LUGGAGE-BY KROGER-Gary Taylor

clean up the mess. Gary Taylor, a former Houston Post reporter, recounts his personal true life fatal attraction involvement in the trail of violence that dog Texas attorney Katherine Mahaffey Shelton for nearly three decades, prompting coverage by newspapers, magazines, Forty eight Hours, American Justice, and even Oprah. The result is a tooth grinding, genre bending tale that blends memoir with murder, mystery, and legal procedural with psycho killer in an adventure odyssey

of self discovery that nearly cost him his life. The book is luggaged by Kroger with my very special guest, journalist and author, Gary Taylor. Welcome to the program, and thank you for Greenna's interview Gary Taylor.

had those interviews you could have maybe capitalized. Why did you wait so long to write the book?

just sort of put it aside. It also took a little bit of time for me to really appreciate the kind of what kind of universal appeal there might be in this story, even though even though it was an option for movies a couple of times, I mean, the events were during that period, but the it was it was basically just something I knew I was gonna do eventually, but I just never got around to doing it. And it helped to have the perspective of time to sort of look back on these events and write it as

a memoir. I think that's one of the one of the things anymore anyway, is that nobody memoir that that Frank McCourt sort of pioneered. So I thought it was time to do it, and I did it, and I had a chance, so I did it.

they started to investigate the crime. And that investigation led directly to the little lady that I later became involved with and who became sort of notorious in Texas for some of the events that have happened in her life.

obviously not very actively under investigation. UH. She had UH her connection to him. She had She had lived with him for about three months back in the nineteen seventy eight and then sued him for divorce, claiming he was her common law husband, and the divorce case was actually supposed to go to trial the day that they found his body, she went down and filed for his estate,

claiming then to be his widow. And at the time she was a criminal defense lawyer in Houston, so it was a it was a a pretty interesting, uh set of circumstances. You had an attractive female, blonde, fem fatale type lawyer who also had a reputation for being kind of rough on men anyway, because there were some other

boyfriends in her background that had had some problems. But all of a sudden, she was the central figure and a murder investigation and involved a doctor, and yet she was stepping out and claiming he to get his estate as his widow. And that's when I met her.

with with the investigation and all that. But I had a lot of lot of trouble going on in my own life at the time, and which which sort of was probably the main reason why we even got together. I was very vulnerable at that time, and we just sort of we met at a party and we hit it off, and and I knew, I knew there was some danger there, but I was I was kind of willing to get a little adventure in my life, and I got a whole boatload of it.

on her behavior and all the evidence they found. And then also, yeah, and then also just tell us how it was that you were not you know, you've given a little bit of an explanation. You say you were vulnerable and she came and you met at a certain time in your life. But tell us what her actual reputation was before this event actually happened. What was she known for? Give us a little bit more of her

character as you knew it before you met her. And tell us also about the police and what they suspected based on the evidence that they saw at that crime scene and her other behavior.

She was articulate, well read. And she had been in this relationship with this uh with this doctor and split up, and the period leading up to their divorce had been a real stormy affair where they were tape recording each other. The the d A had a had a wealth of tape recordings that the doctor had made throughout that period, lots of threats. Uh he had he had been the victim of some burglar uh in which uh a lot

of his Uh. He had pre Columbian art work. He was from Argentina, and he'd brought pre Columbian artwork with him and and they had uh those had been stolen. And he'd go to the police and blame her, and she'd u s say it was community property, or she'd say she didn't have anything to do with it. Uh. She was an attorney and knew how to work the system. So UH when when he when he died, she was definitely the the top suspect. But UH, trying to get

to the bottom of it was another story. And as as far as I as far as me at the time, I was uh, I had probably hit about rock bottom as as you could go. I had uh uh my uh, my second marriage had come to an end. Uh. I was sleeping on a on my editor's couch, and I was driving a two hundred dollar car, and I was carrying my uh mind dirty laundry around and I'm in a brown paper grocery sack at the time. And that's where that's where the name of the book, I'm Lucky

to Take ros. Yeah, So that's uh, that's pretty much the police had had turned the case over to uh the District Attorney's office special investigative Unit, which investigates crimes that are complicated or crimes where the suspect is considered maybe too smart for the regular cops. And that's what was called the Special Crimes Unit of the Harris County

District Attorney's Office. And they're the ones who had the file on her when when I met her, which occurred about eight or nine months after George Tedesco was was murdered.

maybe the day he was murdered. And I do recreate that tape in the first chapter of My Boy, and it's it's it's a fairly interesting conversation about them, her trying to get her telling him that she wants to meet him that night, and that uh, he he's he's uh demanding that she returned his stuff that he claims was stolen from her, and she talks about having seen him go in his condo with with another woman, and it goes through all the emotions of pity, guilt, and

then just outright anger and uh it ends with them agreeing to meet. And then the next thing that happened is his body was found.

place was probably not evidentiary. They they basically started looking for his uh, his car, which they eventually found he was driving, and he drove a Corvette at the time, the Silvie Corvette, and they they found it in a parking lot somewhere in Houston, and they staked it out for a few days, and actually there was a kind of a uh, kind of a comic scene where somebody tried to steal it from the parking lot and turned out that he wasn't. They thought they had had somebody there,

but they basically just just ran into uh nothing. I mean they they they were just a dead a dead case, and uh she was uh sitting pretty. And the the investigation took on two prongs at the same time because when she when she uh filed for his estate, uh claiming to be his widow, his parents uh came up to defend his estate, and they hired a private investigators

and they were they were dogging her tracks too. Eventually, what happened was that came down to them filing a wrongful death suit in which they identified her and one of her burglary clients, a a guy named Tommy Bell in the lawsuit as being responsible for the doctor's death. But no criminal case ever got very far off the ground. It was an ongoing investigation when I met her, and Uh.

to men in her life. Uh, I know that one of her lap she said that one of her law partners had called the Tedesco uh the hotline the private eyes had set up for tips on it, and uh and talked in the voice of a Greek sea captain and tried to uh to to give him some some some some tips some kind. And she thought that was she thought that was really funny. And she talked about how the lawyers had a lot of the lawyers had gone in with her and ripped off the condo, taking

the pre Columbian artwork and hauled it out. She went in and uh got in an argument with Tedesco's neighbor. This was the day after he died, and uh and she went into the broke into the condo to get get some of the other property out of there, and claiming to be claiming in his community property. And there was all that kind of stuff going on back then as well.

That testimony from the uh if they came out in a deposition and uh in the uh the estate trial, and she she went to the Later on, in a magazine interview, she said that she the police interviewed her and tried to sweat her down the day of the the day of the murder, and as she was getting ready to leave, one of the homicide cops looked at her and said did you love him? And her her comment to the magazine writer H was I guess he expected me to break down crying and confess yes, and

I killed him too. But she just told him no and walked away.

was filed. H I was shot and so the the spotlight kind of turned onto my case, which turned out to be an attempted murder case. But the the my thoughts on it always were that they that they really didn't have much in that case, and that they filed that just to make sure they had a case to pursue. And her comment when she told the papers when it was filed, her comment was, anybody can file a lawsuit, and in this case, I think anybody has.

with with men. She had claimed that Tedesco had forced her to have an abortion and that there was never any any proof that she'd even had an abortion or that she'd even been pregnant earlier, and this came out in in the in the estate case, there was an assistant there was a deputy sheriff here in the town who had had a fling with her and she later she later told me about him, but her he he had he had helped her sell some some of the booty from the Tedesco condo, I think a sword or something,

and they had an affair and she had claimed she was pregnant and she wanted money for him abortion and he didn't give it to her, so she told his wife and UH the guy got uh got divorced over it.

And many times she talked about him a lot to me saying that uh, saying that all he had to do was UH pay up, pay up the uh the money and it wouldn't have uh any and he could have had his life back, but uh, she said up sh She described that as a having been a false pregnancy, so she she kind of used that several times and the uh, the the district attorney's office was always looking for that uh kind of situation where where she would claim a a pregnancy and that was kind of one

of her tools that she would use.

what she said she witnessed. Hmmm, what you mean, Well, there was all kinds of claims that wasn't her claims that she that her that George Tedesco was involved with a homosexual tryst, and that that the other she was providing information at some point for possible scenarios why George Tedesco was married murdered and by who the Oh.

many possible alternative scenarios for his death as possible. And she was also trying to belittle him and make sure that, you know, setting the stage for for any kind of a jury that my hearing in this that he would that they would not think much of him. And she was always talking about him wanting to have homosexual affairs with little ball, was talking about him being involved in drugs.

Of course, he wasn't there to defend himself, but she she had, She had all kinds of of stories like that that that she always kind of worked into the testimony that she gave wherever she could. And basically the point was that there were many people who wanted him dead and the cops should be looking for them and not looking at her.

part of my job. I was always hob nobbing with anybody over there at the courthouse, and that that kind of a party presents the opportunity to uh get better acquainted with h with people that might be sources on stories and things like that. So, so when went went to the party and that's where that's where we met.

of a surprising occurrence there. She took me and a another reporter on a tour of the house and we ended up in his bedroom and uh, I mean nothing was nothing was going on yet, but we we we

kind of knew what was going to happen. But anyway, her her uh her lawyer date uh came came in on us and and uh we were just sitting around actually, and she had she had uh looked like she had had tried to set up some kind of a confrontation there, but uh I just kind of laughed it off and made arrangements to uh see her if uh if she if she wanted to. This happened. This party occurred the weekend before the estate case was supposed to begin, and that was gonna be a jury trial, and it was

supposed to begin on Monday. So she was pretty pretty well, pretty pretty well, uh, focused on on that, although she was having a good time. You know, we had some drinks and and well, what was the conversation?

favorite color? And she walked up to the bar about the same time I did, and I just uh figured I'd never have another chance to uh use this line again, so I I I asked her, is this the notorious Catherine Mahaffey, and uh she kind of looked at me

strangely and said, who wants to know? And I I told her who I was and introduced myself, uh and uh she became sort of semi enraged because she was pretty mad at the paper at that time because the police reporter and his coverage of the Tedesco murderer had spent a lot of uh of a lot of ink describing her and uh her relationship with the disco and sort of indicating that she would be uh a main suspect for that. So uh we started talking and and kind of got uh kind of got acquainted and we

we we hit it off pretty well. I mean we hit it off right away because uh there was uh kind of a magnetism there on the on the physical side.

But as we talked, like I said, we both kind of had this black uh sense of humor that uh that permeates and I know I uh I said sort of things like, uh I asked her if she'd ever been married, uh cause she was asking me about my uh where my wife was, and I told her I was estranged, and uh I asked her if she'd ever been married, and she said, oh, y, you mean anyone besides George And I said, well, uh, you know, i'd

and think he would count. And she started laughing and said, well, I guess I can't call you as an expert on marriage then at my estate trial. So we pretty much hit it off like that, although I'm not sure what her agenda was at that point. I think she was just trying to kill some time before the trial.

on one side of the fence, we'll say. And then there's this woman accused of murder, and by all accounts, even by the Houston Post, she looks like she's guilty, and yet you still venture into this arena. You you know, you said there was a physical attraction and then you hit it off. You both had the same kind of sense of humor. But how did you justify that? I mean, maybe you didn't think about it, but how did you How did you come to terms with that knowing that

this person was likely a murderer. I know you said you're vulnerable and you're in a very dark time in your life, but were you just did the journalist in you somewhat? I'm wondering if the journalist in you kind of took over someone that you're curious is a fascinating case and a fascinating subject.

and kind of a fascination. I'd also covered the Texas prison system, and I always seemed to be a beat. Where I ended up was where there was some criminal activity going on, and so it was hard to resist her because it looked like I could I could have a pretty close peak into the mind of a of a twisted mind. At the same time, she also just

looked like she was a lot of fun. Now. The way that I reconciled that with any ethical concerns was I just uh told myself that, uh if I if I ever got in a situation where I was gonna have to report on her, I'd have to back away. We'd get another reporter to do it. I mean, I just I wouldn't uh. Uh I wouldn't do it. Uh I I I really wasn't looking for a story. Uh I thought it might be kind of interesting if if

I found one. It's kind of a it's kind of a uh dilemma that reporters often find themselves in because you you work with you work with sources to a certain extent that sometimes you have to uh turn on 'em if they're if they're not. I know. The some of the advice I got that still rings true from from college is that, uh, you're really not allowed to have any friends in h and you could have you could have a similar situation with a drinking buddy who maybe was a politician, and you found out he was

uh taking bribes. Then just because you have this relationship doesn't negage your responsibility to do the story. Now when that relationship becomes sexual, Uh, there's an emotional component that that would would obviously not be appropriate sure for the journalistic side of it. But and maybe I was rationalizing some but I you know, it was Uh, she was quite a ways really at the time from from being into my my venue, I mean my courthouse. Uh, there

wasn't any any charges pending. There was a uh she was trying to practice law over there, but she was basically handling some lightweight stuff misdemeanors and and small felonies that that I wasn't that that weren't newsworthy. I wasn't covering them anyway, And so I didn't really see the too big of a problem there. And I always felt I could just shule it off if it got to be a problem.

And then from that point on we had a real chess game of relationship of stalking and me trying to figure a way out of out of the relationship without anybody getting hurt, and then eventually led to the the ultimate confrontation there in January where where if she shot me?

to help her stabilize her life. She told me that in addition to that that I could by having a relationship, she could she could get her practice in order. And at the time, she was actually living in a bedroom that she was living in with some by some friend. Uh they didn't have a they didn't have a a sexual relationship, but uh, she was staying in a in an extra bedroom, so she really didn't even have a

place to live. I was staying on a couch and Uh, she presented herself as someone with ambition, and she seemed like, uh she was someone who uh wanted to uh wanted a second chance, and wanted to get out from from these rumors and and and uh difficulty difficulties, and uh of course I wasn't gonna help her get any appointments. I mean I told her I couldn't do that, although I I did introduce her to a uh one of the court coordinators over there who who did help her

get a murder appointment. And uh I uh I told her, you know, I do that for anybody. I mean, I do that for any lawyer, cause they're always looking for uh lawyers to handle handle cases at that time. Uh. But little by little her her temper would would would show up, and uh her kind of outrageous outrageousness. Uh. There was a kind of one breaking point where I was, I was, uh uh needed to pick up my my daughters.

I had two daughters by my my second wife that that we were separated, and uh my uh my wife was having some problems of her own and uh sh so I needed to go pick up my daughters. And uh Catherine just threw a fit in a restaurant where we were, and we went over to get get uh sandwiches at the at uh sandwich shop in the afternoon, and I told her I was was gonna go pick 'em up. This was around Thanksgiving of US nineteen seventy nine. And she just went into a rage and grabbed grabbed my

neck tie and tried to choke me in the sandwich shop. Uh, threw pencils up against the wall, and so I just told her I was leaving, and she she chased me down the street with an umbrella and uh I and she uh she had this overly dramatic uh demeanor too. I mean she got got there on the corner of the street and said, what do you want me to do? Get down in the gutter and beg. Well, you know, this was all about control. I mean, it was just

this really ridiculous scene. And as I as I note in the book, if I'd been watching it from the other side of the street, I've been laughing my ass off. But it's always the one who was in it. And I I always remembered covering uh cases where those kinds of scenes UH A lot of times preceded preceded the discovery of somebody's built body, and I sure, I sure didn't want to take it further than that. Plus I

was worried about my kids. Well, what happened that night was that she when I went to pick up the kids, uh uh, I took him to McDonald's and I was supposed to bring him back to my ex wife's place. And when I got there, she wasn't there, so I

couldn't find her. And when I, uh, I called my roommate and he told me I needed to get my ass back to his house because uh, Catherine had had called my ex wife uh and and had told her that uh she had the kids and that uh she was now my lawyer and she needed her to come get him. So there was this mad dash over to where I was living, which was with a buddy, and we got there about the same time, me and my ex wife and Catherine was coming out of the house.

So I, you know, I jumped out. I mean, I said, you know, just just go on and go. She's not uh, she's not having any she's not my lawyer, and just

ignore her, you know. All that. Then then that night we had a we were we were she was staying overnight at at uh my buddy's house, and my buddy left and so I was there with her alone, and we had a pretty good, pretty good uh run in where uh uh shh, I thought she was going to attack me with a stereo and uh I uh I pushed her, pushed her down and ran out of the house, and the cops had to come, and it was, uh,

it was pretty ugly. But uh that's when, you know, my buddy said that he didn't want her over there anymore, and I decided that, uh, we needed to break it off. So that was right around Thanksgiving of nineteen seventy nine.

serious card in the game. I had. I had been approached earlier in our relationship by one of the members of the Special Crimes Unit, who had warned me that I was getting in trouble by seeing her, and that in itself had kind of put me off because I didn't know how he how he had found out actually that I that I was seeing her at that at the point when he when he told me about it, but it stuck in my mind, and he'd always said, if you want to listen to some tapes, you know,

come by. Well, at that by Thanksgiving, I was in too deep. I was going to need help getting out, and I didn't expect them to help me. But I went up to Special Crimes and I gave him a statement about everything I knew. I was real concerned. I didn't know if I I knew that she was into

a lot of stuff. Uh. She had shown me a diamond she had that uh that I didn't know uh much about what the source of it was, and uh I I was honestly, I was leaving a little bit concerned that I might end up being one of the uh CO conspirators in a crime that I didn't even

know about. So I wanted to go up to the DA's office and I I talked with Don Strickland, who at the time was the head of Special Crimes and the the the thing about this is, uh, people wonder about running to the police about your girlfriend, but you know, usually the police will just tell you to go see doctor phil or something. Yeah. In this in this case, uh, the police said come on in and talk to us, and so uh of course they were hoping to use me.

They were they were hoping to get something out of me that might uh uh give him a break in at Tedesco case. I don't I don't think I had anything. She had. She had actually told me at one point that she had done it, but uh, I never uh, I never put much credence in in the way she told me. I mean, there wasn't anything evidentiary about that.

She she just uh she just a one night Uh we were we were uh was a Saturday night, and I forget what what was going on, but uh, she just at one point started saying, what if I told you I, uh I did kill George Tedesco, what would you think? And then she described how she grabbed a grabbed a barstool leg from the top of the garage and beat on his head before he could pull his gun.

It was a real dramatic story and lit at the end of it, she sort of kissed it off by saying that, uh, she just wanted to see the look on my face and and that it that had never happened. So es since well she she took it back. But I had that, and I, you know, I wanted to make sure I had had revealed that. But I also wanted,

uh to. What I wanted to do was to call her from the DA's office and uh uh tell her that, tell her that that I was not gonna see her anymore, and that we were we were breaking up, and that if if anything happened to me, that uh I'd given the DA's office as a statement and that uh sh it would be like somebody uh coming back from the grave to testify in their own their own murder case. And uh she so, So I got her on the

phone and I made the tape. And what I was what I was hoping was that this tape would be my uh my buffer zone uh to uh that that she would basically just what I was hoping was that she would think, oh, this guy's too much trouble. I just better, you know, I I don't need I don't

need this kind of trouble and and go away. Well on when when I was talking to her on the phone, she played it, uh played it real cool, and UH just was uh very calm and collected and said, well, okay, you go to your talking to your buddies up there, and you you know, you just keep on talking and and uh that's that's all right, you just go on about your business. So then the guy I was uh rooming with was a guy named Jim Strong, and he was a radio reporter, so he he was over there too.

He keme over looking for me, and he said he wanted to make a tape. He wanted to call her and make a tape of his own, and they thought that was a good idea, just to see what her temperature was uh on uh when she wasn't talking to me, so he called her up and she went absolutely bananas and uh started making these gurgling sounds, and uh uh told him that at some point I was gonna have to beg for her mercy, and uh that I had done all kinds of things to her and she wasn't

gonna take it anymore. And it became uh, it became known in the in the animals in this case as the Exorcist tape, because uh, she'd she actually did make noises on the tape. It centered like Linda Blair and the Exorcist in and I heard that. When I heard that thing going on, it was, uh, you know, it made my skin crawl, and I thought, oh, man, Taylor, you've really gotten into it now. And so and as as time went on, every time I'd start feeling a

little sorry for something. In the next couple of months, Jim kept a copy of that tape around and he would just pull it and put it into a tape recorder and play it again so that I'd get back in the in the defense mode.

Apparently one bounced off your head. Tell us about what led up to this event that she would get to the point where she wanted to kill you, and and you do talk about in the book that there there may have been some advantage to her wanting you in one of the rooms of the house so that you know that maybe you were fortunate in that respect that she had that plan that you were able to escape with your life actually at home. So tell us about that that evening, right, Well.

Uh she was she told went over and told my editors that I was uh working undercover from the DA's office and had had seduced her and uh in an effort to uh crack the Cadesco murder. And UH so they moved me off the courthouse beat. And and what what happened was, I s she kept calling me and harassing me, and I just I just stopped taking her calls.

I just uh started hanging up on her. And the next thing that happened was, uh there was a burglary at our house, and it was obviously it obviously appeared to me it was some kind of a set up job. Uh. There was not necessarily gonna be a burglary. Uh. What had happened was I was out at a a an event and I had my four year old daughter with me, and we went back to Jim's place and as I drive up, Jim is out on the sidewalk with a shotgun, walking up and down and had to get my daughter

to hide in the floorboard of the car. And I asked Jim what was going on, and he said, we've been hit. So we go in. There's nobody in there, but some things have been stolen, some of my stuff I really didn't have. I had a stereo and some records and that was about it. And Jim Jim lost one of those early model Beta Max things, I mean way back then that was real pioneering stuff. But he

lost some expensive stuff though. And when I was as we were cleaning up the mess in there and looking around, I realized that she had sent somebody over to to teach me a lesson, I guess, or maybe even to kill me. And I realized I'd had my daughter with me. She could have gotten in the middle of it. Jim had lost his stuff, he could have gotten in the

middle of it. And I just decided there had to be an ultimate confrontation and that the next opportunity I had, I would give her any chance to do whatever she could do to me and just try to see what I could do to either survive it and get her put away, or the worst comes to worst, I'd be the one who was dead and nobody else would be called in the middle. So what happened next was that Jim decided he was going to try to get his stolen property back and he started negotiating with her for it.

And about two nights later, she showed up at the house and she wanted to She was promising to give Jim his stuff back. So I thought, well, can I

just send my stuff back too? I mean, I didn't really want to talk to her anymore, but she was there, so uh uh, and we were pretty much at each other's throats, and she said, she said I could get the stuff back if I would come over to her place, uh, which was a duplex in the Montrose area of Houston, And so I said, well, okay, So I I went over there, and she said that she was calling some Mexicans to bring the stuff over. And so we went went to her place and it was a pretty bizarre

pr pretty bizarre evening. I I kind of had the sheh she was uh. She was a uh like I said, an overly dramatic, uh kind of person who kind of lived in U nineteen thirties gangsters movies and dialogue and such, and she was always quoting uh, Casablanca and other movies like that, and I I I asked her, I said, you know, isn't this where you're supposed to confess everything?

And she's I said, you know that you you did have somebody coming over last night to uh to beat on me, right, and she said, uh, yes, yes, it was time to teach you a lesson and uh. I said, well, you know, I had my daughter with me and she said, well, they would have taken her somewhere where she'd be safe. I said, over my dead body, and she said, well if it, if it would required that, that's what would have happened. So so anyway, we got to her place

and uh she called the so called Mexicans again. And I didn't even I at that point, I thought that she probably had. I thought that she she probably didn't have the the stolen property or have access to it, and that she had invited me over there to see what she had the guts to do, and as I would learn later, she kind of had a a plan all mapped out. For some reason. She wanted to mess around for a while. And when I say mess around, I'm not talking sexually. But there was a question and

answer period about uh whether I ever loved her or not. Uh, there was uh. She read to me at one point from The Godfather, uh the section where uh Luca Brossi sleeps with the fishes. Though I didn't know what I was supposed to uh to get from that, I t I tried to I tried to understand whether I'm Luca Brossi or I'm one of the fishes. But uh. She also had me call some uh young woman that I had gone out with one time, and she followed us.

This was a couple of weeks earlier, and I knew that she wouldn't that the that she wouldn't take my call, but I I called her and she hung out and so uh uh Catherine called her and she hung up on her too, and uh at one point she wanted to dance, put on some music and wanted to dance.

Said we needed one last dance and uh we had a couple of dreams ks and so finally the evening wore on and uh I uh told her that uh that I uh I didn't think this was going anywhere, and I was I was gonna go and I was gonna do some investigating on her and her bar uh bar card and uh we'd just uh really take it from there if we didn't get our uh if we didn't get our property back. So as I was going out the door, she said, UH, wait a minute, Jerie,

I've got something for you in my closet. So I turned around, and I realized I was probably going back there to I don't know, find somebody waiting for me, or get trapped in the back because there was no back exit. But uh, I had made this mental commitment to myself that I was going to go ahead and give her the opportunity to do whatever she was gonna do and get get our confrontation resolved one way or the other. So uh I went on back to her bedroom and and went in got into her closet and

uh uh there was nothing in there. And about then the lights went out and I heard a uh, I heard her walking down the hallway and I heard uh her the revolver, her click that echoed throughout the house. And so I was standing in the closet and uh had the door as a shield, and she took a position across the room from the door, took the policeman's position and pointed the gun at the closet door, ready to uh ready to see this to the end. And uh she uh she, uh course she couldn't shut up.

She had to. Uh she had to start yapping and uh telling me uh how terrible I'd been to her, and uh that I didn't have a chance and I might as well come out, and uh this was gonna be it. She wouldn't do anything to anybody else. And so I had probably about two or three minutes. Seemed like an eternity, but I had a a lot of time in the closet. I was peeking through the uh peeking through the door jamb there and watching her see what what she was doing, and wondering, uh, how bigly

get out of this now. So there I was calling myself an imbecile and all of that, and looking for uh some kind of exit strategy that might uh that might uh allow me to allow me to get out of the house and allow her to be arrested for trying to kill me.

I just decided I was gonna watch her through the jam and when I saw my opportunity, if she looked away or something and she kept talking, I was just going to kick the door open and uh use the chair as a shield. So I formulated this plan in my head and and uh, basically I saw her eyes dripped down and that's what I did. I kicked the

door open, I picked up the chair. I came straight at her, and she fired off one round that went through the chair, and uh, the the chair, the the seat of the chair actually, cause I was coming at

her like a lion tamer kay I needed. I was without the whip, but at least I had the chair, and the bullet came through the seat of the chair and glanced off my side of my head, over my left ear, and I threw the chair in her direction, and then I turned to my right and I ran down the hallway, and I realized and I heard some shots behind, but I wasn't really concentrated on that because I saw where she had dead bolted the front door, which is where I would the only exit to the

place I would have to go out through the front door. So I remember all of this seems to be in slow motion anymore when I think back to it, and I remember thinking focusing on the thought that I'll only have one chance to unlock that dead bolt, and I need to stop and make sure I do it right.

So as I stopped to open the door, she blasted away, and then one hit me in the back and blew me out into the front yard, and uh, I learned later that the bullet stopped a centimeter from my heart, so, uh it was a it was a a really close call. But when I got out in the out in the yard, I was laying there and I realized that, uh h, I wondered, I could feel my toes, I could feel my fingers, and I thought, well, I, uh, maybe I

should get up and well. And so she she came out on the porch and was watching me, and all of a sudden, I jumped up and I ran. I ran. This was about two o'clock in the morning, so it was uh it was total dark, and but lights were coming on all over the neighborhood because uh uh gunshots and uh so I ran uh couple blocks. I ran down the street, and she actually chased me, uh with another pistol U I found out later. I mean, I was kind of unaware of all of the noise and gunshots.

I knew there were some other shots, but I think at the trial they counted up uh that seven shots and all they'd been fired throughout this uh this deal, and I'd been hitting in the back and glanced in the head, and uh I made it to an all night grocery store and I I told him to call an ambulance, and when I got to the hospital, they uh basically, I only spent about an hour in the hospital. They'd they left the bullet in. They didn't want to

mess around with trying to get the bullet out. Uh, although later it was removed from the trial cause we needed to to tell what uh what caliber bullet was in my back and uh. But I was there about an hour and then she was mean. Meanwhile, she was arrested while I was there. Well, the homicide cop that made the scene, he called me. He called me in the emergency room, and he was an old, old, uh friend of mine that I'd covered some paces with before,

and he he just he couldn't help. But he just said to her, I gotta tell you this, this scene over here looks like something out of a road Runner cartoon. I can see where you ran by the bullet holes in the wall. And then then he told me that she was saying that it was self defense and that I had one of the guns. At that point, I didn't know there were two guns. So I just told him, well, I mean, that's that's not true, and I don't I don't know, and he said, well, we're arresting her anyway,

you're shot in the back. So she got arrested, and that's at the stage for the legal thriller part of the book.

your book. So we're going to leave it that for our audience and they'll have to pick up your book Luggage by Kroger k R O G e Er and it's a true crime memoir by Gary Taylor, Luggage by Kroger. And I want to thank you very much Gary for coming on the program and then talking about your fascinating book. It's been a quick hour and have lots to talk about, but unfortunately that's the end of our program. But I want to thank you very much for agreeing to this interview.