Body of man who died in 1946 exhumed

04/23/2004

By ANGELA K. BROWN  / Associated Press

After recently receiving a mysterious letter indicating that a man's 1946 death was murder rather than suicide, authorities on Friday exhumed the body for forensic testing.

Harold "Buddy" Vest was only 25, with a loving wife and baby son, when he was found dead in his Gainesville cabinet shop 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 justice of the peace report.

A rope was tied around his waist was a rope, pinning one arm to his side, and another rope was around his legs was fastened to the wall, according to the report. The justice of the peace ruled it a suicide.

"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."

He said the body was exhumed Friday from Hope Cemetery in Henrietta, about 110 miles north of Fort Worth , and that a forensic scientist will examine it in the next few weeks.

Throughout his life, Herb Vest had nagging doubts about how his father died. But he didn't want to start looking into the matter until his stepfather died in 1996, and then he got busy with work.

Last fall he hired a private investigator, Danny Williams, who discovered inconsistencies with the death certificate and other records. The men then placed an ad in a Gainesville newspaper offering a reward for information.

Vest said Williams 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 and two other men burst into the shop a few minutes later, erupting in a jealous rage.

The boyfriend took Smith home and threatened to kill his two friends if they let Vest escape, and when he almost did, the pair tied him up in the bathroom, according to the letter.

Smith wrote that she heard 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. She believes authorities covered up the crime because her boyfriend had ties to the Police Department, 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. But Williams has not heard from Smith again, Vest said.

The men gave the evidence from the docket archives to Cooke County Justice of the Peace Dorthy Lewis, who conferred with the district attorney and determined there was probable cause to reopen the case.

Vest said his mother, Ruth Vest, rarely discussed his father's death through the years, 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 nearby Wichita Falls .

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.