By Pete Kendall/reporter@trcle.com
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According to those who knew him well several years ago in Seattle, George “Buddy” White was a late-middle aged motorcycle enthusiast who spoke with a Texas drawl.
But was the man who frequented the T-Bird Tavern on 15th Street in Ballard, a Seattle suburb, the same George White who disappeared in Johnson County in September 1975, when his horse-trading acquaintance, Durwood Grisham, was found dead.
Evidently not.
“I was able to track down the Seattle George ‘Buddy’ White,” White relative Stephen Irwin said Monday. “He currently lives in Dallas. He was born in 1942 like my George but in December rather than in May. Also, his middle name is Milton and not Gilbert.”
So, the search for George White continues. Law enforcement officials, like Irwin, are drawing a blank.
Grisham was found dead Dec. 27, 1975, in a briar patch 3 miles east of Parker in southeastern Johnson County. Foul play was suspected, but no one was ever arrested. Grisham was an ex-con who pleaded guilty in 1963 to six counts of conspiracy and substantive violations of federal narcotics laws. The last known association of Grisham and White was reportedly a visit to a bank north of Fort Worth to complete a horse transaction.
The Johnson County Sheriff’s Office cold case squad, comprised of retired peace officers such as former Texas Ranger Billy Peterson, is investigating the case. Any Johnson County records related to the Grisham case were destroyed in a chemical spill in the former evidence room. Peterson said the Rangers have no record of the case.
Meanwhile, Johnson County Sheriff Bob Alford said his office has been unsuccessful in linking Grisham’s death or White’s disappearance to an August 1982 case in which two bodies were found at the bottom of an abandoned well 7 miles southwest of Blum. One body was identified by the Dallas Medical Examiner’s office.
“We’re waiting on the identification of the other body,” Alford said, “and on reports from Hill County.”
According to the Aug. 9, 1982, Times-Review: “The discovery was made after more than a year of investigation, which began after the sheriff’s office began receiving anonymous reports that the well held the remains of four to eight people.”
The last clue to White’s whereabouts surfaced in the days after his disappearance when White’s wife, then residing near Grandview, reportedly received a brief letter signed by White and post-marked in South Texas. The present location of that letter is unknown. The postmark has led some White family members, such as Irwin, to speculate that White may have headed to Mexico.
The Grisham investigation begins and ends with White, according to the ex-Ranger on the cold case squad.
“We need to find George White before we can do anything else,” Peterson said. “We don’t know if he’s alive, but we have no evidence to indicate he’s dead.”
Irwin told the Times-Review that he thought he was on the verge of adding to his knowledge of the case in recent correspondence with a Seattle resident also searching for a George White.
“The George White I am looking for would be in his late 60s or early 70s,” the man wrote to Irwin. “He has/had white hair and white beard, and many people referred to him looking like Santa, although he did not like that. I cannot say if he was from Texas. However, he spoke with a drawl and his friends told me ‘he moved back to Texas.’”
Irwin wrote to the Seattle contact that White liked motorcycles and was involved in a near-fatal motorcycle wreck in the early ’70s.
The Seattle contact wrote to Irwin about trading White a motorcycle for a car: “The guy that I met was really nice; spoke to him a few different times. Actually traded the bike straight across for a ’54 Packard Pacific that he had. He seemed to come in and out of money; meaning he had a great house and lots of toys, but then the next time I saw him he was fire-selling everything to pay some debt.
“The friends that I spoke to were the bartender and a few patrons of the T-Bird Tavern on 15th Avenue, in Ballard.”
George White went by the nickname Buddy as he was growing up in Big Spring in West Texas. Told this, the Seattle contact wrote to Irwin that everyone at the bar referred to that George White as “Buddy.”
Irwin traced the Seattle George “Buddy” White to Dallas, only to find it wasn’t the White who disappeared in Johnson County.
Irwin recounted the string of strange coincidences:
“George’s full name was/is George Gilbert White Jr. However, growing up in Big Spring everyone called him Buddy. His sister still calls him Buddy. Almost, every newspaper article in the Big Spring paper where his name appears refers to him as Buddy. When he got married his wife called him George as well as his other adult friends.
“George liked motorcycles. In the early ’70s he was badly injured in a motorcycle accident in Colorado and almost died. The man who sent me the e-mail [from Seattle] sold a vintage Harley to a George ‘Buddy’ White and is trying to track him down. He last saw him three to four years ago.
“George had a very privileged upbringing and was used to having access to large funds. Throughout his early adult years he was into one thing or another that involved large sums of cash.”
