Worcester Telegram & Gazette
Texas Officials Reopen 1946 Hanging Case
Friday, April 23, 2004
FORT WORTH , Texas- When Harold Vest was found dead in his cabinet shop in 1946, with a belt around his neck and ropes binding an arm and his legs, officials said he had committed suicide.
His body was exhumed Friday, after his family received a mysterious letter indicating that he had been murdered.
"It just never made sense that he committed suicide," his son, Herb Vest, told The Associated Press on Friday. "I am happy that we're able to finally get to the truth here."
Harold Vest, known as Buddy, was only 25, with a loving wife and baby son, when he died nearly 58 years ago. Around his neck was a thin leather belt, suspended from a woodworking machine and nailed to the door, according to the 1946 report by the justice of the peace that ruled the death a suicide.
A rope tied around his waist pinned one arm to his side, and another rope around his legs was fastened to the wall, according to the report.
Herb Vest said the body was exhumed from the cemetery Friday, and that a forensic scientist will examine it in the next few weeks.
Throughout his life, he had nagging doubts about how his father died. Last fall he hired a private investigator who discovered inconsistencies with the death certificate and other records. The men then placed a newspaper ad offering a reward for information.
Vest said they received a three-page letter, signed "M. Smith," from someone saying she was infatuated with Harold Vest and went to his shop to flirt with him that summer night in 1946. According to the letter, her boyfriend burst into the shop a few minutes later with two other men, erupting in a jealous rage.
Smith, who left the shop with her boyfriend, wrote that she learned of Vest's death the next day and that one of the men later told her what happened. Her boyfriend said that if they told anyone, they would be executed, according to the letter.
Vest said the person who wrote the letter knew some intimate details, and that a forensic psychologist has deemed it authentic. The family has not heard from Smith again, Vest said.
The men gave the evidence from the docket archives to Cooke County 's justice of the peace, who determined there was probable cause to reopen the case.
Vest said his mother, Ruth Vest, rarely discussed his father's death, although something unusual happened a few weeks after the body was found. She read in a newspaper that someone named Harold Vest was admitted to a hospital in a nearby town.
His mother had never received the wallet or other personal items, and Herb Vest said he now suspects that someone stole his father's wallet and used the identification.
Finding out that Harold Vest did not take his own life has been somewhat of a relief to Ruth Vest, now 80, her son said.
"But my father was Catholic, and I guess his parents went to their graves thinking their son committed suicide and was in purgatory," Vest said.
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