Southern Hills Country Club

In 1981, Tulsa businessman Roger Wheeler was murdered in a mob hit after playing a round of golf at Southern Hills Country Club, and it is known as one of the most infamous murders in the city’s history.

This week marks the 44th anniversary of the murder and now there is a definitive book about the mafia hit and the fallout. The book titled, “Killing My Father: The Inside Story of The Biggest FBI Corruption Scandal In History,” delves into the history of the murder, the Wheeler family, and the FBI corruption that led to even more murders after Wheeler’s death.

“I think Tulsa does know the impact of this murder on our economy. I mean, Telex went away. You know, and the personal impact of the Wheeler family. It just destroyed that family,” Huff said.

Roger Wheeler’s son, David, has teamed up with former Tulsa Police Detective Mike Huff and local author Larry Yadon to write a book about the murder and the FBI cover-up before, during, and after. At the time of the murder, Wheeler was the head of the Telex Corporation and former owner of World Jai Alai.

He uncovered embezzlement in the sport of Jai Alai involving the mafia and was killed for it with a single bullet to the head in the parking lot of Southern Hills. TPD’s Mike Huff was one of the first officers on the scene that day in May of 1981, and it looked like a mafia hit fairly early in the investigation. At that time, the only mafia in Oklahoma was the Dixie Mafia out of Louisiana.

Huff’s investigation took him from Tulsa to Boston numerous times and that’s when he first heard the name Whitey Bulger, the head of the Winter Hill Gang. Eventually, Bulger would be accused of Wheeler’s murder along with two other gang members, but Bulger went on the run for decades. He was able to avoid capture until 2011 but was murdered in prison in 2018. He was depicted by Johnny Depp in the 2015 movie “Black Mass.”

“There’s a lot of folklore about Whitey Bulger being kind of the Robin Hood of our time. Actually, he’s more like the Al Capone of our time,” Huff said.

Bulger was an FBI informant for years and was allowed to continue his life of crime which included more murders after Wheeler’s killing. Huff said Bulger has been linked to around 20 murders but there could be more.

“It was a huge cover up,” Huff said. “It started in May of (1982) or actually before. The feds didn’t let us in on the deal and fed us some lies. Then, there was another murder in Miami in August of (1982) and that just kind of knocked the socks off of us.”

The book is available on Amazon, and Huff said there have been some early discussions about a possible movie.