Big E’s Vapor Shop co-owner charged in love triangle murder-for-hire plot
An owner of vapor shops in Oklahoma and Kansas — including Big E’s Vapor Shop in Wichita — is facing federal charges in a murder-for-hire plot targeting an ex-lover and her boyfriend.
Oklahoma businessman Vernon Wayne Brock, 69, was charged Thursday in federal court in western Oklahoma with one count of using interstate commerce facilities in the commission of a murder-for-hire scheme. An FBI-written affidavit included with the complaint says Brock wanted his ex-lover, who is also a former employee of his, and her new beau killed on her birthday — April 5 — because he was upset after she left the company and refused to continue having sex with him.
Brock, the affidavit says, contacted one of his business partners who he knew was a member of an “outlaw motorcycle gang” and asked the business partner to carry out the slayings — or find someone who would.
Brock agreed to pay $5,000 for the murders and cut a check from Big E’s Vapor Shop in that amount to give to the business partner to cash so his involvement would be concealed, the affidavit says. In the check’s memo line, Brock wrote that the check was for a loan.
The business partner, who lives in Maize, called the FBI Office in Wichita on March 29 to report Brock’s plan.
Law enforcement arrested Brock on Wednesday a few miles from Alva, Oklahoma, where he lives, while he was driving back from a meeting that took place at the Red Rooster Cafe in Harper, where Brock gave his business partner the $5,000 check.
Brock is being held in the Logan County Jail in Guthrie, Oklahoma, pending a detention hearing set for April 10, according to court records. If convicted, he faces up to 10 years in federal prison and a $250,000 fine, plus three years of supervised release.
A federal public defender representing Brock couldn’t be reached for comment Friday.
Big E’s Vapor Shop has 13 locations in Kansas, three in Oklahoma and one in Missouri, according to its website. Seven of the sites are in Wichita.
Brock bought into Big E’s as the company sought to expand, The Eagle reported in November 2017. On Facebook, he identifies himself as the majority owner of Big E’s and the owner of Pure Country Medical Cannibis in Waynoka, Oklahoma.
The vape shop’s namesake, Eldon Simmons, and his original partners opened the first Big E’s Vapor Shop at 946 S. Rock in Wichita in 2013.
A man who answered the business phone number at that location on Friday referred questions about the murder-for-hire case to an office employee who said Big E’s was not yet ready to comment on Brock’s charge or what financial toll his arrest might have on the business.
The office employee said the shop would likely release a statement Saturday.
Simmons did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
According to the FBI affidavit:
Several weeks before the desired murder date, Brock and the business partner drove from Wichita to Oklahoma City to watch the ex-lover and her boyfriend’s home to find out their “pattern of life,” the business partner told the FBI in a March 29 phone call. Leading up to April 5, the business partner “attempted to ignore” Brock’s request for the killings, but Brock “became more insistent” as the date approached.
The business partner told the FBI that because of his association with the motorcycle gang, Brock knew he “hangs out with a ‘rough crowd’” and that’s likely why he believed he “is capable (of) finding someone to commit murder.”
When the FBI contacted the ex-lover, she told agents that she has worked for Brock intermittently for six years managing cattle, selling mineral rights and working at his vapor shop and that he’d wanted to take her on a birthday trip. She confirmed that she and Brock had been in an on-again-off-again sexual relationship and said that he’d recently become “very upset” with her and “would constantly send her angry text messages.”
She told agents that she’d agreed to have sex with Brock “always under threat of her not being paid” and that she’d most recently been involved with him six months prior during a trip to Kansas City, where Brock planned to “meet a possible investor in his medical marijuana business.”
During the Kansas City trip, Brock “threatened to fire her and take away her company car if she did not engage in sexual contact with him.”
The woman had been dating her new boyfriend for about 18 months but they’d recently broken up, so she was single during the Kansas City trip. Later, she “grew tired” of how Brock treated her and resumed the other relationship.
The woman told FBI agents that she didn’t think Brock wanted an exclusive relationship with her — he just “wanted the ability to have sex with her whenever he wanted.”
On April 1 and 2, FBI agents in Wichita recorded a series of phone calls between Brock and his business partner where they worked out details of the killing. During the calls, the business partner told Brock that he’d found a guy willing to kill. Brock decided he wanted his ex-lover’s boyfriend dead and her roughed up instead of being killed, saying:
“Are they going to thump her around a little bit? And do him? Cause that’s what I wanted ‘ and “I’d rather do him, thump her and I mean thump her hard. And tell her if she says one word to the cops about anything there will be someone come back to get her and her kids.’ ” He called his ex-lover’s children “her most prized possession.”
He told his business partner that the killer should shoot the boyfriend rather than using a bomb because “it was cleanest” and suggested the killer wear a mask and carry duct tape to tie up his ex-lover’s children.
He also suggested the killer make the murder appear drug-related, saying in the recorded call:
“The main thing is for them (the killer) to throw the scent off of everything. Is for them to say to him, ‘You (expletive), something like, you owe us a million dollars for the drugs.’ Cause that throws the scent off of me and you and everybody else. Like he’s doing some kind of drug deal that no one knows anything about.”
Brock sent his business partner a photo of his ex-lover’s boyfriend to confirm his identity.
During the calls, they also discussed the logistics of paying the $5,000 murder-for-hire fee. Brock and the business partner settled on meeting at the Red Rooster Cafe in Harper at about 10:45 a.m. on Wednesday, where Brock turned over the check.
The business partner then gave the check — which Brock had signed — to FBI agents who were observing the meeting. The agents followed Brock’s 2019 Ford F-150 truck as he left Harper and drove to Medicine Lodge.
FBI agents and deputies from the Woods County Sheriff’s Office arrested Brock during a traffic stop on Highway 281 about 7 miles north of Alva, Oklahoma, less than two hours after the meeting.
This story was originally published April 5, 2019 at 10:38 AM.
