181: The Real Suburban Axe Murder: Candy & Betty

WEBVTT

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Southern Fried true crime covers cases that
are not suitable for young listeners, and

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there may also be some explicit language
used. Listener discretion is advised. On

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May ninth of nineteen eighty, the
blockbuster horror film Friday the Thirteenth premiered.

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The movie, which is now considered
a classic, was a huge success.

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Teenage camp counselors are being murdered by
a masked assailant. The killer uses multiple

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sharp objects to slay his victims,
one time gruesomely lodging an axe and a

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young woman's face. On May twenty
third of nineteen eighty, Stanley Kubricks the

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Shining debut in theaters, and this
horror film was also a huge success.

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Jack Nicholson stars as the caretaker of
an isolated hotel and the Rocky Mountains,

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and the most iconic scene in the
entire movie, A scene I know you've

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seen somewhere, is when he chases
down his wife with an axe after trapping

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her in a bathroom. He maniacally
chops his way through a wooden door and

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screams the famous lines here's Johnny fun
fact. Jack Nicholson was actually axing through

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a real door. Not so fun
fact Shelley Duval, who played Jack's wife

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Wendy, later says she was horrifically
traumatized by the filming of this movie because

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of Kubrick's methods and probably the experience
of filming with that real axe. Although

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Jack didn't kill his wife with that
axe, there's no denying that the fervor

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around axe murders was at an all
time high in nineteen eighty. It was

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thrilling because it was fake cinema fantasy, a way for us to live out

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our fears from the safety of a
theater while munching some popcorn. But only

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one month following the opening night of
these watershed films, an axe murder actually

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happened. It wasn't fake, it
was real. In Texas, a schoolteacher

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was killed by a housewife. You
cannot make this up. Welcome to episode

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one eighty one, The Real Suburban
axe Murder. Candy and Betty. Betty

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Eileen Pomeroy was born on January ninth, nineteen fifty in Norwich, Kansas.

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Her father, Bob, was an
insurance salesman, and her mother, Bertha,

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was a housewife. Betty also had
two brothers. Together, the family

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of five was the quintessential Midwestern American
family, industrious Christian folk who made a

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modest living, went to church every
Sunday and hardly ever called in sick,

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and they were well respected in the
Norwich community because of it. Norwich was

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and is a barely their town in
the rural countryside of south central cans It's

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thirty seven miles west of Wichita,
and that matters because if Norwich residents wanted

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anything clothes, restaurants, doctors,
they had to make the track to Wichita

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to get it. Back In nineteen
fifty, when Betty was born, only

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about four hundred people lived in Norwich, and in the late sixties, of

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those four hundred Norwich residents, young
Betty Pomeroy stood out from the crowd.

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She was a beautiful woman with a
striking smile and a bold personality. She

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made friends easily and was well liked, and she didn't shy away from hard

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work. When school let out in
the summertime, Betty always got a job

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helping out with a harvest on a
local farm, and when school was back

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in session, Betty thrived. She
was an enthusiastic student with a clever mind.

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When she graduated from Norwich High school
in nineteen sixty eight, she dreamed

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of becoming a teacher. She had
wanted a classroom of her own, and

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she was a little girl. So
that fall, Betty attended Southwestern College in

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Winfield, Kansas. She studied elementary
education, trying to make her dream a

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reality, and during her freshman year
there, Betty met a man. Well,

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actually, Betty met a lot of
men equipped with both beauty and brains.

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Eighteen year old Betty Pomeroy was a
hot commodity. But while Betty caught

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the attention of many, only one
man caught her eye. His name was

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Alan Gore. He was twenty one
years old, a senior at Southwestern College,

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and he was also Betty's math instructor. Although she was very bright,

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she had always struggled with math.
Alan, as her college teacher, also

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noticed that calculus was not Betty's strong
suit, and undoubtedly he also noticed that

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Betty was a pretty young thing,
a pretty young thing who was clearly interested

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in him. But Alan was a
respectable g He wasn't one to take his

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student's home, but when Betty approached
him for some extra tutoring, Alan found

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that he was smitten. He couldn't
and wouldn't refuse her anything. They met

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at the campus library to study a
few times, and by the next semester,

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when Betty was no longer Allan's student, the two were officially dating.

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Alan Dean Gore was born in nineteen
forty seven and raised in Larned, Kansas.

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Like Betty's hometown of Norwich, Larned
was also a small town in rural

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Kansas. Alan graduated from Larned Senior
High School in nineteen sixty five, and

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from there he pursued his math and
business degrees at Southwestern College, where he

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met Betty. After Allan graduated from
Southwestern in nineteen sixty nine, he enrolled

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in Kansas State University for his master's
degree in computer science. This was probably

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a very important moment for Alan and
Betty's relationship. They had only known each

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other for about a year. They
could have easily called it quits. After

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all, Allan was going to go
to a university that was two and a

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half hours away. Betty was either
going to have to relocate or commit to

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a long distance relationship. And this
was long before you could text your cross

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country boo. But Alan and Betty
knew they had something special, so they

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made it work. Allan proposed to
Betty in May of nineteen sixty nine,

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and in January of nineteen seventy they
were married. Betty transferred from Southwestern to

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Kansas State, and Allan graduated a
year later in nineteen seventy one. Alan

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and Betty's marriage shocked the Pomeroys.
He didn't match what they thought a man

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should be, but remember the context. Though they weren't farmers themselves, Betty's

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family embraced the farming culture of Kansas. They were tanned, calloused, Tossabelle

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of Hay over your shoulder type people, and Alan was the exact opposite of

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that. He was pale and wore
horn rimmed glasses. His hands were probably

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as soft as a baby's bottom.
According to Evidence of Love by journalist Atkinson

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and Briggs, Betty's father confided and
Betty's mother that for a guy who grew

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up in a Kansas farming town,
Alan sure didn't seem like a farm boy.

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Plus, Betty's friends and family thought
that Betty was a shining star,

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and they weren't sure Allan was good
enough for her. Betty was a dynamo

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and Alan, in comparison, was
downright plain people described him as quiet,

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average looking, and kind of a
snob. He was actually a bit shy,

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not snobby, but that's a common
mistake people may still Betty was sure

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of Alan. She liked how smarty
was, she liked how secure he was,

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both financially and emotionally, and she
preferred men who were a little older.

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She wasn't looking for a farm boy. She wanted Allan and that was

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the end of it. In nineteen
seventy one, Allan was hired at the

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White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. When he and Betty moved to New

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Mexico, she continued working on her
elementary education degree, and in nineteen seventy

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three she graduated from New Mexico State
University. That same year, she became

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pregnant with their first child. The
pregnancy was really hard on Betty. She

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had to go to the doctor all
the time. Her normal aches and pains,

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which were already pretty frequent, skyrocketed, and Betty's chronic depression, which

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she had always managed without medication,
became worse. When she gave birth to

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a little girl named Elissa in nineteen
seventy four, she was really struggling and

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Allen who had to travel often for
his job, wasn't home as much as

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Betty would have liked. She hated
being alone. By nineteen seventy seven,

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Betty, Allen and Alissa had moved
to a few different places, but they

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ended up in Wyley, Texas,
a small suburb twenty five miles northeast of

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Dallas and ten miles east of Plano. Back then, it was a population

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of only about three thousand, seven
hundred people, and Betty found a job

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teaching fifth grade reading at Arcy Dodd
Middle School. Unfortunately, she hated teaching,

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she had since she had gotten her
very first teaching job a few years

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earlier. As it turns out,
dreaming about becoming a teacher and actually stepping

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into the classroom were two very different
things. Betty didn't like how much the

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kids misbehaved. She became agitated when
her lesson plans didn't go perfectly. Ultimately,

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teaching just did not make Betty happy, and it showed just the summer

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before in nineteen seventy four, a
different Texas school district had not invited Betty

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to return after one year, and
teachers speak, Betty was fired. Did

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it hurt her feelings now more?
Than ever. She was determined to get

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into the classroom and prove herself.
Fortunately, she found that job at rc

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DOT, and there Betty decided she
could tolerate teaching. At this time,

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Alan was in a fairly high up
position at Rockwell International, an electronics conglomerate

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and major defense contractor. Alan had
been at Rockwell for several years by then,

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but in nineteen seventy seven, he
was starting a new position with a

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company. It wasn't a demotion or
anything. He had requested the change before.

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Alan's job required him to travel for
many weeks at a time, but

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all that travel upset Betty. She
was afraid of being alone, and she

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frankly abhorded. It wasn't an oh, sweetie, i'll miss you, I

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wish you were home more situation.
Betty could not stand when Alan was gone.

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It truly affected her mental health.
One time, when Alan was on

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a business trip in Switzerland, Betty
begged him to come home. When he

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wouldn't, she actually called his boss
and asked if Allen could come home.

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So realizing that Betty was seriously distressed
and didn't seem like she would ever get

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used to all his required travel,
Allen transferred to a different position with Rockwell,

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one that would allow him to stay
in Dallas, a more stable position,

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hopefully stabilizing his home life. In
nineteen seventy seven, everything seemed to

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be coming up roses for the Gore
family. Betty and Allan's little girl,

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Alyssa, was healthy. They had
just moved to a nice seventy thousand dollars

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three bedroom, two bathroom brick house
in the bedroom community of Wiley, Texas,

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and they had started attending the local
Methodist church and nearby Lucas. Their

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home would be worth about three hundred
and fifty thousand dollars today. The small

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suburb of Dallas is home to about
fifty five thousand people now and is still

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known one of the nicest places to
live around the big city. Wiley has

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a highly rated school system, lots
of parks, and most residents own their

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homes. It would be considered an
extremely safetown in nineteen seventy seven as well

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as today. Wiley is in Collin
County, which is home to several small

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cities and towns, including Fairview,
where friends of the Gores lived, which

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will be important later. Lucas plain
O McKinney Richardson, and others were all

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conglomerated in Collin County, and many
people from these towns traveled to the first

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United Methodist Church of Lucas. Betty
seemed to thrive in Wiley. She became

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an active member of their chosen church. She sang in the choir, co

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ordinated the youth group, and helped
arrange the women's division. And Alan's job,

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which now did not require travel,
was going well, and Betty,

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who still wasn't a big fan of
teaching, was managing all right with her

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fifth grade students. But looks are
deceiving. I'm going to pause now for

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a short commercial break. In the
fall of nineteen seventy eight, Betty and

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Allen decided that they were ready for
their second child. This baby would be

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carefully planned, unlike their firstborn.
Betty wanted to give birth in the summer

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so she wouldn't have to take time
off from teaching, so she and Alan

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started having sex primarily and Betty's fertility
window. At first, Alan thought trying

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for her second baby sounded like a
lot of fun, but he was quickly

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turned off by this new rigid sex
schedule. To him, it wasn't romantic

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and honestly, Betty and Allan weren't
doing so well in the romance department even

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before the sex schedule. Keep in
mind, Betty and Allen had been married

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for eight years. I don't care
who you are. The honeymoon period does

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pass, and your partner is going
to annoy the shit out of you some

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days. But Alan felt like he
and Betty were doing way worse than the

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average married couple, and he attributed
a lot of it to Betty's job.

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Since Betty hated teaching, she would
come home from work anxious and stressed.

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Even before they started trying for their
second child, Betty and Allan rarely had

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sex due to Betty's stress, and
when they did, according to Alan,

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it was mechanical, not fun.
Some church friends of Betty and Allan noticed

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their relationship troubles, so they suggested
a program they had done called Marriage Encounters.

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Basically, it was a weekend of
marriage counseling disguised as a fun vacation

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getaway. Couples would arrive at a
hotel, spend two days doing guided therapy

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exercises with their spouse, and leave
feeling closer than ever. Alan thought this

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was a great idea. A chance
to reconnect with Betty. But Betty,

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who was constantly overwhelmed by teaching,
thought it sounded like the weekend from hell.

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How was she going to get these
papers graded if she was away for

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the weekend? Who was going to
write her lesson plans if she was busy

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working on her marriage? According to
Texas Monthly, Betty turned to Alan and

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asked, you don't think there's something
wrong with us, do you? And

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after that, Alan dropped the subject
of their relationship altogether. Now let's take

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a second to appreciate Betty's perspective.
You might be thinking, Wow, she's

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just so negative. She didn't want
to try at all. But Betty isn't

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here to tell her side of the
story, and so their relationship has only

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been conveyed through Alan's perspective, in
combination with some friends and family who spoke

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with reporters. And also, Betty
was a teacher, she was busy.

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Why couldn't they do the marriage Encounters
program in the summer. Why was it

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always Allan's way or the highway?
I've known a lot of teachers in my

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life, and it is an extremely
stressful job, even if you love it,

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which Betty didn't. I can see
how adding stuff to her plate during

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the school year would antagonize her.
I'll get back to the case now,

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but just remember Betty was really going
through it, and Alan could have done

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a million things other than what he
actually did. In early July of nineteen

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seventy nine, Betty and Allan had
their second child, Bethany, and following

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Bethany's birth, Betty and Allan were
closer than ever. Finally it felt like

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they were on their way to rekindling
their relationship. They chose kind of sweet

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matching names for their girls, Allan
and Alissa, Betty and Bethany, details

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like this twist my heart. And
about a year later, in the summer

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of nineteen eighty, Alan and Betty
had put a lot of work into their

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marriage. Alan had taken a new
job that required almost zero travel, just

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how Betty liked it, and Betty
had agreed to do that marriage Encounters program.

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Things were going swell for the Gore
family. It finally felt like they

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were back on track. On June
thirteenth of nineteen eighty, thirty three year

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old Alan Gore left his wily home
at about eight am. He was catching

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a flight to Saint Paul, Minnesota
on a business trip. Since he had

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accepted this new job, these trips
were rare, but he couldn't avoid this

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one, and he was actually kind
of looking forward to it. The project

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really intrigued him, but at the
same time, Alan knew this trip would

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be hard on Betty. Right before
he boarded the plane at Dallas Fort Worth,

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he called the landline at his home, expecting Betty to pick up.

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He waited for eleven or twelve rings, but no one answered the phone,

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and she should have picked up,
but she didn't. Huh. Alan probably

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thought weird. When he arrived in
Saint Paul, he called Betty again,

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still no answer. As he worked
on a Saint Paul project, his mind

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wandered back to his wife. Why
wasn't Betty answering the phone. Allan was

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getting worried. He rationalized that perhaps
Betty had taken an afternoon walk with baby

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Bethany, or maybe she was angry
with him. It's possible she could have

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said something that morning that Alan forgot. But Allan wasn't too concerned that Betty

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was mad at him. After all, he had planned a trip to Europe

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for Betty. They were leaving the
next week, and they were very excited.

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This would be Alan and Betty's first
outing without their kids in four years.

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Their daughters were staying with Betty's parents. In many ways, this could

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be considered Alan and Betty's second honeymoon, and that felt especially appropriate after all

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the work they had done on their
marriage recently, including renewing their vows at

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that marriage Encounter's program. Alan called
Betty from his hotel room that night,

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still no answer. At this point, he was very concerned. He called

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his neighbor and real estate agent,
Richard Parker. Allan and Richard weren't really

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friends, but when he asked Richard
to go check on Betty, Richard agreed.

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He knocked on the door to the
Gore home, but no one answered.

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Richard told Allan that Betty must be
out, but Alan knew that Betty

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would have told him if she was
leaving. She was always extra careful when

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he was gone. Allan called his
friend from church, a woman named Candy

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Montgomery, to see if she could
go check on Betty. Candy was watching

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Betty and Allan's oldest daughter, five
year old Alyssa, that day. Candy

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00:19:38.279 --> 00:19:42.400
explained to Allan that she had seen
Betty just that morning, and Betty had

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been fine. She reassured Allan that
nothing was wrong, but she did offer

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to go to Allan's house to check
on Betty, but Candy lived over in

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Fairview, so he said he would
call his neighbors back instead. He tried

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calling Betty again first, then doled
Richard's number again. This time, he

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asked Richard to look in the garage
for Betty's car. Richard came back to

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the phone and said that the garage
door was open, the lights were on,

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but he didn't see Betty's car.
Alan was baffled. Why would Betty

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leave the garage door open? Was
she sick? He called the local hospitals,

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but she wasn't there. He called
the police, but they also couldn't

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00:20:21.839 --> 00:20:25.920
help him, which is a bit
odd. A welfare check wouldn't have been

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out of line for a young mother, but they did decline to help,

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so Alan was left hanging on the
other end of the phone, becoming more

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and more frantic about his wife.
Betty was a fragile person, and even

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00:20:37.839 --> 00:20:44.079
more so when she was alone.
Alan called Candy again, then he called

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00:20:44.160 --> 00:20:48.359
Richard again. Richard was getting annoyed
he didn't know Alan all that well,

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00:20:48.440 --> 00:20:52.720
and he thought Alan's wife was probably
fine, just one drunk at a friend's

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house or something. Since Allan was
out of town still, he agreed to

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00:20:57.480 --> 00:21:03.319
go check on the house again.
Alan suggested that maybe Betty had left a

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note on a door somewhere, so
Richard kept his eyes peeled this time.

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As he checked the house, he
noticed that there were two cars in the

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garage. If Betty had gone somewhere, one of the cars should have been

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gone. Richard also noticed that the
lights were on inside the house, but

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still no one was answering the door. Now he had a bad feeling.

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He told Allan something's wrong. Alan, I don't know what, but something's

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00:21:30.200 --> 00:21:33.160
wrong. Both cars are there and
the lights are on, but nobody answers.

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If Alan was ever calm during all
of this, he wasn't anymore.

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This was an emergency. He told
Richard to get into that house by any

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means necessary. Reluctantly, Richard agreed. Alan could sense Richard's reluctance, so

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he called yet another friend. This
friend was Jerry McMahon, a computer analyst

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who lived across the street from the
Gores. At Alan's request, Jerry grabbed

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00:22:00.000 --> 00:22:04.920
his flashlight and went to investigate the
Gore house. He didn't find anything new,

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00:22:06.240 --> 00:22:11.039
same lights on open garage, no
one answering, repeated Knox. Jerry

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called Allan back and insisted Betty must
be at a friend's house. But Allan,

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00:22:15.519 --> 00:22:19.799
now probably losing his damn mind,
knew better, He knew his wife

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00:22:19.839 --> 00:22:25.200
better. Allan told Jerry, no, she's not with friends. I've already

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00:22:25.200 --> 00:22:29.359
tried that. Get in that house
and see what's wrong. Take the windows

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off, force the doors, whatever
it takes. Jerry didn't want to break

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into Allan's house, so he called
his barber, Leicester Galer. As Jerry

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00:22:37.960 --> 00:22:42.400
and Lester prepared to break into Allan's
house, Richard, the reluctant neighbor,

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finally showed up. He had a
bunch of house keys with him. Since

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Richard was the real estate agent who
sold the house to Betty and Allan,

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he figured he might still have a
key to the place in his key stash.

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Together, the three men went through
key after key trying to get the

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00:23:00.039 --> 00:23:04.160
backdoor open, but none of the
keys worked. Finally, Richard tried the

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00:23:04.200 --> 00:23:08.759
front door and to his surprise,
it swung open. It was unlocked.

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00:23:10.359 --> 00:23:17.160
It had probably been unlocked this entire
time. All three men immediately understood the

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00:23:17.200 --> 00:23:22.039
importance of an unlocked door and Betty
not answering the phone. They hesitated before

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going in. When they did,
it was like stepping into a horror movie.

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00:23:30.079 --> 00:23:36.039
I'm going to pause now to hear
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00:23:36.079 --> 00:23:40.880
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first month. That's better Help help
dot com slash Southern. At eleven fifteen

296
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pm on June thirteenth, nineteen eighty, Richard Parker, Jerry McMahon, and

297
00:24:56.640 --> 00:25:02.200
Lester Galor gathered up their courage to
enter the Gore home. They were looking

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00:25:02.240 --> 00:25:04.720
for Alan's wife, Betty, and
they all had a bad feeling about this.

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00:25:04.880 --> 00:25:10.559
Now she hadn't answered the Gore's house
land line for over ten hours.

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00:25:11.319 --> 00:25:15.559
As the three men went inside and
started searching each room, they yelled Betty's

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00:25:15.680 --> 00:25:22.079
name, but she didn't respond.
They found eleven month old Bethany Gore first.

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00:25:22.640 --> 00:25:26.480
She was crying in her crib and
she had clearly been alone for some

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00:25:26.640 --> 00:25:30.200
time. The poor baby was covered
in her own filth, and she had

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00:25:30.240 --> 00:25:36.160
cried so long her voice was hoarse. Richard took Bethany across the street to

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00:25:36.240 --> 00:25:40.640
his house, where his wife took
care of her. Back in the Gore

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00:25:40.720 --> 00:25:45.680
house, the men carefully opened each
door looking for Betty. During the search,

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00:25:45.079 --> 00:25:51.279
they noticed a strong pungent odor coming
from somewhere. They couldn't tell where

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00:25:52.119 --> 00:25:56.519
until Lester opened the door to the
laundry room. It was attached to the

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kitchen. When he opened the door, he saw all blood, so much

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00:26:00.799 --> 00:26:06.680
blood. He immediately closed it.
He hadn't seen Betty's body, but he

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00:26:06.759 --> 00:26:11.680
knew she was in there. Next, Jerry looked inside the small twelve by

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00:26:11.720 --> 00:26:15.720
six room. He shut the door
quickly and declared, she's dead. She's

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00:26:15.759 --> 00:26:22.000
blown her head off. At this
same time, Allan called his home's landline

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00:26:22.000 --> 00:26:26.759
again. Lester picked up, but
chickened out and handed the phone to Jerry,

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00:26:26.359 --> 00:26:32.000
and Jerry told Alan that his baby
daughter Bethany was safe, but thirty

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00:26:32.079 --> 00:26:37.599
year old Betty Eileen Gore was dead. Jerry had assumed it was a suicide

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00:26:37.920 --> 00:26:41.799
and probably told Alan as much,
but Jerry also said that he had seen

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00:26:41.839 --> 00:26:48.000
a three foot long wood handled axe
in the utility room with Betty, so

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00:26:48.119 --> 00:26:52.559
maybe this was an axe murder.
Allan called Candy to tell her the news

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00:26:52.599 --> 00:26:59.519
at eleven thirty pm. Candy sounded
shocked and then asked if Bethany was okay,

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and Alan and said she was.
Then he asked Candy not to tell

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00:27:03.480 --> 00:27:07.880
five year old Elissa of her mother's
death, he wanted to tell her himself.

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00:27:07.799 --> 00:27:11.640
Before Alan hung up, He asked
Candy to watch Elyssa for a few

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00:27:11.640 --> 00:27:18.000
more days, and she agreed.
When detectives arrived at the Gore house,

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00:27:18.400 --> 00:27:22.759
they quickly determined that Betty's death was
definitely not a suicide. No one could

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00:27:22.799 --> 00:27:27.079
have done to themselves what someone had
done to Betty. It just wasn't physically

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00:27:27.119 --> 00:27:33.759
possible. The blood covered axe in
the laundry room was obviously the murder weapon,

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00:27:33.359 --> 00:27:38.039
and initial reports claimed that Betty had
suffered fifteen chop wounds from the axe,

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00:27:38.519 --> 00:27:45.039
but later the autopsy would indicate that
Betty had actually endured forty one chop

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00:27:45.079 --> 00:27:49.680
wounds, and she was alive for
forty of them. Twenty eight of the

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00:27:49.720 --> 00:27:53.759
blows were directly to her face.
Her skull was crushed from the front and

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00:27:53.960 --> 00:27:59.960
back. One of her arms was
almost severed, probably in her desperate attempt

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00:28:00.400 --> 00:28:03.920
to shield her head. Her cause
of death was written as blows to the

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00:28:03.960 --> 00:28:08.839
head. Needless to say, the
crime scene was incredibly gruesome, with blood

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00:28:08.839 --> 00:28:12.640
splashed up the walls and all over
the small room, and Betty lying in

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00:28:12.680 --> 00:28:18.839
a very large, congealing pool of
blood. Her head was so mangled.

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00:28:18.119 --> 00:28:23.920
The officers struggled to look at her. Journalist Jim Atkinson and John Bloom wrote

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00:28:23.920 --> 00:28:29.720
in Texas Monthly the following description,
which is graphic if you want to skip

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00:28:29.759 --> 00:28:34.119
ahead about thirty seconds. To get
a look at her face, the men

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00:28:34.200 --> 00:28:37.680
had to walk around the ocean of
red. What they saw was even more

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00:28:37.759 --> 00:28:42.640
unsettling. Her lips were parted,
showing her front teeth, her mouth fashioned

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00:28:42.680 --> 00:28:48.880
into a half grin. Her hair
radiated in all directions a tangled, soaked

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00:28:48.960 --> 00:28:52.880
mess of glistening black, and Betty's
left eye was wide open, staring down

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00:28:52.880 --> 00:28:56.759
at the gaping black craters in her
arm. As to her right eye,

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00:28:57.119 --> 00:29:02.160
she appeared to not have one.
The entire right half of her face seemed

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00:29:02.200 --> 00:29:07.359
to be gone. The investigation into
Betty's murder was conducted by the Collin County

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00:29:07.440 --> 00:29:11.519
Sheriff's Office, the Wily Police Department, and the Dallas Homicide Detective Unit.

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00:29:12.240 --> 00:29:17.200
From the jump, they knew this
wasn't a robbery. There was cash lying

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out in the open, completely untouched. As police combed the Gore household,

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they of course found the axe,
but they also discovered the following key pieces

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00:29:26.799 --> 00:29:30.839
of evidence. A small bloody footprint
near Betty's body, a bloody fingerprint on

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00:29:30.880 --> 00:29:37.279
the refrigerator, and both blood and
hair in the Gore shower, as if

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00:29:37.319 --> 00:29:41.640
someone had tried to clean themselves up
after killing Betty. There was blood on

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00:29:41.680 --> 00:29:47.039
the Fawcets soap, dish, shower
curtain and in the tub. Keep in

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00:29:47.119 --> 00:29:51.319
mind, we're in nineteen eighty right
now. DNA analysis was a long ways

356
00:29:51.319 --> 00:29:55.960
away, so despite having both blood
and hair samples that were probably from the

357
00:29:56.039 --> 00:30:00.640
killer, the detectives couldn't do much
with it. They could do something with

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00:30:00.680 --> 00:30:06.559
a fingerprint. However, the police
chief told the fort Worth Star Telegram that

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00:30:06.640 --> 00:30:11.200
he had no motive and no suspects. Betty hadn't been robbed or raped.

360
00:30:11.680 --> 00:30:15.400
There weren't even signs of a forced
entry, but clearly she was murdered.

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00:30:15.920 --> 00:30:22.039
It looked like a crime of passion
and also not premeditated. The acts came

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00:30:22.119 --> 00:30:25.640
from inside the Gore home. The
killer did not bring it with them,

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00:30:26.000 --> 00:30:30.119
and Betty had clearly opened the door
for this person. It was someone she

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00:30:30.240 --> 00:30:34.839
knew, or at least wasn't afraid
of. News about Betty Gore's death traveled

365
00:30:34.880 --> 00:30:40.279
fast. Hers was the first murderer
while he had seen in fifteen years,

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00:30:40.799 --> 00:30:44.920
and as a result, the entire
town was a twitter. Friends called friends,

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00:30:44.960 --> 00:30:48.759
who called two more friends. They
all concluded that it had to be

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00:30:48.839 --> 00:30:55.440
some very sick person who had so
viciously murdered Betty Gore. The only solace

369
00:30:55.519 --> 00:31:00.279
they had as the murderer walked free
was that they probably weren't going to kill

370
00:31:00.319 --> 00:31:03.440
again. After all, the axe
that was used to murder Betty was from

371
00:31:03.440 --> 00:31:08.480
Betty's own house. It hung in
her garage. If some psycho ax murderer

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00:31:08.559 --> 00:31:12.559
was wandering the streets, surely they
would have their own acts, or at

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the very least, they would have
taken the one they used to murder Betty.

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00:31:17.599 --> 00:31:22.559
One law official named John Buddy Newton
told the Associated Press, it's just

375
00:31:22.720 --> 00:31:26.839
my personal opinion, based on no
evidence, that this was a one shot

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00:31:26.880 --> 00:31:30.119
deal executed in a moment of frenzy. I don't feel like there's a psycho

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00:31:30.200 --> 00:31:34.400
on the loose. I think the
person was the intended victim and there was

378
00:31:34.440 --> 00:31:40.359
no reason other than what motivated the
killer. I could be entirely wrong,

379
00:31:40.759 --> 00:31:44.519
but it is just a gut feeling. The killer went after the person they

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00:31:44.559 --> 00:31:48.480
wanted and did a very thorough job
of it. Newton would be pretty much

381
00:31:48.559 --> 00:31:53.359
right. This was personal and people
probably didn't need to worry about a killer

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00:31:53.359 --> 00:31:59.200
on the loose. Regardless, the
public was still scared. A woman was

383
00:31:59.240 --> 00:32:04.400
literally chopped to pieces. It's scary. Everyone double checked that their doors were

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00:32:04.400 --> 00:32:07.759
locked each night and kept loaded guns
at the ready. One of Betty's neighbors

385
00:32:07.759 --> 00:32:12.160
told the AP I hate to say
this, but I hope it was someone

386
00:32:12.200 --> 00:32:15.599
who knew her. It's really scary
to think about some weirdo just walking in

387
00:32:15.680 --> 00:32:21.720
off the street and doing it.
On June sixteenth, three days after the

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00:32:21.799 --> 00:32:25.680
murderer, over two hundred and fifty
people attended Betty's funeral at her Methodist church.

389
00:32:27.519 --> 00:32:31.079
The next day, AP News reported
that local detectives were still unsure of

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00:32:31.079 --> 00:32:37.400
what happened Betty. A wily police
officer told the reporters, we don't have

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00:32:37.440 --> 00:32:42.240
anything, really, and we don't
know anything, not a thing so far.

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00:32:42.759 --> 00:32:45.960
The investigators had picked up two men
thinking they could be somehow related to

393
00:32:45.960 --> 00:32:52.519
Betty's case, but they weren't.
And then on June twentieth, seven days

394
00:32:52.519 --> 00:32:57.960
after Betty's murder, newspapers reported that
a Dallas County fingerprint expert had a strong

395
00:32:58.079 --> 00:33:04.279
lead. They had successful identified a
suspect for Betty Gore's killer. Using that

396
00:33:04.359 --> 00:33:07.440
bloody fingerprint on the fridge, they
matched a set of prints from a female

397
00:33:07.480 --> 00:33:13.839
subject. They wouldn't name who this
female subject was. They only referenced her

398
00:33:13.960 --> 00:33:17.480
as a friend of the family.
Two days passed and no arrest was made.

399
00:33:19.119 --> 00:33:22.039
The people of Wiley were baffled.
If the police had, as they

400
00:33:22.079 --> 00:33:25.839
said in their own words, a
good clean match for the bloody fingerprint,

401
00:33:27.319 --> 00:33:30.759
why was there no arrest. Was
a killer just walking free? None of

402
00:33:30.759 --> 00:33:37.200
this made sense. Finally, on
Jean twenty sixth, nineteen eighty, thirteen

403
00:33:37.279 --> 00:33:43.599
days after Betty was killed, some
progress was made. The police arrested thirty

404
00:33:43.680 --> 00:33:47.759
year old Candy Lynn Montgomery, a
friend of the Gore family, a housewife,

405
00:33:49.119 --> 00:33:55.720
a devout churchgoer, and Alan Gore's
mistress. I'm going to pause now

406
00:33:55.799 --> 00:34:06.599
for a commercial break. Candice Lynne
Wheeler was born on November fifteenth, nineteen

407
00:34:06.640 --> 00:34:10.199
forty nine. Her father was a
radar technician for the military, so Candy

408
00:34:10.239 --> 00:34:15.360
was an army brat, moving across
the United States a lot during her childhood,

409
00:34:15.760 --> 00:34:21.679
as well as overseas, and every
time Candy's family relocated to a new

410
00:34:21.719 --> 00:34:24.400
state, she did pretty well.
She would meet new people, build a

411
00:34:24.440 --> 00:34:29.559
new life, and do her best
to thrive. After moving around so much,

412
00:34:29.840 --> 00:34:34.400
she learned to be really friendly,
not necessarily outspoken or loud, but

413
00:34:34.480 --> 00:34:37.599
just nice, the kind of woman
who felt at home anywhere and everywhere.

414
00:34:38.239 --> 00:34:45.239
She was easygoing and had a quiet
confidence about her. Texas Monthly described Candy

415
00:34:45.400 --> 00:34:51.079
as a pretty vivacious, utterly normal
suburban housewife. They went on to say

416
00:34:51.119 --> 00:34:54.239
she was a loving mother, a
devoted wife, a churchgoer, and everyone's

417
00:34:54.280 --> 00:35:00.519
friend to those around Candy, her
sweetness didn't feel like an act. She

418
00:35:00.719 --> 00:35:05.360
wasn't a sociopath hidden in plain sight. She was just a kind person,

419
00:35:06.000 --> 00:35:10.039
or at least she seemed like one. Candy married her husband, Pat on

420
00:35:10.079 --> 00:35:15.760
October sixth, nineteen seventy in al
Paso, Texas, when she was twenty

421
00:35:15.800 --> 00:35:20.960
years old. Pat Montgomery, as
they pronounced it, had been older at

422
00:35:21.000 --> 00:35:25.239
twenty five, and he was a
rising star in the electrical engineering world.

423
00:35:27.039 --> 00:35:30.360
He worked for Texas Instruments, which
was actually where he met Candy. She

424
00:35:30.519 --> 00:35:36.559
was a secretary there. In nineteen
seventy seven, after seven years of marriage,

425
00:35:36.760 --> 00:35:39.559
Candy and Pat moved to Fairview,
Texas, another suburb of Dallas.

426
00:35:40.320 --> 00:35:44.519
By this time, they had a
son and a daughter, and Pat was

427
00:35:44.559 --> 00:35:49.559
doing really well. He made seventy
thousand a year at Texas Instruments today about

428
00:35:49.639 --> 00:35:53.079
three hundred and fifty thousand dollars a
year. As you can imagine, Candy

429
00:35:53.159 --> 00:35:57.800
did not need to work, so
she was a housewife. She took care

430
00:35:57.840 --> 00:36:01.000
of the kids, the house,
cooked, ran all the errands, and

431
00:36:01.119 --> 00:36:07.119
by Candy's own admission, she was
still bored. She decided to do something

432
00:36:07.199 --> 00:36:13.800
about it, create a little adventure
in her humdrum, whitebread life. So

433
00:36:14.199 --> 00:36:17.079
she decided to have an affair.
She even spoke to her friends about it

434
00:36:17.360 --> 00:36:22.320
in a hypothetical way. Of course, she joked about taking a lover,

435
00:36:22.480 --> 00:36:27.719
but it wasn't all jokes. She
explained to her friends that she wasn't feeling

436
00:36:27.719 --> 00:36:30.239
the spark with Pat anymore. They
had been arguing a lot, and she

437
00:36:30.320 --> 00:36:37.880
wanted better sex. Candy's exact words
were, I want fireworks. She met

438
00:36:37.920 --> 00:36:42.000
Alan Gore in late nineteen seventy seven. She and Pat went to the same

439
00:36:42.079 --> 00:36:45.639
church as Alan and Betty, and
as active church members, they ran into

440
00:36:45.679 --> 00:36:51.159
each other a lot. Their choir
practices were at the same time they played

441
00:36:51.199 --> 00:36:54.400
on the church volleyball team together,
and because of all that, Candy and

442
00:36:54.440 --> 00:37:00.320
Allan would chat frequently and no one
thought anything of it. Maybe Allan teased

443
00:37:00.360 --> 00:37:04.840
Candy a little more than he did
the other women at church. Maybe their

444
00:37:04.880 --> 00:37:08.679
shared smiles seemed to tad too intimate. But for the most part, it

445
00:37:08.800 --> 00:37:13.440
just seemed like Candy and Pat had
bonded with Betty and Allan. Though way

446
00:37:13.480 --> 00:37:17.079
married couples with kids do. They
would babysit each other's children and wave if

447
00:37:17.079 --> 00:37:21.840
they passed each other on the street. They had a lot in common.

448
00:37:22.440 --> 00:37:27.400
Both men worked in what was called
silicon prairie and lucrative tech jobs, and

449
00:37:27.519 --> 00:37:31.599
they were both relatively happy with home
and work. Both women felt stifled and

450
00:37:31.679 --> 00:37:37.280
bored in their small towns, their
lives molded around their husband and children.

451
00:37:37.119 --> 00:37:42.440
Of course, outwardly they would say
they had the church choir and young daughters

452
00:37:42.440 --> 00:37:46.800
in common. Their girls were best
friends. But they were both unhappy in

453
00:37:46.840 --> 00:37:52.920
their lives. In a way,
they were warped mirror images of their happy,

454
00:37:52.920 --> 00:37:57.760
go lucky husbands. Candy just hid
it under a happy housewife facade,

455
00:37:58.119 --> 00:38:04.599
while Betty seemed to emanate unhappy happiness
to everyone. But back to the affair,

456
00:38:05.320 --> 00:38:08.320
if Candy knew Allan for months before
they began their affair. What spurred

457
00:38:08.360 --> 00:38:13.199
it? What caused Candy to think
Allan, of all people, would be

458
00:38:13.239 --> 00:38:16.639
a great person to have an affair
with. Remember, Allan was not a

459
00:38:16.679 --> 00:38:22.360
traditionally handsome guy. He had a
receding hairline, a bit of a gut.

460
00:38:22.719 --> 00:38:25.599
He wasn't a snappy dresser. I
am not trying to hate on Alan,

461
00:38:25.840 --> 00:38:29.760
but it's the truth, and a
lot of people have wondered why she

462
00:38:29.840 --> 00:38:32.800
was attracted to him. I feel
like I need to point out that Candy

463
00:38:32.960 --> 00:38:37.480
was considered attractive, though not a
knockout. She was thin, an athletic

464
00:38:37.519 --> 00:38:42.920
build. But it's her styling you'll
wonder about. Many of you may see

465
00:38:42.920 --> 00:38:46.599
photos and disagree that she was attractive. I went through this with Darley Routier,

466
00:38:46.880 --> 00:38:52.360
so I get it. I ask
of you to remember that hairstyles over

467
00:38:52.400 --> 00:38:57.239
forty years ago were a trip.
Perms were all the rage, though at

468
00:38:57.320 --> 00:39:00.719
least my mom had long hair when
she permed hers. But the hairstyle Candy

469
00:39:00.760 --> 00:39:07.800
war was not unusual, just a
tad short. She was also later advised

470
00:39:07.880 --> 00:39:12.000
to change her hair to a more
conservative style for court, which is where

471
00:39:12.000 --> 00:39:15.920
most photos you will see come from. Is it attractive now once she changed

472
00:39:15.960 --> 00:39:21.639
it? Hell no, But this
isn't nineteen eighty and it was considered a

473
00:39:21.679 --> 00:39:28.079
mousei hairdo even then. And let's
be more fair, Candy's husband Pat wasn't

474
00:39:28.119 --> 00:39:30.960
a looker either, and Betty,
while she did have a lovely smile,

475
00:39:31.360 --> 00:39:36.800
had a haircut worse than Candies,
and the stress and depression she suffered in

476
00:39:36.840 --> 00:39:42.559
her later years showed on her.
The point is all of these people were

477
00:39:42.599 --> 00:39:46.400
just normal people. That's what makes
this story so salacious. It wasn't really

478
00:39:46.440 --> 00:39:52.760
Candy's looks that attracted Alan. He
was flattered and enjoyed her forwardness anyway.

479
00:39:52.840 --> 00:39:58.079
According to Texas Monthly, in the
summer of nineteen seventy eight, there was

480
00:39:58.119 --> 00:40:02.840
a catalyst that ignited Candy's flame for
Alan. As the story goes, Candy

481
00:40:02.840 --> 00:40:07.360
and Allan bumped into each other while
playing volleyball together, and that's when Candy

482
00:40:07.440 --> 00:40:13.960
noticed that Alan smelled really good.
According to Texas Monthly, Alan smelled so

483
00:40:14.000 --> 00:40:17.840
good that Candy just had to have
him. So one day, following choir

484
00:40:17.920 --> 00:40:22.320
practice, Alan was walking to his
car and that's when Candy stopped him.

485
00:40:23.079 --> 00:40:27.920
He was already in the driver's seat, so she opened the passenger door and

486
00:40:28.000 --> 00:40:31.360
got in his car. According to
Texas Monthly, Candy said, Alan,

487
00:40:31.800 --> 00:40:37.360
I'll want to talk to you sometime
about something that's been bothering me. I've

488
00:40:37.360 --> 00:40:39.880
been thinking about you a lot,
and I don't know whether I want you

489
00:40:39.920 --> 00:40:44.760
to do anything about it or not. Then she got out of the car

490
00:40:44.960 --> 00:40:49.760
and left. Alan was shocked,
though, like I said, flattered.

491
00:40:50.360 --> 00:40:54.119
This exchange was very unusual for him, but he was intrigued. A week

492
00:40:54.199 --> 00:40:59.159
later, Alan and Candy began chatting
after a church volleyball game. They were

493
00:40:59.199 --> 00:41:02.880
cleaning up the gym and walked out
to their cars together. It was then

494
00:41:02.920 --> 00:41:07.079
that Allan asked Candy what she had
meant when she approached him earlier, and

495
00:41:07.199 --> 00:41:13.559
Candy asked, would you be interested
in having an affair? Allan didn't know

496
00:41:13.599 --> 00:41:17.079
how to respond. He told Candy
that he loved Betty. He mentioned that

497
00:41:17.119 --> 00:41:21.760
Betty had had a brief affair when
they lived in New Mexico years earlier.

498
00:41:22.599 --> 00:41:27.719
He had obviously forgiven her, but
not forgotten it. Alan remembered that he

499
00:41:27.760 --> 00:41:30.920
was so incredibly hurt by her infidelity
that he didn't want to do the same

500
00:41:30.960 --> 00:41:36.559
thing to Betty, especially since they
had just found out that Betty was pregnant,

501
00:41:37.280 --> 00:41:40.480
so Candy pulled back. She agreed
with Alan, and she said it

502
00:41:40.480 --> 00:41:45.000
would be best not to hurt her
husband too. According to Texas Monthly,

503
00:41:45.079 --> 00:41:49.639
Candy said, I was just putting
the option out there because of how I

504
00:41:49.719 --> 00:41:52.079
felt, and it's up to you
to decide. I don't want to hurt

505
00:41:52.119 --> 00:41:55.559
your marriage. All I wanted to
do was go to bed. I won't

506
00:41:55.599 --> 00:42:00.800
mention it again. Then Candy chased, kissed Alan on the lips, and

507
00:42:00.920 --> 00:42:07.440
left. About three weeks past Then, on Candy's twenty ninth birthday, Alan

508
00:42:07.519 --> 00:42:12.960
called her. He offered to take
her out to lunch to discuss a potential

509
00:42:12.960 --> 00:42:16.880
affair. He needed to go to
an auto repair shop that was relatively close

510
00:42:16.960 --> 00:42:22.519
to Candy, so they met at
the car shop and Alan gave her a

511
00:42:22.559 --> 00:42:27.280
birthday card. It read for the
Last of the Red Hot Lovers and had

512
00:42:27.320 --> 00:42:31.719
a bat of red Hot candies inside. Then they just chatted about anything and

513
00:42:31.800 --> 00:42:37.880
everything. Candy spoke with Alan about
her creative writing course, which was especially

514
00:42:37.920 --> 00:42:43.280
exciting since her husband Pat never wanted
to talk about how well she was doing

515
00:42:43.280 --> 00:42:47.480
in that class. At the end
of this conversation, Alan admitted that he

516
00:42:47.519 --> 00:42:52.800
had never had an affair before.
Candy said she never had either. The

517
00:42:52.880 --> 00:42:58.159
two discussed how concerned they were about
hurting their spouses. They vowed to not

518
00:42:58.239 --> 00:43:02.159
get emotionally involved, that everything would
be purely physical. By the end of

519
00:43:02.159 --> 00:43:09.280
the conversation, they determined they would
continue evaluating the risks again. Weeks passed,

520
00:43:09.920 --> 00:43:14.360
Candy and Allan continued to talk about
the risks of having an affair.

521
00:43:15.280 --> 00:43:19.599
Truly, it feels like they were
hemming and hawing just for show, or

522
00:43:19.639 --> 00:43:22.679
I guess this was a type of
four play. They had never really flirted

523
00:43:22.719 --> 00:43:29.599
before Candy's proposition, so maybe that's
what all this was. But they definitely

524
00:43:29.679 --> 00:43:34.800
kept it about the ramifications of an
affair. They would ask questions like when

525
00:43:34.840 --> 00:43:37.960
would we do it? What if
somebody saw us, and debate the answers

526
00:43:38.000 --> 00:43:43.280
to no end. At one point, Candy invited Alan to her house for

527
00:43:43.400 --> 00:43:46.679
lunch one day and presented a big
piece of butcher paper for them to write

528
00:43:46.679 --> 00:43:52.639
down a proclm list about their affair. It was titled Whys and why Nots.

529
00:43:53.480 --> 00:43:58.119
It was intended as a cute joke, but it was also in a

530
00:43:58.159 --> 00:44:04.000
way serious. After all, they
did write down pro con bulletin points on

531
00:44:04.039 --> 00:44:07.320
the butcher paper. The biggest con
was, of course, getting caught,

532
00:44:08.239 --> 00:44:15.400
but Candy reassured Alan that they would
be very careful. Alan was also worried

533
00:44:15.440 --> 00:44:20.840
that either he or Candy would become
emotionally entangled. Candy said, as reported

534
00:44:20.840 --> 00:44:24.000
by Texas Monthly, Alan, as
far as I'm concerned, this is just

535
00:44:24.159 --> 00:44:29.320
for fun. I'm not serious about
it. It's just a companionship thing,

536
00:44:29.639 --> 00:44:31.920
and we shouldn't be afraid of it. Whatever happens, will do it for

537
00:44:32.000 --> 00:44:37.960
a while, and then it will
be over. That lunch at Candy's helped

538
00:44:37.039 --> 00:44:43.199
keep building the tension towards the big
moment when it finally happened, and eventually

539
00:44:43.400 --> 00:44:46.800
it did happen. A few days
after the big pro con list, Allan

540
00:44:46.880 --> 00:44:52.599
called An affirmed he wanted an affair
with Candy. Then Candy created a list

541
00:44:52.599 --> 00:44:59.800
of rules so they could keep the
affair with them predetermined parameters. Some stand

542
00:44:59.760 --> 00:45:02.559
out rules included if either one of
them ever wanted to end the affair for

543
00:45:02.639 --> 00:45:07.599
whatever reason, it would end,
no questions asked. If either one became

544
00:45:07.639 --> 00:45:13.840
too emotionally involved, the affair would
end. If they ever started taking risks

545
00:45:13.880 --> 00:45:17.800
that shouldn't be taken, the affair
would end. All expenses, food,

546
00:45:17.880 --> 00:45:22.960
motel, room, gasoline would be
shared equally. They would meet only on

547
00:45:22.000 --> 00:45:27.280
week days while their spouses were at
work. Candy would be in charge of

548
00:45:27.320 --> 00:45:31.159
fixing lunch on the days they met
so that they could have more time with

549
00:45:31.239 --> 00:45:36.599
every possible TEA crossed and I dotted. The two set the date for their

550
00:45:36.639 --> 00:45:42.159
affair to launch, December twelfth,
nineteen seventy eight. Betty, who was

551
00:45:42.199 --> 00:45:46.480
still pregnant, didn't suspect anything,
and Pat was also none the wiser.

552
00:45:47.840 --> 00:45:52.480
Once every other week, Candy would
wake up extra early to cook a lavish

553
00:45:52.599 --> 00:45:57.840
lunch. She'd pack it neatly in
a picnic basket, and then she and

554
00:45:57.920 --> 00:46:01.679
Alan would meet during his lunch hour. Candy always booked the Como motel and

555
00:46:01.840 --> 00:46:07.480
Richardson for twenty three dollars a day. Allan was in a high up,

556
00:46:07.519 --> 00:46:12.079
trusted position at work, so he
could take two hour lunches with no one

557
00:46:12.199 --> 00:46:16.119
noticing, and he often did when
he was with Candy. Richardson is another

558
00:46:16.159 --> 00:46:21.840
suburb of Dallas and about fifteen minutes
from Candy's home in Fairview, so it

559
00:46:22.000 --> 00:46:25.000
wasn't in the town's either new lover
lived nor where Allan and Pat worked,

560
00:46:25.440 --> 00:46:30.440
but it was close enough to be
convenient for Candy, who, let's face

561
00:46:30.480 --> 00:46:35.000
it, did all the work at
the como. The two would eat half

562
00:46:35.000 --> 00:46:37.320
sex, and then it was just
pillow talk until it was time for Allan

563
00:46:37.360 --> 00:46:42.920
to head back to work. For
a few months, this was pretty exciting

564
00:46:42.920 --> 00:46:47.280
for both Allan and Candy. Allan, who wasn't very experienced sexually, thought

565
00:46:47.360 --> 00:46:52.800
Candy was good in bed, and
Candy thought Allan showed potential. But after

566
00:46:52.880 --> 00:46:58.320
a while she realized the sex with
Allan was not getting any better, and

567
00:46:58.440 --> 00:47:00.719
it was actually a lot of work
for her to get up early and make

568
00:47:00.719 --> 00:47:07.480
these extravagant lunches on their affair days. Not to mention, Alan had started

569
00:47:07.480 --> 00:47:12.440
expecting more from Candy, sweet notes
packed in the lunch cookies for him to

570
00:47:12.480 --> 00:47:15.400
take home, little things that just
gave Candy more and more work to do.

571
00:47:16.239 --> 00:47:21.159
She had done these things willingly in
the beginning, little shows of affection,

572
00:47:21.679 --> 00:47:24.760
but now it was becoming work.
After a while, Candy and Alan

573
00:47:24.800 --> 00:47:30.559
stopped having sexes often. They still
met regularly and had sex sometimes, but

574
00:47:30.639 --> 00:47:36.719
they were more best friends than lovers, as Texas Monthly described it. But

575
00:47:36.800 --> 00:47:42.239
that didn't stop Candy from falling for
Alan, which is now when my old

576
00:47:42.239 --> 00:47:46.400
ass will remind you that the best
romantic relationships are people who are best friends

577
00:47:46.880 --> 00:47:53.760
companionship, being able to really talk
to someone creates real intimacy. So even

578
00:47:53.760 --> 00:48:00.199
though Candy was disappointed by the sex
in February of nineteen seventy nine, old

579
00:48:00.199 --> 00:48:02.559
Allan she was thinking about him too
much and she didn't want to have to

580
00:48:02.599 --> 00:48:07.199
deal with the inevitable heartbreak. She
was trying to end the affair, but

581
00:48:07.320 --> 00:48:13.599
Alan stopped Candy in her tracks.
He reassured her that the relationship wouldn't get

582
00:48:13.639 --> 00:48:19.760
too serious. Without much argument,
Candy agreed. Although Alan was in this

583
00:48:19.920 --> 00:48:22.840
just as deeply as Candy, he
wasn't catching feelings the way she was.

584
00:48:23.400 --> 00:48:28.840
He just felt like he needed her. Did you just hear Phil Collins singing

585
00:48:28.880 --> 00:48:30.960
to you? Because I did?
I love that song in too deep?

586
00:48:31.360 --> 00:48:37.840
Anyway, their relationship was special and
thrilling. It improved Alan's self confidence to

587
00:48:37.880 --> 00:48:43.440
have a pretty woman infatuated with him, cooking meals for him and having sex

588
00:48:43.480 --> 00:48:49.159
with him. Of Course, Alan
had no intention ever of divorcing Betty,

589
00:48:49.519 --> 00:48:53.639
let alone marrying Candy. He just
liked their little secret, their shared glances

590
00:48:53.679 --> 00:49:00.519
at church, Alan felt wanted and
that's all he wanted. And now at

591
00:49:00.639 --> 00:49:04.679
Erica will tell you that this is
another cliche. This affair was supposed to

592
00:49:04.760 --> 00:49:10.320
be exciting. Candy didn't feel excited
yet she felt emotionally attached. Alan was

593
00:49:10.400 --> 00:49:15.519
excited, but he didn't fell in
love with Candy, but he had bigger

594
00:49:15.559 --> 00:49:21.199
problems. In June of nineteen seventy
nine, Allan became worried that is now

595
00:49:21.440 --> 00:49:25.239
seven months pregnant wife would go into
labor while he was out having an affair

596
00:49:25.280 --> 00:49:30.440
with Candy. He wouldn't be reachable
since he would be at the unknown hotel.

597
00:49:30.559 --> 00:49:35.880
And yes, cheating on your pregnant
wife is some next level stassary,

598
00:49:37.480 --> 00:49:40.159
but at least Alan knew he would
be devastated if his baby was born while

599
00:49:40.159 --> 00:49:45.920
he was off cheating on his wife. He suggested to Candy that they paused

600
00:49:45.960 --> 00:49:51.079
their affair until the baby was born, and Candy agreed. What a gentleman.

601
00:49:52.239 --> 00:49:55.280
That same month, Candy threw Betty
a surprised baby shower. Most of

602
00:49:55.320 --> 00:50:00.840
the churchwomen came. They ate cake, open gifts, and a generally good

603
00:50:00.880 --> 00:50:07.679
time. Betty appeared unaware of Candy's
affair with her husband, which is just

604
00:50:07.920 --> 00:50:12.719
bananas. Alan haunts the affair,
so then Candy throws his wife a baby

605
00:50:12.760 --> 00:50:17.440
shower. You can't make this shut
up anyway. That July of nineteen seventy

606
00:50:17.519 --> 00:50:22.519
nine, as you know, Betty
gave birth to Bethany. Following that,

607
00:50:22.719 --> 00:50:28.199
Candy and Allan resumed their affair,
but it wasn't the same. Allan,

608
00:50:28.559 --> 00:50:32.079
for the first time ever, felt
guilty about what he was doing to Betty,

609
00:50:32.280 --> 00:50:38.079
and Alan might have had a gut
feeling that Betty suspected something. I'm

610
00:50:38.079 --> 00:50:49.039
going to pause now for a short
commercial break. Right after Bethany was born,

611
00:50:49.360 --> 00:50:52.880
Alan and Betty planned a trip to
Kansas. They wanted to show off

612
00:50:52.920 --> 00:50:55.960
their new baby to Betty's parents in
Norwich. They arrived back at their home

613
00:50:57.079 --> 00:51:01.480
late on a Thursday night. Betty
figured that Allan wouldn't go into work the

614
00:51:01.559 --> 00:51:05.639
next day, after all, that's
what he had done in the past.

615
00:51:06.280 --> 00:51:09.400
But for some reason, Allan was
insistent he needed to go back to the

616
00:51:09.440 --> 00:51:15.400
office tomorrow. And we know why. Alan had a date with Candy over

617
00:51:15.480 --> 00:51:19.920
his lunch hour. But Betty didn't
know this, and she was pissed.

618
00:51:20.480 --> 00:51:23.400
She kept asking Alan why what on
earth was going on at work that was

619
00:51:23.400 --> 00:51:29.360
so urgent. She needed his help
unpacking, managing the kids, and running

620
00:51:29.480 --> 00:51:35.360
errands. It felt like Alan was
abandoning her. Finally, Alan relented,

621
00:51:36.000 --> 00:51:38.000
but before he went to bed that
Thursday night, he did something out of

622
00:51:38.000 --> 00:51:44.360
the ordinary. He called Candy Montgomery. While on the phone with Candy,

623
00:51:44.559 --> 00:51:49.480
Allan brought up some church function that
Betty hadn't heard of. He told Candy

624
00:51:49.480 --> 00:51:52.239
he wouldn't be able to make it
to the function the next day. Betty

625
00:51:52.320 --> 00:51:57.360
didn't think much of this exchange.
She and Allan were heavily involved at the

626
00:51:57.400 --> 00:52:01.559
local Methodist church. They did a
lot of events. It's not impossible that

627
00:52:01.599 --> 00:52:07.800
maybe some function or another had slipped
her mind. But Betty did remember this

628
00:52:07.840 --> 00:52:10.599
incident later, whether she meant to
or not, and she might have thought

629
00:52:10.639 --> 00:52:16.119
about it a few times, especially
after one particular night when Betty wanted to

630
00:52:16.159 --> 00:52:22.280
have sex with Alan. This was
rare for Betty. She never initiated sex.

631
00:52:22.760 --> 00:52:27.039
In fact, they hadn't even had
sex since Bethany was born weeks earlier,

632
00:52:28.000 --> 00:52:31.239
and Allan, knowing that his wife
hardly ever offered sex without coaxing,

633
00:52:32.039 --> 00:52:37.000
turned her down. He said he
was too tired. Now Betty was hurt

634
00:52:37.679 --> 00:52:43.519
defeated, and she told Alan as
much. Betty said she felt unloved and

635
00:52:43.639 --> 00:52:49.920
fat, and nothing Allan said could
fix it. For such a conservatively raised

636
00:52:49.960 --> 00:52:52.920
woman to get up the nerve to
make the first move and then be rejected

637
00:52:53.119 --> 00:53:00.480
would be the ultimate humiliation, and
it certainly was for Betty. Fall of

638
00:53:00.559 --> 00:53:05.599
nineteen seventy nine, Betty became depressed. She returned to teaching, which,

639
00:53:05.639 --> 00:53:09.480
considering how little she enjoyed her job, didn't help her depression, and she

640
00:53:09.559 --> 00:53:15.119
started getting horrible back pains. Her
neck was constantly sore. That's the thing

641
00:53:15.159 --> 00:53:21.599
with depression, it can make your
whole body hurt. Betty was losing her

642
00:53:21.639 --> 00:53:24.800
spark. Her confidence was gone.
She was a shell of who she used

643
00:53:24.840 --> 00:53:30.519
to be, and Alan noticed.
He came to Candy trying to end the

644
00:53:30.559 --> 00:53:35.840
affair, but Candy wasn't having it. Alan tried to explain he told Candy

645
00:53:35.920 --> 00:53:39.159
about the night that he couldn't perform
for Betty and how destructive it was to

646
00:53:39.199 --> 00:53:45.920
his marriage, but Candy argued.
She said that Betty was being unfair,

647
00:53:45.400 --> 00:53:50.719
and she also accused Allan of being
unfair. When Candy had wanted to end

648
00:53:50.760 --> 00:53:54.280
things months ago, he wouldn't let
her, but now now he wanted to

649
00:53:54.400 --> 00:54:00.239
end things. After this debacle,
Candy and Allan's affair and last much longer.

650
00:54:01.639 --> 00:54:06.639
Allan started a new job, one
that required less travel so he could

651
00:54:06.679 --> 00:54:09.480
spend more time with Betty, and
then he and Betty had their life changing

652
00:54:09.559 --> 00:54:15.079
experience at the Marriage Encounters program.
That was the last straw that broke the

653
00:54:15.119 --> 00:54:20.880
camel's back. In late nineteen seventy
nine, Allan came to Candy and explained

654
00:54:21.159 --> 00:54:24.840
that he wanted to give his full
resources to his family. Their affair was

655
00:54:24.920 --> 00:54:30.400
over. Candy and pat actually did
the same Marriage Accounters program too, once

656
00:54:30.480 --> 00:54:35.159
Candy saw the difference in the Gore
marriage, but they didn't have the same

657
00:54:35.199 --> 00:54:40.159
great results as Betty and Allen.
On Friday, June thirteenth of nineteen eighty,

658
00:54:40.400 --> 00:54:45.320
the day Betty was murdered, Candy
and Allan's affair had been over for

659
00:54:45.400 --> 00:54:50.719
about half a year. Alyssa had
spent the night at Candy's house the night

660
00:54:50.760 --> 00:54:55.280
before. She was best friends with
Jenny, Candy's daughter. Candy then took

661
00:54:55.320 --> 00:54:59.960
all the kids to vacation Bobble School, which she, of course had held

662
00:55:00.000 --> 00:55:05.000
help to organize. Alyssa often spent
the night, but this week Candy could

663
00:55:05.039 --> 00:55:09.320
drive her to vacation Bible School for
Betty. Candy, always the perfect mom,

664
00:55:09.519 --> 00:55:15.119
never hesitated to help out her friends. I think it's a testament that

665
00:55:15.239 --> 00:55:20.639
she didn't have any lingering, jealousy
or feelings for Alan too. That morning,

666
00:55:20.719 --> 00:55:24.039
the girls begged for Elissa to stay
one more night because the Montgomery family

667
00:55:24.159 --> 00:55:29.559
was going to the movies that night
to see The Empire Strikes Back. She

668
00:55:29.639 --> 00:55:34.840
said, of course and promised to
ask Betty for Elyssa. She called her

669
00:55:34.960 --> 00:55:38.119
and was supposed to come by around
noon to pick up Alyssa's swimsuit. The

670
00:55:38.159 --> 00:55:43.559
little girl had swim lessons that afternoon, and despite the busy day and evening

671
00:55:43.599 --> 00:55:49.000
plans, Candy was still taken Alyssa
to her lesson, but she decided to

672
00:55:49.079 --> 00:55:52.480
run over to the Gore House earlier. That way, Candy could take Alyssa

673
00:55:52.519 --> 00:55:57.880
to her swim lesson right after Vacation
Bobble School, and then they would all

674
00:55:57.920 --> 00:56:02.000
go meet Pat Montgomery at the movie
theme her. Candy also needed to stop

675
00:56:02.000 --> 00:56:07.280
and get Father's Day cards. The
holiday was that weekend. She had her

676
00:56:07.360 --> 00:56:12.000
day regimented tightly, and she also
wanted to get back to vacation Bobble school,

677
00:56:12.320 --> 00:56:15.800
and time to see the kid's puppet
show. In the book Evidence of

678
00:56:15.880 --> 00:56:20.639
Love, they illustrate what a pain
in the ass all this was for Candy.

679
00:56:21.280 --> 00:56:24.000
She lived in Fairview, the church
was in Lucas, but Betty was

680
00:56:24.000 --> 00:56:29.000
in Wiley. She spent a lot
of time on the road in her station

681
00:56:29.039 --> 00:56:36.199
wagon, but never complained. When
Candy knocked on Betty's door around ten am,

682
00:56:36.280 --> 00:56:39.199
she thought Betty looked irritated when she
opened it, and she probably was.

683
00:56:39.880 --> 00:56:45.159
Candy was two hours early and her
eleven month old daughter Bethany had just

684
00:56:45.239 --> 00:56:50.199
gone down for her mid morning nap. Betty had a cup of coffee in

685
00:56:50.239 --> 00:56:52.920
her hand and was about to take
a few minutes to herself and watch the

686
00:56:52.960 --> 00:56:59.280
Phil Donahue show. Also, Alan
was gone, which Betty hated, and

687
00:56:59.360 --> 00:57:02.760
the night before or Betty had started
wondering if she was pregnant again. She

688
00:57:02.880 --> 00:57:07.960
felt all the sogns were there,
so Betty wasn't in the best mood,

689
00:57:08.199 --> 00:57:14.159
but she offered coffee to Candy,
who politely declined. Candy was friendly enough

690
00:57:14.199 --> 00:57:16.960
for the both of them. They
chatted about everything, and she even asked

691
00:57:16.960 --> 00:57:23.039
to meet the Gore's new dog.
Everything was normal, Finally, Candy mentioned

692
00:57:23.119 --> 00:57:28.440
that she needed to get going,
and then Betty explained that Alyssa didn't like

693
00:57:28.519 --> 00:57:32.239
putting her face underwater during her swim
lessons. She gave Candy the peppermints that

694
00:57:32.280 --> 00:57:38.920
she used to reward Alyssa for submerging
her whole body. Starting from here onward,

695
00:57:39.199 --> 00:57:44.039
the version of events I'm about to
tell you comes straight from Candy's court

696
00:57:44.079 --> 00:57:50.880
testimony, as reported by many local
newspapers and Texas Monthly. Nobody knows exactly

697
00:57:50.880 --> 00:57:54.440
what happened to Betty. Nobody but
Candy Montgomery, and this is what she

698
00:57:54.519 --> 00:58:00.280
said happened to Betty on June thirteenth, nineteen eighty. According to Candy,

699
00:58:00.599 --> 00:58:05.239
Betty said, out of the blue, are you having an affair with Alan,

700
00:58:05.880 --> 00:58:08.719
to which Candy said, no,
of course not. And then Betty

701
00:58:08.760 --> 00:58:14.400
followed up with a different question,
But you did, didn't you. At

702
00:58:14.440 --> 00:58:17.639
this Candy admitted she had, but
it was a long time ago, she

703
00:58:17.760 --> 00:58:22.000
promised. Betty told Candy to hold
on for a moment, and she left

704
00:58:22.039 --> 00:58:27.440
the room. When she reappeared,
she was holding a three foot axe in

705
00:58:27.440 --> 00:58:31.159
her hand. She wasn't wielding it, just holding it loosely in both hands

706
00:58:31.199 --> 00:58:37.079
with the blade pointed toward the floor. Betty told Candy, well, don't

707
00:58:37.079 --> 00:58:43.159
see him again. Candy could tell
the situation was dire, even though Betty's

708
00:58:43.159 --> 00:58:47.039
tone was subdued, and Candy said
that under the circumstances, she would just

709
00:58:47.079 --> 00:58:52.199
bring the Lissa straight home from Bobble
school. But Betty said, no,

710
00:58:52.679 --> 00:58:55.679
keep Alissa overnight. She wanted Candy
to return Alissa the next day. I

711
00:58:55.719 --> 00:59:00.679
guess when Alan would be home,
because she never wanted to see Candy again.

712
00:59:01.199 --> 00:59:06.360
Then Betty put the axe down.
She went to grab Alyssa's towel and

713
00:59:06.440 --> 00:59:09.840
told Candy to get a Lissa's swimsuit
off of the washer. Betty also gave

714
00:59:09.920 --> 00:59:15.400
Candy the peppermints that Alyssa liked.
Then Candy put the swimsuit, towel and

715
00:59:15.480 --> 00:59:21.360
candies in her handbag. She said
that Betty looked so sad that she put

716
00:59:21.360 --> 00:59:23.960
her hand on her arm and said, oh Betty, I'm so sorry.

717
00:59:25.039 --> 00:59:30.079
And at that Candy said, Betty
lost it. She shoved Candy into the

718
00:59:30.159 --> 00:59:36.280
laundry room, grabbed the axe and
rushed her. Betty screamed, you can't

719
00:59:36.320 --> 00:59:38.800
have him, over and over again. I'm going to have a baby,

720
00:59:38.840 --> 00:59:44.320
and you can't have him this time, she cried. Candy put her hands

721
00:59:44.320 --> 00:59:47.880
on the axe handle as Betty approached, denying that she wanted alan. For

722
00:59:47.920 --> 00:59:52.159
a long time, the two women
held onto the axe, waiting for the

723
00:59:52.199 --> 00:59:57.239
other's shoe to drop. Would the
situation de escalate or was someone about to

724
00:59:57.239 --> 01:00:01.920
get hurt. Finally, Betty jerked
the axe. Candy held on but started

725
01:00:01.960 --> 01:00:07.360
pleading. She said, Betty,
don't do this, please stop, and

726
01:00:07.480 --> 01:00:12.440
Betty, according to Candy, responded, I've got to kill you. They

727
01:00:12.480 --> 01:00:15.679
fought for control of the axe.
In the process, the flat part of

728
01:00:15.679 --> 01:00:21.679
the blade hit Candy in the head. Then Candy saw Betty raise the axe

729
01:00:21.679 --> 01:00:27.679
over her head. She was going
to strike Candy very very hard. At

730
01:00:27.679 --> 01:00:30.199
this point, Candy screamed and jumped
out of the way as best she could,

731
01:00:30.800 --> 01:00:34.199
but it was a small room,
so she couldn't go very far.

732
01:00:35.199 --> 01:00:37.639
She knocked some of the knick knacks
off the cabinets in an effort to escape.

733
01:00:39.039 --> 01:00:44.079
Betty swing missed and hit the linoleum, but the blade bounced and struck

734
01:00:44.119 --> 01:00:47.079
Candy's foot. Candy grabbed the blade
of the axe while Betty jerked on the

735
01:00:47.119 --> 01:00:52.639
handle. Betty moved her hands down
the handle toward the blade, trying to

736
01:00:52.639 --> 01:00:58.400
get leverage. Then she leaned in
and bit Candy's hand, and that's when

737
01:00:58.440 --> 01:01:02.199
Candy saw her opportunity. Betty was
off balance from leaning over so far,

738
01:01:02.840 --> 01:01:08.400
so Candy shoved her with the axe
and Betty fell. Candy then struck Betty's

739
01:01:08.400 --> 01:01:13.719
head with the axe. It was
a death blow, at least Candy thought

740
01:01:13.760 --> 01:01:19.760
so, but miraculously Betty wasn't dead
yet. She got up and grabbed the

741
01:01:19.800 --> 01:01:24.079
axe to go after Candy again.
Candy once again grabbed the axe by the

742
01:01:24.119 --> 01:01:30.119
handle and the two women did the
same four hands on the axe dance again.

743
01:01:30.400 --> 01:01:36.039
It was now a struggle to the
death for Betty. Candy tried to

744
01:01:36.039 --> 01:01:38.119
get out of the laundry room,
but Betty was able to stop her and

745
01:01:38.239 --> 01:01:43.280
lock the door. Candy said she
slipped and fell due to all the blood,

746
01:01:43.400 --> 01:01:46.400
but Betty, who had lost all
that blood, didn't have the strength

747
01:01:46.760 --> 01:01:52.719
to raise the axe anymore. Candy
attacked Betty's leg and Betty fell practically on

748
01:01:52.760 --> 01:02:00.119
top of Candy. Now they fought
over the axe while sitting next. He

749
01:02:00.239 --> 01:02:02.119
gave up the axe and ran for
the door, but it wouldn't open because

750
01:02:02.119 --> 01:02:07.079
Betty had locked it. She turned
toward Betty, who was wielding the axe,

751
01:02:07.079 --> 01:02:09.480
and said, Betty, don't please
let me go. I don't want

752
01:02:09.519 --> 01:02:16.239
him. I don't want him.
Betty responded by saying sh and placing one

753
01:02:16.280 --> 01:02:22.239
finger over her mouth, and according
to Candy's defense team at trial, this

754
01:02:23.639 --> 01:02:28.960
triggered a response in Candy. It
was just like when Candy's own mother had

755
01:02:29.000 --> 01:02:32.559
shushed her when she was in immense
pain as a child, and it caused

756
01:02:32.599 --> 01:02:37.559
Candy to snap. She grabbed the
axe from Betty, knocked her down,

757
01:02:37.639 --> 01:02:42.400
and hit her over and over again
with the axe. Forty one wax.

758
01:02:43.239 --> 01:02:49.039
Betty Gore was obliterated. After Candy
killed Betty, she went to great links

759
01:02:49.079 --> 01:02:52.679
to hide it. First, she
tried to shower with her clothes on in

760
01:02:52.719 --> 01:02:55.559
the Gore home, but when that
wasn't effective, she left for her own

761
01:02:55.559 --> 01:03:01.079
house. Once there, she showed, houred, and changed clothes. She

762
01:03:01.239 --> 01:03:06.039
washed and dried the same shirt and
found some jeans that were the same color

763
01:03:06.079 --> 01:03:09.400
as she had been wearing so no
one would notice. She found some tennis

764
01:03:09.400 --> 01:03:13.840
shoes to cover up the wound on
her toe and keep the bandage tight.

765
01:03:14.559 --> 01:03:17.199
The wound on her head was harder, the bandage wouldn't stay because of her

766
01:03:17.199 --> 01:03:22.519
hairdo She just kept dabbing the blood
when she thought about it and her head.

767
01:03:22.719 --> 01:03:27.800
She had already concocted a story about
cutting her toe on a broken storm

768
01:03:27.840 --> 01:03:32.280
door. And then she picked up
her children and Alyssa from church. She

769
01:03:32.360 --> 01:03:37.159
spoke with her friend Barbara Green,
and then she took the kids to see

770
01:03:37.199 --> 01:03:44.000
the Empire strikes back like nothing had
ever happened. I'm going to pause now

771
01:03:44.039 --> 01:03:52.719
for a final commercial break. The
next day, everyone knew that Betty Gore

772
01:03:52.800 --> 01:03:58.880
had been horrifically murdered. Candy did
yardwork. She trimmed her hedges and shrubs.

773
01:03:59.360 --> 01:04:02.280
Then she used those same garden shears
to cut up the sandals she had

774
01:04:02.320 --> 01:04:08.400
worn while killing Betty. She threw
the shoe pieces away in the outdoor garbage

775
01:04:08.440 --> 01:04:12.760
can. Around this time, Candy
spoke to her friend Barbara Green on the

776
01:04:12.800 --> 01:04:16.840
phone. Barbara was shocked to hear
that Candy had visited Betty so close to

777
01:04:16.880 --> 01:04:21.320
the time when someone had murdered her. Barbara later told the court, I

778
01:04:21.400 --> 01:04:26.239
remember telling her how glad I was
that she was not hurt, that if

779
01:04:26.239 --> 01:04:28.960
she had been there when it happened, she might have been hurt too.

780
01:04:30.719 --> 01:04:34.320
When Candy was arrested on June twenty
six, people couldn't believe it. It

781
01:04:34.400 --> 01:04:41.880
seemed like poor innocent Candy had been
mistakenly nabbed based on some unrelated fingerprints while

782
01:04:41.880 --> 01:04:45.719
the real murderer was running free.
The church helped her raise the money to

783
01:04:45.760 --> 01:04:51.039
cover the hundred thousand dollar bond.
People from the Wily community sent her greeting

784
01:04:51.039 --> 01:04:56.559
cards and well wishes, letting Candy
know they were on her side. Her

785
01:04:56.639 --> 01:05:00.639
church reverend said that she would be
guilty of what they say. She is

786
01:05:00.360 --> 01:05:04.719
is incomprehensible. She's not capable of
committing murder. She's a very creative,

787
01:05:05.159 --> 01:05:13.079
very talented, very highly intelligent person. And Candy's husband, Pat, also

788
01:05:13.159 --> 01:05:17.320
expressed his support for his wife.
But less than a week later, people

789
01:05:17.360 --> 01:05:21.960
started having doubts about Candy's innocence.
And that's because Alan told the police about

790
01:05:23.000 --> 01:05:28.039
his affair with Candy, and the
newspapers, as newspapers do, caught wind

791
01:05:28.039 --> 01:05:32.159
of it. Candy and Alan's church
congregation was stunned to learn of the affair.

792
01:05:33.880 --> 01:05:38.880
Even though it had ended, very
few people even knew it had happened.

793
01:05:39.800 --> 01:05:45.719
Candy's husband, Pat knew last spring
he had been looking for his and

794
01:05:45.800 --> 01:05:49.800
Candy's old love letters. In the
process, he found a love letter to

795
01:05:49.840 --> 01:05:55.840
Candy from someone other than him.
It was a goodbye letter from Alan Gore,

796
01:05:56.480 --> 01:06:01.079
finalizing the end of his affair with
Candy. But his wife was going

797
01:06:01.119 --> 01:06:06.239
on trial for her life and he
was going to support her. Candy hired

798
01:06:06.239 --> 01:06:11.840
a personal injury lawyer if she knew
from church, named Don Crowder. He

799
01:06:11.960 --> 01:06:15.280
told her she needed an experienced criminal
defense attorney, but she wanted him.

800
01:06:15.800 --> 01:06:19.760
She knew him and felt comfortable,
so he hired a criminal lawyer to help

801
01:06:19.840 --> 01:06:25.880
him with the case and sit second
chair. Don Crowder was going to trot

802
01:06:25.880 --> 01:06:29.719
an Axe murder case as his first
criminal case in a court of law.

803
01:06:30.199 --> 01:06:35.159
It seemed crazy. Candy's trial began
on Monday, October twentieth, nineteen eighty.

804
01:06:35.639 --> 01:06:42.280
It was a media circus. Over
two hundred people packed the courtroom.

805
01:06:42.440 --> 01:06:48.320
The trial would only last eight sensational
days. For weeks, Candy's lawyers had

806
01:06:48.360 --> 01:06:53.199
been hinting that she was going to
plead guilty, so the courtroom was stunned

807
01:06:53.480 --> 01:06:59.000
when Candy started off by pleading self
defense. Now her testimony was tantamount to

808
01:06:59.039 --> 01:07:03.039
the case, and we know defendants
rarely take the stand. This was a

809
01:07:03.199 --> 01:07:09.199
huge gamble. The prosecution had a
hint of what was to come because they

810
01:07:09.239 --> 01:07:13.960
knew Candy had passed a polygraph when
she told her story, but they still

811
01:07:13.960 --> 01:07:18.519
thought self defense was outrageous and impossible
as a defense in this brutal murder.

812
01:07:19.519 --> 01:07:24.440
And when Candy got to the witness
stand, she didn't do well. She

813
01:07:24.559 --> 01:07:30.360
came across clipped and cool, according
to Texas Monthly, not personable, kind

814
01:07:30.719 --> 01:07:33.239
or friendly, not even shy,
which probably would have been better in the

815
01:07:33.239 --> 01:07:39.199
eyes of the jury, But Texas
Monthly was not on that jury, and

816
01:07:39.320 --> 01:07:45.199
newspapers don't always read a courtroom right. Candy's lawyer, Don Crowder, asked

817
01:07:45.280 --> 01:07:49.360
Candy's softball questions about her kids,
her family, her community, her church,

818
01:07:49.920 --> 01:07:56.320
anything and everything to humanize Candy,
but Candy was not cooperating. She

819
01:07:56.440 --> 01:08:01.559
gave what Texas Monthly described as short, functional answer. She sounded like a

820
01:08:01.599 --> 01:08:08.480
stuffy schoolmarm over enunciating her sentences and
banishing all emotion from her voice, they

821
01:08:08.519 --> 01:08:14.119
wrote. Then Candy was given the
chance to tell her story, the version

822
01:08:14.159 --> 01:08:17.039
of the murder that I already told
you. As Candy told the story,

823
01:08:17.119 --> 01:08:23.960
she remained emotionless, with a few
straight tears. Following Candy's testimony about the

824
01:08:24.039 --> 01:08:29.319
murder, her lawyer Don Crowder decided
to try a tactic. Candy wasn't given

825
01:08:29.399 --> 01:08:33.159
him much to work with, so
he had nothing to lose. He asked

826
01:08:33.159 --> 01:08:36.239
her, when you went over there, did you mean to kill her with

827
01:08:36.359 --> 01:08:43.520
that axe? And Candy responded no. But then Crowder became loud and urgent.

828
01:08:44.079 --> 01:08:46.520
He said, but you did kill
her with that axe, didn't you.

829
01:08:47.880 --> 01:08:53.000
Then he grabbed the axe from the
evidence table and put it in front

830
01:08:53.039 --> 01:08:58.119
of Candy's face. He said,
this ax right here. You killed her

831
01:08:58.119 --> 01:09:01.359
with this axe right here. Didn't
you killed her with this axe right here?

832
01:09:01.479 --> 01:09:06.119
Didn't you? This is when Candy
jumped up from her chair, screamed,

833
01:09:06.479 --> 01:09:12.000
and burst into tears. It was
the most emotion anyone had seen out

834
01:09:12.000 --> 01:09:15.960
of her during the entire court proceedings, and it visibly affected the jury.

835
01:09:16.479 --> 01:09:21.600
One woman wiped her tears. The
state argued that Candy didn't kill Betty in

836
01:09:21.640 --> 01:09:27.039
self defense because of the sheer number
of wounds she inflicted. It was far

837
01:09:27.119 --> 01:09:30.159
more damage or injury than is needed
to take the life of that person,

838
01:09:30.680 --> 01:09:39.159
so said an expert from the Institute
of Forensic Sciences in Dallas. In response

839
01:09:39.199 --> 01:09:43.840
to this argument, Candy's defense team
elaborated on the childhood trauma we touched on

840
01:09:43.920 --> 01:09:47.760
earlier. Before the trial, her
lawyers had taken her to a hypnotist.

841
01:09:48.399 --> 01:09:54.359
He was actually a psychiatrist named Fred
Fazon who used hypnotism on his patients,

842
01:09:54.960 --> 01:09:59.920
and based on three sessions, they
were able to determine the following Candy Respon

843
01:10:00.000 --> 01:10:04.119
wanted to Betty's attack out of trauma. She had acted in pure, uncontrollable

844
01:10:04.239 --> 01:10:09.239
rage. She hadn't even known what
she was doing. It was a moment

845
01:10:09.279 --> 01:10:13.800
of fight or flight that had turned
into a fight due to that experience with

846
01:10:13.880 --> 01:10:20.079
her mother, saying sh, just
like Betty had said, sh Now,

847
01:10:20.279 --> 01:10:25.239
whether you believe this or not is
up to you personally. I've never seen

848
01:10:25.319 --> 01:10:29.359
hypnotism, never tried it myself,
or even seen a silly magic show.

849
01:10:30.000 --> 01:10:32.399
I know that regression therapy is supposed
to have the same results as well,

850
01:10:33.039 --> 01:10:38.119
but I have no idea if it
worked, other than Don Crowder saying it

851
01:10:38.159 --> 01:10:42.880
did in fact work, as well
as the psychiatrist testifying to it at trial.

852
01:10:44.279 --> 01:10:48.680
Crowder also used a tactic many found
distasteful but it was effective. He

853
01:10:48.800 --> 01:10:54.880
blamed the victim. He put Betty
Gore on trial. Candy had had many

854
01:10:55.000 --> 01:10:59.600
character witnesses who talked about what a
wonderful mother she was, how friendly an

855
01:10:59.600 --> 01:11:04.960
outgoing she was, how helpful to
anyone and everyone. By contrast, Betty

856
01:11:05.119 --> 01:11:11.960
was portrayed as sullen, unhappy,
and standoffish. Even her pastor, who

857
01:11:11.960 --> 01:11:16.880
had eulogized her, testified that she
was a difficult woman. If Candy's defense

858
01:11:17.039 --> 01:11:21.079
was that Betty started the fight,
I guess it made sense to explain why

859
01:11:21.119 --> 01:11:26.039
she started it, how she was
kind of an angry person to begin with.

860
01:11:27.279 --> 01:11:30.039
And Candy might have come off as
robotic in her direct testimony, but

861
01:11:30.199 --> 01:11:35.680
she held up well under cross examination. She became more detailed and never faltered

862
01:11:35.720 --> 01:11:40.960
with her answers. When asked how
she could walk out of the house and

863
01:11:41.039 --> 01:11:45.279
leave that baby alone, she explained
that she was in shock. She wasn't

864
01:11:45.319 --> 01:11:47.680
thinking about the baby, she was
putting one foot in front of the other

865
01:11:47.720 --> 01:11:53.199
and trying to act normal. Of
all the names, Candy was called,

866
01:11:53.640 --> 01:11:59.800
murderer, adulteress, or leaving baby
Bethany alone was the cherry on top.

867
01:12:00.000 --> 01:12:04.640
She did later care very much.
In the book Evidence of Love, pat

868
01:12:04.720 --> 01:12:09.239
said she called him that afternoon,
asking where Alan Gore was that day,

869
01:12:09.840 --> 01:12:14.439
worried about how long it would be
before he got home. She also offered

870
01:12:14.439 --> 01:12:17.359
to go over and check on Betty
when Alan was calling around to everyone worried.

871
01:12:19.119 --> 01:12:23.560
You could argue that she wanted to
get over there and possibly be able

872
01:12:23.600 --> 01:12:28.520
to explain any fingerprints of hers,
but you could also argue that she was

873
01:12:28.560 --> 01:12:31.399
worried about Bethany. As soon as
Alan called with the news about Betty,

874
01:12:31.800 --> 01:12:36.600
she asked about Bethany to make sure
she was okay. I think she probably

875
01:12:36.600 --> 01:12:42.479
couldn't explain herself like this, because
the whole point of the prosecution was that

876
01:12:42.520 --> 01:12:45.960
she lied and carried on like she
didn't do it, but now insisted it

877
01:12:45.000 --> 01:12:49.119
with self defense. It probably would
have been better had she called the police

878
01:12:49.159 --> 01:12:53.880
at the time, but her story
was she was in shock, she was

879
01:12:53.920 --> 01:12:58.439
traumatized, and I think she probably
was, But I do think she was

880
01:12:58.439 --> 01:13:04.239
worried about that baby. She wasn't
a monster. On Wednesday, October twenty

881
01:13:04.319 --> 01:13:09.399
ninth, the jury went to deliberate, and after three hours of deliberation,

882
01:13:09.920 --> 01:13:14.079
the call came that they were back. Both sides would have been scared about

883
01:13:14.119 --> 01:13:17.439
that short amount of Tom it's always
uneasy when a jury comes back quickly.

884
01:13:18.760 --> 01:13:24.279
The judge read the verdict. Candy
Montgomery was found not guilty. She was

885
01:13:24.319 --> 01:13:28.800
acquitted of all charges. Had Candy
been found guilty, she could have been

886
01:13:28.840 --> 01:13:34.199
sentenced up to ninety nine years in
prison. The courtroom was flabbergasted onlookers chanted

887
01:13:34.319 --> 01:13:41.000
murderer, murderer. One wiley resident
said, everybody is in shock. I

888
01:13:41.039 --> 01:13:45.000
think they forgot about Betty Gore.
There are thieves who still and get sent

889
01:13:45.039 --> 01:13:49.000
to jail for less than she has
done. Betty's brother in law publicly said,

890
01:13:49.159 --> 01:13:53.000
I don't think justice was served in
the least bit. I think it

891
01:13:53.039 --> 01:13:58.079
was murder. And Bob Pomeroy,
Betty's father and a godfearing man, said,

892
01:13:58.560 --> 01:14:00.920
as far as I am concerned,
justice will be done. Eventually,

893
01:14:02.279 --> 01:14:05.560
Candy left the courtroom and about a
week later, she and her family moved

894
01:14:05.560 --> 01:14:11.680
out of Texas. Don Crowder rode
the wave of publicity he had earned getting

895
01:14:11.680 --> 01:14:15.119
his client off with self defense and
an axe murder. He ran for governor

896
01:14:15.119 --> 01:14:19.399
of Texas in nineteen eighty six,
but he took his own life in nineteen

897
01:14:19.479 --> 01:14:26.279
ninety eight. After all of this, Candy and Pat remained married. Pat

898
01:14:26.319 --> 01:14:31.079
accepted a teaching position with Georgia Tech
University immediately following the trial, but the

899
01:14:31.159 --> 01:14:38.199
Montgomery marriage ultimately did not survive.
They divorced four years later. Pat still

900
01:14:38.239 --> 01:14:44.159
works in defense technologies in Georgia.
Candy now goes by Candy Wheeler, her

901
01:14:44.199 --> 01:14:48.279
maiden name. She has worked as
a mental health therapist for teens and adults.

902
01:14:49.399 --> 01:14:55.359
In a twentieth anniversary retrospective in two
thousand, Candy refused to speak to

903
01:14:55.399 --> 01:14:59.800
the Dallas Morning News reporters. She
said, I'm telling you in big bold

904
01:15:00.079 --> 01:15:05.640
letters, I'm not interested. Alan
Gore remarried three months after Betty's murder to

905
01:15:05.680 --> 01:15:11.119
a woman named Elaine, who was
the church organist. That marriage ended in

906
01:15:11.199 --> 01:15:15.079
divorce. He lost a custody battle
with Betty's parents, so Elyssa and Bethany

907
01:15:15.439 --> 01:15:20.880
were raised by their maternal grandparents in
Norwich, Kansas. Today, according to

908
01:15:20.920 --> 01:15:26.359
Facebook, Alan lives in Sarasota,
Florida, and I imagine is still an

909
01:15:26.359 --> 01:15:32.279
asshole. Can you believe how fast
he remarried. Alyssa is exactly my age,

910
01:15:32.359 --> 01:15:39.039
so both girls are now women in
their forties. They spoke out during

911
01:15:39.079 --> 01:15:43.520
the twenty year anniversary retrospective, but
it was mostly about the drama with their

912
01:15:43.560 --> 01:15:47.800
father and stepmother. Alyssa, who
goes by Lisa, barely remembered her mother,

913
01:15:48.199 --> 01:15:53.479
and Bethany, of course, didn't
remember her at all. Even though

914
01:15:53.520 --> 01:15:57.199
they didn't remember much, they did
say they felt Candy wasn't telling the whole

915
01:15:57.239 --> 01:16:01.720
story and wished they knew the truth. I cannot imagine growing up and having

916
01:16:01.760 --> 01:16:06.800
to live with a woman who murdered
your mother going free. I hope that

917
01:16:06.880 --> 01:16:12.000
both women have gotten help and moved
on with their lives, but losing a

918
01:16:12.079 --> 01:16:15.680
parent, especially so violently, as
a whole, you can never feel.

919
01:16:17.600 --> 01:16:21.479
Since nineteen eighty, there have been
multiple remakes of Candy and Betty's case in

920
01:16:21.479 --> 01:16:27.600
the media. It inspired a nineteen
ninety CBS made for TV movie called A

921
01:16:27.720 --> 01:16:31.399
Killing in a Small Town and a
non fiction book called Evidence of Love.

922
01:16:32.960 --> 01:16:38.920
The two most well known adaptations right
now are Elizabeth Olsen's Max show called Love

923
01:16:38.960 --> 01:16:44.159
and Death and Jessica Bill's Hulu show
called Candy. I have watched all of

924
01:16:44.199 --> 01:16:46.800
them, and, of course time
permitting, soon Andrea and I are going

925
01:16:46.880 --> 01:16:53.239
to discuss these shows for Patreon.
As for Candy Montgomery and the truth of

926
01:16:53.279 --> 01:16:56.840
what happened in the laundry room on
a hot day in June of nineteen eighty.

927
01:16:57.920 --> 01:17:00.039
I'm going to take a lot of
ship for this, but I believe

928
01:17:00.079 --> 01:17:08.279
her. Hear me out because nothing
else makes sense. KNDy told people she

929
01:17:08.399 --> 01:17:12.600
was going to Betty's house to get
Lyssa's swimsuit. She parked her station wagon

930
01:17:12.680 --> 01:17:15.319
right in front of the house.
It was clearly a crime of passion.

931
01:17:15.880 --> 01:17:19.760
There was no planning. She didn't
bring a gun and her purse. The

932
01:17:19.840 --> 01:17:25.800
axe came from the Gores garage,
and Candy was no longer involved with Alan.

933
01:17:26.399 --> 01:17:30.119
It is crazy to me that she
could just carry on taking care of

934
01:17:30.119 --> 01:17:34.600
Alyssa and even babysitting Bethany after the
affair. But she did. She was

935
01:17:34.640 --> 01:17:41.960
a woman who was capable of compartmentalizing
her entire life. Call me crazy,

936
01:17:42.439 --> 01:17:45.920
but I do believe her version of
events with one problem. I have said

937
01:17:45.960 --> 01:17:51.439
before that intent can be formed within
seconds. Forty one wax with an axe

938
01:17:51.600 --> 01:17:57.720
does not seem like self defense,
but her attorneys argued that she snapped,

939
01:17:57.880 --> 01:18:03.439
and clearly the jury believed it.
Psychiatrist Fred face On, the hypnotist,

940
01:18:03.680 --> 01:18:10.000
testified at the trial and claimed that
Candy had a dissociative reaction that led her

941
01:18:10.039 --> 01:18:15.640
to chop at Betty repeatedly. Don
Crowder also argued that the violent death was

942
01:18:15.720 --> 01:18:20.680
also protected under Texas's stand your Ground
law, which permits the use of deadly

943
01:18:20.720 --> 01:18:27.199
force if necessary to prevent a violent
crime. And Candy said that Betty attacked

944
01:18:27.199 --> 01:18:30.760
her with the axe, she had
to defend herself. And it was a

945
01:18:30.840 --> 01:18:34.479
jury of nine women and three men. I think that could have helped.

946
01:18:35.039 --> 01:18:39.840
Have you ever picked up an axe, much less a three foot axe,

947
01:18:39.840 --> 01:18:45.119
which was the murder weapon. They
are so heavy, I'm not strong enough

948
01:18:45.159 --> 01:18:47.840
to raise one for even one chop. And I'm willing to bet those women

949
01:18:47.960 --> 01:18:51.800
believed he'd of passion because they know
what it's like to try and pick up

950
01:18:51.840 --> 01:18:58.760
an axe. That Candy was already
wounded twice and was terrified then enraged that

951
01:18:58.800 --> 01:19:03.279
Betty attacked her. I also think
this is one of those cases where the

952
01:19:03.359 --> 01:19:09.000
prosecutions screwed up by not giving the
jury more options. They might have said

953
01:19:09.039 --> 01:19:13.680
guilty for manslaughter or some other lesser
offense, but not first degree murderer.

954
01:19:14.760 --> 01:19:17.720
They didn't believe that Candy went there
to murder Betty, and they did believe

955
01:19:17.800 --> 01:19:23.079
that the gruesome forty one wax were
born of rage after Betty attacked Candy.

956
01:19:23.920 --> 01:19:28.520
Maybe they would have acquitted her either
way, but we will never know,

957
01:19:29.159 --> 01:19:32.079
and it's really important to note that
we don't know Betty Gore's thought of the

958
01:19:32.159 --> 01:19:35.920
story. We don't know why she
went and grabbed that axe other than what

959
01:19:36.039 --> 01:19:42.680
Candy said. Candy said Betty thought
she was pregnant. If she found out

960
01:19:42.680 --> 01:19:47.079
about the affair and felt so vulnerable, maybe she did attack for the record.

961
01:19:47.199 --> 01:19:54.880
An autopsy showed she was not actually
pregnant. Whatever really happened between the

962
01:19:54.920 --> 01:20:00.439
two women resulted in a death match
for an extremely heavy axe, and Kendy

963
01:20:00.520 --> 01:20:05.119
Montgomery was the winner. But she
won a lifetime of whispers and people pointing,

964
01:20:05.680 --> 01:20:11.199
even if she changed her name and
moved, but it was a life

965
01:20:11.720 --> 01:20:18.000
all the same. Southern Fried True
Crime is hosted and produced by me Erica

966
01:20:18.079 --> 01:20:23.840
Kelly. Today's episode was researched and
written by Andrea Marshbank and myself, and

967
01:20:24.000 --> 01:20:28.479
of course all editorial opinions are my
own. Southern Frid's original music is by

968
01:20:28.560 --> 01:20:31.960
Rob Harrison of Gamma Radio and the
original graphic artist by Colly Horner. Today's

969
01:20:31.960 --> 01:20:36.920
episode was edited and mixed by Brennan
Scheck Snyder of Southern Gothic and Erica Kelly.

970
01:20:36.960 --> 01:20:41.359
If you have any case suggestions,
please go to my website and click

971
01:20:41.359 --> 01:20:46.439
on the listeners suggestion tab or email
SFTC Research at gmail dot com. You

972
01:20:46.560 --> 01:20:49.359
will get lost in a sea of
emails if you send it to my main

973
01:20:49.399 --> 01:20:53.920
address, so this is the best
way for me to get those little known

974
01:20:53.960 --> 01:20:58.920
cases you'll always send me. Please
remember that I do not accept suggestions on

975
01:20:58.960 --> 01:21:02.800
social media private messages. With three
platforms to manage, that is very overwhelming

976
01:21:02.840 --> 01:21:08.000
for me. I hope you understand, But please come join our Facebook group,

977
01:21:08.079 --> 01:21:12.319
Southern Fried True Crime Fans Discussion Group, where we swap recipes, worship

978
01:21:12.399 --> 01:21:15.479
Dolly Parton, and share memes.
I much prefer spending my social media time

979
01:21:15.760 --> 01:21:19.119
and our lovely group. We do, of course discuss true crime, not

980
01:21:19.199 --> 01:21:23.439
just Southern Fried, but all kinds, but it is still very much a

981
01:21:23.479 --> 01:21:27.239
Southern lifestyle group. Our group is
a safe and fun corner of Facebook,

982
01:21:27.239 --> 01:21:29.760
and by God, we mean it
when we say no shut as is allowed.

983
01:21:30.079 --> 01:21:31.720
It's not just a motto, it's
how we run the group. If

984
01:21:31.720 --> 01:21:35.520
you enjoy today's show, don't forget
to subscribe, and please tell a friend

985
01:21:35.640 --> 01:21:40.720
or rate and review on iTunes.
I'm also on all large platforms like I

986
01:21:40.920 --> 01:21:45.079
Heart, Stitcher, Spotify, Amazon, and Audible. Until next time,

987
01:21:45.640 --> 01:21:48.279
thanks so much for listening, y'all. Take care,