As chief investigator for the state attorney’s office in Gainesville, Billy Malphurs always had a plate full of cases. But when legendary saddlemaker Don Brown called, Malphurs’ job and his 30-year career didn’t matter.
Brown offered a more enticing opportunity than tracking down murderers, rapists and other criminals. The opportunity was to learn how to make saddles from one of the country’s top craftsmen.
Not just any saddles, but old-time saddles that were comfortable to ride all day.

“We’re going to build saddles and build them right, just you and me,” Brown told Malphurs when he called him in 1996.
Malphurs didn’t hesitate. “I drafted my letter of resignation to [then State Attorney] Rod Smith and gave him a two-weeks’ notice,” he says.

And so began what has turned into a 14-year second career for Malphurs as a custom saddlemaker with a steady clientele. His backlog for orders is six months.
Malphurs spends about 60 hours making each saddle in the modest workshop in the barn behind his home, about a mile north of Santa Fe High School.

The base price for one of his saddles is $2,500, and the average saddle sells for $3,000.
Malphurs customizes each saddle. He measures his customers and also travels to measure the horses that will wear his creations, when he can. “The bottom [of the saddle] needs to fit the horse perfectly, and the top needs to be comfortable for the rider,” he says.

When making a saddle for a cutting horse—a horse that cuts cattle from the herd—Malphurs makes the slope of the saddle only slightly elevated so that the rider can move around freely. For a working cowboy’s saddle, Malphurs elevates the slope so the rider can rest against the back of the saddle on long rides.
He buys his saddle trees—wooden frameworks covered with rawhide—from Randy Alexander of Vernal, Utah.
Many of Malphurs’ customers are working cowboys. The largest number of them are in the Okeechobee cattle country, although Malphurs has customers in Georgia, Texas, California, Oklahoma, Ohio, Alabama, South Dakota, Montana and Kansas.
He doesn’t advertise, and he doesn’t have a website, getting all of his business through word of mouth.
At one point, an Okeechobee businessman offered to set up a saddle plant under Malphurs’ name. He said no. “I’m interested in building good quality saddles that people enjoy riding, not mass producing saddles,” he says.
One of Malphurs biggest fans is cartoonist Jake Fuller. “My Billy Malphurs saddle is my pride and joy,” Fuller says. “Billy’s one of the best saddlemakers in the country.”

On a trip to Montana, Fuller used his Malphurs saddle for 10 to 13 hours a day. “I didn’t get any saddle sores,” he says. That’s the mark of a well-designed saddle.
Malphurs also helped Fuller train his horse. “We’ve been through Billy’s Boot Camp,” Fuller says. “Billy taught me how to get my horse to go through water.
“He told me that when the horse is acting up, I should make him go in tight circles until he figured it was easier to straighten out than to keep going in circles,” Fuller says.
At 66, Malphurs isn’t slowing down, although he has stopped carving leather as his hands have become less nimble.
Now the tables are turned, with people asking him to take them on apprentices. Not yet, Malphurs says. “I’ll take on an apprentice when I’m ready to slow down and pass this dying art onto someone else,” he says.

30 Years Fighting Crime
Billy Malphurs got into law enforcement through his friend, Billy Cooter, who was an Alachua County deputy sheriff. Malphurs and Cooter became horse-riding buddies, and Cooter invited Malphurs to join the sheriff’s reserves.
After a year on the reserves, Malphurs joined the sheriff’s office full time and remained there five years. He spent seven years with the Gainesville Police Department before working nearly 19 years with the state attorney’s office.
In addition to investigating crimes in the six counties in the Eighth Judicial Circuit, he worked on special gubernatorial assignments, investigating both violent crime and wrongdoing by sheriffs and other elected officials throughout the state.
His approach in criminal investigations was simple: Follow the evidence. “Don’t develop someone as a suspect and try to prove they did it,” he says. “The evidence will lead to the individual.”
Getting a suspect to open up under interrogation takes a special talent, Malphurs says. The good cop, bad cop routine makes for good television but doesn’t work in reality, he says. To get results, you have to “treat people like they like to be treated,” he says. “Never lie. Never bully.”
Malphurs investigated Gerald Stano, a serial killer who was arrested in 1981 after killing as many as 41 women. Stano killed two of his victims near Waldo Road.
“The case that bothered me the most involved a 10-year-old girl who was raped and murdered along railroad tracks in Starke,” Malphurs says.
“I had the murder weapon, and I knew who the killer was, but I couldn’t prove he had the gun in his hand,” Malphurs says. “It troubled me. I kept it on my desk seven to eight years.”
After Malphurs retired, a new DNA testing technique led to the killer’s conviction. “I got lots of satisfaction when the evidence was resubmitted,” Malphurs says.