Lone Star Hit Man

In January 2004, Sonny (Billy Frank) Vickers was executed in Texas for the 1993 murder of Mr. Kinslow, a liqour store owner. While strapped down to the execution gurney, Sonny's last words stunned reporters and made headlines around the world! He confessed to being a hitman and claimed over 14 contract killings to his credit as well as involvement in the 1976 murders at the Cullen Davis mansion in Fort Worth, Texas.

His first born son, Keith (my client and ironically, a criminal defense attorney in California) researched his estranged father's criminal life and found that he was a contract killer for the "Dixie Mafia" a criminal organization in Texas and Oklahoma. Sonny's 30 year criminal carrier consisted of bootlegging, gamling operations, prostitution, arson and murder for hire all of which Sonny ran out of his used car business in Paris, Texas and a bar in Detroit, Texas.

At 14, Sonny was arrested for petty theft and placed into an adult jail cell in Greenville, Texas, where he was raped by a drunk inmate. A few years later, Sonny meets David Ewalt, a corrupt sheriff deputy who shows Sonny and his younger brother Jimmy how to break into houses. They conduct a buglary ring, Sonny and Jimmy split the lot with Ewalt, who offers police protection during the burglaries.

Sonny's first murder took place in Greenville, Texas at the age of 19, when he sees the wino that raped him sleeping one off in an alley behind a grocery store. Ewalt provides Sonny with a knife and blocks off the alley so Sonny can go and exact his revenge. Impressed with Sonny's callouness, Ewalt introduces Sonny to Floyd Click, the head of the Dixie Mafia. Click tells Sonny that he will pay handsomely for Sonny's skills and talents as a professional killer.

Sonny's first contract killing was in 1965 upon a man who opened a liqour store in a nearby county, interferring with the Dixie Mafia's bootlegging operations.

In 1976, Cullen Davis was a Fort Worth oil tycoon. He lived lavishly in his sprawling 240 acre mansion and had only the most beautiful women. Embroiled in a costly and bitter divorce with his second wife Priscilla Davis, Cullen contacts Jerry Hitson, a Fort Worth man who owned a private security firm and had ties to the Dixie Mafia, and asked Hitson to kill Priscilla for $20,000. Hitson said that he knew a "heavy shooter" from Detroit, Texas and that he was the most notorious hitman in all of Texas.

Sonny bothced the August 1976 hit on Priscilla. While waiting for Priscilla to return home, Sonny unexpedietly found her 12-year old daughter Andrea Willborn home, he brought her to the basement and killed her and waited over an hour for Priscilla. When she arrived home with her live-in boy friend Stan Far, a seven foot tall TCU basketball star, Sonny killed Far and shot Priscilla, who survied the shooting.

In the most famous criminal trial in Texas history, Cullen Davis was acquited for the murders, primarily because the bloody palm print left by the perpetrator (Sonny) did not match Davis.
In 1989, a woman named Patricia Rawson hired Sonny to kill her husband. After the murder Sonny was arrest and made a deal with the prosecutor to roll on Rawson. Working with the Texas Rangers, Sonny wore a wire and after many meetings with Rawson in parking lots and hotels, got her to admit hiring him for the murder. Sonny was so charasmatic that he got his accomplice, Jaime Kent, to wrongly confess to being the actual trigger-man. To this day, Rawson and Kent are still serving life sentences for the murder of Jerry Rawson. Sonny received an immunity deal.

The killing of Kinslow, for which Sonny was executed was not a botched robbery. It was another contract killing which Sonny admitted with his last words.

Sonny was originally scheduled to be executed in December 2003. He waited all night in the holding cell next to the death chamber however, the death warrant expired (the first and only time in US history that a death warrant expired) and he was returned to death row to await a new date with death. While awaiting the new date, he writes a long letter of the agony he experienced waiting in the gallows that first night and being returned to death row. Titled "Three and a half steps," it is the only true first hand account of a man returned from the gallows.

Prior to his execution, he was converted to Christianity by a pastor who convinces Sonny that he must confess all he has done, which led to his final confession moments before his execution.

The working title for the screenplay is "Lone Star Hitman."