Shattered: The True Story of a Mother's Love, a Husband's Betrayal, and a Cold-Blooded Texas Murder (30 page)

I
n February, Debbie and Cindy ran a full-page remembrance of Belinda in the Katy High
Tiger Teacher Times
. They were still grieving, thinking of Belinda every day when they walked into their suite of classrooms. The students continued to be upset, some talking often of Mrs. Temple, wondering what if anything was being done to catch her killer. Others still thought of Belinda, too. In Nacogdoches, Carol and Tom were becoming consumed by the murder. “They didn’t talk of anything else,” says Tom’s brother, Chuck. “It was horrible for them and for the kids.”

David’s family, too, seemed to be in turmoil. Ken Temple suffered a heart attack, he’d later say, when he walked into the closet of the master bedroom on Round Valley, where his daughter-in-law died. “I loved her,” he’d say. “A heart attack from grief.”

Yet detectives increasingly had the feeling that the Temple family was on the defensive, circling the wagons around David, much as they had in his tumultuous school years. “The Temples were playing it like they were the regal rulers of Katy, Texas,” says Shipley. “They weren’t helping, and they weren’t pushing for anyone else to help us solve Belinda’s murder.”

That month, Quinton and David went out to lunch at a hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant not far from Hastings. After they sat down, David laughed about an unmarked squad he’d noticed following him there. It was nearly six weeks after Belinda’s murder, and the sheriff’s office still had him staked out, waiting to catch him making a slip.

“Why aren’t you talking to the police?” Quinton asked. “Don’t you want to know who killed Belinda?”

To his friend’s astonishment, David answered, “What good is it going to do?”

Quinton looked at the man who for the past three years had been his close friend. They’d had disagreements, and at times David badgered him. But now Quinton wondered,
Did David murder Belinda?

Then David again explained his alibi, claiming police had him on video at Brookshire Brothers, buying cat food, when Belinda was murdered. Quinton thought about that and reassured himself that David couldn’t be guilty. If what he said was the truth, David hadn’t even been in the neighborhood when Belinda was murdered. Still, there were those unanswered questions. “But wouldn’t you like to know who did it?” Quinton asked. “I’d want to know who murdered my wife and my unborn child. I’d want them caught.”

“It isn’t going to bring Belinda back,” David replied, as if not even considering the possibility that solving the murders could bring his family and the Lucases closure and some helping of justice.

Not long after, Tammey called Becky Temple. This time Belinda’s friend came right out and said what she was thinking, telling Becky, “I think David did this.”

“Everything he said was a lie. I’m deathly afraid of David,” Becky confided. “I’m beginning to think he did it. Kevin’s family is so mad at me.” Then, Becky suddenly sounded worried, begging Tammey: “Please don’t tape record this. What will David do to me? What will he do to my family?”

“I’m not,” Tammey assured her.

Winter ended, and spring began, and the house on Round Valley sold. At Hastings, David bragged that he made money off the sale.

Meanwhile, at the Harris County Sheriff’s Office homicide division, Chuck Leithner moved on to other cases. Mark Schmidt did, too, but he couldn’t completely let go of the Temple homicide. It needled at him, bothered him, and the other detectives thought they saw the case changing him. “Mark became nervous, more anxious. He talked about the case all the time,” said Shipley. “He wasn’t the same old Mark, with a smile on his face.”

“I thought about Belinda Temple’s murder before I closed my eyes at night and first thing in the morning,” said Schmidt. “It was my first big homicide, and it looked like the killer might get away with murder.”

Forensics had little to offer, and it seemed that there was no concrete evidence tying David to the murder. Hoping to find more, to prove David lied when he said he didn’t own a .12-gauge shotgun, Schmidt canvassed stores in the area that sold guns, from Walmarts to sporting-goods stores that featured display cases and wall racks of weapons. None had a record of anyone in the Temple family buying a .12-gauge shotgun.

When Leithner and Schmidt met with prosecutors, Wilson and Goode agreed that there was circumstantial evidence and more than a little suspicion, yet, they argued, not enough to pin a murder charge on. “We had one chance at David Temple. If he was guilty and we tried him unsuccessfully, we’d never be able to try him again,” says Wilson. “We didn’t see that there was a hurry. There’s no statute of limitations on murder.”

Goode agreed, saying what she always believed: “David Temple would confess to someone, or someone who knew something would come forward, or the murder weapon would be found, something that made the case more solid.”

Yet, the prosecutors decided there was one action they could take, one way to safeguard testimony until they brought the case into a courtroom: presenting the case to a grand jury would result in an official record of what each witness remembered about the murder, before time intervened and memories faded.

In a secret proceeding in early March 1999, one after another, the main witnesses in the murder case answered questions before a grand jury, including Mark Schmidt; Katy High teachers Stacy Nissley, Debbie Berger, and Cindy O’Brien; neighbors like Mike Ruggiero; Tara Hall and Heather Scott; and the Temple family: Ken, Maureen, Darren, and Kevin. Even Joe Sanders and his friends agreed to testify.

Tammey Harlan wasn’t scheduled to appear, but she went with Quinton. As she talked to the prosecutors and detectives in the hallway, they decided to put her, too, before the jurors. Quinton still had a hard time believing David could be guilty, and his answers that day were protective. He described David’s grief over Belinda’s death as sincere. When it came to Shaka, he said that the dog was all right, once it knew someone. Tammey told a different story, including describing the problems in the Temple marriage, telling the jurors about the weeks of silence between David and Belinda.

In the hallway at the courthouse, Tammey saw Heather leave the grand jury room. Following her instincts, Tammey attacked. “Look what you’ve done to Belinda,” she said, seething.

To prevent more, Mark Schmidt slipped between the two women, advising, “She’s not worth it, Tammey.”

When the grand jury ended, the members were polled, and they described the case against David Temple as weak. Yet Wilson had accomplished his goal. He now had an official record of the testimony of many of the main witnesses. Everyone, that was, except the only suspect. David Temple appeared as required, but brought Paul Looney with him. In a move not unusual for the focus of a criminal investigation, David pleaded the Fifth Amendment, refusing to testify.

Afterward, the prosecutors again told the detectives that they didn’t have enough evidence. “Did I believe David Temple murdered his wife? Yes,” said Wilson. “Did I believe I could prove it in a courtroom beyond a reasonable doubt? No. I didn’t know that we were even close to closure on the case.”

Days later, after her testimony was given, David called the Harlan house, and Tammey answered. “What did you tell the grand jury?” he demanded.

“We’re not supposed to talk about that,” she said.

David asked for Quinton, and demanded again, “What did
you
tell them?”

“We told the truth,” Quinton said.

“You need to keep your mouth shut,” David ordered.

For Evan’s fourth birthday, Maureen and Ken brought a cake to Tiger Land, but David didn’t come. That month, Schepps, a Houston dairy that had helped the sheriff’s department in the past, offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to the conviction of the person who murdered Belinda. Schmidt and Holtke made up flyers with the reward information and a photo of Belinda and spread them through Katy, in store windows, on bulletin boards, at the post office, at restaurants and in grocery stores. They even put them beside Heather’s mailbox at the town-house complex.

Not long after, Tom, Carol, Brian and Jill met with the prosecutors and detectives again. This time the detectives detailed the evidence for Belinda’s parents, including the broken glass pattern not matching a closed door and the fact that David had been having an affair. “It was the affair that did it,” says Tom. “Once I heard that, for Carol and me, it all started to fall into place. We weren’t defending David anymore.”

That day, Wilson and Goode explained that David was their only suspect but that they didn’t have enough to charge him with the murder. “We left there angry and hurt,” said Carol. “We were mad that David did it, and there was nothing the police could do.”

Feeling guilty, as if somehow he was supposed to have prevented the murder, Tom Lucas considered going after David himself, with a gun. “Fathers are supposed to protect their little girls,” he said, shaking his head sadly. “But Carol and my family convinced me not to. They said having me in jail wouldn’t help anyone.”

At the Harlan home, Tammey began getting odd telephone calls. At times the caller hung up, and at other times someone laughed in the background. It happened only when Quinton was on the road with the basketball team. Without caller I.D., she had no way to track them, but she suspected it had something to do with David Temple. “He knew when Quinton wouldn’t be home,” said Tammey. “I figured he was trying to frighten me, to make me shut up.”

Then one weekend afternoon, Tammey drove into their driveway with their oldest girl, Sydnee, and a McDonald’s lunch she was bringing home for the family. Quinton was behind her in his truck with the two younger girls. Just before he arrived, Sydnee ran from Tammey’s car into the house. Seconds later, she fled the house screaming, “There’s a man inside!”

Instantly, Tammey saw a man run from their home. When Quinton pulled into the driveway, she hurriedly explained, and he ran to search. He found no one, but the sliding glass door that led to the master bedroom, which had been locked, stood wide open. When they investigated why the house alarm hadn’t gone off, they discovered that all the sensors had been broken. “I thought it was odd that all of a sudden something like this happened. Maybe David was behind it,” said Quinton. “I started thinking maybe it was all true, that Tammey had been right. I knew David was mad at us for talking to the grand jury. It started to make sense that David had murdered Belinda.”

Frightened, Tammey bought a gun and began carrying it with her. “We were in fear for our lives,” she said.

Quinton and Tammey were so frightened that they left the house that night, moving in with friends. They even went to Sydnee’s school and talked with the principal and counselors, to warn them to be on the lookout, in case David showed up on the school grounds. They went so far as to hand out photos of David to the staff, so he’d be recognized. And Tammey and Quinton had a careful talk with their oldest, telling Sydnee, “Don’t go to Mr. David, if you see him and he calls your name.”

It was a difficult thing for Tammey and Quinton to do. The girls had grown up knowing Belinda and David so well that they viewed them as extended family. “Sydnee loved David,” said Tammey. “She really did.”

Still, they worried that if David wanted to find them, he could. And the fear didn’t end.

As if proving that point, early that summer, on a Friday evening, Tammey drove to her Storybook Cottage, the quaint teahouse she ran, to open it up and turn the air-conditioning on for a little girl’s birthday party the next day. On the way there, Tammey saw David trailing her in his new truck. He pulled up beside her, and then fell back behind her and followed. Tammey sped up.

When she reached her Storybook Cottage, Tammey ran inside, her hands shaking as she held her gun. Moments later, David pulled up and slowed down, not stopping but driving by at a snail’s pace, as if to taunt her. Then he laid on the gas and drove away.

That July, the
Katy Times
ran a series on the case, headlined with the question on so many minds: “Who killed Belinda Temple?” Over the coming weeks, the newspaper reexamined the evidence, from Shaka’s ferocious defense of the backyard to the broken glass. The series revealed that the burglary appeared to have been staged, and recounted the continuing effect of the murder on the Katy community. And the reporter asked questions, including: If the back door had been left open by the burglar that afternoon, as David Temple told police, wouldn’t Shaka have gone inside the house and found the body, leaving bloody paw prints behind?

In the
Times
article, Paul Looney vigorously defended David and attacked the detectives, saying they’d jumped to judgment and that callous behavior on their part had done “emotional damage” to the Temple family. In a strange statement, since the murder resulted in the death of a young mother and her unborn child, the defense attorney said: “Sometimes I think the damage done [to the Temple family] in those first few hours might exceed the damage done by the loss of Belinda Temple.”

The series ended: “Detectives are little closer now to charging a suspect or even naming a suspect than they were when they began on the day of the murder,” a sergeant in homicide was quoted as saying. “Until we solve this, it will never go away.”

In their own defense, Ken and Maureen Temple wrote a letter to the newspaper’s editor. In it, they complained that they’d been mistreated by law enforcement and hadn’t been granted the sympathy usually given to a victim’s family: “Since the tragic deaths of our daughter-in-law and granddaughter on January 11, no level of the media has identified the Temple family as victims…Without respect for [David] being the spouse, father, and first discoverer of his wife’s body.”

That fall, on the surface, life went back into a more normal rhythm, but always with the undercurrent of fear, doubt and anger left by Belinda’s murder. Her brother Brian and her father, Tom, called Schmidt often, asking what was being done to solve the case. He had few answers for them. There was still evidence analysis Schmidt waited to get back, from the FBI lab. The agency had what at the time was considered the premier forensic lab in the nation, and Schmidt had submitted some of David’s clothing and a pair of his shoes collected the night of the murder, for processing. But the agency was slow, with thousands of other cases in the queue, so the wait would be formidable.