Shattered: The True Story of a Mother's Love, a Husband's Betrayal, and a Cold-Blooded Texas Murder (31 page)

At Maureen and Ken’s house, photos of Belinda remained on the refrigerator, and they talked of her often, say family and friends. Perhaps from the unrelenting stress of the murder and investigation, both suffered setbacks with their health. If they had any doubts about their son’s involvement, whenever the subject came up, they continued to assert David’s innocence. “They steadfastly defended David,” said a friend. “They were adamant that he was being falsely accused.”

Meanwhile, in Nacogdoches, Tom compiled his own outline of the evidence on his home computer. Waiting for a break in the case, he felt understandably frustrated and angry, as did Carol. “Belinda’s death had torn the whole family apart,” said his brother, Chuck. “Tom was struggling, trying to get someone to run with the case. It was there every day, in everything they did.”

When all appeared to have quieted down, Tammey and Quinton moved back into their home in Katy, and beginning in August, Quinton was back at Hastings working alongside David on the football field, coaching the defense. “We tolerated each other, but interacted very little,” said Quinton. “It was strange considering we worked with the same players.”

Brenda sent chimes and flowers to Belinda’s gravesite, and cards, including one with a verse that read: “To my best friend.” When Brian was in Houston on business, he visited Belinda’s grave, and then spent hours walking Katy creek beds, looking for the shotgun. Later he’d call Mark Schmidt. “What are you doing?” he’d ask.

“We’re trying,” Schmidt answered.

A few times, David allowed Belinda’s family to visit with Evan, but never alone. Once Jill, Brenda and Brian went to the Temples’ house. The entire time they sat outside with Evan and David’s parents, Shaka thrashed at the garage door. “If that dog could have gotten out, we would have been mincemeat,” says Jill.

The Temple case was turning into an embarrassment. The Harris County sheriff, Tommy Thompson, had a ranch in Katy, and was regularly approached by neighbors who wanted to know when an arrest would be made. Dean Holtke lived there, too, and people often cornered him, asking why no one had been arrested for murdering that nice teacher from Katy High School. On Sundays, when Dean went to First Baptist Church, he looked over and saw Ken and Maureen Temple.

Although nearly everyone who approached Holtke and voiced an opinion held that David was the murderer, when detectives talked to people who knew the Temple family, they nearly always came away with little. “It was like hitting a wall out there,” Shipley said. “There was this attitude that they didn’t want to be the one to disparage a hometown football hero. It was frustrating.”

There was one person, however, who would talk with them, if, at first, reluctantly: Cindi Thompson, who’d been Darren Temple’s girlfriend so many years earlier in high school. Cindi just happened to know Dean Holtke’s wife, so well that Cindi had sung at their wedding. When Dean heard rumors that Cindi knew something about David threatening someone else with a shotgun, he called her. After some convincing, Cindi agreed to talk to Holtke. When she did, she recounted that night when Darren shook, terrified, telling her how David had held a shotgun on him.

Since the murder, Tom and Carol had tried repeatedly to see their grandson alone, hoping to have him for a weekend, to spend time with the only tie they had left to Belinda. Evan looked so much like their family. He had Belinda’s eyes and her smile, and Brenda’s thick, dark brown hair. Although he did meet with them, David wouldn’t allow the Lucases to be alone with Evan. Instead, David offered to meet them at McDonald’s or a shopping center, where they walked together. At every moment, David stayed protectively at his son’s side, and the rift between the two families grew wider.

One afternoon, David agreed to bring Evan and meet Belinda’s parents at the cemetery. Perhaps to open their son-in-law up to talking to law enforcement, Tom and Carol agreed to have Mark Schmidt drive them there. When David saw the detective, he scooped up Evan and ran to the car. At the Temple house, Ken came out and told the Lucases, “If you want to see Evan, you’ll have to come by later.”

When they returned without Schmidt, no one answered the door.

That fall Carol and Tom gave a television interview to a Houston station. “David is a suspect in the case. Do you think he did it?” a reporter asked.

Rather than defending her son-in-law, Carol said, “I would hate to find out that someone my daughter married would do this.”

The next time they called asking to visit Evan, David told them, “I don’t think I can ever forgive you for saying that.”

The animosity built as the Lucases heard, all the way in Nacogdoches, that their son-in-law was dating the woman he’d been seeing when Belinda was murdered. It never seemed as if David was hiding the relationship. That fall, David and Belinda’s Round Valley neighbor, Natalie Scott, went out for dinner with her husband, Robert, to the C&H Steakhouse, a plush restaurant that served thick slabs of beef with sides of baked potatoes and asparagus. After they were seated, Natalie noticed David across the dining room, sitting with a blonde in a red dress, a woman she’d later identify as Heather Scott.

“Isn’t that David?” Robert asked Natalie.

“Yes it is,” she said. Although she repeatedly looked over at him, David never acknowledged that he knew her.

F
all came and the football season began. To the surprise of many, Heather showed up in the stands where the coaches’ families sat for Hastings’ first home game. “You’ve got to be kidding,” Tammey said, confronting her. “How dare you?”

Instantly, Heather shot up out of her seat and left, moving to another area. That wasn’t enough to placate Tammey, who stood and glared at the woman who, along with David, she blamed for Belinda’s murder. The Temples sat nearby with Evan, but when Tammey went to talk to the toddler, his grandparents slid in closer to him, as if protecting him. They did the same when Kay Stuart, the head coach’s wife, stopped to say hello. “Maureen and Ken Temple shut it down real quick,” said Stuart.

Few knew that Tammey wrestled with her own situation, that her husband had indulged in a flirtation with David’s girlfriend. “Tammey told me that she loved Quinton and that she understood he’d made a mistake,” said Shipley. “She said they were struggling, trying to work it out.”

In early September, Brenda called Mark Schmidt to ask if she could help with the investigation. He declined the offer, but Brenda couldn’t accept that. Her sister was dead and after hearing the evidence against him, Belinda’s twin believed her brother-in-law was responsible. Despite Schmidt’s refusal, Brenda tried to think of some way to help. One day, she came up with an idea and bought a tape recorder with a mechanism that allowed it to be inserted into a telephone line.

On September 14, at 8
P.M
., Brenda dialed the Temple house and David answered. “Hey, what have y’all been doing?” she asked, with the recorder on.

The call was congenial, as Brenda asked about Evan. David said that the four-year-old was doing well, and talked a bit about his son’s life, much of it involving David’s family. Evan was a regular at the Hastings football games with Ken and Maureen, and David had made plans for his son to go on his first airplane ride, taking a trip to California with Kevin and Becky. As the conversation progressed, David talked of football, but Brenda turned the subject to her dead sister, asking if Belinda’s headstone had arrived.

“Just got it…it’s out there now,” David said, bragging, “It’s the nicest one out there.”

“I still can’t believe this happened, David,” Brenda said.

“I’ve cried every day of the past two weeks nonstop at the games,” David said. While others saw his girlfriend cheering at the games, David, sounding tearful, insisted he yearned to see Belinda in the stands.

When Brenda asked if he’d heard anything about the investigation, David said he didn’t know “if they’re even doing anything. There’s no way to know.”

“Have you ever asked?”

“Yeah,” he claimed.

“Is there anything you can do to move along the investigation?” she prodded.

“They aren’t going to do anything for me. Not for anybody,” David said. In truth, David hadn’t called to inquire about the progress or to try to spur along the investigation, nor had anyone in his family. Instead, David said his lawyer told him that the case would be solved one day when someone talked or got “caught doing something else, speeding with the gun in the car.”

“How could anyone just go in there and do that to a pregnant woman?” Brenda said, angry.

Sounding heartbroken, David told his dead wife’s twin that he was filled with sadness at not being able to go home to the house on Round Valley and have Belinda waiting for him. When it came to the murder weapon, he said it could have been a sawed-off shotgun someone hid in a baggy pants leg. Despite so much found in the home and on Belinda, he claimed that Belinda’s jewelry was gone. Yet how was it that the thieves had taken nothing of his, not one item? “I wear my watch, my wedding ring I had on….”

Brenda didn’t know until much later that she’d caught David in a lie. Pictures from the scene that night clearly showed that he wasn’t wearing either his wedding ring or his watch that night. Both were in the bedroom, with his heavy gold championship ring on a plate next to the television.

“It’s one sick individual, whoever did this…” Brenda said, talking to the man she believed to be the murderer. “Eight months pregnant, just insane whoever did it. It tears me up every day.”

On a Sunday afternoon, Brenda called the Temples’ house again. This time Maureen answered, and they discussed Evan. Maureen tried to coax him to the telephone to talk to Aunt Brenda, but the toddler, who didn’t like talking into telephones, refused.

“Does he ask about Belinda a lot?” Brenda asked.

“Just this morning, we were folding towels, and he started rolling one. I asked why he’s doing that, and he says, ‘My mommy says it’s prettier that way.’”

When Brenda said she missed her twin sister, Maureen could be heard crying. “I know you do,” David’s mother said. “Every day, every time Evan says something about his mommy…this has been so hard for him.”

“Those two were so close,” Brenda observed.

“He won’t forget her,” Maureen assured her. “We talk about her all the time.”

When Brenda asked if she thought the police would ever solve Belinda’s murder, Maureen said that she wished it would be solved. “I hope you know that David would never have hurt her in any way. If you have any common sense, Brenda, you know your sister was not afraid of him.”

“Yeah,” Brenda said, swallowing what she truly thought to keep the older woman talking. “I can’t imagine someone could do that to a pregnant woman…I see babies, and I wonder what Erin looks like.”

With that, Maureen Temple cried again. She advised Brenda, “Close your eyes and think of [Belinda] and she’s there.”

The next day, Brenda called again, and this time David answered the phone. He told her that he went to the cemetery often. When Brenda said she worried about Evan, David responded, “He’s doing good.”

Quickly, David turned the subject around to football and Hastings’ latest team. But Brenda brought it back to Evan, asking if her nephew should have counseling, to help him through the loss of his mother. As he had in the past, David reassured her that Evan was well. Then David mentioned that he’d received a letter from an attorney Tom and Carol hired, asking for visitation with Evan. “None of y’all are supporting me. I don’t know what you expect me to do,” he said. But then, as if that weren’t a suggestion that he’d punish them by withholding visits with Evan, he said. “You know, you can see him at any time.”

“Well, you said a while back that you didn’t want [my parents] seeing him,” Brenda said.

“Well, I told them that,” David admitted, but then maintained, “It was ridiculous [for them to get a lawyer].” He paused, as if considering what he’d just said, and then charged, “You haven’t supported me, Brenda.” As if explaining his building anger, he claimed unidentified people called to tell him things about Brenda and her parents. “I know what you’ve said and what you’ve done.” The conversation continued and he chastised her for not taking his side against the investigators, and insisted he had “totally nothing” to do with Belinda’s murder.

“Why haven’t you taken a polygraph? What are we supposed to believe?” Brenda countered.

“You have never asked me or anything else. You only believe the sheriff’s department and they’ve lied to everybody…my family and everybody else…. You don’t support me,” he charged. Then, after attacking the newspapers, saying they, too, spread lies about him, he insisted that her family had hired a private investigator. Brenda said that wasn’t true, and once again asked why he wasn’t helping police find the murderer.

“You have no idea what my family went through,” he said again, never answering her question.

On the telephone, David repeated what he’d told Quinton Harlan months earlier. When Brenda asked if he wanted the crime solved, David responded, “What difference would it make? It won’t bring Belinda back.” Then he said something even more shocking, “Belinda wouldn’t want all this. She’d want us to leave it alone.”

Again, Brenda asked about the polygraph, saying that if he took it and passed, perhaps the police and her family would accept his innocence. “Polygraphs don’t work,” David said. “…Belinda would roll over in the grave if she knew what was going on with you and your parents, that you would think that.”

At times David’s answers made no sense, as when Brenda again pointed out that David had told her parents he wanted them to have nothing to do with Evan. And then again, she asked about a polygraph. “Why don’t you just go and do whatever to clear your name?”

“Questions have been answered,” David said. “Every single one of them.”

He implied that his family had wanted to give a reward, but had been turned down by police, another lie, since the Temples had never contacted the sheriff’s department offering to put up a reward.

“The newspapers keep pointing at you, David,” Brenda said.

David responded that he’d sent facts that backed him up to the newspapers, but they’d refused to run them. “You all assume the worst,” he said.

“I don’t know, David,” Brenda said, crying.

“You should know. Belinda would want you to know. And you damn well know. We were happier than anyone in your family who’s married. You don’t know that?” he asked. “Your brothers or your parents. You know that.”

Although she knew that David and Belinda were anything but happy the last time she saw them together, it made no sense for Brenda to alienate him by disagreeing, and she said, “I know.”

“What the hell do you think happened in the days, ten days you were gone?” David asked.

“I have no idea,” she answered.

“[Belinda] was the best thing that ever happened to me, Brenda, ever,” David insisted.

“So why’d you have that affair with that girl?” Brenda asked, pushing him to talk.

“It wasn’t an affair…why do you think nothing came out about it in the paper? It was nothing. I told you that. I wasn’t having an affair and sleeping with her.”

“Who was this girl?” Brenda asked.

“It’s not anybody you know,” David said, again insisting, “You know how happy your sister was.”

But Brenda recounted how he’d lied to Belinda and his parents that New Year’s Eve, when he told them he was going hunting. “Next thing, all this happens, and you tell me you were with a girl. What am I supposed to believe?”

“It’s blown out of proportion,” David insisted.

“I don’t know what to believe. This just drives me crazy, David,” Brenda said.

“So what would you want me to do, Brenda? Call you and support you and let you see Evan…?” he challenged. “When he grows up and figures out how you treated his dad, what do you think he’ll think then?”

“I just want you to go to that detective and talk to them, get your name cleared. Why are there so many questions up in the air?” she prodded.

“There aren’t any questions. Why don’t you call and ask [the detectives], Brenda? And they’re going to give you the total fuck runaround…. The D.A. called me and said they had nothing. Those are his words. The D.A. is the one who called me and said there was a private detective.”

It was another lie. Ted Wilson had never called David Temple, about either the status of the case or a private investigator. Finally, David insisted that when the case was solved, implying he wouldn’t be found to be the murderer, “Y’all are going to feel like shit. I want you to remember that.”

At a playoff game late in 1999, Tammey was carrying one of her daughters to the restroom when she saw Heather approaching her. “Look at her,” Tammey challenged. “Look at this child. Belinda had a baby girl.”

“You need to calm down,” Heather said, walking away.

“I know what you are,” Tammey shouted.

The following game, when Ken and Maureen walked in, they shot Tammey an angry look. Not long after, Heather walked in wearing a football jersey, jeans and a baseball cap. She sat with the Temples and, after the game, left with David’s parents and Evan.

“David’s parents know,” Tammey told Kay.

That December, a month before the first anniversary of Belinda’s murder, Cherica Adams, the girlfriend of Rae Carruth, an All-American wide receiver picked up on a $3.7-million first-round draft choice by the Carolina Panthers, was ambushed in her car. Carruth blocked Adams in while three men pulled up beside her and fired guns. Adams was conscious long enough to call 911 and describe what had happened to the operator.

Adams, like Belinda Temple, was eight months pregnant. The ambulance arrived quickly, and the child survived. Carruth was later convicted of conspiring to commit murder and sentenced to nineteen years in prison.

Around that same time, the Center for Disease Control issued a report: homicide was the third leading cause of injury-related deaths for all women ages fifteen to forty-four. But for pregnant women, murder ranked number one.

Determined to help the case along, Brenda called David again that winter, with little result. Then, on December 12, she called and Maureen answered. The conversation started out friendly, as they discussed what Brenda planned to send Evan for Christmas. Maureen said that they’d been out to Belinda and Erin’s gravesite, and that they didn’t talk to Evan about his mother being buried there, because he wouldn’t understand. “We just call it Momma’s marker,” she said. “We told him she’s in heaven. It’s too hard.”

“Maureen, I want to ask you something. Did you know about the affair David had?” Brenda asked.

“The what?” the older woman said.

“The affair,” Brenda pushed.

“He did not have one, Brenda,” his mother answered, sounding upset that Belinda’s sister would make such a claim.

“Ahhh. Are you sure about that?” Brenda asked.

“I know there was something that happened, but I’m not going to discuss that, Brenda,” David’s mother said. “If you want to discuss that, you can discuss it with David.”

“I mean, I just didn’t think he could ever do that to Belinda,” Brenda said. “And that really hurt me.”

“Yeah,” Maureen said.

“I mean, I don’t know what’s what, but he did tell me that night before the funeral that he did go out with a woman and kissed her and stuff. I don’t know what’s up with that.”