Cracking murder mystery

Family hopes TV segment will bring answers to death
By Trish Choate/Times Record News
February 12, 2005

Ruth Vest doesn't bear any ill will toward a mystery woman who may have kept an awful secret from her for 58 years.

The Henrietta native just wants the woman, known only as "M. Smith," to come forward now with information about the murder of Ruth's husband, Harold "Buddy" Vest.

"I would love for M. Smith to get in touch with me and us go have lunch," the 81-year-old widow said. "And I would certainly be kind to her."

The case inspired a "48-Hours Mystery" about the 1946 death of Buddy in Gainesville.

Ruth and her son hope it will prompt M. Smith and others to help. "Postmarked for Murder: The Ghosts of Gainesville" airs at 9 p.m. Saturday on CBS Channel 6.

A reward is being offered for up to $25,000 for information, according to www.murderingainesville.com, a Web site devoted to the case.

The case drew national attention in April 2004 when Buddy's body was exhumed from Hope Cemetery in Henrietta. His death - ruled a suicide for more than 50 years - had always struck his family as odd.

The TV segment will chronicle the family's grief, the questions surrounding the death and a son's quest for the truth. It will also take viewers to a small town in Oklahoma where clues to the mystery woman reside, Harold Dow, host of "48 Hours," said.

"We found someone there," Dow said. "We set up our own little sting operation."

Dow did not want to reveal much more about what "48 Hours" discovered in Mulhall, Okla.

Herb Vest, now a Dallas millionaire, was 2 when his father died. He was about 60 when something happened that changed everything.

But first came the agony.

Ruth Vest, who now lives in Dallas, was a young wife when she went to her husband's cabinet shop in Gainesville on June 28, 1946.

It was between midnight and 2 a.m.

"He was in a bathroom, and I couldn't get the door open," she said.

She got help from a sailor who stood outside hitchhiking.

"He couldn't get it open, but he pulled the door open enough so he could look inside and see Buddy," Ruth said.

Buddy had a thin leather belt from a wood-working machine looped around his neck. The belt was nailed to the door, and a rope was tied around his waist, pinning his arm to his side.

Another rope was tied around his legs and fastened to a wall with a screw, according to the Web site. Justice of the Peace L.V. Henry ruled the death suicide by hanging.

But there was something strange.

"I never saw a policeman," Ruth said. "Nobody ever interviewed me or talked to me."

Ruth and Buddy's mother kept the official cause of death a secret.

"She didn't tell his brothers and sisters," Ruth said. "They were told he had a heart attack."

She and her son didn't discuss it openly until a few years ago when she called Herb and asked him to come over.

"One night, it just hit me, 'You should tell him,' " she said. "And I told him. And he knew. He had discovered it when he was 12. Both of us kept this secret from each other."

Herb was poking around in their attic when he found correspondence that revealed how authorities thought his father had died.

But suicide never seemed right to Ruth.

"He just wasn't a person who could do that," she said.

Herb wasn't satisfied either. Years later, he hired a private investigator who found inconsistencies in records.

Herb placed an ad in a Gainesville newspaper.

The letter came in October 2003. It was signed "M. Smith."

It told the tale of Buddy Vest's murder. Smitten with him, a young and flirtatious "M. Smith" had visited the married man's cabinet shop on the thinnest of pretexts.

Perhaps in spite of her efforts, they were not having an affair.

Her boyfriend, a jealous - and married - policeman, followed her and burst into the cabinet shop with two friends. They beat and tortured "M. Smith" and Buddy. They sexually assaulted and humiliated the woman.

The boyfriend threatened her and took her home. He left Buddy Vest tied up with one of his friends keeping watch.

Later, another man who took part told "M. Smith" what happened.

Buddy apparently choked to death from either the handkerchief stuffed in his mouth or the belt around his throat.

Her boyfriend was reluctant to talk about what happened - but did.

"He had no intentions of killing him," "M. Smith" wrote. "He only meant to scare him."

"M. Smith" believes that the crime was covered up.

New evidence convinced Cooke County Justice of the Peace Dorthy Lewis to order the exhumation of Buddy Vest's body.

On April 23, 2004, the body was taken from Hope Cemetery.

Most of the remains were skeletal, Herb said. So a forensic anthropologist, with a medical doctor present, performed the autopsy. The scientist found that Buddy's nose and a tooth at been broken at or near the time of death.

Lewis changed the manner of death from suicide to homicide. The case is open.

Herb and his mother were glad about the new ruling.

"I was so joyful," Ruth said. "That's a nutty statement. But between those two choices, boy, I was happy to have it murder because I never could accept that suicide."

"M. Smith's" letter said her ex-boyfriend and one of his friends are dead. The third man is alive but suffering from a poor memory.

"All I want to know is what happened to my father," Herb said. "We're not at this point seeking vengeance. But that could change if they continue to cause hurt to myself or my mother. And we will take whatever remedies are available to us under the law."

Herb has even offered to pick up the tab for the surviving man's defense.