Shattered: The True Story of a Mother's Love, a Husband's Betrayal, and a Cold-Blooded Texas Murder (6 page)

Meanwhile, the more Tom and Carol saw David, the better they felt about him. He was polite with them, saying, “Yes, sir,” and, “Yes, ma’am.” Brenda was still less certain. When she saw the Temples, “they always acted as if everyone else was below them. And Belinda was spending more time with them, so I had to see them to see my sister.”

Her family and friends had no doubt that Belinda was taken with David and the whole Temple family. “Belinda always did everything one hundred percent, and she loved the same way,” says Rios. Of course, she had to admit that David couldn’t have been more engaging with Belinda, or sweeter. He’d call her late at night, sometimes just to hang on the phone for hours and talk. That he was a celebrity on campus must have made Belinda feel special. “People would say, ‘Oh, you’re dating
that
football player?’ They were impressed. In Nacogdoches, people fawned over David, and David was good-looking. He could have had almost any girl, and he chose Belinda.”

Rios continued to express concern when Belinda mentioned David’s temper. Yet Belinda shrugged it off. “I can handle him,” she said. “I know when to back off.”

That’s what Belinda did with Tony Luna, when they happened upon each other at a shopping mall. Three years younger than she, Tony, the kid brother of Belinda’s good friend Angie, had a crush on Belinda. Yet the closest they’d ever come to a date was Belinda’s senior year at Nacogdoches High, when she needed an escort for homecoming. Angie asked Tony to escort Belinda. He agreed and on that night brought Belinda a white flower corsage. “I only got to dance with her twice, and then she danced the rest of the night with a football player,” he’d say. “She looked beautiful.”

That day, years later, their paths crossed at the Beall’s Department Store in the mall, when Tony was home on leave from the navy. Belinda ran up to him, giving him a big hug. She seemed delighted to see him, but they talked for only a few minutes before she became fidgety. “I need to go,” she said. “My boyfriend is here somewhere, and he’s the jealous type.”

Saying nothing more, Belinda hurriedly turned and walked away.

If David was already attempting to control Belinda, she didn’t reveal any concerns to her parents or Brenda, or confide in her friends. That November, David went to the hardware store where Carol worked, now that her children were grown, and said he had something he wanted to talk to her and Tom about at their home.

“It’s a good thing,” he said.

That evening, David Temple, spit and polished, looking every bit the All-American he was, sat down with Carol and Tom and announced, “I’d like your permission to ask Belinda to marry me.”

Both Belinda’s parents were impressed. How many young men took that formal, even old-fashioned, step before proposing? It seemed from all outward appearances that Belinda had found herself an exceptional young man.

“I thought he must be all right,” said Carol.

“I figured Belinda was a smart gal, college educated and all,” says Tom, looking dejectedly at his hands. Shaking his head with the painful wisdom of hindsight, he says, “Belinda was a grown woman, and I didn’t think she’d pick the wrong man.”

In David Temple’s grand style of courtship, the proposal would be memorable. He seemed to have a penchant for showmanship, especially with the women in his life.

That October, after a game, David walked Belinda out onto the football field to the fifty-yard line. His friends were stationed in a ring around the perimeter, and on his command, they turned on their car headlights, sending funnels of bright light through the darkness. In the convergence of the headlights, David Temple dropped to one knee on the site of his greatest accomplishments and asked for her hand in marriage. On her left ring finger, he slipped an impressive diamond engagement ring. “I told her how much I loved her and asked her to marry me,” David would later recount.

Crying, Belinda said, “Yes.”

When she called to tell her twin, Brenda was excited for Belinda. Although Brenda had misgivings about David, Belinda couldn’t have sounded happier, going into details about the romantic evening and David’s chivalrous proposal. And not too long after, Belinda called an old high-school friend and suggested lunch. That afternoon, Belinda showed off her diamond and cooed about the excitement of David’s romantic proposal.

The notice ran in the Nacogdoches newspaper on November 3, 1991. “Mr. and Mrs. Tom Lucas announce the engagement and approaching marriage of their daughter, Belinda Tracie Lucas to Mr. David Mark Temple.”

That winter, David Temple’s SFA football career ended on a grand note, leaving with three all-time Lumberjack records: most tackles, at 492; most unassisted tackles, at 309; and most assisted tackles, at 183. David had worked hard, played hard, and he left behind accomplishments that would remain unsurpassed at the university for decades to come.

The first view of what the Temple family was really like, perhaps, came during the wedding preparations. The Lucases booked their church, the North Street Church of Christ, and the date was set for the coming winter break, since David and Belinda both had one more semester ahead before graduation. Although the church didn’t have music during services, Kevin, the best man, made a CD and brought equipment to play it on, and the Temples arranged the flowers, even helped pick out Belinda’s dress. Carol did make Belinda’s veil, a crown of flowers she wore on the back of her head, and a throwaway bouquet of silk flowers.

“The Temples descended on Nacogdoches in force and took over,” says Rios, one of the bridesmaids. “From the beginning, they overpowered the Lucases and ran the show.”

At Tom and Carol’s church, the wedding party and guests gathered. It wasn’t a large crowd, but the seats filled. As maid of honor, Brenda wore a dress covered with blue roses, a light blue ribbon cinched around her waist, and had her dark hair styled high and falling around her shoulders, as she carried two pink roses. In the photos taken that day, she stands beside her sister, smiling and happy, looking content that the life that waited ahead for both of them would fulfill their dreams.

Yet Brenda was overshadowed, as she should have been, by the bride.

In her white satin dress with a tight bodice and puffy, ribbon-capped sleeves, Belinda was breathtaking. She let her golden brown curls fall around her shoulders, as her veil fanned out from a ring of flowers set back on her head. As Tom walked her down the aisle, Belinda carried a large bouquet of pink and white roses.

Dressed in a black tux with a white rose boutonnière, David waited for her. Beside him stood Ken Temple in his role as the minister, ready to preside over the union and bring Belinda officially into his family. At the time, there seemed no doubt that Belinda was getting all she wanted. She looked radiant. On that day she married a man who professed to deeply love her, a hero on the football field who’d do anything to protect her. They planned a family that would complete her life. Even her in-laws loved her. Belinda would become part of the Temple clan, a big, boisterous, seemingly happy family. On that day, when David and Belinda took their vows, she looked confident and prepared for all life could bring.

As he watched the wedding, Brian, Belinda’s oldest brother, held his wife, Jill’s hand, and wondered if Belinda was making a good decision. He still had nagging doubts about David Temple. To him, his new brother-in-law had a football star’s aloofness and a jock’s mentality, where everything was centered on him. “Belinda was so sheltered, so innocent,” says Brian. “I thought David Temple might overpower her.”

A
ll of us knew that Belinda loved David with all of her heart,” says Staci Rios. “Belinda never did anything halfway.”

At first it appeared, at least from the outside, that marriage didn’t substantially change Belinda and David’s lives. They graduated from SFA that May with degrees in physical education. Belinda had a second major in special education.

Another graduate that spring was David’s old girlfriend, Pam. The night before the ceremony that marked the completion of their degrees, she went out with friends and ended up at a club where David had a part-time job as a bouncer, a good fit for his football-player physique. Spotting him in the crowd, she walked up and said hello, asking if he was well.

“I’m fine,” he said.

Pam asked about his parents and family, and then, because she truly believed she had to know: “Are you happy?”

David had been married to Belinda for five months, and he didn’t hesitate. He smiled at her and said, “Yes, I am.”

The next day, after the graduation ceremony, Pam left SFA and Nacogdoches behind. She cried for the entire three hours in the car, but when she arrived home in Houston, she dried her tears and never cried over David Temple again. “He was my first love,” she says. “But I was starting over.”

Their diplomas in hand, David and Belinda were also making decisions about the future. Although he told friends he felt eager to get a job, Belinda wanted to continue on for one more year, to get a master’s degree in education. He agreed, decided to work on one as well, and they spent a year living in SFA’s married student housing. In the same town with the Lucases, they saw them infrequently. When the entire family gathered, Belinda’s Uncle Chuck still felt uncomfortable around David. “I thought he had a hard time relaxing around us,” he says. “Belinda seemed happy, but David looked uptight.”

Brian, too, continued to have doubts. When he went deer hunting with his dad, his brother Brent, and David, Brian listened to his new brother-in-law talk. David boasted about dove hunting in Katy, claiming that he’d once bagged his limit with one box of shotgun shells. “That was fifteen birds with twenty-five shells,” says Brian. “Good shooting. But it felt like he was just bragging, having to be the big shot who was showing the rest of us up.”

That year during grad school, Belinda and David worked for the university’s intramural sports program. Their studies were harder than they’d been for their undergrad degrees, and more than once Belinda confided in Brenda that David was having trouble. “Belinda said she had to help him with his papers so he’d get through,” says Brenda. “She said he was out coaching, and she was the one doing most of his work.”

When Reno Moore stopped in at his old roommate’s apartment, Belinda and David looked happy. And the Lucases never questioned that Belinda had made a good decision. “David had really charmed Belinda,” said Carol. “You could tell that she was just all excited about being married.”

That New Year’s Eve, Belinda and David went to the Lucases house for a small party. As far as Tom and Carol were concerned, everything went well that night, and David appeared to have fun. Belinda’s parents would later say that they never thought it would be the last time their son-in-law would enter their house. “From that point on, he just never came,” said Carol. “When we saw her, which wasn’t often, Belinda came alone.”

Yet, Belinda had her eyes firmly focused on the future, a future that included David and starting a family. That spring break, she went to visit her brother Barry when his son was born in Amarillo. She held the infant in her arms and talked wistfully about how she wanted a baby of her own. But it wasn’t yet time for Belinda and David, their lives still unsettled, torn between work and school.

The following year, Belinda finished her master’s and David was well on his way, when a call came in from one of his old Katy High School football coaches. Don Clayton was moving to the town of Livingston, Texas, to take over the head coach’s slot at the high school, and he needed assistant coaches to flesh out his staff. “I felt his intensity as a player, he’d bring to coaching,” says Clayton.

David took the job, and he and Belinda moved to Goodrich, just south of Livingston, where they rented a home she furnished with flea-market antiques. Belinda called Brian’s wife, Jill, excited about the treasures, recounting how she refinished the furniture to a glossy shine.

For the most part, David was the same as always, meticulously groomed and carefully attired in his Tommy Hilfiger and Nike jogging suits, everything matching, down to his shoes and socks. At home, if football or any sport was on, David was into the game, analyzing every play. If not, he surfed the channels, often settling on a crime show, especially anything with a forensics angle. “He watched those shows all the time,” says Brenda. “He loved them.”

That fall, Belinda took a special-education teaching slot at a nearby middle school, and David went to work at the high school with Clayton, coaching the inside linebackers on the football team and working with the kids on the track team. A little more than a year after their marriage, at least from the outside, David and Belinda looked happy.

Although David didn’t see Tom and Carol often, he spent time with Brian and Jill. On occasion, they drove down from their home outside Dallas, and David grilled steaks in the backyard. Belinda, at such times, appeared excited and happy to have family close.

Brenda, too, came to visit off and on. Belinda had begun buying Coca Cola memorabilia, and soon Brenda was scouting for miniature trucks and buildings, and plaques with the Coca Cola logo. As they built their collections, this, too, would be something the sisters shared, kibitzing about their latest finds and helping each other track down special pieces. Although they saw each other infrequently, the sisters still had “the twin thing,” as they called it, a special connection they credited with having shared their mother’s womb. More often than not, when one called, the other said, “I was just going to call you.” Sometimes they’d both get busy signals only to determine that they’d been calling each other at the exact same time. “It was strange,” says Brenda. “We laughed about it a lot.”

Despite their special connection, Brenda didn’t sense what was actually going on in Belinda’s life. Later, she would judge that a pattern was already forming, one where Belinda didn’t confide in her family. Brenda, who Belinda still called “Shrimpie,” had health problems, suffering from a stomach problem that stress worsened. There was something else, Jill and Brian would later suspect. They wondered if Belinda’s pride kept her from admitting to her family that the marriage to David, although barely past the honeymoon phase, wasn’t going well. “Belinda so wanted the whole thing, the happy home with the loving husband and kids. She was determined to have that,” says Jill. “Maybe that’s why Belinda didn’t want us to know that they weren’t getting along.”

As they approached their second anniversary, Belinda did complain to friends that David was rarely home. He left early in the morning for work, and during football season, she rarely saw him. Even when the season ended, she told her old roommate Staci Rios, David didn’t make it home many nights until well after dark. “I think David, after the marriage, became more himself around Belinda,” says Rios.

When Staci visited, Belinda admitted that she wondered if David was having an affair. Belinda had no evidence, but he’d become progressively distant and came home less often. Then, almost immediately after she said it, Belinda contradicted herself. “Oh, I’m sure I’m just imagining things,” she said. “He’s just busy. That’s all that’s going on.”

“Right or wrong, she loved him,” Rios said years later. “Belinda knew David had his faults, but she loved him enough that she wasn’t going to admit them, even to herself.”

One year after they moved to Livingston, Belinda and David packed up all they’d acquired and moved again. A new high school was opening in Katy, and Don Clayton was leaving Livingston to take a job as an assistant coach. He didn’t have a slot in Katy for David, but Clayton didn’t want to leave him behind in Livingston. So he made a few phone calls and found an assistant coaching position opening at Hastings High School in the Alief Independent School District, between Houston and Katy. The head coach there was looking for an assistant to work with the football team’s defensive players, David’s expertise. With Clayton’s recommendation, David got the slot.

Alief was interested in both David and Belinda, and that fall David began at Hastings, coaching football and track and teaching physical education, while Belinda signed on with the district’s Albright Middle School as a special-education teacher and a girls’ volleyball and basketball coach. They rented a house west of the school, south of I-10 on the outskirts of Katy, in one of the newer subdivisions that line I-10. One story, beige brick, with an attached garage, the house on Comstock Springs Drive was in the Cimarron Parkway area, just a fifteen-minute drive from the house David grew up in. Maureen and Ken were undoubtedly delighted that their middle son was moving nearby. By then, their oldest, Darren, was living outside Dallas, and Kevin, the youngest of the Temple boys, was graduating from SFA. Before long he’d move to Houston and marry Becky, his longtime girlfriend. In Houston, Kevin took a slot as an investigator for an insurance company.

The Alief Independent School District, with its student body of 45,000, covers a 36.6-square-mile section of the Houston suburbs and part of unincorporated Harris County. With more than 4,000 students, Hastings High School, where David began that fall as a coach, is part of a sprawling complex of facilities that include the Alief ISD headquarters, two elementary schools and even a second high school. On any given day, nearly 10,000 students attend classes within the immediate area. The district stadium, Crump, is a massive facility, one all the district’s high schools call home field. Hasting’s school colors are black and gold, and the stadium is a short walk from the campus, the pathway marked by painted gold bear paw prints.

Now that they were living in Katy, David and Belinda attended the First Baptist Church with his parents. David and Belinda weren’t regulars, but went on holidays and off and on throughout the year. And they joined in the Temple family’s Sunday tradition, afternoon gatherings with the family. Afterward, Maureen packed up leftovers for David and Belinda, making sure they had enough so that Belinda wouldn’t have to cook on Monday night. “When they came, they still looked so happy,” a family member would say later. “In the beginning, they were, I think, but over time, that changed.”

As coaches, the days were long for both Belinda and David, sometimes well into the evenings. Still, David wasn’t the type to let any disarray in his life. His hair, everything, looked precise. The coaches shared a bathroom with a shower, and David stocked it with not just the usual shampoo and soap, but also powders, colognes, a razor and gels. At home, Belinda ironed even his T-shirts, and he brought extras to school to change into after his frequent showers, along with extra warm-up suits and jeans.

To the student body at Hastings, their new football coach appeared to keep to himself. “He wasn’t friendly at all,” says one. “He was a really intense guy. And when he didn’t like something one of us did, he got right up to us, got into our space.”

Coach Bill Norwood, one of David’s colleagues at Hastings, would remember how the young football coach sometimes “lost it” with the kids. “He’d get too far out of line, and we’d have to reel him back in,” says Norwood. “He never understood that his team was made up of high-school kids who made mistakes.”

At times, Norwood wondered about Belinda. He noticed how she acted differently without David around—outgoing—but when the coaches and their wives went out as couples, Belinda seemed quiet. “I rarely saw her smile,” he remembers. “She looked unhappy.”

Yet, to most people, at least from the outside, the Temple marriage continued to look idyllic. The house on Comstock Springs Drive was neatly kept. “Everything was in its place. David insisted on it,” says a friend. David and Belinda worked together on the yard, and it was precisely trimmed and always freshly mowed. At first they knew no one in the area, but, before long, Belinda met her new neighbors. It was a friendly place, one where people waved as they drove by in their cars and where neighbors stopped to talk. Belinda was like that, too. At times, they stood outside talking, in one of the yards. Some dropped over to sit in lawn chairs with Belinda in the driveway. She was friendly, talking about coaching and teaching. Gradually, she opened up with a few in the neighborhood, voicing her disappointment at David’s long hours. One noticed that Belinda kept an eye on her watch, hurrying to go inside before David got home, saying, “I need to make dinner.”

In contrast, David ignored the neighbors, barely acknowledging them, which led the neighborhood men to see David as distant. The only ones he talked to were the family who lived directly next door, the Fournerats. A little older than Belinda and David, Sheree Fournerat worked full time in an office, and her husband, who’d played football in high school, traveled. They had two youngsters, Evan and Shelby.

“I think maybe David talked to me because of the way I am,” Sheree would say, with a hearty laugh. From the beginning, she went out of her way to approach David, almost forcing him to acknowledge her. Before long, Sheree, her two youngsters, and David and Belinda were going to James Coney Island, a hot dog restaurant, on Wednesday nights, when children ate free. When Belinda discovered she was pregnant in late 1994, she knocked on Sheree’s door. Belinda and David had discussed names for the little boy she was carrying and wanted to name him Evan, after David’s maternal grandfather, William Elvis Evans. Since Sheree’s son was already named Evan, Belinda was concerned. “David and I wanted to ask if it would bother you,” Belinda said.

Sheree insisted it wouldn’t, that they’d be delighted to have another Evan in the neighborhood, and the two women laughed, talking about how they’d call one boy “Big Evan” and the other “Little Evan.”