Cold Case Files: Shots that killed Ellie and Mary Waybourne in 1975 came from a sniper in the Latimer County woods

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lie and Mary Waybourn were a married couple raising two young children on rural land in the Bengal area of Latimer County.

Elie, who carried Cherokee and Chickasaw ancestry through his family line, had acquired the property and begun enclosing sections of it with fencing.

The land had long been treated as open free range by local cattle operators.

Someone had repeatedly cut the new fences in the weeks leading up to the shootings.

On the afternoon of June 5, 1975, the couple worked together on one of those fence lines in dense woods when a high-powered rifle opened fire from a distance in a calculated sniper-style attack.

Elie took a shot to the back and died upon arrival at the hospital. Mary sustained a gunshot wound to the hip. She lingered for three days before succumbing on June 8.

No robbery occurred. Nothing was taken from the scene. Investigators found no signs of a struggle or close-range confrontation. The shooter had positioned for a clear line of sight through the trees and then vanished without a trace.

Elie had a two state criminal record at the time. He had served three years for burglary, attempted escape during that sentence, and faced several pending proceedings. One recent arrest involved an allegation that he tried to strike another Bengal resident with his vehicle. Those matters placed him in and out of the justice system, and they directly tied into the events that positioned Mary as a witness in a separate legal battle hundreds of miles away.

Mary had scheduled testimony in an upcoming trial in Delta County, Texas, focused on bail bond improprieties. The central figure was Bennie Fisher, then sheriff of the small northeast Texas county headquartered in Cooper. Fisher stood accused of steering bond business toward two specific bondsmen: H.D. “Pete” Bledsoe, a former Delta County sheriff, and Curtis Fisher, Bennie’s own father.

Public controversy had simmered for months. A June 1975 television report captured Fisher denying that he funneled cases to family members, even as some of the bonds they wrote faced forfeiture actions in Dallas courts. Mary’s involvement stemmed from firsthand frustration. When she attempted to arrange bail for Elie during one of his legal troubles, she encountered the very practices under scrutiny.

She prepared for and planned to describe that experience on the stand. The shootings occurred just days before her scheduled appearance.

 The couple now rests side by side in Green Hill Cemetery in Latimer County. Their two children, whose names have remained private in public records, grew up without their parents. In later years, those children wrote letters to the Oklahoma House Speaker and the governor urging renewed attention to the file.

Local investigators at the time offered little encouragement, according to family accounts. The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation eventually assumed lead responsibility and listed the double homicide as a cold case.

No physical evidence linked any individual to the rifle shots. No shell casings, footprints, or vehicle tracks produced a workable lead. The repeated fence cutting suggested possible local resentment over the enclosure of traditional free-range pasture.

Yet the timing aligned too precisely with Mary’s role in the Texas bail bond matter to ignore the possibility of targeted silencing. Online discussions among those familiar with the file have long speculated that the sheriff and bondsmen circle in Delta County held a motive strong enough to reach across state lines.

Fisher, Bledsoe, and Curtis Fisher each denied any connection when the question arose. None faced charges related to the Oklahoma deaths. Decades have passed. The children of Elie and Mary have continued pressing for answers.

The high-powered rifle that ended two lives in the Bengal woods remains unidentified. The shooter who waited in the trees that June afternoon has never been named.

The file sits open with the OSBI, awaiting the single piece of information that could possibly connect the fence line in Oklahoma to the courtroom in Texas.