Candy Montgomery (Dallas ax-murder)

[m***@gmail.com]

LEFT TO WONDER 20 years after the ax slaying of Betty Gore, victim's
daughters still have questions
By Doug J. Swanson
Published 06-11-2000
Dallas Morning News
If it was self defense, the why did she use the ax to also kill the victim's new born baby girl.
WICHITA, Kan. - Two young women, sisters, were talking over lunch
recently about the woman who, 20 years ago, killed their mother.
"I wonder if she thinks about it every day, like I do," said Bethany
Gore, 20. "I wonder if she thinks about us."
Lisa Gore Harder, 25, recalled that her mother was only 30 when she
was slain.
"The closer I get to the age when she died," she said, "the more I
realize how young she was."
The older sister barely remembers her, and the younger one doesn't
remember her at all. In place of memories are yellowed newspaper
clippings and archived police reports that tell of June 13, 1980, when
schoolteacher Betty Gore was hacked to death with an ax in her
suburban Dallas home.
The killer was another 30-year-old woman, Candy Montgomery. She had
been having an affair with Mrs. Gore's husband, Allan Gore. Bethany,
not yet a year old, lay in her crib for hours as her mother's body
went undiscovered in another part of the house.
Five-year-old Lisa, not knowing what had happened, spent that night
with Mrs. Montgomery as the two families had arranged before the fatal
encounter. Mrs. Montgomery even drove Lisa back to the scene the next
day.
Meanwhile, Mr. Gore was in St. Paul, Minn., on business. His wife's
body was discovered late that night after he called neighbors and
asked them to go into the house because no one was answering his phone
calls.
It was the most sensational North Texas homicide of its day,
dominating the news coverage and bringing standing-room-only crowds to
see the trial in the old Collin County Courthouse in McKinney. When it
was done, Mrs. Montgomery walked free, having convinced a jury that
she had administered 41 wounds in self-defense.
Two decades later, some of those involved in the case have died or
moved far away. Memories have faded. New families have been started
and dissolved.
For Mrs. Gore's daughters, however, there are matters still to be
discussed. Twenty years ago, with all the lurid testimony about
adultery and pools of blood, about repressed memory and tired
marriages, the children drew sympathy but little outside attention.
20 years of anguish
Now, in young adulthood, they want to say that they managed to turn
out all right after all, despite some rough early years. Long
estranged from their father, they talk now of how nice it would have
been to have a mother around.
And they're curious about what Mrs. Montgomery, looking back, might
say.
"I just wish I knew what really happened," Ms. Gore said. "Because
nobody knows but her."
Mrs. Montgomery these days goes by Candace Wheeler, her maiden name,
and lives in Georgia. She does not wish to reveal her thoughts
regarding either then or now.
"I'm telling you in big bold letters," she said in response to a
reporter's query, "I'm not interested."
On the day of the slaying, Mrs. Montgomery had gone to the Gore house
in the Collin County suburb of Wylie. Lisa was at vacation Bible
school with Mrs. Montgomery's daughter. Mrs. Montgomery had gone to
retrieve Lisa's bathing suit.
Though it had been over for months, Mrs. Montgomery - mainstay of the
local Methodist church choir, wife of a successful engineer - had
engaged in a series of lunch-hour interludes with Mr. Gore at a shabby
motel in Richardson.
That morning in the Wylie house, Mrs. Gore confronted her with
knowledge of the affair, Mrs. Montgomery later testified. Then, she
said, Mrs. Gore - a woman with no history of violent acts - attacked
her in the laundry room with a 3-foot ax.
As Bethany slept in a bedroom down the hall, the women struggled over
the weapon until Mrs. Montgomery seized control. She began, she would
later testify, swinging the ax in a frenzy.
When it was over, Mrs. Gore lay dead on the laundry room floor. More
than three dozen blows had landed on her face and head.
Mrs. Montgomery then washed the blood off herself, returned to the
Bible school, ate lunch and gave the children a Scripture lesson. Next
she took Lisa and her own daughter shopping for Father's Day cards.
She told no one what she had done at the Gore house. Days later,
police linked her to a bloody thumbprint found on the Gores' freezer.
She was arrested and charged with murder.
Repressed hostility
At her trial, a defense psychiatrist said Mrs. Montgomery snapped when
Mrs. Gore said to her, "Ssshhh," as they fought for the ax. This
released, the doctor said,
26 years of repressed hostility that Mrs. Montgomery held toward her
mother, and she could no longer control herself. The jury took 4 1/2
hours to acquit her on all charges.
A not-guilty verdict is one thing. Forgiveness by grieving loved ones
is something else.
"I don't know if I could forgive her," Mrs. Harder said recently. "I
know you're supposed to, but. ..."
She dimly remembers her mother's funeral in Mrs. Gore's Kansas
hometown.
"Everybody was crying, so I pretended I was crying," she said. "At
that age you don't really understand what death is, and you don't
realize how long forever is."
Both sisters believe the true story of their mother's death has never
been told by Mrs. Montgomery.
"I just think she got away with it," Ms. Gore said. "I'm one of those
people who are very emotional, extremely emotional," she said. Sad
television shows reduce her to tears. A junior at Wichita State
University, she wants to be an elementary school teacher.
Mrs. Harder is more diplomatic and contained. With brown hair and dark
eyes, she looks like her mother.
"On our 50th anniversary, we put her mother's picture on our mantel,"
said her grandmother, Bertha Pomeroy. "Everyone thought it was Lisa."
An accountant at a Wichita equipment leasing company, Mrs. Harder is
married to Jonn Harder of Newton, Kan. They have a 7-month-old son,
Jacob.
The sisters were adopted by their maternal grandparents, Bob and
Bertha Pomeroy of Norwich, Kan., in 1988. The adoption came at the
request of Mr. Gore, who was moving his new wife and family from the
Dallas area to California.
"They felt like their marriage had a better shot at working out if
Bethany and I weren't around," Mrs. Harder said.
Second marriage
Mr. Gore had married the former Elaine Clift less than three months
after Mrs. Montgomery's acquittal, and the family later moved to
Sachse, northeast of Garland. The first few years of their father's
second marriage were difficult for the sisters.
Lisa was in and out of therapy as a pre-teen. "There were a lot of
times my dad and Elaine would use withholding food as punishment," she
said.
Mrs. Harder said that when she was 10 her stepmother made her read
Evidence of Love, the true-crime book that detailed her father's
affair and her mother's death.
"I had to give her a little summary after each chapter," she said.
One of Ms. Gore's earliest memories is being punished by standing in a
cold shower with her feet in a tub of ice cubes.
"My stepmother told us if we said anything [about their treatment]
they would separate us," Mrs. Harder said.
"I've seen neither of them in 15 years," Elaine Gore said of the
sisters.
"I only want to say that Elaine Gore has no comment."
Elaine and Allan Gore are divorced, and the sisters' former stepmother
is now a college music teacher in the northeastern United States. She
refused to respond to any other questions about her relationship with
the two girls.
A dispute over grandparents' visitation rights ended up in court in
Dallas before it was resolved. Once, Mr. Pomeroy said, a young Bethany
arrived for a visit with tufts of hair missing.
"I told him [Mr. Gore] if that little girl comes back here with any
more hairs pulled out of her head, I'll take you down and pull out
every one of your hairs," Mr. Pomeroy said.
Mr. Gore, a computer consultant living in California, did not respond
to numerous phone calls and a letter requesting comment on remarks by
his daughters and their grandfather.
Once the girls reached Kansas for good, they thrived. Lisa was a
cheerleader and class president.
"They were pretty good girls to raise," said Mr. Pomeroy, 72, a
farmer.
Both were salutatorians of their high school graduating classes, and
both earned college scholarships.
"I think my mother would be proud of me and my sister," Ms. Gore said.
Said Mrs. Harder, "We've both tried to do the best with what's been
handed us."
Family division
The sisters have not seen their father in six years, though there have
been occasional greeting cards from him, signed "Allan." When Mrs.
Harder was married in 1996, he was not invited.
"Bethany said she wasn't going to come if he was there," she said.
Mr. Pomeroy still harbors anger toward Mr. Gore, in part the result of
a conversation with his son-in-law shortly after his daughter's death.
"I said, 'You didn't show any remorse,'" Mr. Pomeroy recalled
recently. "He said, 'It didn't bother me very much. We weren't getting
along anyway.'"
'A lot of anger'
Perhaps most of the ill will is still directed at Mrs. Montgomery.
"My family has a lot of anger and a lot of hatred toward her," Mrs.
Harder said, adding that she prefers not to dwell on that. "You can
spend your whole life hating someone."
Instead, she tries to remember her mother.
"I talk to her once in a while. I kind of always feel like she's
there, like with [son] Jake," she said. "My husband says, 'It's too
bad your mom couldn't see him.' In my mind, she probably sees him
every day."
Again, the talk turned back to loss. "What angers me," Ms. Gore said,
"is thinking about what could have been."
Even if their mother had lived, the daughters say, that doesn't mean
they would have enjoyed a happy life in Texas.
"I know that Mom and Dad would have gotten a divorce. I think she
would have left him and we would have moved back to Kansas," Ms. Gore
said. She smiled, with a distant look in her eyes. "That would have
been perfect."
Craig Hacker) Lisa Gore Harder, holding son Jacob, and her sister,
Bethany Gore, would like answers to questions about their mother's
1980 death at the hands of Candy Montgomery. 2. Betty Gore, shown in
this 1979 photograph with daughters Bethany and Lisa, 5, was 30 years
old when she was slain June 13, 1980, in her Wylie home. "I just wish
I knew what really happened," Bethany Gore, who is now 20, says about
the ax slaying. Candy Montgomery, who had been having an affair with
Mrs. Gore's husband, was acquitted in the case after claiming self-
defense. 3. Betty Gore ... the mother and teacher was killed after a
confrontation with Candy Montgomery, according to testimony. , Betty
Gore holds daughter Bethany while her other daughter, Lisa, sits on
the lap of her grandfather Bob Pomeroy in 1979. Betty Gore's parents
adopted the children in 1988 at the request of their father, Allan
Gore, who was moving his new wife and family to California. 4.
MONTGOMERY. 5. CROWDER. 6. O'CONNELL. CHART(S): (The Dallas Morning
News) THE CANDY MONTGOMERY CASE: WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

[k***@gmail.com]

My interest in this case was just revived as of yesterday. I saw a hypnotherapist for the 1st time & he asked how I became interested in hypnotherapy. I gave him my reasons & then told him the only negative thing I've ever heard of about hypnotherapy is the fact that it got a woman off on a murder case. We talked briefly of what each of us was familiar with regarding the case & he said he had second hand insight into the case. He knew someone who had been on the crime scene & it was shared with him by this friend that the belief during the investigation was that at some point during the assault, the refrigerator had to be down because of the way the blood splatter was on it horizontally. Crime scene investigators were of the belief that someone with a male's strength had to have helped her pick up the refrigerator & put it back upright. He said that it was a well known fact at the time, that there was a wife swapping ring going on amongst these small communities, which involved Wylie & Fairfield. Has anyone else heard anything like this?

I once called Candace's clinic just to hear her voice. I wasn't sure what I was going to say but when I heard her voice I chickened out & hung up. Not even sure what my intention was. I was just highly curious & in such disbelief that this woman, who committed this horrific crime, would have the audacity to become a counselor.

Life can definitely be stranger than fiction!

[l***@gmail.com]

LEFT TO WONDER 20 years after the ax slaying of Betty Gore, victim's
daughters still have questions
By Doug J. Swanson
Published 06-11-2000
Dallas Morning News
WICHITA, Kan. - Two young women, sisters, were talking over lunch
recently about the woman who, 20 years ago, killed their mother.
"I wonder if she thinks about it every day, like I do," said Bethany
Gore, 20. "I wonder if she thinks about us."
Lisa Gore Harder, 25, recalled that her mother was only 30 when she
was slain.
"The closer I get to the age when she died," she said, "the more I
realize how young she was."
The older sister barely remembers her, and the younger one doesn't
remember her at all. In place of memories are yellowed newspaper
clippings and archived police reports that tell of June 13, 1980, when
schoolteacher Betty Gore was hacked to death with an ax in her
suburban Dallas home.
The killer was another 30-year-old woman, Candy Montgomery. She had
been having an affair with Mrs. Gore's husband, Allan Gore. Bethany,
not yet a year old, lay in her crib for hours as her mother's body
went undiscovered in another part of the house.
Five-year-old Lisa, not knowing what had happened, spent that night
with Mrs. Montgomery as the two families had arranged before the fatal
encounter. Mrs. Montgomery even drove Lisa back to the scene the next
day.
Meanwhile, Mr. Gore was in St. Paul, Minn., on business. His wife's
body was discovered late that night after he called neighbors and
asked them to go into the house because no one was answering his phone
calls.
It was the most sensational North Texas homicide of its day,
dominating the news coverage and bringing standing-room-only crowds to
see the trial in the old Collin County Courthouse in McKinney. When it
was done, Mrs. Montgomery walked free, having convinced a jury that
she had administered 41 wounds in self-defense.
Two decades later, some of those involved in the case have died or
moved far away. Memories have faded. New families have been started
and dissolved.
For Mrs. Gore's daughters, however, there are matters still to be
discussed. Twenty years ago, with all the lurid testimony about
adultery and pools of blood, about repressed memory and tired
marriages, the children drew sympathy but little outside attention.
20 years of anguish
Now, in young adulthood, they want to say that they managed to turn
out all right after all, despite some rough early years. Long
estranged from their father, they talk now of how nice it would have
been to have a mother around.
And they're curious about what Mrs. Montgomery, looking back, might
say.
"I just wish I knew what really happened," Ms. Gore said. "Because
nobody knows but her."
Mrs. Montgomery these days goes by Candace Wheeler, her maiden name,
and lives in Georgia. She does not wish to reveal her thoughts
regarding either then or now.
"I'm telling you in big bold letters," she said in response to a
reporter's query, "I'm not interested."
On the day of the slaying, Mrs. Montgomery had gone to the Gore house
in the Collin County suburb of Wylie. Lisa was at vacation Bible
school with Mrs. Montgomery's daughter. Mrs. Montgomery had gone to
retrieve Lisa's bathing suit.
Though it had been over for months, Mrs. Montgomery - mainstay of the
local Methodist church choir, wife of a successful engineer - had
engaged in a series of lunch-hour interludes with Mr. Gore at a shabby
motel in Richardson.
That morning in the Wylie house, Mrs. Gore confronted her with
knowledge of the affair, Mrs. Montgomery later testified. Then, she
said, Mrs. Gore - a woman with no history of violent acts - attacked
her in the laundry room with a 3-foot ax.
As Bethany slept in a bedroom down the hall, the women struggled over
the weapon until Mrs. Montgomery seized control. She began, she would
later testify, swinging the ax in a frenzy.
When it was over, Mrs. Gore lay dead on the laundry room floor. More
than three dozen blows had landed on her face and head.
Mrs. Montgomery then washed the blood off herself, returned to the
Bible school, ate lunch and gave the children a Scripture lesson. Next
she took Lisa and her own daughter shopping for Father's Day cards.
She told no one what she had done at the Gore house. Days later,
police linked her to a bloody thumbprint found on the Gores' freezer.
She was arrested and charged with murder.
Repressed hostility
At her trial, a defense psychiatrist said Mrs. Montgomery snapped when
Mrs. Gore said to her, "Ssshhh," as they fought for the ax. This
released, the doctor said,
26 years of repressed hostility that Mrs. Montgomery held toward her
mother, and she could no longer control herself. The jury took 4 1/2
hours to acquit her on all charges.
A not-guilty verdict is one thing. Forgiveness by grieving loved ones
is something else.
"I don't know if I could forgive her," Mrs. Harder said recently. "I
know you're supposed to, but. ..."
She dimly remembers her mother's funeral in Mrs. Gore's Kansas
hometown.
"Everybody was crying, so I pretended I was crying," she said. "At
that age you don't really understand what death is, and you don't
realize how long forever is."
Both sisters believe the true story of their mother's death has never
been told by Mrs. Montgomery.
"I just think she got away with it," Ms. Gore said. "I'm one of those
people who are very emotional, extremely emotional," she said. Sad
television shows reduce her to tears. A junior at Wichita State
University, she wants to be an elementary school teacher.
Mrs. Harder is more diplomatic and contained. With brown hair and dark
eyes, she looks like her mother.
"On our 50th anniversary, we put her mother's picture on our mantel,"
said her grandmother, Bertha Pomeroy. "Everyone thought it was Lisa."
An accountant at a Wichita equipment leasing company, Mrs. Harder is
married to Jonn Harder of Newton, Kan. They have a 7-month-old son,
Jacob.
The sisters were adopted by their maternal grandparents, Bob and
Bertha Pomeroy of Norwich, Kan., in 1988. The adoption came at the
request of Mr. Gore, who was moving his new wife and family from the
Dallas area to California.
"They felt like their marriage had a better shot at working out if
Bethany and I weren't around," Mrs. Harder said.
Second marriage
Mr. Gore had married the former Elaine Clift less than three months
after Mrs. Montgomery's acquittal, and the family later moved to
Sachse, northeast of Garland. The first few years of their father's
second marriage were difficult for the sisters.
Lisa was in and out of therapy as a pre-teen. "There were a lot of
times my dad and Elaine would use withholding food as punishment," she
said.
Mrs. Harder said that when she was 10 her stepmother made her read
Evidence of Love, the true-crime book that detailed her father's
affair and her mother's death.
"I had to give her a little summary after each chapter," she said.
One of Ms. Gore's earliest memories is being punished by standing in a
cold shower with her feet in a tub of ice cubes.
"My stepmother told us if we said anything [about their treatment]
they would separate us," Mrs. Harder said.
"I've seen neither of them in 15 years," Elaine Gore said of the
sisters.
"I only want to say that Elaine Gore has no comment."
Elaine and Allan Gore are divorced, and the sisters' former stepmother
is now a college music teacher in the northeastern United States. She
refused to respond to any other questions about her relationship with
the two girls.
A dispute over grandparents' visitation rights ended up in court in
Dallas before it was resolved. Once, Mr. Pomeroy said, a young Bethany
arrived for a visit with tufts of hair missing.
"I told him [Mr. Gore] if that little girl comes back here with any
more hairs pulled out of her head, I'll take you down and pull out
every one of your hairs," Mr. Pomeroy said.
Mr. Gore, a computer consultant living in California, did not respond
to numerous phone calls and a letter requesting comment on remarks by
his daughters and their grandfather.
Once the girls reached Kansas for good, they thrived. Lisa was a
cheerleader and class president.
"They were pretty good girls to raise," said Mr. Pomeroy, 72, a
farmer.
Both were salutatorians of their high school graduating classes, and
both earned college scholarships.
"I think my mother would be proud of me and my sister," Ms. Gore said.
Said Mrs. Harder, "We've both tried to do the best with what's been
handed us."
Family division
The sisters have not seen their father in six years, though there have
been occasional greeting cards from him, signed "Allan." When Mrs.
Harder was married in 1996, he was not invited.
"Bethany said she wasn't going to come if he was there," she said.
Mr. Pomeroy still harbors anger toward Mr. Gore, in part the result of
a conversation with his son-in-law shortly after his daughter's death.
"I said, 'You didn't show any remorse,'" Mr. Pomeroy recalled
recently. "He said, 'It didn't bother me very much. We weren't getting
along anyway.'"
'A lot of anger'
Perhaps most of the ill will is still directed at Mrs. Montgomery.
"My family has a lot of anger and a lot of hatred toward her," Mrs.
Harder said, adding that she prefers not to dwell on that. "You can
spend your whole life hating someone."
Instead, she tries to remember her mother.
"I talk to her once in a while. I kind of always feel like she's
there, like with [son] Jake," she said. "My husband says, 'It's too
bad your mom couldn't see him.' In my mind, she probably sees him
every day."
Again, the talk turned back to loss. "What angers me," Ms. Gore said,
"is thinking about what could have been."
Even if their mother had lived, the daughters say, that doesn't mean
they would have enjoyed a happy life in Texas.
"I know that Mom and Dad would have gotten a divorce. I think she
would have left him and we would have moved back to Kansas," Ms. Gore
said. She smiled, with a distant look in her eyes. "That would have
been perfect."
Craig Hacker) Lisa Gore Harder, holding son Jacob, and her sister,
Bethany Gore, would like answers to questions about their mother's
1980 death at the hands of Candy Montgomery. 2. Betty Gore, shown in
this 1979 photograph with daughters Bethany and Lisa, 5, was 30 years
old when she was slain June 13, 1980, in her Wylie home. "I just wish
I knew what really happened," Bethany Gore, who is now 20, says about
the ax slaying. Candy Montgomery, who had been having an affair with
Mrs. Gore's husband, was acquitted in the case after claiming self-
defense. 3. Betty Gore ... the mother and teacher was killed after a
confrontation with Candy Montgomery, according to testimony. , Betty
Gore holds daughter Bethany while her other daughter, Lisa, sits on
the lap of her grandfather Bob Pomeroy in 1979. Betty Gore's parents
adopted the children in 1988 at the request of their father, Allan
Gore, who was moving his new wife and family to California. 4.
MONTGOMERY. 5. CROWDER. 6. O'CONNELL. CHART(S): (The Dallas Morning
News) THE CANDY MONTGOMERY CASE: WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

[l***@gmail.com]

I attended the same church where the Montgomery and Gore families attended. In fact, I was teaching in Vacation Bible School the very day this all occurred. I just happened to have a conversation with a neighbor today about why I no longer attend church and it brought it all back to me. I looked on line to see what was there and found this article.

I knew all the people involved, although not close friends with them. The lawyer who defended Candy Montgomery also attended my church and I had his children in my class. The young pastor we had at the time got very involved in the whole situation. The aftermath was that the pastor and his wife later divorced, the attorney and his wife divorced and he later committed suicide. I understood at the time of the murder that both couples had been attending Marriage Encounter weekends through the church at the same time and that's when things got started between Candy and Allan. It was just too much to see Candy come into church services on Sundays while the investigation and trial were going on, and I quit attending. The only time I've set foot in a church since that time has been for funerals.

I wish I could reach out to the Gore daughters and the Montgomery children and tell them what devastated them and changed their lives also affected a lot of other lives. I'm so glad to read that the Gore daughters are doing well and I wonder about the Montgomery children. What a horrible legacy to be left to those children.

[g***@gmail.com]

Candy Montgomery didn't kill anyone's baby girl; Bethany Gore (not sure what her surname is now) is alive and well.

[c***@gmail.com]

I honestly would have killed her when she walked out of the court room. This family is so hurt.

[j***@gmail.com]

You should be ashamed of yourself. An eye for an eye, which I believe should be. But it's not your eye. Bitch has been tried and forgiven. Unfortunately, those weren't the loved ones who lost. Her name is Candace montgomery tenczar. Practices physcology. Unbelievable how our judicial system fucked up again!!

[j***@gmail.com]

By the way I'm not saying this is her email but ***@gmail.com??

[k***@gmail.com]

Just FYI it isn't Candace montgomery tenczar. That is a totally different lady. I think the right person is Candace Wheeler of Dawsonville, GA.

[p***@gmail.com]

I’ve just learned about this story - how awful! I don’t believe for a second it was self defense. Betty didn’t know candy was going over there, so how could she have had an ax ready? And the door supposedly locked? The neighbors said the doors were unlocked when Allan asked them to break a window to check. Like who calls like that all day? I absolutely believe he was in on it, and I believe he was having an affair with Elaine then too. I think he wanted out of the marriage and tricked Candy into doing it. I truly believe that candy thought one strike of an ax would kill. She didn’t plan on the 41 wacks.
It appears that Allan and his girls are Facebook friends now. But...OMG!! He’s gay now? He’s been in a domestic partnership since 2017.

[p***@gmail.com]

I’ve just learned about this story - how awful! I don’t believe for a second it was self defense. Betty didn’t know candy was going over there, so how could she have had an ax ready? And the door supposedly locked? The neighbors said the doors were unlocked when Allan asked them to break a window to check. Like who calls like that all day? I absolutely believe he was in on it, and I believe he was having an affair with Elaine then too. I think he wanted out of the marriage.
It appears that Allan and his girls are Facebook friends now. But...OMG!! He’s gay now? He’s been in a domestic partnership since 2017.

LEFT TO WONDER 20 years after the ax slaying of Betty Gore, victim's
daughters still have questions
By Doug J. Swanson
Published 06-11-2000
Dallas Morning News
WICHITA, Kan. - Two young women, sisters, were talking over lunch
recently about the woman who, 20 years ago, killed their mother.
"I wonder if she thinks about it every day, like I do," said Bethany
Gore, 20. "I wonder if she thinks about us."
Lisa Gore Harder, 25, recalled that her mother was only 30 when she
was slain.
"The closer I get to the age when she died," she said, "the more I
realize how young she was."
The older sister barely remembers her, and the younger one doesn't
remember her at all. In place of memories are yellowed newspaper
clippings and archived police reports that tell of June 13, 1980, when
schoolteacher Betty Gore was hacked to death with an ax in her
suburban Dallas home.
The killer was another 30-year-old woman, Candy Montgomery. She had
been having an affair with Mrs. Gore's husband, Allan Gore. Bethany,
not yet a year old, lay in her crib for hours as her mother's body
went undiscovered in another part of the house.
Five-year-old Lisa, not knowing what had happened, spent that night
with Mrs. Montgomery as the two families had arranged before the fatal
encounter. Mrs. Montgomery even drove Lisa back to the scene the next
day.
Meanwhile, Mr. Gore was in St. Paul, Minn., on business. His wife's
body was discovered late that night after he called neighbors and
asked them to go into the house because no one was answering his phone
calls.
It was the most sensational North Texas homicide of its day,
dominating the news coverage and bringing standing-room-only crowds to
see the trial in the old Collin County Courthouse in McKinney. When it
was done, Mrs. Montgomery walked free, having convinced a jury that
she had administered 41 wounds in self-defense.
Two decades later, some of those involved in the case have died or
moved far away. Memories have faded. New families have been started
and dissolved.
For Mrs. Gore's daughters, however, there are matters still to be
discussed. Twenty years ago, with all the lurid testimony about
adultery and pools of blood, about repressed memory and tired
marriages, the children drew sympathy but little outside attention.
20 years of anguish
Now, in young adulthood, they want to say that they managed to turn
out all right after all, despite some rough early years. Long
estranged from their father, they talk now of how nice it would have
been to have a mother around.
And they're curious about what Mrs. Montgomery, looking back, might
say.
"I just wish I knew what really happened," Ms. Gore said. "Because
nobody knows but her."
Mrs. Montgomery these days goes by Candace Wheeler, her maiden name,
and lives in Georgia. She does not wish to reveal her thoughts
regarding either then or now.
"I'm telling you in big bold letters," she said in response to a
reporter's query, "I'm not interested."
On the day of the slaying, Mrs. Montgomery had gone to the Gore house
in the Collin County suburb of Wylie. Lisa was at vacation Bible
school with Mrs. Montgomery's daughter. Mrs. Montgomery had gone to
retrieve Lisa's bathing suit.
Though it had been over for months, Mrs. Montgomery - mainstay of the
local Methodist church choir, wife of a successful engineer - had
engaged in a series of lunch-hour interludes with Mr. Gore at a shabby
motel in Richardson.
That morning in the Wylie house, Mrs. Gore confronted her with
knowledge of the affair, Mrs. Montgomery later testified. Then, she
said, Mrs. Gore - a woman with no history of violent acts - attacked
her in the laundry room with a 3-foot ax.
As Bethany slept in a bedroom down the hall, the women struggled over
the weapon until Mrs. Montgomery seized control. She began, she would
later testify, swinging the ax in a frenzy.
When it was over, Mrs. Gore lay dead on the laundry room floor. More
than three dozen blows had landed on her face and head.
Mrs. Montgomery then washed the blood off herself, returned to the
Bible school, ate lunch and gave the children a Scripture lesson. Next
she took Lisa and her own daughter shopping for Father's Day cards.
She told no one what she had done at the Gore house. Days later,
police linked her to a bloody thumbprint found on the Gores' freezer.
She was arrested and charged with murder.
Repressed hostility
At her trial, a defense psychiatrist said Mrs. Montgomery snapped when
Mrs. Gore said to her, "Ssshhh," as they fought for the ax. This
released, the doctor said,
26 years of repressed hostility that Mrs. Montgomery held toward her
mother, and she could no longer control herself. The jury took 4 1/2
hours to acquit her on all charges.
A not-guilty verdict is one thing. Forgiveness by grieving loved ones
is something else.
"I don't know if I could forgive her," Mrs. Harder said recently. "I
know you're supposed to, but. ..."
She dimly remembers her mother's funeral in Mrs. Gore's Kansas
hometown.
"Everybody was crying, so I pretended I was crying," she said. "At
that age you don't really understand what death is, and you don't
realize how long forever is."
Both sisters believe the true story of their mother's death has never
been told by Mrs. Montgomery.
"I just think she got away with it," Ms. Gore said. "I'm one of those
people who are very emotional, extremely emotional," she said. Sad
television shows reduce her to tears. A junior at Wichita State
University, she wants to be an elementary school teacher.
Mrs. Harder is more diplomatic and contained. With brown hair and dark
eyes, she looks like her mother.
"On our 50th anniversary, we put her mother's picture on our mantel,"
said her grandmother, Bertha Pomeroy. "Everyone thought it was Lisa."
An accountant at a Wichita equipment leasing company, Mrs. Harder is
married to Jonn Harder of Newton, Kan. They have a 7-month-old son,
Jacob.
The sisters were adopted by their maternal grandparents, Bob and
Bertha Pomeroy of Norwich, Kan., in 1988. The adoption came at the
request of Mr. Gore, who was moving his new wife and family from the
Dallas area to California.
"They felt like their marriage had a better shot at working out if
Bethany and I weren't around," Mrs. Harder said.
Second marriage
Mr. Gore had married the former Elaine Clift less than three months
after Mrs. Montgomery's acquittal, and the family later moved to
Sachse, northeast of Garland. The first few years of their father's
second marriage were difficult for the sisters.
Lisa was in and out of therapy as a pre-teen. "There were a lot of
times my dad and Elaine would use withholding food as punishment," she
said.
Mrs. Harder said that when she was 10 her stepmother made her read
Evidence of Love, the true-crime book that detailed her father's
affair and her mother's death.
"I had to give her a little summary after each chapter," she said.
One of Ms. Gore's earliest memories is being punished by standing in a
cold shower with her feet in a tub of ice cubes.
"My stepmother told us if we said anything [about their treatment]
they would separate us," Mrs. Harder said.
"I've seen neither of them in 15 years," Elaine Gore said of the
sisters.
"I only want to say that Elaine Gore has no comment."
Elaine and Allan Gore are divorced, and the sisters' former stepmother
is now a college music teacher in the northeastern United States. She
refused to respond to any other questions about her relationship with
the two girls.
A dispute over grandparents' visitation rights ended up in court in
Dallas before it was resolved. Once, Mr. Pomeroy said, a young Bethany
arrived for a visit with tufts of hair missing.
"I told him [Mr. Gore] if that little girl comes back here with any
more hairs pulled out of her head, I'll take you down and pull out
every one of your hairs," Mr. Pomeroy said.
Mr. Gore, a computer consultant living in California, did not respond
to numerous phone calls and a letter requesting comment on remarks by
his daughters and their grandfather.
Once the girls reached Kansas for good, they thrived. Lisa was a
cheerleader and class president.
"They were pretty good girls to raise," said Mr. Pomeroy, 72, a
farmer.
Both were salutatorians of their high school graduating classes, and
both earned college scholarships.
"I think my mother would be proud of me and my sister," Ms. Gore said.
Said Mrs. Harder, "We've both tried to do the best with what's been
handed us."
Family division
The sisters have not seen their father in six years, though there have
been occasional greeting cards from him, signed "Allan." When Mrs.
Harder was married in 1996, he was not invited.
"Bethany said she wasn't going to come if he was there," she said.
Mr. Pomeroy still harbors anger toward Mr. Gore, in part the result of
a conversation with his son-in-law shortly after his daughter's death.
"I said, 'You didn't show any remorse,'" Mr. Pomeroy recalled
recently. "He said, 'It didn't bother me very much. We weren't getting
along anyway.'"
'A lot of anger'
Perhaps most of the ill will is still directed at Mrs. Montgomery.
"My family has a lot of anger and a lot of hatred toward her," Mrs.
Harder said, adding that she prefers not to dwell on that. "You can
spend your whole life hating someone."
Instead, she tries to remember her mother.
"I talk to her once in a while. I kind of always feel like she's
there, like with [son] Jake," she said. "My husband says, 'It's too
bad your mom couldn't see him.' In my mind, she probably sees him
every day."
Again, the talk turned back to loss. "What angers me," Ms. Gore said,
"is thinking about what could have been."
Even if their mother had lived, the daughters say, that doesn't mean
they would have enjoyed a happy life in Texas.
"I know that Mom and Dad would have gotten a divorce. I think she
would have left him and we would have moved back to Kansas," Ms. Gore
said. She smiled, with a distant look in her eyes. "That would have
been perfect."
Craig Hacker) Lisa Gore Harder, holding son Jacob, and her sister,
Bethany Gore, would like answers to questions about their mother's
1980 death at the hands of Candy Montgomery. 2. Betty Gore, shown in
this 1979 photograph with daughters Bethany and Lisa, 5, was 30 years
old when she was slain June 13, 1980, in her Wylie home. "I just wish
I knew what really happened," Bethany Gore, who is now 20, says about
the ax slaying. Candy Montgomery, who had been having an affair with
Mrs. Gore's husband, was acquitted in the case after claiming self-
defense. 3. Betty Gore ... the mother and teacher was killed after a
confrontation with Candy Montgomery, according to testimony. , Betty
Gore holds daughter Bethany while her other daughter, Lisa, sits on
the lap of her grandfather Bob Pomeroy in 1979. Betty Gore's parents
adopted the children in 1988 at the request of their father, Allan
Gore, who was moving his new wife and family to California. 4.
MONTGOMERY. 5. CROWDER. 6. O'CONNELL. CHART(S): (The Dallas Morning
News) THE CANDY MONTGOMERY CASE: WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

[a***@hotmail.com]

LEFT TO WONDER 20 years after the ax slaying of Betty Gore, victim's
daughters still have questions
By Doug J. Swanson
Published 06-11-2000
Dallas Morning News
WICHITA, Kan. - Two young women, sisters, were talking over lunch
recently about the woman who, 20 years ago, killed their mother.
"I wonder if she thinks about it every day, like I do," said Bethany
Gore, 20. "I wonder if she thinks about us."
Lisa Gore Harder, 25, recalled that her mother was only 30 when she
was slain.
"The closer I get to the age when she died," she said, "the more I
realize how young she was."
The older sister barely remembers her, and the younger one doesn't
remember her at all. In place of memories are yellowed newspaper
clippings and archived police reports that tell of June 13, 1980, when
schoolteacher Betty Gore was hacked to death with an ax in her
suburban Dallas home.
The killer was another 30-year-old woman, Candy Montgomery. She had
been having an affair with Mrs. Gore's husband, Allan Gore. Bethany,
not yet a year old, lay in her crib for hours as her mother's body
went undiscovered in another part of the house.
Five-year-old Lisa, not knowing what had happened, spent that night
with Mrs. Montgomery as the two families had arranged before the fatal
encounter. Mrs. Montgomery even drove Lisa back to the scene the next
day.
Meanwhile, Mr. Gore was in St. Paul, Minn., on business. His wife's
body was discovered late that night after he called neighbors and
asked them to go into the house because no one was answering his phone
calls.
It was the most sensational North Texas homicide of its day,
dominating the news coverage and bringing standing-room-only crowds to
see the trial in the old Collin County Courthouse in McKinney. When it
was done, Mrs. Montgomery walked free, having convinced a jury that
she had administered 41 wounds in self-defense.
Two decades later, some of those involved in the case have died or
moved far away. Memories have faded. New families have been started
and dissolved.
For Mrs. Gore's daughters, however, there are matters still to be
discussed. Twenty years ago, with all the lurid testimony about
adultery and pools of blood, about repressed memory and tired
marriages, the children drew sympathy but little outside attention.
20 years of anguish
Now, in young adulthood, they want to say that they managed to turn
out all right after all, despite some rough early years. Long
estranged from their father, they talk now of how nice it would have
been to have a mother around.
And they're curious about what Mrs. Montgomery, looking back, might
say.
"I just wish I knew what really happened," Ms. Gore said. "Because
nobody knows but her."
Mrs. Montgomery these days goes by Candace Wheeler, her maiden name,
and lives in Georgia. She does not wish to reveal her thoughts
regarding either then or now.
"I'm telling you in big bold letters," she said in response to a
reporter's query, "I'm not interested."
On the day of the slaying, Mrs. Montgomery had gone to the Gore house
in the Collin County suburb of Wylie. Lisa was at vacation Bible
school with Mrs. Montgomery's daughter. Mrs. Montgomery had gone to
retrieve Lisa's bathing suit.
Though it had been over for months, Mrs. Montgomery - mainstay of the
local Methodist church choir, wife of a successful engineer - had
engaged in a series of lunch-hour interludes with Mr. Gore at a shabby
motel in Richardson.
That morning in the Wylie house, Mrs. Gore confronted her with
knowledge of the affair, Mrs. Montgomery later testified. Then, she
said, Mrs. Gore - a woman with no history of violent acts - attacked
her in the laundry room with a 3-foot ax.
As Bethany slept in a bedroom down the hall, the women struggled over
the weapon until Mrs. Montgomery seized control. She began, she would
later testify, swinging the ax in a frenzy.
When it was over, Mrs. Gore lay dead on the laundry room floor. More
than three dozen blows had landed on her face and head.
Mrs. Montgomery then washed the blood off herself, returned to the
Bible school, ate lunch and gave the children a Scripture lesson. Next
she took Lisa and her own daughter shopping for Father's Day cards.
She told no one what she had done at the Gore house. Days later,
police linked her to a bloody thumbprint found on the Gores' freezer.
She was arrested and charged with murder.
Repressed hostility
At her trial, a defense psychiatrist said Mrs. Montgomery snapped when
Mrs. Gore said to her, "Ssshhh," as they fought for the ax. This
released, the doctor said,
26 years of repressed hostility that Mrs. Montgomery held toward her
mother, and she could no longer control herself. The jury took 4 1/2
hours to acquit her on all charges.
A not-guilty verdict is one thing. Forgiveness by grieving loved ones
is something else.
"I don't know if I could forgive her," Mrs. Harder said recently. "I
know you're supposed to, but. ..."
She dimly remembers her mother's funeral in Mrs. Gore's Kansas
hometown.
"Everybody was crying, so I pretended I was crying," she said. "At
that age you don't really understand what death is, and you don't
realize how long forever is."
Both sisters believe the true story of their mother's death has never
been told by Mrs. Montgomery.
"I just think she got away with it," Ms. Gore said. "I'm one of those
people who are very emotional, extremely emotional," she said. Sad
television shows reduce her to tears. A junior at Wichita State
University, she wants to be an elementary school teacher.
Mrs. Harder is more diplomatic and contained. With brown hair and dark
eyes, she looks like her mother.
"On our 50th anniversary, we put her mother's picture on our mantel,"
said her grandmother, Bertha Pomeroy. "Everyone thought it was Lisa."
An accountant at a Wichita equipment leasing company, Mrs. Harder is
married to Jonn Harder of Newton, Kan. They have a 7-month-old son,
Jacob.
The sisters were adopted by their maternal grandparents, Bob and
Bertha Pomeroy of Norwich, Kan., in 1988. The adoption came at the
request of Mr. Gore, who was moving his new wife and family from the
Dallas area to California.
"They felt like their marriage had a better shot at working out if
Bethany and I weren't around," Mrs. Harder said.
Second marriage
Mr. Gore had married the former Elaine Clift less than three months
after Mrs. Montgomery's acquittal, and the family later moved to
Sachse, northeast of Garland. The first few years of their father's
second marriage were difficult for the sisters.
Lisa was in and out of therapy as a pre-teen. "There were a lot of
times my dad and Elaine would use withholding food as punishment," she
said.
Mrs. Harder said that when she was 10 her stepmother made her read
Evidence of Love, the true-crime book that detailed her father's
affair and her mother's death.
"I had to give her a little summary after each chapter," she said.
One of Ms. Gore's earliest memories is being punished by standing in a
cold shower with her feet in a tub of ice cubes.
"My stepmother told us if we said anything [about their treatment]
they would separate us," Mrs. Harder said.
"I've seen neither of them in 15 years," Elaine Gore said of the
sisters.
"I only want to say that Elaine Gore has no comment."
Elaine and Allan Gore are divorced, and the sisters' former stepmother
is now a college music teacher in the northeastern United States. She
refused to respond to any other questions about her relationship with
the two girls.
A dispute over grandparents' visitation rights ended up in court in
Dallas before it was resolved. Once, Mr. Pomeroy said, a young Bethany
arrived for a visit with tufts of hair missing.
"I told him [Mr. Gore] if that little girl comes back here with any
more hairs pulled out of her head, I'll take you down and pull out
every one of your hairs," Mr. Pomeroy said.
Mr. Gore, a computer consultant living in California, did not respond
to numerous phone calls and a letter requesting comment on remarks by
his daughters and their grandfather.
Once the girls reached Kansas for good, they thrived. Lisa was a
cheerleader and class president.
"They were pretty good girls to raise," said Mr. Pomeroy, 72, a
farmer.
Both were salutatorians of their high school graduating classes, and
both earned college scholarships.
"I think my mother would be proud of me and my sister," Ms. Gore said.
Said Mrs. Harder, "We've both tried to do the best with what's been
handed us."
Family division
The sisters have not seen their father in six years, though there have
been occasional greeting cards from him, signed "Allan." When Mrs.
Harder was married in 1996, he was not invited.
"Bethany said she wasn't going to come if he was there," she said.
Mr. Pomeroy still harbors anger toward Mr. Gore, in part the result of
a conversation with his son-in-law shortly after his daughter's death.
"I said, 'You didn't show any remorse,'" Mr. Pomeroy recalled
recently. "He said, 'It didn't bother me very much. We weren't getting
along anyway.'"
'A lot of anger'
Perhaps most of the ill will is still directed at Mrs. Montgomery.
"My family has a lot of anger and a lot of hatred toward her," Mrs.
Harder said, adding that she prefers not to dwell on that. "You can
spend your whole life hating someone."
Instead, she tries to remember her mother.
"I talk to her once in a while. I kind of always feel like she's
there, like with [son] Jake," she said. "My husband says, 'It's too
bad your mom couldn't see him.' In my mind, she probably sees him
every day."
Again, the talk turned back to loss. "What angers me," Ms. Gore said,
"is thinking about what could have been."
Even if their mother had lived, the daughters say, that doesn't mean
they would have enjoyed a happy life in Texas.
"I know that Mom and Dad would have gotten a divorce. I think she
would have left him and we would have moved back to Kansas," Ms. Gore
said. She smiled, with a distant look in her eyes. "That would have
been perfect."
Craig Hacker) Lisa Gore Harder, holding son Jacob, and her sister,
Bethany Gore, would like answers to questions about their mother's
1980 death at the hands of Candy Montgomery. 2. Betty Gore, shown in
this 1979 photograph with daughters Bethany and Lisa, 5, was 30 years
old when she was slain June 13, 1980, in her Wylie home. "I just wish
I knew what really happened," Bethany Gore, who is now 20, says about
the ax slaying. Candy Montgomery, who had been having an affair with
Mrs. Gore's husband, was acquitted in the case after claiming self-
defense. 3. Betty Gore ... the mother and teacher was killed after a
confrontation with Candy Montgomery, according to testimony. , Betty
Gore holds daughter Bethany while her other daughter, Lisa, sits on
the lap of her grandfather Bob Pomeroy in 1979. Betty Gore's parents
adopted the children in 1988 at the request of their father, Allan
Gore, who was moving his new wife and family to California. 4.
MONTGOMERY. 5. CROWDER. 6. O'CONNELL. CHART(S): (The Dallas Morning
News) THE CANDY MONTGOMERY CASE: WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

Forty year anniversary...Friday 13th