Business Spotlight: The Wampler Enigma

There is a history to Dee Wampler that few know. Before the days of defending high-profile murder suspects and Mafiosi like John Gotti, he was flown to Washington, D.C., to meet his idol, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. At the time, he was one of the youngest prosecuting attorneys in Missouri history and found himself thrown into the middle of a case that hit worldwide notoriety.

To this day, millions of pieces of metal – evidence of this case – can still be found on the side of Interstate 44, Wampler says.

The striking Teamsters from Webb City fired a shot into 44,000 pounds of dynamite in an 18-wheeler traveling on the highway causing a colossal explosion. Wampler successfully prosecuted the case.

“We never found John Galt, the driver. And we never found the 18-wheeler. It was totally, absolutely, blown into millions of pieces the size of a silver dollar,” he says.

National media reported the blast left a crater 25-feet deep and up to 100-feet wide on I-44. Traffic had to be diverted for months, and windows were blown out all over Springfield – particularly downtown.

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One of those decimated windows could have been the very same one from which Wampler’s mother, a hairdresser, saw a nervous man pacing outside of the Lander’s building. On that day in 1939, she had one of her friends arrange a date. His father, an attorney, would pace the square to try to walk off his nervous stomach before trials. That day, his anxiety led to love.  

Dee Wampler was introduced to lawyers and law in the Woodruff and Lander’s buildings when he was 4 years old. He used to ride the elevators and play with toys on the floor of his father’s office and listen to how he interacted with clients.

He started practicing law with his father in 1965, but his father did civil work and he wanted to do criminal law. His father encouraged him to venture on.

“He said, ‘you have to like what you do. If you like what you do in work, it’s not work,’” Wampler recalls.

He became Missouri assistant prosecuting attorney and then prosecuting attorney. But he didn’t always win and that was sometimes difficult to handle, especially with the domino effect created by the first murder case he ever tried. Donald Joe Hall was found not guilty of killing Violet Ruth Brewer in 1970. Hall went on to kill more people and Brewer’s husband committed suicide.

“Whatever I did as a prosecuting attorney and whatever I do as a criminal defense lawyer has a lot of effects that sometimes you don’t think about,” he says.

He became a criminal defense attorney in 1973. Ultimately, he credits money for the shift to the “dark side” of law. His young family was barely scraping by on his pay as prosecuting attorney.

“I hated to switch because I loved being prosecuting attorney, but I would say the five letter word money was my belief at the time – that I needed to support my family and not my ego.”

An enigma was born. Wampler defends criminals, but is in favor of the death penalty. He is against abortion, but represented defendants from Planned Parenthood; he is for traditional marriage, but defends those in same-sex relationships; and he is a Christian, yet defends atheists and nonbelievers.

“I freely am willing to represent people that I disagree with, not only on social issues, but I disagree with what they’ve done to commit a crime. Is this a difficult job? Oh, you’d better believe it,” he says.

If a defense attorney doesn’t do his job well, a defendant can ask for another trial.

“And the victim goes through it all over again – the trauma of testifying. And the judge has to have another trial,” he says.

At 77, he still works seven days a week. About 20 years ago, a young attorney named Joseph Passanise arrived at his office, saying the president of the American Civil Liberties Union – Wampler’s greatest adversary in Springfield – had referred him. Wampler says he was ready to push Passanise out the door but changed his mind.

“I said, ‘If you’re going to work here, you’re going to have to work extremely hard and you’re going to have to take the lumps from people that don’t understand why you are representing the people that we represent,’” he says.

The rest is history. While Passanise says his mother holds onto hope he will one day become a prosecuting attorney, he and Wampler have other plans.

“I’m selling out and (Passanise) is coming in,” he says. “He’s a fine young man and he works very hard. He’s in here about 6 a.m. every morning. He called me last night at 10 o’clock. He and the other lawyer, Scott Pierson, were working until 10 o’clock last night. That takes a lot of energy to do that.”

Out of 100 calls to the office per day, Wampler says 10-20 are potential clients fishing around for an attorney. Of those, only a few become appointments. Declining to disclose revenue, he says they turn people down regularly and are demanding of clients.

“People come in here and they are sick. They’ve got a problem. We say, ‘You’ve got to do five things and if you don’t do these five things, don’t hire us. Go get another lawyer. We are going to change your life and we want to present you to the judge as a changed person,’” he says.

Wampler says he’s ready to scale back, but he’s waiting for the Lord to tell him when. In the meantime, he is continuing what he calls the “six-month plan.” He and his secretary Sandy Ellis, who initially worked for him in 1970 and is one of five secretaries in 52 years of work, meet to discuss if they are going to keep working for another six months. He brought her out of retirement from the Missouri Court of Appeals 10 years ago to work at the office.

“Initially, I was working one day a week, then two,” says Ellis, who now works four days a week and is known to chase the attorneys around to get them to eat when they become too busy.

Ongoing representation includes City Council woman Kristi Fulnecky’s battle over her eligibility to serve in public office and Parkview High senior Gavin Devic, a pro-bono case in which Wampler worked to get the student’s A+ scholarship reinstated following the school’s punishment for riding in a car with someone under the influence of marijuana.

“If you will resign yourself to deal with honest people and associate with good people, you will be a much better person,” Wampler says. “You will be much more successful in business as well.”