BY ANDY TAYLOR
chronicle@taylornews.org

CANEY — Details about the unsolved 1970 murder of Osage County rancher E.C. Mullendore III may soon be revealed with the words of a Caney man lending a key to the crime.

The Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise revealed Tuesday that one of its columnists, Dale Lewis, who is known in the newspaper as the Original Buffalo Dale, had been subpoenaed last week to testify in a multi-county grand jury in Oklahoma City as the grand jury investigates the murder of E.C. Mullendore III. Mullendore was beaten and shot to death at his vast ranch headquartered in northeastern Osage County, Okla., on Sept. 26, 1970. The ranch headquarters were less than seven miles from Caney while the ranch itself abutted many properties in the rural Caney area.

Lewis was asked to testify about his numerous interviews of Caney resident Damon “Chub” Anderson, who as a Mullendore Ranch employee and Mullendore’s own bodyguard, was present the night Mullendore was killed. Anderson also received gun wounds that night but later recovered. Anderson contended that two unknown assailants ambushed he and Mullendore after the two returned with Mullendore’s mother from a night of racing at the Caney Valley Speedway.

The death of Mullendore has remained a mystery ever since that deadly night. And, the many assorted details about Mullendore’s financial plight — including a staggering $12 million debtload, a freshly-signed, multi-million dollar life insurance policy and alleged dealings with the Mafia — were prime grist for a murder mystery. That happened in 1975 when Wall Street Journal reporter Jonathan Kwitny wrote “The Mullendore Murder Case,” which chronicled Mullendore’s dangerous young lifestyle and land dealings that, Kwitny leads the reader to believe, may have resulted in his murder.

Anderson knew the most details about that deadly night in his boss’ house at the famed Cross Bell Ranch. However, he never spoke about it, even though some people over the years have fingered him as being the killer.

Even when a grand jury was impaneled in February 1972 to investigate Mullendore’s murder, the grand jury was unable to put its hands on Anderson. That’s because, Kwitny wrote in his book, that Anderson was safe and sound across the border in Caney, where he was working as a welder. The grand jury was unable (or unwilling) to go through the legal process of extraditing Anderson to Oklahoma to make him squeal about Mullendore’s death.

So, the grand jury term ended . . . without Anderson speaking . . . and without any indictments ever being issued.

Jump ahead two full decades and Anderson is living the life of a ne’er do well. Arrest warrants were issued in Oklahoma and Kansas for his alleged cultivation of marijuana, including a field of pot near Dewey that roughly measured the size of a football field. When law enforcement began putting the squeeze on Anderson, he fled the region.

He found his way to Montana, where he maintained work as a ranch hand and welder. In fact, he once worked as a subcontractor for media mogul Ted Turner, who hired Anderson to build buffalo pins at a Turner ranch in Montana.

Over the years of hard life and even harder memories grew on Anderson. He became sick . . . a victim of bad kidneys. According to Lewis, Anderson eventually had to start selling personal belongings in order to pay for medical bills, and he bounced around from hotel to hotel.

Meanwhile, back in Oklahoma and Kansas, the Mullendore murder mystery grew cold. And, the mystery — because of its unsolved nature — only grew with more rumors over the years.

No one ever believed the Mullendore case would ever raise its head again. But that all changed in 2006 when  Anderson was discovered in Helena, Mont. He was arrested for trying to use another person’s name to receive Social Security benefits. He was desperate for money to pay for his medical problems. So, he tried to enlist on a Social Security benefit using the name of a person who died in 1957.  At the time of his capture, he was listed on the Kansas Bureau of Investigation’s Most Wanted List.

Anderson was brought back to Kansas to face the narcotics charges in Chautauqua County. He eventually pleaded no contest and was sentenced to a maximum of five years in prison.

However, Anderson, at the time of his prison sentence, was an ill man — victim of malfunctioning kidneys. So, he was released from prison in February 2007, less than eight months after his prison sentence was issued.

He returned to Caney, where he has lived quietly. Only in recent months has his condition worsened. He now resides in an area nursing home as he deals with his ailing kidneys.

Why does this story apply to Dale Lewis of the Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise? Because Anderson has signed a contract with Lewis giving the writer the exclusive rights to Anderson’s story. And, within those dozens of hours of interviews that Lewis has conducted with Anderson, Lewis has learned much more than anyone else knows about the events leading to Mullendore’s death on Sept. 26, 1970.

“I think we are as close now to solving the mystery as we were on day one, when Mullendore was shot on September 26, 1970s,” Lewis said in an interview with Tulsa television station KOTV on Tuesday.

Lewis told KOTV that Anderson wanted to get the truth told about Mullendore’s death as it has been an issue that has weighed heavily on his mind since it happened. In fact, when Anderson was brought back to Kansas to face his drug charges in 2006, he carried with him a dog-eared copy of Kwitny’s book, one of the few possessions he brought to Kansas from Montana.

Lewis said Anderson has revealed information in his interviews that he has not told anyone — including to members of his own family, law enforcement or to the Mullendore family. The interviews also includes details about Anderson’s childhood in Copan, Okla., where he was raised; his history as a ranch hand, personal bodyguard, and welder; and his penchant for attracting beautiful ladies, who apparently were lured by Anderson’s chiseled frame and personality during the wild times of the 1960s.

Lewis said his interviews with Anderson have been made into an unreleased biography called “Footprints in the Dew,” a title that is taken from one of the unresolved elements of the Mullendore mystery. In the early morning hours of Mullendore’s murder, thick dew covered the lawn of the Cross Bell Ranch. Law enforcement was able to trace the footprints of Chub Anderson, who fled the home after he contended two assailants shot he and Mullendore.

Only one set of tracks could be found in the dew . . . those of Chub Anderson.

According to a source in Kwitny’s book, no other footprints could be found in the dew.