Shattered: The True Story of a Mother's Love, a Husband's Betrayal, and a Cold-Blooded Texas Murder (7 page)

As the months passed, it was easy for Sheree to see how delighted Belinda and David were about the coming baby. They debated the wisdom of buying new furniture for the nursery or getting it secondhand. When they found furniture at a flea market, Belinda and David worked in the garage, sanding it down and refinishing it for their son, who was expected in April of the coming year.

By then, Brenda was living in Kansas, but she sent gifts for the nephew Belinda carried, and waited for news as the date neared. Preparing, Belinda and David bought a small football uniform with a cover for his diaper. The nursery was ready when, on the evening of April 13, 1995, Belinda went into labor. David wasn’t home yet, and she called his parents to take her to the hospital. David arrived an hour later, and Evan Brett Temple was born at 2
A.M
. He weighed seven pounds, fourteen ounces, and was 20½ inches long. The announcement the proud parents sent to friends and family had a train pictured on it and read: “It’s a boy!” Evan, it said, was their first draft pick and “their little linebacker.”

When Belinda called to tell Brenda about the baby’s birth, their twin connection kicked in again, Brenda immediately guessing the time and saying she’d woken up the night before at that precise moment and felt something important had happened. When Brenda visited not long after, she saw how happy Belinda was, holding her baby son, talking to him, kissing his soft head. “Evan was so important to her,” says Brenda. “I’ve never seen Belinda more excited about anything than she was about him.”

David appeared happy, too, but Brenda thought he acted oddly. He’d never been overly friendly, but now he kept her at arm’s length. “I had the feeling he didn’t want me around,” she says. “I made a point to visit because of Belinda, but I didn’t feel like David wanted me there. We kind of tolerated each other.”

Two weeks after Evan’s birth, Belinda sent Jill and Brian photos of the new baby along with a note: “We would love for y’all to come visit anytime. We could get some shrimp and do them on the grill. David has a student whose dad is a shrimper. Love, David, Belinda, and Evan.”

Despite the invitation, it seemed to Jill that once Belinda moved to Katy, all she talked about was the Temple family. David and Belinda spent every holiday with his family, and nearly every Sunday afternoon. When David and Belinda traveled to Dallas for a birthday party for Jill and Brian’s son, David wanted to leave an hour after they had arrived. Later, a friend mentioned David and said, “There’s something odd about that guy.”

That spring and summer, Belinda spent more time outside. She whipped through the streets on in-line skates behind Evan’s stroller, trying to get back in shape after the pregnancy. When Sheree saw her skating, she shook her head at Belinda, laughed and said, “You’ve got to be nuts!”

“Well, I put on a little weight while I was pregnant,” Belinda confided.

“Doesn’t every woman?” Sheree asked.

“David doesn’t like heavy women,” Belinda said.

Sheree looked at her young neighbor. At twenty-six, even so soon after the birth, Belinda had a firm, athletic body, and she was pretty and full of life. “He doesn’t have one,” Sheree said. But Belinda didn’t appear to believe her as she skated away.

At other times, Belinda sat in a lawn chair in the driveway. She chained Shaka up in the front yard or to the backboard that held the basketball hoop, and had Evan in the stroller beside her. Jackie Cerame, who lived across the street, had a child just a little older than Evan. Some afternoons, Jackie passed time with Belinda as they watched the children play. David was rarely around, and gradually, Belinda began confiding in Jackie, talking about the problems in her marriage. “David doesn’t want me to see my family,” she told her. “I feel as if I need to, but he doesn’t like them, and he doesn’t want Evan around them.”

Jackie wasn’t sure what to respond, other than to say that Belinda had the right to see her own parents. “I think it’s good for Evan to have both families,” Jackie said. Belinda agreed, but then said again that David didn’t like it when she visited. At such times, Belinda talked wistfully of her family, missing them.

Jackie wasn’t the only one who heard about the troubles in the Temple marriage. Not long after they became friends, Belinda revealed her disappointment to Sheree as well. “David says he’s not comfortable around my family,” Belinda told her one afternoon. Sheree and Belinda talked, and over time the older woman noticed changes in the young mother. When they first met, Belinda cleaved willingly to the Temples, talking of them often and saying how much she admired them. But as time passed and their lives continued to be centered on David’s family, Belinda sounded less enamored, calling Maureen “Mother Temple.”

“It wasn’t always said with affection,” says Sheree. “I think Belinda grew tired of spending every holiday and vacation with them.”

If David kept Belinda and Evan away from the Lucases, their daughter made a point of not losing contact. Nearly every Sunday, she called. “Mops and Pops, it’s Number Five,” she’d say happily. Then she rambled on about what was new in her life, especially Evan’s latest accomplishment, his first words and the funny things children do that bring smiles to their grandparents. What Belinda rarely talked about was David. “She didn’t mention him, and when we asked, she just said, ‘David’s fine,’” remembers Carol.

That fall, Evan was in day care and Belinda was back at work. At school, she told stories about her infant son, putting his picture up in her classroom. But there was no doubt that Belinda also loved teaching. She joked with her students, urging them to study, ribbing them when they didn’t bring in their work. She was the teacher with the most elaborate Halloween costumes and the one who shouted the loudest at pep rallies. Loving music, Belinda broke into song at any moment. When OMC’s “How Bizarre” played on the radio, her fellow teachers laughed as Belinda sang along with her East Texas drawl, pronouncing the refrain, “How bizine.”

While they didn’t see each other often, David’s Katy High School teammate and friend Mike Fleener and his wife came to the house a couple of times. Fleener took an immediate liking to Belinda. Although others noticed that Belinda was quieter around David, she still had that spark about her, a joy for life. While they were there, David locked Shaka in the bedroom, but the entire time, the dog snarled, making Fleener eager to leave. “I was afraid of that dog,” says Fleener. “We didn’t stay long.”

On Comstock Springs, Shaka was well known among the neighbors. The children loved Belinda and congregated around her in the driveway when she was outside, wanting to talk and play with Evan, but they gave the dog a wide berth, and their parents watched the chow carefully, wary of it.

That fall, David worked outside one afternoon with Shaka chained in the front yard. A friendly lab mix from down the block roamed free, walking the street, and as a group of neighbors watched, the lab, tail wagging, ran up to Shaka as if wanting to play. Immediately, the dark brown chow lunged at the other dog, Shaka latching his powerful jaws onto the lab’s neck and shaking it.

Remarkably, David just watched. He didn’t shout or try to separate the dogs, and Jackie Cerame even thought that David looked amused.

“Call your dog off,” one neighbor shouted as they ran toward David. At that, David appeared to snap out of a trance. He moved forward and pulled Shaka off the other dog as a neighbor helped the lab escape. The lab wasn’t badly hurt, but talk of the incident filtered through the neighborhood, fueling even more rumors that the Temple’s dog was dangerous and not to be trusted.

In most ways, Sheree Fournerat saw David as a good neighbor. When her son, Evan, was eleven or so, he made a game out of breaking the spotlights on the eaves of David and Belinda’s house with a BB gun. Although he could have, David didn’t get angry. Instead he talked to the boy, explaining how dangerous the shattered glass was, especially to little Evan when he played outside. Sheree thought at the time that David must have been like that with his students, kind and patient. She found it difficult to reconcile what she saw in David with what she heard from a niece who attended David’s school, Hastings. “Coach Temple is mean,” the girl said.

Jackie Cerame came to the same conclusion as Sheree’s niece, but for a different reason. She hadn’t seen David with his students, but she heard him yelling at Belinda. Out on the street talking to a neighbor or working in her yard, she saw Belinda drive up in her Toyota, open the garage door, and pull inside. Before Belinda got Evan out of his car seat, David was at the door leading from the house to the garage, furious, shouting at her to get inside. Cerame couldn’t see Belinda’s face as she walked into the house, but from the tone of David Temple’s voice she knew he was in a rage.

At other times, when Cerame talked to Belinda out on the driveway, David stuck his head out the door and ordered her inside. Belinda immediately said good-bye, and turned and left. “He seemed quick to anger, and she’d do what he said,” Cerame says. “She didn’t argue with him. Not ever that I saw.”

At times, Sheree knew Belinda had to have been furious with David, and once or twice she heard the frustration in her neighbor’s voice. “Well, duh,” David said, mocking Belinda about something or other, Sheree never quite sure what.

“Sure, David. You’re always right,” Belinda replied, venturing no further. Sheree never thought of Belinda as a push-over, but she saw the cold, stern look in David’s eyes.

“I could practically see steam coming out of Belinda’s ears,” Sheree would say years later. “It wasn’t my husband, but if it had been, I’d have been furious.”

That December, David and Belinda decorated the house and put deer outlined in white lights in the yard. A handful of David’s football players came to help, as they did off and on with the yard in the summer and fall with the mowing and trimming. Sheree had always assumed that the boys did it because they wanted to, maybe to curry favor with their coach, but that December, she heard one boy grumble and refer to working at Coach Temple’s house as punishment. The holidays came and Belinda convinced her brothers and sister to buy Carol a mother’s ring with all their birthstones. Yet, she saw her parents less and less often. She told no one in the family that David was arguing with her about visiting Tom and Carol, but no one doubted that Belinda wanted to see them. By then, Brian and Jill were spending little time with the Lucases, and Belinda told Jill in no uncertain terms that she thought that was wrong. “She really came down hard on me for not going to Brian’s parents’ house,” says Jill. “Belinda wanted us all to be one big happy family, and we weren’t. And that disappointed her greatly.”

When David was at a coaching camp over the holiday break, Belinda took advantage of his absence to drive to Nacogdoches to spend one night with her parents. Carol and Tom played with Evan, getting to know their little grandson, but the next afternoon, Belinda and the baby were in the car and on their way back to Katy.

Perhaps not surprising, with an infant son to care for, Belinda’s priorities had changed. Winter faded into spring, and she tired of the long hours coaching after classes ended for the day. That spring, Belinda called Coach Clayton in Katy, who’d helped her and David find the Livingston and Alief jobs, and told him that she was shopping for a position without coaching responsibilities. Clayton asked around, then called Belinda and suggested she apply at Katy High, where the district had an opening for a content mastery teacher, to tutor students in math and science.

Thin, with short dark blond hair, Debbie Berger was one of the Katy High staff members who interviewed Belinda that spring. “She absolutely blew us away,” says Debbie, who worked in the department with the job opening. “Belinda was so full of life, she radiated it. We knew the kids would love her.”

There was only one concern. Debbie had taught at Katy High a decade earlier, when David Temple had been a student. So had many of the other teachers at the high school, and they hadn’t forgotten him. “When she told us whom she was married to, I thought that couldn’t be right. People grow up and change, but I thought,
Oh, my gosh, no
,” says Debbie, who’d known the football team’s star linebacker to be a bully. “He had such a bad reputation, it really took me back. But Belinda acted so proud to be his wife, and she was so strong, so great. She was perfect for the job, and I thought maybe he’d changed.”

In the spring of 1996, Belinda gave her notice at Alief and prepared to start the next fall at David’s alma mater, Katy High School. A few months later, two people entered the Temples’ lives who’d play roles in the drama to come: Quinton Harlan, a tall, handsome high-school coach with a laid-back manner, and his wife, Tammey, a pretty, petite, dark-haired spitfire. The Harlans would become David and Belinda’s best friends, but in the end Tammey would feel compelled to pull away to try to save her marriage, and Quinton would find himself entrapped in the vortex of a sensational and brutal murder.

I
liked Belinda right off. We just automatically clicked, and we got close,” says Tammey Harlan, fidgeting ever so slightly in a chair in her cozy kitchen. “It was tough not to like Belinda. Everyone did. She was just great to be around, more fun than it seemed possible. We were both coaches’ wives, alone a lot while our husbands worked, and we became like family.”

Quinton and Tammey met during high school at Wharton, a small city with a quaint downtown on the Colorado River, southwest of Houston. Tammey moved to Wharton from Tennessee but integrated quickly, becoming a cheerleader and homecoming queen. They’d married in 1990, two years earlier than David and Belinda, and both went on to be teachers. When they moved to Katy, the Harlans had a toddler named Sydnee, a year older than Evan, and Tammey was pregnant with their second daughter. A few years older than Tammey, Quinton towered over his diminutive wife. Tammey, with dark hair and eyes, was just four feet eleven and, when not pregnant, weighed a little more than a hundred pounds, but like Belinda, Tammey was vivacious and strong willed.

The first time they met Belinda and David was that summer, in 1996, days after moving to Katy, when the Harlans dropped in at Pappasitos, a cavernous, loud, brightly decorated Mexican restaurant that serves platter-size portions of highly seasoned chicken, beef, and shrimp, to wrap in warm flour tortillas, alongside pico de gallo and bowls of pinto beans. That day, David and Belinda were at the restaurant with other Hastings coaches and their spouses, including the head coach, Bobby Stuart, and his wife, Kay. The Harlans recognized Stuart and stopped over to say hello. Quinton hadn’t yet started at the school, and Stuart walked him and Tammey around the table, making introductions.

The following week, Quinton and David worked with the new crop of football players at the high school, and Belinda invited Tammey and Sydnee over so the little ones could play. From that point on, the two women and their children bonded, sharing dinners on evenings their husbands worked late, taking the kids to Discovery Zone and the park, to the movies and McDonald’s. Before long, the Harlans joined David, Belinda, Evan, and their next door neighbors, the Fournerats, for Wednesday-night, kids-eat-free hot dogs at James Coney Island.

When the Harlans, who’d bought a house just five minutes away, came over to Belinda and David’s on the weekends, David had everything planned, from the time they were to arrive to when he put the hamburgers on the grill, to the exact time they were expected to play games. Belinda seemed to take her husband’s need to be in control in stride, never complaining. At times, when the men shot hoops on the driveway, she left Evan with Tammey and Sydnee and played ball, as competitive as any of the men under the net.

Afterward, the deck of cards came out. The children fast asleep, the four adults gathered around the kitchen table, and they played teams, the women against the men. Off and on, David talked about Katy, referring to it as “my town,” and acting as if he had an exceptional claim to celebrity within the city limits. Belinda, too, sounded proud to be a Temple in a place where the name made her feel special. Most nights, Tammey and Belinda won the card game, celebrating loudly with high fives and catcalls. Afterward, on the way home, Quinton and Tammey joked about the Temples’
Leave it to Beaver
lifestyle, the way David insisted the house had to be spotless, all of his clothes immaculate, and Evan dressed just so, like his father, in name brands only, with everything matching.

While David had quirks, initially they both liked him. Tammey found him charismatic, a strong personality with a dry sense of humor. “There was something about David,” she’d say years later, as if still trying to understand. “He was this big, broad-shouldered guy, with a quiet, kind of a soft manner, but this incredible intensity. He was able to persuade people to do things they wouldn’t normally do, especially women, and he was all about appearances.”

As she got to know them better, Tammey discovered that David had his rules, edicts he passed down to Belinda, to uphold the proper image. One was that Belinda was only allowed to shop at certain stores, the more upscale ones. Like his ironed T-shirts and immaculate yard, being seen in the right stores cultivated a prosperous image. David hated his truck, the 1991 blue Chevy Silverado pickup he’d had since graduating from SFA. When they traded Belinda’s old Corolla late that summer for a new red Isuzu Rodeo, David drove it whenever he could, only taking the truck to work. He kept the old Chevy immaculate inside and out, but he complained often and loudly, saying he wanted a new truck. That was one of the only subjects Tammey heard her friend argue back about. Whenever David brought the subject up, Belinda reminded him that they were saving to buy a house, and they couldn’t afford a home of their own and two car payments.

If Tammey sometimes felt something wasn’t entirely right about David, she couldn’t put her finger on what. At least on the surface, he was charming and amusing. He was a great father, devoted to Evan. When they went out as a family, Tammey marveled at the way David had Belinda drive so that he could sit in the backseat next to Evan’s car seat. Protective of the boy, David didn’t want his son sitting alone. It seemed odd behavior to Tammey, but she shrugged it off when she realized that Belinda didn’t seem to be bothered by David’s actions. In fact, to Tammey it appeared that Belinda adored her husband. “She had him on a pedestal,” says Tammey. “It was David this and David that. She told him everything. It was like they had this perfect home life, only later did I realize it was all a façade.”

Looking back, Tammey would grow angry recounting what she saw in the Temples’ marriage. “David needed everything to be perfect,” she says, her dark eyes passionate. “The perfect little house, perfect yard, perfect family. And Belinda bought totally into it.”

At school, Quinton and David worked closely, both training the team’s defensive players, Quinton the secondary and David the defensive backs. From the beginning, David was a puzzle. When they worked on strategy for the games, Quinton quickly learned that David was highly competitive, insisting that every idea be his own. Before long, to make the process easier, Quinton planted ideas and let David believe he’d come up with them.

That fall, Belinda burst into Katy High School and quickly became part of the fabric of the faculty and the student body. “After Belinda was there for a month, it was hard to imagine the school without her,” says Debbie Berger.

Along with Berger, Belinda worked in a suite of rooms with Cindy O’Brien, a petite, motherly woman with a high voice and a soft manner. All of them were in the content mastery department, where Belinda tutored thirty-five students over the course of the day, those who needed help with math and science. Debbie did the same in social studies, while Cindy tutored English. With Belinda’s perkiness, bright green eyes and wide smile, along with her soft drawl, Debbie and Cindy started calling Belinda their East Texas Beauty Queen. They laughed and joked, and before long Debbie and Cindy, who were older than Belinda, were treating her like an unofficial daughter.

It would seem that many found it easy to want to be with Belinda.

When the faculty needed a volunteer to head up the Sunshine Club, the ad hoc organization that sent flowers when one of the staff had a baby or suffered an illness or a loss, Belinda volunteered, jumping in with both feet, taking the job over with her characteristic enthusiasm. She kept up with the faculty, sending flowers and cards, but also made it a point to e-mail daily pep talks and silly jokes, often humorous takes on children and teaching. Some came to rely on the morning e-mails to brighten their days.

To many it seemed that Belinda had boundless zest. Another teacher worked with the hall monitors, making sure students moved quickly on to their classrooms. Without being asked, Belinda pitched in. Soon Belinda became known as the Four Corners Lady, since she stood where two of the main hallways intersected, calling out to the teens and prodding them to hurry to class. When students walked by with cans of soda they weren’t supposed to have, Belinda confiscated them, but always with a smile, and none of the teenagers seemed particularly upset. That year, the faculty gave Belinda a “rookie sheriff’s award,” as a bit of fun and to acknowledge her services.

Yet, as they had been during her own high-school years, Friday-afternoon pep rallies were Belinda’s favorite times. She dressed in the school colors, red and white, sometimes with red heart sunglasses and a homemade hat, and cheered as loudly as the students. But at night, at game time, Belinda wasn’t in the Katy stands. Instead she sat in Crump Stadium, cheering on David’s football team, the Hastings Fighting Bears. As they had throughout their son’s football career, Maureen and Ken Temple came, too, eager to support David’s team. Yet, on this one night of the week, Belinda splintered off from David’s family and spent the evening with the other coaches’ wives, going out to dinner and cheering with them from special seats in the stands. Of all of the fans in the bleachers, Quinton would remember hearing Tammey and Belinda’s voices above the crowd. “They were wild,” he says with a laugh. “Tammey always really gets into the games, and Belinda was as loud or louder.”

Remembering those happy evenings, Tammey would smile and recall, “I’d take my cue from her and shout at the officials, but most of the time, I wasn’t sure why. Then I’d ask Belinda, ‘Was that right?’ and Belinda, who’d be all worked up, would say, ‘Yes, it’s right! That was a bad call!’”

On nights the team wasn’t faring well, fans around them mumbled complaints, but if anyone criticized the coaches within Tammey and Belinda’s hearing, the two women took them on. “We really put them in their places,” Tammey remembers, with a chuckle. “When our side scored, there were touchdown hugs.”

Hastings was large, with a good crop of athletes, and Quinton would later say it was a rewarding place to coach. “The kids were motivated,” he says. “And David was a good coach. The players liked him, and they worked hard for him. In fact, everybody loved David, all the coaches, including me. In the beginning, I thought he was just a great guy.”

“There was something about David,” Tammey would say. “It was like he could put people under a spell. He could be mesmerizing. He knew how to play people, to get them to do what he wanted.”

With women, David had a way of focusing on them, making it appear he was interested only in them, and complimenting them. “David knew how to make a woman feel awesome,” Tammey says, and with men, “He wore his big gold championship ring, talked about football and growing up duck hunting in Katy. He was a guy’s guy.”

After the games, Tammey and Belinda went home and put the children to bed, while Quinton and David cleaned up in the coaches’ showers. But David’s intention, even though it was ten or eleven at night, wasn’t to end the evening. Instead, groomed and dressed in fresh clothes, he cajoled Quinton into joining him at a bar, even supplying an alibi to use with Tammey. If Quinton balked, David pushed harder, calling him “a pussy,” and telling him to run his home, not kowtow to his wife.

Sometimes Quinton gave in, but other times he held his ground. He knew it bothered David that he couldn’t always get his way. “David was all about control,” says Quinton. “He’d get mad because I wouldn’t let him order me around.”

At the bars, David, not wearing a wedding ring, flirted and sometimes left with women. The next day at the field house, when the coaches and players gathered to do a postmortem on the prior night’s game, Quinton asked David how the night had ended. David made a fist and smiled, indicating that he’d scored a touchdown.

Did Belinda know? Later, it would be difficult to tell. Certainly she had periods of concern about David’s behavior, as in Livingston when she’d confided in Rios that she thought David might be having an affair. If she suspected, she wasn’t ready to acknowledge her fears.

Each morning, Belinda took Evan to Tiger Land day care, in a one-story building not far from Katy High School. She pranced into the day care with Evan on her shoulders, making a game of their arrival. She kissed him good-bye, nuzzling him happily and telling him to be a good boy. Afternoons, on her way out the door at Katy, she told Debbie and Cindy, “I’m going to get my little man.” Acting as if she couldn’t get there soon enough, Belinda hurried to the day care with juice and cookies. From those first days when he learned to walk, Evan rushed to his mother, laughing and excited, throwing his arms around her and rewarding her with kisses. As they left Tiger Land, often on their way to playtime at the park, Evan jabbered happily about his day.

David rarely came to pick up Evan at day care, but when he did, the staff noticed that Evan didn’t run to his father as he did to Belinda. There just didn’t seem to be the joy Evan had for his mother. “David treated Evan like the male child, like a mini-David,” says one of the teachers. “We didn’t see the kisses and the smiles.”

“David was into other things, so Belinda poured herself into the child, and they did everything together,” says Debbie. “Evan was her first priority, always.”

But then, Belinda was like that with everyone she loved.

Throughout Tammey’s pregnancy, Belinda catered to her, picking up Sydnee and taking her places, trying to ease the stress of caring for a child while pregnant. The Harlans’ baby came, and Quinton and Tammey named her Avery. A year later, while Tammey was pregnant with their third daughter, Reese, she’d take a respite from her teaching career and open a little girls’ party place called the Storybook Cottage in a quaint old house on First Street, in Katy proper. She worked part time, throwing birthday and tea parties for little girls in fancy dresses and their favorite dolls and teddy bears.

At times, Belinda talked about her plans, that she and David were thinking of expanding their family, hoping that she’d get pregnant and this time, that they’d have a little girl. First, they were shopping for a home of their own. Late in 1996, David and Belinda tried to convince their landlord to sell them the Comstock Springs Drive house. They liked the neighborhood, had friends nearby, and it was convenient to David’s parents and both of their jobs. For the $900 they paid in rent, Belinda had figured out they could pay a mortgage. But the landlord wouldn’t sell, and in November, David and Belinda put money down on a house at 22502 Round Valley Drive, a five-minute drive away in the neighboring Creekstone subdivision. The Round Valley house was larger, more impressive. A two-story redbrick colonial with cream trim, it had a center entrance, a treed corner lot, and a good-size fenced backyard for Shaka and Evan. Bubbling with excitement, Belinda knocked on Sheree’s door. The two women put the kids on their bikes, Belinda with Evan in a seat behind her, and pedaled to the new house.