John R. Brinkley - Trial and Death

Trial and Death

In 1938, Brinkley's old nemesis, Morris Fishbein, entered the picture again with a vengeance, publishing a two-part series called "Modern Medical Charlatans" that included a thorough repudiation of Brinkley's checkered career, as well as exposing his questionable medical credentials. Brinkley sued Fishbein for libel and $250,000 in damages ($4,130,000 in current value). The trial began on March 22, 1939, before Texas judge R. J. MacMillan. A few days later, the jury found for Fishbein, stating that Brinkley "should be considered a charlatan and a quack in the ordinary, well-understood meaning of those words". The jury verdict unleashed a barrage of lawsuits against Brinkley, by some estimates well over $3 million in total value. Also around this time, the Internal Revenue Service began investigating him for tax fraud. He declared bankruptcy in 1941, the same year the U.S. and Mexico reached an agreement on allocating radio bandwidth and shut down XERA.

Soon after his bankruptcy the United States Post Office Department began investigating him for mail fraud, and Brinkley became a patient himself, having suffered three heart attacks and the amputation of one of his legs due to poor circulation. On May 26, 1942, Brinkley died penniless of heart failure in San Antonio; the mail fraud case had not yet come to trial. He was later buried at Forest Hill Cemetery in Memphis, Tennessee.

His house, commonly called the Brinkley Mansion, still stands today at 512 Qualia Drive in Del Rio and has been designated Texas Historic Landmark number 13015.