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Speaker 4: You are now listening to true Murder, the most shocking
Speaker 4: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 4: written about them. Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Night Stalker BTK.
Speaker 4: Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking
Speaker 4: and infamous killers in true crime history, True Murder, with
Speaker 4: your host, journalist and author Dan Zupansky.
Speaker 5: Good evening. This is your host Dan Zepanski, for the
Speaker 5: program True Murder, the most shocking killers in true crime
Speaker 5: history and the authors that have written about them. On
Speaker 5: the wild side of an obsessive relationship, from its ecrotic
Speaker 5: beginning to its violent end, and the trials required to
Speaker 5: clean up the mess. Gary Taylor, a former Houston Post reporter,
Speaker 5: recounts his personal true life fatal attraction involvement in the
Speaker 5: trail of violence that dog Texas attorney Katherine Mahaffey Shelton
Speaker 5: for nearly three decades, prompting coverage by newspapers, magazines, Forty
Speaker 5: eight Hours, American Justice, and even Oprah. The result is
Speaker 5: a tooth grinding, genre bending tale that blends memoir with murder, mystery,
Speaker 5: and legal procedural with psycho killer in an adventure odyssey
Speaker 5: of self discovery that nearly cost him his life. The
Speaker 5: book is luggaged by Kroger with my very special guest,
Speaker 5: journalist and author, Gary Taylor. Welcome to the program, and
Speaker 5: thank you for Greenna's interview Gary Taylor.
Speaker 6: Well, thank you for your interest. I've been interviewed on
Speaker 6: these events many times over the years. I only wrote
Speaker 6: the book a couple of years ago, but it seems
Speaker 6: like every time I've had an interview, I've learned something.
Speaker 6: You always the questions caused me to reflect on things,
Speaker 6: so I'm always happy to sit down with anybody and
Speaker 6: talk about it.
Speaker 5: Now you say that this occurred in your book, it's
Speaker 5: in the late seventies, seventy nine eighty primarily in this
Speaker 5: one very very eventful year of your life. Why just
Speaker 5: to start off this, Why did you wait so long
Speaker 5: to write the book? There was a lot of you,
Speaker 5: like you say in the book, there's a lot of
Speaker 5: people that always expressed interest in when you spun the tale.
Speaker 5: Why did it take quite so long? Even though you
Speaker 5: had those interviews you could have maybe capitalized. Why did
Speaker 5: you wait so long to write the book?
Speaker 6: Well, the primary reason was I was always too busy,
Speaker 6: and I have been a working journalist all my life,
Speaker 6: and I spent most of the eighties and nineties as
Speaker 6: a freelance writer. Had tons of things to do and
Speaker 6: just sort of put it aside. It also took a
Speaker 6: little bit of time for me to really appreciate the
Speaker 6: kind of what kind of universal appeal there might be
Speaker 6: in this story, even though even though it was an
Speaker 6: option for movies a couple of times, I mean, the
Speaker 6: events were during that period, but the it was it
Speaker 6: was basically just something I knew I was gonna do eventually,
Speaker 6: but I just never got around to doing it. And
Speaker 6: it helped to have the perspective of time to sort
Speaker 6: of look back on these events and write it as
Speaker 6: a memoir. I think that's one of the one of
Speaker 6: the things anymore anyway, is that nobody memoir that that
Speaker 6: Frank McCourt sort of pioneered. So I thought it was
Speaker 6: time to do it, and I did it, and I
Speaker 6: had a chance, so I did it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, really, you're You're the story really necessitated to do that.
Speaker 5: You couldn't have a true crime book without it being
Speaker 5: a memoir. It would have to be a memoir. So
Speaker 5: it has to mix. The genre has to be mixed anyway,
Speaker 5: and it's done a great.
Speaker 6: Job with it.
Speaker 5: Let's get to this, the beginning of your book and
Speaker 5: the event that led up to all the other events.
Speaker 5: What happened on January fifteen, nineteen seventy nine to an ethologist,
Speaker 5: George Tedesco. What happened that day? What did police find
Speaker 5: at the home?
Speaker 6: George Tedesco's mangled body in the garage. He was a
Speaker 6: Houston and a physiologist worked at the Saint Joseph's Hospital
Speaker 6: in Houston, and the nurses had called the police and
Speaker 6: he had not shown up for an operation the week before,
Speaker 6: and this was on a Monday, and the police went
Speaker 6: to his house and they found him in the garage
Speaker 6: with his head beaten in and his car missing. And
Speaker 6: they started to investigate the crime. And that investigation led
Speaker 6: directly to the little lady that I later became involved
Speaker 6: with and who became sort of notorious in Texas for
Speaker 6: some of the events that have happened in her life.
Speaker 5: Now, the person question is Katherine Mahaffey Shelton. Is that
Speaker 5: her full name?
Speaker 6: Well, at the time, she was just Katherine Mahaffey. She
Speaker 6: married someone named Shelton later on, and that's what she's
Speaker 6: been known as since about nineteen ninety something like that.
Speaker 6: My portion of her experience happened in nineteen seventy nine
Speaker 6: and nineteen eighty about y in in the aftermath of
Speaker 6: the Tedesco murder when she was under investigation as UH
Speaker 6: possibly having having instituted that that that case remains an
Speaker 6: unsolved murder in Houston and it's still under investigation, although
Speaker 6: obviously not very actively under investigation. UH. She had UH
Speaker 6: her connection to him. She had She had lived with
Speaker 6: him for about three months back in the nineteen seventy
Speaker 6: eight and then sued him for divorce, claiming he was
Speaker 6: her common law husband, and the divorce case was actually
Speaker 6: supposed to go to trial the day that they found
Speaker 6: his body, she went down and filed for his estate,
Speaker 6: claiming then to be his widow. And at the time
Speaker 6: she was a criminal defense lawyer in Houston, so it
Speaker 6: was a it was a a pretty interesting, uh set
Speaker 6: of circumstances. You had an attractive female, blonde, fem fatale
Speaker 6: type lawyer who also had a reputation for being kind
Speaker 6: of rough on men anyway, because there were some other
Speaker 6: boyfriends in her background that had had some problems. But
Speaker 6: all of a sudden, she was the central figure and
Speaker 6: a murder investigation and involved a doctor, and yet she
Speaker 6: was stepping out and claiming he to get his estate
Speaker 6: as his widow. And that's when I met her.
Speaker 5: Now, you were working for the Houston Post at that
Speaker 5: time as a court reporter.
Speaker 6: I was a courthouse reporter. He was a courthouse reporter
Speaker 6: for the Houston Post daily newspaper. It was the morning
Speaker 6: paper in town. I covered Harris County criminal courts. So
Speaker 6: she was down there in the courthouse all the time,
Speaker 6: And of course I was well aware of what was
Speaker 6: going on in her background, and she had had sort
Speaker 6: of become the center of attention there in the courthouse
Speaker 6: with with the investigation and all that. But I had
Speaker 6: a lot of lot of trouble going on in my
Speaker 6: own life at the time, and which which sort of
Speaker 6: was probably the main reason why we even got together.
Speaker 6: I was very vulnerable at that time, and we just
Speaker 6: sort of we met at a party and we hit
Speaker 6: it off, and and I knew, I knew there was
Speaker 6: some danger there, but I was I was kind of
Speaker 6: willing to get a little adventure in my life, and
Speaker 6: I got a whole boatload of it.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Well, let's go back a little bit here to
Speaker 5: this crime. Now, it sure looks like, to anybody's looking
Speaker 5: at this, very obvious that Katherine Mahaffey is your prime suspect.
Speaker 5: Did the police viewer as a suspect. You say, there's
Speaker 5: this divorce, this messy common law disputable divorce, and you
Speaker 5: say you were aware of her being a court reporter.
Speaker 5: Tell us what the police initially thought, whether they could
Speaker 5: make the charge or not, what they initially thought based
Speaker 5: on her behavior and all the evidence they found. And
Speaker 5: then also, yeah, and then also just tell us how
Speaker 5: it was that you were not you know, you've given
Speaker 5: a little bit of an explanation. You say you were
Speaker 5: vulnerable and she came and you met at a certain
Speaker 5: time in your life. But tell us what her actual
Speaker 5: reputation was before this event actually happened. What was she
Speaker 5: known for? Give us a little bit more of her
Speaker 5: character as you knew it before you met her. And
Speaker 5: tell us also about the police and what they suspected
Speaker 5: based on the evidence that they saw at that crime
Speaker 5: scene and her other behavior.
Speaker 6: Okay, now, she was not what she would call a
Speaker 6: well known lawyer in town. She was just kind of
Speaker 6: parading out. This is back in a time though, when
Speaker 6: females practicing law in the criminal courthouse were really few
Speaker 6: and far between. So she she she really stood out
Speaker 6: back then. And uh, she was an attractive blonde. She
Speaker 6: had a smart mouth, she was witty, she was intelligent,
Speaker 6: She had her law degree, she had a uh she
Speaker 6: claimed she had a degree in medieval French literature as well.
Speaker 6: She was articulate, well read. And she had been in
Speaker 6: this relationship with this uh with this doctor and split up,
Speaker 6: and the period leading up to their divorce had been
Speaker 6: a real stormy affair where they were tape recording each other.
Speaker 6: The the d A had a had a wealth of
Speaker 6: tape recordings that the doctor had made throughout that period,
Speaker 6: lots of threats. Uh he had he had been the
Speaker 6: victim of some burglar uh in which uh a lot
Speaker 6: of his Uh. He had pre Columbian art work. He
Speaker 6: was from Argentina, and he'd brought pre Columbian artwork with
Speaker 6: him and and they had uh those had been stolen.
Speaker 6: And he'd go to the police and blame her, and
Speaker 6: she'd u s say it was community property, or she'd
Speaker 6: say she didn't have anything to do with it. Uh.
Speaker 6: She was an attorney and knew how to work the system.
Speaker 6: So UH when when he when he died, she was
Speaker 6: definitely the the top suspect. But UH, trying to get
Speaker 6: to the bottom of it was another story. And as
Speaker 6: as far as I as far as me at the time,
Speaker 6: I was uh, I had probably hit about rock bottom
Speaker 6: as as you could go. I had uh uh my uh,
Speaker 6: my second marriage had come to an end. Uh. I
Speaker 6: was sleeping on a on my editor's couch, and I
Speaker 6: was driving a two hundred dollar car, and I was
Speaker 6: carrying my uh mind dirty laundry around and I'm in
Speaker 6: a brown paper grocery sack at the time. And that's
Speaker 6: where that's where the name of the book, I'm Lucky
Speaker 6: to Take ros. Yeah, So that's uh, that's pretty much
Speaker 6: the police had had turned the case over to uh
Speaker 6: the District Attorney's office special investigative Unit, which investigates crimes
Speaker 6: that are complicated or crimes where the suspect is considered
Speaker 6: maybe too smart for the regular cops. And that's what
Speaker 6: was called the Special Crimes Unit of the Harris County
Speaker 6: District Attorney's Office. And they're the ones who had the
Speaker 6: file on her when when I met her, which occurred
Speaker 6: about eight or nine months after George Tedesco was was murdered.
Speaker 5: Now you talk about those teams that they had recorded
Speaker 5: each other, and you describe in a book that he
Speaker 5: had good reason or he believed he had good reason
Speaker 5: to record her. Now, was there any talk of violence
Speaker 5: from her part on those telephone recordings? Was there anything?
Speaker 5: Did she say anything violent? Did he yet get anything
Speaker 5: that he was looking for by taping her? Did he
Speaker 5: actually get or was she too smart being a lawyer
Speaker 5: to commit herself on those tapes?
Speaker 6: Now that the tapes are really cagey and there I listened.
Speaker 6: I've only listened to one of them, and that was
Speaker 6: one that was offered to me by the District Attorney's
Speaker 6: office at one point back then. I actually, I uh,
Speaker 6: I made a transcript of it, and it was kind
Speaker 6: of fascinating to listen to the way that her the
Speaker 6: way that her voice changes throughout the call. And this
Speaker 6: was a tape that was made this respecter, was made
Speaker 6: maybe the day he was murdered. And I do recreate
Speaker 6: that tape in the first chapter of My Boy, and
Speaker 6: it's it's it's a fairly interesting conversation about them, her
Speaker 6: trying to get her telling him that she wants to
Speaker 6: meet him that night, and that uh, he he's he's
Speaker 6: uh demanding that she returned his stuff that he claims
Speaker 6: was stolen from her, and she talks about having seen
Speaker 6: him go in his condo with with another woman, and
Speaker 6: it goes through all the emotions of pity, guilt, and
Speaker 6: then just outright anger and uh it ends with them
Speaker 6: agreeing to meet. And then the next thing that happened
Speaker 6: is his body was found.
Speaker 5: Right now, what did the police do with this this uh,
Speaker 5: you know, this having is that they have? How did
Speaker 5: they How did the police proceed with Katherine mahaffey and
Speaker 5: and this murder case? How did they proceed?
Speaker 6: Well? Uh, back then, well, of course anytime I guess
Speaker 6: she was and she was alleging to have been the
Speaker 6: common law wy finny. Fact that she was in the
Speaker 6: place was probably not evidentiary. They they basically started looking
Speaker 6: for his uh, his car, which they eventually found he
Speaker 6: was driving, and he drove a Corvette at the time,
Speaker 6: the Silvie Corvette, and they they found it in a
Speaker 6: parking lot somewhere in Houston, and they staked it out
Speaker 6: for a few days, and actually there was a kind
Speaker 6: of a uh, kind of a comic scene where somebody
Speaker 6: tried to steal it from the parking lot and turned
Speaker 6: out that he wasn't. They thought they had had somebody there,
Speaker 6: but they basically just just ran into uh nothing. I
Speaker 6: mean they they they were just a dead a dead case,
Speaker 6: and uh she was uh sitting pretty. And the the
Speaker 6: investigation took on two prongs at the same time because
Speaker 6: when she when she uh filed for his estate, uh
Speaker 6: claiming to be his widow, his parents uh came up
Speaker 6: to defend his estate, and they hired a private investigators
Speaker 6: and they were they were dogging her tracks too. Eventually,
Speaker 6: what happened was that came down to them filing a
Speaker 6: wrongful death suit in which they identified her and one
Speaker 6: of her burglary clients, a a guy named Tommy Bell
Speaker 6: in the lawsuit as being responsible for the doctor's death.
Speaker 6: But no criminal case ever got very far off the ground.
Speaker 6: It was an ongoing investigation when I met her, and Uh.
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Speaker 6: No? Sins initially claimed that that she was not involved
Speaker 6: in it, and she was being persecuted and h and
Speaker 6: uh and stuff like that, and and talk with Maine
Speaker 6: tried to get me on her side really quick. So
Speaker 6: there was another part of the mystery there.
Speaker 5: There was a telling part of your book as well.
Speaker 5: You talk about what it just some of the conversations
Speaker 5: are really telling to to to her actual sarcastic, callous character,
Speaker 5: and you talk about Catherine laughing about the rewards set
Speaker 5: up by the parents of George Tedesco. Tell us a
Speaker 5: little bit about that, because I was very telling.
Speaker 6: Well, once I got into her, into her life, or
Speaker 6: once our once our our lives sort of uh combined,
Speaker 6: she was was kind of like a drinking buddy, and
Speaker 6: or a drinking buddy with with benefits, you might say.
Speaker 6: And uh. She she had a way had a dark
Speaker 6: sense of humor. But she talked continually about the Tedesco
Speaker 6: murder and had made fun of a lot of things
Speaker 6: about about that and about other things that had happened
Speaker 6: to men in her life. Uh, I know that one
Speaker 6: of her lap she said that one of her law
Speaker 6: partners had called the Tedesco uh the hotline the private
Speaker 6: eyes had set up for tips on it, and uh
Speaker 6: and talked in the voice of a Greek sea captain
Speaker 6: and tried to uh to to give him some some
Speaker 6: some some tips some kind. And she thought that was
Speaker 6: she thought that was really funny. And she talked about
Speaker 6: how the lawyers had a lot of the lawyers had
Speaker 6: gone in with her and ripped off the condo, taking
Speaker 6: the pre Columbian artwork and hauled it out. She went
Speaker 6: in and uh got in an argument with Tedesco's neighbor.
Speaker 6: This was the day after he died, and uh and
Speaker 6: she went into the broke into the condo to get
Speaker 6: get some of the other property out of there, and
Speaker 6: claiming to be claiming in his community property. And there
Speaker 6: was all that kind of stuff going on back then
Speaker 6: as well.
Speaker 5: What did what did she was sorry? What did the
Speaker 5: what did captain say to that neighbor? According to the neighbor.
Speaker 6: She uh, oh, yeah, well she she told the neighbor
Speaker 6: that to uh forget what she'd seen and if she
Speaker 6: didn't uh uh, she would uh she would be sorry.
Speaker 6: And I, uh, I've forgotten the exact words. Uh, I've
Speaker 6: kind of you know, I re recreated that in one
Speaker 6: of the chapters, in the early chapters of the book.
Speaker 6: That testimony from the uh if they came out in
Speaker 6: a deposition and uh in the uh the estate trial,
Speaker 6: and she she went to the Later on, in a
Speaker 6: magazine interview, she said that she the police interviewed her
Speaker 6: and tried to sweat her down the day of the
Speaker 6: the day of the murder, and as she was getting
Speaker 6: ready to leave, one of the homicide cops looked at
Speaker 6: her and said did you love him? And her her
Speaker 6: comment to the magazine writer H was I guess he
Speaker 6: expected me to break down crying and confess yes, and
Speaker 6: I killed him too. But she just told him no
Speaker 6: and walked away.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, it's up.
Speaker 6: She she liked the confrontations.
Speaker 5: Sure, absolutely. Now there was a ten million dollar lawsuit
Speaker 5: by the parents, and this goes on before any kind
Speaker 5: of court case. So tell us a little bit about that,
Speaker 5: and that's another fascinating aspect of this story. But tell
Speaker 5: us a little bit about that, what what happens from
Speaker 5: that and how does that really help the eventual trial
Speaker 5: or the eventual discovery of certain information? How does how
Speaker 5: does that work?
Speaker 6: Well? Uh, Actually, that case was was filed about a
Speaker 6: year after the murder, and it it it was it
Speaker 6: was really a slim filing. It just was basically a
Speaker 6: a a simple three or four page document that alleged
Speaker 6: that that Catherine, in concert with this guy named Tommy Bell,
Speaker 6: had had conspired to h to perform the murder of
Speaker 6: George Tedesco, and the family wanted damages paid. And eventually
Speaker 6: that suit was just dismissed for lack of for for
Speaker 6: lack of prosecution because about a week after that suit
Speaker 6: was filed. H I was shot and so the the
Speaker 6: spotlight kind of turned onto my case, which turned out
Speaker 6: to be an attempted murder case. But the the my
Speaker 6: thoughts on it always were that they that they really
Speaker 6: didn't have much in that case, and that they filed
Speaker 6: that just to make sure they had a case to pursue.
Speaker 6: And her comment when she told the papers when it
Speaker 6: was filed, her comment was, anybody can file a lawsuit,
Speaker 6: and in this case, I think anybody has.
Speaker 5: Interesting Now, how does how did a pregnancy or the
Speaker 5: possibility of a pregnancy play into this? And was Katherine
Speaker 5: Mahalfe he ever pregnant?
Speaker 6: I don't. I don't think she ever was, but she
Speaker 6: had uh uh pre false pregnancies or or pregnancies and
Speaker 6: abortions were kind of a recurring theme in her relationship
Speaker 6: with with men. She had claimed that Tedesco had forced
Speaker 6: her to have an abortion and that there was never
Speaker 6: any any proof that she'd even had an abortion or
Speaker 6: that she'd even been pregnant earlier, and this came out
Speaker 6: in in the in the estate case, there was an
Speaker 6: assistant there was a deputy sheriff here in the town
Speaker 6: who had had a fling with her and she later
Speaker 6: she later told me about him, but her he he
Speaker 6: had he had helped her sell some some of the
Speaker 6: booty from the Tedesco condo, I think a sword or something,
Speaker 6: and they had an affair and she had claimed she
Speaker 6: was pregnant and she wanted money for him abortion and
Speaker 6: he didn't give it to her, so she told his
Speaker 6: wife and UH the guy got uh got divorced over it.
Speaker 6: And many times she talked about him a lot to
Speaker 6: me saying that uh, saying that all he had to
Speaker 6: do was UH pay up, pay up the uh the
Speaker 6: money and it wouldn't have uh any and he could
Speaker 6: have had his life back, but uh, she said up
Speaker 6: sh She described that as a having been a false pregnancy,
Speaker 6: so she she kind of used that several times and
Speaker 6: the uh, the the district attorney's office was always looking
Speaker 6: for that uh kind of situation where where she would
Speaker 6: claim a a pregnancy and that was kind of one
Speaker 6: of her tools that she would use.
Speaker 5: Now, L I I if I'm going backwards, I I
Speaker 5: I apologize that I will hopefully I want to get
Speaker 5: the audience straight with this that uh, because there's so
Speaker 5: many story Mary claims from this woman, you know, self
Speaker 5: defense and and claims of all kinds of things, even
Speaker 5: in in the the the divorce proceedings. But let's get
Speaker 5: to this point where she's she claims she went to
Speaker 5: the house that night for a particular reason.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 5: She doesn't deny going to the house of George to
Speaker 5: Tedesco the evening of that murder or that day. Uh.
Speaker 5: And then she claims that she is she witnessed something.
Speaker 5: Can you tell us what she said she was doing
Speaker 5: there that night, what was there reason for it, and
Speaker 5: what she said she witnessed. Hmmm, what you mean, Well,
Speaker 5: there was all kinds of claims that wasn't her claims
Speaker 5: that she that her that George Tedesco was involved with
Speaker 5: a homosexual tryst, and that that the other she was
Speaker 5: providing information at some point for possible scenarios why George
Speaker 5: Tedesco was married murdered and by who the Oh.
Speaker 6: Okay, yeah, well she yeah, she the the The most
Speaker 6: fantastic stuff that comes out of her mouth is presented
Speaker 6: in a couple of pre trial depositions that were taken
Speaker 6: prior to the estate trial when she was trying to
Speaker 6: get his estate, and that was in the summer of
Speaker 6: nineteen seventy nine, and she was trying to create as
Speaker 6: many possible alternative scenarios for his death as possible. And
Speaker 6: she was also trying to belittle him and make sure that,
Speaker 6: you know, setting the stage for for any kind of
Speaker 6: a jury that my hearing in this that he would
Speaker 6: that they would not think much of him. And she
Speaker 6: was always talking about him wanting to have homosexual affairs
Speaker 6: with little ball, was talking about him being involved in drugs.
Speaker 6: Of course, he wasn't there to defend himself, but she
Speaker 6: she had, She had all kinds of of stories like
Speaker 6: that that that she always kind of worked into the
Speaker 6: testimony that she gave wherever she could. And basically the
Speaker 6: point was that there were many people who wanted him
Speaker 6: dead and the cops should be looking for them and
Speaker 6: not looking at her.
Speaker 5: Okay, and now well let's get to the Let's jump
Speaker 5: ahead a little bit to this party that you meet
Speaker 5: Catherine at. I was interested at this. I'm just gonna
Speaker 5: ask you, because I've never actually heard this term before,
Speaker 5: but your friend had said, Hey, there's gonna be a
Speaker 5: lot of nasty crack at the party that just that
Speaker 5: promiscuous women. Is that what nasty crack means.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I guess so that's I mean, that's uh, that's
Speaker 6: a I've always used it. Uh the Uh yeah, I
Speaker 6: was a it was a lawyer who who stopped by
Speaker 6: the press room, uh one day and having of those
Speaker 6: Friday night parties where everybody gets together. He just he
Speaker 6: just bought a new townhouse and he, uh, you know,
Speaker 6: he said, come on by, there'll be lots of nasty
Speaker 6: crack and uh uh so uh, I usually didn't miss
Speaker 6: the parties even if there wasn't any nasty crack, so uh,
Speaker 6: you know, as part as actually, you know, kind of
Speaker 6: part of my job. I was always hob nobbing with
Speaker 6: anybody over there at the courthouse, and that that kind
Speaker 6: of a party presents the opportunity to uh get better
Speaker 6: acquainted with h with people that might be sources on
Speaker 6: stories and things like that. So, so when went went
Speaker 6: to the party and that's where that's where we met.
Speaker 5: Would it be was it? Did you find it unusual
Speaker 5: or in retrospect did you think was unusual for her
Speaker 5: to be at that party or was she somewhat in
Speaker 5: the same circle? Uh? And and wasn't that much of
Speaker 5: a surprise to have her at this party.
Speaker 6: Uh it it was well, it wasn't that much of
Speaker 6: a surprise, and the host was one of the one
Speaker 6: of the uh i'd probably say mid level at the
Speaker 6: time criminal uh defense lawyers in town. And as it
Speaker 6: turned out, she was his date. She was actually the
Speaker 6: hostess for the party, right, and I didn't know that
Speaker 6: when I first met her, but uh she was supposed
Speaker 6: to spend the weekend with him and uh which which
Speaker 6: uh she did, but it was uh we had kind
Speaker 6: of a surprising occurrence there. She took me and a
Speaker 6: another reporter on a tour of the house and we
Speaker 6: ended up in his bedroom and uh, I mean nothing
Speaker 6: was nothing was going on yet, but we we we
Speaker 6: kind of knew what was going to happen. But anyway,
Speaker 6: her her uh her lawyer date uh came came in
Speaker 6: on us and and uh we were just sitting around actually,
Speaker 6: and she had she had uh looked like she had
Speaker 6: had tried to set up some kind of a confrontation there,
Speaker 6: but uh I just kind of laughed it off and
Speaker 6: made arrangements to uh see her if uh if she
Speaker 6: if she wanted to. This happened. This party occurred the
Speaker 6: weekend before the estate case was supposed to begin, and
Speaker 6: that was gonna be a jury trial, and it was
Speaker 6: supposed to begin on Monday. So she was pretty pretty well,
Speaker 6: pretty pretty well, uh, focused on on that, although she
Speaker 6: was having a good time. You know, we had some
Speaker 6: drinks and and well, what was the conversation?
Speaker 5: Tell us a little bit about the conversation specifically, cause
Speaker 5: I think is very fascinating. Tell us, how just tell
Speaker 5: us a little little bit like you talked about in
Speaker 5: the book, about the conversation between you two very interesting.
Speaker 6: Samson Samson meets Delilah. Uh yeah, Uh, I I was
Speaker 6: uh going to uh I, I was going to the
Speaker 6: to the little barley had set up there, and I
Speaker 6: was gonna get a scotch and water. And I heard
Speaker 6: one of my friends say, there's the bitch everybody's talking about.
Speaker 6: And I looked around and she was coming across the yard.
Speaker 6: Who was uh uh This window, of course wore red
Speaker 6: and uh she was in her inner red dress, uh,
Speaker 6: which was one of her favorite colors. Who was her
Speaker 6: favorite color? And she walked up to the bar about
Speaker 6: the same time I did, and I just uh figured
Speaker 6: I'd never have another chance to uh use this line again,
Speaker 6: so I I I asked her, is this the notorious
Speaker 6: Catherine Mahaffey, and uh she kind of looked at me
Speaker 6: strangely and said, who wants to know? And I I
Speaker 6: told her who I was and introduced myself, uh and
Speaker 6: uh she became sort of semi enraged because she was
Speaker 6: pretty mad at the paper at that time because the
Speaker 6: police reporter and his coverage of the Tedesco murderer had
Speaker 6: spent a lot of uh of a lot of ink
Speaker 6: describing her and uh her relationship with the disco and
Speaker 6: sort of indicating that she would be uh a main
Speaker 6: suspect for that. So uh we started talking and and
Speaker 6: kind of got uh kind of got acquainted and we
Speaker 6: we we hit it off pretty well. I mean we
Speaker 6: hit it off right away because uh there was uh
Speaker 6: kind of a magnetism there on the on the physical side.
Speaker 6: But as we talked, like I said, we both kind
Speaker 6: of had this black uh sense of humor that uh
Speaker 6: that permeates and I know I uh I said sort
Speaker 6: of things like, uh I asked her if she'd ever
Speaker 6: been married, uh cause she was asking me about my
Speaker 6: uh where my wife was, and I told her I
Speaker 6: was estranged, and uh I asked her if she'd ever
Speaker 6: been married, and she said, oh, y, you mean anyone
Speaker 6: besides George And I said, well, uh, you know, i'd
Speaker 6: and think he would count. And she started laughing and said, well,
Speaker 6: I guess I can't call you as an expert on
Speaker 6: marriage then at my estate trial. So we pretty much
Speaker 6: hit it off like that, although I'm not sure what
Speaker 6: her agenda was at that point. I think she was
Speaker 6: just trying to kill some time before the trial.
Speaker 5: Now I want to ask you this question. I I
Speaker 5: don't think that I have any kind of qualms with
Speaker 5: what you did. I'm just asking as a curious interviewer.
Speaker 5: I want to know how you're working for the Houston Post.
Speaker 5: I mean, maybe you know you had drinks, maybe you
Speaker 5: know people that do this or do that, But I mean,
Speaker 5: you're a respectable, reputable reporter for the Houston Post. You're
Speaker 5: on one side of the fence, we'll say. And then
Speaker 5: there's this woman accused of murder, and by all accounts,
Speaker 5: even by the Houston Post, she looks like she's guilty,
Speaker 5: and yet you still venture into this arena. You you know,
Speaker 5: you said there was a physical attraction and then you
Speaker 5: hit it off. You both had the same kind of
Speaker 5: sense of humor. But how did you justify that? I mean,
Speaker 5: maybe you didn't think about it, but how did you
Speaker 5: How did you come to terms with that knowing that
Speaker 5: this person was likely a murderer. I know you said
Speaker 5: you're vulnerable and you're in a very dark time in
Speaker 5: your life, but were you just did the journalist in
Speaker 5: you somewhat? I'm wondering if the journalist in you kind
Speaker 5: of took over someone that you're curious is a fascinating
Speaker 5: case and a fascinating subject.
Speaker 6: Well, there was two sides of that. I mean there's
Speaker 6: also an ethical problem there. I mean I would never
Speaker 6: be able to write about it if we were too.
Speaker 6: If we were too have have launched a relationship like
Speaker 6: we did at the same time. Probably wouldn't have been
Speaker 6: attracted this woman if I was an engineer or an accountant.
Speaker 6: You know, as a journalist, I spent my whole life
Speaker 6: writing about unusual things, unusual people. I'd covered courts, I'd
Speaker 6: covered police, I'd been obviously had an affinity for criminals
Speaker 6: and kind of a fascination. I'd also covered the Texas
Speaker 6: prison system, and I always seemed to be a beat.
Speaker 6: Where I ended up was where there was some criminal
Speaker 6: activity going on, and so it was hard to resist
Speaker 6: her because it looked like I could I could have
Speaker 6: a pretty close peak into the mind of a of
Speaker 6: a twisted mind. At the same time, she also just
Speaker 6: looked like she was a lot of fun. Now. The
Speaker 6: way that I reconciled that with any ethical concerns was
Speaker 6: I just uh told myself that, uh if I if
Speaker 6: I ever got in a situation where I was gonna
Speaker 6: have to report on her, I'd have to back away.
Speaker 6: We'd get another reporter to do it. I mean, I
Speaker 6: just I wouldn't uh. Uh I wouldn't do it. Uh
Speaker 6: I I I really wasn't looking for a story. Uh
Speaker 6: I thought it might be kind of interesting if if
Speaker 6: I found one. It's kind of a it's kind of
Speaker 6: a uh dilemma that reporters often find themselves in because
Speaker 6: you you work with you work with sources to a
Speaker 6: certain extent that sometimes you have to uh turn on
Speaker 6: 'em if they're if they're not. I know. The some
Speaker 6: of the advice I got that still rings true from
Speaker 6: from college is that, uh, you're really not allowed to
Speaker 6: have any friends in h and you could have you
Speaker 6: could have a similar situation with a drinking buddy who
Speaker 6: maybe was a politician, and you found out he was
Speaker 6: uh taking bribes. Then just because you have this relationship
Speaker 6: doesn't negage your responsibility to do the story. Now when
Speaker 6: that relationship becomes sexual, Uh, there's an emotional component that
Speaker 6: that would would obviously not be appropriate sure for the
Speaker 6: journalistic side of it. But and maybe I was rationalizing
Speaker 6: some but I you know, it was Uh, she was
Speaker 6: quite a ways really at the time from from being
Speaker 6: into my my venue, I mean my courthouse. Uh, there
Speaker 6: wasn't any any charges pending. There was a uh she
Speaker 6: was trying to practice law over there, but she was
Speaker 6: basically handling some lightweight stuff misdemeanors and and small felonies
Speaker 6: that that I wasn't that that weren't newsworthy. I wasn't
Speaker 6: covering them anyway, And so I didn't really see the
Speaker 6: too big of a problem there. And I always felt
Speaker 6: I could just shule it off if it got to
Speaker 6: be a problem.
Speaker 5: Right now, how long was it.
Speaker 6: I didn't actually do that much thinking about it, to
Speaker 6: tell you the truth. I mean, the things just sort
Speaker 6: of sort of happened, sure, and by the time I
Speaker 6: was into it, up to my up to my knees
Speaker 6: and headed up to my neck. It was too late
Speaker 6: to turn back.
Speaker 5: How long did you have a relationship? What's the time
Speaker 5: span between when you met her and and when you
Speaker 5: had this faithful event here where she tried to kill you?
Speaker 5: So how long was that?
Speaker 6: I met her on September fifteenth, nineteen seventy nine. She
Speaker 6: shot me on January eighteenth, nineteen eighty So that was
Speaker 6: that turn of time about four months. People are usually
Speaker 6: amazed when they hear how short our relationship actually was,
Speaker 6: because the civilized part part of the relationship lasted only
Speaker 6: about six weeks. And I you know, I say civilized
Speaker 6: because that's where where she wasn't trying to kill me.
Speaker 6: And then from that point on we had a real
Speaker 6: chess game of relationship of stalking and me trying to
Speaker 6: figure a way out of out of the relationship without
Speaker 6: anybody getting hurt, and then eventually led to the the
Speaker 6: ultimate confrontation there in January where where if she shot me?
Speaker 5: Now, tell us, tell us exactly how the how the
Speaker 5: relationship proceeded. You say it was okay for six weeks
Speaker 5: and then he got the stalking and she's trying to
Speaker 5: kill you and tell us about her personality in the
Speaker 5: relationship and what you realized after you know, a few weeks,
Speaker 5: if not six weeks, tell us about that relationship that
Speaker 5: would lead up to this, you know, some trying to
Speaker 5: kill you.
Speaker 6: Well, we started out. She presented herself as someone who
Speaker 6: wanted to put the tedescal thing behind her. She wanted
Speaker 6: to get her law practice off the ground. She wanted
Speaker 6: my help in getting appointed to represent Big Fellow in
Speaker 6: the bigger felay cases. The system at the time was
Speaker 6: Harris County is still the same where judges appoint defense
Speaker 6: lawyers to represent indigence and that's that's a large percentage
Speaker 6: of all the casework there. And she she wanted me
Speaker 6: to help her stabilize her life. She told me that
Speaker 6: in addition to that that I could by having a relationship,
Speaker 6: she could she could get her practice in order. And
Speaker 6: at the time, she was actually living in a bedroom
Speaker 6: that she was living in with some by some friend.
Speaker 6: Uh they didn't have a they didn't have a a
Speaker 6: sexual relationship, but uh, she was staying in a in
Speaker 6: an extra bedroom, so she really didn't even have a
Speaker 6: place to live. I was staying on a couch and Uh,
Speaker 6: she presented herself as someone with ambition, and she seemed like,
Speaker 6: uh she was someone who uh wanted to uh wanted
Speaker 6: a second chance, and wanted to get out from from
Speaker 6: these rumors and and and uh difficulty difficulties, and uh
Speaker 6: of course I wasn't gonna help her get any appointments.
Speaker 6: I mean I told her I couldn't do that, although
Speaker 6: I I did introduce her to a uh one of
Speaker 6: the court coordinators over there who who did help her
Speaker 6: get a murder appointment. And uh I uh I told her,
Speaker 6: you know, I do that for anybody. I mean, I
Speaker 6: do that for any lawyer, cause they're always looking for
Speaker 6: uh lawyers to handle handle cases at that time. Uh.
Speaker 6: But little by little her her temper would would would
Speaker 6: show up, and uh her kind of outrageous outrageousness. Uh.
Speaker 6: There was a kind of one breaking point where I was,
Speaker 6: I was, uh uh needed to pick up my my daughters.
Speaker 6: I had two daughters by my my second wife that
Speaker 6: that we were separated, and uh my uh my wife
Speaker 6: was having some problems of her own and uh sh
Speaker 6: so I needed to go pick up my daughters. And
Speaker 6: uh Catherine just threw a fit in a restaurant where
Speaker 6: we were, and we went over to get get uh sandwiches
Speaker 6: at the at uh sandwich shop in the afternoon, and
Speaker 6: I told her I was was gonna go pick 'em up.
Speaker 6: This was around Thanksgiving of US nineteen seventy nine. And
Speaker 6: she just went into a rage and grabbed grabbed my
Speaker 6: neck tie and tried to choke me in the sandwich shop. Uh,
Speaker 6: threw pencils up against the wall, and so I just
Speaker 6: told her I was leaving, and she she chased me
Speaker 6: down the street with an umbrella and uh I and
Speaker 6: she uh she had this overly dramatic uh demeanor too.
Speaker 6: I mean she got got there on the corner of
Speaker 6: the street and said, what do you want me to do?
Speaker 6: Get down in the gutter and beg. Well, you know,
Speaker 6: this was all about control. I mean, it was just
Speaker 6: this really ridiculous scene. And as I as I note
Speaker 6: in the book, if I'd been watching it from the
Speaker 6: other side of the street, I've been laughing my ass off.
Speaker 6: But it's always the one who was in it. And
Speaker 6: I I always remembered covering uh cases where those kinds
Speaker 6: of scenes UH A lot of times preceded preceded the
Speaker 6: discovery of somebody's built body, and I sure, I sure
Speaker 6: didn't want to take it further than that. Plus I
Speaker 6: was worried about my kids. Well, what happened that night
Speaker 6: was that she when I went to pick up the kids,
Speaker 6: uh uh, I took him to McDonald's and I was
Speaker 6: supposed to bring him back to my ex wife's place.
Speaker 6: And when I got there, she wasn't there, so I
Speaker 6: couldn't find her. And when I, uh, I called my
Speaker 6: roommate and he told me I needed to get my
Speaker 6: ass back to his house because uh, Catherine had had
Speaker 6: called my ex wife uh and and had told her
Speaker 6: that uh she had the kids and that uh she
Speaker 6: was now my lawyer and she needed her to come
Speaker 6: get him. So there was this mad dash over to
Speaker 6: where I was living, which was with a buddy, and
Speaker 6: we got there about the same time, me and my
Speaker 6: ex wife and Catherine was coming out of the house.
Speaker 6: So I, you know, I jumped out. I mean, I said,
Speaker 6: you know, just just go on and go. She's not uh,
Speaker 6: she's not having any she's not my lawyer, and just
Speaker 6: ignore her, you know. All that. Then then that night
Speaker 6: we had a we were we were she was staying
Speaker 6: overnight at at uh my buddy's house, and my buddy
Speaker 6: left and so I was there with her alone, and
Speaker 6: we had a pretty good, pretty good uh run in
Speaker 6: where uh uh shh, I thought she was going to
Speaker 6: attack me with a stereo and uh I uh I
Speaker 6: pushed her, pushed her down and ran out of the house,
Speaker 6: and the cops had to come, and it was, uh,
Speaker 6: it was pretty ugly. But uh that's when, you know,
Speaker 6: my buddy said that he didn't want her over there anymore,
Speaker 6: and I decided that, uh, we needed to break it off.
Speaker 6: So that was right around Thanksgiving of nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 5: So from that time on til uh m til Christmas
Speaker 5: and beyond, Uh, you were committed to not being in
Speaker 5: a relationship with her. And how did she accept that?
Speaker 5: Did she accept that? Or what would she go on
Speaker 5: to do?
Speaker 6: Uh? She she really wouldn't uh sh I couldn't get
Speaker 6: her to leave the house, And so the only thing
Speaker 6: I had to do was I went. What I did
Speaker 6: was I I played a card in this him a
Speaker 6: little cat and mouse game, and I played a pretty
Speaker 6: serious card in the game. I had. I had been
Speaker 6: approached earlier in our relationship by one of the members
Speaker 6: of the Special Crimes Unit, who had warned me that
Speaker 6: I was getting in trouble by seeing her, and that
Speaker 6: in itself had kind of put me off because I
Speaker 6: didn't know how he how he had found out actually
Speaker 6: that I that I was seeing her at that at
Speaker 6: the point when he when he told me about it,
Speaker 6: but it stuck in my mind, and he'd always said,
Speaker 6: if you want to listen to some tapes, you know,
Speaker 6: come by. Well, at that by Thanksgiving, I was in
Speaker 6: too deep. I was going to need help getting out,
Speaker 6: and I didn't expect them to help me. But I
Speaker 6: went up to Special Crimes and I gave him a
Speaker 6: statement about everything I knew. I was real concerned. I
Speaker 6: didn't know if I I knew that she was into
Speaker 6: a lot of stuff. Uh. She had shown me a
Speaker 6: diamond she had that uh that I didn't know uh
Speaker 6: much about what the source of it was, and uh
Speaker 6: I I was honestly, I was leaving a little bit
Speaker 6: concerned that I might end up being one of the
Speaker 6: uh CO conspirators in a crime that I didn't even
Speaker 6: know about. So I wanted to go up to the
Speaker 6: DA's office and I I talked with Don Strickland, who
Speaker 6: at the time was the head of Special Crimes and
Speaker 6: the the the thing about this is, uh, people wonder
Speaker 6: about running to the police about your girlfriend, but you know,
Speaker 6: usually the police will just tell you to go see
Speaker 6: doctor phil or something. Yeah. In this in this case, uh,
Speaker 6: the police said come on in and talk to us,
Speaker 6: and so uh of course they were hoping to use me.
Speaker 6: They were they were hoping to get something out of
Speaker 6: me that might uh uh give him a break in
Speaker 6: at Tedesco case. I don't I don't think I had anything.
Speaker 6: She had. She had actually told me at one point
Speaker 6: that she had done it, but uh, I never uh,
Speaker 6: I never put much credence in in the way she
Speaker 6: told me. I mean, there wasn't anything evidentiary about that.
Speaker 6: She she just uh she just a one night Uh
Speaker 6: we were we were uh was a Saturday night, and
Speaker 6: I forget what what was going on, but uh, she
Speaker 6: just at one point started saying, what if I told
Speaker 6: you I, uh I did kill George Tedesco, what would
Speaker 6: you think? And then she described how she grabbed a
Speaker 6: grabbed a barstool leg from the top of the garage
Speaker 6: and beat on his head before he could pull his gun.
Speaker 6: It was a real dramatic story and lit at the
Speaker 6: end of it, she sort of kissed it off by
Speaker 6: saying that, uh, she just wanted to see the look
Speaker 6: on my face and and that it that had never happened.
Speaker 6: So es since well she she took it back. But
Speaker 6: I had that, and I, you know, I wanted to
Speaker 6: make sure I had had revealed that. But I also wanted,
Speaker 6: uh to. What I wanted to do was to call
Speaker 6: her from the DA's office and uh uh tell her that,
Speaker 6: tell her that that I was not gonna see her anymore,
Speaker 6: and that we were we were breaking up, and that
Speaker 6: if if anything happened to me, that uh I'd given
Speaker 6: the DA's office as a statement and that uh sh
Speaker 6: it would be like somebody uh coming back from the
Speaker 6: grave to testify in their own their own murder case.
Speaker 6: And uh she so, So I got her on the
Speaker 6: phone and I made the tape. And what I was
Speaker 6: what I was hoping was that this tape would be
Speaker 6: my uh my buffer zone uh to uh that that
Speaker 6: she would basically just what I was hoping was that
Speaker 6: she would think, oh, this guy's too much trouble. I
Speaker 6: just better, you know, I I don't need I don't
Speaker 6: need this kind of trouble and and go away. Well
Speaker 6: on when when I was talking to her on the phone,
Speaker 6: she played it, uh played it real cool, and UH
Speaker 6: just was uh very calm and collected and said, well, okay,
Speaker 6: you go to your talking to your buddies up there,
Speaker 6: and you you know, you just keep on talking and
Speaker 6: and uh that's that's all right, you just go on
Speaker 6: about your business. So then the guy I was uh
Speaker 6: rooming with was a guy named Jim Strong, and he
Speaker 6: was a radio reporter, so he he was over there too.
Speaker 6: He keme over looking for me, and he said he
Speaker 6: wanted to make a tape. He wanted to call her
Speaker 6: and make a tape of his own, and they thought
Speaker 6: that was a good idea, just to see what her
Speaker 6: temperature was uh on uh when she wasn't talking to me,
Speaker 6: so he called her up and she went absolutely bananas
Speaker 6: and uh started making these gurgling sounds, and uh uh
Speaker 6: told him that at some point I was gonna have
Speaker 6: to beg for her mercy, and uh that I had
Speaker 6: done all kinds of things to her and she wasn't
Speaker 6: gonna take it anymore. And it became uh, it became
Speaker 6: known in the in the animals in this case as
Speaker 6: the Exorcist tape, because uh, she'd she actually did make
Speaker 6: noises on the tape. It centered like Linda Blair and
Speaker 6: the Exorcist in and I heard that. When I heard
Speaker 6: that thing going on, it was, uh, you know, it
Speaker 6: made my skin crawl, and I thought, oh, man, Taylor,
Speaker 6: you've really gotten into it now. And so and as
Speaker 6: as time went on, every time I'd start feeling a
Speaker 6: little sorry for something. In the next couple of months,
Speaker 6: Jim kept a copy of that tape around and he
Speaker 6: would just pull it and put it into a tape
Speaker 6: recorder and play it again so that I'd get back
Speaker 6: in the in the defense mode.
Speaker 5: How did you uh, Now, let's let's uh get to
Speaker 5: the point where the actual evening where she shoots you,
Speaker 5: and and there's she shoots seven times. I guess you
Speaker 5: got at least one moment and you one in your back.
Speaker 5: Apparently one bounced off your head. Tell us about what
Speaker 5: led up to this event that she would get to
Speaker 5: the point where she wanted to kill you, and and
Speaker 5: you do talk about in the book that there there
Speaker 5: may have been some advantage to her wanting you in
Speaker 5: one of the rooms of the house so that you
Speaker 5: know that maybe you were fortunate in that respect that
Speaker 5: she had that plan that you were able to escape
Speaker 5: with your life actually at home. So tell us about
Speaker 5: that that evening, right, Well.
Speaker 6: The events, the events leading up up to this, the
Speaker 6: relationship or the falling apart of the relationship. There was
Speaker 6: escalation after escalation. I she she confronted someone that I
Speaker 6: was I was going out that I was gonna go
Speaker 6: out with. She found out I was going to go
Speaker 6: out with there she went to see her at her office.
Speaker 6: She uh came and confronted me in the courthouse. Basically,
Speaker 6: I couldn't get any work done. She ended up going
Speaker 6: over and trying to get me fired from the post.
Speaker 6: Uh she was she told went over and told my
Speaker 6: editors that I was uh working undercover from the DA's
Speaker 6: office and had had seduced her and uh in an
Speaker 6: effort to uh crack the Cadesco murder. And UH so
Speaker 6: they moved me off the courthouse beat. And and what
Speaker 6: what happened was, I s she kept calling me and
Speaker 6: harassing me, and I just I just stopped taking her calls.
Speaker 6: I just uh started hanging up on her. And the
Speaker 6: next thing that happened was, uh there was a burglary
Speaker 6: at our house, and it was obviously it obviously appeared
Speaker 6: to me it was some kind of a set up job. Uh.
Speaker 6: There was not necessarily gonna be a burglary. Uh. What
Speaker 6: had happened was I was out at a a an
Speaker 6: event and I had my four year old daughter with me,
Speaker 6: and we went back to Jim's place and as I
Speaker 6: drive up, Jim is out on the sidewalk with a shotgun,
Speaker 6: walking up and down and had to get my daughter
Speaker 6: to hide in the floorboard of the car. And I
Speaker 6: asked Jim what was going on, and he said, we've
Speaker 6: been hit. So we go in. There's nobody in there,
Speaker 6: but some things have been stolen, some of my stuff
Speaker 6: I really didn't have. I had a stereo and some
Speaker 6: records and that was about it. And Jim Jim lost
Speaker 6: one of those early model Beta Max things, I mean
Speaker 6: way back then that was real pioneering stuff. But he
Speaker 6: lost some expensive stuff though. And when I was as
Speaker 6: we were cleaning up the mess in there and looking around,
Speaker 6: I realized that she had sent somebody over to to
Speaker 6: teach me a lesson, I guess, or maybe even to
Speaker 6: kill me. And I realized I'd had my daughter with me.
Speaker 6: She could have gotten in the middle of it. Jim
Speaker 6: had lost his stuff, he could have gotten in the
Speaker 6: middle of it. And I just decided there had to
Speaker 6: be an ultimate confrontation and that the next opportunity I had,
Speaker 6: I would give her any chance to do whatever she
Speaker 6: could do to me and just try to see what
Speaker 6: I could do to either survive it and get her
Speaker 6: put away, or the worst comes to worst, I'd be
Speaker 6: the one who was dead and nobody else would be
Speaker 6: called in the middle. So what happened next was that
Speaker 6: Jim decided he was going to try to get his
Speaker 6: stolen property back and he started negotiating with her for it.
Speaker 6: And about two nights later, she showed up at the
Speaker 6: house and she wanted to She was promising to give
Speaker 6: Jim his stuff back. So I thought, well, can I
Speaker 6: just send my stuff back too? I mean, I didn't
Speaker 6: really want to talk to her anymore, but she was there,
Speaker 6: so uh uh, and we were pretty much at each
Speaker 6: other's throats, and she said, she said I could get
Speaker 6: the stuff back if I would come over to her place, uh,
Speaker 6: which was a duplex in the Montrose area of Houston,
Speaker 6: And so I said, well, okay, So I I went
Speaker 6: over there, and she said that she was calling some
Speaker 6: Mexicans to bring the stuff over. And so we went
Speaker 6: went to her place and it was a pretty bizarre
Speaker 6: pr pretty bizarre evening. I I kind of had the
Speaker 6: sheh she was uh. She was a uh like I said,
Speaker 6: an overly dramatic, uh kind of person who kind of
Speaker 6: lived in U nineteen thirties gangsters movies and dialogue and such,
Speaker 6: and she was always quoting uh, Casablanca and other movies
Speaker 6: like that, and I I I asked her, I said,
Speaker 6: you know, isn't this where you're supposed to confess everything?
Speaker 6: And she's I said, you know that you you did
Speaker 6: have somebody coming over last night to uh to beat
Speaker 6: on me, right, and she said, uh, yes, yes, it
Speaker 6: was time to teach you a lesson and uh. I said, well,
Speaker 6: you know, I had my daughter with me and she said, well,
Speaker 6: they would have taken her somewhere where she'd be safe.
Speaker 6: I said, over my dead body, and she said, well
Speaker 6: if it, if it would required that, that's what would
Speaker 6: have happened. So so anyway, we got to her place
Speaker 6: and uh she called the so called Mexicans again. And
Speaker 6: I didn't even I at that point, I thought that
Speaker 6: she probably had. I thought that she she probably didn't
Speaker 6: have the the stolen property or have access to it,
Speaker 6: and that she had invited me over there to see
Speaker 6: what she had the guts to do, and as I
Speaker 6: would learn later, she kind of had a a plan
Speaker 6: all mapped out. For some reason. She wanted to mess
Speaker 6: around for a while. And when I say mess around,
Speaker 6: I'm not talking sexually. But there was a question and
Speaker 6: answer period about uh whether I ever loved her or not. Uh,
Speaker 6: there was uh. She read to me at one point
Speaker 6: from The Godfather, uh the section where uh Luca Brossi
Speaker 6: sleeps with the fishes. Though I didn't know what I
Speaker 6: was supposed to uh to get from that, I t
Speaker 6: I tried to I tried to understand whether I'm Luca
Speaker 6: Brossi or I'm one of the fishes. But uh. She
Speaker 6: also had me call some uh young woman that I
Speaker 6: had gone out with one time, and she followed us.
Speaker 6: This was a couple of weeks earlier, and I knew
Speaker 6: that she wouldn't that the that she wouldn't take my call,
Speaker 6: but I I called her and she hung out and
Speaker 6: so uh uh Catherine called her and she hung up
Speaker 6: on her too, and uh at one point she wanted
Speaker 6: to dance, put on some music and wanted to dance.
Speaker 6: Said we needed one last dance and uh we had
Speaker 6: a couple of dreams ks and so finally the evening
Speaker 6: wore on and uh I uh told her that uh
Speaker 6: that I uh I didn't think this was going anywhere,
Speaker 6: and I was I was gonna go and I was
Speaker 6: gonna do some investigating on her and her bar uh
Speaker 6: bar card and uh we'd just uh really take it
Speaker 6: from there if we didn't get our uh if we
Speaker 6: didn't get our property back. So as I was going
Speaker 6: out the door, she said, UH, wait a minute, Jerie,
Speaker 6: I've got something for you in my closet. So I
Speaker 6: turned around, and I realized I was probably going back
Speaker 6: there to I don't know, find somebody waiting for me,
Speaker 6: or get trapped in the back because there was no
Speaker 6: back exit. But uh, I had made this mental commitment
Speaker 6: to myself that I was going to go ahead and
Speaker 6: give her the opportunity to do whatever she was gonna
Speaker 6: do and get get our confrontation resolved one way or
Speaker 6: the other. So uh I went on back to her
Speaker 6: bedroom and and went in got into her closet and
Speaker 6: uh uh there was nothing in there. And about then
Speaker 6: the lights went out and I heard a uh, I
Speaker 6: heard her walking down the hallway and I heard uh
Speaker 6: her the revolver, her click that echoed throughout the house.
Speaker 6: And so I was standing in the closet and uh
Speaker 6: had the door as a shield, and she took a
Speaker 6: position across the room from the door, took the policeman's
Speaker 6: position and pointed the gun at the closet door, ready
Speaker 6: to uh ready to see this to the end. And
Speaker 6: uh she uh she, uh course she couldn't shut up.
Speaker 6: She had to. Uh she had to start yapping and
Speaker 6: uh telling me uh how terrible I'd been to her,
Speaker 6: and uh that I didn't have a chance and I
Speaker 6: might as well come out, and uh this was gonna
Speaker 6: be it. She wouldn't do anything to anybody else. And
Speaker 6: so I had probably about two or three minutes. Seemed
Speaker 6: like an eternity, but I had a a lot of
Speaker 6: time in the closet. I was peeking through the uh
Speaker 6: peeking through the door jamb there and watching her see
Speaker 6: what what she was doing, and wondering, uh, how bigly
Speaker 6: get out of this now. So there I was calling
Speaker 6: myself an imbecile and all of that, and looking for
Speaker 6: uh some kind of exit strategy that might uh that
Speaker 6: might uh allow me to allow me to get out
Speaker 6: of the house and allow her to be arrested for
Speaker 6: trying to kill me.
Speaker 5: So she sat you seven times, and you got out
Speaker 5: of the house and you gotta did you you gotta
Speaker 5: shot in the back? Was it did? Yeah?
Speaker 6: There was what happened. Yeah, there was. Uh started looking
Speaker 6: around for some things and something I could use as
Speaker 6: a shield maybe, and uh, and I knew that right
Speaker 6: outside the closet door was a wooden chair that I
Speaker 6: had actually brought down from her headache earlier in the
Speaker 6: uh in the relationship, uh for her use at some
Speaker 6: kind of Christmas party she was trying to throw a
Speaker 6: few weeks before. And uh, I knew that chair was there.
Speaker 6: I just decided I was gonna watch her through the
Speaker 6: jam and when I saw my opportunity, if she looked
Speaker 6: away or something and she kept talking, I was just
Speaker 6: going to kick the door open and uh use the
Speaker 6: chair as a shield. So I formulated this plan in
Speaker 6: my head and and uh, basically I saw her eyes
Speaker 6: dripped down and that's what I did. I kicked the
Speaker 6: door open, I picked up the chair. I came straight
Speaker 6: at her, and she fired off one round that went
Speaker 6: through the chair, and uh, the the chair, the the
Speaker 6: seat of the chair actually, cause I was coming at
Speaker 6: her like a lion tamer kay I needed. I was
Speaker 6: without the whip, but at least I had the chair,
Speaker 6: and the bullet came through the seat of the chair
Speaker 6: and glanced off my side of my head, over my
Speaker 6: left ear, and I threw the chair in her direction,
Speaker 6: and then I turned to my right and I ran
Speaker 6: down the hallway, and I realized and I heard some
Speaker 6: shots behind, but I wasn't really concentrated on that because
Speaker 6: I saw where she had dead bolted the front door,
Speaker 6: which is where I would the only exit to the
Speaker 6: place I would have to go out through the front door.
Speaker 6: So I remember all of this seems to be in
Speaker 6: slow motion anymore when I think back to it, and
Speaker 6: I remember thinking focusing on the thought that I'll only
Speaker 6: have one chance to unlock that dead bolt, and I
Speaker 6: need to stop and make sure I do it right.
Speaker 6: So as I stopped to open the door, she blasted away,
Speaker 6: and then one hit me in the back and blew
Speaker 6: me out into the front yard, and uh, I learned
Speaker 6: later that the bullet stopped a centimeter from my heart, so,
Speaker 6: uh it was a it was a a really close call.
Speaker 6: But when I got out in the out in the yard,
Speaker 6: I was laying there and I realized that, uh h,
Speaker 6: I wondered, I could feel my toes, I could feel
Speaker 6: my fingers, and I thought, well, I, uh, maybe I
Speaker 6: should get up and well. And so she she came
Speaker 6: out on the porch and was watching me, and all
Speaker 6: of a sudden, I jumped up and I ran. I ran.
Speaker 6: This was about two o'clock in the morning, so it
Speaker 6: was uh it was total dark, and but lights were
Speaker 6: coming on all over the neighborhood because uh uh gunshots
Speaker 6: and uh so I ran uh couple blocks. I ran
Speaker 6: down the street, and she actually chased me, uh with
Speaker 6: another pistol U I found out later. I mean, I
Speaker 6: was kind of unaware of all of the noise and gunshots.
Speaker 6: I knew there were some other shots, but I think
Speaker 6: at the trial they counted up uh that seven shots
Speaker 6: and all they'd been fired throughout this uh this deal,
Speaker 6: and I'd been hitting in the back and glanced in
Speaker 6: the head, and uh I made it to an all
Speaker 6: night grocery store and I I told him to call
Speaker 6: an ambulance, and when I got to the hospital, they
Speaker 6: uh basically, I only spent about an hour in the hospital.
Speaker 6: They'd they left the bullet in. They didn't want to
Speaker 6: mess around with trying to get the bullet out. Uh,
Speaker 6: although later it was removed from the trial cause we
Speaker 6: needed to to tell what uh what caliber bullet was
Speaker 6: in my back and uh. But I was there about
Speaker 6: an hour and then she was mean. Meanwhile, she was
Speaker 6: arrested while I was there. Well, the homicide cop that
Speaker 6: made the scene, he called me. He called me in
Speaker 6: the emergency room, and he was an old, old, uh
Speaker 6: friend of mine that I'd covered some paces with before,
Speaker 6: and he he just he couldn't help. But he just
Speaker 6: said to her, I gotta tell you this, this scene
Speaker 6: over here looks like something out of a road Runner cartoon.
Speaker 6: I can see where you ran by the bullet holes
Speaker 6: in the wall. And then then he told me that
Speaker 6: she was saying that it was self defense and that
Speaker 6: I had one of the guns. At that point, I
Speaker 6: didn't know there were two guns. So I just told him, well,
Speaker 6: I mean, that's that's not true, and I don't I
Speaker 6: don't know, and he said, well, we're arresting her anyway,
Speaker 6: you're shot in the back. So she got arrested, and
Speaker 6: that's at the stage for the legal thriller part of
Speaker 6: the book.
Speaker 5: Yes. Well, Gary, we've used up an hour here just
Speaker 5: talking about setting up this whole thing. I want to
Speaker 5: tell our audience that basically the legal part of the
Speaker 5: thriller part of your book is still to come. There's
Speaker 5: three trials, if I'm not correct, for Catherine Mahaffey, and
Speaker 5: you testify and your very effective witness at this trial,
Speaker 5: and she testifies too, which is another fascinating part of
Speaker 5: your book. So we're going to leave it that for
Speaker 5: our audience and they'll have to pick up your book
Speaker 5: Luggage by Kroger k R O G e Er and
Speaker 5: it's a true crime memoir by Gary Taylor, Luggage by Kroger.
Speaker 5: And I want to thank you very much Gary for
Speaker 5: coming on the program and then talking about your fascinating book.
Speaker 5: It's been a quick hour and have lots to talk about,
Speaker 5: but unfortunately that's the end of our program. But I
Speaker 5: want to thank you very much for agreeing to this interview.
Speaker 6: Gary Hey, thank you for your interest.
Speaker 5: Well, thank you, Gary, have a great evening, and I'll
Speaker 5: talk to you again sometime. Have a good evening, Bye,
Speaker 5: bye bye. You've been listening to the program True Murder,
Speaker 5: the most shocking killers in true crime history and the
Speaker 5: authors that have written about them, with your host Dan Spansky.
Speaker 5: Good Night,