Shattered: The True Story of a Mother's Love, a Husband's Betrayal, and a Cold-Blooded Texas Murder (25 page)

While Shipley interviewed Hall, Leithner was at Evan’s day care, Tiger Land, talking to the toddler’s teacher and the others who’d seen Belinda that last afternoon. What he learned was that Belinda had been a doting and devoted mother. The teachers described Evan as sick that morning, running a fever, not eating and not playing with the other children. When they called Belinda, she said David would come for him, but she was the one who rushed over to pick him up. One teacher said, “Evan was sound asleep when Belinda carried him out.”

If Evan had been ill, why would David have taken him to a park?

When one coach’s wife heard David took Evan out after he’d been sent home with a fever from day care, she called one of the detectives: “I told him there was no way Belinda would have let David do errands with Evan when he was sick. Belinda wouldn’t even take him to the games with a runny nose.”

I
n a
Houston Chronicle
article that ran three days after the murder, Paul Looney railed against the sheriff’s department, claiming that David and the Temples were being treated “bad beyond description.” David’s attorney was on the offensive, charging that the investigators weren’t sensitive to a grieving family.

A vast city that sprawls, Houston had more than four million residents in 1999, but Belinda’s murder was becoming big news. A suburban woman, pregnant, a beloved teacher with no history of risky behavior, she wasn’t the usual murder victim. Television news reporters were camped outside Tom’s sister’s house when Tracy Shipley arrived on Thursday morning. Belinda’s visitation was scheduled for that evening, and the Lucas family was gathering in Houston, giving the detectives the opportunity to conduct interviews without traveling to Nacogdoches.

One of the first things the detective asked about was the note found on the kitchen counter, asking Belinda to call her Aunt Lorraine. Tom’s sister explained that she’d called Belinda to let her know her grandfather had been taken to the hospital. While she talked with David, Lorraine heard Evan in the background. What Lorraine couldn’t pin down was the time of the phone call.

When Shipley interviewed Tom and Carol, the detective was surprised that they offered so few answers to her questions. Belinda’s parents seemed disconnected from their daughter. The more Shipley questioned them, the more apparent it became that the Lucases knew little about Belinda’s life with David Temple. “The Lucases thought it was a matter of the physical distance and their lack of financial resources to visit often,” says Shipley. “They were on a fixed income and couldn’t afford long-distance phone calls.”

When Carol said Belinda always came alone to visit them in Nacogdoches, Tom defended his son-in-law, saying it was because of David’s demanding coaching responsibilities. When Shipley asked why David didn’t come in the summers, Tom shrugged and answered, “I guess he’s just too busy.”

Confiding that her lack of contact with her youngest child had been a grave disappointment, Carol said, “David and Belinda spent every holiday with the Temples. It hurt my feelings, but I never said anything to Belinda about it.”

Shipley pushed, asking if anyone had seen any evidence of problems in the marriage, but Carol insisted they hadn’t. In fact, Brenda had been with Belinda and David just weeks earlier. “Everything was fine while Brenda was there,” Carol said, unaware of much of what her surviving daughter had witnessed.

Recounting their history with David, Tom told of his son-in-law’s popularity in Nacogdoches, how he’d been a football star, and told the story of how David had been respectful during the courtship, even asking Tom and Carol for Belinda’s hand in marriage. “He was very gentlemanly,” Tom said, with a sense of pride.

“Have you spoken to David since Belinda’s death?” Shipley asked.

“No,” Tom said. “We called the Temple house and talked to his mother, but David never called back.”

The interview continued, and Shipley asked about Shaka. Carol and Tom had only been to David and Belinda’s house in Houston once, but the dog wouldn’t let them in the backyard until Belinda came outside to control it. “Belinda said she liked having the dog in the yard,” Carol said. “It made her feel safe when David was gone and she was home alone with Evan.”

In hindsight it would appear that in the wake of Belinda’s murder, both the Lucases were protective of their son-in-law. Their feelings were natural; they had always liked David and neither had ever seen him anything but loving with their daughter. David had always appeared to Belinda’s parents to be a good husband and father. Adding to the tension was that Tom had heard from Ken Temple that the police were being less than professional. Seething, David’s father had insisted that detectives weren’t investigating the murder, instead focusing solely on David. The situation was so bad, Ken fumed, that David had to hire a lawyer, because “the police aren’t looking for the real killer.”

Sympathetic, Carol and Tom hadn’t even considered the possibility that Belinda’s husband could be responsible for her death, and Tom spelled that out clearly for Shipley, telling her they knew their son-in-law couldn’t and wouldn’t have hurt their daughter and his own unborn child.

At her aunt’s house, while Shipley interviewed her parents, Brenda hung back, saying little. But at one point, Belinda’s twin pulled the detective to the side. “We should talk, but not with my parents,” Brenda said. “I’d like to talk to you separately.”

Brenda gave her a phone number, and the brief exchange ended. In the end, Shipley would say that whatever Tom said, Carol agreed to, and Tom, in the detective’s estimation, “was just kind of clueless about Belinda’s life.”

As Tracy Shipley prepared to leave, Tom peered down at her and frowned, his forehead furrowed, and said, “My daughter and son-in-law were happily married. I want you to catch the man who killed our daughter, but when you make an arrest, you need to make sure it’s the
right
man. I don’t want you to put an innocent man in jail.”

“Yes, sir,” Shipley said, bristling. “I can assure you that when we arrest somebody, it will be the right person.”

Meanwhile that Thursday, Leithner and Schmidt were back at Hastings. They hadn’t been able to interview David’s closest friend, Quinton Harlan, who’d stayed home from work the previous day. Tension was building in the Harlan home. While Tammey thought David was guilty, Quinton couldn’t come to grips with even the possibility that his good friend could murder his pregnant wife. That day, Quinton didn’t describe Shaka to the detectives as a vicious animal, but said that at times the children rode on his back. David, he said, loved Belinda and was looking forward to Erin’s birth. Not yet ready to admit any doubts to himself, Harlan admitted none to Leithner and Schmidt.

After the interviews, Quinton stopped to talk to Heather in her classroom. He was thinking a lot about what would happen when the school district found out about the relationship between David and Heather. “I guess you’ll probably have to leave, go to another school,” Quinton said.

“Why would I have to do that?” she asked, appearing startled. “I haven’t done anything wrong.”

About that time, the two lead detectives on the case were sitting down with Hastings’ head football coach, Bobby Stuart. He talked about David’s role as an assistant coach at the school. Leithner and Schmidt were both mindful of what Wilson had told them, that to press charges they needed to put a .12-gauge shotgun in David’s hands. When asked if he’d ever seen David with a weapon or heard him talk about hunting, Stuart raised their hopes, answering that yes he had. David, in fact, had gone hunting with a group of coaches at Stuart’s ranch. But hope faded when the head coach said he couldn’t remember if David had actually hunted, and if he did, what type of weapon he had.

After the interview, the detectives went to Hastings’ security office and inquired about video surveillance tapes from the Ninth Grade Center for the day of Belinda’s murder, in hopes that they would be able to monitor David’s comings and goings and determine what he’d worn that day. If they knew what to look for, the clothes could be tested for blood and GSR, gunshot residue. In the end investigators watched hours of videotape but never found David. They knew he was at school that morning because others saw him, but somehow the cameras had missed him.

Across Houston at his office at the sheriff’s department, David Rossi processed evidence, sending it to labs for analysis. They’d come away with less than hoped for at the Round Valley house. Most disappointing was that he and Holtke never discovered the murder weapon. What Rossi sent to the lab that day included the “rules of golf” shirt, found in the laundry room; a pair of David’s tennis shoes, found outside the back door; the damp towels and drain and P-trap from the master bath; the shelf brackets and Home Depot bag from the Isuzu; Belinda’s cell phone and charger; and the man’s jogging suit, collected from the master bedroom.

Once everything was catalogued and transferred to the labs, all Rossi and Holtke could do was wait for results.

Early that afternoon, detectives fanned out to the Home Depot on I-10 and Brookshire Brothers grocery store on Franz Road, the two places, along with the park, that David Temple said he’d gone when he and Evan left Belinda at home. At both stores, detectives presented subpoenas for surveillance tapes from three days earlier, January 11, the day of Belinda’s murder, and during the time period David said he was in the stores. Both stores had multiple cameras placed at entrances and exits.

With the manager at Brookshire Brothers, Schmidt loaded the video from the day of the murder into a viewer. First they determined that the time stamp on the video was off by sixty-two minutes, much of the discrepancy due to not setting the timer back when daylight savings time ended the previous fall. The tapes from both stores were collected and brought to Lockwood for viewing.

While Schmidt was at Brookshire Brothers, he walked up to a mechanical horse outside the store. David had said that on the day of the murder, he’d put Evan on the horse but it wasn’t working. Schmidt inserted a quarter, and as Temple had said, the toy was broken.

Belinda had been dead for nearly three days, and her twin could think of nothing else. Who had murdered Belinda? Houston was such a big city, and big cities could be dangerous. But who would break into a pregnant woman’s house and gun her down, execute her and her unborn child? Brenda never considered the prospect that it could have been David. That seemed impossible.

When she listened to Detective Shipley interviewing her parents, Brenda kept silent, but she was glad she’d been able to pull the detective aside to say she wanted to talk to her. She didn’t consider David a suspect, but she did want the investigators to understand that all wasn’t well at the house on Round Valley when she visited over the holidays.

That afternoon, at a Houston hotel, Brian and Jill, too, wondered about the murder. Although no one else in his family had started to even think about David as a suspect, Brian couldn’t get the possibility out of his mind. “I’d never really trusted David,” he says. “Something about him always bothered me.”

The hours ticked away, and Brian thought about seeing David that evening at the visitation. How could he be in the same room with a man he suspected had murdered his sister? “We didn’t want to go any more than the man in the moon,” says Jill.

Although the Temples never called to ask for input from Belinda’s family, they did call to tell Tom and Carol where and when the wake would be. That evening, Belinda’s friends and both families congregated at the Schmidt funeral home in Katy, an old-line establishment housed in a redbrick and white-trim building not far from the cemetery. As guests entered, they saw a closed casket, and beside it Belinda’s school picture, one taken just months earlier of her beaming for the camera in front of a blue background. David sat surrounded by his family. Many felt as if they were protecting him from questions. That didn’t stop the crowd from whispering about Belinda’s death, debating who had killed her. The coffin that held Belinda and little Erin remained tightly closed, but many imagined what they looked like inside, their cold bodies, Belinda’s wounded face.

Circulating through the crowd, Ken Temple talked to many, often inserting in the conversation that David didn’t own a shotgun. According to Ken, David hadn’t owned one in years. One of David’s cousins, a young man, stood up and talked, recounting to others his view of Belinda and David’s marriage, describing how much David loved Belinda and how he, the cousin, looked up to him. As they sat silently and listened, Brian and Jill judged that what was supposed to be an evening held in remembrance of Belinda and Erin had turned into a support rally for David.

As they walked in, Evan’s Tiger Land teachers offered David their condolences, and one after the other, they told stories of Belinda. “She was such a good woman,” one said. “An amazing mother.”

Instead of acknowledging what they said, David repeated to each, in an almost robotic manner, “Thank you for taking care of Evan.”

“He acted like he didn’t care,” says one of the women. “It was like he was there because he had to be there.”

When Carol talked to her daughter’s widower, she put her arms around David and hugged him. “What are we going to do without her, David?” she asked, sobbing.

“Well, I know the first thing I’m going to do,” he said calmly. “I’m going to sell the house. It took both of our salaries to keep it up.”

Looking at her son-in-law, Carol considered how cold that was and wondered why David didn’t say how much he loved and missed Belinda. “Well, I’m sure going to miss her,” Carol said.

David said nothing, simply walking away.

Finding the Temples in the crowd of teachers, students, friends and family, Staci Rios, Belinda’s college roommate, approached David’s parents to offer her condolences. As they talked, David walked up to her, saying he knew that she and Belinda had talked on the telephone the day before her death. “I’m glad you got that chance,” David said.

Staci cried, looked at David and thought,
I’m sure you did this
.

As the visitation drew to a close, Brian heard that Tom, Carol and Brenda were going to the Temples’ house. At first, he and Jill hesitated, but then decided they would go, too. When they arrived, they sat in their car, tears in their eyes, trying to marshal their forces to withstand more time with the man they believed had murdered Brian’s sister, when suddenly a Porsche pulled into the driveway, its exhaust system rumbling. While the driver sat in his car, Jill and Brian rang the bell and joined the rest of Belinda’s family.

In the living room, the Temples had arranged chairs for their guests, and Brian and Jill chose two near the fireplace. Moments later, the man from the Porsche, wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase, walked in. Ken introduced him to the Lucas family as Paul Looney, David’s attorney. Minutes later, Brian and Jill watched as David, his brothers and father gathered around the lawyer and talked, whispering among themselves.