Strangler

by Corey Mitchell

  JS: Was it on the same side of the freeway or on the other side of the freeway?

  TS: It was on the other side of the freeway but I don’t remember for sure. This time I drove down an off-road and I threw all the shit out and I drove back. JS: What kind of . . . clothes?

  TS: Clothes and duct tape and—

  JS: Whatever she had?

  TS: Whatever she had.

  JS: So, she was like completely naked?

  TS: As I recall. I can’t remember because my brain wasn’t straight that day.

  JS: Okay.

  TS: And the jewelry I didn’t throw in the same area. I threw that out on the freeway behind my back.

  JS: And that was that one? Do you know how her body got found?

  TS: Yes, I do. An anonymous phone call.

  JS: And who made that phone call?

  TS: I did.

  JS: And what did you say and who did you call?

  TS: I was out in the area of T.S.U. (Texas Southern University), Third Ward. I was a telephone main installer and repairman. So I used an effects box and tapped into one of those college campus lines and I couldn’t be traced.

  JS: Right.

  TS: I don’t remember what I said.

  JS: Who did you call?

  TS: I talked to Crime Stoppers, it wasn’t Crime Stoppers. Crime Stoppers wouldn’t give me the time of day. I want to say it was “Tips.” The 222-TIPS, “Please use this line,” something. Whatever it is you call and—

  JS: They wouldn’t take your call?

  TS: At first Crime Stoppers didn’t, they didn’t, they thought I was full of shit and didn’t listen. That’s two calls that I made. The second one was to TIPS and I changed my voice and I remember telling them where to find her and I remember telling them her name and I remember telling them her birthday.

  JS: You remember who you were talking to? A male or female?

  TS: Honest to God, I don’t recall. I want to say female but I don’t recall.

  JS: You told them what? I’m sorry I interrupted you.

  TS: I told them where they could find her and at that time I had a better recollection of approximately where it was and I told them her name was Ruby and I told them what her birthday was so they could identify her. There was a part of me that just wanted to be caught and stopped.

  CHAPTER 39

  Thursday, February 15, 1996,

  Harris County, Texas.

  Upon researching Tony Shore’s background and court records, police discovered that he had been arrested a little more than six months after he allegedly killed Dana Sanchez. Shore apparently did not receive enough of a Valentine’s Day gift from Amy Lynch, so he decided he would head out and look for some companionship. What he found was an attractive young female who offered her body for cash. Shore willingly accepted and looked forward to experiencing some new ass.

  Instead, Shore had his own ass handed to him. He did not solicit sex from a prostitute, but rather from Alicia Ross (pseudonym), a Houston undercover police officer. She cuffed her john and dragged him downtown, where he spent an uncomfortable night in a holding cell. Shore made bail the following morning.

  On March 26, 1996, Shore’s lawyer, Bill Gifford, struck a sweet deal for his client. No jail time and only three months of unsupervised probation that would end on June 25, 1996. Shore also was required to pay $122 for court costs.

  Nothing ever came up about Dana Sanchez or the other girls, but Shore kept his cool and got off with an extremely light sentence.

  CHAPTER 40

  Christmas 1996

  In 1996, Tony Shore lost control of the girls. “My kids were growing up fast,” he recalled. “Too fast.” Shore claimed his daughters were tired of being treated like little girls. “They demanded cable TV, wanted a new stereo, and had become tired of the little-girl furniture I made them. They wanted all new stuff and more respect.” Tony had provided the girls with a nanny, but they asked him to get rid of her. They told their father they wanted a “more mature environment.” Shore also realized that the girls knew how much he spent on the nanny and that that money would be better spent on their material needs.

  Shore also claimed that his daughters “spent time listening to inappropriate music and watching inappropriate videos.”

  In his words, the girls had become “out of control.”

  Shore seemed to be following the pattern established by his father. He worked at least sixty to seventy hours a week with Southwestern Bell, taught piano lessons, and played nighttime gigs, and he claimed he spoiled his family.

  “I had the foolish notion,” he surmised, “that spending money to spoil my kids and Amy with material items and activities was somehow making up for not being there in person.”

  CHAPTER 41

  Thursday, May 1, 1997,

  700 block of East Eighteenth Street,

  Houston, Texas.

  After nearly three years of living together, Tony Shore made Amy Lynch an honest woman. They were financially stable as his job paid nearly $80,000 a year, and, to that end, they had a nice home, two cars, a nanny, who doubled as a housekeeper, and a yardman. He described their lives together as “the all-American dream.” As far as he was concerned, “our life was one big vacation from the reality of the responsibilities of daily life.” Eventually Shore and Amy got married and were eager to continue their fun times together.

  Shore made sure that he and Amy enjoyed their honeymoon. He sent Amber and Tiffany to live with their grandmother, Dea, in Sacramento. Allegedly, Dea balked at first, but her son threatened her with never letting her see her granddaughters again so Dea relented and took the girls into her home.

  Fairly soon thereafter, Dea was not able to care for both girls and was forced to send Tiffany to stay with Shore’s sister, Gina, up in Oregon. Gina gladly took her niece in and made her feel welcome and loved.

  Gina immediately noticed that Tiffany did not seem like the upbeat, exuberant niece she used to know. According to an Out Patient Department Progress Record filed with the Sacramento Child Protection Center, and dated August 25, 1995, Tiffany would “sleep in her clothes, wear multiple layers of clothes, won’t bathe regularly, has sexually advanced speech; speaks violently.”

  It was also disclosed in the same report that Tiffany confided in her aunt that her father had been raping her. When Gina told Dea of the molestation, she also informed her mother that Shore had also raped her and Laurel when they were young girls.

  Tiffany later told her grandmother that Shore had “penile penetration” with her.

  According to the report, Tony Shore was at home with the girls because Amy had to spend the night in the hospital. Tiffany claimed that he “crawled naked into bed with her” and raped her. She managed somehow to kick him off her and ran into the bathroom, where she locked herself away from him.

  Tiffany stated that this was the only time that her father ever raped her; however, he had been exposing his genitals to her and Amber for years. Tiffany told her grandmother that she tried to slit her wrists and kill herself after her father attacked her. Tiffany also unsuccessfully attempted suicide by overdosing with a handful of pills taken from the medicine cabinet.

  Tiffany reported that her father had even crawled into bed with one of her little girlfriends who had spent the night.

  Tiffany spoke violently of what she wanted to do to her father. The eleven-year-old told her aunt that she “wanted to kill him” for what he did to her and Amber.

  It was understandable, especially when she reported the violence perpetrated on her by her father. According to Tiffany, her father “beat her, threw her against a wall, pulled her by the hair, and kicked her.” She added that he “tied her in sheets” and that “he would place a pillow on her face if she cried and threaten to kill her.”

  Once Tiffany opened up to Gina, Amber disclosed to her grandmother what her father had done to her. Amber said that her father had been peeping on her in the nude since she was less than six years old. She claimed
that he would pull his penis out of his pants and stare at her or Tiffany until one of them stirred and then would hurriedly leave their room, and that her dad used to “come to her bed and fondle her buttocks with his hands, feeling her anus and fondling her breasts.”

  Amber also said that her father “hit her all over her body,” and added that “she sleeps on her stomach on her pillow to make it harder for him to get at her.” Amber, like Tiffany, also claimed that Tony “pulled her hair, placed a pillow on her face, and threatened to kill her.”

  * * *

  Tony Shore’s ex-wife, Gina, was skeptical initially. “As much as he and Amber never got along, she always wanted to do something to spite him. There’s some part of me that says if that was going on, it seemed like she’d be blabbing it to everybody.

  “The way that they were raised, that if the doctor touches you like this, it’s okay; but if it’s like this, then it’s wrong. We’d give them the speech over and over about people touching you and even if it’s one of your parents, it’s still wrong,” Gina insisted. “I had that discussion with them from a real young age and so it wasn’t as though they were presented with a situation with which they had no coaching. They had been told, even if it’s a grown-up you know, it’s wrong, even if it’s me, it’s wrong. Even if it’s your dad, it’s wrong.” Gina never heard a peep from the girls about their father molesting either one of them.

  Gina believed the girls needed to come back to Texas and stay with her until they straightened up their acts. “They went to California and then they started doing bad in school; they hung out with the wrong crowd; they had pentagrams and pentacles on everything. I was thinking about having [them] home-schooled, and they were going, ‘No, no, no, we don’t want to do that. You know what, Mom? You’re really too far away to make us come back,’” the girls defiantly challenged her.

  “I can make you come back,” their mother retorted.

  “It just seems like an unusual set of circumstances for them to be strutting around. And, according to Amber, Tony’s favorite thing to say to her, ‘I’m gonna put you in military school.’”

  But Gina had her doubts as to whether her second ex-husband actually molested her daughters. She believed it had more to do with Tiffany. “She wanted to stay in California. It’s beautiful there. And she was always doted upon by Tony’s mom.” Gina also believed that Shore’s interest in his new wife, Amy, took away from the attention he paid Tiffany. Gina further suggested Tiffany was embarrassed because her father was married to someone so close to her in age.

  “The school nurse used to make fun of her,” Gina said of Tiffany, “because Amy would walk in and say, ‘Yes, I’m their mother,’” which Tiffany emphatically denied.

  Interestingly, today Gina believes that her ex-husband did indeed molest their two daughters. “Obviously, if he hadn’t had that charge against him, he wouldn’t be where he is today, so everything happens for a reason.”

  She doesn’t, however, believe the sexual assaults could have begun when Amber was six years old. “I don’t know how he could have done that. It wasn’t like they didn’t go and have physical examinations.

  “And Amber didn’t have a good sense of personal hygiene,” Gina continued. “I think I would have noticed any irritation down there. And of course in Houston it’s hot, so you want to pay attention to little girls in case they get rashes. They get yeast infections. I used to tell her, ‘You better clean it or it’ll fall off.’ So, I really think I would have noticed.

  “Up until he left the house, and up until that summer, I still saw the girls naked all the time, bathing, dressing, all that. And they never had any redness, rashes, irritation, inflammation, any of that. My mom was a stickler for nighttime baths and she never saw any of that. If a kid itches, they’re gonna tell you, ‘Hey, it itches’ or ‘It burns.’ And they never had anything. Anything.”

  Gina also had her doubts as to the veracity of Dea Shore in regard to the girls’ molestations. “Tony’s mom was all this, that, and the other thing, talking and telling my mom. Whenever the evidence came back regarding their gynecological exam, nothing.”

  In conclusion, Gina could only surmise one thing in regard to Tony Shore possibly raping his own flesh and blood. “I had been greatly uninformed as far as that goes.”

  * * *

  Rob Shore, likewise, was clueless as to what his son had allegedly done to his granddaughters. “I had no idea,” he remembered. “I had so little of a relationship with them.”

  * * *

  Friday, October 31, 1997,

  Harris County Courthouse,

  1201 Franklin Street,

  Houston, Texas.

  Regina Shore, Tony’s sister, made sure that charges were officially filed against her brother for the alleged molestation of his two daughters, Amber and Tiffany Shore.

  CHAPTER 42

  Friday, January 23, 1998,

  Harris County Courthouse,

  Courtroom #337,

  1201 Franklin Street,

  Houston, Texas.

  Tony Shore appeared in court for two charges of indecency with a child. Shore’s case would be heard that day by a visiting judge from Dallas, Judge Jon Hughes, who was filling in for Judge James L. “Jim” Barr, who was suspended from the bench. Judge Barr had been accused of making sexually inappropriate comments to female prosecutors after referring to them as the “all-babe court.” Judge Barr also made another comment to a female district attorney (DA) that raised several eyebrows: “I could just reach over and slap the crap out of you.” Judge Barr even got into a shoving match with a deputy who refused to release a rape suspect who had been acquitted before being processed. Judge Barr was later disciplined and removed as the sitting judge.

  But Judge Jon Hughes’s temporary tenure in the courthouse started out with a bang. During one of his earliest courtroom appearances, the visiting judge got into a verbal disagreement with an attorney, Joseph Rumbaut, which nearly escalated into fisticuffs. Apparently, each man called the other a liar.

  Tony Shore was walking into a very strange courtroom.

  Shore took his seat behind the defense table next to his court-appointed attorney, Bill Gifford. Seated nearby at the prosecution’s table was Assistant District Attorney (ADA) Michelle Stansbury. The defense attorney and prosecutor had spent the previous two months going over Shore’s case. Gifford earned his paycheck as he hammered out a sweetheart deal with the prosecutor.

  Stansbury, on behalf of the Harris County District Attorney’s Office, agreed to reduce the charges against Shore from two counts of sexual molestation of a minor to two counts of indecency with a child. Even such a reduced sentence at the time could net a defendant five years to life in prison. Somehow, the district attorney’s office decided it would be acceptable for Tony Shore not to have to serve any time behind bars.

  In lieu of prison time Shore would be placed on probation for eight years and forced to pay a $500 fine and $126.50 for court costs. He also received a payment plan, wherein he would only have to pay $10 a month.

  As a further condition of Shore’s probation, he would be required to register as a sex offender with authorities every ninety days and to report to his parole officer, Chester “Chet” Machen, every fifteen days. Shore would be assigned 240 hours of community service and not be allowed to leave Harris County without Machen’s approval. He could not drink alcohol or take any illicit drugs, would be required to have drug and alcohol counseling, and would be subject to the occasional, random urinalysis.

  Shore would also have to attend a sex offender therapy program. He further could not be in public where children gathered and could not live with a child.

  The final requirement for Shore was that he had to provide a DNA sample for the court to keep on file.

  If Shore managed to slide through the next eight years unscathed, he would receive deferred adjudication and the court would expunge the charges from his record.

  A usual requirement in a case involving
sexual misconduct with children is to forbid them from being within one hundred yards of a school. Strangely, Judge Hughes allowed Shore to return to his residence on East Eighteenth Street, directly across the street from Field Elementary School and its playground full of young kids.

  The waiver was penciled in by the judge himself. The agreement actually stated that Shore was not allowed to “reside, go in, on, or within 100 yards of premises where children commonly gather, including a school, day-care facility, playground, public or private youth center, public swimming pool, or video arcade facility.” Next to that declaration, written in the judge’s hand, was “except for your residence” at East Eighteenth Street.

  When it came out, nearly six years later, that Shore was a suspected serial killer who stalked, raped, and strangled little girls, the critics came after Judge Hughes.

  “There is no justification for it,” stated Andy Kahan, director of the Crime Victims Assistance program, out of the City of Houston Mayor’s Office. “Unless he was taking care of invalid relatives, there is no reason why he should have been allowed to stay in that house.”

  Kim Valentine, administrative coordinator for the Harris County Community Supervision and Corrections Department, clarified that it was the judge who made the decisions on any extra conditions or waivers when it came to parole. “The judge is really the only one that can answer that question.”

  When Judge Hughes was asked about it in 2003, he feigned ignorance. “I don’t recall that case.” He then added that such a decision to waive the one-hundred-yard rule would be given only in the rarest of circumstances. “Generally speaking, the only time I would allow them to stay in their home is if it was their homestead,” which was the case.

  * * *

  Further, while it is normal for probationary requirements to forbid the defendant from seeing his or her victim or victims, Judge Hughes inexplicably allowed Shore to have contact with Amber and Tiffany.