Farenthold case recalled

Chris Tiensch isn’t the only man whose body ever has washed up on a Port Aransas area beach after falling victim to a mysterious homicide.

Thirty-nine years ago, Randy Farenthold’s body was found on the beach in Port Aransas. Like Tiensch, Farenthold was a welloff man who was from out of town and was killed in a case that generated a lot of publicity.

No one is trying to draw a connection between the deaths of Farenthold and Tiensch. But Tiensch’s death superficially bears such similarities to Farenthold’s death that the Farenthold murder case – remembered for how bizarre it was, among other things – once again has become a topic of conversation among longtime Port Aransans who remember the slaying.

(The following account of Farenthold’s life and death, and the court action that followed, was culled from Corpus Christi Caller- Times news stories of that era.)

Even before his death, Farenthold was a well-known man around the Coastal Bend. A wealthy Corpus Christi rancher and farmer, he inherited half of a large estate left by his late grandfather, Randolph Morgan, who owned ranches, farms and oil interests throughout the area.

Farenthold also was the stepson of Frances “Sissy” Farenthold, form er gubernato- rial candidate and state legislator. And Randy Farenthold was the father of a boy named Blake Farenthold, who eventually would be elected, in 2010, to Congress, representing the 27th District, which stretches from Corpus Christi to Brownsville.

A frequent visitor to Port Aransas, Randy Farenthold was well-known to the fishing community here. He enjoyed deep-sea fishing out of his boat, the Lollipop, which was docked in Port Aransas.

Farenthold was 32 years old when his body was discovered on June 6, 1972, by a fisherman in the surf on Mustang Island, two miles south of the south jetty. A block of concrete was chained around his neck, and his hands were bound behind him.

The slaying occurred two days before the body was found. The Nueces County Medical Examiner’s Office reported that he was struck hard in the head, twice, before he was dumped in the Gulf of Mexico.

Farenthold was killed as he was scheduled to testify in a federal fraud case against a man named Bruce Lusk Bass III, a former construction contractor from Banquete.

The investigation into Farenthold’s death lasted for more than four years. The Nueces County Sheriff ’s Department worked the case, assisted by the Texas Rangers and the FBI.

Bass was indicted on a murder charge in 1976.

The state at first offered a plea bargain in which Bass would be sentenced to 25 years. Bass rejected that. A few weeks later, prosecutors offered a16-year deal as a trial was about to begin in Judge Wallace C. Moore’s 184th District Court in Houston, where the trial had been moved on a change-of-venue motion.

Bass pleaded no contest and was sentenced to 16 years in prison on June 20, 1977.

Special prosecutor Robert Bennett said the state offered a 16-year sentence because of legal difficulties found while preparing the case against Bass. He didn’t elaborate.

Bennett said the likelihood of a conviction and the trial’s expected expense were also factors in the state’s decision to offer the plea bargain.

The state submitted written statements of three state witnesses. That included the grand jury testimony of two key witnesses.

“According to submitted testimony, Bass was identified as the person who strangled Farenthold on June 4, 1972, but another man was said to have done the beating. Both acts of violence are mentioned as a cause of death in the indictment against Bass,” according to an account that ran in the Corpus Christi Caller-Times at the time.

Bennett was quoted as saying that at least three other people were involved in the crime. He said law enforcement officers considered it an open case at the time, but no one else was arrested in connection with the case in the years afterward.

Bass was released from prison early, after serving six years and accumulating credit for good behavior.

Within a year after being released, Bass was shot during a dispute at a bar in Jackson, Miss. He was hospitalized for about a week. A man was arrested and charged with aggravated assault. The man told police that Bass had intimidated him.

“Information we got was that Bass was trying to take over or had somehow tried to rig a gambling operation, and all of the local people were afraid of him,” Jackson Police Detective David Fondren told a Caller- Times reporter at the time.

Two months after the shooting in Mississippi, Bass was shot to death in Corpus Christi. The shooting occurred on June 6, 1984, in the parking lot of a Corpus Christi bar, Club Robert, at 5413 S. Staples St. It was 12 years to the day after Farenthold’s body was found in the surf, but police at the time said the incident had nothing to do with the Farenthold case.

Bass, 45, was shot five times by the bar owner, B.D. “Bobby” Horton. The following year, Horton, 58, was acquitted of murder after a jury decided he acted in self-defense.

A pathologist in Horton’s trial testified for the defense that Bass was a “psychopathic criminal.”

“This case reminds me of a situation where you have a coyote spending a lifetime of chasing and killing rabbits,” defense attorney Lee Mahoney was quoted as saying. “Then, one day, a rabbit turns on him and kills him.”

Questions? Comments? Contact Dan Parker at (361) 749- 5131 or dan@portasouthjetty.com.