by John Bloom
“But you have an opportunity here to allow a family to stay together. Don’t rob two children of their mother—”
There was a loud and collective gasp from the audience. Ryan looked sternly into the crowd but didn’t say anything.
“Don’t rob a husband of his wife,” Don continued. He was getting ready for his finale.
“There’s been an American tragedy played out in this courtroom,” he intoned gravely. “But conviction—a conviction is not a proper solution to that particular tragedy. Perhaps there’s forces working in this case that you and I can’t understand. To a woman named Gore, an event of massive tragedy took place on June 13th, a Friday the 13th, and this case will end very nearly on Halloween. Maybe there’s something involved here we can’t understand. Something greater than all of us. But you can understand this—that the state has not proved its case. That reasonable doubt exists. Good luck to you.”
Don, at long last, was finished.
Taking center stage for the state, O’Connell summed up his approach to the case in the third sentence he spoke.
“I don’t know if final summations are all that important to juries,” he said. “You’ve sat there as we have and listened to the testimony, and I’m sure can draw whatever reasonable inferences and reasonable deductions that the law in fact permits you to do.”
After a long introduction—full of generalizations about the duties of jurors—O’Connell made the one strong point he had to make: Betty Gore was not present to give her side of the story. Yet he didn’t mention her by name. She was “the other party.” He reviewed all the physical evidence, which didn’t make any difference at this point, since Candy had admitted to the killing. Then he tried to attack the “reasonableness” of Candy’s self-defense plea by musing on the evidence of the mysterious sunglass lens. There’s something wrong when the defendant’s testimony and the physical evidence are at odds, he seemed to be suggesting. He pointed out that Candy was a good liar, since none of her friends had detected her deceptions after the killing. He reviewed the discrepancies in the polygraph examination. And he was most effective when dealing with the psychiatrists.
“To say that that relates back to something that happened when she was four years old and it was her mother she was after is just incredulous,” said O’Connell. “I really think it is, and I think it’s insulting to the intelligence of the jury. I think it’s insulting to put that on.…
“You’re not going to swing an ax twenty-eight times or forty-one, or however many times it was in this case, and not know what you’re doing.”
The jury, suddenly, was out.
“Ya’ll go on home and get something to eat,” said Don. “This is gonna take a long time.”
As he watched Candy and Pat leave the courtroom, Don turned to Rob Udashen. “We did everything we could do, Rob, and now if they send her to prison, we can’t let it get to us. If the worst happens, we’re just gonna walk away from it.”
Pat and Candy lunched on Salisbury steak, macaroni, and iced tea, but the anxiety was too much for them, so they drove back to the new courthouse, where the lawyers were waiting, and sat around sipping soft drinks with Don.
“You know, Pat,” said Don, “what I said in there is true. No matter what happens ya’ll are gonna have to get out of town. There’s no life here for you anymore.”
A deputy sheriff came into the room and motioned that he needed to speak to Don. Don got up and conferred for a moment.
“Good God, where’s Candy?” Don said.
She was in the restroom. But when she emerged, she was told to go into the attorney’s conference room with Don, where an armed guard would be posted at the door. The Sheriff’s Office had received a death threat against both Candy and Don.
They all sat nervously in the small room, wondering whether the Montgomerys should be escorted home again. Then, in the middle of the afternoon and long before anyone had expected it, a bailiff came to the door and told the attorneys a verdict had been reached.
Don couldn’t wait for the car to be brought around. He told the Montgomerys to wait for their escort and then sprinted out the door and ran the whole two blocks to the old courthouse. He flew up the stairs and burst into the courtroom, only to find that a twenty-man cordon of deputy sheriffs had formed a human wall between the spectators and the attorneys, just in case there were problems when the verdict was read. Don went into the judge’s chambers. O’Connell was already there.
“One of the TV stations wants to tape the verdict,” said Ryan. “Do either of you object?”
Don didn’t say anything. O’Connell hemmed and hawed for a few moments, then said, “I really don’t see any point in it, Judge.”
“All right,” said Ryan.
When Don told Candy what the judge had suggested, she felt enormous relief. After the trial she would thank O’Connell for that.
“All rise,” said the bailiff.
Ryan strode out, mounted the bench. “You may be seated, ladies and gentlemen,” he said.
“I have some instructions for the attorneys, the parties, and the spectators. When I read the jury’s verdict into the record I want no reaction from anyone in this courtroom, whatever that verdict might be. No vocal reaction, no physical reaction. And don’t think I’m picking on y’all. That’s a standard instruction I give every time I get a jury verdict. Because I want to thank you for being as nice as you have been up to this point and I deeply appreciate it.
“All right, bring the jury in.”
The jurors filed in. Don and Candy studied their faces, for any sign of emotion, but could find none.
“Mr. Foreman,” said Ryan, “has the jury reached a verdict, sir?”
Bob Snyder, the head of corporate security for EDS, stood up. “Your Honor, we have.”
The bailiff carried the verdict to the judge.
“We, the jury,” Ryan read, pausing just a beat, “find the defendant not guilty. Signed, Robert F. Snyder, Foreman.”
As though frozen in time, the room was silent and motionless.
“Each member of the jury that concurs in this verdict, will you indicate it to me please by raising your right hand?”
They all raised their hands.
“The court will accept the verdict and order it filed.”
Candy started to cry. Don put his hand on her shoulder.
“Congratulations, Candy,” he said.
Pat rushed past the bar and let Candy collapse into his arms.
“Dadgummit, Don,” Pat said, “I love ya.”
There was no general celebration. Five minutes later, when the Montgomerys started down the courthouse steps, there were scattered cries of “Murderer!” from the assembled crowd. For the first time since the trial began, Candy felt genuinely afraid.
26 Outrage
For the jury, it had not been an agonizing or even a particularly difficult decision. When the door of the jury room swung shut, everyone had assumed at first that they were in for a long haul. One woman, fearing they would have to stay overnight, complained that she didn’t have a change of clothes. They asked the bailiff to bring food and drinks, wanting to get as much done that day as possible.
Bob Snyder, an ex-military man who handled all security operations for H. Ross Perot, had gained the respect of everyone for his apparent levelheadedness and knowledge of trial procedure. He was quickly elected foreman. He stood up to speak.
“I’m as offended as anyone by the affair Mrs. Montgomery had,” he said, “and I don’t approve of it morally. But I think, as far as this decision is concerned, we should put that aside. It can’t affect our thinking in the case.”
To the surprise of most of the jurors, no one offered any objections, although two of the female jurors did say that they, too, wanted it known that they didn’t approve. Then Snyder moved on to the brutality of the crime—the forty-one blows. He wasn’t sure that that should be a paramount issue in the deliberations either.
There was only mild disagr
eement on the overkill question, with the jurors eventually deciding that, regardless of whether it was a single gunshot or a hundred whacks with an ax, it was still just one killing. The only question was whether it was murder, voluntary manslaughter (a lesser charge that Ryan had placed in their instructions), or not guilty. After a mere half hour of discussion, they were ready to take their first vote—on the question of murder only. Snyder suggested a secret ballot.
He collected the papers and read them aloud. Three voted guilty. Nine voted not guilty.
Since no one knew who the three hard-liners were, a general conversation ensued. It turned out that the principal concerns were why Candy hadn’t run away instead of killing Betty, and why she had left the baby in the house. The women jurors were especially concerned about the baby issue, but as the discussion continued, a consensus emerged that Candy had been under sufficient stress to cause her to completely forget the baby was in the house. Next they discussed flight.
“Why didn’t she just get out of there?” one woman asked.
“Sometimes you just don’t have control over your body,” said another.
Bob chimed in that, as a combat veteran, he could easily understand the kind of irrational impulses Candy must have felt.
He then called for a second vote. All twelve voted not guilty of murder.
Next they considered voluntary manslaughter. This time the issues were more cloudy. On the first ballot, the jurors split, six guilty and six not guilty, and everyone groaned at the implications.
They discussed some of the evidence, including the issue of the mysterious sunglass lens. But after hashing and rehashing that aspect of the trial, they finally decided that they didn’t know exactly what point Tom O’Connell had been trying to make.
“Besides,” said a juror, “those sunglasses could have gotten there any number of ways.”
The baby issue came up again. The general feeling was that it was unfair for Candy to go scot-free after such a terrible death. But Snyder, perhaps sensing that the discussion was aimless, kept calling for additional ballots.
The next tally was four guilty, eight not guilty.
He called for another: two guilty, ten not guilty.
Finally, there was only one holdout for a conviction.
“How are we going to get at the problem?” one of the women asked. “If somebody asks a question, we’ll know who the holdout is.”
So Snyder ordered everyone to write something down on a piece of paper. Those who’d already made up their minds would just scrawl something. The one with the question would write it down. When Snyder looked through all the scraps of paper, there was only one with writing on it.
“I’ve resolved my question,” it read. “I’ll vote acquittal.”
“Well,” Snyder announced cheerfully, “we’re ready to go, then.”
When the bailiff opened the door, though, the jurors suddenly weren’t so sure. They could hear the incessant din of reporters and cameramen crowding around to get pictures of them as they came out. It occurred to them that the verdict was going to be unpopular, and some of the women wanted to ask the bailiff for extra protection. They got it, but no one really relaxed until they had all been safely bundled into their cars by sheriff’s deputies and driven out of sight.
For the first few days after the verdict, it seemed as though the twelve jurors were the only people in the world who believed in Candy Montgomery’s innocence. After leaving the courthouse, the Montgomerys went home and invited several people over for champagne and bologna and cheese sandwiches. Candy was beaming.
“Oh Pat,” she said, “you know what the best thing is? I can go to the grocery store again. I can write a check again. I can just be normal.”
“Candy,” said Don, overhearing her, “you can’t be normal.”
“Everybody knows I’m innocent now.”
“Candy, all they said is you’re innocent of murder.”
“So?”
“You’re still guilty of adultery. That’s what these people can’t accept.”
The newspapers and television news shows were full of followup stories, many of them featuring interviews with “the other jury,” the people who had lined up each morning on the Collin County courthouse steps for seats at the most sensational trial in Texas. Most of them were women. Most of them were more than willing to be quoted. They were uniformly “disgusted,” “appalled,” “disillusioned.” The headline in the Dallas Times Herald read:
Woman hacked 41 times
in self-defense, jury rules
The apparent inconsistency implied by the headline pretty much summed up public opinion.
Two days after the trial, the hate mail started arriving. It came from all over the country, most of it unsigned, some of it containing such grisly attempts at humor as drawings of Betty Gore, blood gushing from forty-one places in her body, or, in one case, a newspaper photograph of Candy’s face that had been scissored into twenty pieces. Many of the most hateful letters were signed by avowed Christians, quoting scripture and warning Candy that she had escaped mortal justice, but that God had a terrible surprise waiting for her. One letter was composed of the word “SHHHHHHHH” scrawled dozens of times up one side of the page and down the next. At first she opened the mail herself, but after the sicker ones started arriving, she turned them over to Pat. Some of them were so offensive that he destroyed them forthwith.
Halloween fell three days after the verdict, and at an adult party in North Dallas, three of the invited guests came dressed as Candy Montgomery, complete with cardboard axes and signs on their backs—“Whisper to me at your own risk” and the like. An unsigned poem was sent to the offices of Crowder & Mattox. The first page had a cartoon likeness of Candy, holding a bloody ax and grinning diabolically. The title of the poem was “Candy Is Bad For Your Health”:
Candy Montgomery was a whore
She screwed around with Alan Gore—
When Betty Gore brought it up,
Candy used an ax to cut her up.…
In Collin County, murder’s O.K.—
If you go to church and pray,
And don’t worry, adultrey’s cool
If you teach Sunday School!
The doggerel went on for twelve similar stanzas. It had obviously been copied and widely circulated.
Four days after the verdict, on a Saturday, Candy went shopping for the first time at her usual McKinney supermarket. She was so unnerved by the stares that she returned home without buying anything.
Six days after the verdict, a Dallas television station aired a documentary on the trial. A reporter held the bloody ax in his hands and repeated again the facts as the public knew them: a woman had taken this very ax and mutilated another woman with forty-one blows, and the jury called it self-defense. Pat was so angered by the sensationalism of the report that he briefly considered filing a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission.
By November 5, eight days after the verdict, the Montgomerys had decided to leave Dallas forever.
Bob Pomeroy, lonely and tired, had gone and checked out of his motel in McKinney as soon as the verdict was rendered. He had tried to find Tom O’Connell afterward, but, as usual, the district attorney didn’t have time for him. The police had never explained anything to him. The prosecutors had never had time to explain what they were doing. Bob felt he knew less about his daughter’s death after the trial than he had known before.
Still, Bob had very little interest in the question of whether Candy Montgomery had been technically innocent or guilty. He had no anger that she was going free. A thought had suddenly occurred to him as he was watching the closing arguments in the trial, and now as he drove back to Kansas, he couldn’t shake it. When Don Crowder had started to make his summation, he had spent twenty minutes on Allan’s testimony. Almost everything Allan had said had benefited the defense. Bob had known that Allan was a strange bird, and he’d been acting weird since the killing, but he’d never wanted to face the possib
ility that Allan simply didn’t care whether Betty lived or died. Suddenly Bob felt tired, and much, much older.
27 Evidence of Love
The ancient Spartans worshipped a goddess called Hera Aphrodite. She represented the full range of womanly virtues: marriage, fertility, love, beauty, the nurturing of children, and sexual fulfillment. Over time, though, her worshippers separated into two cults—one devoted to Hera, one to Aphrodite. Hera became the goddess of marriage and the hearth; she was a strong goddess, tied to the earth, patroness of warriors. Aphrodite became the goddess of love, beauty, and the sexual life of women; she reportedly came from the sea, and prostitutes claimed her as their guardian. Mythology records that Hera, the wife of Zeus, became uncommonly jealous of Aphrodite, Zeus’s mistress. Marriage and love, once united in a supreme white goddess, had become warring forces within the soul of every woman.
Betty Gore and Candy Montgomery were women more similar than either would have liked to admit. They were small-town girls, Betty almost stereotypically so, and they were post-World War II babies. Neither woman would be called beautiful; both were “pretty.” They married into the upper middle class, choosing men devoted to the glamor field of the seventies: electronics. They thought themselves—and they were—resolutely typical.
Betty and Candy also came to share the great malady of the day: their marriages were going sour. Yet so grand were their hopes and adamant their intentions that, for a time, they didn’t admit this even to themselves. For Candy, her settled life brought on feelings of inexplicable dread and self-doubt, feelings so vague at first that she didn’t know herself why she had sudden bouts of ennui and mental fatigue. For Betty, her fantasy of married life—a strong, wise husband who made all the decisions and stood behind her at all times—deteriorated into the bitter realization that in many ways she would always be alone. Each woman, to a greater or lesser degree, blamed her husband for the malaise. They thought of their husbands as weak men, men too passive and indecisive to fulfill the strong, fatherly image they once held of them. They constantly wanted their men to be more than the men themselves wanted to be.