- FEMALE NARRATOR: A grizzly crime
straight out of a horror movie rocks a Dallas suburb.
- It made national headlines, you know an ax murderer.
- I think that the-the Boogeyman phenomena
was in people's minds.
- NANCY: I can't understand why anybody would ax somebody
40 times on Friday the 13th.
- JIM: You couldn't find a more startling contrast-
this little suburban home, this bloody scene.
- STEVEN: They started getting telephone calls
you know, your daughters are next.
- NARRATOR: As the investigation begins,
a dark betrayal comes to light
- ROBERT: They were couple friends
and their kids socialized together.
- JOHN: He named one of her good friends
as the person he had the affair with.
It resulted in the most horrific confrontation
that you could imagine.
- NARRATOR: When the killer is revealed,
this quiet community will be left wondering
if justice will ever be served.
- JOHN: She was everybody's best friend.
She was the least likely suspect in the world.
- RICHARD: The whole courtroom just roared because they could
not believe that that was the verdict.
- It really is just kind of appalling that something
like this could happen here.
- It's a story about the dark side of the subrubs.
- [theme music]
- *
- NARRATOR: The quaint town of Wylie, Texas
is a popular suburban escape
from the hustle and bustle of Dallas city life.
- JIM: This little town with an old church and an old courthouse
and an old police department.
It was self-consciously quaint.
- STEVEN: Wylie is a small community, very slow moving,
slow-paced community.
It was a very friendly community you know,
it's a- really tight-knit.
- NARRATOR: But on the night of June 13th, 1980,
the charm of Wylie is shattered when resident Richard Parker
receives a panicked phone call around 11PM from his neighbor,
Allan Gore.
- JOHN: Allan Gore was in Minnesota on a business trip
saying, I can't get my wife to answer the phone-
something must be wrong.
- He started getting really concerned after several hours
of not being able to reach her.
- NARRATOR: Richard agrees to check in on Allan's
30-year-old wife Betty Gore,
and recruits neighbors to go with him.
- JIM: They went around front,
and they assumed that the front door would be locked,
and one of them, uh, just by chance
tried the door and it opened- it wasn't locked.
- NARRATOR: The men cautiously enter the home,
calling out for Betty...
but the only response is a chilling cry...
- ROBERT: The Gores had two children there,
there was a baby that was about a year old that was in her crib.
She was crying and wet.
I mean she'd obviously been in the crib all day.
- JOHN: Now, they were true, truly scared.
Of course, they got the baby out of there immediately
gave it to one of the wives of the men.
- The Gores had another child that was about five years old,
who was actually spending the night at a friend's.
They knew from Allan that she had been there.
- JIM: They looked in every other space in the house,
they can see blood, um, on the doorknobs and,
so they decide to go look in the utility room.
There's light coming beneath the door,
so it's lit up so they think well
we mine as well look in there.
And one of them tentatively does and he sees, uh,
Betty lying on the floor completely covered in blood.
He immediately says to the two other guys, oh my God,
she's blown her head off.
His instinct is that she had, uh, committed suicide.
- KEN: There was a- an enormous amount of blood.
I mean, the blood literally was a half-inch to an inch deep
around betty's body.
- *
- NARRATOR: Born in 1950, Betty Pomeroy grew up
in small town Kansas,
the older sister to two brothers.
- She was very popular.
She was involved in all kinds of school events, music, plays,
student council.
She wanted to be an elementary teacher really from the word go.
- NARRATOR: While pursuing her dream in college,
Betty met an ambitious grad student named Allan Gore.
- Allan was a graduate teaching assistant and um,
Betty was one of his students.
As soon as, she wasn't a student of his any longer,
they got together and uh, and uh, they were uh,
fairly quickly uh, fell in love.
- She saw a very intelligent, smart guy
that had a good education, you know,
and was capable of doing bigger things.
I said he next thing, you know,
he'll be asking you to marry him,
and she said, yeah, he did.
She was very excited. She was very happy.
- NARRATOR: On January 25th, 1970
Betty and Allan tied the knot in her hometown.
- She was beautiful in her wedding dress,
that's certainly true.
Everybody knew her and the whole town was excited.
- NARRATOR: Following the wedding,
Allan took a job at a prestigious computer company.
- He was a big uh, a big shot in the electronics field and um,
was off to Dallas to live a, a um, a very uh,
successful life and have children and, and uh,
everything that she wanted.
She was a success story from a small town in Kansas.
- NARRATOR: In the late 70s, after the birth of their
daughter Alicia, the Gores left the big city and settled in
the suburb of Wylie, where Betty
quickly got a job in the local school system.
- RICHARD: They didn't have to worry about money.
I mean, I think he made good enough money.
And of course, her being a school teacher, I'm sure,
helped out considerably too.
- NARRATOR: As they settled into their home,
the Gores found community at a local church.
- They started going to this church along with everybody else
who were their peers.
Just because, you know,
they'd always gone to church growing up,
and it was social center for them.
- NARRATOR: It was there that Betty befriended a beautiful
young housewife named Candy Montgomery.
- ROBERT: Candy was a really outgoing, likeable person.
Uh, she was very involved in her community, her church,
she was in the choir, she taught Sunday school,
she was on committees in the church.
- JIM: She grew up moving around all over the place,
and with a dad who was in the army,
she had to learn to be very social and sociable.
- JOHN: She was rebellious and she um,
always had an eye for the boys.
She was always trying to live a more exciting life.
- NARRATOR: When Candy met her future husband, Pat Montgomery,
she took a step back from the excitement
and became a new version of herself.
- JIM: She had made a decision after she met Pat that she was
gonna go the more tradtional route.
I'm gonna be a house wife and a mom and you know that's it.
- NARRATOR: And when she met Betty and Allan,
she had it all: the church, a family...and friendship.
- ROBERT: They were couple friends and their kids
socialized together.
- JOHN: Their daughters would spend the night
at each other's houses and they would go swimming together
or go to the movies together
they were close because their children were close.
- NARRATOR: But Candy and Betty's friendship was put to
the test when Betty welcomed her second child in 1979.
- Betty was prone to depression.
She was particularly prone to post-partum depression.
- NARRATOR: As Betty struggled with her mental health,
her relationships began to suffer--
especially her marriage.
- They weren't real connected and,
and the marriage wasn't really good.
- JOHN: There was a program called marriage encounter
that was, that was sanctioned by the Methodist church.
They went to this marriage encounter weekend and they were
genuinely transformed by it.
They fell in love all over again.
- ROBERT: They were doing better and in fact they were planning
a European vacation.
She was looking forward to that.
- NARRATOR: But with the trip less than a week away,
the potential for a fresh start has come to an end
as Betty lies dead in the laundry room.
- There was a body lying on the floor
with a great deal of blood.
There were blood spatters, blood smears all over the room.
- NARRATOR: Betty's neighbors quickly call
the Collin County Sheriff's Office.
When detectives arrive, they are troubled to find that it appears
to be something straight out of a horror movie.
- ROBERT: When the police looked at the scene
a little more closely
an axe was in the room uh where Betty's body was found,
and it was clear Betty had not been shot-
it that she had been killed with the axe.
- KEN: You could see multiple wounds to the body from an ax.
You can actually see where the blade entered, uh,
on both her hands and arms, as well as on her head.
- IRV: It was a vicious set of blows to the body, the face,
the arms, the head, the torso, even into the- into the legs.
- JIM: This was--was macabre
it had the feeling of a horror movie.
This outlandish, exaggerated melodramatic, uh, violence, um,
in, in a place where people rarely raised their voices
to one another.
- NARRATOR: Coming up:
A small clue holds big potential:
- KEN: Someone had been in there
and left behind some smeared blood.
- NARRATOR: And detectives speak to their first suspect.
- STEVEN: She had been brutally murdered
he should've been a basket case.
You know, I would think. You know, what's going on?
- NARRATOR: On June 13th, 1980,
investigators in the small town of Wylie, Texas
have just come upon a scene
unlike anything they've ever encountered.
- JIM: You couldn't find a more startling contrast than
this victim and the context.
This little suburban home and uh, this bloody scene.
It was unthinkable, uh, that, that something like that could
happen in that place.
- KEN: It was Friday, June 13th.
The first Friday the 13th movie had just come out
and I think that the-
the Boogeyman phenomena was in people's minds.
- NARRATOR: 30-year-old mother and teacher, Betty Gore,
lies dead in her suburban home,
the apparent victim of a real-life horror story.
- IRV: This was overkill of the first order,
and it was represented not only
by the number of blows to the body,
but to the- the blood spatters and the blood smears
all over the room.
- NARRATOR: Investigators quickly get to work.
- KEN: I could see that there was a struggle.
There was the utility room, and the kitchen were all-
it was a very confined space.
You could see that it wasn't just, you know,
a river of blood, but there were spots and splashes.
- JOHN: You had evidence that someone had tried to clean
the floor and clean some of the other surfaces
in the utility room, unsuccessfully.
As though, they had started cleaning and saw that it was
impossible, there was too much blood and then left.
- NARRATOR: In doing so,
the killer left behind a potential clue:
- On the freezer, I found a thumbprint that was in blood.
- JOHN: That type of device
usually you can't lift a print off of it,
but they were able to take a photograph of it.
- NARRATOR: Investigators soon discover another striking clue
in the laundry room: a bloody footprint.
- STEVEN: You know how the idention on the bottom of a-
of a flip-flop how it's got those three little holes.
So, we knew that was a someone's wearing, a shower shoe.
- NARRATOR: As detectives continue to scour the house,
they find another telling clue left behind
in the killer's desperate attempt to clean up.
- STEVEN: Down the hallway, inside the bathroom -I saw some.
Blood on the tile from the shower wall and then around
the drain I saw blood and also hair- lots of hair.
- KEN: It was abundantly clear that someone had been in there
and left behind some smeared blood and it looked like, uh,
the person had showered.
- NARRATOR: As they wrap up their survey of the house,
investigators notice a final chilling detail:
- JIM: They had found the, the Dallas Morning News.
I think it was opened to the movies for that weekend,
and it was opened to the page where there was a big ad uh,
for the Shining; which involves, uh, an axe murder
and, there was some blood dripped there.
- ROBERT: There was an axe, there was a lot of blood,
uh there were bloody footprints in the house and then there was
a lot of speculation about what happened.
I mean was this a a stranger that did it?
Was it a vendetta killing? Did she know someone?
- NARRATOR: After processing the horrific scene,
investigators head next door to speak with Richard Parker,
the neighbor who called 911.
- STEVEN: We want to know what he neighbors,
the ones that reported it knew.
- NARRATOR: As Richard speaks to detectives, his phone rings.
- JIM: One of the cops answered the phone.
And this is Allan Gore, um, what, what's going on there,
you know, because he didn't... realize the police were
already there or the police were there at all.
Police officer told him well, "I'm sorry to tell you
that we found your wife, she's deceased."
- NARRATOR: Allan agrees to come home immediately,
and before hanging up, provides a rundown of his whereabouts.
- ROBERT: Allan left in the morning of June the 13th
to go to work and then caught a flight to St. Paul, Minnesota,
later that afternoon.
- NARRATOR: Allan says he travels frequently for work,
but he and Betty always kept in close contact
while he was on the road.
- JOHN: She knew that he was arriving in um,
Minneapolis at a certain time and,
they would normally talk on the phone, as soon as,
he arrived in the distant city on his business trip.
- Allan called Betty before he got on the plane to go to
Minnesota, and she didn't answer.
And um so he, he took his flight went to Minnesota and then tried
calling her again when he got there and did,
she still didn't answer.
Allan continued to try to call Betty,
couldn't get her and then he called that neighbor.
- JOHN: And so uh, for her not to um,
answer the phone for hours was uh, so far be,
off of their pattern that he knew something had to be wrong.
- NARRATOR: Investigators note that while Allan is being
cooperative, his tone is oddly even keeled.
- My gosh, if- if- if- if my wife had- had been murdered,
I think I'd be boohooing and I mean It wasn't that case.
It wasn't like that. He should've been a basket case.
You know, I would think, here he's got the-
the mother of his two children ha- had been brutally murdered.
You know, what's going on?
- Everybody reacts to tragedy in a different way.
And so, so I'm not really faulting him for that,
but he didn't seem emotional.
Allan was, was really pretty cold in, in my estimation.
- JOHN: It seemed very strange to the police
that Allan goes out-of-town,
he's the first to report that something's wrong
and meanwhile his wife is dead in the house.
The initial assumption was he must have killed her
right before he left town.
- STEVEN: So you start looking at those aspects
now he becomes more of a- uh, a suspect.
- NARRATOR: Coming up:
Investigators follow a new lead...
- ROBERT: One of Betty's brothers answered the phone
and someone said, "I killed her."
- NARRATOR: And authorities sit down with a key witness...
- STEVEN: This little girl went over and probably interrupted-
or was there during the time of the homicide.
- She was apparently the last person to see Betty alive.
- NARRATOR: Investigators in the quaint Dallas suburb
of Wylie, Texas
have just homed in on their first suspect in
the brutal murder of 30-year-old Betty Gore --
her husband, Allan.
- JIM: It's rare that a stranger killing will mutilate the face,
but an acquaintance or someone close to the victim will
frequently try to eviscerate the face to make a person disappear.
That made Allan Gore the top suspect at the beginning.
- NARRATOR: As investigators wait for Allan
to get back to Wylie, news of the gruesome murder
of this well-known mother and teacher
spreads quickly through small town Wylie.
- NANCY: The fact that it happened on Friday the 13th,
everybody was freaking out over that.
Everybody was afraid of everybody at that point,
they thought there was like a psycho killer
or something like that wandering around.
- It made national headlines, you know,
and people concerned about, here's a you know,
the ax murderer.
- NARRATOR: To investigators however,
the violence strikes them as more intimate...
- IRV: I wasn't worried about this being an outside person,
crazy person.
This was going to be pretty personal.
- STEVEN: They counted out the number ax- ax chops,
and there's 41 times total ax marks,
they actually in 28 in the head.
- ROBERT: There were a number of blows that were struck
after she was down on the ground and already dead.
There was so much overkill here.
- How many of these wounds to the head would have killed her?
Do you need to do anymore? This was just rage.
- NARRATOR: Looking at the evidence before them,
investigators can only think of one person responsible...
- IRV: When we walked into the kitchen, there was burnt coffee.
It suggests that time frame of number of hours earlier,
in the early morning hours.
- ROBERT: Allan could have killed Betty
before he went to work
and then gone to work at his normal time and, and uh,
flown off to Minneapolis.
- JIM: They looked at Allan, uh, real hard,
but there were footprints on the linoleum in the, uh, uh,
the utility room.
And um, they could tell the, that it was a flip flop
and it was too small to be a man's
and so at that point they were, you know, flummoxed.
- At that time, we were looking for someone and small in stature
was a child or a woman.
- NARRATOR: On June 14th, 1980,
hoping to make sense of their conflicting leads,
investigators head back to the Gore home,
where they find Allan - along with his two daughters
and Betty's family from Kansas.
- It wasn't until Allan got back home.
He flew back to Dallas.
He found out what really happened.
- RICHARD: Allan is- is pretty low-key, you know,
he doesn't seem to show emotions too much about Betty.
He just didn't have the emotion that somebody should have had.
It was just another day, you know,
just wasn't no big deal which did sat kind of odd
with everybody or the family.
- NARRATOR: Instead of interviewing Allan at his home,
investigators opt to give him space
to prepare for Betty's funeral.
But before they leave the Gore residence,
one of Betty's brothers, Richard Pomeroy,
approaches them with a disturbing story.
- RON: The day after my sister was killed,
we had people calling- claiming they had-
they had killed her.
- ROBERT: Someone called Betty Gore's home and Betty's...
one of Betty's brothers answered the phone
and someone said, "I killed her."
and the brother hung up.
- RICHARD: We had one caller that claimed that they were
the one that did it.
I was happened to pick up the phone when that happened.
- STEVEN: They started getting telephone calls to their house.
Like, okay, you know, your daughters are next.
- NARRATOR: Investigators put a trace on the line,
hoping for another call.
In the meantime, they canvass the neighborhood where
they receive a tip from an unlikely source.
- JOHN: There was a five-year-old girl who was
playing in the street that morning.
- STEVEN: Probably around nine o'clock at morning,
this little girl went over, knocked on the door to see if
Betty's daughter, Alicia, was there
and no one came to the door. So, she probably interrupted-
or was there during the time of the homicide.
- NARRATOR: According to the little girl,
she did see one person she recognized that day,
the mother of one of her other friends from school...
- JOHN: She saw Candy Montgomery
leave Betty's house Friday morning at about 11:00 A.M.
- STEVEN: So we're thinking that she might be the last person to
actually see Betty alive.
- NARRATOR: Though the word of a five-year-old feels thin,
detectives ask Candy Montgomery
to come in for an interview on June 15th.
- They were just interviewing her because she was apparently
the last person to see Betty alive.
- NARRATOR: The 30-year-old housewife explains
she'd been at church until
she ran a quick errand in the late morning.
- ROBERT: It was around, um, ten-thirty, eleven o'clock.
She went to Betty's house to pick up a swimsuit
for Betty's daughter
because Betty's daughter is gonna be spending
the night with her.
That they, chatted for a few minutes,
she got the swimsuit and left and then she got back to church
around noon for lunch.
- NARRATOR: Though Candy is forthcoming, at this stage,
everyone is considered a possible person of interest.
- During the interview, we actually took her fingerprints
because whenever you are there-
we took fingerprints of everyone that was in that house.
- NARRATOR: Before she leaves, Candy lets them know they may
find her prints in her friend's home.
- STEVEN: She talked about places
where her fingerprints might be.
She went in the utility room to get Alicia's bathing suit
and then she said she also went the bathroom
and combed her hair and washed her hands.
She was very cooperative, you know, her friend had died,
had been murdered, and she's just going to try
and be as helpful as possible.
- NARRATOR: After interviewing Candy,
detectives get word that one of Betty's brothers has just
fielded another disturbing phone call.
- RONALD: I would answer the phone call and try to keep him
on- on the phone as long as possible so they could trace it.
And one of them they traced to a mental hospital.
- NARRATOR: Investigators immediately race to the hospital
to speak to the caller.
- It turned out to be a mental patient making the call
they really had nothing to do with the case.
- RONALD: The guy was, I guess, enjoying the fact that he could,
uh, claim that he had killed my sister and where it happened,
and all this will know the details added up.
So, we knew it wasn't true at all.
- ROBERT: Police were really scrambling around trying to find
uh who, who did it and and they they had no,
no real leads for at least several days
af-after this happened and they were concerned.
- We had the funeral down there in- in Wylie and we were really
just taking care of the girls as we could.
- NARRATOR: On June 16th, just a few hours after Betty Gore
is laid to rest, investigators finally sit down
with her husband, Allan.
According to Allan, his marriage was solid--although he admits
that on the morning of the murder,
they did get into an argument
as he left for his business trip.
- She was afraid that she was pregnant again.
Betty didn't do well with pregnancies and she didn't think
she could go through that.
- NARRATOR: Allan tells detectives he tried to touch
base with Betty as soon as he could.
- STEVEN: So he calls.
Of course, we had, you know, no cell phones, so he had to call,
and he, uh, calling her and she wouldn't ever answer the phone.
- NARRATOR: Since Allan's story hasn't changed,
investigators allow Allan to leave
while they follow up on his alibi.
- STEVEN: It was easy to confirm that he left that morning.
He flew to, uh, Minneapolis-Saint Paul.
- NARRATOR: But the next morning,
Allan Gore calls the chief to get something off his chest.
- He thought about it, that he probably should tell police
more information.
- JIM: He was having a crisis of conscious, I guess.
And he thought he needed to tell them that he had an affair with
this church member and friend of Betty's.
- ROBERT: The affair started about a year and a half maybe
before Betty was killed.
- NARRATOR: The name of Allan's alleged mistress immediately
sets off red flags...
- He named Candy Montgomery
as the person he had the affair with.
- NARRATOR: Coming up:
Details of a forbidden romance emerge...
- They decide okay, on this certain day
we're gonna start the affair.
- JIM: They said we're not gonna get
really romantically entangled.
- NARRATOR: And detectives get a shocking admission of guilt.
- She said, "I didn't,
"I haven't done anything wrong. I did not murder her."
- Self-defense usually doesn't involve, you know 40 odd blows.
- NARRATOR: Just days after the brutal ax murder
of teacher Betty Gore, her husband calls investigators
to offer illicit details of his love affair
with one of her closest friends.
- ROBERT: Allan Gore and Candy Montgomery had been having
an affair and, so that created some suspicion,
I think both on Allan and Candy.
- NARRATOR: Allan tells investigators things between
he and Candy heated up after a church volleyball game about
a year and a half prior.
- She followed Allen to his car out in the parking lot and,
and said, um, words to the effect of, of um,
"Well, I'm, I'm really attracted to you
and, and I think we should have an affair.
He didn't quite know what to say.
- NARRATOR: Allan says he and Candy decided to move
forward--with one condition:
- JIM: We're not gonna get involved, uh, you know, beyond,
uh, uh, the physical, we're not gonna get
really romantically entangled.
- JOHN: Finally, they decide okay,
on this certain day we're gonna start the affair and they go to
a sleazy motel and have sex.
- NARRATOR: But a few months in, Allan says his relationship with
Betty started to change:
- JIM: Because of marriage encounter,
and what Betty and Allan, uh, were learning about one another,
uh, Allan decided I need to... I need to call this off.
It was beginning to be trouble for him.
- ROBERT: They mutually decided to end the affair
and so by the time um Betty was killed
the affair had been over six or seven months.
- NARRATOR: Allan tells investigators that he never told
Betty about the affair
and he believes Candy had also moved on.
But investigators aren't so quick to dismiss the revelation.
- At that point the, the investigators were suspicious
of both Allan and Candy.
I'm sure that that caused 'em to think
even if Allan was in Minnesota,
maybe he asked Candy to do it, they planned it.
- NARRATOR: As detectives press Allan,
he remains adamant he had nothing to do with his wife's
death and is eager to prove it.
- He took a polygraph and passed with flying colors.
- NARRATOR: With Allan seemingly in the clear,
investigators focus on Candy's alibi.
- STEVEN: During the interviews with her, uh,
she had- was teaching Vacation Bible School
at the Lucas Methodist Church.
- NARRATOR: Detectives head to Candy's church to talk to those
working directly with her the day of the murder,
starting with Nancy Crandell.
- She did wonderful at the Vacation Bible school.
Everything completely normal.
Then she said, "I've got to run over to Betty's in Wiley."
She said she was going to uh, go over there and get Alicia's
swimsuit so she could take her to the swim classes.
- NARRATOR: Nancy says, Candy left around 9:45 in the morning
and returned after 11, a little later than expected.
- NANCY: She was a little more quiet,
a little bit more reserved,
but other than that completely normal.
- NARRATOR: According to Nancy, there was one thing
that was odd: Candy had changed clothes.
- NANCY: She had on sleeves that came down to like her elbows,
and it was kind of up, you know, high around her neck
and everything and I thought, "Man, that must be hot.
I can't believe she's wearing something that hot."
- That was suspect, you know.
So you've actually changed clothes and changed shoes, why?
- NARRATOR: With Candy now at the center of the investigation,
detectives summon her to the Collin County Sheriff's Office
on the morning of June 17th.
- ROBERT: Her position at that point was she didn't have
anything to do with the killing.
- NARRATOR: With nothing concrete to keep Candy in
custody, detectives let her go, but do have one final request.
- ROBERT: They'd asked her about the polygraph
cause they're trying to eliminate her as a suspect
and then that's when I shut down the polygraph.
- NARRATOR: With Candy unwilling to cooperate,
investigators return to the evidence.
- ROBERT: They knew they had like a,
a bloody thumbprint on the freezer in the laundry room.
They hadn't compared that print to anyone.
- NARRATOR: Four days after Betty's murder,
investigators pull Candy's prints --
still on file from her initial interview.
- The fingerprints specialist from Dallas Sheriff's Office
tried to lift that fingerprint unsuccessfully.
However, he did have a really good photograph of it
that he used and was able to identify
the fingerprints from Candice Montgomery.
- STEVEN: You can't account for a-
how did a body thumbprint get on that freezer.
That you- that you can't account for unless you were there,
and you committed the offense.
- NARRATOR: Investigators also learn that Candy wears a size
five shoe--a match to the size of the bloody flip flop print
found at the scene.
- All flashy arrows are pointing at her.
- NARRATOR: As they wait for a warrant for Candy's arrest,
investigators formulate their own theory about what happened
after Candy arrived on the morning of Friday the 13th.
- JIM: We can't know that because you know,
she's not with us but she might have known he was uh,
having an affair.
I think, I think you can know that about a partner, but uh,
you can sense that this affair had gone on for about a year.
Betty's out of sorts.
She's in terrible a terrible mood.
She's depressed, she's upset, anxious,
Alan's gone and here comes Candy to the house.
- She went over there to get the bathing suit
and I think what happened
they did get into an argument about the affair.
Maybe it had been in the back of- of Betty's mind, who knows,
that there was an affair going on and this is what I think it
happened at-at the back door in from the garage.
There's lots of tools hanging up there, Candace gets that ax.
It's the first tool implement that's hanging up there.
She gets it, and she hits her.
She knocked her and she- she fell back in the utility room.
- There were 41 times where she was hit with the ax.
- STEVEN: It was a crime of opportunity.
I don't think it was a- a premeditated thing.
- NARRATOR: Realizing what she had done,
detectives believe Candy quickly tried to cover her tracks.
- She actually went and cleaned up
and she actually went back here and tried to clean up things.
She wiped and swiped on that- on that freezer.
- Candy took a shower, went back to church, you know,
didn't tell anyone.
- NARRATOR: On June 27th, fourteen days after Betty's
gruesome murder, detectives obtain an arrest warrant for
Candy Montgomery.
- There was media everywhere, there were spectators,
there was, uh, there were cameras, uh,
there were four major TV stations in the area.
All of 'em had their cameras there.
- STEVEN: She is arrested and I'm the one who actually
read her rights.
Some female jailers to actually, uh, strip search her,
and take her- all of her clothes off
that's where they noticed
all of these bruises and also the cut on her toe.
- NARRATOR: News of Candy's arrest hits the town of Wylie
almost as hard as the gruesome details of Betty's murder.
- I was just shocked. I was just completely in shock.
Uh, I just I could not believe that these two people
that I liked, had- one had killed the other one.
It- it was just terribly shocking.
- RONALD: I was shocked that it was this woman that had brought
food to the house.
You know, she was one of the church ladies
that brought food over after my sister had been killed.
- NARRATOR: As Candy continues to maintain her evidence,
speculation runs wild about
how the 30-year-old mother of two will plea.
- STEVEN: We're sitting there talking about the case.
And they said, well, is she going to plea insane?
We've got her bloody thumbprint there.
We got all this, how are they going plea?
- NARRATOR: When her trial begins in October 1980,
Candy's lead attorney presents his opening argument,
revealing her much-anticipated defense:
- He said something along the lines that --
we have quite a story to tell, uh,
that Candy Montgomery did kill Betty Gore
and she did so in self-defense.
- RONALD: We were all shocked.
She was talking self-defense, and we could imagine anybody
that would have believe that when she was hit that many times
that it was self-defense.
- JIM: Self-defense usually doesn't involve,
you know 40 odd blows.
You know, self-defense is one blow and you run.
- *
- NARRATOR: Coming up:
Candy tells her story for the first time...
- ROBERT: She said Betty Gore comes back inside with an axe
and starts confronting Candy
about having an affair with her husband Alan.
- Betty told her shh like that, and that just set Candy off-
that's where she snap right there.
- NARRATOR: On day one of Candy Montgomery's murder trial,
her attorney drops a bombshell that sends waves of shock
through the courtroom:
- Candy Montgomery did kill Betty Gore and she did so in
self-defense, and she did so with this axe,
but I firmly believe this was self-defense.
- She plead, you know, ah, um, not guilty by reason
of self-defense.
- NARRATOR: To bolster their claim,
the defense calls 30-year-old Candy Montgomery to the stand.
- She seemed like a genuinely concerned,
nice person, you know.
I mean, she- she definitely had her game face on,
I guess because you wouldn't have thought
that Candy could have done this.
- JOHN: She was a pillar of the community.
She was everybody's best friend.
She believed that as long as she held it together,
no one would ever know because
she was the least likely suspect in the world.
- NARRATOR: Candy explains when she went to Betty's house
on June 13, her past affair with Allan
was the last thing on her mind.
- ROBERT: In her mind, uh, you know the affair was over.
Candy, when she went over there,
she didn't know that Betty even knew there was an affair.
She said Betty Gore goes out to the garage in her home
and comes back inside with an axe.
And starts confronting Candy about having an affair
with her husband Alan.
- JOHN: She said Betty brought the ax forward,
it bounced on the linoleum,
and it sliced into one of Candy's toes and drew blood.
- NARRATOR: Terrified, Candy claims she tried to leave
the laundry room but Betty blocked her.
- ROBERT: She gets the axe away from Betty and hits Betty
and knocks Betty down and Candy thought
okay Betty is down and she tries to go out the door
and leave and Betty pops back up
and grabs the axe again.
Candy is doing everything she can to leave the house
and she couldn't and so then, uh, she
you know they struggle over the axe
and Candy gets the axe and ends up killing Betty.
- NARRATOR: Prosecutors quickly counter,
alleging that the excessive nature of Betty's murder
goes far beyond self-defense.
- STEVEN: A person is- is struck, 41 times with an ax.
You know, and there, you know, they probably died
in the first couple blows of the head.
And- and it's overkill
where is self-defense at?
- NARRATOR: Candy's attorneys next call a psychiatrist
to the stand.
- ROBERT: There was so much overkill here that I thought
we really needed to explain what happened.
I thought I needed to send her to a, uh,
a psychiatrist or psychologist to just get her evaluated.
As part of his evaluation process he hypnotized Candy
and it was really just like
watching a movie of what happened and that convinced me
without any shadow of a doubt that she was telling the truth.
- NARRATOR: According to the psychiatrist,
the events in the laundry room had triggered a memory in Candy.
- She was hit by a sharp instrument or something whenever
she was a child and it hurt her and she was bleeding real bad.
And her mother shook her and told her shh like that,
and that's what supposedly set her off because she said Betty
actually did that, went shh-
that's where she snap right there.
- ROBERT: That, that just set Candy off
Candy is just hitting and hitting and hitting,
she went into this dissociative reaction.
- NARRATOR: After four and a half hours,
the jury returns with a verdict.
- The whole courtroom literally lined shoulder to shoulder with
bailiffs separating, us, from all the crowd in the courtroom.
The judge gets the verdict from the foreman of the jury and uh,
he reads it and it's a not guilty verdict.
- RICHARD: The whole courtroom just roared because they could
not believe that that was the verdict.
- STEVEN: They were stunned.
I mean, the- the- the people were just outraged.
They were just- they just couldn't believe it.
- JIM: The jury was a jury of her peers.
Uh these were people from these little communities
she knew many of them.
- NARRATOR: Even decades later,
questions around what really happened in the Gore home
that fateful morning continue to linger.
- There's this dissatisfaction with,
with their lives and in this case it,
it results in the most horrific, um,
uh confrontation between two nonviolent women, um,
uh that you can imagine.
It's a story about the dark side of the suburbs.
- RONALD: I feel like my sister ought to be remembered as
the warm, bubbly, highly motivated elementary teacher
that she was.
- *