Shattered: The True Story of a Mother's Love, a Husband's Betrayal, and a Cold-Blooded Texas Murder by Kathryn Casey Read Free Book Online Page A

David was featured prominently on the glossy pages of the school yearbook. On one page, against a blue background like the other seniors, he was spit-and-polish groomed and wearing a tuxedo. A handsome nineteen-year-old, David had dimples, a strong chin, and a broad smile, and his brown hair was high off his forehead and combed carefully back.
    Renée Zellweger had been voted the school’s “Dream Date,” but David was singled out as well. In his letterman’s jacket, surrounded by friends, in one photo David had his right index finger held up, indicating the Tigers were number one. He had a tousled-hair bad-boy look about him, and a disarmingly appealing smile. On other pages, there were photos of David in his uniform on the football field and coaching a powder-puff game. In another, he collected a plaque for being an outstanding member of the “Fighting Tigers.” With a girl on his lap, David slumped back in a chair wearing a blue sweater with jeans. They’d both been voted “Most Athletic.”
    The 1987 Katy High graduation ceremony was held at the city’s equestrian center. By then, David’s future had been planned. Although the top-tier universities with their multimillion-dollar football programs had passed him by, David’s exploits on the football field had earned him an offer. He’d accepted a five-year scholarship from Stephen F. Austin University, in Nacogdoches, Texas, the same college Belinda Lucas would attend. It was a 1-AA athletic program, a good-sized school in a town that worshipped football and the players who represented it on the field.
    The world waited for David Temple. But before he left Katy for Nacogdoches, Coach Johnston pulled his star linebacker to the side. The head coach worried about David’s inability to separate football-field aggression from what was permissible in the real world. “I told him that if I heard he got in any trouble, I’d be calling Coach Graves at SFA and letting him know,” says Johnston.
    Another of David’s teachers, too, had misgivings about him as the Katy seniors collected their diplomas. “I remember thinking that there would be problems down the road with David,” she’d say years later. “It wasn’t anything solid. I just had a bad feeling that we hadn’t heard the last of him.”

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    A t the time Belinda Lucas and David Temple enrolled at Stephen F. Austin University the fall of 1987, the enrollment hovered around 12,000 students. The campus covered 401 rolling, heavily wooded acres, originally private property, the bucolic homestead of Senator Thomas J. Rusk. Perhaps not surprisingly, since the university’s roots traced back to a 1923 teachers college, the campus was rich in history along with reports of ghostly apparitions. Mays Hall dormitory, once a hospital with a morgue in the basement, had an unexplained coldness, while a ghost named Chester was said to appear at times in the university fine arts auditorium, his face once seen by students on the theater’s curtain. Legend has it that Chester was either the building’s architect, who died before its completion, or the prowling spirit of a drama student who’d committed suicide.
    One of the oldest buildings on campus was the Stone Fort, the site of an old trading post. Campus folklore warned that any SFA student who dared enter the Fort before finishing was destined to never graduate. Most students saw little reason to visit, since the structure housed a museum. The more popular destinations were campus bars, including Monday Night Football at the Sports Shack, happy hours with live music at the Crossroads, and weekend evenings at Speak-EZ.
    SFA’s school colors were purple and white, and the football team, befitting the school’s heavily forested setting, was dubbed the Lumberjacks. As SFA was an NCAA Division 1-AA school, the “Jacks” were part of the Southland Conference, made up of twelve universities in Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana. On game days, students posted homemade