ANGELA K. BROWN

Associated Press

DALLAS - Herb Vest was just 22 months old when his father's body was found hanging in his Gainesville cabinet shop in 1946, his arms pinned to his side with ropes and his feet bound with another rope fastened to a wall.

His family accepted the suicide ruling and never talked about it, but Vest grew up with nagging doubts about how his 25-year-old father died. Last fall the Dallas businessman hired a private investigator, who uncovered some new evidence that prompted Cooke County authorities to re-open the case.

Harold "Buddy" Vest's body was exhumed in April, and a recently completed autopsy report shows that his nose and a tooth were broken. Now, Dorthy Lewis, a Cooke County justice of the peace, has decided to change the cause of death on the death certificate to homicide.

"It's amazing that after all these years, this has come to light," she said. "I believe there are still people locally who know something about this, and I hope they come forward."

For Herb Vest, 60, the autopsy report and Lewis' ruling validate his suspicions that have been growing since he was 11, when he found letters to his uncle from his father's Army friends saying they had no idea why Buddy would commit suicide.

Until then, when young Vest asked his mother how his father died, she said she didn't know.

"It (suicide) was almost a disgrace upon a family," said Ruth Vest, 80. "I was never angry at him, never had a feeling of 'What should I have done?' The only feeling I had was that he died because he wanted to, and he wasn't scared to die."

Even after Herb found the letters, he never told his mother, who had since remarried. She finally decided to tell her son a few years ago about the suicide, and he admitted that he had known for decades.

Herb Vest decided to look into the matter last year and hired a private investigator, who found that the death certificate given to Ruth Vest listed no cause or manner of death. But the official death certificate on file lists the cause of death as asphyxiation by strangulation and the manner of death as suicide. When he was found, the belt around his neck was nailed to the wall.

The justice of the peace report, part of which was missing, listed the wrong name and business address. The report said "there were no marks of violence on the body save a few scratches and an indenture around the neck" and the justice of the peace signature was forged.

After Herb Vest placed an ad in a Gainesville newspaper offering a reward for information, the investigator received a three-page letter from someone saying she went to the Vest Cabinet Shop to flirt with Buddy that summer night in 1946.

According to the letter, her jealous boyfriend and two other men burst into the shop, forced her to remove her underwear and girdle and then placed the garments on Buddy's body. The men wanted to "tar and feather" him and place him on the street to humiliate him, but they killed him instead, according to the letter.

The woman said she believes authorities covered up the crime because her boyfriend had ties to the Police Department in Gainesville, about 70 miles northwest of Dallas.

Herb Vest said he wrote a letter to the woman's post office box seeking her identity and more details but has not heard from her again.

Vest, CEO of the online dating service True.com, said his investigators will work with Gainesville authorities on the case. He still is offering a $25,000 reward for information about those responsible for his father's death.

"I will find the perpetrators. I have no vengeance motive, and if they were to tell the truth and come forward now, I would recommend against prosecution," Herb Vest said. "I would even pay for the defense if they were prosecuted. All I want to know is the truth."