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Host you are now listening to? True Murder, The most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about them. Gaesy Bundy Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK. Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host, journalist and author Dan Zupansky.
Good Eating. This is your host Dan Supaski for the program True Murder, The most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about them. In Creekstone, Texas, a small quiet suburb of Houston, football was king and David Temple was a prince. A former high school and college gridiron star turned coach, had a fairy tale marriage to bright, vivacious Belinda Lucas, a teacher at the local high school who was so warm and popular her colleagues
called her the Sunshine Girl. The fairytale ended savagely on January eleventh, nineteen ninety nine, when Belinda's lifeless body was discovered in the closet. Her skull had been shattered by a shotgun blast at close range. She was eight months pregnant. There was no damning evidence directly linking the brutal murder to husband David, who stood by, emotionless and dry eyed
as police searched the crime scene. But a dog at eight year investigation would expose a shocking history of domination, infidelity, and rage, ultimately resulting in an epic court room battle for the ages as a scandalous truth was revealed about love betrayed and innocent lives shattered. My special guest this evening, journalist and author Catherine Casey with her latest true crime classic Shattered. Thank you very much for agreeing to this interview,
and welcome back to the program. Catherine Casey, Thank.
You, Dan, thank you for inviting me.
Thank you very much. First off, it's my favorite question. I always ask it, what in particular brought you to this case? How did you come to want to write about this particular case.
I live in Houston, Texas, and this happened right outside, right west of the city, and it made major headlines down here. This was a very big case. Belinda was, as you said, a beloved teacher, and she was eight months pregnant, and David was this lone star football hero both in high school and college, and it just seems like such an improbable end to what was a fairytale marriage.
Right Well, now let's go back and introduce the characters in this incredible story. Here. First off with David Temple, the football star, and we're talking about Creekstone, Texas, a suburb of Houston, and maybe you can tell us how important football is in this community of Creekstone, at this high school, and how big a star David Temple really was, and go back to David Temple and introduce his life growing up and really a little bit about David Temple.
David actually grew up in Katie, Texas, which is right next to Creekstone, and Katie is like Friday night lights gone mad. It's the kind of place where they closed up the stores on Friday nights so that everybody could go to the football game. Football is king, it rules, and David Temple was the football player that turned the Katie High School team around. They had a remarkable year of the year that he was there. They almost won it all and he was a big reason for that.
He then went off to college and had a remarkable we were at Stephen F. Austin and Acadocius. He was a talented athlete from the time he was young, and because he was he was treated differently. He had also grown up in a family that was kind of Katie hierarchy. They go way back in the Katie area and people like them. They're they were well thoughtoed they were. They were thought of his very good people, good church going family, and they had this remarkable son. But David also had
this other side. He was incredibly violent on the football field. At one point they were calling him the Temple of Doom. On the field, he once nearly broke another players back. He also was known to go into rages off the fields and people had to be very careful around him. He had a problem with a high school girlfriend and she refused to see him again, and the rumor was that he had strangled her pet rabbits.
Well. To be fair though, did he have any run ins with the law whatsoever? We did?
At one point he did. He was arrested for stealing uh fuzzbusters remember those from back in the eighties, the uh yeah, for the in the cars. I can't think what's the other name is, but they're they're radar detective okay, yeah, And he he was arrested along with another young man, a player on the team, and he ended up actually being uh. I think he pleaded no contest or something on the charge, and he was suspected and I think around seven or eight different instances different robberies in the
Katie area. And the other player at the time said that they were using the Fuzzbusters or selling the Fuzzbusters to get money for drugs for steroids. I'm sorry. So, yeah, he did have a run in with the law. And the people in Katie and the police department knew about David. They had heard the stories about his bad temper. It was rumored that he had once tried to run an
elderly couple off the road. I mean, this is a kid that from Jang' was acting out and doing really showing a violence side, and everybody looked the other way because he could play football.
Sure, No, he went to college and had a successful football career, and so now he becomes a high school football coach and obviously as well as a teacher at Katie High.
As it, he was at another school in the a Leaf School district, which is right next door, right, he was in the middle school there.
Okay, so he had a successful career as a teacher, at least till this incident. Anyway, he did.
He was pretty well liked. Actually, he was a pretty good coach. He came down a little tough on the kids sometimes and he'd had to be pulled aside and told to, you know, ease off. They were just junior high school kids, just high school kids, and actually was high school. He was coaching high school, but teaching in the middle school at the ninth grade center. So he you know, he was a little bit on edge at times, but he was fairly well liked actually when it got to that point.
Now you talk about the parents of David Temple, and if I'm not correct, to Ken and Maureen, and now he also has some siblings, and maybe he can tell us, because they're very important to this story as well. Tell us about the siblings of David Temple and give us their approximate ages of who they are in relation in relationship the age did David, Well, I know.
You were in front of me, but I believe that each of them are two years apart. I think Darren is two years older and Kevin is two years younger, David being the middle son, and they were very close brothers. They grew up to be very close.
Now this is important later, but there is testimony that, and this is part of the community as well. Not everybody is a hunter or a fisherman, but these people have a little bit of a tradition of hunting in their in their family. So tell us a little bit about that. That did they as a family go hunting? How did they get interested in? How involved were these people in hunting?
Well, in the Katie area is the main flyway and ducks and geese fly over it, and most of the young men grow up hunting, and David did along with his two brothers. As a matter of fact, their house was a jason to a rice field, which of course is kind of lures in birds. So sure it was a great place to go out even after school during the season and shoot. So the father Ken gave each of the boys shotgun at a different time. So this
was a big part of their lives. It's a big part of the entire community in Katie, Okay.
So now he's a successful teacher, he's a successful coach, he's been a star football player, and as you've talked about, he's privileged and arrogant and has a violent streak and has gotten away with things for years. Now he meets a woman named Belinda Lucas and when does he meet Belinda, And what are the circumstances when they do meet, and where did they meet? And tell us about Belinda and her life and her parents.
Well, Belinda grew up in Nagadocius, Texas, which is about I think it's about three or four hours north of Houston. And David did not get into one of the big name schools. He was quite disappointed about that, and he ended up at Stephen Faustin and Acadocius and he was a big man on campus. The year that Belinda met him, his picture was up all over all over the city. He was on the cover of the football team's program, so there were actually posters in a lot of the stores.
Belinda grew up in this small town, well not small town, small city, and she was the fifth child of Tom and Carol Lucas. She was a twin. She has a twin sister named Brenda. And Belinda was just a really special human being from the very beginning, she was just one of those people had just kind of glowed and she loved people. She was very athletic, she was always busy. She just she could laugh and make everything go away.
She loved children. One of her brothers his deaf, and Belinda was the only one in the family that learned sign language in order to be able to talk with him using sign language. She was just she had a really good heart, and she really loved family, and she grew up wanting a really good family. The problem was that within her nuclear family there was quite a bit of tension. And it wasn't that, you know, it wasn't
like a courier in ives, you know, Christmas. It was Things were always a little strained at the Lucas house, and it became more so she got older, and it ended up that she moved out during college because of roles that her father was putting down. So she was a little bit estranged from her family, not completely, but a little bit. And when she met David, David kind of took over her life and she was pretty much absorbed into the Temple family.
No, she didn't recognize any of this violent streak when she first met him. She was caught up with his charm and his good looks and his importance in the community. Obviously, she was charmed enough for these people to date and tell us about the meeting and tell us what she first thought her first impressions of David were when she talked to her girlfriends about meeting him and her relationship.
Well, this was a pretty heavy thing to have the star of the football team as your boyfriend are interested in you in the beginning, sure, and he was actually dating someone else at the time who he dropped immediately when he started to see Belinda. She was really taken by him. And I don't know that David had the
tendency talking to his previous girlfriends. He has a tendency to really cater to a woman, to really put her on a pedestal, to the extent that he's known to beat up other guys in bars if they even look at the woman as at a woman who's his girlfriend. So you know, he was very He gave a lot of roses. He was the kind of guy who showed up with flowers, the kind of guy who left love notes on her car. On the other hand, from the very beginning in the relationships, he was always very controlling.
It was always, you know, you come to my family's house for Christmas, you come with me when I want to go out. If I tell you I'm coming over, I'm coming over there was very little, he tended to segregate the women, all of his girlfriends, and he did the same thing with Belinda. Pretty soon he had segregated her from her family.
Yeah, you do give an example too, when Brenda was wanted to come down and at a Christmas I'm jumping ahead a little bit, but it showed the domination where he canceled those plans that were for Christmas and said, listen, you know she had to tell her sister, you know, that the planet had changed, and the idea that the family, that she wouldn't see her own family at Christmas and instead they would spend with his family was a really good,
clear example of that kind of domination. That's pretty good evidence of it for sure.
Well, if David, Belinda told many people that David just didn't want her to see her family at all. She called him, he called him terrible names and talked to belittle of them and said that he didn't want after they did get married and they had a child, that he didn't want their son around Belinda's family at all.
So he really did. He made a I don't know if it was a conscious effort, I think it was, but it certainly a concerted effort to cut her off from her support system, and that included her sister and brothers and her parents.
Now, the event that we talk about is in nineteen ninety nine. But when did they get married? When did they meet? And when did they get married?
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And David, Well, they've been married about seven years when she died, so they must have been married about ninety two and they had met in Yeah, they got married early in ninety two, and I think they began dating about a year earlier, so they were married for about seven years. They had a three year old at the time.
And his name is his name is Erin or Evan Evan Evan. Okay.
The little girl she was carrying was to be named Aaron right right now.
In a conversation she had with her girlfriend, I guess the marriage obviously, we'll get to that. But the marriage had changed. So was she very aware of changes with David and his This was her dissatisfaction in relationship. How did the relationship her marriage fair? He said it was nomination separation, but was there violence? How what would you characterize the marriage like and when did it really deteriorate or when did it change?
You know, I think it actually happened gradually, Dan, I mean, this is really this marriage had the fairy tale beginning. He proposed to her on the football field, dropped down on his knees in front of all of their friends, and you know, he was this chivalrous guy. And then you know, within a year they were living in a rental house in a small town outside Nacadocius, and she's starting to say that he's never home and she tells a friend, I wonder if he's going out on me.
I wonder if he's seeing other women. But then immediately she would change her minding. Oh well, no, David wouldn't do that to me. I know, David wouldn't do that to me. Belinda really wanted the family. She really wanted the whole Norman Rockwell family. You know, she didn't have that growing up. Her family wasn't that close. It was important to her and she was willing to overlook a lot and a lot of times she was willing to
talk herself out of things. But David, it appears, had a wandering eye from you know, at some point in the marriage that developed as they went along.
Now the thing is they have a three year old and they have a daughter on the way. So he has a son, they have a son, there's a daughter on the way. Tell us about the preparation for the child. And it seems like if she didn't think that he was stepping out on her, she was definitely now telling her girlfriends that she was disappointed she had to hire somebody to put up some shelving in the nursery. He
didn't seem to be so interested. And I think understandably that would be a big fear of you're eight months pregnant and somebody looks like they're not so interested, So tell us a little bit about that.
Well, she didn't. It had actually started this summer before they had gone about six weeks where they didn't talk at all, and Belinda was telling her friends that she didn't believe that he loved her anymore. And then suddenly they got back together and she was pregnant, and she at first acted like everything was wonderful, but then she started talking about David really not wanting a baby girl and him not being excited, and as you said, he
didn't help prepare the nursery. She would show up at Katie High School to go to work and talk about how she had had to paint the room all by herself, and how she'd had to put the crib together by herself. And as you said, she had this idea for a shelf she wanted to put up in the baby's room, and it was one of those things that was really important to her, you know how sometimes things take on added meaning to people, and she really wanted his help
with this, and he never did do it. He never got that shelf up.
Now let's introduce the another one of the main characters in this incredible story. Heather Scott and who is she? Where did she come from? She was new to this area. And tell us a little bit about Heather Scott, her background. Who was she?
She grew up in a little town outside College Station. She had a lot in common with Melinda. They're both very pretty. She was a cheerleader like Belinda was. She dated a football player. They were both teachers, and they were both twins. They both had twin sisters, and they were both very bright. And she had gone to College Station to Texas A and M and she had a teaching degree. And she followed a friend and moved to Houston and started teaching in the Katie School district in
the fall of nineteen ninety eight. And actually I think it was a little bit before that she moved in, But she was at David's school teaching English in the fall of nineteen ninety eight, and before long they started showing up places together. She wasn't the type of person that had a lot of boyfriends that was out all the time. Her roommate said that she they actually kept to themselves for quite a while after Heather moved to Houston.
But you know, she was well liked and very pretty, and David noticed her.
Now there's another important character, just to go backwards just a step, and another person, a friend and a co teacher as well, and the friends of mutual friends of Heather and David is a man named Quinton and quintin Harmon, I think, but anyway, Quentin also was well, it was flirtatious with Heather, was flirting with Heather, and David and
Quinton had spoken about Heather and their own relationships. Maybe tell us a little bit about Quinn because he's an interesting character in this story as well.
Well. Quentin was married to Tammy and they had daughters. They had three daughters, and he was taken with Heather. It was kind of a flirtation. He and Tammy were going through a little bit of a rough spot and he was interested a little bit in Heather, although he never pursued it the way that David did. But the really interesting thing is that Quentin and David were very very uh uh. They were always trying to one up
each other. So when Quinton put a like a fountain in their backyard, well then David had to put one in and his head to be bigger, in his head, to be better sure, And David was always telling Quinton what to do and where to go, and always trying to lure Quintin out to do things that Quinton really didn't want to do, as far as going out to
bars and topless places and everything. So it became one of those relationships where there was just a lot of, you know, kind of a guy relationship where there was a lot of back and forth and ego, you know, going into it. So Quentin actually noticed Heather first and said something to David, and in no time at all, David was interested in Heather.
No, it progressed. It started off obviously of flirtation, but there was the happy hour at the bar, apparently on Thursday in the neighborhood bar, and Quinton would had gone to this happy hour, and I guess a lot of the teachers decided to go on Thursdays to this happy hour. So how does a happy hour and the bar play into all this?
Well, Quentin actually I think he only went once, but David started showing up after he went with Quinton once and they saw Heather there, and then David became kind of a regular on Thursday night. It was easy for him to get out because Thursday nights were Juvie football games, and all he had to do was tell Melinda that he was observing looking at the kids coming up for the next year, right, and he started showing up and before for along Heather and David were sitting together talking
and flirting, and they started acting like a couple. People started noticing them together. And then Heather's roommates started coming home and finding David's trucks out in the driveway in front of the house and Heather's purse in the living room, and they were upstairs in the bedroom.
And she's another important character in this and her name is Tara Hall. Is that correct?
Yeah?
Now this is another part of very bizarre part of this story as we proceed here is that what does you know, Christmas happens and some interesting developments there. I think to illustrate his character, you talk of the Christmas present situation. Christmas, maybe you can tell us a little bit about that, and then when and how he broke the news that he was not going to be spending New Year's Eve with his wife despite being more than
eight months pregnant. Tell us a little bit about Christmas and New.
Year's Well, we know about Christmas and New Year's because Brenda, Belinda's twin, came right after Christmas and stayed there, and she saw a lot of tension between the two of them, and she even heard Belinda say to David at one point, you really don't want this baby girl. So there was a lot going on right then, things had gotten really, really difficult. And that Christmas he gave Heather a gold necklace for Christmas, and he didn't give Belinda a gift.
And then New Year's Eve Ril around, which was Belinda's birth well it was two days before was Belinda and Brenda's birthday, right, and Brenda didn't see a gift being given to her sister for the birthday. And at dinner that night with his parents, he announced that he was going hunting on New Year's Eve, and he did. He left New Year's Eve afternoon, left his eight eight month pregnant wife at home, and was gone for the weekend. Only he didn't go hunting, That's not where he was Heather.
He was at Heather's apartment at her townhouse for that weekend.
Now, just before we get any further, you talked a little bit about Heather Scott and came from a decent background but how is she reconciling this situation here the pregnant wife, New Year's Eve, Christmas? How does she? How does her friend Tara Hall approve of this? How what's the conversation between Tara and Heather about this relationship and David Temple?
Well, it was appearing to Terra that Heather was getting relatively serious about David. On the other hand, Heather would later say that she really didn't ask David about his family, that she really didn't want to know, except at one point she asked if he had children, and he said, yeah, he had one boy, and and he had a little girl on the way. So she knew he was married,
She knew he had children. She knew when he was with her on New Year's Eve that his pregnant wife was home alone, well not alone with her little boy. And she continued to see him. And I think that says a lot.
Now, three days before January eleventh, nineteen ninety nine, what does David say to Heather? And Heather say to David that will end up being very important, and it is very important.
He told her, I think I'm becoming total I think I'm falling totally in love with you. And she said, I don't think I can keep going on this way. Well, she said she loved she thought she loved him too, and then at another time said, but I don't think I can keep going on this way. But he didn't seem upset about it. He didn't seem worried, right, and nothing changed. She didn't really cut off the relationship.
Sure wasn't an ultimatum. Now, the faithful day of January eleven, nineteen ninety nine, Belinda and her friends. She has a group of friends that they are playing Bunco that evening that night, and she's looking forward to some Mexican foods enchilada. She really liked tell us about her friends because they are major characters in this as well. About the evening plan playing bunko with her friends, well.
She Tammy and quite a few of the teachers from Katie High School were all planning to get together to play bunco. They played once a month, and Belinda was an enthusiastic bunko player, and she was with everything. She was just really full of life, and she hadn't seemed quite that happy the last month or so before, but she she really loved bunko and so She had told people Evan got sick that day, and she told people all day long that she's still planned to go to Bunco that night.
Now the what else happens in the day. She did she speak to any of those ladies that day before previously the Bunco game, where they just they just assumed that she would show up and if not, if they didn't, She didn't contact any of those ladies that day. What was her day? What was the rest of her they like, what did she do well?
She went to school that morning and she complained that she wasn't feeling well. She'd been to the doctor and he told her that he thought the baby might come a little bit early. Right, and Evan was sick. Her son was sick, but she'd given him some he'd woken up and thrown up in the middle of the night. She'd given him some Thailand off and dropped him off with daycare and said that if he started running a fever or anything, to call and that David would come
and get him. She said that she had talked with David and he had agreed to pick Evan up if Evin was ill. So she went to Hey, guys, Itida.
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Eighteen plus school that morning, and talked to her fellow teachers and everything, and then about eleven o'clock the phone rang and it was the daycare center and they were calling to say that Evan was running a fever high enough that it violated their policy to keep him there,
so somebody had to come pick him up. And at that point she started calling David, and she called and called and called and couldn't get him, and finally left Katie High School to go pick Evan up, saying that she would be back for a meeting she had about two o'clock that afternoon, but she needed to get him home. So she went to Tigerland, which is the daycare center, and picked up Evan, who was just like a wet noodle.
You know how three year olds are. And I don't know if you have kids, Dan, but when they're sick, and yeah, when they're sick and they're on medicine and they're running a fever. She picked him up and he slept all the way to the car and they said he hadn't eaten anything that day. The poor little guy was really sick. Sure, so she went home and continued
to call David. Finally got in touch with him, and he left Katie High School or left a leaf the Junior High where he worked at the ninth grade center, and came home to take care of Evan. She did you want me to keep going?
Well, I'll I can ask you a question to set this up. So now she is at home and she is go backwards just a little bit. She picked up some soup from the Temple family Maureene earlier, so she had some homemade soup and she came home and then David comes to the home and so I guess describe the situation according or as David describes it to police tell us about that.
Well, she gets home about noon, and then he comes home shortly after to take care of Evan, and she leaves, and she goes back to Katie High about one o'clock and then leaves thereafter her meeting and stops at her mother and father in laws house and picks up this soup and she leaves there. I think it was right around two twenty and heads to She left the school
at two twenty. She stopped at the temple's house and then she drove home, and he later said that she arrived home about quarter to three, which would be about right depending on it looking at the distances. And he said that she came in the house tired and went upstairs to rest, and he took Evan out. Now Evan had been ill and had been in bed, and there was a note on the counter about one to give
him tyland all. But David said that he took David or that he took Evan to the park and then to a grocery store to buy a drink, and then to a home depot and then returned back to the house. And I think it was right around five o'clock or so he came running to a neighbor's house and said that his back door window had been smashed in, and the call to nine one one was made about fifteen minutes later.
Ten minutes later, so he came to the Riguero family next door, Mike Riguero and his wife's home, and because he knew them and also left his left Evan there, the three year old, while he proceeded to run, and as you've describe in your book very vividly, Mike Riguero runs behind him because David indicates that there's something going on that the back door's open, there's glass broken.
So then what happens, Well, Mike gets to the door to the gate going into the backyard and Shaka, the dog Belinda and David's dog, it's a child, brown child, look like a bear. It was well known in the neighborhood to be very frightening. It was very aggressive. Dogs won't let him in the yard. So he sees David run into the house and Mike has to hold the gate shut to keep Shaka from attacking him. Right, and he's downstairs when the nine one one call is made. When David makes the nine one one call.
And what did David say to police?
He said that he had just gotten in and he found his wife in the bedroom closet, the master bedroom closet, and she was dead, and that there were brains that her, that it looked like she'd been shot in the head, and that there was brain matter everywhere. And they told him they at first they tried to talk him into doing CPR, right, but he kept saying that he couldn't do that, you know, there was too much damage. She
was dead. Then they tried talking him into doing CPR for the baby, right, you know, because there is a period of time I think it's fifteen to twenty minutes or something where they can still deliver a child because the oxygen is still flowing into the fetus or into the infant, and this is in you know, this is eight months. This baby is you know, able to live outside the room. It was you know, nearly full term. But he doesn't do it.
And he knows. They ask him if he does know how to do CPR, and he indicates that he does.
Then he does, Yeah, he does, because he's a football coach, you know, from sports and everything. So he The police arrive and they've seen Mike Raggerio outside and they circle around and come to the gates and they try to get into the yard and the dog won't let them
into the yard either. They're actually at the point where they're pulling their gun and they're going to come in because what they've heard is that there's somebody in need of help inside and they don't know what the situation is, so as far as they know, there's a human life hanging in the balance inside the house, sure, and they've
got this dog that won't let them in. So they pull their gun to go into the backyard, to go in the back door, and at that moment, David walks out and stops them from shooting the dogs, locks the dog up in the garage, and they go inside.
Now what do they find? What do they initially find because they're at antennae is up, that's their job. What do they initially find and where do they find Belinda's body?
Well, they walk through the house. Actually just one of them walks through the house. A sergeant Goslin walks into the house and you know, walks up the stairs where David had told him to walk and then walks into the bedroom, the master bedroom, and over to the left, and what he sees is an obviously dead woman, kind of on her side a little bit enough so that he can see that she's very pregnant, and she's still
and not moving and very obviously dead. And he knows, based on the nine one one call and everything, that it's been too long, so he turns around and walks back out gets down on stairs. In about that time, the EMT show up. So the sergeant then brings one of the EMTs up, who looks at Belinda's body and verifies that it's past the point for life saving measures, past the point where she can save the feet us anything can be done for the baby, and leaves in a short time later. Linda's declared dead.
Now, what did the police find. We'll start with the bedroom because that's where we are. What did they find particularly unusual or odd in particular the hangars and some clothing in the closet itself that looked like the would be perpetrator move something there, and then was a TV set as well. Tell us a little bit about the crime scene and what police saw immediately.
Well, there were it appeared that it was a robbery because the back door had been smashed in the window it's been smashed. And downstairs on the first floor, as you said, a TV was taken off its standing laid on the side. But as they looked through the house, they saw things that didn't make sense based on it being a robbery. They saw jewelry and including David's gold championship ring sitting out plain view. They saw Belinda's jewelry
boxes undisturbed in the closet. Once they started really looking at the scene where the body was, they realized that there wasn't enough blood splatter for the fact that her skull had literally been shattered and emptied, and so they began looking for her, you know, her brain basically and the blood splatter. And what they found is that somebody had taken the clothes on the bottom rack and pushed them over in order to cover up all of the
blood splatter and everything. Then that the brain matter that was splattered against the closet wall.
Yeah, it's kind of unusual, it is.
Yeah, usually that's not Usually a robber is not going to stay around long enough to rearrange the clothes.
So they had this undisturbed TV or this TV said move the clothing on the hangars moved to cover up the brain matter they also had they were suspicious about. Well, they thought the broken glass was unusual. Where the glass actually landed, Yeah, unusual.
This was a big deal because if somebody's trying to break glass to get into a house, that means that the door is shut and locked. And what they found was and if you do that, if you if you show something through a door, you propel that glass forward, most of it's going to go forward. Some of them might fly in unusual places, but most of it's going to go forward. Well, what they found was that the glass, the majority of the glass was over to the far left, some of it very far left, in the in the
TV room or in the den. So it appeared that the back door had actually been open already when the glass was broken, which didn't make sense for a robbery, but did for a stage robbery.
So that was there basically their conclusion at that time that he was the lead suspect and this was a stage crime scene. And well did they make an arrest of David Temple? And what is his demeanor? Again, you cite it so many times, what was his demeanor?
You know, he was unemotional even when his parents came to the scene. He was unemotional. He didn't appear to be grieving at all. He didn't, you know, appear to want to help the police to solve the crimes. He was very quiet. They took him down to the police
station for questioning, but he didn't give any information. He recited his story about having taken Evans, this sick little boy, to a park, into a grocery store, into a home depot, and didn't really at any point appear upset by what had happened.
Now, what is important is how his family reacts to the accusation that he had committed murder, and then some of his friends, obviously and obviously Belinda's friends and family start off with the different reactions from his arrest. Immediately, what does the Temple family do and what is their reaction, and what are other people's reaction like Belinda's family, the.
Temple family, the police felt from the beginning that the Temple family, circles away against had been standing up for David for a very long time, and the police felt that they were doing that from the first night of the killing. That they were indignant about being questioned, They were uncooperative, they were not helping with the case at all. On the other hand, at first the Lucas's Belinda's parents at first didn't They never considered the idea that maybe
their son in law could have done this. Really, they were devastated by what could have happened, but that didn't dawn on them. But Belinda's older brother Brian and her twin sister Brenda both immediately believed that David could be involved, especially of course when they found out about Heather. The relationship with Heather.
Now, how long did it take for police to actually find out what the actual or what the truth were regarding his other relationship with relationship with Heather? How long did it take for police to put that altogether? What did they make of that? And how did they proceed legally from there? You talk about the not everybody knows this, but sometimes they put something and maybe can explain this much better than I can. The grand jury. Why they would take evidence to the grand jury, and what is
the intention by doing that? Why can't they just go to trial? Why can't they just be charged? Explain that as we proceed with this.
Well, a lot of times prosecutors they'll use a grand jury as a way of testing a case. They'll bring in their evidence and then talk to grand juris about whether or not they feel there was enough there. And another thing they do is they have people testify in front of a grand jury, which is a sworn testimony, and they have of the evidence. You know, they had the testimony recorded, and what it does is it locks in what these people are saying at that particular time,
so it kind of puts them on the record. So it's a good investigative tool actually, and so they you know, they they had a very good suspicion that David Temple was with the killer, that he had killed Belinda in order to get rid of her to be with Heather r. And they talked to Heather about that at one point and she admitted that, yes, he had said that he loved her and everything, but she was spanning by David.
She said that, you know, she couldn't believe that he would have done that, and you know, and she was very much in his corner. But they the police had a problem, and that's that the prosecutor didn't think he had enough evidence unless he had the murder weapon right, and they could not find a shotgun. It was an unusual shotgun shell. It was double lot and it was a reload and so and it was it was not
a one that was done like a manufactured reload. So it was done by somebody on like you know, just at home with a reload machine and with reload equipment. And uh. The prosecutor told them that he needed that shotgun and they couldn't find it. And they looked, and they looked. They they dragged, you know, they were dragging the ponds in Katie, Texas, they were going to the parks, they were walking through rice fields. There were massive searches for this weapon, but they couldn't come up with it.
And the prosecutor on the case said that he wouldn't take the case without it.
Yeah, and they also had actually said they need to put the shotgun in hands. So it's important. It's important a little bit later when they do do not get the shotgun, but they settle for second best or as close as they can to that. So we'll talk about that just in a bit now. So there's no murder weapon, there's not really enough evidence. And they realize too that he is can afford and just from the behavior of the family itself and his importance and certainly that he's
going to get a very good defense. Laur So when this thing is going to go. You talked about the grand jury. This thing doesn't takes a long time before they can ever indict this person. Explain how long it takes. There's one particular homicide detective that really this really bothered and it was his mission to have this case cleared, and also how long it took. And finally, what was the evidence gathered by the Crown attorney and that she felt was going to be enough evidence to be able
to take to the jury and convict this person. David Temple.
Well, there was a cop name, a homicide cop named Mark Schmidt, and this was his first homicide case. It was actually Tracy Shipley's first too. They were both working this case and there was a guy named Chuck Leitner, and they were working really hard on this case but couldn't get anywhere with it. So it languished and it sat collecting dust on Mark's desk for a very long time.
It would turn out to be eight years before this case ever entered a courtroom, and every time there was some type of a new forensic discovery, Mark Schmidt would send in the evidence again and try to find it and try to find something, anything that they could use because they felt certain that David Temple was getting away with murder. Sure well it didn't, you know it, Just as I said, languaged and the family kept pushing. Belinda's family kept pushing to try to get this thing into
a courtroom. But they made a lot, they hit a lot of resistance. And then Mark sent in a shirt and it came back from the FBI lab. It was one of David's. It was David's jacket, like a warm up jacket, right, and a pair of tennis shoes. And the FBI lab returned it and said that there was gunshot residue on it. And not only that, but they it matched the gunshot residue on Blinda's clothing.
And this was a different This was a development. Sorry, this was a development as well because initially they did the GSR process at that time, initially, immediately after the murders, there was no GSR evidence that would be able to be used at trial. So this is a maybe you can explain it just a bit. This is a leap in either technology or the process or further testing. Again, initiated by probably Mark Schmidt and the police themselves to say it, could you submit to this further testing.
Well, it was one of those things where it a lot of times in life, it's timing. And they had submitted these clothes early on, but then nine to eleven happened, because remember we're going back to ninety nine here, sure, and all the clothes that were in the queue at the FBI and Quantico to be tested, and because of nine to eleven, everything involving nine to eleven got fast tracked, and these and cases like this really were just pushed to the backs. So this sat for a very very
long time. The initial results that came back were not did not find anything, but they kept testing with these new tests that were coming out. As Mark kept resubmitting, He actually went to DC and and carried these clothes at one point David's close and this one time finally it came back and there was a match. They found GSR and there was a match. So at that point
they started talking, but they still weren't ready. Well, then the Scott Peterson case happened in California, right, and Tom Lucas, Belinda's dad, who had you know, never given up the hope that there would be some justice for his daughter's killing, called or emailed I forget which the DA's office here in Houston, and said, you know, you're either going to pursue this case or I'm going to go in and tell everybody in the world, you know, on the world
wide web, that you know what's happened here, and why why aren't you doing anything about it? Well, the DA here in town brought it into one of his or to his top assistant prosecutor, a woman named Kelly see Seigler, and asked her to take a look at it. And it sometimes it takes a fresh set of eyes. And she looked at it, and she gave it to another guy in the office and he looked at it, and they came away thinking they had maybe a sixty percent
chance of getting a conviction. Sure, and that was enough to go with. So they arrested David.
Now that the trial courtroom drama is incredible in this book a lot. I got to say, I've read a lot of true crime books, and what happens is that there's not so much mystery in the trial, you know, and they're not so exciting. I mean, some trials are exciting. This one's very exciting, and you've really captured that. Now we won't go into all the testimony at the trial, but who are the key witnesses at trial? It's and tell us a little bit about the testimony of the
Temple family and David himself. It's incredible.
Well, the first half, of course is the prosecution. The prosecutor put on his witnesses, and sure she put on her witnesses, and she had both of the Harlan's. Tammy and Quinton testified about the turmoil in the Temple's marriage, how and how David was still controlling with Belinda, and then Brenda got up and testified about the the way there was so much tension in the house that Christmas, after Christmas through New Year's Eves, and Heather testified for
the prosecution. This is an instance. One thing we didn't touch on, Dan is that, as this case language language, two years after the killing, David had married Heather.
That's right, Yeah, we forgot about that.
Yeah, it's a big one. And they were living together raising Evan, David's son, and both of them are still teaching. So and in this instance, because they weren't married when this all happened, she could be forced to testify. They weren't husband and wife at the time, so she was put on the stand, and she was very hostile witness. It was very tense in that court room the whole time she was on the stand. But this was really an amazing case. A lot of the little pieces started
to fall together. What Kelly Seeler did is she started putting before the jury all of these little things that lined up to form this really damning picture. David never called the police trying to push this investigation on, never tried to find out who had murdered Belinda. In fact told people he didn't care that Belinda wouldn't want anybody to look into this, all of this bit about the dog, the staged crime scene, and then she managed to put
a shotgun in David's hand. As you mentioned earlier, Yes, she found someone who could say that David's father had given David a twelve gage shotgun, and that all of the all the Temple boys had twelve gauges, and that there were no twenty gauges, as David's dad would later when he got on the stand, would contend that David had and this is a kid who had been out hunting with them Temple boys a lot, so any knew guns, and he knew hunting, and he knew that David Temple
had a twelve gage shotgun like the one that was used to murder Belunda.
Yeah, and then she put a lot of information to them to use their own logic too, because you know, the dog is very important because nobody could get in that yard. How could a burgerlar get in the yard. And then who walks around and broad daylight in this neighborhood without these neighbors who are friends noticing somebody with a big shotgun. Yeah, and then nothing stolen, So everybody knew who this was. But they took this case to the jury without a lot of the normal forensic evidence.
And now you talked about the Temple family testifying. What about David Temple.
Testifying, Well, you know, it seemed obvious on the stand that the Temples were trying really hard to protect David. The impression in the room was that they were doing their best to bolster him up. But in truth, it just made them and him look bad because it made them look as if they were lying. And David was actually a pretty good witness on the stand, he did pretty well up there compared to his parents, but he
maintained that he hadn't done it. He was trying to shift the blame toward a neighbor boy, the boy who lived right next door, and he was, you know, pretty forceful, he maintained. His lawyer, Dick de Garon, maintained that David and Belinda had a wonderful marriage and that there wasn't any real problem between them. Between them, but of course that's a problem because David was having an affair and later married the woman he was having the affair with. So David on the stand wash he was kind of
like the football player he'd been on the seals. He was just really focused and pushing really hard and doing his best to cut through and force the blame in other places.
So the jury basically what was the deciding factor for the jury?
You know, I think that in all honesty, this is a really unusual case. I think that if the defense attorney had not put on a case and they had settled after the prosecution finished, I think David probably would
have been acquitted. But the defense when they started actually kept making him look worse, and I think it was actually the testimony of the Temple family that swayed the jury because they saw that the Temples were dancing around things trying to make David appear innocent, and that they weren't telling the truth about things like David's relationship with Belinda and knowing about David's relationship with Heather right after
the killing. So there was a lot of a lot that came out of the Temple testimony.
Yeah, so it was an incredible victory. And what was the inevitable sentence for mister David Temple?
Fifty five years?
So it's it's an actual life sentence.
Well, it's the equivalent of a lifestentence. Yeah, he'll be Ellis I think it's fifty five. I've written so many books. I get a little confused at times, right, But yeah, it's fifty five or sixty five years, and he'll be eligible for a geriatric parole at some point. His case still is an appeal. The Appeals heard it in January and they have not come down with a decision yet.
Yeah. It's a very interesting case, very interesting case indeed, and very interesting book. And I want to thank you very much for this very informative interview about your incredible book, new book called Shattered, and I'm sure the audience appreciated our interview. It was great. Thank you very much, Catherine.
Well, thank you Dan.
You've been listening to the program True Murder with my special guest Catherine Casey with her book Shattered. And this is a true murder, the most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about it. Have a good evening. Thank you very much, Catherine. Good night,