CURRENT THEORY - SUMMARY SCENARIO
In the Matter of the Murder of Harold Eugene Vest
on 27 Jun 1946 in Gainesville, TX

This document is strictly confidential.  It is designed to document an independent assessment of the facts and theories surrounding the death of Harold “Buddy” Eugene Vest on June 28, 1946 in order to discover the truth.  This document necessarily includes a significant amount of personal information – some of which may not be accurate – in order to analyze investigative leads.  This document and its information are not designed to impugn anyone.  Readers must understand that many of the statements in this summary are not factual, but rather are opinions, impressions and speculations based on assumptions and interpretations of existing and necessarily incomplete information.  Further, the information contained in this summary is not warranted to be accurate and we assume no responsibility for damages arising from the publication, distribution, use of, or reliance on any such information.  This document is being provided confidentially in order to further the investigation.  It is a living document, and as such remains subject to change without notice. 

SMITH LETTER

There was only one response to the advertisement in the Gainesville Register. A letter postmarked 23 Oct 2003 and addressed to the investigator was received from a woman who identified herself as M. Smith (The letter will hereafter be referred to as the Smith letter). Investigator Doe, an ex-undercover police officer, handled the letter, showed it to his wife and made no effort to preserve the chain of custody of evidence as he had been trained to do.

Kerensa and I left the country on 10 Oct 2003 for our wedding ceremony in the Seychelles. We did not return home until 5 Nov 2003. The next day, the investigator came to our home and told us about the Smith letter. I had no knowledge of the letter prior to that time.

Later in the investigation I discovered that several calls to Canada had been made from my residence phone to Dr. John C. Yuille, a professor of psychology at the University of British Colombia. Dr. Yuille specializes in forensic psychology related to witness memory recall.

An H.D. Vest Investigations investigator (not associated with Investigator Doe) contacted Dr. Yuille in 2007. Dr. Yuille stated that he had been contacted on 7 Nov 2003 by an individual to look at and comment on the Smith letter. He was unsure about whether the caller identified himself as me. However, the caller did refer to Buddy as “Daddy.”

In adulthood, I never refer to anyone as “Daddy”. When referring to Buddy, I would say “my father”. Since discovering that Buddy was murdered, I often refer to him as “Dad”; but, only after 2003. The letter was faxed to him from my private investigator’s number. Dr. Yuille called the individual back at my home phone number on  17 Nov to discuss his observations. The conversation lasted 48 minutes.

I never heard of Dr. Yuille until his name was discovered during the ongoing investigation in 2007. My wife and mother had not heard of him either. Investigator Doe denies having ever heard of Dr. Yuille.

The letter asserts that the writer, signed M. Smith, was “smitten” by Buddy and wanted to have an affair with him. She would go to the café he frequented, the lumberyard, and his cabinet shop in order to talk to him. On the night of the murder, shortly after dark (8:13), she went to his shop. Her married police officer boyfriend burst in with two friends and proceeded to torture her and eventually kill Buddy.

The writer identified herself as a local resident and gave substantial detail concerning her life subsequent to the event. She requested that any reward be sent to a General Delivery address in Gainesville with a zip code from Mulhall, OK. A letter in reply contained Investigator Doe’s return address and was mailed in January 2004. Investigator Doe stated that the letter was never returned and that he never received a reply.

In a sworn statement, Ms. Marla Bennett, postmistress of Mulhall, stated that she had, in fact, received several letters addressed to a M. Smith and returned them because they had the wrong zip code. She stated that she received several phone calls from Investigator Doe during this period. When she would inform him that she returned the letters, the investigator would become very angry. She finally informed her supervisors and postal inspectors of Investigator Doe’s persistent calls. She stated that, about Christmas 2003, Investigator Doe showed up at the post office and said that he just wanted her to meet him. Investigator Doe never informed me that he sent more than one letter.

The letter provides demographics on the boyfriend and the others, but does not give their names. The letter also provides many leads and clues that were difficult or impossible to track down.

Based on the letter, I requested the Cooke County justice of the peace to order an exhumation of the body. The exhumation occurred on 23 Apr 2004 and the subsequent autopsy report was dated 2 Aug 2004. The autopsy found two perimortem fractures. (A third fracture was found later by a different forensic expert. In total there have been five experts²³ who have examined the remains. Their opinions differ. Currently, it is indeterminable how many perimortem injuries were present, if any.)

In June 2004, I gave the letter to one of Investigator Doe’s employees to have a DNA test run. When one of my employees contacted the investigator’s employee about a month later, the investigator’s employee told her that Investigator Doe told him to “hold off” on the DNA test. (The investigator had an opportunity to retrieve the letter and the envelope from his employee during this time, but did not.) My employee then obtained the letter and submitted it for DNA testing. In December 2004, I received the results of the test. It had male saliva DNA on the flap. There was no DNA found on the adhesive side of the stamp.

In the fall of 2004, I received a call from the justice of the peace who asked me if I had told Investigator Doe that I thought she wrote the M. Smith letter. I informed the justice of the peace that I had said no such thing. At that time I began to suspect that Investigator Doe was intentionally trying to alienate both the district attorney and the justice of peace.

Also in the fall of 2004, Ruth and I met with the justice of the peace and the district attorney at a hearing to reclassify the manner of death from suicide to homicide. Based on the autopsy and other evidence, the justice of the peace changed the manner of death on the death certificate from suicide to homicide.
I called Investigator Doe on 23 Dec 2004, and told him of the results of the DNA test. The investigator confessed that it was his DNA on the flap of the envelope. He said that when he received it, the flap was only partially sealed. He carried the letter with him under the visor of his automobile. He said that he had gotten the M. Smith letter mixed up with his outgoing mail and licked the flap by mistake. I told him to immediately inform the district attorney that he had licked the envelope. When he failed to do so, on  27 Dec 2004, I notified Investigator Webb at the district attorney’s office of what Investigator Doe had told me.

In January 2005, in a videotaped interview with 48 Hours, the interviewer presented me with a letter from the district attorney dated 31 Dec 2004, her last day in office, addressed to 48 Hours stating that she was closing Buddy’s homicide investigation. The district attorney never informed me or my mother of her decision to close the case.

Subsequently, Ruth and I requested and received a meeting with the new district attorney. At that meeting, the new district attorney told us that she believed that Buddy’s death was a homicide. She stated that if the letter was a fraud, the perpetrator of the fraud may be guilty of tampering with evidence. I agreed with her that if the letter was fraudulent, the person perpetrating the hoax should be brought to justice.

In a follow-up letter, the district attorney stated, “This office still considers your father’s death to be a murder.”²⁴

Subsequently my new investigator, Dan Bierman, discovered three witnesses who stated under oath that they had seen a woman from out of town in close proximity to Dad’s shop during the time period just before his murder. One of the witnesses stated that the woman told him that she was there in Dad’s shop to “learn about lumber”. The woman was identified by the three witnesses as being or resembling a 1947 photo of Virginia Ruth Smith²⁵ (she later married the soldier who was believed to be at the murder scene, Howard L. Penley) of El Paso. Ms. Smith had terminated her employment as a stenographer with El Paso Natural Gas in April 1946. As yet we have been unable to identify Ms. Smith’s supervisor while she was with El Paso Natural Gas.

In 2007, I had two different labs run tests of the letter. They report that the letter was created on one computer, scanned into an image file on another computer, and then printed out on a 1980s vintage printer using 1980s vintage ink. Both the printer and ink are impossible to trace.

This elaborate methodology used to create the letter suggests collusion. Further, the methodology suggests very detailed knowledge of police crime lab procedures. It also requires that the perpetrator(s) maintain a printer and ink from the 1980s. The presence of a scanner (later technology than printers) suggests that the perpetrator(s) could afford modern equipment, yet, used outdated equipment for printing.

Investigator Doe had not interviewed any of the three witnesses before the Smith letter was written. Accordingly, he is eliminated as a suspect in writing the letter.