Shattered: The True Story of a Mother's Love, a Husband's Betrayal, and a Cold-Blooded Texas Murder (9 page)

That fall one of the Temples’ neighbors on Round Valley, Mike Schrader, rang the doorbell with two Houston Aeros hockey tickets for David. They’d only nodded in passing a few times, but Mike’s wife had spent time talking to Belinda and liked her. Mike had gone over a few times while the women were talking and David was outside. He had never even said hello. This time, David opened the door, took the tickets and nodded at Mike, then closed the door without saying thanks.

Of all of the neighbors, later it would seem that the only ones David Temple did more than barely acknowledge were the Ruggieros, Peggy and Mike, who lived on Hidden Canyon, the side street that bordered the Temples’ lot. The Ruggieros’ house was one lot down from David and Belinda’s driveway, and they talked at times, even sharing a barbecue or two. Mike, an engineer with British Petroleum, would label it a neighborly relationship.

At Katy High, Belinda continued to be one of the more popular teachers. “If you ever need to talk, I’m here,” she told a troubled girl that winter. “I want to help.” Every morning, she spent time with her suite-mates, Debbie Berger and Cindy O’Brien. It seemed that Belinda perpetually had a new Evan story. She put his picture up on the “Teacher’s Brag Board” in the lounge, and there were more family photos on her desk. One morning Belinda talked about how she’d taken Evan to Walmart and he’d picked up a toy. Instead of crying to keep it, he told her, “I’ll play with it here and put it back.” Belinda was so impressed she gave him the $3 to buy the toy.

At lunch in the teachers lounge, Belinda ate French fries and always had a small pile of chocolate wafer cookies for dessert. She took them apart and licked out the frosting, then finished by crunching on the wafers. If she had an appetite at work, Belinda didn’t give up on losing weight. When she wasn’t taking Evan to the park after school, she brought him to the gym, where he played in the nursery while she worked out, still hoping to get back to her pre-pregnancy physique. Yet, no matter what she tried, it appeared that David didn’t approve. The Harlans heard David ridicule Belinda, embarrassing her by disparaging her family and calling her fat.

More and more that year, 1998, Tammey saw a change in her friend. Belinda away from David remained a happy, fun-loving person. When David arrived, Belinda became quiet, almost sullen. Tammey didn’t like to see what the marriage was doing to her friend: “It was like Belinda walked on eggshells around him. It made me so uncomfortable. If I was at their house with Belinda when he came home, I left.”

Years later, Tammey would recount an incident but be unable to say whether she saw it or if Belinda described what happened: that David had pushed Belinda into a wall. What gave the memory credence was that, although Tammey had no way of knowing, David had done the same thing to Pam in a hotel bathroom seven years earlier.

While Maureen and Ken Temple were their grandson’s usual babysitters, the fall before, a Katy High student named Ginny Wiley, a pretty young girl with long blond hair, began babysitting for Evan. She and Belinda became friendly, and Ginny rode her bike to the Temples’ and played basketball with Belinda. “The woman still had some moves,” says Wiley.

When David showed up, he drove into the garage and went in the house without even saying hello.

By then, it seemed that David Temple increasingly had other matters on his mind. He and Quinton continued to go out at night. When they did, David instructed his fellow coach on what to tell Tammey, so their alibis would jibe. But Quinton didn’t use David’s lies, instead telling Tammey where he’d gone. That spring Belinda found credit-card bills of David’s from bars and strip clubs, and when Belinda called Tammey, she verified that was where David had gone. The next day at work, David confronted Quinton.

“You need to keep your woman in line,” he ordered, seething. Quinton stared at David, not sure how angry he was or what he might do, but then shrugged it off.

“It was like we were getting pulled into their world, and there was this unbelievable storm we lived in,” Tammey would say later. “It was crazy, like everything was unraveling.”

With so much going on in her marriage, at school, Belinda talked more openly to Debbie and Cindy, confiding in her fellow teachers about the credit-card bills and the things David said about her family and her weight. “Belinda said that the Temple men talked badly about the women,” says Debbie. “It bothered her. She didn’t like that.”

“Belinda was spunky, but she wasn’t tough. She got her feelings hurt,” adds Cindy.

One night when Tammey and Quinton were over playing cards, David suddenly stopped in the middle of the game and snapped at Belinda, who’d been jumping up and down whenever anyone wanted a drink. “You’ve got a big fat ass,” he said. Embarrassed, Quinton and Tammey listened as David then railed against his wife for disciplining Evan, something he maintained only he had the right to do, and then brought up another of his pet peeves, Belinda’s parents. “They’re crazy,” he said. “White trash.”

Belinda said little.

The discipline issue emerged again and again. Once Tammey was over with Sydnee when Sydnee and Evan had a spat. Belinda put Evan in time out, but when David saw it, he glared at Belinda and talked to the toddler, then let him get up off the chair.

“Why did you do that?” Belinda asked.

David looked furious. “You let me take care of my son,” he ordered.

That spring, Tammey Harlan was losing patience with her friend. She urged Belinda to stand up against David and not to let him control her. Belinda agreed, but when Tammey saw them together, she knew Belinda couldn’t stand up to David. It was as if David had scraped away all Belinda’s self-esteem.

“I hated the way he treated her, and I hated that she let him. I started telling Quinton that David was evil,” said Tammey.

While in the beginning David had been obsessive with his yard and his house, over the years he lost interest. He still insisted it was well maintained, but Belinda was charged with the work. On the weekends, Belinda would mow the yard and trim, while David sat inside watching sports on television.

Their neighbor from across the street, Natalie Scott, dropped by often, talking with Belinda in the driveway while the children played. They were both teachers and much of the conversation centered on students. Trying to join in, Natalie’s husband, Robert, tried to get them to talk about something else, but usually failed. The Scotts saw little of David. When he poked his head outside or drove up in his pickup truck, Bob Scott would remember David glaring at him. “It was like he was trying to intimidate me,” Scott would say years later. “He just had this hard, cold stare.”

It was Scott that Belinda asked for a favor one afternoon. She wanted to put Evan down for a nap, and rock and roll music vibrated out of the house next door. The teenager who lived there, Joe Sanders, had his stereo blasting. One of her students from Katy High, Sanders was a laid-back kind of kid, one who smoked pot and cut classes, but he hadn’t been in any real trouble in the neighborhood, other than a loud party when his parents weren’t home. Perhaps Belinda worried that talking to Sanders alone, without a witness, someone might see her at his house and misinterpret, or that Sanders or his parents could become angry and claim she said things that she didn’t. So Belinda asked Scott to stand in her yard, behind the bushes, and listen in on the conversation.

He did, and she left, returning minutes later.

“Everything all right?” he asked.

“Yup. No problem,” Belinda said with a shrug. “Joe was really nice about it.”

That Christmas, David and Belinda put out their lighted deer and lined the walkway with make-believe candy canes. Belinda asked Ginny Wiley to babysit while she shopped. Wiley drove to the mall with Evan and Belinda in the red Rodeo, then Ginny took Evan up and down on the escalator, with Evan giggling and enjoying the ride, while Belinda searched for the items on her Christmas list.

Over the holidays, Belinda again made the drive home to Nacogdoches with Evan and Shaka. David didn’t go. It was getting to the point where much of the contact Tom and Carol had with their youngest child was on the telephone. She visited every three or four months, usually driving up one day and driving home the next. They didn’t know that each of her trips home riled David up.

More often, she called on Sundays. “Hi Mops and Pops,” she’d say. “It’s Number Five.” On the phone or during her short visits, neither of Belinda’s parents understood what was going on in her life, the turmoil in her marriage. With them, she appeared carefree, never complaining about David.

At Katy High that spring, Belinda cried at her desk one morning when one of the teachers saw her.

“Are you okay?” he asked. “What’s wrong?

Belinda just shook her head. The man knew David from his high-school years at Katy and guessed that Belinda’s sadness involved a problem at home. He stood beside her and put his arm around her. His wife and Belinda were friends, and he felt sad that all wasn’t well. “What’s going on?” he asked. “Is there something I can help you with?”

“No,” she said. “I’m okay.”

Despite her assurances, he wasn’t convinced. “I’ve known you long enough for you to know that I care about you. Is it David?” he asked. “Is there something I can do? Do you want me to talk to him?”

“No, please, don’t get involved,” she begged.

“Belinda, if he’s not doing you right, I will talk to him,” the teacher said.

This time Belinda looked frantic. “Please don’t say anything. It’ll only make it worse.”

A few days later, that same teacher saw Belinda and asked if everything was all right. “Things are a lot better now,” Belinda said. “We’re fine.”

The Creekstone area, where the Temples’ new home was located, was a quiet neighborhood. It was the kind of place where neighbors leave their doors unlocked and stop to talk or wave as they drive by.

“Nothing much ever happened here,” says a neighbor. “It’s almost boringly quiet.”

That was about to change, and the tremors of what happened would haunt the middle-class subdivision for years to come.

W
hen it came to football, Coach Temple was aggressive,” says one of his Hastings players. “You could tell he had a real temper, when things weren’t going his way. He cursed at us, but I never saw him hit a kid.”

In life, as in sports, there are boundaries that aren’t to be crossed. Later, it would seem that 1998 was a dangerous year in the Temple marriage, one in which David continued to pull ever further away from Belinda, putting in motion events that would lead him to violate deeply entrenched mores, the most basic rules that govern society and define family.

That spring, Belinda was in her room at Katy High School, upset about problems at home. Then Belinda called Tammey crying. She’d found more credit-card receipts from bars and strip clubs, and she said that when she’d confronted David, he told her he wanted his own checking account. “I felt bad that I knew about what David was doing, the other women, and I couldn’t tell her,” Tammey says. “And I was angry at Belinda for not standing up to David. I didn’t see her as abused, I saw her as weak.”

Tammey mentioned Belinda’s call to Quinton, and a few nights later, he and David were in a bar, when David said he was leaving.

“Be sure to get the credit-card bill before your wife does,” Quinton prodded. It was the type of jab David gave Quinton regularly, but David apparently didn’t like it being directed toward him.

The next day Belinda was on the phone again, frantic, crying and begging Tammey to never again tell Quinton anything she confided in her. “I will never forget that phone call,” says Tammey, wiping away a tear. “Belinda sounded desperate.”

After school let out for the summer, she called Cindy and Debbie, her surrogate moms from Katy High, and told them there was more trouble. David was so angry that he hadn’t talked with her in weeks. “It didn’t sound good,” Debbie would later say. “I was worried for her. To go a few days not talking was one thing, but not weeks.”

When she heard about the latest event in the Temples’ marriage, Tammey Harlan was proud of Belinda for standing her ground and not giving in. This was a new Belinda, one who was willing to push back. “Have you and David talked yet?” she’d ask Belinda. When Belinda said they hadn’t, Tammey was filled with pride. Finally, her friend was refusing to bow down to her domineering husband.

That summer, there were more calls from Belinda, telling Cindy and Debbie that the situation continued to deteriorate. Debbie wondered if the marriage was ending, and thought that perhaps that would be for the best for Belinda. Debbie had had misgivings early on when Belinda told her whom she was married to; now those fears seemed justified. That summer Belinda told Tammey something else: that she’d begun refusing to go to David’s parents’ home at times, something Belinda in the past would never have had the courage to do. “She was sick of spending every weekend with them,” says Tammey. “In the framework of their marriage, this was big. Belinda was standing up to David. She wanted her own family, just her, David, and Evan. She wanted to do things on their own.”

When July came and it was time for the family reunion in New Braunfels, something years earlier Belinda had looked forward to, she didn’t want to go. “Why can’t it ever just be us?” she asked. “They’re all driving me crazy.”

“Don’t go,” Tammey said. “Just refuse.”

“I can’t,” Belinda said. “I can’t not go.”

If reluctant to attend, in the photos taken that year, Belinda looked happy. She played in the pool with Evan, and in one, Belinda, with her sisters-in-law Becky and Lisa, who was married to Darren, mimicked their husbands’ summer tradition, with cigars in all their mouths, grinning widely.

As he had the year before, Quinton took over duties with Shaka while David and Belinda were gone. As always, Quinton was cautious around the dog. Immediately when he pulled in the driveway and opened the car door, Shaka growled, barked, and jumped against the pine slats that made up the backyard gate. More than once, Quinton shuddered at the prospect that the latch wouldn’t hold and the dog would pounce on him. As he approached the gate, Quinton said the dog’s name. “Shaka, you know me,” he said gently. “I come here all the time. I’m the one who feeds you.”

At the gate, he held his hand next to a crack in the slats, so Shaka could recognize his scent. Only after the dog quieted down would Quinton ease inside. As Quinton retrieved dog food out of the garage and refilled its bowl, the dog kept a sharp eye on him. Each time he left unharmed, Quinton sighed in relief.

That summer, 1998, Belinda told Brenda that she and Evan would visit her. Belinda never made the trip to Kansas, where Brenda had moved to work for a poultry company. The middle Lucas brother, Barry, too, was disappointed when Belinda didn’t come that summer, as she’d promised. One night while David was at a baseball camp, Belinda did, however, drive to Nacogdoches to see Tom and Carol. No matter how much David ridiculed her parents, the draw was strong and Belinda wasn’t willing to lose them.

The weeks passed, and, back home in Katy, David and Belinda continued their silent war, until one morning when she called Tammey in utter despair. As Belinda described it, she was reading Evan a book in his room when David stopped at the door. Belinda looked up and asked him, “Do you love me?”

“I don’t know,” David replied.

Grieving, Belinda cried as she told her friend, as if David’s words signaled an ending to the marriage. Although Tammey knew Belinda’s spirits rose and fell with David’s moods, Tammey wasn’t prepared for what happened the following morning, when her friend called again. Taking up the story where she’d left it off the day before, Belinda explained that she’d cried much of the day after her conversation with David. Then, that night, she was again in Evan’s room, putting him to bed. To her surprise, David walked up behind Belinda and kissed her on the back of the head.

“I love you,” he said.

It seemed that was all Belinda needed to hear. With those three words, their standoff ended. Despite the pain of the previous weeks, Belinda again sounded head-over-heels in love, raving about David as if he were the ideal man, the only man in the world she could ever love.

The turnaround hit Tammey hard, not so much that they’d made up but that Belinda had made a complete about-face, restoring David to his undeserved pedestal. Feeling that her own emotions, too, had been in upheaval, Tammey made a difficult decision. “I couldn’t stay on this roller coaster with Belinda. I had a four-year-old and two babies,” she says. “It was eating me up, too. My marriage was suffering. The more time we spent with David and Belinda, the more Quinton and I fought. From that moment forward, I pulled away.”

Not long after that Belinda called friends with big news. “She was pregnant,” says Cindy. “I was surprised, after things had been so bad between them, and I wondered if Belinda thought another baby would fix the marriage. But she sounded excited, and Debbie and I were happy for her, and we hoped maybe all was well.”

Belinda and David had talked about wanting a baby for more than a year, so it shouldn’t have been a shock. Yet after such a stressful summer, the news caught those who understood what Belinda had gone through by surprise. For others, those who only saw the pretense of the Temple marriage—the pretty wife with the football-star husband and the handsome little boy who lived in the well-kept house on the quiet street—there was no reason to greet the pregnancy with anything less than excitement.

When Belinda announced she was pregnant to her friends at the gym, they cheered and laughed, and started singing the old pop hit by the Supremes, “Baby Love.” At Katy High School that August, she made the announcement to a wave of hugs and good wishes. And when Belinda told the staff at Evan’s day care, Tiger Land, they surrounded her with embraces. There seemed so much to be happy about.

David’s parents were in a small town outside of Houston antiquing when they got even more good news. They were both on the telephone with Belinda when she made another announcement; the baby she carried was a girl. The Temples, who had no daughters or granddaughters, were thrilled.

“They were beside themselves with excitement about a baby girl,” says a relative. “Maureen and Ken couldn’t have been happier.”

At first Tammey was shocked by the news, after the difficult summer Belinda and David had had. But then, she thought, perhaps a new baby would help. David was a good father to Evan, obsessively devoted, to the point that Tammey and Quinton joked about him seeing the boy as a mini-David. Now, when David visited the Harlans, he looked at little Avery, with her dark hair and blue eyes, and said things like, “My daughter is going to be like Avery.” The prospect of a baby girl, at least in the beginning, seemed to bode well for everyone.

On Round Valley, there was still a wide disparity between the way neighbors viewed Belinda and David Temple. While Belinda went out of her way to make friends, David continued to hang back with the majority of the neighbors. It seemed as if Belinda couldn’t do enough, and David simply wasn’t interested.

One of the Temples’ across-the-street neighbors, Natalie Scott, was pregnant, too, due in the fall. One weekend a friend was using the Scotts’ house to throw Natalie a baby shower. She told Belinda about the event in passing, mentioning that Natalie’s husband, Robert, was on a business trip, and that the lawn needed mowing. A short time later, Natalie heard a mower start up and looked outside to find Belinda mowing the lawn.

On yet another weekend, Robert stood on the street in front of his house watching his children, while Belinda and David played basketball. David hit the backstop hard and the ball rocketed off, aimed directly at one of the Scott’s young daughters. Without a moment to spare, Robert put out his hand to deflect the ball, but it hit so hard that it split his fingertip. The blood spilled out, but David just stared at the other man. He didn’t apologize, and he didn’t offer any help. Belinda was the one who ran for a bandage and ordered David to “say you’re sorry.”

“He mumbled something,” Scott would say years later. “But he didn’t look in the least bit sorry.”

At Tiger Land, too, the disparity between the Temples had people talking. They saw Belinda with Evan, loving and protective. David continued to dote on the three-year-old, but to most he appeared to treat the toddler as older than he was, as if David wanted to train his son to be strong.

They understood that David had high expectations, ones Belinda worked hard to fulfill. Daily, like his father, Evan was outfitted in matching Nike and Tommy Hilfiger clothes, down to his socks and tennis shoes. That fall, Belinda was working on potty training. When she dropped him off at Tiger Land in the mornings, she made the time to take the toddler to the bathroom. As children do, he still had accidents. Prepared, Belinda kept an ensemble of matching clothes at Tiger Land for Evan to be changed into, but one day he went through the extra outfit as well, and his teacher, assuming it wouldn’t matter, dressed Evan in clothes the school kept for such emergencies, a pair of coveralls and a shirt. When Belinda arrived, she saw her son and looked worried.

“Oh, Evan, we’ll need to go to the mall and buy clothes and change you. We can’t bring you home dressed like that,” she said. Then, in a cautionary voice, “You know how your father is.”

Belinda turned to a woman standing beside her and said, “His daddy gets upset if Evan isn’t dressed just right.”

At Katy High in the content mastery suite, Debbie hung a big pink bow on a shelf in Belinda’s room to commemorate the coming baby. That fall, in her role as the sunshine lady, Belinda sent out e-mails to the other teachers. “I hope everyone has returned prepared to get tired again,” she joked in one. In another, later that year, she wrote: “Secret pal people, do not forget your pals!” And then there were the jokes in her e-mails, including one about a three-year-old who put his shoes on by himself, on “the wrong feet.” When his mother pointed out his mistake, the child looked dumb-founded.

“Don’t kid me,” he said. “I know they’re my feet.”

The boy in the story was as old as Evan, and at the bottom of the e-mail, Belinda wrote: “They’re so cute at that age.”

Then there were Belinda’s customary pearls of wisdom, including “A smile is the cheapest way to improve your looks, even if your teeth are crooked.” Most of her missives ended with a cheer for the Katy football team: “Go, Tigers!”

As the school year got under way, it would seem that all was relatively well in Belinda’s life. She and David were talking again, and he’d said he loved her. Her pregnancy was exciting for the entire Temple family, including Belinda, who’d ached for another child and always dreamed of a daughter. There were twins at Tiger Land, and one of them was a little girl named Erin. Belinda’s parents had named their children with Bs, and David and Belinda decided that Erin was the perfect name to go with Evan. Before long the baby she carried had a middle name: Ashley.

As painful as the summer had been, the fall held the promise of a better life and a beautiful baby girl named Erin Ashley Temple. Belinda couldn’t know that the worst lay ahead.

While Belinda eagerly awaited their daughter’s birth, big changes took place at Hastings High School, where David worked. The school had grown to the point where a decision had been made a few years earlier to split off the youngest students and construct a separate ninth-grade center behind the high school. In August 1998, the building opened, and a group of teachers moved into classrooms in the modern facility, with its soaring roof over the entryway. David and Quinton were two of those teachers. Another was Heather DeAnn Scott, a slender, blond English teacher, at twenty-nine a year younger than David. Before long, Heather and Quinton would indulge in a flirtation. At least in the beginning, it all seemed harmless. But that would quickly change, and events would soon spin even further out of control when David Temple became part of a triangle that would end in tragedy.