Luggage By Kroger: A True Crime Memoir

by Gary Taylor

  The investigation convinced detectives she had fired a total of seven times at me that night. One slug landed in my back. I laughed when I heard they found another slug just laying on her bed where it had fallen after sailing through the chair and bouncing off my head. In addition, they marked holes in the hallway wall and another in the picture window beside the front door. They believed she fired two more times outside the house as I ran down the street.

  "Blasting away," I muttered, musing on the image of those holes in the wall.

  Bert said the officers believed Catherine had kept a .32-calibre pistol stashed on the floor beneath the couch in the living room, waiting for the best moment and working up the courage to actually use it.

  "She could have pulled it out and shot you in the face any time she wanted while you were in the living room with her earlier," said Bert. "For some reason, she waited until she could entice you to the bedroom. Maybe she wanted to make sure it looked like you had been in the bedroom so she could call it attempted rape. Or, maybe she was waiting for someone else who decided not to come. At any rate, when you got loose back there, she had to change her plans. She shot up the walls trying to kill you as you fled but couldn't hit the moving target. She even threw one slug into that picture window at the front of the house, probably just before she shot you in the doorway."

  After using the last bullet in the .32 to put me on the ground outside her apartment, Catherine apparently withdrew to the bedroom where she retrieved a .22-caliber pistol from the top drawer of her dresser, Bert theorized. The first cop on the scene found that drawer still open when he checked the bedroom. Bert said they believed she had used the .22 for any shots outside the apartment, as I fled down the street.

  "But the physical evidence verifies your version of the incident," Bert continued, offering his view of the good news for his trial strategy. "In fact, it's hard to explain it any other way. That bullet hole in the seat of the chair, for example, is crucial. She will have to explain that some how. We all feel if she testifies she will lose control and show jurors that temper."

  "Or, at least the Medusa stare."

  "Yeah," he chuckled, "that, too. Anyhow, we also have the other stuff leading up to that night, testimony from Strong and the burglary. There are the tape recordings with the threats against you she made to Jim Strong. And we hope to find some way to at least mention the unsolved death of George Tedesco. Could you testify that you knew about her reputation and the suspicions in that murder?"

  "Better than that," I said. "She talked about it constantly. She told me what I had done was worse than anything George had ever done."

  "Did you take that as a threat?"

  "You bet your sweet ass."

  "We'll need you to say that in court, without the sweet ass part, of course."

  I nodded. Bert also said he needed to get that slug from my back to prove she had been shooting the .32. So I arranged day surgery and went to a hospital with John Donovan. He stood beside the surgeon with a tin pan to preserve the chain of evidence as the doctor deposited the .32-calibre bullet into his custody. They just deadened my back with local anesthetic, and the doctor dug around in there until he could grab the slug with a forceps, much like a scene from an old western movie. I felt quite a bit of pressure when he grabbed the slug, but nothing went wrong. Of course, I needed another round of Demerol.

  Just a few days after my shooting, the family of George Tedesco filed a civil, wrongful-death lawsuit seeking damages from Catherine and alleging she had conspired with a man the family identified as Tommy Bell to murder Tedesco. Although the criminal investigation into Tedesco had stalled, the family's attorneys felt strongly enough about their private investigation to make those allegations in a suit. I hadn't heard much about Tommy Bell to that point. But I was destined to hear much more in the weeks ahead.

  My first Bell connection arrived in the mail, when I received a receipt for a late January gasoline purchase in New Jersey on a credit card of mine stolen in the burglary at Strong's. I took it to Bert, and his investigator, John Ray Harrison, tried to chase it down. The license plate number on the receipt was partially blurred, but Bert and John Ray tried a combination of digits until they found one that made sense. They traced one of the combinations back to the mother of Tommy Bell. He was known to have been a client of Catherine's. They thought they might finally have hit the jackpot, gaining leverage against an insider who could deliver Catherine on a number of crimes—maybe even Tedesco.

  So, just before the March 24 trial date, they interrogated Bell for three hours. They persuaded him to admit Catherine had dispatched him to Strong's house the night of the burglary. He told them she wanted him to "rough Taylor up." But Bell denied stealing anything. Since Bell had missed me at the house, Bert decided against trying to squeeze him on a flimsy charge like unlawful use of a credit card. He wanted more. But, with the trial fast approaching, he had to keep Bell in the wings. Bert knew he couldn't trust Bell enough to force him to testify. And Bert thought he had a strong case without Bell. Bert just saw Bell as a potential ace in the hole, should something go wrong.

  Should something go wrong? Bert didn't' know the circus was headed for town with plans to set up tents at the trial of Catherine Mehaffey and turn all his assumptions about jury psychology and presentation of evidence inside out.

  FIFTY-NINE

  March 24, 1980

  "Gary, are you all right? I am such a bad shot. But I still don't know how you got out of there."

  Catherine was sitting alone with me beside the desk in the chambers of State District Judge Jon Hughes. Just before jury selection in her attempted murder trial, she had made another of her bizarre requests—one that had led directly to this strange conversation. I had not even seen her since that night in her apartment, when I peeked around that chair I held as a shield in her bedroom before she fired the first shot. Back then, she resembled a zombie. With the trial set to begin this day, however, she was cleaned up, now perky and composed, ready to crack a few jokes and charm the world. She asked Bert for a private audience with me so we could sort some things out. Bert, of course, was skeptical, called it "highly unusual," and recommended I ignore her. But, of course, I couldn't resist. And the judge, eager to facilitate any meeting that could eliminate a trial, offered his chambers for our chat.

  "No, I thought you made a pretty good attempt," I replied with a compliment, rubbing my back for affect.

  Catherine tilted her head, batted her eyes, and cackled. Then she stared into my eyes and said, "You're not wearing a wire, are you? With you, I can never tell."

  "I'm not. But I'm also not going to let you search me this time. You'll just have to take my word."

  "Of course, I believe you. We have to talk."

  "What's on your mind?"

  She sat in a high back chair with her legs crossed. Her blonde hair was curled and bouncy, a lot like her demeanor. She was vivacious and smiling. Catherine had something to sell, and she wanted me to buy.

  "Gary, we are making fools of ourselves. Don't you realize it?"

  "I don't understand."

  "This trial. You know, every lawyer in town thinks it's a big joke. I can't work."

  I already knew that. The State Bar of Texas had suspended her license pending the outcome of this case. That organization will ignore a lot of misbehavior from its members, but an attempted murder charge tested its limits.

  "And you," she said. "Look at you. You're ruined."

  "I'm ruined? How so?"

  "Oh, c'mon. They've got you back in the office running errands, hiding you, and hoping nobody knows you're there anymore."

  "So, what's the solution?" I asked, unwilling to engage in debate over her deliberate mischaracterization of my job status and eager to get the trial under way.

  "Call it off. Tell them you withdraw the charges. Forget about it. You know, I have two great lawyers handling this for me. And they are going to make you look very foolish."

  I knew both of th
em. I had great respect for Catherine's trial lead, a lawyer named Jim Skelton. I had interviewed him numerous times and even shared a few drinks on occasion. But I had to chuckle as I thought of his associate on this case. He was an older, bearded man named Will Gray who already had a legendary reputation as an appellate wizard. I respected him, too, and knew him better. I knew him so well that I had asked him a few weeks back to serve as a character witness on my behalf if we needed anyone to testify about my stalwart reputation for the truth. He had quickly agreed. Then he called back a week later and withdrew. Sounding a bit sheepishly, he explained Catherine had hired him for her team. As a result, of course, he could not testify for me. Then he said something else that made me laugh: "Don't tell her I agreed to testify for you, will you?" I didn't mind losing Will as a character witness because I recognized that her retention of a crack appellate counsel for the trial itself spoke volumes about her concerns. She wanted Will Gray at the defense table raising every objection and finding any technical misstep that might eventually overturn an inevitable conviction.

  "They are good," I agreed.

  "Skelton is the Last Cowboy, you know. He is a real man who wouldn't betray his lover no matter what happened. He knows there are lover spats, and you just work around those things. I wish I had met him before I met you."

  "The Last Cowboy," I said with a grin, stroking my beard. It sounded like they had kindled more than an attorney-client relationship. Maybe that's how she is paying for the high-priced legal counsel, I mused. I had heard rumors that she and Skelton had hooked up, and, with her gushing praise of his manhood, I couldn't help but suspect Catherine viewed him as something more than her lawyer. I also saw her glowing comments about the Last Cowboy as a feeble attempt to trigger a jealous rage. But she hadn't even been able to make me jealous when I liked her. So I ignored her discourse on the Code of the West and pressed for a quick end to our private session.

  "So, what can I do for you?" I asked.

  "I told you. Drop the charges. Tell Bert Graham you changed your mind, and you don't want a trial. It will only destroy both of us."

  "I can't do that. It's really not my case, is it? It is styled 'The People of the State of Texas versus Catherine Mehaffey.' I'm just a witness in that case."

  She frowned and snarled, "Don't give me that technical crap! You know in a case like this you could smash it with a single word, maybe even leave town."

  "Leave town?" I asked, looking shocked. She had suggested this alternative a couple of times and friends had recommended it, too. She considered herself more of a Houstonian than me, having lived here since childhood, and had boasted to me once that Houston belonged to her. So I used this opportunity to challenge her territorial imperative.

  "Houston has become my home," I said. "If anyone is leaving town, it's going to be you."

  Then, before she could close her wide open mouth and respond, I delivered my final decision on her request.

  "Catherine, we are going into that courtroom now and pull a jury. Then I am going to tell them everything I know. Then they are going to deliberate for about ten minutes and send you straight to fucking jail."

  She sat back in her chair and delivered another Medusa stare. After a half-minute of that, I rose to leave. But before I could walk off, she offered her conclusion on the question of how I escaped that night.

  "Now I know how you got away," she said. "Billy Joel is right. Only the good die young."

  SIXTY

  March 31, 1980

  By the time my testimony had ended on the second day of trial, Catherine's reputation should have been in shreds. Jurors had learned as much about the unsolved murder of George Tedesco as they had about the attempt on my life. I believed I had been an effective witness. In my career, I had covered at least a hundred trials from start to finish, plus bits and pieces of hundreds more. I didn't require much coaching from Bert. I knew to look at the jury and answer the questions succinctly. When Skelton took his turn on cross-examination, he didn't ask many questions at all. I thought he was being cautious. But he did say he expected to recall me to the stand at a later time.

  Since court rules prohibit witnesses in a case from hearing the testimony of other witnesses, I couldn't stay in the courtroom for the rest of the trial. As the defendant, of course, Catherine was allowed to face her accusers and assist her lawyers at the defense counsel table. So, I didn't hear the first part of the testimony from Jim Strong. But I did return to the courtroom at Catherine's request while Strong sat on the witness stand to present the Exorcist Tape. And during that second visit I had a strange premonition: "The state's case is falling apart."

  Catherine and her attorneys wanted jurors to watch me while Bert played the Exorcist Tape and introduced it as evidence through testimony from Strong. So they asked the judge to have me return and sit in the front row behind the bar. I felt a strange transformation occurring in the courtroom. Every time we had listened to that tape in the confines at home, she had sounded spooky and chilling as her raspy voice threatened: "He has to beg for my mercy." In the sterile environment of that courtroom, however, she sounded more like a pitiful trapped animal. She sounded like a small, defenseless woman victimized by two large men who had recorded her weakest moment and ridiculed her with it for their own amusement. I wanted to puke.

  Listening to that tape in open court, I felt embarrassed and ashamed. And I'm sure my face betrayed it. In contrast, Catherine sat weeping tenderly at the counsel table, looking every part an innocent forced to withstand this greatest of public humiliations by yet a third bully in her story, prosecutor Bert Graham. I could see the Last Cowboy had succeeded in making every defense attorney's dream come true for Catherine. He had turned his client into the victim.

  I grew even more nervous as I watched the jurors and reviewed my testimony, imagining the questions they undoubtedly would be asking: Is she on trial for Tedesco or Taylor? Why would Taylor continue to see her if she had such a dangerous reputation? Why would he even date her at all? What kind of person records his lover's most vulnerable conversations? Could that small woman really be as vicious as they say? What is this trial really all about, anyway?

  Indeed, I decided, my shooting had become just a footnote to something larger, more confusing, and possibly sinister.

  Despite the boatload of incriminating evidence against Catherine, suddenly I felt like the villain with Jim Strong and Bert Graham as accomplices. Skelton and Gray just sat there shaking their heads in disgust while Catherine wept. Even Strong looked like he wanted to be anywhere but the witness stand. Then Skelton rose and delivered the final blow.

  "Your honor," he said, "the defense demands that the state surrender all the tapes these men made of my client without her knowledge."

  Above the twelve jurors I saw a single dialogue balloon disclosing their collective reaction: More tapes? These guys made even more of these secret tapes?

  When the judge agreed, Bert's assistant, Ira Jones, opened his briefcase and dumped the contents on the defense table with a loud crash that echoed around the room. At least a dozen cassettes tumbled onto the wood. I had no idea we had taped her that many times in the week after Thanksgiving, and I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

  Skelton had no intention of playing any of those tapes, but he had made his point in dramatic style. From that moment on, he controlled the case. He didn't even present witnesses. Catherine did not testify. She just sat there crying. In final arguments Skelton described Strong and me as "fat worms" used by the district attorney's office in its single-minded and unfair pursuit of Catherine Mehaffey for the murder of George Tedesco. The jurors deliberated ten hours before declaring themselves hopelessly deadlocked. Judge Hughes declared a mistrial and scheduled a new trial for late May.

  "Five? Five of them voted to acquit?" Bert was flabbergasted, and he looked a bit like Wile E. Coyote himself as he dissected the jury's reaction to this case. He sat on the couch in his office shaking his head and mumbled, "I thought may
be one would be fooled, but I can't believe five voted to acquit her."

  "We're trying this again, aren't we?" I asked.