Evidence of Love

by John Bloom

  Only a few people followed the hearse to nearby Upchurch Cemetery, where the graveside ceremony was simple and brief. Allan watched as Bertha Pomeroy started to cry again, leaning on Bob for support. As soon as the casket was lowered into the ground, the Pomeroys started back to the car, where they could break down together in private. There would be dinner waiting at the Pomeroy house, and then Allan wanted to leave immediately for Larned. He was having trouble accepting it all. It wasn’t just the shock of her death, or the strangeness of Norwich. It was something only he knew. As he stood there at the graveside, watching the casket and trying to concentrate on the reverend’s prayer, he couldn’t feel anything. He wanted to grieve, but he knew that whatever he felt wasn’t real mourning. When he did finally begin to cry, it was not because he felt a terrible void in his life. It was because he felt ashamed of himself, and guilty. For the first time, he wondered how much he’d ever really loved her.

  Texas Murder Victim

  Is Former Norwich Girl

  announced the Harper Advocate on the day after the funeral. Similar reports appeared in several small-town Kansas newspapers. But Kansas was too far away from the scene of the crime to know how rapidly the complexion of the case was changing. That very afternoon, the Dallas Times Herald had reported that a “female friend of Allan Gore” was the prime suspect in the murder of Betty, after the discovery of “bloody fingerprints” on the refrigerator door of the Gore home. Betty’s death was back on the front page, and a hot item on the six o’clock news. Still, nothing could have prepared Allan for the phone call he received Thursday morning.

  “Mr. Gore, this is Texas Ranger Fred Cummings, and I’m calling from Kingman, Kansas.”

  “Yes.”

  “Mr. Gore, we’re going to be arriving at the Great Bend Airport around one o’clock because we understand that’s not too far from your parents’ home. We would like you to meet us there if you could, so that we can ask you some further questions.”

  “All right,” said Allan.

  But Allan was completely panicked. As soon as he hung up the phone, he knew he would have to tell his family. There was no way to explain police officers flying all the way to Kansas simply to “ask some questions.” They would have to know: he was a prime suspect in the murder of his wife. And if he told them that, he would have to tell them the reason. He would have to tell them about the affair.

  Fortunately, Allan’s older sister Beth was home. It would be easier to say since she was in the room. He gathered everyone into the living room and began haltingly. “I need to tell you something that’s very hard for me. I made a mistake. I had an affair with a woman at church.”

  When the police decided to fly to Kansas for the Gore interview, they weren’t simply being melodramatic. They knew that the longer they waited, the more difficult it would be to wring confessions out of the two people they considered prime suspects: Candy Montgomery and Allan Gore. They had gone after Candy first, figuring that she would be the easiest to break. The first indication they had miscalculated came at 5 P.M. that same day. A lawyer named Rob Udashen called the station and asked for Murphy.

  “Captain Murphy, I’ve been retained by Candace Montgomery, who I understand is a suspect in the Betty Gore murder case. And I’m afraid Mrs. Montgomery will have to cancel the polygraph examination you’ve scheduled for tomorrow. I’ve already informed a polygrapher at DPS that she won’t be there.”

  “Damn,” said Murphy as he hung up the phone.

  They had gone too far. They had scared her. They had scared her right into the arms of a lawyer.

  Now the investigators felt the press of time, and they stepped up the pace even more. Later that night—almost midnight, in fact—the chief fingerprint expert for Dallas County turned to Fred Cummings and announced his verdict.

  “It’s a positive ID,” he said. “These prints are the same.”

  Sergeant Jim Cron, head of the physical evidence section of the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department, had spent three hours comparing Steve Deffibaugh’s photo of the bloody thumbprint on the freezer door to the fresh prints taken from Candy Montgomery. He had no doubt. That macabre, bloody print found in the utility room belonged to the Montgomery woman. But what about Allan Gore? Cummings and Cochran headed for Kansas.

  Unlike Allan’s two previous meetings with the police, this one was tense and combative. The two investigators made it clear from the outset that they suspected Allan of a conspiracy to kill his wife.

  “We’ve got evidence that implicates the Montgomery woman,” said one, “but we haven’t confronted her with it yet. What we want to know is whether you had anything to do with it.”

  “I was in Minnesota the whole time.”

  “We know you weren’t there. What we want to know is what you and Candy talked about before you left.”

  “Nothing. We hadn’t talked at all for several months.”

  “Mr. Gore, I want you to understand what we’re talking about. We feel like we have Mrs. Montgomery cold. It would be much better for you to tell us what you know now than to wait for her to go down first.”

  “I don’t have anything to tell you that I haven’t already said.”

  “I can’t very well believe that. Would you be willing to take a polygraph examination to prove that to us?”

  “All right.”

  “When will you be going back to Dallas?”

  “I can go right away if it will clear this up.”

  “Okay, you call us tomorrow, as soon as you get there, and we’ll make the arrangements. But if there is anything you haven’t told us, you should do it before then.”

  “All right.”

  Allan was nervous and rattled when he got back to his parents’ house. Ray Dahlberg, the local attorney who had accompanied him to the interview, now realized how serious the case was and advised Allan to confer with a Dallas lawyer before taking the lie detector test. By the time Allan flew back to Dallas, he already had legal representation, in the form of Mike Gibson, a partner in the firm that had recently won a measure of notoriety by assisting in the successful defense of multimillionaire oilman T. Cullen Davis of Fort Worth, who was acquitted in the costliest series of trials in the history of Texas jurisprudence. Allan didn’t realize that the mere mention of Gibson’s name would make reporters and police doubly suspicious of his involvement.

  But the ordeal of facing the police and press was nothing compared to what Allan would have to do before he left Kansas. Late that afternoon, he called the Pomeroys in Norwich and told Bob he needed to come down to talk.

  Allan asked his older sister Beth to make the two-hour drive with him, and she readily agreed. When they arrived, the Pomeroys were all gathered in the tiny living room—Bob, Bertha, Ronnie, Pat, and Richard. Twilight was approaching, and it had started to rain very hard. Everyone was exhausted from the events of the past week, but at least the funeral was over and they would be able to start over. Or would they? Everyone had a dark intimation even before Allan arrived. If he was driving all the way from Larned just to tell them something, chances were it wasn’t something good.

  “This is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do,” began Allan.

  The room was silent, except for the sound of the rain pounding against the windows.

  “I had an affair with a woman. It wasn’t anything. She didn’t mean anything to me. It’s over now. It’s been over more than six months.”

  Bertha started to cry.

  “My God, Allan,” she said softly, “how could you?”

  She left the room and, as she did, tears started to form in Allan’s eyes as well. Beth hugged him gently. Betty’s brothers stared at the floor.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “The reason I’m telling you this is that I’ve talked to the police and they tell me this woman is a suspect in the murder. She was the woman who was keeping Alisa that night. I had thought of this possibility myself, but I didn’t say anything because I didn’t take it seriously until now.”
r />   The room remained silent.

  “I hope you can forgive me.”

  Bob started coughing. Ronnie cleared his throat.

  “It’s so strange,” Allan said, “because the past three months of our marriage, Betty and I were closer than ever.”

  “You say the affair was over?” Bob was the first one to break the silence.

  “Yes. It had been over for eight months. Can you forgive me?”

  “Did Betty ever know?”

  “No, not that I know of.”

  “Did she know when she got killed?”

  “No.”

  Bob thought for a moment.

  “If she didn’t know about it when she got killed,” said Bob, “maybe nothing ever came of that.”

  “I just hope you can forgive me,” Allan repeated.

  “I think I can understand,” said Bob.

  Allan looked at the boys.

  “I understand,” said Ronnie.

  “I need to go back to Dallas tomorrow to take a polygraph examination,” said Allan, “and if it’s all right I’d like to leave Alisa here until things are more normal.”

  “That’s fine,” said Bob. “I think Bertha would like that.”

  “Thank you,” said Allan.

  He and Beth left quickly.

  It had been a full ten days since Bob Pomeroy had had a full night’s sleep. He was so shaken that he had trouble concentrating on even the smallest task. But it was summer harvest time, and he had a full 160 acres of wheat that needed to be cut. That would be the hardest part, trying to work again. It took enormous effort just to get up that morning, but he did it. On Tuesday the twenty-fourth, he rose before dawn and drove the pickup out to his fields. He pulled his rig out of the shed and started hooking it up to the tractor. Then, as the sun started to rise and he looked up from his work, he saw at least a dozen trucks coming down the highway, trucks he recognized on sight as belonging to neighboring farmers. The men didn’t say anything about why they were there. They parked their trucks, shouted a quick greeting, and started unloading their own equipment. By the time Bob had started his tractor, they were already at work, dividing up the Pomeroy Field into areas of responsibility. Bob just sat on the tractor, the June sun beating down on him, staring at the long even rows of grain, wondering what had happened to his daughter.

  18 Unnamed Suspect

  Murder is always news. Murder with an ax is the kind of news that gets onto the front page. Murder of a woman with an ax, followed by the mutilation of the body, is the kind of news that television stations can justify putting on their six o’clock reports, since it has the advantages of being bizarre and mysterious, with a hint of sexual deviancy. It helps when the victim is a white, middle-class mother of two who teaches elementary school.

  But all of those news “hooks” paled into insignificance on Thursday the nineteenth of June. That was the day the major news media of Dallas learned that the police had a suspect, that the suspect was a woman, and that the woman had had an affair with the husband of the victim. Suddenly reporters’ assignments were changed. Police and courthouse “beat” reporters were pulled off the story and quickly replaced with investigative newsmen. Camera crews were dispatched to Collin County, a forty-five-minute drive to the north, to find out where the woman lived and get footage of her if possible, of her house if not. The film couldn’t be used yet—until she was arrested, Candy Montgomery couldn’t be linked to the death of Betty Gore without the risk of libel—but when and if she went to jail, they wanted to have everything ready to air. On Thursday afternoon, just a few hours after Sergeant Cron’s positive identification of the bloody thumbprint, the Dallas Times Herald published a page-one story by Gary Shultz, a county courthouse reporter:

  Female friend of husband sought

  in ax killing of Wylie housewife

  The words “female friend” had been chosen carefully. It was the type of phrase that got the point across—she was a friend of Allan Gore’s but not necessarily Betty’s—without directly stating the delicate matter of the affair. By that evening, the news was the lead item on all four Dallas and Fort Worth television stations, all of which picked up on the “female friend” usage. Most of the stations simply rehashed Shultz’s story, which was being denied by Chief Abbot. The police were as surprised as everyone else by the speed with which the news had spread, and they weren’t sure just how to react.

  The first one actually to find Candy Montgomery was young Doug Swanson, a 27-year-old Times Herald reporter. By checking mailboxes along Arroyo Blanco, the secluded gravel drive where the Montgomerys had built their dream house, he had managed to find the right address. Parking his car on the street, he walked up the steep drive and rang the doorbell. The woman who opened it was Sherry Cleckler, who had come by to comfort Candy after her first interviews at Don’s law office that morning. Perhaps not realizing just how spooked Candy was, Swanson immediately identified himself—and all of Sherry’s defenses were instantly aroused.

  “I’m sorry, she’s not here. I’m just the baby sitter.”

  “Do you know when she might be here?”

  “She’ll be gone all day.”

  “All right, thank you.”

  Sherry closed the door, locked it, and pressed her finger to her lips as she turned and looked at Candy.

  “It was a reporter,” she said.

  “Oh no,” said Candy.

  Panicked, Candy called Pat at work, and he instantly agreed to come home. Then she called Don, who advised her to get away from the house and, regardless of what happened, not to talk to any reporters. Sherry suggested they go to her house, just five minutes away, and so they gathered up the kids, jumped in the station wagon, and left.

  That night Pat, Tom, and Sherry sat in front of the television and flipped from channel to channel in an effort to catch all three major newscasts. Candy wasn’t there. She had left for Don Crowder’s house. He had called suddenly, wanting to talk, and Candy hadn’t known how long she would be gone. When she returned, long after the ten o’clock news, Sherry noticed that she had been crying.

  “I can’t deal with it anymore,” she said. “I’m turning it all over to Don.”

  “This is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard of,” said Sherry.

  Candy didn’t even ask what was on the ten o’clock news. She didn’t want to know. If there was one thing Candy Montgomery feared more than the police, it was the press. All the police could do was put you in jail. The press could tell the whole world you were there.

  By the next morning everyone’s paranoia had increased tenfold. First came a front-page report in the Dallas Morning News:

  Ax case

  suspect

  hunted

  The word “hunted” carried an especially sinister connotation for Pat. He had visions of armies of squad cars spread out across Montecito Estates, searching for Candy and wondering why the entire family had left the house. The truth was far simpler. After the Times Herald story Thursday afternoon, the News had put one of its young investigators, Bruce Selcraig, on the case, and he had only had a few hours to catch up on all the events of the previous week. He simply assumed, as did many of the investigators on the fringes of the case, that the fingerprint would be all the police needed for an arrest. So he wrote: “A female friend of Allan Gore, whose wife, Betty, was found hacked to death in their Wylie home last week, was being sought Thursday after investigators matched the friend’s left thumbprint with a bloody print on the couple’s refrigerator, officers said.”

  Now Pat Montgomery was thoroughly confused by the events of the past two days. The police were not only going to go through with the arrest; they claimed they had a bloody thumbprint that proved Candy did it.

  “There must be some explanation for this,” said Pat. “Did you open the refrigerator while you were there? Did you lean on it?”

  “I may have,” said Candy.

  “I wonder how they know it’s blood.”

  “I don’t
want to think about it, Pat.”

  Pat was not the only person panicked by the news reports. Rob Udashen saw the “bloody thumbprint” story, too. He knew that anytime a case has this much publicity, the police are under a great deal of pressure to make a quick arrest. That meant his time with Candy might be limited. So he went to the office very early, set up a physical examination and a polygraph test for Candy, then called her and told her to come to Dallas immediately. When she got there, he called Elaine into his office, and the three of them started going back over the same ground they had covered the previous day. This time, though, they were all business. They worked fast, taking down every word Candy said, stopping only for elaboration where it was needed. During the interview, Don came into the office.

  “Candy, when you get finished with this, I want you to take out a sheet of paper and write down all the reasons you wouldn’t have wanted to kill Betty.”