Murder, He Said

Arkansas' Senator John McClellan reached out his left hand, grabbed the long-barreled, bolt-action Remington .22 rifle at the balance, stretched a long, bony finger to the trigger, and poked the muzzle doubtfully into his belly. With that vivid gesture, Investigations Subcommittee Chairman McClellan last week voiced his conviction that the death, in June 1961, of Henry Marshall--a Texas cotton-program specialist for the Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service whose jurisdiction included Billie Sol Estes' cotton dealings--was murder. Said the Senator sternly: "I don't think it takes many deductions to reach the irrevocable conclusion that no man committed suicide with a weapon like this. He would have had to place the gun in an awkward position, pull the trigger and then work the bolt, while wounded, four more times."

In last week's hearings Marshall, who has been ruled a suicide by Texas authorities, was very much in evidence. Testimony showed that he several times had warned Agriculture Department officials that Billie Sol's wholesale cotton allotment transfers might be illegal. Why had officials been so slow to act on his warning? No answer was forthcoming. First. W. Lewis David. Marshall's onetime boss in Texas, told the committee he had approved Estes' operations--with Marshall's reluctant consent--under a Washington directive that such dealings were to be okayed if the applicant merely certified that the transaction was bona fide. Then Leonard C. Williams, a former Marshall aide, said that the dead official in 1960 had warned his staff that Estes' deals were fishy. The Agriculture Department agreed, but not until May 1962.

While the hearings headed deeper into the mystery. El Paso U.S. District Court Judge Robert Ewing Thomason at week's end listened to eight minutes of legal wrangling, swiftly decided that Billie Sol Estes was obviously bankrupt. He ordered foreclosure notices tacked up on everything Billie Sol owns except for the lavish Estes home in Pecos. That same day Billie Sol himself sailed into court, serenely pleaded innocent to a multimillion-dollar federal fraud charge; moments later, his three co-defendants admitted their guilt.

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