Feuds, even lawsuits, are nothing new among the Moncriefs of Fort Worth, heirs to an estimated $1 billion fortune.

Now, a relatively new and deep family split has evolved into a brutal conflict over hundreds of millions of dollars in assets, made more complicated by the Dec. 29 death of patriarch W.A. “Tex” Moncrief Jr. at 101.

Since October 2020, relatives accused kin of wrongly siphoning millions from trusts while trying to grab ranch and vacation property in Texas and Colorado. Each side claims the other extracted signatures from dying or mentally infirm relatives for documents that affect the leadership of trusts and Moncriefs’ privately held operating company, Montex Drilling Co.

No one is pulling punches in a drama that smacks of Shakespeare’s King Lear colliding with HBO’s Succession in downtown Cowtown.

Remarkably, the high-stakes clash among Fort Worth’s most prominent philanthropists and social luminaries has unfolded without a word in the news media until now. The vacuum endured despite local movers and shakers increasingly agog over a prolonged row marked by reputation-shattering name calling.  

Richard “Dick” Moncrief, 79, is accused by his half-brother Tom, 65, and niece Gloria Moncrief Holmsten, 40, of having played no role at Montex “for more than 25 years,” yet marching into its downtown headquarters on Oct. 2, 2020, to seize control, firing the chief financial officer and offering jobs to 20 of 22 employees. 

Dick did so, they claim, after receiving a $10 million transfer from Tex using “undue influence and/or fraud” on the failing centenarian. Moreover, Dick, has yet to pay a dime toward principal and interest on a $20 million loan that was due in 2018, Gloria and Tom allege in filings to Judge Pat Gallagher’s 96^th District Court.

For his part, Dick Moncrief accuses the pair of manipulating another “incapacitated” person – Charles “Charlie” Moncrief, his half-brother and Gloria’s father, who had been Tex’s righthand man. A few chicken scrawls purported to be Charlie’s signature appeared on a document while he was being treated at Dallas’  Zale-Lipshy Hospital for glioblastoma, a virulent form of brain cancer. 

The document removed Tex from the board of the family’s huge 1966 trust and converted it from a Texas entity to a Delaware limited partnership – without Tex being informed as required, Dick said. Why? To shield the trust from an audit, Dick said. Or was it a defensive strategic move against Dick’s own maneuverings?

It was early October 2020. Charlie died three months later. Gloria, one of his three daughters, said in filings that she took over his business responsibilities as “planned successor,” having worked alongside him 10 years at Montex. Earlier, she served as a White House intern during President George W. Bush’s administration. (One of Bush’s twin daughters, Jenna Bush Hager, an NBC-TV morning show co-host, roomed with Gloria at the University of Texas at Austin and is godmother to one of her daughters.)

A separate lawsuit challenges Gloria’s efforts to remove both Dick and attorney Marshall Searcy from running a trust benefitting W.A. “Bill” Moncrief III, Dick’s older brother, who is in his 80s and was described in a court filing as using a wheelchair and living with Parkinson’s disease; Bill’s wife, Anna Marie; and their son, Patrick. Gloria accuses Dick of “self-dealing” by trying to shift $5 million from the trust to his own adult children. 

In a separate filing, Gloria claims Dick, using his adult children’s trust, tried to wrest control of 250 acres of Parker County ranch property from Bill with a questionable $1.5 million purchase, then tried to claw back $500,000 until a bank froze the transaction. 

In a counter-move, Dick has asked the 17^th District Court to eject Gloria as a trustee for “serious breaches of fiduciary duty” in regard to Bill’s trust. Dick has not addressed the ranch purchase allegation, and many of Gloria’s other accusations.

Dick’s attorneys, Andrew D. Sims and Michael V. Fitzpatrick, have not responded to requests for comment. Earlier, Dick and his wife Marsland requested a restraining order in Parker County, claiming that they had been locked out of ranch property, including a lake house, that they control through “adverse possession,” akin to squatter’s rights. The couple later dropped the action, apparently after the move to buy the land.

Further complicating the picture was a filing by Bill and his wife, Anna Marie, supporting Dick in one of his legal battles with Gloria. But in November, Anna Marie removed herself from the case.

As if there were not enough family ruptures, Lenore Long “BB” Moncrief – Charlie’s oldest daughter from his first marriage – filed a probate court petition in July challenging an amendment made to Charlie’s trust before he died last year. A source close to the family said BB fears that a heavily redacted amendment to the trust removes her $60,000-plus annual annuity. In court filings, her half-sister, Gloria, and Kit Moncrief, Gloria’s mother and Charlie’s widow,  denied that they influenced him to make the change. 

The source said BB was physically prevented from seeing her father by specially assigned security guards. In 2019, she was offered funds to leave town, stemming from fears among some in the family that the art-loving, former Marine had begun to hold sway over her grandfather, Tex, then a frail 99. She rejected the ultimatum, according to the source. 

From bad to worse

Then, on a cold wet Monday morning in late January of this year, the feud escalated exponentially.

Gloria challenged the legitimacy of Tex’s revised will, dated March 22, 2021, saying her uncle Dick’s “persistent and calculated pattern of undue influence and/or fraud” made Tex appoint Dick and attorney Marshall Searcy co-executors. She called on Probate Judge Booke Allen to void the new will because Tex “lacked the mental capacity required by law.”

Although owing the family tens of millions, “Dickie is trying to take or take over any Moncrief asset that is not nailed down,” she claimed.

Curiously, her Jan. 24 petition led off with an assertion by Tex Moncrief’s kidney specialist that in “recent months” the 101-year-old oilman was “mentally incapable of managing his own affairs, including those pertaining to financial matters.” 

Dr. Robert Toto, a medical director of the Multi-Specialty Clinic at UT Southwestern Medical Center, declined to clarify when his statement was made, telling Fort Worth Report by email: “This is protected health information that I will not comment on.” Dr. Toto did not respond when asked if he had given permission for such confidential information to be used in a publicly available court filing. A statement by a nephrologist might signal that Gloria and Tom were unable, or unwilling, to have Tex Moncrief examined for mental fitness under court order in 2021 or earlier. 

Conspicuously absent from the legal broadsides is Tex’s surviving spouse. 

Linda Porter Moncrief quietly relocated to her separate $500,000 Arlington Heights home following Tex’s death in December 2021, according to sources close to the family. Linda met Tex when she was caregiver to his second wife Deborah, they said. They married 19 months after Deborah’s death; Tex was 91, Linda, 53. 

Also not involved is Mike Moncrief, Tex’s nephew and a former Fort Worth mayor, state senator and Tarrant County judge, who was at the center of the family’s last public feud. Mike was adopted by Tex’s late brother, Richard Barto Moncrief, but was related by blood since his maternal grandmother was the sister of Monty Moncrief, Tex’s father.

Mike Moncrief sued Tex after Billy Jarvis, Montex’s controller-turned-whistleblower, told him that his inheritance had been hugely short-changed when his grandfather Monty died. Six months earlier, 64 IRS agents raided Montex, acting on Jarvis’ information that Tex’s side of the family wrote off as business expenses numerous jet flights to vacation homes in California and Colorado, household help salaries and ranch losses.

The government hoped to collect $100 million to $300 million in unpaid taxes. But it settled in 1998 for $23 million after Jarvis, who weakened the government’s case by pleading the Fifth, was found to have been paid $5,000 a month by Mike Moncrief’s attorney to help his case.

Paying up but admitting no wrongdoing, Tex painted himself the victim of a “Gestapo-like” raid at a sympathetic congressional hearing and extracted a public apology from Mike, who dropped his case. Tex collected some money from the insurer of Mike’s attorney, Charlie disclosed in his 2001 book, “Wildcatters.” But Tex suffered a stroke while pursuing his case against Jarvis, the book said. Jarvis never received a nickel of whistleblower reward money despite going to court.

Initially, the family thought an assistant named Mary Ellen Lloyd was behind the leak to the IRS. After she called in sick and suddenly disappeared in June 1995, numerous payments by, or to, Lloyd were uncovered when company books were scrutinized for the IRS case. Included was $205,000 paid to a single fashion boutique. Montex ended up suing her for theft. But jurors believed the former pro shop clerk, not Tex, when she testified to being his longtime mistress, who had been materially indulged – Tex had her bathroom remodeled to suit his taste – and often carried his handwritten bets to Las Vegas for him. One note in his writing, a football wager on Notre Dame to win, became an exhibit, the Dallas Observer reported. (Lloyd later sued Tex for defamation, but dropped the case after signing an agreement not to discuss the Moncriefs.)

The widely covered Lloyd case was bad publicity for Tex, tarnishing an image honed by millions gifted to worthy causes. Mickey Oxford, his former data processing manager, testified that Tex was a “control person” who became “very, very vindictive” after his father Monty died in 1986, the Dallas Observer reported. “I saw men coming out of his office with tears because of the abuse and verbal lashings he had given them.” 

Even after Mike Moncrief’s public apology, Tex continued to publicly excoriate him, calling his nephew an “ingrate” who never worked a day in his life. The animus prompted Tex to donate $150,000 – his sons chipped in another $50,000 – to Mike’s top opponent in his first mayoral race. The amounts were eye-popping for a Fort Worth municipal election in those days, and remain out-sized. (Eighteen years later, Mayor Mattie Parker’s largest individual campaign donation was $33,334 from billionaire Ed Bass.)

“I did it for the fun of it and to let people know where I stand,” Tex told the Houston Chronicle’s Evan Moore. “He (Mike) is nothing but a third-rate politician.” Mike Moncrief, who won the race by a 2:1 margin, rarely responded, and declined to be interviewed for this article.

 Tex’s death changes equation

Family feuds played out openly, if not with marked aggression, when Tex lived. But the clan’s vast holdings were kept tightly cloaked from prying eyes. 

In 2008, Forbes estimated Tex Moncrief’s wealth at $2 billion, then lowered it to $1 billion before taking him off the magazine’s Billionaire’s List in 2014. But a source close to the family said the holdings were still in the $1 billion range, with the 1966 trust holding a big chunk.

An unaudited 2019 balance sheet for Montex Drilling Co. attached to a filing in Judge Pat Gallagher’s court put assets at $27.4 million, up nearly $2 million from the year before. And the value of an entity, Moncrief Partners LP, is valued at $150 million, according to another filing by Gloria. But without a rundown of all investments, oil-gas production figures plus reserves, cattle herd valuations, combined with ranches in Texas and Colorado, the company-owned jetliner and sprawling mansions, including Tex’s 11,700-square-foot home on Crestline Road, the scope of the family’s assets can only be guessed at.

Their philanthropy provides some clues to the Moncrief wealth: $100 million in donations to UT Southwestern Medical Center, including $25 million toward a Fort Worth treatment facility; $8.5 million to what was then All Saints Episcopal Hospital; $5 million to its cancer treatment center, an $18 million gift to UT (Tex, Dick and Gloria’s alma mater) that was just one of many (and reciprocated with a bronze statue of Tex in the school’s football stadium); and millions to Texas Christian University (which Charlie and Tom attended), including $3 million toward the W.A. Monty and Tex Moncrief Field at the Amon Carter Stadium.  Tex was a regular Republican donor;  in 2016 he gave $50,000 to Keep the Promise, a super PAC that supported Sen. Ted Cruz, and another $5,000 to Cruz’s campaign.

A family of philanthropy

Striking it rich

The genesis of the family’s oil wealth began with a major wildcat strike in 1931 by Tex’s father, W.A. Monty Moncrief Sr., after 29 duds that had earned him the nickname “Dry Hole Monty,” The Houston Chronicle reported. The nickname quickly forgotten, Monty Moncrief joined the ranks of industry legends like Sid Richardson, Clint Murchison and H.L. Hunt. 

After serving in France as an Army lieutenant during World War I – having dropped out of the University of Oklahoma to enlist – Monty joined Marland Oil Company’s accounting department, then became a landman securing drilling rights and, to help support his young family, played semi-pro baseball in Ponca City, Okla., the squad losing to the Chicago White Sox in an exhibition game. In 1925, Moncrief was transferred to Fort Worth. But while vice president of Marland’s Texas division, he elected to become a wildcatter, or a person who drills risky exploratory wells, to avoid a transfer back to Ponca City.

A remote East Texas site, 25 miles north of Columbus “Dad” Joiner’s already-famous Daisy Bradford No. 3 well, was not Monty’s first choice. A farmer didn’t want him messing up his 40-acre hog pasture. But another landowner, F.K. Lathrop, offered a bonus share if he drilled on his Gregg County property.

Eleven-year-old Tex watched as his father tossed his Stetson in the air when Lathrop No. 1 began gushing black gold – 320 barrels a day from a depth of 3,587 feet. Gregg County was offering $10,000 for the first commercial well. Instead of pocketing it, Moncrief said that he and his partner John E. Farrell divided the bonus among the drilling crew “since the good Lord blessed our efforts.” The partners sold their interest for $2.5 million ($45.8 million in today’s money). 

Monty ignored his wife Elizabeth’s entreaties to put his share in a trust because she had seen many friends in the industry go bust. He only heeded her demands after she threatened divorce, the Star-Telegram said in a report on his death in 1986 at 90.

Over five decades, the family patriarch produced oil and gas around Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Mississippi, Michigan, Florida and Canada, but never overseas. An avid golfer, Monty hobnobbed with Hollywood celebrities during Palm Spring vacations and brought Bob Hope and Bing Crosby in as investors for a West Texas wildcat effort. After one dry hole, Montex drilled 28 straight producing wells in what would become a billion-barrel field near Snyder. Crosby and Hope ended up netting millions.

Favored son

Tex became Monty’s right-hand man after serving in the Navy during World War II. The father famously had forbidden him from dropping out of UT to become a professional golfer. Monty’s other son, Richard Barto Moncrief, invested in some projects but never aspired to a similar position as Tex. He died at 48.

The pattern of father and favored son would repeat itself in the next generation.

Charlie, Tex’s oldest surviving son from his second marriage, was an oil industry natural. He became his father’s righthand man, learning to work with Tex’s strong will, as Tex had done with Monty. In “Wildcatters,” his often candid 2002 book about the IRS raid and the rift with Mike Moncrief, Charlie flatly states that he had been conceived during a Los Angeles assignation when Tex and his mother were married to others.

His older, half-brother Dick worked for the Goldman Sachs investment bank and later tried his luck overseas, creating Moncrief Oil International. He did so against the advice of his grandfather, Monty, who refused to invest with him in an Israeli-occupied, off-shore field in the Gulf of Suez. Monte bluntly told him “BLNT” (better luck next time), according to the 1981 book on the family, “Wildcatters: The Story of Texans, Oil and Money,” by Sally Helgesen. Dick’s ventures met with mixed results at best. And his notable failures were repeatedly cited by Gloria in the lawsuit over Montex’s control as the reason Tex had kept him from business matters for decades.

According to Helgesen’s book, Dick did find initial success in the Gulf of Suez. The off-shore field was handed back in 1979 following peace accords with Egypt. Helgesen doesn’t make clear how much Dick’s company might have earned during the year or so it pumped oil.

Siberia was Dick’s biggest challenge. Gloria and Tom claim he spent millions in futile lawsuits against Gazprom, Russia’s major energy company. Arriving in Russia during an unstable political period in the late 1990s, Dick asserted that he forged a deal to exploit a spot near the Arctic Circle. When things calmed down, Gazprom ignored him and signed a deal with a German company, BASF. 

Claiming he was due $1.37 billion in damages, Dick sued Gazprom in Germany and later in Fort Worth. The last case ended in 2015 when Gazprom’s Houston lawyers asserted that a key document – described by Dick as “proprietary” technical details drawn up in 2004 for an LNG plant – had been “falsified.” Gazprom said it was public information prepared by a UT economist in 2012. 

The assertion that the document had been faked prompted Dick to fold. “This was pretty much an ‘only-on-TV’ type of thing,” Gazprom attorney Van Beckwith told a Forbes columnist. 

“We have an accountant who made a tragic error ,” conceded Marshall Searcy, Dick’s attorney who is now co-executor with him for Tex’s estate. “I still think we had a strong case, but you’ve got to play by the rules.”

“Tex was fully aware of Dickie’s history of poor investments and his bad business decisions,” Gloria and Tom claimed in an Oct. 5, 2020 filing. “As a result, Dickie has had no role in Montex, whether as a shareholder, director, officer or employee.” In her latest petition, Gloria claimed that Tex so distrusted Dick that he threatened to fire any Montex employee who did business with him. But Tex did give him a monthly allowance of $200,000 until fall 2020, she said in her challenge to the revised will.

What changed? How did Dick come to win over Tex? 

His niece claims that from at least the summer of 2020, with Charlie stopping his daily visits to Tex because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Dickie launched a “classic undue influence maneuver.”

 Stopping in almost every morning she said Dick misled the frail centenarian to the point where he had isolated Tex from his closest advisers, including famed Washington attorney Bob Bennett, a friend of 30 years, and longtime estate lawyer Tom Richardson. Dick has not responded to these allegations.

The battle lines have been drawn, pitting Dick Moncrief against his niece Gloria, who is half his age. Does she have the grit to grapple and prevail? 

“Gloria always knew she wanted to go into the business,” said Stacie McDavid, a longtime family friend. “Being a woman in this male-dominated, tough industry is not for the faint of heart. But she’s a real leader. It’s weird for me to say this, but she’s filling a ‘patriarch’ position at Moncrief Oil.”

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Freelancer writer Barry Shlachter served more than a dozen years as a foreign correspondent in Asia and Africa for The Associated Press. While posted in Kenya, he conducted the interviews and co-produced the PBS documentary “World Without Walls: Beryl Markham’s African Memoir,” which won the San Francisco Film Festival’s Special Jury Prize. After returning to the United States on a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University, he settled in Texas where he was a reporter and editor at The Fort Worth Star-Telegram for 28 years. In 2002, he was named Star Reporter of Texas by the Austin Headliner’s Club and won the Dallas Press Club award for best reporter’s portfolio, following his 9/11 coverage in New York and Afghanistan. Since leaving the Star-Telegram in 2015, he has written for D CEO, 360 West, TCU Endeavors, AARP Magazine and Cross Country Skier, while operating a boutique press specializing in regional titles, Great Texas Line Press. 

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