If you were a Dallasite with swagger and a bulging back pocket in the 1970s, you probably crossed the threshold of Cutter Bill Western World. Inside, a bombshell in high-waisted jeans would serve you a whiskey and outfit you in an ostrich leather blazer or buckskin bell-bottoms with fringe running from hip to hem. The stores, in Dallas and another in Houston, were a small but shiny sliver of Rex Cauble’s empire, which included ranches, quarter horse breeding, steel manufacturing, oodles of oil wells, and Exxon stock that his wife, Josephine, had brought into their marriage in 1951.
For decades, Rex played poker with high rollers and rubbed elbows with big timers—Gov. Connally, among them—until 1978, when the wildcatter was fingered as the “Cowboy Mafia’s” head honcho in the biggest marijuana bust of the era. A TV series starring Henry Winkler is in the works, based on a Texas Monthly story penned by Lawrence Wright in 1980. But that’s not where Rex’s story ended. A decade later, in the January 1990 issue of D Magazine, the Cauble saga continued. It remains one of this magazine’s most unusual stories, both in content and format.
It started with Tom Stephenson, a writer who once carried a wad big enough to frequent Cutter Bill’s. That was during the years he co-owned several booming bars in Dallas. But by 1989, Tom was flat broke and back to writing, this time ghosting a book for Jack Binion, the Dallas owner of the Horseshoe casino in Vegas. Binion tipped Stephenson off on the meltdown between Rex and Josephine Cauble. The couple’s divorce had been simmering since 1962, finally boiling over into a mess of accusations and lawsuits after Rex’s 1987 release from prison. Stephenson pitched Rex’s divorce tale to D Magazine, but the editor had one problem: “Well, that’s just one side of the story.” She suggested Josephine’s side be told by editor Sally Giddens…