Strangler

by Corey Mitchell

  “We talked about rape not being about sex. Where does the pain come in to all this stuff?” Buess inquired.

  “It’s about power and control and it goes even further, because the sadomasochistic individual likes the infliction of pain. It brings them pleasure.”

  “So, it’s all about them?”

  “Yes. Them.”

  “During the time that you had Tony Shore involved with treatment, did he appear to know everything about everything?”

  “He did. He’s an interesting individual to converse with.”

  “On October 29, 2003, was Anthony Shore terminated from the program?”

  “Yes, ma’am, he was.”

  “Now, since that time, have you reviewed the offense reports that you didn’t have at that time of his offense against his own daughter?” Buess asked.

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Now that you know all of that information, did Anthony Shore ever fully disclose or even get close to it?”

  “He never even got close,” Dr. Burns responded.

  “You’ve read the statements of his girlfriend and his wife about the drugging and the choking and the sexual acts.”

  “Yes, ma’am, I did.”

  “Tell the jury what’s important about that to you. What’s going on there?”

  “It seems like because he was being monitored, what he did was use the drugs to put these women and girls into a state simulating death. If someone is unconscious then and they’re drugged unconscious, you can move their body and you can do what you want with them and they have no awareness of it, much like a dead person.

  “The statements also indicated,” Dr. Burns continued, “that the women would sometimes wake up with their throats and necks being sore and having a sore throat. Some would wake up with his hands around their throats. That was simulating the crimes he had committed.”

  “Did you learn that the defendant killed an animal, a cat, when he was a very young age, four or five or six?”

  “Yes, I did,” Dr. Burns answered.

  “Is that significant to you?”

  “Yes, it is in terms of the other aspects of psychopathy.”

  “So, when we talk about a psychopath, we’re talking about someone who’s aware of society’s rules?”

  “Yes.”

  “But is above all of that?”

  “Yes,” the doctor replied.

  “And will do anything that they can, or want to, as long as they can get away with it?”

  “Yes, yes.”

  “Tell the jury, please, how do you become a psychopath?” the ADA posed.

  “From all we can determine, it’s something that seems to be more of what they are than what they’ve become. And it’s not anything that’s short-term.”

  “I want to go through the checklist of characteristics that are looked at [to determine whether or not a person is a psychopath]. Number one, glibness, superficial charm. There’s something that’s looked at?”

  “That’s somebody who’s able to kind of sense what it is that you like and talk about the things that you like, a very charming individual. A lot of salesmen score high on that one.”

  “Grandiose sense of self-worth,” Buess continued.

  “That’s when the individual feels like they’re the king or queen and entitled to all sorts of things that the rest of us aren’t entitled to by the very fact that we don’t matter like they do.”

  “Cunning or manipulative?”

  “Using whatever means they can to kind of set the situation up so that it’s in their favor.”

  “Lack of remorse or guilt?”

  “That enables the person to continue engaging in a behavior that even just a little bit of guilt could stop somebody from doing it. The person who doesn’t have any remorse will go to the extreme that most people would stop way before ever getting there,” Dr. Burns elaborated.

  “Where does Anthony Shore fall on this particular scale?”

  “As far as I’ve been able to determine . . . he’s in the highest level.”

  “Let’s talk a little bit about religion here. During the time that Anthony Shore was involved with treatment, was religion used as a crutch or as a topic of discussion for him or by him?”

  “Anthony Shore talked about finding God several years back,” Dr. Burns recalled. “It is not unusual, in sex offender treatment or in basically any kind of offense, for people to find God. One of the people I trained under, Dr. Anna Salter, did a study and called it the ‘double life.’ How the sex offender would pretend to be one person in front of other people and then when no one was around was this entirely different person. And so they would just use the manipulation and cunning to present who they thought you wanted them to be. And that’s what he would do.”

  “So, if Anthony Shore is now claiming that he’s found God since he’s been incarcerated for the last year, that’s nothing new to you, is it?” Buess wondered.

  “No, he found God a while back.”

  “Based on what you know about Anthony Shore’s behavior patterns, was it a surprise to find out that he asked this jury to give him the death penalty?”

  “No, it wasn’t. That’s consistent with a psychopath.”

  “Which part of that?”

  “He would be in control if he asked for the death sentence and was awarded it on his behalf. It also could be a manipulation when, ‘If I ask for the death sentence and later I change my mind, I have a lot more ground to stand on than if you dictated for me.’

  “Another thing is,” the doctor continued, “that’s a media catcher. His name would be dragged out in the limelight even more because it could catch people off guard. They would think, ‘Wow!’”

  Dr. Sharon Burns then added, “It’s also a ploy for sympathy.”

  “What does killing young girls—raping them and killing them—do for someone like Anthony Shore?”

  “It’s an adrenaline rush. It’s a thrill. That’s the ultimate control—to have power over life and death—for an individual to have that power.”

  “Do you have an opinion about whether Tony Shore presents a danger of committing violent acts in the future?”

  “Yes, ma’am, I have. I do believe that he would. Everything that I’ve seen, he didn’t stop. He continued to engage in behaviors that were on the fringes of it. He drugged his girlfriends to simulate victims that he had murdered in the past. He carried pornography in his treatment notebook. It looks like he was just biding his time until there weren’t so many eyes watching him in order to act out again.”

  “Even in a controlled environment like the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, do you think he’s a danger?” Buess inquired.

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Are women employees at TDCJ, in the prison system?”

  “In the male system, yes, there are.”

  “In your opinion, does Anthony Shore present a danger to these women that work in that system?”

  “I believe that he is.”

  “Pass the witness.” Prosecutor Buess was done with Dr. Burns.

  CHAPTER 62

  Wednesday, October 27, 2004,

  Harris County Courthouse,

  1201 Franklin Street,

  Courtroom #337,

  Houston, Texas.

  There would be no more witnesses in the case against Anthony Shore. The jury was ready to hear closing arguments.

  Up first was the defense. Alvin Nunnery announced, “Your Honor, at this time the defense waives any argument in this case at the request of Mr. Shore, but against the very strong advice of Mr. Bourque and myself.”

  Next up was Terese Buess for the state. She began her final closing argument by empathizing with the jurors. She let them know that she “agonized with you this entire punishment half of the trial.” She talked about the evidence, the crime scene photos, the tearful testimony of Selma Janske, and the surviving family members of Tony Shore’s multiple victims.

  “Every one of us in this courtroom has been
touched by evil,” Buess lamented. “All of us. Whatever it was he did to them, we are as marked as they were.”

  Buess then addressed Tony Shore’s request for the death penalty. “Anthony Shore doesn’t get it yet. He doesn’t understand that this is not all about him. Even this trial. This is who it’s about,” Buess stated as she pointed at photographs of Maria del Carmen Estrada, Diana Rebollar, Dana Sanchez, Laurie Tremblay, Selma Janske, Lizz Martin, Amy Lynch, Pauline Cody, Amber Shore, and Tiffany Shore. “All of these women, four of them died at his hands. One of them he left alive after brutalizing her. His own children, the lives that he gave them, the way he sexually used them, that’s what we’re here about today.”

  In regard to Shore’s request, Buess added, “. . . by trying to take that final decision away from you, which can’t be done, it was just a poor attempt because now we’re here and each of you have the power to make this end the way it should.”

  Assistant District Attorney Buess wanted the jurors to make sure that they were meeting the special issues against Tony Shore. She brought up his potential for future violence and how he had drugged and choked and raped the women he supposedly loved.

  “You know what’s scary about this?” Buess asked. “We all know he’s got the intelligence to make it happen. If the opportunity arises, he will be out and he will be back in your community. And we all know what a dangerous situation that’s going to be.”

  Buess then addressed the second special issue in regard to any mitigating factors that may have negatively contributed to Shore’s actions.

  “Let’s take a look at him,” Buess surmised. “Superior intelligence. And what does he choose? He plans. He fantasizes. Fantasies about the sick things that he’s going to do and then he plans them and he executes them. Then he disposes of the bodies in ways that evidence can’t be recovered from them.

  “That’s what he chose to do with his intelligence. That’s not mitigating. That’s damning.”

  Buess talked about his musical savant status. “You heard about him being a wonderful musician. A great artist. Can pick up an instrument and play it in fifteen minutes. Anything. He chose not to work with that. He chose not to be the professional musician he could have been.

  “What did he choose to do with his hands instead? What did he choose to spend his time with? He broke pieces of wood. He got a toothbrush. He got the items together that he needed to commit his crimes. He took yellow nylon rope and singed the end so that the rope wouldn’t come apart. That’s what he chose to do with his artistic hands.

  “Those are choices that Anthony Shore made. They’re not mitigating. They’re damning.”

  Buess closed with evocations of screams. “He talks about nine-year-old Diana Rebollar fighting the hardest of them all. That’s because he was engaged with her fighting, fighting, fighting. What he didn’t tell you about is all the screams because you know all four girls—Carmen, Dana, Laurie, and Diana—you know they all screamed like hell. But he can’t tell you about that, because, you see, that’s not about him.”

  Buess addressed the jury in closing. “You have the power. Not him. You have it. You have the power to do justice. You have the power to tell him we’re going to hold you responsible for what you are and for what you have done. You’re a horrible monster. You’re a serial killer. You’re a child rapist.

  “Despicable isn’t even a good enough word for what he is.”

  Kelly Siegler reiterated Buess’s closing point that Tony Shore was still trying to control things by demanding to receive the death penalty. Siegler also wanted to make sure that the jury understood that Shore was truly a bad man.

  “As much as we don’t want to believe it, and as much as Sharon Burns still tries to figure it out, there are people who are just born mean and bad and sick and evil. And all the shrinks in the world can’t fix them and can’t figure it out.”

  Siegler continued, “And what’s even more scary about that in a case like this is that sometimes those sick, evil, mean, bad people look just like him. Look just like us. Look normal. All-American. No one would ever suspect it. No one would have a clue. Look how many people he fooled.

  “And now he wants you to think . . . that he’s deserving of fame and recognition because he’s special and he’s to be analyzed and figured out, and people are going to use him as a case study for some reason.

  “Now he’s flipped all this into making you think he’s special. Anthony Shore, you’re not special. You’re nothing.”

  Siegler ended her closing with “even the defendants on death row would give him the death penalty.”

  * * *

  Less than one hour later the jury had returned with a sentence.

  “We, the jury, find the defendant, Anthony Allen Shore, guilty of capital murder, as charged in the indictment.

  “‘Special Issue Number One—Do you find from the evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that there is a probability that the defendant, Anthony Allen Shore, would commit criminal acts of violence that would constitute a continuing threat to society?’

  “Answer—We, the jury, unanimously find and determine beyond a reasonable doubt that the answer to this special issue is ‘Yes.’

  “‘Special Issue Number Two—Do you find from the evidence, taking into consideration all of the evidence, including the circumstances of the offense, the defendant’s character and background and the personal moral culpability of the defendant, Anthony Allen Shore, that there is a sufficient mitigating circumstance or circumstances to warrant that a sentence of life imprisonment rather than a death sentence be imposed?’

  “Answer—We, the jury, unanimously find and determine beyond a reasonable doubt that the answer to this special issue is ‘No.’”

  * * *

  After Anthony Shore received his death sentence, he requested that his attorneys forgo the filing of his appeal. He informed the judge that he wanted to be executed as soon as possible.

  Tony Shore currently awaits his fate on death row at the Polunsky Unit in Livingston, Texas.

  EPILOGUE

  Some random discussions, thoughts, and quotes on Anthony Allen “Tony” Shore:

  Gina Worley Shore

  “I wish I knew where that person was and how I missed it. He was charismatic, not like in a Cary Grant kind of way, but he was always courteous and thoughtful and had a good sense of humor and [was] intelligent,” Gina recalled. “He liked things to be neat and he liked his music. He used to be an avid reader, but as he got more into writing music, I’d say, ‘Why don’t you read a book?’ He’d say, ‘I read music.’

  “He was like a kid that would throw temper tantrums.”

  In describing his temper tantrums, Gina recalled, “I saw him get really, really mad once. We were in Weingartens. I was pregnant with Amber and we were just doing regular shopping when a kid ran past me. I was eight months pregnant. This kid was a big kid and he hit me really hard in the shoulder and it was hard for me to catch my balance. I looked over at Tony and he turned the whitest shade of green. You know they say most people get flushed and turn red or they get pale? He was green. It was weird. He wanted to go hurt that kid and I told him to calm down because I wasn’t hurt. But that was the angriest I ever saw him.”

  According to Gina, Tony never directed his anger toward her. “We would have these little arguments, but it would always be about finances. “I’d say, ‘Ha, ha, you spent way too much money on musical instruments.’ He’d say, ‘But, it was a helluva deal.’ I’d ask him how many ‘helluva deals’ can you have in one day, Tony?”

  When asked if she believed her ex-husband killed more than four girls, Gina replied, “I don’t know. I have heard from his sister that he has since recanted his confessions and he wants another trial. Now he’s saying he confessed under duress. ‘Oh, just kidding,’” Gina joked as if she were acting like her ex-husband.

  “And then he wrote his sister and he wanted to know my address. Frightening. I flirted with the idea for a while. But then
I thought, I don’t really know who he knows. Just because he’s in jail doesn’t mean he doesn’t have people outside of jail.

  “I’d be intrigued to hear what he has to say, but it’s not worth the long-term risk.”

  Gina mentioned that Tony uses the Internet from prison to find pen pals. She spoke of a letter he wrote that is posted on a German Web site. “It’s such a nice letter. That’s the kind of person he is. He does have a way of sounding nice and not horrible.”

  As for Tony’s current belief in religion, Gina had her doubts. “I don’t know if he is sincere about anything. It’s really hard to tell. Maybe this is really him and he’s finally just come out of the closet and is saying, ‘Okay, here I am, I’m horrible, I don’t need to keep on pretending anymore.’”

  Gina believed Tony’s desperate need for attention and stardom simply boiled down to the fact that “he wanted to be a famous musician. He wanted to be famous. He was very gregarious; he liked parties; he liked being in large groups of people performing. If he had to choose between being rich or being famous, I think he would have chosen fame.”

  Rob Shore

  “You wonder how it happened. Inevitably you’re curious about that. Certainly you don’t want to blame. I’m sure a lot of people sit and ponder what went wrong. If I did something wrong, it was unintentional. And I’m not sure I did.”

  Rob Shore spoke about his own upbringing. “I didn’t have abusive parents. As a matter of fact, I was very lucky. My stepfather, more so than my mother, treated me as if I was his kid. He made no differentiation between me and his true kids. My mother kind of differentiated, probably hoping that she was pleasing, I don’t know why. My real dad, he spanked me just like he spanked the rest of them. My stepmother stood up for me just like I was her very own. And all of my grandparents were the same way.

  “All of my life I had friends here in the summer and I had friends here in the winter. But I was never tightly knit to someone with whom I played in the summer and someone with whom I went to school with in the winter. I think it made me unable to tightly associate myself, even with my own kids. I don’t know that’s a fact, but it’s possible. I gave thought to that years before Tony’s problems.”