True Crime Campfire - Deadly Encounter: The Killing of Betty Gore

Episode Date: July 17, 2020

The human brain is an exquisitely complex organ, and it’s capable of some pretty bizarre stuff. Take couvade’s syndrome, otherwise known as sympathetic pregnancy—where a non-pregnant partner is so in tune with their pregnant one that they start showing signs of pregnancy themselves: morning sickness, weight gain, mood swings. I can relate to this—whenever my husband has a kidney stone, I always feel pain in exactly the same place. Then there’s the whole wide world of wild stuff that can happen to people when they come out of comas. People can wake up with totally different accents than they had before. People have been known to wake up speaking foreign languages that they never actually learned. My point is, our minds are amazing, and they’re not always on our team. There’s a lot we still don’t understand about them, and sometimes they can sabotage us pretty spectacularly. Are you wondering why I’m telling you this? Well, you’re about to hear one of the oddest true crime stories you’ll ever hear, and it raises some fascinating questions about the capabilities of the human mind. Sources:Evidence of Love: A True Story of Passion and Death in the Suburbs by John Bloom and Jim AtkinsonInvestigation Discovery's "The 1980s: The Deadliest Decade," episode "Friday the 13th"Follow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, a day early, an extra episode a month, a free sticker and more!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfireFacebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail] a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Hello, campers. Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. The human brain is an exquisitely complex organ and it's capable of some pretty bizarre stuff. Take Kovade syndrome. Otherwise, known as sympathetic pregnancy, where a non-pregnant partner is so in tune with their pregnant partner that they start showing signs of pregnancy themselves, morning sickness, weight gain, mood swings. I can relate to this. Whenever my husband has a kidney stone, I always feel pain in exactly the same place. Then there's the whole wide world of wild stuff that can happen to people when they come out of comas. People can wake up with totally different accents than they had before. People have been known to wake up speaking foreign languages that they never

actually learned. My point is, our minds are amazing, and they're not always on our team. There's a lot we still don't understand about them, and sometimes they can sabotage us pretty spectacularly. Are you wondering why I'm telling you this? Well, you're about to hear one of the oddest true crime stories you'll ever hear, and it raises some fascinating questions about the capabilities of the human mind. This is deadly encounter, the killing, of Betty Gore. So, Camper's Friday the 13th, June 1980.

We're in Wiley, Texas, a tiny little town near Plano. Alan Gore, yep, his name is Al Gore, the sooner you get right with that, the happier you'll be. Alan is worried. He's on a business trip to St. Paul, Minnesota. It's 10.30 at night, and he hasn't been able to get hold of his wife, Betty, all day. This was really strange for Betty. She was a homebody, not the type to be out and about a lot, especially lately, since she and Alan had a nine-month-old baby.

He just couldn't think of any good reason why Betty would be gone all day, and especially not at 10.30 at night. So Alan was starting to get pretty freaked out. He knew Betty was always really nervous whenever he had to leave her home alone at night. In fact, his business travel had been a serious sticking point for them all throughout their marriage. She hated it when he had to leave town. In fact, when he'd left for St. Paul that morning, Betty had broken down, pretty much thrown a fit. She'd cried and cried, why do you have to go? I hate it when you go, et cetera, et cetera. He'd had to calm her down before he left for the airport. So none of this felt right. Alan decided to call one of his neighbors back in Wiley and ask him

to check on Betty. So the neighbor went over to the house and looked around a bit. The car was in the driveway. Nothing looked amiss. There were no doors or windows open or busted out or anything like that. So he knocked, but nobody answered the door. But, you know, it didn't seem off to the neighbor. So he went back to the phone and said, you know, Alan, nothing seems off. She just didn't answer the door. But Alan was not going to be reassured. He said, look, something is wrong. I know it. Please go back and get inside. You have my permission to break into the house if you have to. So the neighbor said, okay, but he wasn't, as I probably wouldn't be either, super comfortable at the idea of breaking into somebody's house, even if he did have

permission. So he went and got another neighbor. I guess, like in case the cops showed up, he figured out this guy could vouch for him or something, and they headed back over to the Gore's house. They found the front door unlocked, so they just went right on in. And the first thing that they heard when they came through the door was the Gore's nine-month-old baby daughter, Bethany, just screaming her head off. So one of the men went to the baby's room, and it was immediately obvious that this kid had been unattended for at least hours, possibly longer. She was disheveled, her face was beat red, she was screaming, and she was covered in her own poop, poor little thing. So she really needed a change in a bath. So the neighbor picked her up

and quickly ran back to his house to give her to his wife to take care of while he went back to the gorse. Okay, it's not funny, but I can't help but picture. I know. He just hands this poopy-covered baby to his wife. Take this baby, bye. Yeah, bye, going back now. That's real nice. So the two neighbor guys continued walking through the house, and they started to notice a kind of strange unsettling smell. It was hard to put a finger on, but if either of the two men had ever worked as a paramedic or emergency room doctor before, it wouldn't have been.

A sharp, metallic smell, like pennies. The neighbors started to get a bad, bad feeling. And then one of them noticed a few drops of red on the bathroom tile, and when one of the guys pushed open the door from the kitchen into the laundry room, they realized what it was they'd been smelling. It was blood. Blood everywhere. It looked like a set from a bad horror movie. The room was just a wash in red, as if someone had taken gallons of red paint and doused the whole room. And in the midst of this horrendous scene lay the body of Betty Gore.

Or at least they assumed it was her. They couldn't be entirely sure because her face was basically gone. So, of course, the men both screamed and fled, running for the phone in the living room, and right as they reached it, it rang, which must have made them both jump like they were on springs, poor dudes. And it was Alan calling. He said, did you find her? What's going on? So these men had to tell poor Alan Gore that they just found his wife in a pool of blood. his neighbor said

Al I'm so sorry I think she shot herself That's what he assumed Given the amount of blood in the condition of Betty's face That she must have killed herself with a shotgun or something Remember they weren't in that room long enough to see much They just saw the bloody scene and fled like anybody would Alan in his hotel room in St. Paul Hundreds of miles away dropped the phone

Fortunately he was there with some colleagues And they were able to get the story out of him and calm him down a little bit. Alan said to his friend, she was depressed. She was so upset about me leaving. Is this because I didn't stay home? Is it my fault?

Oh, my God, can you imagine? Oh, I can't. Her co-workers helped him arrange to fly back home, and in the meantime, the neighbors back in Texas called it in. So the investigators arrived, and they were almost as stunned as the neighbors. It was the worst crime scene any of them had ever seen. They quickly determined that this was not a suicide, and there was no

gun involved. This was a murder, and the weapon was an axe. The axe was lying on the floor not far from the body, covered, of course, in blood. It had broken during the attack. The head had come off, and the handle had splintered from the force of the blows. Poor Betty Gore had been hacked to death. Yikes. The little town of Wiley, Texas, sure as hell, had never seen anything like this. Fortunately, there was quite a bit of evidence for the CSIs to work on. They found some light brown hairs in Betty's hand and some more stuck in the blood on the soles of her feet. There was a footprint in blood on the floor near the body. Best of all, they found a thumbprint in the blood on the freezer in the kitchen.

A fingerprint in the victim's blood is as good as a smoking gun. The person who left that is most likely going to be your killer. So if they could find the person who left that thumbprint, they'd be in business. As the evidence texts were working

in the kitchen, one of them noticed something that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. On the kitchen counter, a newspaper was open to a full-page ad for the movie, The Shining. Yeah, a movie in which, as I'm sure y'all know, a woman and her two little girls were hacked to death with an axe. And another woman was chased around a deserted hotel with one. Creepy.

So creepy. Under the circumstances, this did not feel like a coincidence. Had some maniac come in off the street and acted out his own sick version of the Shining? It hadn't escaped the investigators that the murder had happened on Friday the 13th either. or that the victim's last name was Gore. Was there killer a slasher movie buff who didn't know how to separate fantasy from reality? They didn't know yet, of course. From what they could tell from their initial investigations,

Betty Gore was about as unlikely a murder victim as you could find. She didn't seem to have any enemies. She was a quiet, unassuming 30-year-old wife and mother of two girls, eight-year-old Elisa and little baby Bethany. She was an elementary school teacher, for God's sakes. She wasn't active in her church. Looking at her horribly brutalized body, the investigators couldn't imagine why anyone would want to do this to her.

This was overkill to the nth degree. One or two blows from that heavy axe would have done the trick, but Betty had suffered over 40. She had horrible hacking wounds to just about every part of her body, and worst of all, one of her eyes had been literally hacked out. Her face was basically gone, unrecognizable. What made Betty, Betty? had been obliterated. When we see that, we know there's some deep rage at work. Usually it means

the crime is personal. Not always. Sometimes a killer will take out their rage on a surrogate, someone who reminds them of the object of their fury, or just whoever happens to be nearby, but usually overkill means close relationship. In the bathroom, the CSI's notice that the bath mat, the shower, and the soap inside the shower all had blood on them, and it was obvious the killer had taken a shower after the murder. There was some pink water around the shower drain, along with some longish, dark blonde slash light brown hair that didn't match anybody who lived in the house.

What kind of a killer takes a shower in their victim's house right after a frenzied attack like the one on Betty Gore? It seemed pretty cold-blooded. More interesting findings. It didn't appear that Betty had been sexually assaulted, so that didn't seem to be a motive. There was no sign of forced entry. There was cash sitting untouched on a table,

so robbery didn't seem to be the motive either. Baby Bethany hadn't been harmed. The last time anybody had seen or spoken to Betty was that morning, so this had happened sometime between Alan leaving for his business trip and when the neighbors found the body. Alan said the first time he'd tried and failed to get her on the phone was around lunchtime. As the investigators got to work, Alan Gore made his way back to Texas from St. Paul.

He had to call Betty's parents, which was a horrible task of course. course. Oh my God. And he called his and Betty's friends Candy and Pat Montgomery. They had his eight-year-old daughter, Elisa. She had spent the day with Candy and Pat's little girl and was spending the night too. Of course, Candy and Pat were horrified. And they told Ellen they'd keep Elisa as long as he needed them to while he traveled back home and met with investigators. And this is so sad. He asked them, please don't tell Elisa yet. Oh my God. He wanted to be the one to tell his little girl that her mother was gone. God, that's so sad. I mean, Lisa was really

close to her mom, and it must have been dawning on everybody that now Bethany would never get to know her mother at all, which is just absolutely heartbreaking. And as Alan flew toward the surreal nightmare that had become his life, investigators knew they had their work cut out for them. Was this a personal crime? Or did the town of Wiley have to worry that it would happen again? But let's put a pin in that for a little bit and get a little bit of background on our victim and some of the important people around her in the time leading up to her death. So Betty Gore, born Betty Pomeroy, grew up in Norwich, Kansas in the 50s and 60s. She had a pretty auspicious start in life. When she was three, she was voted the most popular baby in town, which really caught my attention because I did not know they rank babies like that.

But I suspect it's just that my parents didn't tell me because I'm sure I was not a popular baby. I mean, I wasn't popular at high school, except with my fellow drama club nerds and other weirdos. So mom and dad just probably didn't want me to know how badly I tanked it in the popular baby competition. So I think they kept that for me. But Betty won hers. She was her town's Gerber baby. And that streak pretty much continued all throughout her childhood. Betty was pretty and sunny.

She came from a tight-knit farming family. And although she was kind of a girly girl, she was just as willing to get down and dirty and drive a tractor when she needed to. She was one of the most popular girls in school, and she got involved in a ton of activities. She played clarinet. She played women's basketball. She wasn't a star in any of them. She wasn't a high achiever academically, but she was enthusiastic and congenial and energetic, and everybody liked her. And she was particularly popular with the guys. Betty was a good girl.

She didn't have a rebellious streak like a lot of teenagers do. She liked boys. She liked school. She liked her friends. She was happy in her small town world, and she wasn't very interested in the wider world outside. For example, our main source for this case is a book called Evidence of Love by John Bloom and Jim Atkinson, and they included some excerpts from Betty's like Middle and High School Diaries. So here's an entry from 1963.

Today, President Kennedy was shot and killed. Tonight was the carnival. Gary ran the BB stand. I shot two times and got two out of ten. He's such a doll. Holy shit, right? Like, you'd expect some kind of a reaction about the president. being shot but no another one today was okay martin luther king was assassinated last night there are race

riots all over jimmy came in tonight and we rode around i love him wow dang girl so and i don't share those to bag on betty i mean she was just a kid when she wrote those entries and she grew up very sheltered and in a very small town no internet no real opportunities to interact with people who weren't like her. But I think this illustrates the mindset that she grew up with and took with her into adulthood. And the reason I share that is I actually think it's relevant to the way things play out in this story. Oh, definitely. Relevant. Don't you think so? Yeah, relevant to how and why this killing happens. So bear with us. And when we get further into the story, I think you may see what I mean. Betty was a complicated person, as obviously we all are.

And we actually debated a little bit about whether to cover this case because in some ways Betty was kind of a difficult person. And of course, she's also a victim and she did not deserve what happened to her in any way, shape, or form. We would never want to suggest that she did. But I think when we get to the trial later on, you're going to see why this is relevant, namely that the defense that is used by the killer asks us to consider it. And, you know, when we talk about the victims of violence, there's a natural tendency to focus only on the good things about them.

And that's completely understandable. And I think for the most part, right. But in this case, some of the quirks in Betty's character are essential parts of the story. And if we didn't include them, we would leave, I think, huge gaps in your understanding of this case. Right. But we want to make it very clear right now, despite Betty's peccadilloes and God knows we all have them, God knows I do. a very imperfect human being. Of course, yeah, we all are.

We would never for a second suggest that her death was anything but a tragedy. And if we sometimes portray her as a little bit of a difficult person, we mean no disrespect to her memory. We're just trying to paint as real a picture of what happened as we can based on the sources that we had to work with. So we wanted to say that at the beginning because she's a little bit of a prickly pear at times. So Betty had wanted to be a school teacher. teacher her entire life, and after she graduated high school, she became the first member of her

family to go to college. And this is something I really admire about Betty. A lot of women of her era pretty much just went to college to find a husband, and that was it. But Betty really wanted a career. She wanted to be a teacher, and she pursued that goal with a single-minded determination that is nothing short of impressive, especially given when and where she grew up. Yeah, my grandmother's father told her that he would send his sons to college, but he wouldn't spend a penny. to send one of his daughters. Charming. Yeah. And then she paid her way through college and is an all-around badass now. But good for her. That is definitely a remnant of that time. So in college, Betty's worst subject was math. Same, Betty. Same girl. Me too. And in one of her math classes,

she had a professor named Alan Gore, who very quickly made her aware that she was crashing and burning in the class and in danger of failing. So Betty said, well, could you tutor me? And Alan said, sure. And before long, they were meeting up for cozy little tutoring sessions, and Betty fell head over heels in love with him. Alan had grown up on a farm, just like Betty had. He wasn't a social butterfly like Betty was, though. He was quiet, kind of nerdy, a good student. He was really, good at math, obviously. But he and Betty had a lot in common once you scratch the surface. They both valued family and wanted kids. They were both pretty conservative, both in politics, and in the way they dressed and lived their lives. And they both had sort of passive personalities,

by which I mean, they weren't the kind of people who like to rock the boat. They weren't activist types, despite the revolutionary politics going on at the time. They weren't the type start confrontation. They wanted to keep things simple in their lives. If you'd asked Betty what it was about Allen that attracted her, she might have trouble telling you. It seemed like it may have been a case of chemistry that happens sometimes, you know? Oh, yeah. In high school, Betty had dated a totally different type of guy. They were all big, boisterous corn fed football playing farm boy types. Big, musley tan dudes who played sports and rode around in their convertibles with the tops down. Basically, the 80s movie villain trope.

Alan wasn't one of those guys. He was kind of skinny. He was pale. He was quiet and reserved. And Betty's family could not understand it. They were like, uh, what the hell have you brought home? They seem to have interpreted Alan's quiet as snobbery. His reserve is arrogance.

They felt like Alan thought he was better than they were. Whether this was true or a misperception on their part, we have no way of knowing for sure. When Betty would bring Alan home to visit and there was farm work to be done, he'd offer to help. I mean, he grew up on a farm too, but he couldn't lift as much as Betty's brothers could, so they'd tease him a little bit about that. That must have been fun. Right. Her dad and, oh my God. Her dad thought he was a sissy, so basically Alan wasn't their idea of a perfect match for Betty.

But because they knew she was in love with him, they tried to make him feel welcome. And she was head over heels in love with him. Betty followed Alan to grad school. He was going for math, and she wanted to get her teaching degree. They got married in 1970, and initially it was a good marriage. They moved around a little bit with Alan trying out different jobs, and Betty started her student teaching and stuff like that but before too long little cracks began to show in their relationship the first big issue emerged when allan started having to travel a lot for work he was

working as a computer programmer in those really early days of computing and his work would send him all around to different companies around the country to help them out with their IT stuff because at this stage of the game there really weren't that many good IT professionals around and betty hated it she hated being left home alone and she was not not shy about letting Alan know about it. She'd cry and crying, she'd argue and she'd complain. And then Alan started to notice that every time he had to go somewhere for work, Betty would get sick. So, you know, he'd take her to the doctor, and more often than not, the doctor wouldn't find anything wrong.

And after a while, Alan realized that the only time this ever seemed to happen was when he was getting ready to leave for a work trip. And he started to wonder, was this for real, or was this Betty's way of kind of trying to get him to stay home? or at least feel guilty about leaving. Of course, it might also have been that Betty got so stressed out in anticipation of these trips that she made herself sick because, you know, anxiety will do that for you. Right. But whatever it was, it was rough on both of them, and it started becoming a serious sticking point in their relationship.

Then, on one of his trips, Betty did something that was incredibly out of character for her. She had a one-night stand with a student at a nearby college. Dang. She confessed to Alan immediately afterward, and she seemed to feel horrible about it. But Alan wondered if it was some kind of calculated move, if she'd done it to send him a message. If you're going to leave town, this is what I'm going to do. That's a pretty clear message, all right. Right.

Now, whether this was the case or whether she just gave in to a moan of loneliness, who knows. But obviously, Alan's travel was becoming a capital I issue in their marriage. Yeah, and Betty was also a planner to the point where it was almost a compulsion. Betty did not have a spontaneous bone in her body. And it's not like Alan was like Mr. Spontaneous, but he wasn't thrilled about having to plan his life out to the degree that Betty wanted or, I think, needed. And I think it's very clear from all the stuff we've talked about so far that Betty was suffering from anxiety. And I mean, so do I. And so I suspect to some of you, and if you have anxiety, you know it can manifest itself in a lot of different ways.

For some people, it presents pretty much just like this. They have to make sure that their outward environment is as orderly and predictable as possible, so they can kind of keep their inner environment calm. So Betty could not handle any kind of change, any kind of uncertainty, any deviation from the norm. It just freaked her right out. So she wanted the same routine every day, and she wanted to know what they were going to be doing next week, next month, next year. And for Alan, this was a lot, especially given his job, which could be unpredictable. Like, it wasn't really possible for him to tell her those things. And one time Alan had to go to Switzerland for work. And it was the furthest he'd ever gone away from her. And Betty was so pissed

off that she called his boss and yelled at his boss for making Alan travel so much. Oh, no. Oh, my God. Like, can you even imagine? Like, you've got this job that you feel really lucky to have it pays really well you enjoy it and one day your spouse calls your boss and screams at her oh my god no oh hell no this was not good but you know at the end of the day alan loved betty and when she did that it was so completely outrageous that it made him realize like damn this is a really big deal for her so maybe i need to make a change and to his credit he did he started looking for another job that wouldn't require so much travel and it didn't take him long to find one He was good at what he did.

So they had their first daughter, Elisa, in the midst of all this. And for a while, being a new mom seemed to calm Betty down. She had a really bad pregnancy, though. She had awful morning sickness, but not just in the morning, like, all day long. Ugh, eesh. But after Elisa was born, she seemed to do better for a while. She really seemed to thrive on being a mom. She adored Elisa.

She devoted herself to her. And on top of that, she got her first teaching job. And this was something Betty had wanted her entire life. so, of course, it was super exciting for her. Yeah, but almost right away, flies started to show up in the ointment. As much as Betty wanted to be a teacher, she didn't seem to be a natural at it. The problem wasn't the actual teaching, the subject matter. It was dealing with the kids.

Betty had a really hard time handling them, discipline-wise. Things most teachers would take in stride like a kid horsing around a little in the lunch, or talking in class would make Betty meltdown. I think this is part of her need for control. She needed predictability and order at school just like she did at home. And when she didn't get it and it's real hard to get it in a room full of kids, she'd stress out. So she'd call a kid's parents for the smallest infraction, stuff like that. And Betty soon started clashing with both the kids and their parents.

She clashed with fellow teachers, too. The school where she taught had an open classroom team teaching approach, and Betty hated it. She did not play well with others because she had trouble bending or compromising. Yeah, and don't get us wrong, we know teaching is not an easy gig. I've been an educator for 20 plus years, and I've taught everything from fifth grade up to Ph.D. students, and every single level has been hard. So I don't judge anybody for not being great at it, their first crack out of it. the box. But some people are definitely more suited to it than others. And if you're going to be a good teacher, you have got to be adaptable. You have to be willing to change and compromise. And that was

just a real struggle for Betty. I think partly because of her anxiety issues and the specific way they manifested and the fact that, you know, it was the 70s. And we weren't really equipped to treat anxiety yet. Yeah, rub some dirt in it. Get over it. Well, basically, she just got prescribed little yellow pills. Yeah. So her first teaching job was turning out to be kind of a disaster. This school system worked on a probationary system where they'd hire you for a year and then re-evaluate your contract at the end of that year. And when the end of Betty's year came along, the school opted not to renew her contract. Ouch. Yeah. Betty was furious about it, but the school officials told her, look, you have to be willing to take criticism.

you can't blame every problem on the team teaching platform, or on the other teachers, or the kids. But despite being rejected by the first school who had hired her, Betty was determined to find a permanent teaching job. She told Alan she was not going to give up no matter what. Good for her. And in 1977, Betty and Allen decided to buy a new house in Little Wiley, Texas. Alan was really enjoying his new job in that area, and there was a school system. there where Betty could try for a teaching job. They bought a pretty brick house

and started looking for a church. They found a little church called First Methodist Church of Lucas. This church campers will be the epicenter of this story. The place that brings all our major players together. It was actually a pretty cool place.

They had a woman minister, which was pretty damn progressive for the 1970s. Her name was Jackie Ponder. She was a really warm, gregarious person with a strong social conscience, and she made everybody from all walks of life feel welcome. Yeah, Pastor Ponder was neat. She was a really progressive-minded, cool lady, and her congregation just absolutely adored her. So Betty and Allen found this church, and they felt at home there

right away. Allen, in particular, started really getting involved in the church. He was joining up for activities and whatnot, and two of the people they met soon after they joined the church were a married couple named Pat and Candy Montgomery. So let's talk a little bit about Pat and Candy. Candy Montgomery was about as different from Betty Gore as you could get. Where Betty was more conservative and reserved, Candy was a free spirit. And I think we've said this before, but have you ever noticed how often free spirit is just a euphemism for hot mess on toast? Because I've noticed that. Candy had wild, curly blonde hair. Sometimes she'd wear a little bit of a short skirt, you know, and Candy was a social butterfly and a born flirt. She had a really

easy way about her. She was easy to talk to and easy to like. Anybody she met became an instant friend. You know, she was one of those folks. And Candy had grown up in a military family, so she'd moved around a lot. She'd lived in France and West Germany, Washington, D.C., in Texas. And as we've mentioned before, that kind of lifestyle tends to create strong social skills. So people learn to make friends quickly and easily. And Candy was a great example of this. Many people just loved her. Whereas Betty was a good kid in school, Candy was a little bit of a rebel. She was super boy crazy. She was one of those kids who'd get caught smoking in the bathroom at school. And she also had a social conscience. She got involved in some of the protest movements in the

60s. And although she never went to college, she was interested in philosophy and she liked having intellectual conversations. And when Candy and Pat discovered the first Methodist Church of Lucas, about a year before Betty and Allen did, she and Pastor Jackie Ponder became instant BFFs. Candy would come over to Jackie's house and they'd sit on the porch and drink coffee and smoke and talk about any and everything, just instant besties. In a lot of ways, Candy and her husband, Pat, were as much of an odd couple as Betty and Allen. They'd met years earlier when Candy's co-worker at her secretarial job looked at her one day and said, you know what, I'm going to set you up on a date with my son, which just, oh my God, nightmare, but that's an interesting

meat-cute story. And they definitely were not two people who anybody would have chosen to put together if you were just kind of looking at their profiles on paper. Pat was absolutely brilliant. He was an electrical engineer who was so smart and so talented that when he entered his Ph.D. program on a NASA fellowship, no less, he was so far ahead of the curriculum that they just let him design his own, which is astounding. And Candy was smart, too, but she didn't pursue any degrees or anything like that. And she wasn't science or math-minded. She was more creative. She liked writing and stuff like that. So their first date was a disaster. They bored the crap out of each other. But for some reason, they just both felt drawn to

have a second date. And then a third date. And the rest was history. So chemistry again? Maybe. They weren't each other's usual type at all. But for some reason, they just kind of couldn't quit each other. I think from Candy's perspective, she maybe saw Pat as a good bet, you know, good husband material. She told her friends, he's stable, he makes good money. There weren't a lot of fireworks, but Pat was the kind of guy you could take home to mom. What a beautiful story, right? Yikes. So they got married in 1970, same as Betty and Al. And by the time our story starts, they had two kids, a boy, Ian, and a girl named Jenny. So around the time they discovered the First Methodist Church of Lucas, Candy and Pat had just moved into their dream house out in the country.

They'd always wanted a place where they could have a ton of pets and play outside and kind of have their own little place of paradise. That sounds awesome. Right? Pat was making incredible money by now working for Texas instruments. They didn't have to worry financially. They'd been married for about seven years by now and they were starting to get a little bored of each other. Candy was telling her friends, there's nothing wrong with him. He's a good man. I'm just bored stiff. I've got to find something to do.

So she threw herself into the life of the church, and soon she became the center of everything. Besties with Pastor Ponder and involved in just about every church program and activity. As Whitney said, Alan Gore didn't take long to jump into the church life either. He started organizing the volleyball and softball team, stuff like that, but Betty hung back a little bit. there was kind of a clickish atmosphere with the women at the church. They were all in the choir, and they had this little best friend group. They all spent a ton of time together. They had little coffee clatches and whatnot.

They were really close. And Betty did join the choir, but she just never really fit in. By all accounts, it wasn't that she was unfriendly. She was just a little standoffish, a little hard to get to know. And in fairness, it's really hard to jump into an established group of close friends, especially as an adult. Yeah, absolutely. But there were little awkward moments with Betty. For example, when Betty got pregnant with Bethany, a woman who had just joined the church knitted a gorgeous baby blanket for Betty.

She went up and presented it to her in a beautiful box. And listen, that shit is time-consuming. It is not nothing to knit somebody, anything, especially a full-sized baby blanket. That takes time and effort and, like, love, man. Yep. And Betty's reaction was to take the box, open it, look at the baby blanket, and say, oh, and walk away. My stars. Dang.

Maybe this was one more way Betty's anxiety manifested in social awkwardness. Who knows? But it could come across as rude. And there were a few little incidents like that, according to people in the church. Not only that, but the choir ladies' kids would come home from school and tell their parents how tough Betty was on them in class. They'd tell them about all the things Betty's daughter, Elisa, wasn't allowed to do. So people started to get a picture of Betty as a little bit harsh, a little bit cold. And at school, the kids in her kids and her class were getting restless, to the point where one night, a group of them egged Betty and Allen's house. Oh, God. Which is horrible, obviously. Little shits. Hell no. And like women everywhere,

the women in the choir like to, as they called it, talk naughty. So cute. When they got together on Pastor Ponder's porch, they'd sometimes talk about their sex lives. Which, you know, there's something terribly weird about that if you ask me, but it made Betty really uncomfortable, and she showed it. Like, she'd give kind of a judgy look, and the other women could tell she was just hating it, and people kind of started to feel like they had to walk on eggshells around her, you know, so that they wouldn't offend her, which is, you know, not super fun, obviously. And I mean, okay, there's nothing wrong with any of that. It's okay to not want to talk about sex with your girlfriends. It's okay to be kind of strict with your kid about some things.

We're not saying that the choir ladies were right and Betty was wrong, not at all. Oh, definitely not. It was just obvious early on that this just wasn't Betty's crowd. She wasn't a laid-back person. On the other hand, everybody loved Alan. He thrived at the church. He'd laugh and joke around. It's odd, given how popular Betty was in high school. Yeah. Something had obviously changed for her between then and now.

Yeah, that is really strange because she was like, one of the most popular kids in school. And so maybe that's the anxiety taking hold. And I mean, it can really change you when you're untreated, especially, which, you know, I mean, she was being prescribed stuff, but we didn't have great treatments for anxiety in the 70s. So, look at you now. I mean, you went from the least popular baby in your town to running a moderately successful podcast. We have a small cult following on top of the world. I'm super excited about our small cult following. Yeah, we love you. it's like the best thing in the world so okay back to candy and pat what was going on in their marriage was

basically the perfect recipe for an affair pat was working a lot and he was becoming very disconnected just not paying a lot of attention to candy candy she was the type that wanted to go do stuff like she wanted to go to a writing workshop and take a painting class and you know she was creative and artistic and pat was just very science minded so when she would try to talk to him about that stuff He could be pretty dismissive. Like, he didn't want to talk books with her, you know. And she did the same thing to him. I mean, it's not like it was all one way.

She didn't show interest in the stuff he was into either. And it's not like couples have to be into all the same stuff. I mean, obviously, my husband and I both have separate interests. But you have to be interested in them. And you have to want to talk to them about what they're passionate about, or it's going to spell death for the relationship. It just is. And I think everyone knows that, like, soul-killing feeling,

when you're talking to someone about something and you're excited about it and they don't care. Yeah, that sucks. Like, at least pretend to listen when I'm talking about sports anime, you know? Okay, I'll work on it. I told you I would work on it. And Candy and Pat were pretty much just headed over a cliff. They weren't spending time with each other anymore. Basically, they were swimming in a big old bowl of a fair soup.

Ew. And, yeah, it's gross. And soon Candy started telling her coffee clutch friends in the choir that she was thinking, about having an affair. So it wasn't like she'd picked out a guy or anything. She just knew she wanted to take a lover. And I love this because it's so insane. She was very calculated about it.

She actually sat down and made a list of pros and cons. Like, can you imagine doing this? So she's like, okay, here we go. Pros of having an affair will get to have sex, right? That's all I got for that. Now, let's see, cons of having an affair. and that goes on for 14 pages. But, of course, that's just my opinion as an old married lady.

I have no idea what was on Candy's list, although I would love to have seen it. Oh, please. But it seems that Candy really, really wanted to have some hot romance novel sex while she was still young. She was 29 at this point. She loved romance novels, and she wanted the kind of sex she read about in there. And it sounds like she and Pat maybe had never had that, like even from the start. So basically, Candy had ODed on Danielle Steele or something, and she was feeling, and 50 shades of frisky.

And, of course, her friends tried to talk her out of it. The pastor tried to talk her out of it, but Ms. Candy was determined. So she decided to join the volleyball team, which if you're on the prowl, I mean, that's a great plan. Because I have no doubt that the volleyball team of the first Methodist Church of Lucas was nothing less than a hotbed of raw sexuality. I mean, that's a given, right? Plenty of young, virile, hairy, chested men, men still had chest hair in the 70s, y'all. miss the chest hair. I think it's a bummer that the dudes are waxed in their chest. But anyway, that's just me. I like a little fuzz on a man. I think she had a vision of like a top gun

style montage where a bunch of hot guys would just carry her around on their shoulders or something. I'm just, I'm just. For sure. For sure. With like, you know, music playing background. Yeah. And meanwhile, Alan and Betty were also having issues. So for one thing, at some point, Betty got the idea to start taking in foster kids, which struck everybody as an odd choice, given that Betty was having so much trouble dealing with the kids at school and stuff. Nobody could figure it out, but Betty just really wanted to do it. But the kid that they got was way too wild for Betty. Like, it was a disaster from minute one, and they ended up sending the poor kid back. And this really upset Alan, because he felt like she'd been too demanding of the kid. I mean, you know, again, Betty cannot handle

disruptions and routine. So that caused some friction between her and Alan as well. And soon Betty and Alan's sex life started going downhill too. That is until Betty decided that she wanted to have another kid. She started aggressively pursuing Alan, who was kind of frustrated. He was like, I've been trying to have sex with you forever. But now you want a kid, I'm supposed to drop everything every time you're ovulating. You're making. You're making. me feel cheap. Yeah, he said he felt used and resentful. He wasn't sure if he wanted another kid. What do we call it, kids? A fair soup. Fair soup. Yep. Just like Candy and Pat. And then campers, Candy joined the volleyball team. Lord have mercy. And one afternoon, a ball came flying over the net to a spot

between Allen and Candy, who both dove for it at the same time and crashed into each other. can we say romantic comedy moment it's so is it wasn't a high-speed collision or anything this was a church rec league not an Olympic match but it certainly left an impression on candy well it would be bad if it had been a high-speed collision because a concussion really kind of cools your ardor at the end of the day right what candy realized is that Ellen smelled good. She told her friends about it later, went on and on about how sexy he smelled. Good God.

Now, we campers on your behalf spent quite a bit of time postulating about this smell, and we can't come to a consensus. I'm telling you, it was man sweat and sexual repression and brute. I've decided that's a potent combo right there. I'm telling you. I'm just thinking, like,

just sweat and maybe a hint of Irish spring. Okay, I'll buy it on the Irish spring. That's a good smell. Well, whatever it was. That moment on the volleyball court was enough to make candy zero in on Allen as the partner she wanted for her little romance novel sex capade. It must have been pheromones or something because this dude was, okay, I mean, he was not Dwayne Johnson, to say the least.

Dwayne Johnson. Yeah. Are you talking about the rock, the wrestler? Uh-huh. Okay. I'm just, okay, so I'm getting an idea of your type. I would have picked somebody. I thought I would have thought you'd want like a beardy guy, like one of those mountain man looking types. Yeah. I would have picked like Tom Hittleston or somebody for myself. Like I like those pale, consumptive British types. Like Lord Byron looks, but Simon Pegg energy. That's like meow. I can see that. Yeah. Yeah. Alan wasn't unattractive or anything. He was just an ordinary looking dude. But Candy was warm for his form. And one night after choir practice, she cornered Alan as he was about to drive off.

She kind of sauntered up, held his driver's door open, and said, So Alan, I have a little problem that I need to talk to you about. And Alan was like, oh, okay, what's up? And Candy said There's something that's been bothering me I've been thinking about you a lot And I'm not sure whether I want you to do anything about it or not But I'm very attracted to you

I just wanted you to know Yeah and then she just kind of Like hip-checked his car door closed And just sauntered back off again You have to give it to her the girl has some gain That's very smooth And also shame on you, Candy This is another woman's husband

You bitch Oh, my God, no. Do not do this. No. This way lies madness, as we are about to see. Alan was just stunned. Yeah. He felt like a bomb had gone off under a seat. This kind of thing didn't happen to Alan Gore.

In fact, Betty was the first and only woman he'd ever dated. So, Candy just let it sit there for a while. And Alan stude. It was all he could think about. He and Candy had a lot in common. They loved kids. They loved church. They had a similar sense of humor.

And Alan felt guilty. He was worried that maybe he'd done something to lead her on. And then Candy, after just kind of leaving it to sit for a couple of weeks, started pursuing him hard. So hard, in fact, that she became a bit of a pest. She went after Alan like he was made out of cupcakes. And when Alan expressed his reluctance to cheat on Betty, Candy said, dude, look, all I want is sex. I don't want any emotional entanglements.

I don't want my husband to find out either. All I want is no strings attached sex. And I think we've mentioned this before, Camper's, that it's actually illegal for a man to reject an attractive woman's advances, right? I mean, there can be heavy fines, even jail time. So when Candy said no strings, that was all it took. And this is just bonkers beyond words, y'all. Before they officially started their affair,

they actually went to Candy's house one afternoon while Pat was at work. they sat down at the flipping kitchen table and they drew up a list of rules to make sure that they didn't get emotionally attached rules oh my god so these work number one if either of us wants to end the affair we end it right there no questions asked number two no emotional entanglements we are not allowed to fall in love because you know that's how human emotions work right you can just agree not to have any and bonk away and it's all going to be fine you fucking idiots what the ego on you people so they had some other rules to like how to be discreet like no phone calls after certain times etc so this was the most meticulously planned affair in the history of

infidelity which i would think would take some of the zing out of it but whatever so after they had this you know signed and notarized and i assume copied in triplicate they started meeting up once a week or so in this little motel called the coma which looks exactly like the kind of place where you would meet up for shit like this. And Candy went all out. She bought lingerie. She put together this like Martha Stewartworthy picnic lunch for him with little beautiful finger foods and stuff like that.

It was all very civilized. And, you know, they got at it. And Candy very quickly discovered that this dude had zero experience sexually. She stuck her tongue in his mouth and it blew his flippin mind. Like that's the degree to which this is a married dude with a child. Which is just amazing to me. So you can only imagine what else blew his mind if a French kiss. Yes, let's not.

Let's not imagine what else blew his mind, Whitney. Agreed. So it wasn't exactly the fireworks that she'd had in mind, but Alan was a fast learner and Candy liked teaching him stuff. So their affair kicked into high gear. And after a while, and I know this is going to stun all of you, despite the rules, Candy started to worry that she was getting a little too attached.

She and Alan were starting to bond They were starting to talk about their bad marriages Which is always the death nail never Oh God As soon as you start bitching to Somebody that you're attracted to About your partner It's over man

You're definitely going to start catching feelings So they were starting to bond They were starting to become friends And that was a little bit worrying to candy And she told him Look I'm afraid I'm falling for you I think we ought to break this off Before we get too attached

But Alan Talked her out of it He was like, no, come on, we just got started. We won't fall in love, I promise. What about no questions asked, Alan? I know. You've broken both of your first two rules now. And, you know, Candy didn't take much convincing because she was enjoying herself.

So they continued meeting up at the Como. And in the midst of all this, Betty got pregnant. So Alan's perfunctory, tongueless sex, had produced a fetus. And Betty, bless her heart. She was thrilled. Of course, she had no idea what this jackhole husband hers was starting to do behind her back. And as Betty headed into her second trimester of pregnancy, Alan started feeling really bad about that. He knew what hell she had been through with her first pregnancy, and he thought, you know, Betty's going to need more attention.

So he told Candy, hey, let's just cool things off for a while. We don't have to break it off, but just let's just cool things down while she's pregnant. And according to the book that we read about the case, Candy was cool with it. She was like, no problem. You know, go take care of your wife. And this was something Alan really liked about Candy, this kind of low-maintenance thing, because nothing spells death quicker for a mistress than being high-maintenance, you know, ugh. God forbid.

I hate this shit. I just hate it all so much. And the thing was, Candy was kind of ready to take a break anyway. She was starting to realize that, A, the sex wasn't that great. I bet. B, the novelty of teaching Alan new things was starting to wear off. C. Allen was starting to expect work from her. Speaking of high maintenance, he wanted like little notes on his car and fancy lunches. Oh, barf. Yeah. And D, she was really only in it for

the friendship at this point. After the baby was born, the affair resumed, but it resumed with less fire. Alan was feeling guilty. They had a new baby, and he thought that Betty was starting to suspect something was up, which, okay, your wife just had your baby and you're humping it up in a no-tel motel with your church friend. I hope you're feeling guilty. Go fuck yourself. Also, shove your guilt right up your ass. Stop doing it, dickhead. Don't do it in the first place. It's illegal. I'm sorry, we forgot it was illegal. Oh, that's right. He could have gone to jail for rejecting her. That's right. Men have to say yes when a woman wants to have sex with them. It's the law. God. This.

all came to a head when Betty tried to initiate sex one night, which was never, ever, ever, ever part of Betty's M.O. He always had to initiate sex. And she was really aggressive, too. It was really out of character. And because he'd been with candy all afternoon, Alan couldn't, how you say, perform? Mm-hmm. And poor Betty was stung. This just breaks my heart this part. Oh, my God. It would hurt so bad. Yeah, she burst into tears like, you don't find me attractive anymore. Blessing heart. She was already hormonal. She was feeling bad about her body because she just 3D printed a fucking human and then used only muscles to push it out of her. Mm-hmm. So of course, she was feeling a little insecure. Of course. Alan spent the whole

night trying to reassure her, but she was really upset. And the next day, Alan called Candy and put a stop to the affair. He said, I can't hurt Betty. Yeah, you already did, Dickie. And Candy, again, breaking one of the rules, put up a little bit of a fight. She pointed out, hey, I wanted to break it off before and you wouldn't let me. But eventually she let it go. But as we all know, the first breakup never takes. And they were back at the coma before you could say awful idea. The suburban dangerous liaison was back on again. So enter Marriage Encounter.

Now, you probably already know that the 70s and 80s were a sort of self-help renaissance, the golden age of self-help. I don't know if you've ever seen the show The Americans, where one of the spies goes to Est meetings, but that was another big trend back then. There was a lot of stuff like that. And Marriage Encounter was a really popular one. It was a Christian-based retreat. They would host these grueling, weekend-long, seminary.

couples would do group sessions where you had to get up in front of the whole room and reveal your deepest, darkest secrets about your marriage, which sounds like a flipping nightmare, but whatever. And sometimes they'd go to their own individual rooms and write letters to each other. So you'd have to confess things and talk and do worksheets and exercises. And for some couples, it was life changing. A lot of couples swore by it. President Jimmy Carter's son was one of them. He and his wife apparently were big advocates of it. I don't know. It sets off my cult radar a little bit, but whatever. Yeah, it was very culty. It turned people into marriage encounter zealots. Yeah. They'd come home and bug the living shit out of all their married friends to go. It must have been super annoying. Yeah, and after their disastrous sexual encounter, Betty suggested that she and Alan should go. And as soon as Candy heard about that, she knew the affair was over.

She said, you're going to go to this thing. When you come back, you're going to break it off with me. So Alan and Betty went to this really intense retreat. They did all the exercises and renewed their commitment to each other in front of all the other couples. And it was a huge deal for both of them. Oh, by the way, though, this is just a tiny insignificant detail, no big deal. But during this whole soul-searching, everything out on the table weekend, did Alan ever confess to Betty that he'd cheated on her? Of course not.

Fucking coward. No, of course not. But just as Candy predicted, when he and Betty got back home, Alan ended his affair. Candy was a little hurt, but she said she understood. Candy moved on with her life. She confessed everything to her husband Pat, and they started going to counseling and doing the hard work they needed to do to fix their marriage and move on to a more honest, loving relationship. Well, that's good. I'm just kidding.

She found a new lover. She started going to the sort of sexy piano bar with her friend, and there she met Richard. Richard was exactly the kind of guy she was looking for in the first place. Hot, rough around the edges. Ooh, rough trade. I know the type. Makes women cry for sport. Yep. Plus, good sex. Hot, steamy, right out of the pages of the romance novels, but sadly for Miss Candy, their affair was short-lived. Richard couldn't follow the damn rules.

And he started getting way too intense and talking about marriage and stuff. Oh dear. So Candy was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. And she broke it off with Richard. And Richard did not take it well. He got kind of stockery for a while. And then he threatened to tell Pat. And that seems to have been a wake-up call for Candy.

Like, oh my God, what the hell am I doing? Candy took stock and decided to go to marriage encounter. She had a kind of talk Pat into it. He was kind of skeptical about it at first, but they went and it was good for them. They didn't have the religious fervor that the other couples had about it, but, you know, they did the letter writing for a while, and then they felt like they'd gotten what they needed to get out of it and they dropped it. But they were doing better. And then one night, while Candy was out with some friends, Pat went looking for something, and while he was rooting around, he found a whole stack of letters from Allen. oh no so pat who had been in the dark this whole time now finally realized he'd been betrayed and pat this just floors me came to the conclusion that this was his fault that if candy had cheated on him it was because he was so checked out of the marriage and he was a bad husband for god's sakes i mean you know most marital problems are not one person's fault there's always some blame to go around but come on man like the choice to cheat lies solely with the cheater this is never how you fix things but pat was just just like, I'm going to do better. And he went out, I swear to God, and bought her a dozen roses,

which is just bananas. And when Candy got home, he gave her the roses, and he asked her if the affair was over, and she swore it was and had been for months. And Pat promised he was going to be a better husband for her. Holy shit. She must have felt like she dodged a landmine. Can you imagine? No, I cannot. And they had this big heart-to-heart talk, and even more than marriage encountered, this ended up, as bizarre as it sounds, being what really started them coming back together as a couple. Who would have thought? Okay, so, did anybody else go to vacation Bible school as a kid? Oh, yes.

Yeah. It's like a religious summer program, basically, for kids. And at First Methodist Church of Lucas, Candy was in charge of it. In fact, Friday the 13th, June 1980, was the last day of the program. And Betty's daughter, Elisa, asked if she could spend the night with her bestie Jenny, Candy's daughter. They wanted to see this really cool brand new movie called The Empire Strikes Back that night, and they were going to go to a pool party, and it was going to be a good time. So Betty said sure, and Elisa went to vacation Bible school that morning with her overnight bagpacked to stay with the Montgomery's. Candy had a busy day of errands ahead of her, and at some point that morning, Elisa realized that she'd forgotten her swimsuit. So Candy said, it's okay, don't worry, I'll run over to your moms and get it for you. So she told everybody, Look, I have to go to Betty Gore's house to pick up this swimsuit, so just run the show without me for a while.

I'll be back in 30 minutes, and she left the church. So the staff all thought she'd be back fairly quickly, or at the very least before the puppet show that afternoon, because her daughter Jenny was going to be like the star of the puppet show, and it wasn't like Candy to miss something like that. But Candy didn't come back. She wasn't there for the puppet show. Finally, about two hours after she left, she came back. and a couple people noticed that she was wearing a pair of canvas shoes instead of the flip-flops she'd had on before. They wrapped up the last day of VBS and went on to the movie and the pool party.

That night, Alan called and asked if Candy had seen Betty that evening. Candy told him no. She hadn't seen her since that morning when she went to go get to Lisa's swimsuit. Later that night, she got the frantic call that Betty had been found dead. It looked like she may have killed herself. So, back to the police investigation. As Whitney said earlier, they had a thumbprint and a shoe print in blood. And they noticed that the shoe print was small, so they figured that either they were looking for a short man or a woman.

They set about getting all the evidence cataloged and analyzed. And on the day of Betty's memorial service, her family was all milling around the Gorehouse. The atmosphere was tense, partly because. the killing itself and partly because Betty's brothers were really disturbed by Alan Gore's demeanor. Her brother Ron said he wasn't grieving a lot.

He was just kind of going on about his routine. As they were all sitting around that afternoon, the phone rang. Betty's brother Richard picked it up to hear a creepy voice on the other end saying I killed Betty Gore.

It must have made his blood run cold and for some reason He just reflexively hung up the phone. Which is just astound. Like somebody just confessed to murdering your sister and you just hang up on them? Dude. Yeah. And the investigators were like, dude, why?

I think it was just, he was just panicked. He just went and hung it up. Yeah, it's scary. I can't imagine dealing with that. But they were hoping the guy would call again. So they set up a trap and trace on the line. And lo and behold, the next day the creepy voice calls back. And this time, thank God.

Betty's brother Ron answered and kept the guy on the phone. He described in great detail what he had supposedly done to Betty, but the details were all wrong. But they did trace the call and they went to check it out. Turns out, the call came from a guy with mental health issues, just a troubled person with an airtight alibi. But it added to the creepiness of the whole thing. So next they started interviewing everyone at the church and the Gore's social circle. One of the people they interviewed was, of course, Candy. She was going to see Betty and may have been the last person to see her alive. So they brought her in for an interview. She was very friendly and cordial as she always was. She refused a lawyer. And she gave them an

account of her day. She said, you know, Elisa needed her swimsuit and Betty and I got to chatting and we just kind of lost track of time. She said she'd left to go get Father's Day cards at Target and she was just about to get the cards when she realized that her watch had stopped. And she thought, oh my god I must be running late so she had to run back to vacation Bible school and she told the investigators I was late because my watch stopped don't answer questions you haven't been asked candy it's not a good idea so the police asked what she did for the rest of the day they hadn't been able to nail down the time of death yet so they needed to know about everybody's whole day and also they were already thinking that the killer may have been a woman because of that little

bitty footprint and blood so they asked you know what did you do after the movie and putting the kids to bed and Candy got kind of cagey and didn't seem like she wanted to tell him and when they pressed her she got quiet and finally said I think you must know what I was doing and the cops were like no that's why we asked and Candy said isn't it obvious I was screwing oh no okay so that struck him as a little odd to say the least was she trying to shock them for some reason I mean it was true but still it's just like not something you could have just said my husband and I were in bed Yeah. You didn't need to say I was screwing.

So then they're kind of starting to get a little wiggie, and they asked her to take a polygraph, and she said, sure, no problem. But before they could actually schedule it, she went to see a defense attorney. And she told the guy, look, I didn't do anything, but I want to make sure I'm protected, and the police want me to take this polygraph exam. So the attorney, a guy named Robert Udishin was like, okay, whoa, whoa, whoa, let's hold up. And as most attorneys would, he told her, don't take a polygraph. And then he called the investigators.

to let them know that Ms. Candy Montgomery was represented by counsel, and she wouldn't be taken any exam, which is right around the time, of course, that the police started getting real interested, because when you refuse to take a poly, especially if you've already agreed to take a poly, that's when they're going to crawl right up your ass. So, investigators started looking a little bit deeper. They brought Alan in for another interview and started pushing on him a little bit. They asked if he'd be willing to take a polygraph, and Alan said he would, but just before the test got underway, he suddenly kind of stopped and said, there's something I need to tell you. And that something, of course, was his affair with Candy Montgomery. He told them, though,

that it had been over for months with no hard feelings on either side, and he said he couldn't imagine Candy doing this to Betty or to anybody else. Well, that was all well and good, but the investigators went right ahead and got a subpoena for Candy's fingerprints. And when they compared them to that bloody thumbprint on Betty Gore's freezer? What do you think they found? It was a perfect match. Oh, my God. Campers, it was habeas grab-as time. Candy was hauled in and everyone was just stunned. Candy was not the type of person to have a violent bone in her body. Not only that, but by all accounts, Allen's and Candies and all Candy's friends, she was fine with the affair ending. She wasn't pining after Allen at all.

I mean, she'd had another affair. She'd gone to marriage encounter and everything was going great between her and Pat. So her attorney confronted her, like Candy, girl, what happened? You've got to tell me. And Candy was finally like, okay, I don't remember it all. I'm kind convinced myself that it was a dream. But I remember that she came after me. Okay. Now we're getting somewhere. So the attorney decided to take her to a hypnotist. And holy shit. Here's the story that came out during Candy's hypnosis session. She went over to the Gors to get Lisa's swimsuit that morning and Betty invited her in. She was doing laundry and watching Phil Donahue and they sat down and chatted a bit about the kids, et cetera, et cetera.

Candy was hoping to see little baby Bethany, and she was kind of disappointed to learn she was asleep in her crib. After a little while, Candy realized what time it was, that she was running super late. So she jumped up and said, oh, wow, I got to go get father's stay cards. And as Candy moved to leave, Betty's face just changed suddenly, just got dark. And she locked eyes with Candy, and out of nowhere, she said, are you sleeping with my husband? It hit Candy like a wet towel to the face, and it took her a moment to recover, but then she said, No, no, Betty, I'm not sleeping with your husband.

And Betty said, but you were, though, weren't you? At this point, Candy realized Betty was not going to accept the lie, so she said, yeah, Betty, I was, but it's been over for months now, believe me, and I promise you it's never going to happen again. Well, at this, Betty flipped out. she started saying just over and over again you can't have him you can't have him just over and over again and trying to calm her down candy said it's okay betty i didn't even really want him that was the wrong thing to say under hypnosis candy said that at that moment something snapped in betty gore there was an axe lying on the dryer in the laundry room from a project that they'd

been working on in the backyard and betty picked it up okay nothing good can come from having an axe in your house. That's true. I know of a few murders, but specifically the Villisca axe murders were perpetrated with the victim's own axe. Yep. My solution to this is never chop anything down. That's good advice.

So Betty started walking towards Candy holding that axe. You can't have him. You can't have him. And Candy was kind of backing up, trying to put some distance between them. and then whether intentionally or not Candy got hit in the forehead by the axe It wasn't a cut, it was just kind of a glancing blow But it scared her and she started screaming

And then apparently freaked out by Candy screams Betty said And Campers according to Candy Something about that Chh Reached deep down into Candy's soul And pushed the button marked dissociative rage she and Betty had been struggling over the axe and Candy wrestled it away and

supposedly what she discovered during this hypnosis was this in that moment of fear and pain when Betty swiped at her forehead with the axe and then shushed her for her screaming candy was catapulted back to a moment in her childhood when Candy was about six she had a little friend over to play and he challenged her to race him to this big water pump in her backyard. What they liked to do was race to the pump and whoever got there first and filled up the big glass jug with water won. I'm not sure why that was such a prize. I think that's just what kids did before Wi-Fi.

Yeah, that makes sense. So they took off running and her friend beat her to the pump. I guess Little Miss Candy didn't like to be beaten because she got mad and, smashed the glass jug against the pump. And a piece of glass went flying and hit her in the corner of the eye. And you know how head wounds are. It bled all over the place. It was really scary. She was covered in blood. Her mom had to take her to the hospital. Six-year-old Candy was so freaked out that she couldn't stop screaming. The nurses had to hold her down. And her mom was annoyed. She thought Candy was overreacting. So her mom said,

Sh, what will people think? During one of the most traumatic experiences of her young life, you see, Candy's mom shushed her. And to six-year-old Candy, that meant no. You don't get to express your pain and fear. Your fear and panic is humiliating to me. Very, Oh, it is, isn't it? Yeah. So the defense theory, backed up by a distinguished psychiatrist, was that in the midst of this moment of extreme stress and fear, when Betty Shuster, Candy went into a fugue state and hacked this woman to death. Then, in a daze, she showered with all her clothes on, she drove home and put her wet clothes in the dryer. Then she drove back to church.

She said she only remembered bits and pieces, like hitting her own toe with the axe. So this was the defense that Candy put on at trial, and the jury bought it. By virtue of self-defense, Candy Montgomery was fully acquitted of the murder of Betty Gore. Take a moment to sit with that, if you need to. So after the trial, she and Pat and the kids felt so much heat from outraged townspeople that they packed up and moved to Georgia. She and Pat stayed together for a while, but ultimately their marriage didn't work out. But Candy, Candy reinvented herself. She changed her name, I don't know what, too, and she became a counselor, specializing in treating the victims of domestic violence.

So, the shush defense. Yep. Definitely one of the weirdest defenses we've ever seen. Yeah. Right up there with the Twinkie defense and affluenza. Both of the shush defense. Both of the of which worked, may we remind you. Yeah, weird defenses can work sometimes. This case is infuriating because none of it makes sense to me. It doesn't make sense that Candy would go after Betty. She didn't have a history of violence and she wasn't into Allen anymore. But it also doesn't make a lot of sense that Betty would go after Candy with a fucking axe. Yeah. And okay, so I'm not saying I buy the shush defense or the hypnosis angle or any of that. I mean, obviously, as we've been talking about this all day. So as you pointed out to me, when we were texting earlier today,

her confession is very self-serving and we have to take it with a huge grain of salt, and I completely agree with that. But I can buy that Betty was the initial aggressor. Because to me, the way I look at it is Alan was Betty's entire world. And you remember earlier we said that some of the quirks in her character would come into play with the defense? I think for Betty, you know, she was very devoted to the people she loved. And her entire world, I think, was Alan and those kids. And she had a history of getting aggressive, not violent, but, you know, aggressive with people she thought might come between them, like when she yelled at the boss that made him fly to

Switzerland, which most people would never do in a million years. And on top of that, Betty was having a really hard time with anxiety, you know, mostly untreated or not effectively treated. And according to the book that I read, it seems likely she was also suffering from a pretty bad case of postpartum depression. She was taking anti-anxiety meds. who knows what those were like in the late 70s, early 80s. And I think she had probably been suspicious about the affair for a while.

Alan thought so too. And she just couldn't resist when she had candy there in a quiet moment, just the two of them. I think she just couldn't resist asking her about it. And then when Candy treated it so lightly, because Candy's an asshole, frankly, especially when she said, I never really wanted him, Betty. It just touched off a rage in Betty. Now, do I think she actually intended to kill Candy with that axe? I very much doubt that she did.

I think it's a lot more likely that she was just kind of wigging out and wanting to just scare Candy and chase her out of the house. But Candy got scared, and then I think Candy got mad and Candy snapped. To me, that is the scenario that makes the most sense. I know some of y'all are going to disagree. You know, I don't think any of this makes any sense. But the dissociation defense, I don't know if I buy that, that she was in a fugue state or whatever. I think she just got pissed off and she snapped and she just hacked this woman to death.

Yeah, I don't think she completely dissociated either. Yeah. If it was self-defense, why didn't she call the cops? Why did she shower the blood off her clothes and hair, drive home, put her clothes in the dryer, and go back to church? I think when Betty shushed her, whether it was because of her childhood trauma or not, Candy just got fucking furious. Yeah, and I mean, you know, you do not have to hit somebody 41 times to defend yourself. She mutilated this woman's face. we see that, we're usually seeing rage. And I think I said earlier in the episode that sometimes

people do take rage out on a surrogate. So there might be something to the fact that in that moment that anger at her mother from when she was six did come welling up. I don't know. But it could just as easily have been because, you know, this crazy woman's coming at me with an axe or whatever she's thinking. So, you know, but then we've got the fact that she didn't call anyone about the baby, though it should be said that she did not know that Alan was traveling that day. So she would have assumed that he would be home for dinner in a few hours. So it's not like she meant to leave the baby alone for like an entire weekend. But I don't know, y'all. This is just a weird case. Do I think she should have been acquitted? No. To be honest with you, I do not think she should

have been acquitted. I think she should have done some time. Not necessarily life in prison, but I think she should have done some time. I don't think she went there intending to kill anybody, but I think she definitely could have gotten out of that house without brutalizing this woman in, you know, on her for doing that. Good God. That baby grew up without her mom, you know? Two babies grew up without their mom. Two babies, absolutely. So an interesting little PS to this story.

Alan got married to another one of the church ladies three months after Candy's trial. Three heckin' months. Damn. Don't waste any time, Alan. The police don't think Alan had anything to do with the killing. He passed a polygraph and he was never anything but cooperative with the investigation. Yeah, but it's worth. pointing out that Betty's family feels differently.

Apparently, her dad went to his grave believing that Alan and Candy conspired to kill Betty. Now, I really don't think that's likely, because again, by all accounts, they couldn't find one person who thought that Candy was still pining over Allen. And that's what this completely comes down to for me is that I just don't see that candy had a motive other than just rage in the moment. Right. Because she didn't want Alan. She'd moved on.

You know, she and Pat were doing a lot better. And as far as Alan getting remarried so fast and everything, he strikes me as a guy who just is really not an emotional person. I think he genuinely loved Betty, but he was just a stoic guy. So in all of this, the people I feel the worst for are, of course, the kids in Betty's family. And Betty's death was a horrendous tragedy. It completely did not need to happen. And I just hope they've managed to find some peace in their lives, although probably not. In fact, Betty's brother, he was on a TV show about this case, and he said that when he found out that Candy had gone on to a career as a counselor, he said, I'm tempted to go and make an appointment with her and say that, you know, I have issues because this woman hacked my sister to death with an axe and walked off scot free.

And that just was like a punch in the gut like that. Yeah. It hurts. This case is a rough one. It is. It just makes no damn sense. None of it. None of it makes sense.

Yeah. So that was a while. one right campers you know we're going to have another one for you next week but for now lock your doors light your lights and stay safe until we get together again around the true crime campfire and we want to send a grateful shout out to some of our newest patrons thank you so much to louise casey jossy jocelyn and michel we appreciate the heck out of you and if you haven't yet become a patron you're missing out patrons of true crime campfire get every episode ad free at least a day early sometimes more plus a free sticker, and for patrons in the $5 an up category, while supplies last, a rad enamel pin.

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