GW: No, Kent Green was in a hotel. He was over there in Bartlesville in a hotel.

JE: Certainly, Chub would never have told him?

GW: No.

Chapter 08–3:07 Life Insurance

John Erling: Another story that we can’t get into now is what went on in the courtroom because a $15,000,000 life-insurance policy had been taken out on E. C. that we referred to earlier. Who were they going to pay off? That’s a whole ‘nother story. There were many attorneys who made good money on that trial, including names like Howard Edmondson, who bE. C.ame our state’s 16th governor, state legislator Gene Stipe, Urban Ungerman, Willard Gotscher. Another name was the defense attorney, Pat Williams.

George Wayman: Pat Williams never did get paid for representing Chub.

JE: Pat defended him from the get-go.

GW: Yeah. When I asked Chub to come in for interrogation, he’d come in with Pat Williams.

JE: And Pat Williams was from Tulsa.

GW: Yeah.

JE: Was Pat there generally every time you wanted to talk to Chub?

GW: No, he was just there one time when Pat says, “We’re not going to talk. What are you going to do?”

JE: Right. The insurance companies, in court, were trying to prove that E. C. had committed suicide, so they wouldn’t have to pay out the life-insurance policy. Based on what you’re saying, that was preposterous.

GW: Yeah.

JE: They argued and wrangled over that for a long time.

GW: That’s insurance for you.

JE: It was finally settled. $15,000,000 was brought down to $8,000,000. As I understand it,

$4,000,000 went to Linda, and $4,000,000 went to Gene.

GW: I think that’s right, and Linda got the ranch up in Kansas. If you just think about this case a little bit… After this happened, there was a lot people coming in and got a lot of money, and they still got about 60,000 acres up there. E. C., when he got in so bad, if he’d sold one of them outside ranches, that’d relieve a lot of pressure, and that’s what they ended

up doing, selling the ranch out here and the one over at Pawhuska. Then they got that one in Kansas, but they ended up in pretty good shape. Plus leasing it for 20 years for $20 an acre.

JE: E. C. just had too much pride to sell off?

GW: Yeah, he didn’t know what to do…I think. I don’t know.

JE: Today, then, the original Cross Bell Ranch is still there in ownership of Katsy…

GW: Yeah, yeah, and it…

JE: …and the granddaughter.

GW: …sold, far as I know, now. They’ve sold some tracts of land over close to Bartlesville for hunters and fisherman. No telling what it brought. Outside of that, the rest of the

headquarters is still intact. What he could’ve done, just pull it up, just pull up. The market wasn’t the best in the world, cattle market, but if he’d pulled up and sold off an outside ranch or two, he’d still been in business, but he just couldn’t bring himself to do that.

JE: Is it fair, then, to say that E. C. was born into wealth, he never really had to worry about a dollar, he left OU early to run the ranch, he knew Linda there, they were both going to Oklahoma University, they run the ranch at this very young age, so dollars didn’t mean anything to him.

GW: Right.

Chapter 09–1:51 Could’ve Proved It

John Erling: We call this an unsolved crime, which is true by the standard of the court.

George Wayman: Right.

JE: But here today, you have solved it. You know who did it. You looked the killer in the eye when you asked him to confess and he didn’t and he took it to the grave. How much did this bother you that you just couldn’t nab him?

GW: Well, you don’t know how, it just bothers you. You know, I’ve always felt like one day that we’d solve it.

JE: But even if the crime scene had been disturbed, you probably couldn’t have solve it anyway.

GW: I think we could. We might not but I think we had enough circumstantial evidence to tryed it.

JE: If the scene hadn’t been disturbed.

GW: Yeah. If everything been like it ought have been, there would have been powder on E. C.’s hand. If we’d got to do it like it’s proper, we would have run a paraffin on E. C.’s hand, it would have showed powder. If we hadn’t lost a chip of his skull that would have been great. I think we could have proved it. I’ve work on lots of murder cases and worked them but everything went wrong on this one, everything. It wasn’t anything went right.

JE: And Chub had to show why his gun had been fired, that’s why he said, “I fired at the fleeing people.” And you say, “No, he fired it right between the eyes of E. C. Mullendore.”

GW: Yep.

JE: Well, you’ve spent a lot of sleepless nights, I’m sure.

GW: Yep. We worked hard on it for a long time and I didn’t think when it happened, I’d be working on it when I was 90.

JE: Where you are today.

Chapter 10–2:04

How To Be Remembered

John Erling: Anything else you’d like to say? Anything that’s never been said before?

George Wayman: I’ve heard all kinds of series on this thing. What tickles me today is I’ve got a good friend. He’s a little windy, but he’s a rancher. Born and raised in Osage County.

JE: I know who you’re talking about.

GW: He’s got it all figured out. It was Gene had it done. Gene had him killed to get that insurance money.

JE: I didn’t even ask the question if Gene was ever a person of interest.

GW: No. No.

JE: His hands were clean.

GW: Yeah. I think this… I thought when he died it would free up Chubb to tell me because I think Chubb, that he was afraid of that old man. I think Chubb believed that Gene found out that he done it, he’d have him killed.

JE: You served this county, largest county in the state of Oklahoma for 24 years and given great service. How would you like to be remembered?

GW: I enjoyed every day of it. It never did seem like a job to me. Every day was different.

Different challenges, lots of problems, but I enjoyed it. I couldn’t imagine ever looking for another job. I just didn’t feel like it was a job. I enjoyed helping people, and I think the way I’d like to be remembered is that I done the best I could, that I tried to be honest and fair with everybody, whether they’s poor or whether they had money and tried to treat everybody as much alike as I could.

JE: I’m sure there are a lot of people that say amen to what you just said. I want to thank you for sharing these thoughts with us. This is good for those who never knew that this happened in our state. Holton thank you for visiting with us and being part of the interview. I apprE. C.iate it very much. Thank you.

GW: Thank you.

Chapter 11–0:33 Conclusion

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