Cartooning Crime: Etta Hulme’s Depictions of Fort Worth’s Sensational Stories

The purpose of The Compass Rose is to raise awareness of Special Collections' resources and to foster the use of these resources. The blog series also reports significant new programs, initiatives, and acquisitions of Special Collections. 

This post was co-authored by Special Collections Metadata Librarian Stephanie Luke, Photograph Collections Specialist Sara Pezzoni, and Special Collections Archivist Priscilla Escobedo.

Fort Worth is known for its great restaurants, rising skyscrapers, and Western spirit. However, the history of Fort Worth has moments of deep controversy and turmoil. Etta Hulme, renowned cartoonist, used her art to illustrate major events in Fort Worth, Texas, and around the world. In this blog, we’ll be reviewing some of her works in relation to well-known crimes and the criminal justice system of Texas.

Editorial cartoons can be both informational and entertaining, acting as both news sources and historical records of current events. The general public consumes the day’s news and learns about these true crime events through journalism; editorial cartoons provide a unique visual form of journalism that can both complement and contrast with conventional forms of communication. Serving as a method of visual literacy, editorial cartoons convey stories in a way that written or spoken words alone are not always able to achieve. Throughout her decades-long career at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Hulme’s editorial cartoons did not shy away from controversial issues; her opinion on subjects such as crime, corruption, criminal justice reform, and political scandal were often reflective of public perception and the views of North Texans.

Equipped with a simple line drawing and sparse written commentary, Hulme concisely communicated the complex symbolism of current events and brought to light contemporary anxieties about these events from the Dallas-Fort Worth area and beyond. In this blog, we use Hulme’s visual interpretation of three sensational crime stories that occurred in Fort Worth in the 1970s and 1980s: the murder trials of Fort Worth millionaire Cullen Davis, the first prisoner in the United States to be sentenced to execution by lethal injection, and a three-year undercover sting operation.

Perhaps two of the most famous (or infamous) criminal cases in the DFW area are the trials of Cullen Davis. Davis’ family had made its fortune in oil. In August 1976, after a judge ordered Davis to increase the amount of his spousal and child support to his ex-wife Priscilla Lee Childers, her twelve-year-old daughter Andrea Wilborn was shot in the mansion Davis and Childers once shared. When Childers and her boyfriend Stan Farr returned home, they were both shot. Family friends Beverly Bass and Gus Gavrel Jr. were also gunned down when they arrived at the house. Childers and Gavrel later testified that Davis was the perpetrator. Davis was arrested and tried for the murder of Andrea. He hired defense attorney Richard “Racehorse” Haynes. Haynes attacked the veracity of the eyewitness testimony. His approach succeeded and Davis was acquitted of the crime on November 17, 1977. Following the criminal trial, Davis faced civil suits filed by Childers, Stan Farr’s children, and Gus Gavrel. The trial for the wrongful death of Andrea Wilborn ended with a hung jury. Davis settled out of court with the Farr children and Gavrel.

In August 1978, Davis was arrested for allegedly hiring private eye David McCrory to kill several of his enemies, including Childers and Judge Joe Eidson. McCrory contacted the FBI, who equipped McCrory with a wire and tasked him with attaining evidence of Davis’ plans. They also staged a photograph with Eidson, posing him in a trunk of the car with a bloody “bullet wound” in his back. McCrory showed this to Davis as proof the hit had been committed. In his second trial, Davis hired Haynes as his defense attorney once again. The trial ended in a hung jury.

On December 14, 1976, Charlie Brooks Jr. visited a used car lot, asking the mechanic David Gregory to take a test drive. Gregory accompanied Brooks on the drive. Brooks picked up his friend Woody Loudres and the two of them put Gregory in the trunk of the vehicle. After checking into a motel, the men bound Gregory to a chair and shot him. It is unclear who actually fired the shot that killed Gregory, so both men were charged with his murder.

Brooks and Loudres were both convicted. Loudres received a 40-year sentence (only serving 11 years) while Brooks received the death penalty. Before Brooks’ execution, there had been an 18-year moratorium on executions in the United States, with the last prisoner in Texas executed in 1964. Texas had adopted lethal injection as the standard method of execution in 1977, transitioning away from electrocution. Brooks was executed on December 7, 1982, in Huntsville, Texas. He was the first prisoner in the United States to be executed by lethal injection.

Beginning in 1977, there were a series of five undercover sting operations, coined “Operation Westwind,” that took place in Fort Worth and Arlington over the course of about three years. Fort Worth and Arlington police officers, along with and FBI agents, posed as “fences,” or individuals who knowingly buy stolen goods in order to later resell them for profit. The sting operations brought several hundred arrests and indictments and also resulted in the recovery of over $15 million in stolen property. Operation Westwind was federally funded by a Federal Law Enforcement Assistance Administration grant and, at the time, was considered the most significant crime-fighting activities to date in the community.

In its first iteration in 1977-1978, only 16 undercover agents were involved in the top-secret six-month crackdown on property crimes, which resulted in nearly 200 felony indictments for theft, burglaries, and narcotics violations. Officers would set up in a rented storefront and “let a couple of known thieves know [they're] in the market for merchandise,” as Fort Worth police captain C. E. Hogue of Special Investigations described to the Star-Telegram in 1980. Transactions between officers and guilty parties were videotaped through one-way mirrors and the footage was replayed for juries during trials. Stolen goods ranged from “enough guns to start a small war” to televisions, bicycles, appliances, luxury cars, boats, jewelry, and drugs.  

From the examples above, it is evident that Etta Hulme’s work provides unique perspectives into the way people viewed crime and the legal system in Fort Worth. Cartoons provide contemporary researchers with an answer to questions like “What were people thinking about this case?" or "How did people feel about this law?” These kinds of questions are often forgotten in favor of researching the cases themselves. Hulme’s editorial cartoons are a window into the personal opinions and public reactions to these major cases from the perspective of a woman who saw the world with the eyes of a cartoonist and made her voice heard through her art. Her collection is expansive, and her works address controversies throughout the state of Texas, the country, and even across the globe. Keep an eye out for future blog posts about her work!