Shattered: The True Story of a Mother's Love, a Husband's Betrayal, and a Cold-Blooded Texas Murder (5 page)

Throughout that season, David’s reputation spread, so much so that it attracted the attention of the big city newspaper. That November 22, 1989, in a
Houston Chronicle
article on Nacogdoches’ star linebacker, one Lumberjack coach called David “as tough a linebacker as you’d ever want…. When it gets tough, the better [David] gets.”

When David was interviewed, he told the reporter: “I think I’m more aggressive than the normal player. I try to hit a player with a helmet, T-bar to T-bar. I just try to run through him…. My parents probably feel that way, too,” David said about his intensity. “I’ve got a temper, a pretty short fuse.”

Yet on the field, David’s forcefulness paid off. By the time the article ran, David had racked up 114 tackles, including 64 unassisted stops and 5 sacks. In the article, Coach Graves said the SFA defense was young but maturing, and gave credit to David. “If we have a guy in that position who didn’t do the job, then we don’t have a very good defense.”

That winter, SFA won the Southland Conference title for the first time in their sixty-three-year history. When the Jacks beat the Indians of Northeast Louisiana 66 to 45, the energized fans counted off the final seconds in unison. At the end of that winning season, the NCAA ranked the Stephen F. Austin Lumberjacks third in the 1-AA, the highest ranking in SFA history. A few months later, David and his fellow teammates collected heavy gold-domed Southland Conference Championship rings with their initials.

That year, David shared his dorm room with Reno Moore, one of his fellow players. They hung out together, grilling on the patio, with Pam and Reno’s girlfriend, Stephanie. Sometimes, at night, David and Reno snuck out on the golf course to retrieve balls from the pond, then sold them for extra money. The two players became good friends, and with their girlfriends they formed a family of sorts, at college, away from their homes.

As always, Pam was proud of David. They spent all their available time together, going to Sea World in San Antonio, and out with friends. By then, the outcome of their relationship seemed so predictable that their friends called Pam “Mrs. Temple.” She wore a promise ring he’d bought her, and they’d often get waylaid walking through malls and detour to the jewelry stores, where they considered engagement rings. “David hadn’t proposed, but it was more that it was understood,” Pam says. “He talked all the time about what it would be like when we were married.”

Despite their plans for the future, there continued to be that other side to David and to their relationship. On nights they went out and partied, their arguments spiraled, but Pam chalked it off to college days, when people studied hard, worked hard, and drank hard. Still, she wasn’t prepared for what happened the following January 1990, when they were in Dallas for the wedding of a friend. That night David went out with the groomsmen, while Pam, who was standing up in the wedding, stayed in a hotel room with her friends. “We were doing girl stuff,” she says. “Doing our nails, talking, and fixing each other’s hair.”

Late that night, David called, and said, “I want to come see you.”

Unusual for her, perhaps the first time she’d done so, Pam refused.

“It was a night with the girls, and I said I’d see him the next day at the wedding.” Pam would later hear that before David called her he’d gotten in a bar fight.

Despite her rebuff, soon after, David pounded on the hotel-room door. When Pam opened it, he burst through, shadowed by two friends. Furious, David screamed at her. They argued, and he came at her, confronting and pursuing her into the bathroom. “He was on fire,” she says. “I’d never seen him like that before.”

Years later, Pam would look back with the wisdom brought by age and marvel that she’d let anyone treat her as David did that night. But caught up in the relationship, at that moment, she didn’t understand how dangerous their relationship had become. “As strange as it sounds, I guess I thought it was normal for a boyfriend to be like that,” she says. “I didn’t know better.”

In the bathroom, David came at her, screaming and cursing. He backed her into the bathtub and then, as she cried out, pushed her against the wall, his face a mask of rage.

The other girls begged David’s friends to force him to leave, and one finally wrestled David away from Pam. Sobbing, she tore at the gold necklace she wore, the one he’d given her just weeks earlier at Christmas. The clasp broke, and she threw it in the toilet, as David’s friends pushed him out of the room and out the hotel-room door.

“It was ugly,” says Pam. “Terrifying.” This time she was angry enough to refuse to talk to him when he tried to apologize at the wedding the next day, and David drove back to Nacogdoches not with her but with other friends.

Still, Pam soon forgave him. “He promised it would never happen again, and I loved him,” she says. “I believed him.”

The following fall, 1990, was an even headier time for David Temple. Due to his outstanding performance the year before, his picture in his full uniform was on the cover of the Lumberjacks’ football guide. Posters were made of the same photo, and they were displayed all over Nacogdoches with the team’s schedule and ticket information.

Despite the blowup the January before, David appeared devoted to Pam. She went to the Temples’ over the summer and for holidays, and she and David talked often of marriage. But then, one Friday night in November, she called in sick at the Californian to see out-of-town friends. Late that night, a friend called Pam, telling her that David was in the Californian’s lounge slow dancing with another woman, a pretty young education major named Belinda Lucas.

Since she’d called in sick, Pam couldn’t go to the restaurant. She’d seen Belinda on campus, around the kinesiology building, handing out towels to the football players and going to classes, but Pam had never considered that David was interested in the other girl. The next day Pam went to David’s apartment and confronted him.

“It was nothing,” David told her.

Hurt and angry, Pam said that the fact that David had danced with someone else hurt her, and she asked, “Are we breaking up?”

Immediately, David became remorseful. Crying, he got down on his knees. “No. I love you. We’re going to be together forever,” he told her, tears running down his cheeks. “That dance didn’t mean anything.”

They talked, and David held her and promised he was hers. Finally, she believed him.

A little while later, the doorbell rang. When David answered, Belinda stood outside. She looked at David, looked at Pam, and asked for one of David’s roommates. David got him, and Belinda went to talk to David’s friend.

Wondering what it all meant but believing in David, Pam asked, and David repeated that Belinda meant nothing to him, that he was in love with Pam. She stayed awhile, but then had to leave. Although she traveled with him to almost every football game, Pam couldn’t go that night. She hadn’t been able to get off work. Instead, David said they’d spend the next day, Sunday, together. Pam offered to make a picnic lunch, they kissed, and she left David’s apartment believing he loved her and that all was well.

Sunday morning, Pam made the picnic lunch she’d promised and waited to hear from David. He didn’t call. Finally, at nine that evening, the phone rang. “I need a break from the relationship,” David said. “We can get together later, but I need some time off.”

Stunned, Pam didn’t know how to respond. Twenty-four hours earlier, David Temple had been on his knees, crying, and professing undying love. Instead of reminding him of what he’d said only hours earlier, she simply said, “Okay.”

The days passed, and Pam waited for David to call, believing he’d come back to her. Then, two nights after the phone call, a friend told Pam that she’d seen David out dancing with Belinda. Distraught, Pam stayed home that night and cried. In the weeks that followed, she became so depressed that she sought out a college counselor, needing someone to tell her story to. She had truly believed David Temple loved her, that they would marry, and she couldn’t envision life without him. She thought about the Temples, about how close she’d become to the entire family. It was as if she’d lost them all. Grieving, Pam wrote to Maureen Temple. The way Pam would reconstruct that letter years later, it was on the order of: “I’m so sad. David’s decision has me absolutely devastated.”

David’s mother replied, and as Pam would remember it, Maureen answered: “We know that your and David’s decision was mutual. We wish you the best.”

When she read the letter, Pam was deeply hurt that Maureen didn’t believe her when she said that David had ended it.

Looking back, Pam would say, “It was like, when David was done with me, he was done, and he wanted me gone,” she says. “One minute he was in love with me, and the next he was ready to move on, and he didn’t give a thought to the person he was leaving behind.”

I
n her third year at SFA, Belinda was thriving. She studied and worked hard, intent on becoming a coach and a special education teacher. She dated one of her fellow workers at Brookshire Brothers for a while, but it never got serious. Mostly, Belinda was looking toward the future and enjoying her life along the way. When she and Staci Rios went to Galveston for spring break one year, they met sailors who gave them a tour of the USS
Lexington
. “We were having so much fun,” says Staci. “No matter what we did, Belinda was just great to be with.”

When she’d pledged a sorority, then decided it wasn’t for her, Belinda became a Pi Kappa Alpha little sister, acting as a hostess at their get-togethers. It was all lighthearted and easy. Belinda had plans, and she didn’t seem particularly eager to complicate her life with a boyfriend. Besides, she still looked at her parents’ relationship and worried. “Belinda felt that her mom took a backseat to her dad,” says Rios. “And Belinda really wanted to be her own person.”

Yet, from the moment David Temple came into her life, Belinda never appeared to pause long enough to wonder,
Am I doing the right thing?

“Belinda wanted David, too,” says Moore, his roommate. “I noticed her flirting with him, and, not too long after that, she was coming around. Once they got together, he broke up with Pam, and from that point on, I rarely saw David without Belinda.”

To another teammate, Belinda and David seemed a good fit. “They both loved sports, and they were such good athletes,” he says. “Belinda and David just matched.”

Of course, Belinda must have wondered,
Why not?
David was a catch, a star football player with his photo all over her hometown. At least at first, it wasn’t the contentious David that Belinda came to know. Instead, with her, David was, as he had initially been with Pam, affectionate and gentle. “He treated her like a princess,” says Staci. “I didn’t like David, right off. He made fun of my East Texas accent, and he could be cruel, calling me a redneck. But he was different with Belinda. With her, he was a gentleman.”

While she was initially angry with Belinda, over the years Pam Engelkirk decided she understood what happened the day Belinda showed up at David’s apartment. “I don’t think she would have been there, not while I was there, if she’d realized David and I were still together,” says Pam. “I think that David told her he was breaking it off with me.”

Whatever she knew, at least in the beginning, Belinda didn’t understand the real David Temple any better than Pam had.

That fall, Ken and Maureen drove in as they always did to watch David play. The team wasn’t faring as well as the previous year. A group of the starters had graduated, and the others were foundering. David played well, but he couldn’t do it alone. While his son’s team wasn’t winning, Ken would later say he and Maureen were excited about the trip, especially when they heard that David had a new girlfriend.

At the game, Ken looked out into the stands, wondering which girl it was. He’d later say he saw “hair and green eyes dancing in the sun, and I said, beneath my breath, ‘Let this be her.’” Belinda looked up, winked at him, and later Ken Temple would insist, “I was hers, hook, line, and sinker.”

When they were introduced after the game, Ken asked, “Your name is Melinda?”

“No, Belinda with a B,” she corrected.

“From that point on, we called her ‘B,’” Maureen would say.

While they’d appeared to care for Pam, it would seem that Maureen and Ken had little if any regret about their son’s decision. Perhaps they did, as Ken said, simply fall in love with Belinda on that first day. Those who knew her would have agreed that she was an exceptional young woman, pretty and high energy, low-maintenance but a force to be reckoned with. Giving them perhaps a special kinship, Belinda shared their passion for flea markets and antiques.

When angry with Pam, David resorted to screaming and physical intimidation. In the beginning, he treated Belinda gently, and as much time as Reno Moore spent with them, he never heard David and Belinda even argue. Yet there may have been more going on behind closed doors, because David was having an effect on Belinda. Over the first months Belinda and David were together, Staci saw a transformation in her friend. Around David, Belinda wasn’t the same opinionated and self-assured girl.

“He was very protective of her, treated her like she was made of glass,” says Rios. “He would get angry. But he was always really in control. When he was mad, he’d get really quiet and just look at her, and Belinda would back down. Whatever David wanted, she’d say, ‘Okay,’ and do it. This was unusual for Belinda. Before, she’d never just backed off and did what someone else wanted her to. Belinda was a strong woman, until she met David Temple.”

David’s parents thought that Belinda was transforming him as well.

There was a lot of excitement in the Temple family over Belinda, as Thompson would later remember it. One weekend, David called his parents talking about Belinda, saying they were getting serious. What Cindi heard from Maureen and Ken was that the new girl in David’s life was good for him. Where David had difficulty keeping track of his funds before, suddenly he monitored his checkbook. He seemed easier to get along with, and his wild side was tamed. David, it appeared, was finally growing up.

“They attributed that to Belinda, that David was becoming a man,” says Cindi. “She brought out the good in him. David loved Belinda, and from the start, Kenny and Maureen loved her, too.”

Perhaps David’s parents saw in Belinda what others would remark on later, believing she was someone strong enough to hold her own with David. When they played Monopoly with her during one visit, Belinda and David fought for properties so hard that Ken and Maureen later said they wouldn’t play with them again.

That fall, at a baseball game, a friend brought a litter of dogs for sale, chows. Belinda and David played with the puppies, and Belinda picked one out, a ball of fur they named Shaka. The dog would eventually grow to look like a small bear, with long brown fur that stood at attention. Chows are a protective breed, and Shaka was especially so. From puppy hood on, he bared his teeth and growled at anyone who came near David or Belinda. “That dog scared the fire out of me,” says Rios.

Although the dog lived in their apartment, David’s roommate didn’t trust Shaka. “Even if you knew him, it could be iffy,” Moore would say. He felt more certain of that assessment after his girlfriend once crawled in through a window to retrieve something after being locked out. Although she knew the dog well, Shaka snarled at the girl, warily watching her. “She had to talk the dog down to get inside,” says Moore.

That fall, Maureen and Ken met Tom and Carol for the first time. Tom was impressed with the young man his daughter was dating. “It was hard not to be, with the boy’s picture all over Nacogdoches advertising the football team,” he said, with a glum expression. “We’d go places, and people would get up to greet him, like he was a big shot.”

The meeting between the two families seemed to go well, but when Belinda’s roommate met David’s family, Rios felt even more distrustful of Belinda’s new boyfriend. Like their son, Maureen and Ken ribbed Rios about her accent, but she didn’t take it as if they were kidding. It felt more like ridicule. At one point, Rios admitted her doubts to Belinda, telling her that the Temple family, especially David, had overblown egos. “You know, being a redneck isn’t the worst thing in the world. There are worse things than talking like you’re from the country,” Rios said. “That boyfriend of yours is a horse’s ass.”

“David’s just teasing you,” Belinda insisted. “He really likes you.”

At that point, Staci reasoned that she’d had her say and dropped it. Plus, she kept reminding herself that David and his family didn’t treat Belinda the way they acted toward her. The Temples appeared to adore Belinda, and David, as contentious as Rios found him, at least on the surface was good to Belinda. “I thought maybe I was wrong,” Rios would say years later. “I wanted Belinda to be happy, and she was.”

Coach Graves had known the Lucas family for years and watched Belinda grow up. Although he knew how violent the middle linebacker could be on the field, when Graves saw David with her, he, too, reasoned that all was well. “They looked like they were very much in love,” says the coach.

Yet Belinda’s twin, like Staci Rios, questioned the wisdom of her sister’s choice in a boyfriend. When Brenda met David, she was struck by the way he turned every conversation around to football. “It was all he wanted to talk about,” she says. “Football was everything.”

Then Brenda noticed what Staci had, the way Belinda acted around David. For the first time Brenda saw her feisty sister take a backseat to a boyfriend. If David disagreed with her, Belinda went silent. Brenda thought about how odd it was that Belinda was willing to abandon her usual confidence for a man. Yet Brenda sensed that for her sister to be with David Temple, Belinda had no other choice. “It seemed like everything had to be his way,” says Brenda. “But I couldn’t say anything. Belinda was in love.”

When he met David at family get-togethers, Tom’s brother Chuck also had misgivings. “The boy didn’t talk much to us,” he says. “He never seemed to fit into the family. He just never showed very much affection for anyone.”

It would seem later that Chuck Lucas had sensed a problem. As the holidays passed, Staci heard David referring to the Lucas family as rednecks and white trash. Then Belinda opened up just a little about the way the relationship was developing, statements like, “Well, David flew off the handle again today.” Rios spoke up, telling Belinda that all wasn’t well with David Temple. But as his parents had before her, Belinda made excuses for David, saying it was near finals and he was under a lot of pressure.

“We were so young,” says Rios, who years later would lament that Belinda hadn’t recognized the signs. “Neither of us really understood that there was anything to be really worried about. But I just didn’t like David Temple.”

That Easter, Belinda made her first trip to Katy, replacing Pam at the Temple family celebration. At the annual egg throw, Belinda winged one at Ken Temple. It cracked and he had egg all over, but he was left rolling in laughter. In his flamboyant manner of speech, Ken would later say Belinda “exploded into our lives,” and that “the Temples must have had a void and she fell into it, and immediately everyone was drawn to her and it seemed to be reciprocal with our family and Belinda.”

Ken Temple, Brian and Jill would later say, told the truth. Belinda did move easily and eagerly into her place as a member of the Temple family. By then, there were rifts in the Lucas family, and the children weren’t gathering on holidays. “They just weren’t coming around that much,” says Carol. “Tom and me, we didn’t understand why.”

Her own family was important to Belinda, but there was a distance between them, more than physical, emotional. In contrast, at least on the surface, David’s family appeared close and loving, the embodiment of the traditional Norman Rockwell family, the type of homespun happiness Belinda had grown up longing for.

“David looked like the All-American football hero, and his family seemed like they had a lot to offer Belinda,” says Jill. “She talked a lot about the Temples, how they were such a close family, and that there wasn’t the strain her own family felt. At first, Brian and I were happy for her, grateful that she felt so loved.”

Describing those early days, Ken Temple would say, “Belinda was there for keeps. We did everything for Belinda that we would have done for a naturally born daughter, and we loved her unconditionally and without hesitation.”

By then, the youngest of the trio of Temple sons was also in Nacogdoches. Kevin and his girlfriend, Rebecca, a petite woman with long dark hair, moved into SFA dorms. They’d been dating since high school. Taller than David and with a mop of dark hair, Kevin circulated over to David’s apartment often. Before long, Belinda was doing Kevin’s laundry along with David’s, and making them all quesadillas for dinners. They went to happy hours at the La Hacienda restaurant, laughed and talked. The daughter of an engineer and a schoolteacher, Becky and Belinda grew close. As her months with David passed, Belinda spent less time with her family and friends. Instead Belinda, as Pam had before her, devoted her free time to David. She was at his apartment often, where they grilled outside on the patio with Moore and his girlfriend. Or they went out dancing. “They both really enjoyed that,” says Moore. “Two-stepping at country western bars.”

Coming off their most successful season, the Lumberjacks only won one game that year. Months after their games ended, in March of 1991, Belinda and David were on a basketball court together, playing in a coed intramural game. David later told Moore that a player on the opposing team, Erick Buck, had cursed in front of Belinda. Buck would describe it differently.

It began, he says, when a referee called a foul against David.

“Good call,” Buck said to the ref, as he walked toward the foul line. Seconds later, from out of nowhere, someone clubbed him on the head, knocking Buck out. At 160 pounds, Buck was 60 pounds lighter than the man who hit him, David Temple.

An ambulance was called to transport Buck to the emergency room. After he woke up, a university policeman dropped in to see him, to ask if he wanted to press charges. It was then that Buck learned his assailant was one of the university’s top football players. The officer suggested that if Buck let it slide, David would pay all Buck’s medical expenses.

More worried about finances than getting even, Buck, who had a cut under one eye from the attack, agreed, and no charges were ever filed.

That summer, David circulated to some of the pro camps to try out for an NFL team. He wasn’t chosen. Again, his coach, Lynn Graves, would say, “David just wasn’t tall enough for the NFL.”

The following fall, 1991, David was featured in the Lumberjack television commercials, touting ticket sales. The team again would not have a good year, but David won an honorable mention as an All-American linebacker.