WHOSE BONES?

WHOSE BONES?

On January 23, 1987, I woke up to the Wall Street Journal article “Here’s a Cooler You Don’t Want to

Bring to the Company Picnic.” I had more than a passing interest in this story.

The month before, on December 18, I was part of the FDIC closing team dispatched to Booker, Texas,

after the First National Bank and Trust Co. of Booker was declared insolvent. Over that weekend, FDIC

investigators stumbled across a styrofoam cooler containing a skull and bones. Not knowing what to do,

the FDIC contacted local authorities. I had been wrapping up the affairs of the trust department when a

bank employee informed me the cooler’s contents were part of a doctor’s estate.

So the matter was finally resolved, but only after the FDIC received press about the incident. A local

Booker newspaper ran the article “Bones. Bones. Whose Bones?” The Wall Street Journal followed with

its January 23 article about banking regulators finding skeletons in the closets of failed banks before, but

nothing quite like what they discovered in Booker, Texas. The plot thickened, according to the WSJ,

because the marrow was still soft in at least one of the bones and the FDIC was asked by the authorities to

turn them over for a possible criminal investigation.

The closing team learned that the former President of the bank, Glen Lemon, had died in a plane crash in

early November 1986 while flying his private plane out of Liberal, Kansas. Questions arose as to whether

the bones from the doctor’s estate were placed in the wreckage. The body found in the midst of the

charred plane was burned beyond recognition and was identified only by a billfold and ring with Glen

Lemon’s initial. So, what happened? Did Mr. Lemon die? One can only speculate...however, six months

after the crash, an Amarillo newspaper came out with the article “Insurance Company wants body of

Booker banker exhumed.” To my knowledge, the mystery about the bones’ identity continues.