Although he was accused of being Lyndon Johnson's hit man, Mac Wallace was far from being the street thug who often finds themselves in this position. He was quarterback on the Woodrow Wilson High School football team as well as class president. After high school in 1939 he joined the Marines but was discharged a year later after a fall from a ladder left him seriously injured.

After the Marines he attended the University of Texas where he organized support for an ousted socialist president. While he gathered the support of thousands of his fellow students his efforts proved unsuccessful. However he parleyed that into his election of student union president.

He then began doctoral studies at Columbia University but never completed the course, but during that time he taught there at Columbia, University of Texas and University of North Carolina. It was about this time around 1950 that he was introduced to Lyndon Johnson who recognized his abilities and ambition, and he began working in the US Department of Agriculture in Texas – the real source of economic power in the Lone Star State.

Although he was married to, but estranged from his wife Andre, he took up an affair with Josefa Johnson – Lyndon's sister. About this time a veteran named John Kinser began seeing both women. Josefa was a woman who could not control her tongue and she spoke far too frequently about her brother's questionable dealings. When Kinser made the fatal mistake of asking her to get him a loan, LBJ understood it to be a blackmail threat and had Wallace handle the situation.

While working at the miniature golf club that he owned, John Kinser saw Mac Wallace come in and empty a revolver into him. Patrons at the golf course run into the office and saw Kinser dying on the floor covered on blood and Wallace running out to his car and driving away. The wrote down his license number and gave the police a description.

Soon Wallace was arrested and gave no explanation for his actions. He was charged with first degree murder but was released on $30,000 bail which was supplied by two of Johnson's associates. When the trial came about, he was represented by John Cofer, Johnson's personal attorney. He did not take the stand nor did give any explanation at that time either.

The prosecution produced many witnesses to tell what actually happened. Of course he was convicted with 11 of the jurors in favor of the death penalty and one holding out for life in prison. Eventually they came to a conclusion but it made no difference, the judge overruled them and sentenced Mac Wallace to five years in prison, then suspended the sentence. He walked out of the courtroom a free man... but heavily indebted to Lyndon Johnson for saving his skin.

He could not go back to the Department of Agriculture at that time so the man with a felony conviction that could not even vote received the security clearance for position at Tempco Electronics – a defense contractor owned by D H Byrd that became part of LTV.

Henry Marshall was a Department of Agriculture inspector closing in on Johnson crony Billie Sol Estes. He refused a promotion to work in Washington that he understood to be a bribe, and he continued his pursue of corruption. At one point, LBJ decided they needed to “get rid” of Marshall. Wallace went to work but accomplished the task very inelegantly.

The plan was to hit Marshall on the head and put him in his truck and make it look like suicide using the exhaust fumes. Marshall was hit on the head but fought back. So Wallace grabbed Marshall's 22 bolt action rifle and shot him five times in the stomach. Even with such a messy crime scene, the death was ruled a suicide... such was Johnson's influence in Texas.

It wasn't until years later than Texas Ranger, Clint Peoples investigating the crime convinced a court to exhume the body – and it was concluded that the man had been murdered.

Wallace has been implicated in at least six other deaths, including Estes accountant, George Krutilek and President Kennedy. However as long as he was a good soldier for Lyndon Johnson he enjoyed the protection of being on the winning team.

Wallace's finger print was found on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. There are questions if he was actually one of the shooters or if he was their laying out the plan, but there is little doubt as to his involvement.

He became a liability to the conspirators in Texas as he began asking for more money to keep his silence concerning his role in the American coup that took place in Dallas in 1963. In January of 1971 his car was rigged to run some of the exhaust gases into the passenger compartment as he drove. The official finding was that he had fallen asleep while driving and received serious head injuries that proved to be fatal.

Faustian Bargains: Lyndon Johnson and Mac Wallace in the Robber Baron Culture of Texas
by Joan Mellen

Perhaps no president has a more ambiguous reputation than LBJ. A brilliant tactician, he maneuvered colleagues and turned bills into law better than anyone. But he was trailed by a legacy of underhanded dealings, from his “stolen” Senate election in 1948 to kickbacks he artfully concealed from deals engineered with Texas wheeler-dealer Billie Sol Estes and defense contractors like his longtime supporter Brown & Root. On the verge of investigation, Johnson was reprieved when he became president upon JFK's assassination. Among the remaining mysteries has been LBJ's relationship to Mac Wallace who, in 1951, shot a Texas man having an affair with LBJ's loose-cannon sister Josefa, also Wallace's lover. When arrested, Wallace cooly said "I work for Johnson…I need to get back to Washington." Charged with murder, he was overnight defended by LBJ's powerful lawyer John Cofer, and though convicted, amazingly received a suspended sentence. He then got high-security clearance from LBJ friend and defense contractor D.H. Byrd, which the Office of Naval Intelligence tried to revoke for 11 years without success.

Using crucial Life magazine and Naval Intelligence files and the unredacted FBI files on Mac Wallace, never before utilized by others, investigative writer Joan Mellen skillfully connects these two disparate Texas lives and lends stark credence to the dark side of Lyndon Johnson that has largely gone unsubstantiated.