Luggage By Kroger: A True Crime Memoir

by Gary Taylor

  Barbara looked a little sad. She sipped her drink and said, "She scares me. I'm worried for you. I just don't know how she knew we were going out tonight."

  Wondering the same thing, I reached instinctively into my inside jacket pocket for my appointments book only to find that pocket empty.

  "Oh, shit," I mumbled. "My appointment book is gone."

  "You wrote our date down in your appointment book?"

  "I only wrote initials and the number for the Chronicle. She must have done some serious detective work to find you. I'm really sorry about this."

  Barbara finished her drink before she spoke again. Then she said, "Damn. I think you are really a neat guy, and I would really like to get to know you better. But you should know you really have a serious problem with her. She is frightening. She said she wanted me to understand that you are taken. And even if you say that isn't true, and I believe you, I can't take the risk. I'm sorry, for both of us."

  I nodded and ordered another drink for me.

  "I understand," I told her. "I really do, and I think you are smart to back away from me right now. I see I still have some work to do with her."

  "Good luck," she said, rising to leave. She walked out as my fresh drink arrived, and I sipped it trying to devise a new strategy. Clearly, I realized, I had been naïve about my ability to break away without trouble. I had never heard of anything like this, much less suffered it myself. It was an alien dilemma. In my experience with lovers, girlfriends, and wives, we always had just walked away. If one partner wanted out, the other one accepted it and went on with their life. I recalled how spooked Barbara had looked as she revealed Catherine's visit that day. Just as I rehashed her words and expression from moments before, Barbara returned unexpectedly and approached me at the table with an added reminder of how scary Catherine must have been.

  "Can I ask you one other thing?" Barbara said. I just squinted my eyes, wondering what that possibly could be.

  "I have two dogs," she continued. "You don't think Catherine will hurt them, do you, to get at me?"

  "Two dogs?" I mumbled. Despite the fear in Barbara's eyes, I started to laugh a little at the kind of impression Catherine obviously had made. I moved quickly to reassure her.

  "No," I said. "I can't see her hurting your dogs. You've done the right thing here. I'm the only dog she wants to hurt."

  "Good luck," she said again, then turned to leave for good—or, at least for that night.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  January 13, 1980

  I finally realized that, for the first time in my life, I had engaged with true insanity. And the recognition had an enlightening impact on me, an epiphany of tremendous proportions. Catherine's behavior had become so foolishly cross-twisted that, despite the dangers, it made me laugh. I knew I never would suffer from jealousy or obsession myself again just from watching her deterioration. I was like the kid who became a cautious driver after a weekend viewing those gory old Highway Patrol car wreck films or the guy who quit smoking after a counselor forced him to eat cigarette butts. Watching Catherine disintegrate had become my version of a scared-straight, tough-love antidote for jealousy and obsession.

  As for her sanity, I wondered if it reflects the outlook of a sane mind to fight the humiliation of rejection with the greater humiliation of desperation. Was it less embarrassing to make a public spectacle of obsession by begging for my attention in front of other people instead of suffering in silence? Although I had experienced jealous feelings in the past, particularly at the end of my marriages, I never had fallen so low as to beg in public for reconciliation, much less launch a campaign of threats against potential rivals. I concluded no relationship could ever be worth that investment of time and dignity. From that day on, I have stifled laughs when observing the smallest outbursts in public—the loud voice of a woman after noticing her date ogle a stranger or the interrogation of a woman late to a party by her husband. But I have winced at the annual news stories about men so consumed with jealousy they slaughter their wives and children before killing themselves in one final dramatic display of depression. All those incidents remind me of Catherine and the lesson I learned that week.

  And it is all about control, I whispered to myself, recognizing that Catherine's behavior had nothing to do with love or even physical attraction. She's terrified about the loss of control and is struggling any way she can to recover it.

  As foolish as her behavior had become, however, I still had to appreciate the threat it posed. Because, after all, I realized the ultimate expression of control could potentially be murder. So, I also began to appreciate the dangers I posed to my friends, with Barbara's chilling visit from Catherine just one example of the responsibility I had to assume for others in my life. I could chuckle at Barbara's concern for her dogs, but then I stopped to wonder how far Catherine really might go. What if Strong's house caught fire, and we both died? What if a car ran over me and my daughter while walking across a street? I weighed those fears in my mind while Don Stricklin's words from my November visit to Special Crimes kept ringing in my ears: We think she stalked Tedesco. And after my experience with Barbara, I had evidence Catherine had begun stalking me. But anti-stalking laws remained at least a decade away in 1980. I realized I would have to face this all by myself. "Grow some balls," the cops had advised Tedesco when he sought help about her. They wouldn't have to tell me. I thought I already had a pretty large pair, anyhow.

  While I had failed to adequately conceal plans for my date with Barbara on Thursday, I had managed to keep everyone in the dark about a trip I took to Austin the next day. I had been approached by someone at the Austin American-Statesman about a job in the newspaper's capitol bureau. The paper planned expansion for coverage of Texas state government, and I had always seen that kind of assignment as my ultimate goal. So I flew up for an interview, hung around town all weekend, and came back on Sunday. Besides fulfilling my professional ambitions, I felt that a new job in another town also would place a crucial geographic hurdle between me and all the problems in Houston.

  I also had made plans for another date for Sunday night, January 13, in an effort to test my post-Catherine options. This time I had turned to Denise, the young girl from my ill-fated canoeing class the week before I had connected with Catherine. I wasn't very excited about that evening, but I also was eager to flex my independence. By coincidence, Denise actually had called me during the week wanting to get together, completely out of the blue. So I called her when I returned from Austin and invited her to a movie. She picked me up in her car at Strong's. After the movie, we had a meal at a Mexican restaurant, and she wanted to go swinging in the dark on a playground in a nearby park. I felt secure from Catherine, believing she had no way to know about this outing. As I talked with Denise at the park, however, both of us realized our age differences left us little in common. We agreed to go our separate ways, and I was in bed by eleven after she dropped me at the house of Strong.

  I had been asleep about an hour, however, when a nightmare began unfolding in real life around me in the bedroom. The lights went on, and I popped up, rubbing my eyes, to see Strong standing in the doorway and Catherine beside my bed. I bolted up in the bed and stared at them both.

  "You let her in?" I asked Jim, ignoring her.

  "She insisted," he said. "She pushed open the door. I couldn't stop her. What's going on?"

  "Get out," I barked at her, still fighting to come fully awake.

  "I watched you tonight, and I'm not putting up with this!" she shouted. "I'm going to stay here tonight. You're my whore!"

  So, I thought, she followed me tonight. I began weighing the danger she posed with my need for more information about her deteriorating state of mind. I also feared the result of any physical confrontation required to remove her from the house, once Strong had let her in. But more than that, I felt weary and burned out. I was half asleep. I didn't think she would do anything with Strong in the house as a witness. And I wanted to give her a message as
bizarre as the one she'd just delivered to me.

  "Fuck you," I said. Without seriously considering it further I acted on instinct. I scrunched back down in the small single bed where I slept and rolled over, speaking without looking at her face. "I'm going back to sleep. You can do whatever you want. As far as I'm concerned, you are not here."

  Then I drifted back to my dreams wondering if I would wake up in the morning.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  January 14, 1980

  I awoke unharmed with Catherine still there, sleeping in that small bed beside me. I yawned, rubbed my eyes, and climbed around her to get a shower, thinking all the way to the bathroom about how I must be going crazy, too. After all that concern about her potential for violence, I had just gone back to sleep instead of running her out of the house and locking the doors. Then I realized a more vigorous response might have gotten us firebombed. But I concluded our dance of disengagement could not continue. All debts, whatever those might be, would have to be paid with the devil faced like a man might take his wife: for better or worse. As I scrubbed myself clean and prepared for a new week at the courthouse, I couldn't help wondering what could possibly come next.

  I returned to the bedroom to find Catherine wide awake, standing up, and going through the top drawer of a dresser I used for my underwear. I looked around this room I rented from Strong and took stock. Besides the underwear in the dresser and a collection of outer clothes hanging in the closet, I couldn't think of much else in there worth stealing. I had a cheap stereo with a built-in turntable sitting on a nightstand. And I decided she could have that if she wanted it. I ignored her and pulled clothes from the closet with a plan to just get dressed and leave her standing there. Strong was about to leave and when he did, his belongings in the other bedroom might be vulnerable. But, I rationalized, he had let her come into the house, so he would have to accept the consequences. And I was determined to avoid any physical contact with her at all costs. I wondered: Won't she sooner or later just grow tired of being invisible and go away?

  When I was dressed and ready to leave, however, I reached on the top of the dresser for my keys and found them gone.

  "Not the keys again," I muttered. She had taken a seat on the bed to watch so I turned and said, "I need my keys, Catherine."

  "Tomorrow is our anniversary," she said. Catherine considered the 15th of each month to be our anniversary date, commemorating that first outing on October 15 to collect the rent on my beach house. She said, "Something special might happen."

  "Catherine, I don't come to your house any more. Why did you come to mine? Please leave."

  Just then, we heard Strong exit the front door, and I realized I was alone with her in the house.

  "No," she said. "We are going to get some things settled this morning. And you can't leave until we do because I have your keys."

  "What do you want?"

  "Someone told me that you did something else to me, something so horrible that if I found out what it was, I would lose control. What do you think that could be?"

  "And you think you are under control now? I don't know what the fuck you are talking about."

  "I want you to go into the courthouse this morning and tell Special Crimes you were crazy when you made that tape and that you want to take it all back."

  "If I do that, I can have my keys back?"

  "Yes."

  I acted as if I were thinking about it, and then I said, "Ah, I can get another set of keys somewhere. It's not important, and I really don't have anything you can take that is important enough to make me do that."

  "You don't?"

  Before I could confirm my position, however, I had another thought: This is about the silliest negotiation I could imagine. My statement about her can never go back into my mouth, even if I tell Don Stricklin I'm crazy. If I turn up dead, they're still looking at her.

  So instead of resisting her demand, I changed course and relented with a sigh.

  "OK, Catherine, why don't you get one of them on the phone, and I'll tell them all that. But then I get my keys, right?"

  "Right," she said, already picking up a phone and dialing the district attorney's office number from memory. I heard her get through to Henry Oncken, who served at that time as the first assistant, a position above Stricklin. She identified herself and then handed the phone to me, after telling Oncken I needed to speak with him. I knew he had been briefed on my situation, so I took the phone and said hello.

  "Henry, I just wanted to call and tell you I am crazy, and I take it all back."

  "Gary, are you are in danger?" he asked.

  "No," I said, realizing this all had started sounding even more bizarre than I had imagined. "I'm just trying to get my keys so I can drive in to work. Catherine wanted me to tell you I'm crazy first."

  "OK," he said. "I got it. You are crazy and you take it all back. And you are with her now?"

  "That's correct. I'll stop by your office when I get to the courthouse."

  "Make sure you do. Thanks for the call."

  I hung up the phone, looked at Catherine, extended an arm with palm up, and demanded with one word: "Keys."

  When she started shaking her head and saying, "No," I realized I had reached my limit and decided to drop my non-contact pledge. I snatched her purse from the bed and pushed her down on the mattress. I looked through the purse but couldn't find the keys. So I offered it in exchange for the keys, and she agreed. When I told her to leave, however, she refused. I grabbed her by the hair and dragged her out of the house until she agreed to leave the house as well.

  But, I had no sooner settled in behind my desk at the courthouse when she made an encore appearance there. I tried to ignore her again as I watched from the corner of my eye her efforts to conduct private meetings with my colleagues in the room. When one of them returned from a trip with her down the hall, I leaned over and asked, "What does she want?"

  "She's asking about that Exorcist Tape and whether it was played for us in the press room," said Tom Moran, the courthouse reporter for the Chronicle who would later become a Houston attorney. "She thinks she has a case for slander or something."

  "You do remember that it was Strong who actually played a small part of it, don't you? That's his voice on that tape with her, not me."

  Tom waved me away and said, "Sure, sure, she's grabbing straws."

  Just then she re-entered the room, approached my desk, and crossed her arms on her chest. She checked to make sure she had an audience among the other reporters, and I checked to make sure they were enjoying the show.

  "You are in serious trouble, now, Mr. Taylor," she began. "I'll be filing a suit against you and The Houston Post for $2.5 million for holding me up to public ridicule. And another thing. I have someone else ready to testify you have been running around town distributing naked pictures of your wife. When her attorney finds out about that, your divorce will get real nasty, won't it?"

  Tom and Strong started to laugh, and I was barely holding it back.

  "Catherine," I said, "you are making an absolute fool of yourself. You are the one holding yourself up to public ridicule. I don't have to do a thing. Now it is time for you to leave so we can get back to work."

  "No," she said, standing her ground. So, I took a sheet of typing paper from my desk and started to write on it. When I finished, I showed it to her: "Catherine Mehaffey is barred from this Press Room by unanimous vote." I got up with a tape dispenser, walked around her to the door, and taped it to the outside. Before I could come back inside, however, her hand snaked around the door and ripped it off. As I re-entered the room, she backed into a corner and grabbed a ballpoint pen from my desk, extending it like a knife.

  "Catherine," I said, "you are going to leave."

  "No," she said. So I grabbed one of her arms and started pulling her across the floor. Halfway there, she snatched the back of a small desk chair with rollers and used it to propel herself faster out of my hand. Then she dove onto the floor while I stood th
ere watching her.