Luggage By Kroger: A True Crime Memoir

by Gary Taylor

  "Just in my cock, motherfucker," I said, and they laughed again. "Fuck her to hell for this."

  Of course, I had no way of knowing what was happening back at Catherine's duplex. But I later would learn that she had asked the teenage girls for help. They at first considered Catherine a possible rape victim who had successfully vanquished me as her attacker. They would later testify they saw her drop two pistols in the grass beside the sidewalk before accompanying them back to her apartment where she broke down.

  "I'm ruined," Catherine was telling them about the same time I was talking to Strong. "I have to call the police, and I'm asking you to please not tell them about those guns."

  We had a big reunion at Ben Taub—Strong, George, Cindy, and me—while the doctor tried to keep things somber.

  "I don't know why you aren't dead," he said, shaking his head and unfurling an X-ray that showed a slug sitting right up against my heart. "It must be trapped in some muscle tissue there. Were you bent over or something when she shot you?"

  "I was opening a dead bolt lock. I guess I would have been hunched over."

  "Man," he said, "if you are a poker player you had better give it up because you have used a lifetime's supply of luck tonight. She really nailed you. A fraction of an inch one way and you're paralyzed, another fraction forward and you are D.O.A."

  I looked at Cindy and said, "Don't start spending that life insurance money yet."

  She frowned as the doctor continued his prognosis.

  "We cannot go in there tonight and get that bullet. It's just too close to the heart. We'll have to leave it in. Hopefully it won't move. You may need a note to go through metal detectors and get on airplanes. But you are going to have some terrific pain the next few days. I will get you started on Demerol and an antibiotic. You need to stick around here a couple of hours, and, if you aren't running a fever, I don't see why you can't leave."

  "So, can you get that catheter out, now?" I asked.

  He nodded with a grin and pointed to a nurse who ended that misery.

  "Fucking bitch," I mumbled. The nurse turned to stare, and I apologized, "Not you. I'm sorry. I was thinking of somebody else."

  By then they also had stitched up the gash in my head. All I could do was sit there and wait to be released. For the first time in my relationship with Catherine I was truly angry.

  "That fucker is going to jail, now," I said. "That fucking bitch."

  Strong started giggling and shaking his head. "I'm sorry," he said. "But I have to tell you, when you are sitting there with that bandage on your head and your eyes popped out, you look just like Wile E. Coyote after the dynamite goes off."

  "Thanks," I said, then I started to chuckle a bit, too, euphoric, I guess, that I apparently would survive, and this moment of confrontation had ended. I also felt some pride in my escape, having employed a wooden chair to defeat a woman with a pistol. But I also felt fear, wondering what was happening at her apartment and thinking she might have fled with a plan of her own to wipe out anyone associated with me. I told Cindy to make sure her door was locked and said I would stop by later in the day for Shannon's birthday.

  "I'll probably need a sick day today," I told George, with a little grin.

  George and Cindy left, but Strong hung around. We had decided to get a hotel room for the night rather than go back to his house, exaggerating Catherine's ability to stage another attack. Just as we were celebrating what appeared to be a victory over her, however, a hospital aide handed me a telephone with detective John Donovan on the line ready to spoil the fun.

  "How are you?" he asked.

  "Shot in the back and the head, but it looks like I'll live. What's up?"

  I had known Donovan for years, considered him an ace investigator, and was pleased he had landed the case. He couldn't resist a little jibe.

  "Taylor, I have to tell you, I'm over at Mehaffey's, and this place looks like something out of a Roadrunner cartoon. I can see where you ran by looking at the bullet holes in the walls."

  "Yeah, John, ha, I, uh…"

  "But I do need to ask you a question. Which gun was yours?"

  I was stunned. I had never even held a gun in my entire life, much less that night. I did not even know two guns were in play. Suddenly, I realized Catherine had an escape plan of her own.

  "I didn't have a gun," I said.

  "She says you did."

  I flashed on a scene from the first Halloween movie that had been popular recently and recalled the image of that psycho killer Michael Myers rising up in the background to attack again while everyone was celebrating his death.

  "It's a lie, John. I had no gun. I don't know what she is talking about. Does this mean there's no arrest?"

  "Oh, no, we're arresting her, taking her in right now. You're shot in the back, and she'll have to show it was self-defense. But I had to call as soon as possible and get your reaction. I also wanted to let you know this probably isn't the end."

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  March 1980

  "Hey, I know you, don't I? You're the guy who…"

  I didn't let him finish. I was sitting alone one night a few weeks after the shooting at the bar in Houston's Hofbrau Steak House, sipping on a scotch and water. This guy in a suit sat down and stared at me before he started speaking. I took him immediately for a local lawyer somehow familiar with Catherine's latest escapade of trying to murder me two months earlier. I wondered if he were friend or foe, but I didn't really care. In those three months between my shooting and her trial, a great deal had changed in my emotional attitude and my life in general. I was a tough guy taking on all comers. So I nodded.

  "That's what I thought," he said, ordering a beer, and then telling the bartender to fetch me another scotch on his tab. He turned and said with a grin, "I don't know anything about you. But I once knew her. And whatever you say she did, I believe it."

  Hmmm, I thought, maybe I should take your order for one of those 'Mehaffey Survivor' T-shirts Mark and I might start producing.

  Instead of verbalizing that thought, however, I just winked and thanked him for the drink, acting much like a soldier sharing a war story with no need for the details. Besides, I thought he could just as easily be an investigator for Catherine's impending trial, trying to get some sort of wedge against me through an innocent barroom conversation. I drank up and left, looking over my shoulder all the way to my car, which at this time had become a brand new, dark blue 1980 Ford Bronco purchased with my share of proceeds from the sale of my house.

  My sex life had perked up as well and diversified. I learned that a man wounded by a notorious femme fatale ranks only behind one in a uniform for appeal. Although I was a little surprised at the response, I figured I should milk that advantage as long as I could. A couple of days after the shooting, for example, I got a call at the office from Barbara. No longer fearful about the fate of her dogs, she wanted to get reacquainted and apologized for brushing me off just because Catherine had visited her before our date. She told me she had once had a similar, but less violent, experience with a rejected boyfriend and knew how I must feel.

  After Cindy and I closed on sale of the house, we closed on another reconciliation that resulted in a regular gig as her secret lover when Uncle Al was working nights. About that time she also had officially become my second ex-wife, and I began to realize how seriously conflicted she must have been. But I enjoyed being the other man with her for a change, and the thought of cuckolding Uncle Al just added more spice to the meal. I had an easier time visiting our daughters, too, because I didn't have to leave after they went to bed.

  And then, there was the woman I met in a bar who just walked up and said, "Let's see if it's worth killing for."

  "It's not," I replied. "It was a lot more complicated than that. But you strike me as someone who would demand evidence anyway, so I'm not going to try and convince you otherwise."

  Once I had them aligned on a convenient, rotating schedule, I had a greater appreciation for what
life must have been like for Warren Beatty. I tried to understand the attraction and decided I must have been reflecting a greater air of confidence—the kind that comes from squaring off against a gun with a wooden chair and living to testify in court. I certainly felt stronger then and acted the part. Some might have thought such a close call with death would have shown me the light of religion, but I just hadn't had the time to think about it.

  The night after the shooting, ramped up on Demerol, I started a new hobby, too, when Strong took me to a bar to play British steel tip darts. It seemed like I had a natural talent for the sport. I did well enough to immediately join a league team and start playing tournaments for money around town. One night at a bar called Sherlock's Pub, we had prevailed in a tournament, and I couldn't resist taunting the losers.

  "Dig you an early grave, did we?" I asked. "Kick you while you were down?"

  Fists started flying, and, before we were able to back out of the bar, an entire wall collapsed—the one displaying a framed collectible of Queen Victoria's pantaloons and much beloved by the proprietor. Once we got outside, the mob retreated back into the pub, but I was shaking as I got in Strong's car to ride home.

  "What is going on with me?" I asked him. "I'm thirty-three years old and getting into barroom brawls, now? In just six months I've seen my marriage collapse, dated a psycho, and gotten shot. Now I'm fighting in bars? What the fuck is next?"

  He just shrugged his shoulders and laughed at me.

  We had decided to live under the assumption that Catherine probably would have enjoyed nothing more than to successfully finish the job she started January 18. Just to feel safer, I bought a .357 Magnum. I recruited our police reporter, Fred King, to take me to a pistol range and teach me how to shoot it. I carried it everywhere in a canvas knapsack. On our nightly forays, Strong would bring his shotgun, too. We must have looked like cartoon characters, coming home drunk after a darts tournament, stopping in the driveway, and then grabbing weapons from the trunk. One time a tree limb made a noise brushing against the garage door in the wind as we walked toward the house, and Strong defended us by blowing a hole in the garage wall. Our friends felt the need for arms as well. One night playing poker in Strong's kitchen with a group of lawyers and reporters, we heard tires squeal in the cul de sac outside his house.

  "Whoaa," I shouted, as our guests produced at least four large pistols from under the table, ready for action.

  "And the wind cried MOOOOOHAFFFEEE," laughed Mark, mimicking Jimi Hendrix again as the other players holstered their weapons. The he begged me to never tell that he'd made fun of her that way.

  "You know I told her you called her a bum fuck, don't you?" I said.

  "Can't trust you worth a shit. Now I'm on her list."

  "But we know who's still on top, don't we?" laughed Kent Schaffer, the private investigator who had bet me a hundred dollars I'd never live to attend Mike Ramsey's 1980 Christmas party, still more than nine months away.

  "Want to cancel that bet?" I asked.

  "Nope," he said. "I still think it's good."

  "I think that as long as I can find a chair, I could handle her again."

  Of course, there was work as well, and I found I enjoyed the change back into the office for the variety of general assignment duties, covering whatever story might arise on any given day. Both newspapers appeared so confused about what to do with me as a story that they relegated the shooting to the back pages. My management likely was embarrassed about the news of their reporter getting shot in a domestic squabble. But they didn't punish me or try to make me quit by assigning an unpleasant work schedule. I saw the situation as placing The Post in a bind because the paper needed me to prove myself before a jury as a truthful man. An acquittal for Catherine might have painted me as a liar and diminished the paper's credibility. But I also thought everyone at the paper believed my version of the events. Familiar as they were with the vagaries of the criminal court system, however, I also was sure they were holding their breath to make sure I could prove it.

  But it wasn't all fun and work during the weeks between my shooting and Catherine's trial. I also had preparations to attend with the district attorney's office for that big event. And I was about to learn that the pleasant months of early 1980 were just the eye of a hurricane, with the second wall of rain and winds gathering just then to dump all over my head.

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  March 1980

  Frustrated for more than a year by their failure to touch Catherine on the Tedesco murder, the brass at the Harris County District Attorney's office saw me as the vehicle for their second shot at her. And they liked their odds of success. Not only was she the suspect in both cases, but the facts of her relationship with both me and Tedesco boasted many similarities, with one crucial exception. I would be able to testify about mine.

  So it had come as no surprise to find a who's who of local law enforcement gathered in a large conference room in the DA's building about eight hours after the shooting to take my official victim's statement, a document that normally would have been prepared by a homicide detective like Donovan. Instead of just me and a cop in his cubicle, we had a court stenographer taking my testimony under oath in a room filled to capacity with DA assistants and special investigators. Donovan was among them. Also in the crowd were Stricklin, Rosenthal, Oncken, and Carpenter, plus some others that had not surfaced in the early days of my case. Further emphasizing the importance the law enforcement community placed on my case, the man interrogating me for two hours in front of this audience was none other than Harris County District Attorney John B. Holmes, Jr., himself.

  Everybody wants a piece of her ass, now, I thought, taking a mental roll call around that room. And they believe I can pimp her out.

  That was fine with me. I hoped I had done just that. Later I grinned when I learned that Catherine had spent two nights in jail, unable to post bond while facing a possible life sentence on a charge of attempted murder. I also enjoyed seeing Don Stricklin himself visit Strong's house unannounced two nights after the shooting to warn us personally that she had finally made bail. Stricklin also said the office had decided to assign a prosecution team from the regular assistant ranks to avoid any hint of conflict that might arise if he or another Special Crimes Bureau lawyer took the case. Stricklin had a good chance of being called as a witness based on my statement to him in November.

  But I was pleased a few days later to learn that a veteran prosecutor named Bert Graham would lead the team with the help of another veteran, Ira Jones. Bert was about my age, and I had watched him handle a number of trials during my time covering courts. In fact, he had been the lead prosecutor in the trial of the two Houston police officers accused in 1977 of killing the Hispanic laborer, Joe Torres, by throwing him into Buffalo Bayou. During that month-long trial moved to Huntsville, we had become close acquaintances while living in the dormitory on the campus of Sam Houston State University. Consulting frequently with Bert on plans for the Mehaffey trial, I learned a lot more about what actually had occurred the night she shot me and two days before with the burglary at Strong's house.

  "It's a good news, bad news situation," Bert warned as he began outlining the case strategy for me. I knew Bert to be an extremely fastidious attorney. Although he had never lost a case as a prosecutor, he always worried that he would. He was destined to remain a career prosecutor in the office and rise in the next twenty years to the position of chief assistant. But his tone discussing the Mehaffey case in early 1980 left me wondering if it would actually be the cakewalk to conviction I anticipated. After all, I thought, hadn't I been shot in the back?

  "You were inside her house," Bert explained. "And there were two pistols involved. She told the officers on the scene you had used one of them to threaten her, so she has established a claim of self-defense."

  Catherine had tried to tell the first officers that all the action had occurred in the living room. But one of them was skeptical, noting bullet holes along the walls
and through the picture window in the front of the apartment beside the door where I had run. He walked into the bedroom where he discovered a bullet hole in there and the chair with a bullet hole through the seat.