Ep 73: LBJ (Part 4)

Matt Crumpton
Jul 16, 2025
14 min read

In the last episode, we talked about the financial ascent of Bobby Baker, whose net worth increased from $10,000 to $2.1 Million net worth while he worked for Lyndon Johnson as Secretary to the Senate Majority Leader. That’s an impressive climb. But, Baker’s wealth was a drop in the bucket compared to the subject of today’s episode – Billie Sol Estes, who claims that his net worth in 1961 was a whopping $400 million dollars.^[1]

In this episode, we cover the rise and fall of Billie Sol Estes, with an emphasis on Estes’ connections to Lyndon Johnson, and the mysterious death of federal agriculture official, Henry Marshall.

Billie the Kid

Billie Sol Estes had money and ambition from a young age. When he was a child he asked for a lamb for Christmas and let other farmers in the area know that he would take care of orphaned lambs, which eventually led to Estes having a large herd of lamb and sheep that he sold for a profit.^[2]

As a teenager, Estes found out about a government program to pay farmers to clear cactus. Estes paid his friends 50% of the government funds to clear the cactus, paid the farmers 20% to let them do it, and took a 30% cut for himself. According to Estes, that was when he realized that government funds can be an inexhaustible vein of wealth.^[3] When he was 18 years old, Estes had the equivalent of just over $700,000 in today’s money.^[4]

Estes wasn’t just a wheeler dealer, he was also a legitimate farmer. He was so good at farming, in fact, that in 1943 he won the national 4H Club award for being the best young farmer in America.^[5] The award was presented to Estes by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.^[6]

Enter Cliff Carter

During World War II Estes served in the Merchant Marines.^[7] After the war, he met Cliff Carter in Abilene at a meeting about the future of Texas agriculture.^[8] Carter was a close associate of Lyndon Johnson, having worked for him as a campaign volunteer since 1937. Carter was also a business man himself. He was the owner of the local Pepsi bottling plant in Bryan, Texas.^[9] The two men got along well and decided to go into business together. However, as Estes would find out, the cost of doing business with Cliff Carter and using the associated clout of Lyndon Johnson was 10% of the gross revenues of the business.^[10]

The first business venture between Estes and Carter involved the sale of pre-fabricated homes that had formerly been used for military bases during the war. Estes bought the homes at public auctions. But, Carter, leveraging his relationship with Lyndon Johnson, was able to get inside information about the sales. According to Estes, on a few occasions, Carter paid off other potential bidders to ensure a QUOTE “peaceful auction.”^[11]

The next project involved buying large parcels of land near the town of Pecos . Estes realized that the dry West Texas soil was actually quite fertile if it had the proper irrigation. But, after talking to some of the local residents, he found that most of them didn’t have the money to irrigate their fields. Estes had an idea to get all of the local farmers to convert from electric to gas water pumps because gas was so much cheaper in West Texas. When Estes asked Cliff Carter for financial support on the large project, Carter assured him that Lyndon Johnson backed the venture. Carter then introduced Estes to Harvey Morrison, the head of a pipeline company, who helped fund the gas pump business. It was called the Pecos Growers Gas Company.^[12]

In addition to growing his own crops in Pecos, Estes then got into the fertilizer business, where his strategy was to undercut all of his competitors in hopes of eventually having a monopoly. That strategy led Estes to lose large sums of money and require outside financing. Estes turned to his fertilizer manufacturer, Commercial Solvents, for cash. When Estes was already half a million in the hole and needed another $400,000 from Commercial Solvents, he met with company president, Maynard Wheeler. He explained that he needed money to offset the fertilizer losses and for building new grain storage silos that he could ensure would be kept full through his relationship with Lyndon Johnson.^[13] Wheeler wanted assurances from Johnson himself. So he called Johnson and LBJ told him QUOTE “If Billie builds the storage facilities, I will make sure they stay full.”^[14]

In the mid 1950s, in order to support the price of grain for farmers, the government limited grain production and paid a minimum price for it as long as farmers did not produce too much. The government needed somewhere to store all of this excess grain it was buying.^[15] Estes then jumped in to the grain storage business, at first in Pecos and later in Plainview, Texas. According to Estes, the Plainview grain storage business was the only time that Lyndon Johnson gave money to him (instead of him giving it to Johnson). In exchange for half a million dollars in cash provided by Cliff Carter, Estes was to provide LBJ with a 20% royalty on all income, instead of the usual 10%.^[16]

Cotton Allotments

In 1957, cotton became a crop that, like grain, had government imposed limits on how much a farmer could grow.^[17] Each farmer had a specific allotment based on the size of the farm. Keep in mind that, in the late 1950s, post-war America was booming, which meant that a lot of new highways and roads were being built. The land for those roads came from local farmers from whom the government would buy the land under eminent domain. Farmers with a cotton allotment were eligible to reclaim the allotment they lost through eminent domain if they purchased more land.^[18]

Billie Sol Estes went to displaced farmers with cotton allotments and offered to sell land to the farmers and move their cotton allotment to the new land. But most farmers didn’t have money or interest in buying new land far away from where they lived – especially the plots of land that Estes was selling which had no access to water (not until Billie Sol Estes brought it in) and were ten to forty feet wide and a mile long, making them impossible to farm. Estes sold the land to the farmer and (once the government moved the cotton allotment to the land), he then leased it back from the farmer (but all of the lease payments were made up front to the farmer).

Estes made the deal attractive for the farmer by spreading the payment out over 4 installments and paying the farmers an up front fee. When the farmers failed to make the mortgage payments (as planned), the land would revert back to Billie Sol Estes, with the cotton allotments. And the farmers got to keep the up front fee.^[19]

The Fertilizer Business

The cotton allotment rules meant that Estes had to reduce his cotton planting from 1,440 acres to 400 acres. Estes response to the new rules was, to try to get as much of the cotton allotments as possible AND to start a new fertilizer business with the extra acreage that he had been using to farm cotton.^[20] As noted earlier, Estes strategy for the fertilizer business was to lose money undercutting the competition, in an effort to one day have a monopoly. As of the summer of 1959, this strategy was not going very well.^[21]

It was at this point that Billie Sol came up with his most obviously fraudulent scheme. He approached farmers to buy fertilizer tanks on credit, sign mortgages on the tanks, and then lease the tanks back to Estes. The farmers got an up front fee and did not have to pay anything after that. The problem was that the tanks they were purchasing did not actually exist.^[22]

Still, Estes used the fertilizer tank mortgages for the non-existent tanks as collateral to borrow $22 million dollars ($238 million in today’s money). Estes had 34,000 metal serial numbers for the tank plates. When bank auditors would show up looking to inventory the tanks, Estes and his men would keep the auditors occupied while they moved portable tanks to different locations and changed the tank plates.^[23]

Henry Marshall Enforces

Even though the fertilizer scam was pure fraud, Estes thought he had a pretty clever scheme to be able to get around the cotton allotment rules effectively (and arguably, legally).^[24] By 1960, Estes had acquired 3200 acres of cotton allotments from 116 farmers. But, all it took to derail Estes’ cotton scheme was one by-the-book inspector. That’s because the cotton allotment transfers had to first be approved by the USDA’s Stabilization and Conservation Service Committee. If the Committee had concerns about a transfer, they notified the cotton acreage specialist in the state office. In Texas, that man was Henry Marshall.^[25]

Marshall, who had been with the USDA for 25 years, became aware of Estes’ cotton allotment scheme on August 31, 1960, when he wrote that the regulations needed to be strengthened to stop what Estes was doing. A few months later in early January of 1961, the USDA updated its rules to require that the farmers buying the land – the ones who previously lost their cotton allotment due to eminent domain - had to actually show up in the county offices where the allotment was being moved.^[26] This was a major problem for Estes because it was not worth it to the farmers to do the deal with him if they had to travel long distances for it.

On January 17^th, 1961, Estes sent his lawyer, John Dennison, to go speak to Henry Marshall about the new regulation. Marshall doubled down and told Dennison that the scheme was illegal and that Estes would be prosecuted if he continued to do it. Around this time, Marshall was offered a promotion to Washington, D.C., but he turned it down.

When Estes wrote to Cliff Carter to let him know how bad the new in-person cotton allotment transfer rule hurt his business, Lyndon Johnson took action. LBJ, as the newly sworn in Vice President, wrote a letter to the new secretary of the USDA, Orville Freeman, asking him to intervene in the matter because the new regulation was unreasonably burdensome for farmers. Freeman then changed the rule so that it was interpreted by local officials who could consider exceptions to the rule and waive the requirement that the farmers appeared in person.^[27]

However, for Henry Marshall, the mere fact that local officials now had discretion to not follow the rule, didn’t mean that the rule shouldn’t be followed. Marshall personally led a campaign in county offices throughout Texas in an effort to stop Bille Sol Estes’ cotton allotment scheme. He traveled around the state warning county officials to be on the lookout for it and provided sample contracts.^[28] Even after changing the law from the top down in the way Estes wanted, state cotton specialist, Henry Marshall, continued to be a problem for Billie Sol Estes.

Henry Marshall Murder

On the morning of Saturday, June 3, 1961, Henry Marshall went to work at his 1500 acre ranch around dawn. But, Marshall never came home that day. His dead body was found later that evening by his brother-in-law lying in the grass near the driver’s side of his truck in a remote part of the ranch. Marshall had bruises on his face, hands, and arms and five gunshot wounds from .22 caliber bullets.^[29] There were no photos taken of the crime scene. No blood samples. No checks for fingerprints. And the truck was washed and waxed shortly after. Robertson County Sheriff, Howard Stegal, quickly ruled Marshall’s death to be suicide.^[30]

This ruling was perplexing to those who were familiar with the facts of the case. Marshall’s death was put in the spotlight about a year later in May of 1962, after USDA Secretary, Orville Freeman said that Henry Marshall was the key figure in the Billie Sol Estes scandal. Additionally, the efforts of Captain Clint Peoples of the Texas Rangers convinced District Judge John Barron to call a grand jury on the matter of how exactly Henry Marshall died.^[31]

After Marshall’s body was exhumed, the medical examiner, Dr. Joseph Jachimczyk, concluded that Marshall’s death was the result of five gunshot wounds and that Marshall’s body had an estimated 30 percent carbon monoxide level when he died. Dr. Jachimczyk’s final ruling was QUOTE “possible suicide, probable homicide.”^[32] However, he added that QUOTE “if in fact this is a suicide, it is the most unusual one I have seen during the examination of approximately 15,000 deceased persons.”^[33]

The finding of carbon monoxide poisoning further complicated matters for anyone arguing that Marshall died from a suicide. Given the evidence, for Marshall to have ended his own life, he would have had to 1) pull his shirt up over his head to assist him in inhaling a lethal dose of carbon monoxide from his truck, 2) tuck his shirt back in after being poisoned, 3) strike himself in the head causing his eye to protrude, and 4) shoot himself five times with a bolt action rifle, which would require that he hold it at arm’s length to work the bolt and to reload after each shot.^[34] J. Edgar Hoover underscored the absurdity of the idea that Marshall’s death was self-inflicted when he wrote in the margin of a May 21, 1962 memo, QUOTE “I just can’t understand how one can fire five shots at himself.”^[35]

The 1962 grand jury got the direct attention of President Kennedy and his brother, the attorney general. The President called Judge Barron about the case once. The attorney general called Judge Barron 10 or 12 times asking for updates on the case. That’s a lot of calls given that the grand jury was only in session for 11 days.^[36]

When Estes was called to testify, he plead the fifth Amendment against self-incrimination. In the end, the 1962 Grand Jury found that the cause of Henry Marshall’s death was inconclusive.^[37] According to the two dissenting jurors (who believed Marshall was murdered), the jury foreman, local feed store owner, Pryse Metcalfe, Jr. tried to exert pressure on the jurors to keep the status quo. It turns out that Pryse Metcalfe was the son-in-law of Sheriff Stegal.^[38] Three other jurors were also related to the Sheriff. On top of that, the Sheriff’s cousin, Glynn Stegall, worked for Lyndon Johnson in the Executive Office Building in Washington.^[39]

Estes’ Problems Continue

Billie Sol Estes’ problems with the government did not go away after Henry Marshall died. On October 18, 1961, Estes met in Washington with Wilson Tucker, the deputy director of the USDA’s cotton division. Estes tried to make his case to Tucker about why his cotton allotment scheme was not illegal. But, Tucker did not agree. Tucker would later testify that QUOTE “Estes stated that this pooled cotton allotment matter had caused the death of one person and then asked me if I knew Henry Marshall.”^[40] Estes later denied that he made this threat to Tucker.^[41]

In September of 1961, Estes was fined $42,000 for having illegal cotton allotments. Even with that fine, Estes still managed to be appointed to the National Cotton Advisory Board by USDA director Freeman just a few months later.^[42] That role gave Estes the opportunity to help set the overall regulatory framework of the USDA’s cotton program.^[43]

There was still another mid-level manager at the USDA who believed that Estes had been shown favoritism and should be investigated: N. Battle Hales. However, when Hales attempted to take action against Estes, he was shifted to other work within the USDA, in a section of the department where Hale’s former direct reports could not find him.^[44]

In April of 1962, after Hales had been re-assigned, his former secretary, Mary Kimbrough Jones, insisted on finding Hales. After she demanded to speak with Hales, a doctor showed up at the USDA offices and blocked her exit. Jones was taken to the DC General Hospital as a mental patient. She was stripped of her clothes and left in a room with only a pajama top and a sheet. She was then determined to be QUOTE “a very sick girl, in need of treatment for mental disease.”^[45]

You may recall a man named Jack Puterbaugh from our series on the Secret Service. Puterbaugh worked for the Democratic National Committee and was involved in the planning of the motorcade in Dallas on November 22, 1963. In addition to being a loyal supporter of LBJ, Puterbaugh is the man who replaced N. Battle Hales at the USDA after Hales tried to hold Estes accountable.^[46]

Estes Goes to Jail

Starting in May of 1962, the business operations of Billie Sol Estes were the subject of congressional hearings. Those hearings eventually led to Estes being charged and convicted on the fraudulent ammonia tank storage scam in 1963. Estes was sentenced to 24 years in prison. Yet, he managed to get out after 8 years.^[47]

Estes would end up right back in prison again in 1979. He was found guilty on a $600,000 scheme to lease non-existent steam cleaners for oil field equipment.^[48] If that scheme sounds familiar its because it is exactly what Estes did with fertilizer tanks which led to his initial incarceration.

More Murders?

As we’ve discussed in this episode, Henry Marshall’s death was initially considered to be self-inflicted, despite evidence indicating otherwise. There were four other associates of Billie Sol Estes who met an untimely death around the time of Estes’ downfall.

On April 2, 1962, at a time when the Estes scandal was on the front page of many newspapers, just before Congress began its investigations, two FBI agents interviewed George Krutilek, who was Estes’ chief accountant. Krutilek’s dead body was found two days after the FBI interview in the desert close to El Paso. A hose had been hooked to Krutilek’s vehicle which made it appear that he was trying to poison himself with carbon monoxide.^[49] But the autopsy revealed that there was no carbon monoxide in Krutilek’s lungs, leading to a ruling that he was killed by a heart attack, despite the fact that he had a severe bruise on his head.^[50]

Coleman Wade was the contractor responsible for building Estes’ grain storage facilities in Plainview, Texas. He was aware of Estes’ connection to Cliff Carter and to Lyndon Johnson. In early 1963, Wade’s private plane crashed outside of Kermit, Texas after leaving a meeting with Billie Sol Estes in Pecos. Everyone on board was killed.^[51]

Harold Orr was a business associate of Billie Sol’s, who was convicted for his role in Estes’ fraud. Orr was about to begin his 10 year prison sentence when, on February 28, 1964, he was found dead in his garage. The authorities ruled it to be accidental death due to carbon monoxide poisoning.^[52] A few weeks later, Howard Pratt, the Chicago office manager for Commercial Solvents, Estes number one finance source for the fertilizer tank business, was found dead in his car. The official cause of death was, once again, carbon monoxide poisoning.^[53]

We can’t say that Krutilek, Wade, Orr, and Pratt were all killed so that they wouldn’t talk about Johnson’s connection to Estes. Still, the fact that all of these un-natural deaths happened so close together, and all had a close connection to Billie Sol Estes, is certainly worth noting.

NEXT TIME ON SOLVING JFK: We continue analyzing issues related to Billie Sol Estes, as we pivot to Estes claims about Lyndon Johnson’s alleged hitman, Mac Wallace. Was Wallace Johnson’s hitman? And, did he participate in the assassination of President Kennedy?

^[1] Sol Estes at 1.

^[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/15/us/billie-sol-estes-texas-con-man-dies-at-88.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0; Jeff Crudele, JFK: The Enduring Secret (Podcast), Ep. 257 (Crudele notes that he relies upon J. Evetts Haley, A Texan Looks at Lyndon; Billie Sol Estes, Billie Sol Estes: A Texas Legend; William Reymond, The Last Witness (French)).

^[3] Crudele, Ep 257.

^[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billie_Sol_Estes

^[5] https://www.texasmonthly.com/true-crime/billie-sol-estes-free-man/

^[6] Billie Sol Estes, Billie Sol Estes: A Texas Legend, at 4 - https://www.narrowbandimaging.com/incoming/Billy%20Sol%20Estes%20A%20Texas%20Legend%20by%20Billie%20Sol%20Estes%20(2005).pdf

^[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billie_Sol_Estes

^[8] Crudele, Ep 258.

^[9] https://www.nytimes.com/1971/09/23/archives/clifton-c-carter-is-dead-ai-53-was-johnsons-campaign-aide-texan.html

^[10] Sol Estes at 43.

^[11] Crudele, Ep 258.

^[12] Sol Estes at 33.

^[13] Id. at 33-34.

^[14] Id. at 34.

^[15] Id. at 42.

^[16] Id. at 43.

^[17] Phillip Nelson, LBJ: The Mastermind of the JFK Assassination, at 196.

^[18] Sol Estes, at 68-70.

^[19] Id.; Neslon at 205-206.

^[20] Bill Adler, Texas Observer, November 7, 1986, at 8 - https://issues.texasobserver.org/pdf/ustxtxb_obs_1986_11_07_issue.pdf

^[21] Id.

^[22] Id. at 8-9.

^[23] Id. at 9.

^[24] See Clark Mollenhoff, Despoilers of Democracy, at 107. (But to do that, he had to make sure that he stayed in the good graces of the US Department of Agriculture. At first, Estes used the tried and true method of bribery to get the USDA on his side. But, he was apparently too heavy handed as a total of at least 14 USDA officials were fired for accepting gifts from Estes. Lyndon Johnson also helped Estes by installing several of his men at the USDA.)

^[25] Adler at 9.

^[26] Id.

^[27] Nelson at 200.

^[28] Id.

^[29] Adler at 10.

^[30] Id. at 11.

^[31] Nelson at 226.

^[32] Id. at 226.

^[33] Adler at 14.

^[34] Nelson at 227.

^[35] Adler at 14.

^[36] Id. at 14.