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The Marshall death was only one more spadeful in the tons of dirt cascading over the case of the Pecos Ponzi. Other developments: > Senator McClellan's Investigations Subcommittee announced that it would investigate the suicide (apparent) of William Pratt, 31. Chicago office manager of Commercial Solvents Corp., the New York firm that sold $5,700,000 worth of anhydrous ammonia to Estes, mainly on credit, hoping to be repaid from his grain-storage income. While no connection with the Estes case was evident, Pratt, asphyxiated by carbon monoxide in his car, left a bizarre note: "The bells even toll when a rat dies. The burden of guilt is on my shoulders.''
> Billie Sol's 16th District Congressman, Democrat J. T. Rutherford, admitted getting money from Estes. He had searched his records, he said, and was so surprised that "I could have dropped my teeth" to find that Billie Sol had given him a $1,500 "campaign contribution" last Jan. 17.
This was eleven days after Rutherford had helped set up and had attended a meeting between Estes and Agriculture Department officials in Washington. At that session, the department agreed to postpone its cancellation of Estes' cotton allotments. Also at the meeting was Texas' Democratic Senator Ralph Yarborough, who has admitted getting some $7,500 in political contributions from Estes—all, he says, before the meeting.
> The Agriculture Department decided to move all of Estes' Government-owned grain out of his Texas warehouses. However, the department said it would do so gradually over 18 months. Thus, some of the $4,000,000 in annual storage payments would continue for a while. At his press conference, President Kennedy gave only a generalized reason for the Government's action: "I think that it's appropriate . . . because of all the circumstances surrounding the case." Sol Smiles. In El Paso, Billie Sol himself, who has been sticking close to his own 52-ft. Pecos living room these weeks, walked into a federal court to face representatives of his 500 creditors. The hearing was to determine what assets Billie has left. But Estes took the Fifth Amendment on all meaningful questions.
His court-appointed receiver, Harry Moore, said that Estes' own unverified books indicated debts of $38,387,935 and assets of $20,793,155. Estes was ordered to present a plan by June 15 for paying off his creditors. Droll Judge R. Ewing Thomason, 83, looked down at Estes' creditors, found a bit of wry humor in their predicament. "About all you'd have left is the newspaper,'' observed the judge. "But I'm sure you won't need that, with all the publicity you are getting." Billie Sol smiled for the first time at the hearing—he knew what was happening to the newspaper.