Luggage By Kroger: A True Crime Memoir

by Gary Taylor

  "The terms of your bond require you not to violate any laws, and I am assuming that also means you can't kill me," I said sitting down and ordering a scotch from Sally the barmaid, who had agreed to keep an eye on us while cleaning up from lunch.

  Catherine laughed meekly as I removed my black bow tie and pulled my personalized wine opener from my pocket. She sighed.

  "What have we done to ourselves?" she asked. I raised my eyebrows and took a sip of scotch. She continued, "Look at you. You're a waiter?"

  "Yes," I joked. "But that's only until I can pass the test for driving a cab."

  "It's been so bad for me. Skelton has finally given me a job in a machine shop he owns. I do the books and answer phones. I have nothing any more. No money or anything. I heard about Cindy, and it is good you finally have those kids from that bitch."

  "We're getting along. You know, I got a call from the state's program to help victims of crime. They said I am eligible for a rehabilitation grant. I told them they should find some real victims and give the money to them."

  "Ha! Maybe I should apply. I'm the real victim here," Catherine said and then took a pause before making her pitch. "But it doesn't have to be this way. You can fix it. You can tell them you made a mistake. You didn't mean for any of this to happen."

  "And why would I do that?"

  "Because you know there is going to be another trial. The appeal will be granted. So much happened in that trial that was wrong. And when they order a new trial, you will have to decide again what is best for everyone. And by then I will have something on you."

  "Oh, man," I said, shaking my head. "Listening to you is like having the same bad dream over and over. I wake up, take a piss or get a drink of water. Then I lay back down, close my eyes, and here you come again. Squawk, squawk, squawk. You make my ears hurt."

  "Gary, please listen to me, listen to how desperate I am. I got a job at The Post."

  "The Houston Post?" I asked, astonished. She nodded and I said, "They circulated your picture after the shooting and told the guards to arrest you on sight. And then you just stroll in over there, and they give you a job doing…what?"

  "Just making sales calls at night."

  I started laughing at the image of her walking into The Post and actually getting a job there while she was atop the security team's list of most wanted potential trespassers.

  "Talk about your sleeping watchdogs," I said.

  "No," she said, "it wasn't for the job. I wanted to get in there and sneak into the personnel files, find yours, and get something on you."

  "Did you?"

  "Of course," she beamed with pride. Then she continued, "Well, I got in there and saw your file. But I couldn't find anything in it that was useful."

  "Catherine, I truly am sorry your life has crumbled like this. It is such a waste. You don't have to be like this. You could have been a successful attorney. But I can't do anything about it now. If you win an appeal, so be it. I'll be there to testify again. Until then, you just need to suck it up and do the best you can. All you have to worry about is yourself. I've got a couple of kids, and I certainly don't have time for your bullshit any more."

  Her patented Medusa stare failed to materialize. All she could muster was a timid scowl that vanished almost as soon as she tried. She looked beaten and shaking, and I realized how far she had fallen just to come here and beg me to do something she knew could never be done. If our attraction indeed had been fatal, I realized, the fatality was her.

  "Remember what you always said?" I asked. She squinted as I continued. "You always told me 'Nothing is free' and you were correct. I paid for our relationship with a bullet in the back. And you paid for taking your shots with a conviction. Nothing is free. And, now I think we are done here, correct?"

  She stared a moment, then got up and walked out. I walked over to flirt with Sally.

  "Is she the one?" Sally asked, revealing that she, too, had heard rumors of my turbulent past. I grinned because I did have plans for Sally, and I hoped it would be sooner, rather than later.

  "What do you think?" I asked.

  She smiled and whispered, "You can do better."

  Just then, Catherine emerged from the back door of the restaurant, and I whirled when I spotted her in the corner of my eye. I expected an attack but it didn't come. Instead, she looked at me with painful eyes.

  "My car won't start. Can you come take a look?"

  I started laughing.

  "Sorry, Catherine. You will have to call Triple A."

  With that I walked outside, climbed into my Bronco, and drove toward the parking lot exit. I checked the rear-view mirror and watched as Catherine approached her Mercury Cougar with its hood at a 45-degree angle. She stared in my direction, then reached up and slammed the hood closed. She climbed inside, started the car, and headed for the other exit.

  I didn't know what she had had in mind with that stunt. But it reminded me of something important. I knew I would spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder anyway, waiting for that moment when it came time for her to settle all scores.

  And, at the risk of getting too metaphysical, another thought crossed my mind—a new response to Catherine's lingering question about how I had managed to escape her attempt on my life. If I had been destined to square things for Tedesco, maybe also destiny had a larger plan unfolding to make sure I was available to catch my girls when Cindy fell. I might be uncertain about the existence of God. But it certainly did seem like the universe might have some order in it after all.

  I might not understand why things happened, but I certainly had learned a rule of thumb for managing life. It seemed pretty clear that when the bell sounds for any fight—no matter how hopeless it seems—you just need to keep swinging because there is no way to predict what might happen in the second round. And it sure seemed clear to me that honest, open love is a power that will usually find a way to survive. Peel away superficial emotions like lust or jealousy, and you find that basic love—like that of a parent for a child—dictates the real milestone events of our lives. Find that raw, basic emotion, and you can never go wrong. It will survive.

  Unlike the Apostle Paul, I would never be struck blind on the road to Damascus. But I had seen a light of sorts, and I recalled in particular Paul's admission to the Corinthians—a solid, real world observation even for an agnostic like me. The time had come to put away my childish things. Catherine Mehaffey and the lifestyle she symbolized certainly topped that list.

  But I really had little time that day for further rumination on the mysteries of the universe. Like everything else, they would sort themselves out in time. For the moment, I had more serious responsibilities to attend. Little E would need help prepping for a spelling test. And Shannon would be waiting at school for me to take her home.

  Epilogue: …And they all lived happily ever after?

  Just as Catherine predicted, Will Gray successfully worked his appellate magic on her attempted murder conviction, persuading the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to order yet a third trial in 1983. As we prepared for that event, I told Bert I would be satisfied with a compromise to avoid the risk of submitting the case to another jury. I suggested they allow her to plead guilty to a reduced charge of aggravated assault with a term of ten years probation. She agreed, and the case ended with that conviction. Although some have criticized me for what they considered weakness, that outcome satisfied me for several reasons.

  First, that conviction forced the State Bar of Texas to suspend her license to practice law until 1988, when she completed the terms with an early discharge. As a result, she could not work as an attorney, and I knew in 1983 that would be a tremendous punishment for her—likely as severe as time in prison. Also, at that time, the overcrowded Texas prison system was granting early release paroles in record numbers, so I expected she would have spent only a couple of years in prison even if another jury decided to send her. In addition, no one believed she would ever be able to comply with the restrictive
terms of probation, and most were stunned to learn five years later that she had.

  Most importantly for me, however, was the guarantee that Catherine would march into a courtroom and admit what happened that night as part of a guilty plea. She could never take it back. And she could never complain that a rubber stamp jury of prosecutorial puppets had railroaded her. To me, the guilty plea was worth more than the punishment.

  But that still wasn't the end of Catherine as a lawyer. She rose from her own ashes as soon as probation ended. Reinstated and remarried, she moved from her temporary home in West Texas to Dallas and started a new career under her married name there. She developed a successful practice for a few years handling a variety of immigration, divorce, and criminal matters. But then a new controversy disrupted her life in 1999, when a former legal associate and the associate's husband were ambushed outside their home in a shotgun attack that took the husband's life. That investigation ultimately led to conviction of Catherine's husband on a murder charge and a sentence of life in prison for him. Although prosecutors tried to implicate Catherine in the attack, they failed to compile enough evidence. She was never charged, and her husband did not accuse her. Seriously wounded, the associate testified that Catherine had been on the scene of the attack, giving the man instructions, and telling him "Don't be a pussy."

  That case put Catherine back in the media spotlight as the subject of a three-part series in The Dallas Morning News and a segment of the CBS-TV news magazine 48 Hours. The reporters dogging her tracks in that case found me in her background as the only alleged target who had successfully orchestrated a conviction. Besides the murder of the associate's husband, police up there also found a man hanging nude with a plastic bag around his head in the closet of a rent house she owned. But they had to settle for a ruling of accidental death during erotic asphyxiation, striking out again with her. That discovery prompted a reporter from one TV station to call me and ask if we were having "kinky sex" back in 1979. I just repeated what Catherine always had said: "We were actually like two little mice. Nothing fancy." I told the newspaper: "She was a lot of fun when she wasn't trying to kill me." And, I said it looked like Catherine had more death and violence in her life than most of my friends who had served in Vietnam.

  Following the murder case, the State Bar took a new interest in her and tried to cancel her license to practice law based on complaints from some of the immigrants she had represented. But she stood her ground and had not lost her license as recently as 2007.

  Also as predicted by my attorney, Fred Dailey, Cindy did finally sort things out and decide she wanted to be reinstated as primary custodian for the girls. As part of her religious epiphany she had decided to move to central Texas and live on a farm with some of her new friends, taking the girls along. She hired a lawyer and sued to overturn my custody order. After a five-day jury trial, however, I won permanent custody of the girls. I am proud to note that I did everything possible to allow them to develop a relationship with their mother, and they managed to do that. She remarried and returned to Houston a few years later, finding a house just a few miles from me. We developed a shared custody arrangement that helped heal the wounds of the past as much as possible. But our relationship never recovered. At one point, for example, Cindy asked me to sign a Vatican agreement annulling our marriage so she could have a fresh start in the Catholic church. I refused. But I always have considered it a mark of distinction to boast that one of my wives hated me so much she wanted the Pope to erase our marriage from the permanent records. I'm happy to report that Cindy did manage to find true love and rebuild her life.

  Jim Strong left journalism and became an emergency services director for a neighboring county. I always assumed his experience dealing with my emergencies had prepared him well for that position, but I still have difficulty imagining it sometimes.

  Uncle Al's whereabouts are largely unknown, and that is probably for the best. Someone circulated a rumor he had started a skeet shooting range that flings old telephones into the air for targets—but I never took that seriously.

  As for me and the girls, I managed to create a successful freelance writing business that lasted until they graduated from high school. During the 1980s and 1990s I wrote for some of the nation's premier publications while working at home to care for them as they grew. Somehow I managed to keep the lights turned on and the refrigerator full. Although I lost touch with a lot of my friends at the newspaper, I often would hear about someone snickering to learn that I was serving as chairman of a Brownie Scout cookie sale or coaching a little girls' fast pitch softball team. But the girls grew up, went to college, found careers, and started families of their own.

  My relationship with Catherine developed some national notoriety of its own in 1987 when the movie Fatal Attraction captured the public's imagination. I was interviewed as part of a People magazine cover story about true-life fatal attractions, and that article led to my appearance on a number of television talk shows, including Oprah Winfrey, Sally Jesse Raphael and Regis Philbin. For a brief period in the late 1980s, I became the poster boy for true-life fatal attractions. Although often invited to join me on these shows, Catherine never did. I received no financial compensation for my appearances. But I always enjoyed the experiences and found it educational to sit in the interview subject's seat for a change of pace. I always learned something about the interview process on each of these shows. I also found it difficult to deny interview requests from my brethren in the media, even when they tried to get tough with their questions. And I always enjoyed the reaction from audiences who heard the story. I remember one guy in Sally Jesse's audience shouting, "Hey man, that's really cool. You ran a sting on a killer."

  Besides stimulating Fatal Attraction talk show attention, our story also caught the eye of television docudrama producers who twice optioned parts of it for fictionalized treatments. Two scripts were written and one of them produced. But neither ever aired, to my knowledge.

  After Catherine's probation was announced in 1983, George Tedesco's father invited me to lunch. We met at a place called Zimm's Wine Bar, and he came straight to the point, inviting me to join him in a plot to kill her. I guess he thought I would be a natural ally in his vendetta and believed me unhappy with the outcome of my case. I refused his offer and told him abruptly: "This conversation never occurred." Then I returned to my apartment to find it had been burglarized during our lunch, with my .357 Magnum pistol the only thing missing. I reported the burglary to the police and to Bert Graham. I suspected someone wanted to use my pistol on Catherine so they could blame me, but that apparently never happened. And I never replaced the gun.

  As I write this on my sixtieth birthday in 2007, I have not seen Catherine since that afternoon at Pier 21 in September 1980. But I think about her often, and I consider that healthy. I'm always looking over my shoulder and try to stay prepared for the day when she returns to complete her list of unfinished business. I believe she would have no logical reason beyond mere vengeance to make another attempt on my life, since all the damage already is done. On the off chance that I have underestimated her, however, I have made arrangements for a backup plan. I retained the Tedesco family's private investigator, Kent Ferguson, to investigate my death whenever it occurs. Catherine might take the last action in our turbulent relationship. But I remain determined to have the final word.