"Who Do You Want Next?"

A Texas millionaire finds himself in deep trouble

"I got Judge Eidson dead I for you."

"Good," came the reply.

"I'll get the rest of them dead for you. You want a bunch of people dead, right?"

"All right."

T. (for Thomas) Cullen Davis, 44, one of the richest men in Texas, listened without expression as the tapes of that conversation were played in court last week in Fort Worth, Texas. At his side sat Rich ard ("Racehorse") Haynes, chief of the defense team that has so far cost Davis $4 million in more than two years of legal proceedings arising from his pending divorce and the shooting of his estranged wife, her lover, her daughter and a guest. Testifying against Davis was his former employee, burly, baby-faced David McCrory, the man he had allegedly met in the Coo Coo's Famous Hamburger parking lot to arrange the murder of 15 people on a hit list.

What Davis did not know at the time was that McCrory had gone to the FBI and told its agents about the hit offer. The FBI then planted a tape recorder on McCrory, provided him with fake pictures of "dead" Judge Eidson splattered with imitation blood, and later filmed the meeting between the two. Agents reported that they had watched and photo graphed as Davis paid McCrory $25,000 in used $100 bills. Then they arrested him for solicitation of murder. Now, in court, Davis sat and listened as McCrory's voice came over the tape asking, "Who do you want next?" Replied the voice that sounded remarkably like his own: "The ones we talked about."

Judge Joe Eidson was a natural candidate for such a list because he has been presiding over the divorce court in which Davis and his wife are fighting. He originally awarded Priscilla Davis support payments of $2,500 per month, then raised the amount to $5,000. He gave her possession of the Davises' new $6 million mansion and forbade Davis to dispose of any assets (he is head of Kendavis Industries, an international conglomerate founded by his father).

After Judge Eidson made those rulings, a gunman wearing a black wig broke into the Davis mansion. He wounded Priscilla and a friend, "Bubba" Gavrel, and murdered her lover, ex-Basketball Player Stan Farr, and her daughter by a previous marriage, twelve-year-old Andrea Wilborn. Four hours later, police arrested Davis at his girlfriend's home and charged him with being the gunman.

Davis' trial last summer for the murder of young Andrea lasted 20 weeks, the longest and most expensive murder trial in Texas history. It involved lurid testimony about sex and drug orgies at the mansion, all designed to discredit Priscilla's testimony against her husband. He was acquitted and released on $325,000 bail to await trial for the other shootings. But before the second trial could start, McCrory went to the FBI with his tale of the hit list. It included, besides Judge Eidson, the wounded family friend, "Bubba" Gavrel, who at the first trial had fingered Davis as the gunman, and Judge Tom Cave, who had originally denied him bail and thus forced him to spend 15 months in jail. And, of course, Priscilla.

Some of the spectators who packed the courtroom last week for the bond hearing are actually fans of Davis' and have followed his trials for two years. Many are bleached blondes, with heavy makeup and flashy jewelry, resembling Priscilla or Davis' girlfriend, Karen Master. They chew gum and file their nails during the proceedings. During the recesses, they talk of their fondness for the various participants, especially the darkly handsome Davis, as if they were favorite characters on a television soap opera. Says one spectator, Mrs. Texas Methven, a middle-aged retired secretary: "I'm praying for him. He's a good businessman and looks nice. He'd be a good Christian if he could settle down with Karen." One popular pastime is comparing Karen, 29, who nervously smokes in the hallways during recesses, to Priscilla, 37, who no longer dresses as flamboyantly as in the days when she was known to wear a "rich bitch" necklace and a gun strapped to her boot.

Priscilla still lives at the irregularly shaped modernistic pyramid of a mansion that Davis built, with its electronic sliding glass doors, its huge indoor pool, its Oriental carpets and its three pool tables. With her live her daughter Dee, 20, a guard, seven dogs, two cats and a horse named Freedom.

But the horse is the only freedom she sees. Surrounded by the 19th century paintings and jade sculptures that she and her husband collected, she told TIME'S Robert C. Wurmsted last week: "I've been afraid ever since I was shot. It's like being a prisoner for two years. I don't feel secure enough to go out by myself. I get very depressed." She is convinced of her husband's guilt--"I was looking right at him, talking to him, as he was dragging me back into the house"--and she remembers that he used to beat her and Dee. Once, she recalls, he killed Dee's kitten by smashing it against the kitchen floor.

The bond hearing should end this week and then, as Fort Worth finishes its summer social season and looks forward to the opening of the Dallas Cowboys' season, it will also look forward to a new round in the trials of T. Cullen Davis.

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