New Evidence Emerges in High School Football Star‘s Wife Murder Case: Is the Real Killer Still at Large?
In the affluent Houston suburb of Katy, Texas few could imagine that a beloved high school teacher would meet such a grim and tragic fate in her own home. By all accounts, Belinda Lucas Temple had a cheerful disposition and a heart for helping students with learning disabilities. Married to local high school football star David Temple, Belinda was well-liked and seemed to evoke compassion from all those who knew her.
Which is why January 11, 1999 shook the community to its core.
The Savage Murder That Shocked Suburban Texas
When Belinda Temple didn’t show up to pick up her 3-year-old son Evan from daycare at the expected time, colleagues knew something was wrong. They stopped by the Temple’s residence hoping to find an innocuous explanation but instead were met with a ghastly sight: Belinda’s dead body splayed out on the floor of a closet, her head covered in blood from a devastating shotgun wound.
Investigators surveyed the jarring scene, one described as being reminiscent of a slaughterhouse. Blood coated the walls and pooled on the floor from the gaping head trauma while fragments of bone, hair, and brain matter surrounded Belinda’s lifeless form. She was 8 months pregnant at the time with a daughter who also perished in the attack.
All signs pointed to the murder being personal in nature – Belinda had been executed at extremely close range in her own home in the middle of the afternoon. There was no evidence of forced entry. Nothing of value had been taken from the property that would indicate a botched robbery. Why would a loved wife, mother and teacher meet such a violent demise?
Many in the community were quick to point fingers at one man: David Temple, Belinda’s high school sweetheart and husband of nearly 5 years.
A High School Football Star with a Dark Side
To outsiders, David Temple fulfilled the stereotype of a star athlete living a charmed life. He was a record-setting football player from a well-respected family who started dating Belinda when she was a freshman and he was a senior. After graduation David went on to play football at nearby Stephen F. Austin State University.
When he and Belinda wed in 1994, many thought they were the perfect, all-American couple. But few knew about David’s controlling, abusive behavior towards his wife.
Belinda confided in friends and family that David didn’t like her going out without him and wanted to know where she was at all times. He had a fierce temper – stories of his willingness to get into fist fights with anyone who wronged him or even glanced wrongly at Belinda permeated through their social circles.
While Belinda was the darling of her classmates – kind, bubbly and outgoing – her personality started to change while dating David. Friends noted she became quieter, more closed off, and constantly worried about upsetting her boyfriend. In retrospect, many wonder if Belinda was subconsciously afraid of what David might do if she left him.
“Her personality went from being very popular, very outgoing and talkative, to introverted and quiet. She isolated and alienated herself from her friends by his insistence,” said Shirley Hollon, one of Belinda’s closest childhood friends, in an interview with 20/20.
A Secret Affair Uncovered
David Temple had a lot to lose from a divorce. The son of a prominent businessman and one of the most celebrated athletes to come out of Katy High School, reputation mattered.
So when Belinda uncovered David’s affair with a co-worker from Katy High School just weeks before her murder, some came to believe he resorted to more nefarious methods to end his marriage while preserving his public image.
David had been having an extramarital relationship with Heather Scott, a teacher at the school. Scott herself was married at the time. While the timeline of their involvement remains murky, at some point in December 1998 Belinda uncovered explicit emails between her husband and Scott.
Witnesses said Belinda was upset but determined to keep her family together, perhaps out of fear of retaliation. Despite David’s repeated infidelity and verbal abuse towards his pregnant wife, she hid the truth from most of her loved ones during her final weeks.
A Weak Alibi and Incriminating Behavior
On January 11th, 1999 David claimed he arrived home to find his house ransacked and his wife murdered in the closet. But investigators quickly found flaws in David’s story.
He said he and his son Evan spent much of the afternoon driving around a nearby park looking at birds. But eyewitnesses only placed David alone visiting stores during the critical timeframe.
David also claimed he unsuccessfully tried to revive his wife upon discovering her dead body. However, the first responder on scene testified that Belinda was clearly deceased and that her head wounds were so gruesome that attempting mouth-to-mouth resuscitation would’ve been impossible. David’s oddly cold and emotionless demeanor in the aftermath of the murder also raised suspicion.
As law enforcement dug deeper, they discovered David had a history of childhood rage issues and run-ins with the law. A search of the Temple’s home found no fingerprints or viable DNA aside from the victims and David himself – unusual for a supposed break-in. The murder weapon was never recovered either, causing police to believe David hid it away after killing his wife.
Damning cell phone records also showed that both David and his mistress Heather Scott lied about their whereabouts on January 11th. In fact, multiple eyewitnesses said they spotted David’s truck at a park near Scott’s apartment that afternoon.
For investigators, David’s poorly constructed alibi, history of violence, and known motive of wanting to be with Heather Scott led them to one conclusion: David murdered Belinda and staged the crime scene to look like a burglary gone wrong. He was arrested and charged in October 1999.
A Guilty Verdict Leads to a Life Sentence
The prosecution wove a compelling narrative of a selfish, womanizing jock so bent on having his cake and eating it too that he resorted to mercilessly killing his devoted wife who wanted to work things out. They painted David Temple as a cunning manipulator who exploited his upstanding reputation to appear innocent.
Jurors evidently agreed. While David Temple professed his innocence and his legal team pointed fingers at alternative suspects like a teenage house burglar named Riley Joe Sanders, after eight hours of deliberation he was convicted of murder in 2007 and sentenced to life in prison.
But Belinda’s family felt David deserved an even harsher punishment for his unconscionable crime. During the sentencing phase, they asked jurors to give Temple the death penalty. Jurors deadlocked on what his fate should be, resulting in a mistrial.
Rather than risk another case with an uncertain outcome, prosecutors allowed David Temple to serve out his life sentence behind bars. And for the next eight years David mounted appeal after appeal seeking to clear his name, seemingly to no avail. Temple appeared destined to spend his remaining days estranged from friends and family as a convicted murderer.
That all changed in 2016 when new evidence came to light that cast doubt on David’s guilt and pointed suspicion toward Belinda Temple’s real killer still living freely.
Game Changing New Evidence Offers Exoneration Hope
In handwritten letters penned behind bars, David Temple always insisted police had the right motive but the wrong man. He pled his case to anyone who would listen. Ultimately those cries for help landed on the ears of Texas’ Forensic Science Commission who agreed to review the handling of evidence in Temple’s case.
What they discovered were glaring oversights that had wrongfully kept an innocent man in prison.
First, investigators had recovered a shotgun shell with the victim’s toe prints on it at the crime scene which was critical to understanding when Belinda was shot. But that evidence was never disclosed at trial. The 20 gauge shell proved Belinda was shot not in the closet where she died, but instead at the threshold of her master bedroom before running and taking her last breaths in the closet.
This finding alone punched glaring holes in the prosecution‘s sequence of events pinning the murder on David.
But most shocking was definitive DNA testing of the shell that found trace evidence of skin cells from someone other than Belinda or David Temple at the crime scene. This third party DNA evidence strongly supported Temple’s long held belief of an alternate assailant being responsible for his wife’s slaying.
In particular David and his legal team have pointed at Riley Joe Sanders, the teenage neighbor accused of burglaries in the Temple’s subdivision as potentially being involved. And the Forensic Science Commission chided investigators for not testing Sanders‘ DNA to compare it with the unknown genetic material recovered on the shot shell evidence.
Armed with these paradigm shifting discoveries, Temple and his family hoped to finally set the record straight and exonerate David after 16 long years of being labeled a killer.
Freedom at Last but the Fight Continues
In 2016 David Temple‘s murder conviction was unanimously overturned by Texas‘ highest criminal court after they determined he did not receive a fair trial. Pointing to prosecutorial misconduct and newly discovered evidence, the judges ordered Temple released on bond and indicated he deserved a new day in court.
After rotting in prison for a crime he didn‘t commit, David Temple walked out of the Harris County courthouse on December 28, 2016 a free man for the first time in over a decade. Surrounded by jubilant family members steadfastly committed to proving his innocence, David maintained that he would not rest until his name was cleared and those responsible for Belinda’s death were held accountable.
David awaited retrial as prosecutors vowed to take another shot at convicting Temple who they said should remain the sole person of interest. But after mishandling the original trial and failing to follow leads pointing away from David, Belinda’s loved ones blasted the DA’s office and begged them to search for unknown DNA donors in hopes of tracking her actual killer.
In the end, prosecutors acknowledged trying David again would likely end without resolution. The inconsistencies could not be sufficiently explained away, especially in light of new evidence the jury never got to hear. So in 2019, charges against David Temple were dropped permanently.
After maintaining his innocence for nearly 20 years, David finally got back some semblance of normalcy. He returned home with family working to heal their broken bond. David became an account manager at a logistics company, granted the chance to restart his professional career after losing so many precious years.
And while Belinda Temple’s murder technically remains unsolved, David welcomed any new investigation that could shed light on the possible alternate suspects ignored at the time like Riley Joe Sanders. Until those responsible for Belinda and their unborn daughter’s brutal murders are held accountable, true justice remains lacking for this family ripped apart by a mysterious, violent crime over 20 years ago.
Maybe somewhere down the winding path towards closure, Belinda’s survivors can find some solace after decades of grief. But one thing remains clear – the full truth has yet to emerge in this tragic case that shattered so many lives, leaving fears that the real killer has walked free far too long.