True Crime Chronicles: Despite a "confession" to 2010 murder in Oklahoma the crime remains officially unsolved

Eugene Claremont “E.C.” Mullendore III

The night air was thick with silence across the 130,000-acre Cross Bell Ranch, but inside the den of its sprawling estate, a legacy was shattered by a single bullet. Eugene Claremont “E.C.” Mullendore III--heir to one of Oklahoma’s largest cattle empires--was found slumped on a couch, shot between the eyes.

His bodyguard, Damon “Chub” Anderson, wounded in the shoulder, claimed intruders had stormed the house. But the truth, it seems, may have died with him.

For decades, the murder of E.C. Mullendore has haunted Oklahoma’s history books. The son of Gene and Kathleen Mullendore, E.C. was born into wealth, privilege, and pressure.

By 22, he was managing the Cross Bell Ranch, but his ambition--and perhaps recklessness--drove the operation into $12 million of debt. His marriage to Linda Vance Mullendore was unraveling. She had moved to Tulsa with their four children and was preparing to file for divorce.

Then came the night of the killing.

Anderson’s story was dramatic: a bath interrupted by gunfire, a rush downstairs, a firefight with fleeing assailants. But investigators quickly found themselves mired in a botched crime scene. The body was embalmed before an autopsy. Evidence was compromised. No charges were ever filed.

Speculation swirled. Was it a mob hit? A desperate act over a $15 million life insurance policy--the largest in U.S. history at the time? Or something more personal?

In 2010, just months before his death, Anderson allegedly confessed to private investigator Gary Glanz that he had killed E.C. during a heated argument after serving him divorce papers. He claimed ranch hand Lonnie Joe Brown helped stage the scene, even shooting Anderson to sell the story.

The confession, however, was never made under oath. Osage County Sheriff George Wayman, who led the original investigation, long suspected Anderson but lacked the evidence to prove it.

“Everything that could have gone wrong did,” Wayman later admitted.

Anderson died in 2010, taking the full truth--if he ever told it--with him.

Author Dale R. Lewis chronicled the saga in Footprints in the Dew, a book and documentary based on interviews with Anderson himself. The case remains officially unsolved.

Yet in the quiet corners of Osage County, the story of E.C. Mullendore still echoes—of wealth and ruin, loyalty and betrayal, and a murder that may never find justice.