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

jealousy issues. Most of the time, I wasn’t sure what started it.”
    By the next morning, David was back to normal, charming and kind, bringing flowers and going out of his way to let her know that he loved her. “I’d forget about it,” she says. “I just thought that he really loved me. That when you have a real boyfriend who cares about you, this is what it’s like.”
    The following fall, 1989, was a big year for the Lumberjacks, and on the field, David was outstanding. “He brought his fighting face to every game,” says Graves. “He was on special teams and defense and he got a lot of recognition.” Soon, the Jacks were racking up wins. They played North Texas, Lamar, Eastern Washington, Boise State, and Jackson State, and piled up wins. The night of homecoming, the cheerleaders led the traditional torchlight parade to the bonfire, and the next day the Jacks crushed Sam Houston State’s Bearkats, 45 to 7.
    After one game, getting on the bus, a squabble broke out between a defensive and offensive player. David jumped in the middle of it, and Coach Graves ended up pulling David off one player. The player David fought dwarfed even him, but David didn’t back off. He didn’t appear to even care. By then, David Temple’s fierceness had earned him a nickname: the “Temple of Doom.”
    Throughout that season, David’s reputation spread, so much so that it attracted the attention of the big city newspaper. That November 22, 1989, in a Houston Chronicle article on Nacogdoches’ star linebacker, one Lumberjack coach called David “as tough a linebacker as you’d ever want…. When it gets tough, the better [David] gets.”
    When David was interviewed, he told the reporter: “I think I’m more aggressive than the normal player. I try to hit a player with a helmet, T-bar to T-bar. I just try to run through him…. My parents probably feel that way, too,” David said about his intensity. “I’ve got a temper, a pretty short fuse.”
    Yet on the field, David’s forcefulness paid off. By the time the article ran, David had racked up 114 tackles, including 64 unassisted stops and 5 sacks. In the article, Coach Graves said the SFA defense was young but maturing, and gave credit to David. “If we have a guy in that position who didn’t do the job, then we don’t have a very good defense.”
    That winter, SFA won the Southland Conference title for the first time in their sixty-three-year history. When the Jacks beat the Indians of Northeast Louisiana 66 to 45, the energized fans counted off the final seconds in unison. At the end of that winning season, the NCAA ranked the Stephen F. Austin Lumberjacks third in the 1-AA, the highest ranking in SFA history. A few months later, David and his fellow teammates collected heavy gold-domed Southland Conference Championship rings with their initials.
    That year, David shared his dorm room with Reno Moore, one of his fellow players. They hung out together, grilling on the patio, with Pam and Reno’s girlfriend, Stephanie. Sometimes, at night, David and Reno snuck out on the golf course to retrieve balls from the pond, then sold them for extra money. The two players became good friends, and with their girlfriends they formed a family of sorts, at college, away from their homes.
    As always, Pam was proud of David. They spent all their available time together, going to Sea World in San Antonio, and out with friends. By then, the outcome of their relationship seemed so predictable that their friends called Pam “Mrs. Temple.” She wore a promise ring he’d bought her, and they’d often get waylaid walking through malls and detour to the jewelry stores, where they considered engagement rings. “David hadn’t proposed, but it was more that it was understood,” Pam says. “He talked all the time about what it would be like when we were married.”
    Despite their plans for the future, there continued to be that other side to David and to their relationship. On nights