THE COASTAL BEND MAGAZINE • March/April 2018 47 TheCoastalBend.com top: Randy Farenthold’s son, Blake Farenthold, being sworn in as a member of the U.S. House of Representa- tives for the 27th Dist. of Texas. middle: Blake’s sister, Sue Farenthold, the raid on her home, and the accomplices ar- rested with her in 2012. bottom: Rep. Farenthold hounded by report- ers after news broke that Congress settled a sexual harrasment claim on his behalf. Instead of a pile of government bonds, Randy and Bruce were presented heavy fire arms, pointed at them, and their lives in exchange for the hundred grand in cash. The two returned to Cor- pus Christi empty handed, but soon boarded another flight, this one bound for Las Vegas, with yet another $100,000 in Randy’s cash in hand—this time to ac- cept an apology and double repayment from a remorseful Mafia boss—the sec- ond episode arranged by Bass. Soon after touching down in Vegas, it dawned on Randy that his partner in crime might be up to no good, and he turned Bruce in to the FBI, claiming he had been defrauded. By 1972, Bruce Bass and three others were indicted on fed- eral fraud charges, with their trial set for the end of the year in Houston—Ran- dy Farenthold, naturally, would be the star witness, as he was the victim of the scheme. June 3, 1972, was a beautiful day in Port Aransas, a typically warm early summer Saturday, with a light, south- easterly breeze and a high temperature in the mid-80’s—a perfect day for off- shore fishing, and Randy made the most of it—rather the joining his stepmother, Sissy’s, election party for her runoff race versus Dolph Briscoe. Court statements would later show that Randy returned to his home in Corpus Christi after fish- ing off Port Aransas, dressed and went for cocktails at the Corpus Christi Yacht Club, followed by dinner at his estranged wife’s home, with her, Blake and Sue. He was said to have joined a craps game at a private home, leaving after midnight, presumably to his house in the Ocean Drive district. There, his car, keys, wal- let and money would be found in his absence, and Randy would not be seen again for another two days. On the morning of Tuesday, June 6, 1972, two well-known Port A fisher- men were running a seine net through the surf off Mustang Island, gathering bait for their offshore trip that morn- ing, when an object far bigger than bait fish pulled their drag to a heavy stop. The clothed, male body they discovered had a concrete block chained around its neck, and the victim looked beaten bad- ly. On the man’s wrist was a fully intact, designer wristwatch, and it did not take long for them to identify the unfortunate soul as Randy Farenthold. Two-and-a-half days earlier, Sissy Farenthold, the unlikely runoff candi- date for the Democratic nomination for Governor of Texas—a liberal, anti-estab- lishment female, who attended Vassar and was married to a European aristo- crat—lost by eleven points to governor- to-be, Dolph Briscoe, then the largest private landowner in Texas. Her success as a reformist legislator, feminist and political candidate gained Sissy nation- al attention, and she placed second for the vice presidential nomination at the Democratic National Convention, later that summer. Back in the Coastal Bend, Texas Rangers and agents from the FBI, along with local and county detectives, were following dozens of leads, and inter- viewing hundreds of folks in the search for Randy Farenthold’s killer or killers. It was theorized that he was abducted in front of his house by at least two men in one or two rented cars, taken to a rural location, beaten and struck in the head with a heavy object, then transported to a dock and onto a boat. It was ruled out that anyone in the Port A fishing community transported Randy’s body offshore, as he was well known there and the population of yacht owners was much smaller then, than it is these days. There is at least one unofficial ac- count of a dad and his teenage son who were approached by four men in a rental car on the Lawrence St. T-Head, where they were fueling up a 40-something- foot Bertram. “These guys asked Dad if they could pay us to take ’em offshore that night,” the son remembers, “but Dad told them, ‘well, we can sell you this boat, but we don’t do charters.’ And the guy kept going on about how he would pay us to take us out there and back, no fishing, just a ride. “That was right around the time Randy went missing. We just thought it was kinda weird.” The most likely scenario was that the killers hired a shrimp boat from Aransas Pass or Rockport to take poor Randy to his watery grave, at the age of just thirty-three. Bass would later serve six years for Randy’s murder before be- ing shot to death in a Staples St. bar.