Shattered: The True Story of a Mother's Love, a Husband's Betrayal, and a Cold-Blooded Texas Murder (36 page)

For his part, as he reviewed the evidence and questioned the detectives, Denholm saw areas he knew DeGuerin would mine for reasonable doubt, all the defense needed to prove to get a not-guilty verdict.

Along with his concerns over the lack of any physical evidence, Denholm felt certain DeGuerin would, as he often did in a trial, provide the jury with an alternate suspect. In the Temple case, Denholm didn’t see that as difficult, not with Joe Sanders living right next door. The teenager had lied to detectives about where he was that night, failed multiple polygraphs, and admitted he’d been out shooting shotguns with friends who’d burglarized a house just weeks before Belinda’s murder. Sanders had a potential motive, that Belinda had exposed his truancy to his parents. If DeGuerin needed more, he had it. Two .12-gauge shotguns had been found in the Sanders home along with reloaded double-ought buckshot shells. While not matches, they were of a type similar to those used in Belinda’s murder. “This was more than wiggle room,” says Denholm. “This was a giant problem for the case.”

To Siegler’s relief, the detectives performed well on the witness stand. Yet Denholm felt that he’d uncovered holes in the case, and he wondered if Siegler had enough evidence to win over the jury.

With opening arguments approaching, Siegler saw the biggest hurdle as the case itself. “I figured even after the Peterson case it was going to be hard for a jury to believe that a husband could do that to his own wife and unborn child,” she says. “Our worst serial killers don’t kill babies. And David Temple was an All-American boy from a good family, a football hero. Would they believe he was capable of such an awful crime?”

C
ourtrooms are uncomfortable places, especially during high-stakes trials. On the opening day of David Temple’s trial, October 16, 2007, Tom and Carol, Brent, Brian and Brenda sat in the front row on the right side of the courtroom, behind the prosecutors. On the other side of the same bench, behind the defense table, congregated David’s parents and brothers, along with aunts and uncles. After nearly nine years of building animosity, the two families were nestled up against each other, yet neither acknowledged the other’s presence. At times the atmosphere in the courtroom felt so electric, so charged, it seemed to threaten to snuff out the very air, making it difficult to breathe.

“We were worried,” says Brian Lucas, who sat shoulder-to-shoulder with Darren Temple in the center of the bench. “When we found out Dick DeGuerin was David’s attorney, we were scared to death.”

The trial would be a long one, some estimated up to six weeks, and boxes of files and exhibits ringed the attorneys. Wearing a dark gray suit, David conferred at the defense table with DeGuerin and one of his associates, Neal Davis, a pale, nattily dressed man with carefully combed brown hair.

In a funereal dark blue suit with black trim, Kelly Siegler rose to address the jury, fourteen men and women, including alternates, picked the day before. Behind Siegler, her second chair, Craig Goodhart, watched from the prosecutors’ table.

After reading the indictment, that the state of Texas charged David Temple “knowingly and intentionally” murdered Belinda Temple, Siegler laid out her case for the jury, emphasizing, “The truth is always in the details.”

Constructing a portrait of the murder from the fine points would be the core of Siegler’s case. Boiling the murder down for the jurors, she outlined what she said testimony would show, beginning by painting a picture of what police found in the closet on Round Valley, Belinda Temple’s body “on her tummy, face down, dead of a shotgun wound to the back of the head.”

But that wasn’t the worst of it, she explained, in her sometimes folksy manner. “The other life that ended that day was a perfectly healthy, six-pound little baby girl, its heart beating inside its mother’s womb.”

Siegler left no doubt whom she blamed for the cold-blooded execution. Pointing at David Temple, Siegler charged: “The only person in the whole wide world who had a motive is her husband, David Temple.”

Appearing fifty pounds heavier than his glory days playing football, David’s face was puffy, making his eyes narrow slits. Temple, Siegler said, was a man no one ever said no to. “David Temple has always, his whole life, gotten his own way.”

Then Siegler fleshed out Belinda for the jurors. She was the perfect wife, pretty and fun, a wonderful mother. A spunky woman, Belinda acted differently around her husband, who was controlling and overbearing. His motive for the murder? David had fallen in love with another woman, a teacher named Heather Scott. He didn’t want Belinda anymore. Two years after Belinda’s brutal murder, Heather became David’s wife. Why didn’t David just get a divorce? He couldn’t, Siegler contended, because no one would have understood why he’d divorce Belinda. Even David’s parents loved her.

Preparing the jury for the trial ahead, Siegler read David’s statement. She then systematically tore it apart, showing inconsistencies with the evidence. She explained staging to the jury, laying out the groundwork that she contended clearly showed that no burglary had taken place on Round Valley that night. David Temple, a man who had a reputation for meticulously planning even backyard barbecues, she said, staged the burglary scene at the house to cover up his wife’s murder.

“David Temple was lying, cheating and deceiving,” Siegler said. Pointing at him, Siegler told the jurors that by the end of the trial they “would believe that this man, David Temple, is guilty of the murder of his wife, Belinda…. The details always tell the truth…. Belinda was executed by her husband.”

Glad to have completed her opening, Siegler took her seat and DeGuerin replaced her, center stage, in the courtroom. His face flushed, his hands steady, he began, “David Temple did not kill his wife, Belinda Temple, and the evidence will show you he didn’t.”

He then dropped a bombshell that would leave many in the courtroom wondering why the legendary Texas lawyer was taking such a stand. He had a client who, at the time of his wife’s murder, was involved in an affair with another woman. There would be evidence from many who would say that David and Belinda’s marriage was troubled. Yet DeGuerin stood before the jurors and an overflowing audience and announced, “David and Belinda Temple were deeply in love with each other. David and Belinda Temple were happy in their marriage…. David was eagerly awaiting the birth of a little girl both David and Belinda named Erin.”

In his classes at the University of Texas Austin’s law school, DeGuerin instructed students to “embrace the ugly baby,” the evidence that a lawyer knew waited in the wings that would show his client in a bad light. The ugly baby in the Temple case was the affair and the resulting marriage, a union many would interpret as evidence that David had, indeed, fallen in love with Heather. At the very beginning of the trial, DeGuerin seemed to ignore his own advice, asking jurors to close their eyes to evidence he knew would come, that David had fallen out of love with Belinda and in love with Heather.

It appeared that what DeGuerin believed he had going for the defense in the case was the apple-cheeked, wholesome image of the Temple family. “They called David and Belinda the golden couple,” DeGuerin continued. “They called Belinda the sunshine girl, because she always had a smile.” He pointed out David’s family in the gallery, and said they would testify that David and Belinda were happily married and that David wasn’t as the prosecutor pictured him, a controlling husband.

As he displayed photos on the courtroom screen of David and Belinda during happy times, many wondered if DeGuerin would succeed in convincing the jurors that his client had no motive for murder, that despite his affair, David loved Belinda and grieved after her death. When Paul Looney heard about the tack DeGuerin was taking, he feared it would backfire. “You don’t tell the jury that you’re going to prove something that’s going to blow up in your face,” he says. Yet Dick DeGuerin had a stellar reputation. Could he be making such a blatant mistake, or was it all part of an overall strategy?

As Denholm predicted during the mock trial and Siegler had no doubt that the defense attorney would, DeGuerin then offered jurors an alternate suspect, Joe Sanders, the teenager who lived next door. “We don’t know who murdered Belinda Temple,” said DeGuerin. “But we know David Temple didn’t.”

Opening statements ended when DeGuerin played the 911 tape for the jurors, and they saw David Temple openly weep. The mammoth warrior of a man flushed and tears flowed unabated. He appeared the way his lawyer described him, a grieving husband and father.

“How close is the television show
CSI
to the real world in crime-scene investigation?” Kelly Siegler asked Dean Holtke when the crime-scene investigator turned homicide detective took the stand. Siegler had begun by putting another officer before the jury, the woman who, with Gonsoulin, had first responded to the scene, to talk about Shaka’s fierce defense of his yard, so threatening she’d pulled her gun preparing to shoot the chow, before David Temple arrived to intervene.

“Objection,” DeGuerin cried out. While Siegler wanted to prepare the jury, let them know that all the fancy forensic flourishes they saw on television didn’t exist or weren’t available in most labs, DeGuerin didn’t want the jury’s expectations lowered. He wanted them to demand the prosecutor produce science to prove her claim that David was guilty.

The first time Holtke saw David Temple, he was seated on a bench near the back door. “At that time, in your mind, was he a suspect?” Siegler asked.

“No,” said Holtke, who gave jurors their first glimpse of the crime scene, using photos of what detectives saw when they arrived. Much of it was touching, from the family photos on the refrigerator to Evan’s backpack draped over a kitchen chair. In the master bedroom closet, they saw Belinda’s body, and Holtke explained how the killer pushed the hangers to cover up the mass of blood spatter and brain matter on the wall.

At each turn, from the television still plugged in but off its stand to the dining room drawers partly open but undisturbed, Holtke explained why the scene appeared staged. Perhaps the biggest anomaly for a burglary scene was that out in the open, near the body, photos showed Belinda’s jewelry box undisturbed and David’s jewelry, including his heavy gold ring, not taken. David Temple had reported to his insurance company that Belinda’s jewelry had been stolen, but what did Holtke see inside the box on the dresser?

“Women’s jewelry,” he said.

Holtke showed photos of the garage with barely enough room to walk between the cars and another of Evan’s yellow bike hanging from the ceiling. “Did it appear to you that the bike had been recently ridden?” Siegler asked, after pointing out that David said the toddler had been doing just that in the garage.

“No,” Holtke said, and DeGuerin again objected.

The dynamics between the two attorneys were combative. At times, DeGuerin appeared ready to jump out of his seat at Siegler, as if he could barely contain his fury. Most of the time, Siegler maintained an unaffected yet intensely serious manner. When Holtke became too technical, she instructed, “Tell me that in girl talk.”

Perhaps the most damaging testimony was the broken window glass that had fallen not straight out from the doorway but off to the side in the den. In his opening statement, DeGuerin argued that the glass scattered into the den because the glass broke when the door hit a wooden hutch with shelves positioned behind it. “Did you see anything consistent with that door being forced up against the hutch?” Siegler asked.

“No,” Holtke said. “The glass was consistent with the door being open…when the glass was broken.”

With so much blood around Belinda, Siegler asked if someone checking her pulse would have gotten it on his or her hands or clothes. Holtke said they would. The jury already knew that David told the 911 operator he’d checked Belinda’s pulse, yet no noticeable blood was seen on his clothes or body.

Throughout, Siegler illustrated Holtke’s testimony with photos from the scene, each designated with a number. The photo of the inside of David’s truck without a car seat for Evan became State’s Exhibit 191, and the photo of the hanging bicycle was number 189. Then, as the jury waited, the bailiffs brought the Temples’ back door into the courtroom, still soiled with fingerprint dust. Over the years, even more of the glass had fallen out, clearing an entire pane. As Siegler pointed out a dent DeGuerin mentioned in his opening—one he said proved that the door hit the hutch—Holtke disagreed. He and the other detectives on the scene had examined the door and never saw the indentation. Perhaps that dent, like the missing glass, he suggested, could have happened in the sheriff’s department property room, where it had been kept for nearly nine years.

As would be expected, DeGuerin wasted no time in attempting to dismantle Siegler’s arguments. First, he questioned Holtke’s expertise, implying he was far from an expert on staging. The detective had said David didn’t appear upset the night of Belinda’s murder, but DeGuerin asked, “Don’t people react differently to trauma?”

“Yes,” Holtke agreed. Yet, although the defense attorney pounded away, on many matters Holtke stood his ground. When DeGuerin speculated that the detectives assumed they weren’t walking into a burglary scene because they saw nothing missing, Holtke disagreed. “My conclusion was based on what you would normally see at a burglary and it just didn’t look right.”

Preparing for the battle that was to come, DeGuerin grilled the detective over the way the crime scene was processed, and Holtke admitted that he hadn’t covered his clothes, and had worn his gun. Studies in the past decade, since the murder, had shown that an unclean gun could leave GSR without being fired, transferring it by brushing up against a piece of evidence.

“If Belinda heard burglars and rushed into the closet to hide and call 911, the burglars could have heard her and gone after her,” DeGuerin said.

“I can’t say if they would have heard,” Holtke responded.

Leithner and Schmidt followed Holtke to the stand, backing up much of what their fellow detective testified to, including the glass shards in the den and the position of the body in the closet. Both mentioned David’s lack of emotion on the scene. With Leithner, Siegler talked about the statements taken at Clay Road, especially David Temple’s. “He never looked me in the eye,” Leithner said. There was David’s apparent confusion, when he changed his mind about which park he’d been at that night. The following day, Belinda and Erin’s bodies were in a suite at the medical examiner’s office being autopsied, while David conferred with his lawyer and decided to withdraw his consent to have police search his house.

Throughout, DeGuerin painted the detectives as abusive toward the Temple family. But on the stand, Leithner, despite his reputation for sometimes being confrontational, remained calm.

“Did there come a time when you interviewed Joe Sanders?” Kelly asked, bringing in to evidence the name she knew DeGuerin would banter about in coming weeks.

“Yes,” Leithner said he did, but on further questions the detectives said he investigated Sanders but came to the conclusion that the teenager wasn’t Belinda’s killer.

“Did there come a time when you were satisfied or completely finished in your mind that you had what you needed from Joe Sanders?” Siegler asked.

“Yes,” Leithner said, as a spirited conference erupted between the attorneys and the judge. DeGuerin wanted it in the record that Sanders had failed multiple polygraphs.

“That’s going to be denied,” said Judge Shaver, reminding the defense attorney that polygraph results were inadmissible as evidence.

“One was a reload?” DeGuerin asked Leithner during cross-examination, referring to the shells taken from Joe Sanders’s home, double-ought like the shell that killed Belinda.