JS: Do you know what street you’re on?
TS: I wanna say on Main Street. North Main somewhere around 21 st to 26th. I’m not really sure where in there. I know there is a parking lot and I pulled in and I talked to her and . . . there wasn’t anybody around and I don’t know what the hell. I’m sitting there going . . . the girl. I just picked her up, put her in the van. Nobody saw shit. And I told her to be quiet—
JS: Did you wrap anything around her or anything or just took her into—
TS: I just threw her in initially and I told her to be quiet and that it was kidnapping and that she wasn’t gonna get hurt, this and that. She made like she was gonna not cooperate so I remember using duct tape to bind her. Hands and feet.
Then we drove around. I don’t know where we ended up. I remember this was a big, big parking lot and a building. Looks like it had been vacated. And, uh, in the bay area where the trucks come back up and stuff. And I was gonna molest her and she fought like hell. Strangely, she fought like hell. Just couldn’t go on with anything.
JS: Hispanic girl?
TS: Yeah, Hispanic girl. And I knew it wasn’t gonna happen and she was so afraid, I’m sure, but she shit herself on her underwear. Made a huge mess. And I remember using her clothes and stuff to clean her off.
She fought and fought and I don’t recall what type of cord or strand, a piece of wire or something. And the same thing, I knew I was fucked and I don’t know why the shit kept happening. I couldn’t stop it. I could say, “Yeah, there are voices in my head,” but it’s my own sickness.
JS: You don’t remember what, it was a cord or . . . ?
TS: That I don’t recall. It seems like there was a pencil that I used to twist.
JS: But you don’t know what the cord looked like, what color it was?
TS: No, that I don’t recall.
JS: Okay.
TS: But, uh, then I tried to have sex with her but it wasn’t happening, wasn’t happening. She just fought so bad, and she’s so small, and I just said, “God, you sick fuck. What the hell is wrong with you? Why have you lost your fucking mind?” And I just wanted, I just wanted it to end. I just couldn’t, every time I’d tell myself, I’d just kept saying, “Oh, this has gotta stop. I’m a sick, sick puppy.”
There wasn’t anybody around. I could’ve taken time, I could’ve done this or I could’ve done that and I had this sick, sick [thought] going through my head but I just wanted it to be over. I just wanted to get away from there.
I knew I couldn’t just let her go because I knew that, well obviously, she’s gonna go tell and then my life would be all fucked up. Just selfish, self-centered, fucked-up thinking, I know.
So, I did the ligature and she was [messy] because of shitting herself. I cleaned up the mess. I used her clothes. I don’t remember. I think I left her t-shirt on. She was wearing a black t-shirt as I recall. I used the rest of it to clean her up.
She bought a bag of sugar and she cleaned it and I took that and cleaned that up and there was shit in her hair and I cleaned that up as best I could.
JS: So, you took the shit and threw it away?
TS: Yeah, I just took all the shit, what was left in the van, and I took it to a car wash and I tried to scrub the fuck out of it.
JS: What’d you do with the shit in—
TS: Uh, I drove around with it the day before I got rid of it. And, once again, I threw it in a trash bag and I threw it in a Dumpster somewhere.
JS: So you remember having a black t-shirt on her and you left that on her and then you took her pants?
TS: Pants and underwear and shit. I had to clean up the shit that was everywhere. And it seems like I stopped at a resell shop somewhere and bought myself a t-shirt and used my t-shirt to clean her up good. I ended up going to a car wash to try to clean up the mess. It was a big mess.
JS: How much was that mess?
TS: I didn’t want anybody to know that there was shit in the van or the smell and everything.
JS: Okay. Alright. It’s now about twelve minutes to one. 12:48 A.M.
CHAPTER 37
August 1994,
700 block of East Eighteenth Street,
Houston, Texas.
Less than one week after Tony Shore murdered nine-year-old Diana Rebollar, he officially broke up with his girlfriend, Lizz Martin, who angrily left him, and then moved in his new girlfriend, eighteen-year-old Amy Lynch. The slim, attractive Lynch was a senior at Pearland High School, located in the soon-to-be sprawling suburb located more than twenty miles from The Heights. (Full disclosure—the author graduated from Pearland High School ten years before Lynch, but has no knowledge of or relationship of any kind with her.)
Shore met Amy while he was still dating Lizz Martin. Their meeting was rather inauspicious, as Shore happened to be doing some telephone repair work at Amy’s father’s house. He spotted a photograph of the young Amy on a mantel in the Lynch household. He asked Amy’s father about the girl in the photograph and learned her name and that she loved to sing. When Shore heard that, he perked up. He informed Mr. Lynch that he was a “piano man” and that he and Amy should come out to see him play sometime. Mr. Lynch felt comfortable with Shore and agreed that he would take his daughter out to the watering hole where Shore would be performing.
Amy and her father went to see Shore play and were duly impressed. They hooked up after the gig and promised to keep in touch.
According to Gina Worley Shore, Amy was a “nice kid” who began to see Tony Shore for vocal lessons. Soon thereafter, Shore and Amy began to see each other romantically. Amy’s parents were less than thrilled, mainly because of the age disparity. Shore was fourteen years older than his newest conquest.
Tony Shore moved Amy Lynch out of her mother’s home and into his house on East Eighteenth Street in The Heights within just a few months of meeting her. The couple shared their place with Shore’s daughters, Amber and Tiffany. Amy’s parents became completely disenchanted with their daughter and refused to speak with her, but Amy continued to attend classes at Pearland High School so she could graduate.
Shore and Amy became quite the musical team. Together, as piano man and chanteuse, they headlined several gigs at nightclubs, restaurants, private parties, and weddings. The couple truly made beautiful music together while on stage. Shore even approached the guys in St. Vitus Dance to see if Amy could join the band as one of their lead singers, to which they agreed. Tony Shore believed his chances for stardom had increased dramatically with Amy Lynch in his life.
Amy loved living with Shore. She respected his musical ability and creativity. She loved the fact that he created his own drum kit from scratch. She used to watch as he would stretch the skins over the drums and tie them down with a specific knot. She watched as he tied the skin tighter using a “stick-type thing, a little dowel rod,” which usually measured three to four inches. He told her it made “a good grip for a handle.” It was one of the many things he could do that thrilled the impressionable young girl.
Gina Worley Shore was shocked when Amy called her up and asked her advice about Shore. “Bless her little heart. I used to call her ‘my little sunflower’ because she is so open. She would call and ask me, ‘Was it like this for you?’”
Amy gushed about Shore to anyone who would listen. “He’s creative. He’s smart. He’s talented. He’s brilliant and he’s charming.” She felt lucky to be with such a wonderful man.
After a while, Amy’s luck began to change. As Shore wowed her with his creativity and alleged brilliance, he also began to manipulate and control the young lady. It started simply enough. Shore informed his rather thin girlfriend that she was “larduous,” a nonexistent word he used to describe her weight and physical appearance. Her older beau believed that Amy was just a little too feminine for his tastes. He encouraged her to lose weight so she would lose her “curves.” He wanted his eighteen-year-old girlfriend to look even younger.
Amy, who wanted to please her man, did as she was told. She eve
ntually slimmed down to ninety-eight pounds. Shore was thrilled, as he could now go out and buy her the type of clothes he wanted to see her in. Mainly, children’s clothes. At her smallest, the adult Amy could fit into size-14 children’s clothes. Shore loved to visit the junior kids section of the nearby resale stores and shop for his little girl. He also used to get a kick out of ordering Amy’s clothes for her out of a Dillard’s catalog. Amy even stated that “he’s got a good eye for fashion.”
Rob Shore noticed that his son had become a “control freak.” He and his wife, Rose, ran into Tony and Amy at the Montrose Art Festival in downtown Houston. Rob stated that his son’s wife did everything Tony told her to do.
“How he made Amy dress when we ran into them,” Rob Shore recalled. “And with the daughters, the same way. Rose noticed it and it just wasn’t the way you’d expect someone to dress. It’s like he wanted Amy to dress like a little girl and look like his daughters. It just struck me that he was—and the way that they acted was—just strange to me.”
Shore had other demands of Amy as well. He preferred her hair to be very straight and long. Amy, of course, complied. Anything to make her man happy.
One thing that Shore did do that disturbed Amy was drugging his daughters. She found it “uncool” that he allegedly used to put Benadryl in their hot chocolates to make them go to sleep. Amy actually confronted him about this seemingly bizarre practice.
“That’s how I’ve always done this,” he calmly replied. “If they needed to go to bed and they weren’t going to sleep, I’d just slip them a Benadryl and it would knock them out.” He smiled as if it were no big deal. “Besides,” he added, “I’m the dad and they do what I tell them to do.”
Amy rarely confronted Shore on any issues. Her reason for not doing so was simple in a very stereotypical 1950s way. “He’s the man,” she reasoned. “He’s in charge. He knows best and he directs me toward the best choices.” She added that in addition to her appearance, he also helped her with what music to sing and how to present herself when on stage. “He was my piano man,” she dreamily remembered.
* * *
The following year, on January 11, 1995, both Tiffany and Amber Shore went to visit the school nurse at Love Elementary School. The sisters were nervous as they sat down with the nurse and began to tell her of the molestations perpetrated on them by their own father. The nurse immediately reported Tony Shore to the Child Protective Services agency. When a CPS representative came to the family’s house, they could not do anything to Shore, as his daughters failed to confirm their accusations. The sisters actually denied having ever told the nurse such a thing. As a result, CPS’s figurative hands were bound and they could do nothing. Tony Shore was allowed to keep living with his daughters.
CHAPTER 38
Saturday, October 25, 2003, 12:51 A.M.,
Houston Police Department,
Interrogation Room #6,
1200 Travis Street,
Houston, Texas.
The following text is the transcript from the actual interrogation of and confession on tape by Anthony Allen Shore in regard to the murder of Dana Sanchez:
Tony Shore (TS): Last and final case. Dana Sanchez.
John Swaim (JS): Right.
TS: I got that name from the newspaper. She told me her name was Ruby. I don’t know where Ruby came from. And she told me when her birthday was. I was driving—
JS: Do you know when her birthday was?
TS: I don’t remember now.
JS: Or what she told you?
TS: But, it also never came out in the papers, um, it’s verifiable but I’m telling you—
JS: Okay. I believe you.
TS: I was driving, at that time I was driving a Ford Econoline van, old piece of shit, beat up, green—
JS: ’78?
TS: How in the world you get ’78 from?
JS: Nah, whatever.
TS: That I don’t know. All I know is that it was an older model van about an ’88. It was green, not Army green but like a dark metallic green. It was beat up. JS: You traded it in?
TS: Yeah, I traded it in. I think I traded it in for the uh, Dodge custom conversion van that I ended up buying.
JS: Do you know where you traded it in?
TS: Yes, the Auto Sales on Shepherd somewhere between 11th and 15th. Somewhere on—
JS: Okay.
TS: Anyway. One of the things you can put in your report, I had done the interior with Berber carpet which is uncommon.
JS: Alright.
TS: I was driving around and I saw this girl, I’m gonna say she was wearing white coveralls and a striped shirt underneath and she was mad. She had this look that she was angry and upset and she was at a pay-phone.
JS: Where was this at?
TS: Corner of Cavalcade and Airline.
JS: Okay.
TS: And she, I guess, had called somebody from the pay-phone. She started storming off and I was making the “Say, hey . . .” She said, “Man, I’m going to see my boyfriend” somewhere. Forget where she told me. JS: No problem.
TS: And we went driving and we had [a] conversation and I had this sick fantasy going through my mind like there could be something, relationship there, or some type of thing between us. I was flirting with her heavily. At the time I had really long hair. I thought I looked good or maybe I just looked like a freak, I don’t know. But, she was real friendly, you know. Talking about, I think she said she was a runaway. Don’t know what happened.
JS: She’s a Hispanic girl, also?
TS: Yeah. She is Hispanic. But she wasn’t Hispanic in the sense, she spoke good English. And we drove, if I remember correctly, 45 North. I have no idea where she wanted to go. I don’t remember where she wanted to go. 34th sticks in my mind, I don’t recall. And she told me her name was Ruby. Why she told me that, I don’t know, but, I remember she told me her birthday and we drove somewhere off of 45.
She never even questioned why I was taking so long getting where I was going. She was just happy to have conversation and everything. So, I thought, “What the hell. I’ll go for it.” I pulled into this parking lot. I started flirting with her and pettin’ on her. She was jokingly, “No, no, no, I gotta boyfriend” this and that.
So, I grabbed her, pulled her into the back of the van, and she cried. She bit me hard. Drew blood, I forget. My chest, hold on a sec.
JS: Mmm, hmm.
TS: So, I restrained her, tied her hands with, I wanna say duct tape. I can’t remember but I think duct tape. I remember that I taped her.
JS: Alright.
TS: And she was fighting so hard. And I was there and getting sick about this whole thing.
Oh, I’m with the psychopathology [and its] craziness is . . . and I just knew that this was fucked and I didn’t want it to happen and once again I knew that I couldn’t stop. I knew there was nothing I could do to get out of this. And I used a ligature.
JS: In what way?
TS: I wanna say it was a yellow twisted nylon rope, but I don’t remember. I think that’s right. Like boat rope. Ski rope. Nylon.
JS: What color?
TS: Yellow, I wanna say.
JS: Okay.
TS: And, uh, there wasn’t gonna be any sex with her. I had these sick, sick notions.
JS: Did you use any kind of tool to cut on there, Tony?
TS: Same, same thing. I don’t recall, I just remember the yellow rope. I’m not even positive about that. Just the whole thing, I was getting sicker in my brain. I just couldn’t, at this point I was almost in like a state of shock or dream state. I just, I wanted the shit to stop. I didn’t want to keep not knowing what was going on. I just knew that I couldn’t get caught but I wanted it to stop. And, I uh, couldn’t get aroused, I remember that I was so sick in my brain and I knew, in my mind I knew that something had changed in my head. This wasn’t at all what I bargained for. So I drove and drove and drove and drove.
JS: With her in it?
TS: With her in the van in the
back. I don’t remember for sure.
JS: Mmm, hmm.
TS: And I found this area way out in, got some streets in ’em—
JS: You remember what area?
TS: I don’t. Off the north freeway somewhere. It was way out, way out.
JS: Alright.
TS: And during that time I was thinking, “God, this is so fucked.” And I remember seeing it in the paper for some type of thing she made or something . . . and I was just, I thought I was in a different county. I just knew I was way the hell out, so . . .
JS: Mmm, hmm.
TS: . . . I pulled her out into a field and [took off] like a bat out of hell. I was scared to death.
JS: How far out in the field? Did you drive out in the field or not?
TS: No, I just pulled up to the side. This was like an area that was so overgrown with trees and—
JS: Trees were removed? The streets were cut or something?
TS: Yeah, they look like they were putting in a subdivision or something. It was remote enough. I just, as fast as I could, probably a hundred feet, maybe, off the road. I jumped in the van, sped away scared to death and anytime I think I had taken every identifiable thing I could think of: clothing, jewelry, all of that. I wanted to sit it all up and I didn’t know what to do with it. I didn’t throw it in a Dumpster this time.
I drove around somewhere away, way away from where she was at but still way north and I don’t even know where I was at. I was in a shock state. My brain wasn’t the same. It’s just everything is something or nothing. I was scared and I knew this was fucked.
And I remember seeing another area similar where the streets cut in and the big utility easements cut out and it was overgrown and stuff.
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