Original subtitles

I started out as a prosecutor when I was a baby.

I was 23 years old, and for 21 years,

I fought for justice for victims

on every single case I ever handled,

always trying to do the right thing.

And then for the last case of my career at the DA's office,

to be accused of what I was accused of,

and to have to see a family that didn't deserve

to have any of this happen to them.

I have to put up with it too. It was pretty awful.

On January the 11th, 1999, the murder of Belinda Temple,

who was eight months pregnant with a little baby girl,

shocked everyone in Katy, Texas,

and changed a lot of people's lives.

Prosecuting this case is one of the most difficult things

I've ever done in my whole career.

This trial made my life a living hell for a long time,

because I was accused of withholding evidence

and sending an innocent man to prison.

I couldn't believe it.

Up until that time, no one said

ugly things about me as a prosecutor.

I was the golden girl.

But on this case, I was not only fighting

for justice for Belinda and her baby,

I also had to fight for my own career and my own reputation.

I felt sorry for myself.

I got mad. I lost friends.

But I tried to always tell myself just to shut up

and grow up and suck it up, because the real concern here

is what all this did to Belinda's family.

They didn't just have to go through losing her

and the baby and waiting for the charges to get filed,

and waiting for the trial to happen.

Because of all the mess, they had to do it all again.

And it was just really, really sad.

So I think it's time for people to hear the truth

of exactly what happened to Belinda's family and to me,

to finally get that justice for Belinda and her baby.

It's time to let the souls

of Belinda and Erin in heaven rest in peace.

Around 5:30 in the evening,

Sarge come in and told us they had a homicide

in a location in Acadia.

When we first arrived at the scene,

David Temple was sitting on a bench in the backyard

and his dog was loose.

The Temples had a chow that was not friendly.

You couldn't get anywhere near the house.

He wasn't gonna let you in.

After Mr. Temple secured the dog,

we detained him in a marked unit.

According to the homeowner, David Temple,

his wife is upstairs in her master closet,

dead, with her brains blown out.

The constable's office already

had secured the scene

and a couple of us did enter the residence.

It looks like there was forced entry to the back door.

First, we went up the stairs

to the master bedroom.

To the left of the main bathroom was a large walk-in closet,

which is where we saw Belinda's body.

Feet closest to the door

and her head toward the wall.

There was a significant amount of brain matter

there on the wall and between the clothing.

This was vicious. This was brutal.

It's clear it was a shotgun blast

because there's pellets on the ground,

there's shotgun wadding

and brain matter all over the wall.

We did find two guns in the closet,

both of them rifles.

They were behind some clothing in the corner,

but no shotguns.

As we went through the first floor,

we saw that there was a television

lying by the table and it's still plugged in.

We also see the drawers were open,

but everything was neat and tidy in the drawers.

If this is in fact a burglary, it was botched

because a burglar is going to take

whatever they can find to carry out of the house.

Right away, investigators are noticing things

that the average person doesn't notice

and appreciating that things just aren't quite adding up.

One thing about the forced entry to the back door

is that if the door was in a closed position

and someone from outside forced entry by breaking the glass

to get in to turn the knob, you would expect to see

the glass going in that direction.

The glass was not where it should be.

In this case, all the glass is shattered

to the left in front of the fireplace.

Therefore, the door had to have been open

when the glass was broken.

We needed to get a statement from David.

He's supposedly the last to see her alive,

first to see her dead.

Was there somebody in between there?

We don't know. So I took him to the station.

In any investigation, the detectives want to try

and get statements from all the witnesses

they can as soon as possible

because that way everything that just happened

is very fresh in their mind.

While I was talking to David,

he certainly did not appear to be grieving.

He had no tears in his eyes. His eyes weren't bubbling up.

He was cordial in talking with me back and forth.

He went through the story.

He teaches at one school. His wife teaches at another.

His son was at a daycare.

He was sick. His wife had to go pick him up.

David said she'd drop by his family's house.

And while there, she picked up some soup

and brought it home.

When she got home, she said she was tired.

So David decides to take the child out

to a park and then go shopping.

I asked him what park he went to.

There's two different parks.

And he was...

mixed up on what park he had taken him to.

And then he said after they played at the park

for just a short time,

he went to Brookshire Brothers to go shopping.

And then he went to Home Depot.

After he left Home Depot, he went home.

And as he's coming out of the garage,

he notices the window is shattered on the back door.

So he immediately picks Evan up, his son,

and takes him across the street to his neighbor's house

and tells him there's something going on at the house.

Watch the child.

Between the different things in the house

not seeming to add up to a burglary

and the holes in David Temple's story

that just don't make sense,

it's just natural that the detectives would need

to ask him more questions.

Now we go back in and talk to him

and we're saying,

"This doesn't look right. This doesn't look right."

This is where he starts getting agitated.

And I said, "The only thing to really clarify this

"would be if you'd agree to take a polygraph."

And that's where he stopped.

"I ain't doing that.

"I don't have anything else to say.

"I want an attorney."

I think a polygraph is a tool to show you

how cooperative someone really is.

So if your wife and your unborn daughter

have been brutally murdered and you want to cooperate

and you want to find out who did it,

why wouldn't you take a polygraph?

Why wouldn't you hurry up and take a polygraph

so they can check that box

and move on to find the real killer?

And of course, I called the DA and the DA said,

"Yeah, we just don't have enough.

"Just because he doesn't want to take a polygraph

"it's not a probable cause to arrest him.

"So we have to let him go."

When David Temple walked out of the station that night,

the detectives didn't know if an innocent man

was walking out or a cold-blooded killer.

She did not kick off her shoes.

She didn't go up to bed and take off her glasses.

She was killed before either of those two things happened.

David Temple's family brings up a name of a brand new suspect.

What's he doing up north that he's not telling us about?

Was he up there to possibly dispose of a shotgun?

What are they trying to hide?

And maybe there is way more to this relationship

than he's ever told anybody, which, you know,

kind of gives you a motive.

January the 11th of 1999

was the worst day of my life.

I get a phone call

from Belinda's father-in-law, Ken Temple.

Ken, he said, "Belinda's been murdered."

To get that news over the phone

that your twin sister's been murdered.

That was the worst news I could have ever gotten.

Her world revolved around her son, Evan,

and she was so excited about having a little girl there.

Such a senseless tragedy.

I never thought something like this

would happen to Belinda.

By the next day, Belinda Temple's murder

was the lead story because it was so unbelievable.

This morning the students in faculty

at Katy High School are shock and sad by the death

of teacher Belinda Temple, who was found shot

in her home last night.

There was a lot of news coverage

with the students talking about how much they loved her.

Even if they weren't in her class,

they would go by.

Hey, Ms. Lucas, how are you?

You know, she would go into the gym

and shoot basketball with them.

She impacted everybody that she met.

This case got a lot of press

because Belinda was everybody's sweetheart

and David Temple had been the biggest star

of the football team at Katy High School.

Everybody in town knew who he was,

and so when they met each other at Stephen F. Austin

and fell in love and got married,

everybody liked them and loved that story.

Belinda and I were born in Martins Ferry, Ohio,

December 30th, '68,

and we moved to Nacogdoches, Texas in 1976.

When we were born, I was two pounds heavier

and two inches longer than Belinda,

but it didn't take her long to catch up,

and she ended up being like three inches taller than me,

so Belinda called me shrimpy.

We did everything together.

We shared a bedroom. We shared birthdays.

We liked playing softball growing up.

Belinda would play first base, and I played second base,

and we made a lot of double plays.

We were very competitive.

Belinda wanted to be a teacher

and especially go on to special education.

She wanted to reach out and help as many people as she could

that had some kind of disability.

Belinda and I met at college.

Belinda and I spent an incredible

amount of time together.

We were roommates, and we also worked together,

and then we went out together.

When she first met David, I thought he was a pompous ass.

He made fun of my accent and my kicking boots,

so it wasn't the best first impression,

but she was very happy,

so, you know, you just roll with it.

When I first met David,

I knew he was a big football star.

He was very popular.

Had the nickname "Temple of Doom."

David and Belinda both wanted to teach and coach,

both athletic, both family-oriented.

They both had the same goals.

She loved him, and she was,

you know, she was ready to be a wife.

Belinda seemed so happy.

The day after murder, we witnessed the autopsy.

The evidence is collected that is still with the body,

like pellets from the shotgun.

According to the medical examiner,

it was a close contact wound

with a 12-gauge shotgun wound...

to the back of Belinda's head.

And, yes, of course,

seeing the baby removed from the womb.

Ah, you know, it's, let's say, you're homicide.

You're supposed to be tough, and you're supposed to...

No.

If you've got kids,

and this doesn't burn into your memory,

something's wrong...

with you.

Sorry.

That--

That'll never go away.

When we first get on an investigation,

we divide up the duties.

I went to Katy High School

and started talking to Belinda's co-workers.

I learned that they loved her. They loved working with her.

She had the perfect family. She had the perfect marriage.

As the detectives from the Sheriff's Department

started to look deeper into Belinda Temple's life,

her friends, her job, her marriage...

what they thought the story was started to change.

Tammy Harlan had been friends with Belinda,

and she was one of the first people that I talked to

to tell me about the troubles

between David and Belinda Temple.

Tammy didn't like the way that David talked to Belinda.

He said she was fat,

and he did not talk well about her family.

He called them a bunch of rednecks.

He thought that his family was better

than her family.

Belinda did say, you know, he's kind of distant,

and we've had some troubles.

She said that they...

just stopped speaking to each other at home.

It was a couple of months that they did this.

It was just weird to me.

How do you not talk to someone

you share a house with?

Belinda would confide to Tammy that she thought

David might be cheating on her.

Charges she saw on the credit card,

times that he wasn't home.

A friend of the Temple's said

that David may have been seeing another girl.

Her name was Heather.

She was a co-worker of David's, and there was a rumor

that they had been talking in more than a friendly way.

Investigators need to track down Heather Scott

to get a statement from her.

If it turns out to be true

that Heather Scott and David Temple

are having an affair,

that's going to cause more questions

that need to be asked of David Temple.

But at this point, David stopped cooperating

with the Sheriff's Department.

The next step is to look into his alibi

by looking at that CCTV footage from Brookshire Brothers

and at the Home Depot

where he claimed he went that day.

What doesn't make sense to the investigators is that

David Temple chose a store six miles from his house

when there's a grocery store much closer than that.

Then they discover an important discrepancy.

If he left Brookshire Brothers at 4.38 p.m.

and got to the Home Depot at 5.14 p.m.,

that's a window of 36 minutes.

But those two places are only about 10 minutes apart.

So what was he doing for the rest of that time?

Belinda and Erin were laid to rest

at the First Baptist Church in Katy, Texas.

Several hundred people came to her funeral.

A lot of students, I believe they had actually

closed the school down early

so they could attend the funeral.

Belinda's parents were there and of course

they're just devastated.

They loved Belinda.

They loved her.

But David wasn't really crying.

He wasn't really-- He'd just sat there.

I've never had a murdered spouse.

I don't know how you're supposed to act

but it's kind of weird.

While the investigation is still in the early stages,

David Temple's family

brings to the Sheriff Department's attention

the possibility of another suspect.

Probably Joe Sanders was the next door neighbor.

He was going to the same school that Belinda taught at

and there was some initial information

that there was hard feeling between him and Belinda.

We need to get some more information.

Although David Temple's alibi

still needs to be looked into a little further,

another person of interest in the murder of Belinda Temple

is identified.

The Temple family brought up the possibility

of the neighbor boy, Riley Joe Sanders.

Riley Joe went to Katy High School

and knew Belinda Temple well.

She had actually helped him with some of his classes.

A couple months prior to the murder of Belinda Temple,

Riley Joe's parents were gone.

He had a party and there was some broken glass

in the Temple's yard.

Belinda told his parents, "Your son had this party."

And they grounded him.

And so David Temple's family said,

"You need to look at Riley Joe.

"He's got an axe to grind with Belinda."

I went to Katy High School and I found out

that the day that Belinda was murdered,

Riley Joe was gone for part of the day.

We need to talk to him and anyone he was with

and find out what was going on.

Apparently Riley Joe had skipped his last class

and when confronted with that information,

he said he was just at the house

smoking dope with his friends.

We talked to him at length about his relation with Belinda

and he said she was a good teacher, he liked her.

We asked if he would take a polygraph

and he was really cooperative with us.

He was underage, so we had to get

his parents' permission to have him take a polygraph.

And they were willing to do so.

On all the high points of the questions,

he did all right on them.

He did fail the major question.

"Did you shoot Belinda?"

But he just never could seem to pass every question.

We ended up taking three different polygraphs

and we were ready to take a fourth.

And finally his father stepped in and says,

"You know, enough is enough.

"He's been on the machine three times.

"You ought to be able to get your answers by now."

Unfortunately, we found out he may have been doing

some marijuana at the time

that could affect the outcome of the polygraph.

He was a 16-year-old kid

who was nervous and no one told him

not to smoke some dope before he took the polygraph.

While the investigators are still looking

into this new name of Riley Joe Sanders,

more information about this relationship

that David Temple might be having

with another teacher at his school,

Heather Scott, comes forward.

During our investigation, we had learned

that David and Heather were communicating a lot

through emails on the school's computer.

So it was decided we'd go check with the DA

and see if we could get a subpoena for their emails.

The investigators were able to access the school emails

between David Temple and Heather Scott.

David Temple writes...

So they got some flirting going on.

After reading some of the emails,

they had been having an affair for a while.

This wasn't a one-night stand.

As a matter of fact,

they had spent the weekend together,

New Year's Eve, when David was supposedly hunting.

We also saw that Ms. Scott had sent out an email to David

telling him he should delete his emails to her.

What are they trying to hide?

And maybe there is way more to this relationship

than he's ever told anybody, which, you know,

kind of gives you a motive.

Heather Scott came to the office.

My part was to get a little more detail

about their relationship.

Heather didn't want to admit

that she was sleeping with David.

Everyone knew that his wife was pregnant,

and she didn't want people knowing

that he was actually coming to her house

on a regular basis.

Heather said at one point they had tried to break it off.

But after a day or two, they were back together

and it was just like it was.

I mentioned that if he's a suspect,

you would be considered the motive.

And I'll never forget,

she just stopped at one point and said,

"You think that he killed his wife for me?"

It took something for me to continue the interview

and not be ugly to her, because that was very insulting.

I couldn't believe that he would actually cheat on my sister.

After that, there's no doubt in my mind,

he killed Belinda and Erin.

Suspicion about David Temple

having killed his wife, Belinda, is growing.

And then the investigators get another

new piece of information.

We heard from an old classmate of David Temple,

his name was Buck, that said he had seen David

in the Katy area on the day of Belinda's murder.

So we wanted to go out and see what kind of information he had.

Around 5:00 on the day of the murder,

Buck saw David Temple pulled up to the stop sign

at Katy Hockley Cut Off.

Buck had been traveling eastbound

and he saw David Temple southbound.

He honked his horn and waved, but David didn't respond,

possibly didn't even notice him.

That was very significant to us

because we had video from the Brookshire Brothers.

We had the video from Home Depot.

And then in the middle of all that,

we've got him appearing at this intersection

traveling southbound on Katy Hockley Cut Off,

which puts him in an area where his mom and dad live,

and where there are a lot of rice fields

and water retention ponds.

What was he doing up there?

What's he doing up north that he's not telling us about?

Was he up there to possibly dispose of a shotgun?

On the day of the murder, Buck saw David Temple

pulled up to the stop sign at Katy Hockley Cut Off.

What's he doing up north that he's not telling us about?

Was he up there to possibly dispose of a shotgun?

After searching for a weapon for three or four days,

I called the DA and told them

that we just didn't have the smoking gun,

and they concluded again

that they wouldn't be able to file any charges

until we come up with something that would link

David Temple to the homicide.

The detectives thought they had enough evidence,

but the prosecutors at that time were still thinking

that maybe more information would come up.

They were still looking for the murder weapon.

They were still hoping that something new

might break wide open.

And then the Belinda Temple murder case goes cold.

The stress that it put on the whole family,

it was really, really tough for me to sit there

and know that David Temple murdered my sister,

my unborn niece,

and still out walking the street.

At that time, I was the victim advocate in the mayor's office.

Belinda's parents, Tom and Carol Lucas,

reached out to me for help.

We had an organization called Crime Stoppers,

and so we were eventually able to put out a reward.

I went to the unveiling of a billboard.

Tom and Carol were there, Belinda's friends were there.

There was one person conspicuously not there.

And that was David Temple.

David was not out there trying to find

who killed his wife and baby.

David went on with his life.

Four months after the murder,

David Temple sold the house

that he and Belinda had been living in.

He bought himself a new pickup truck,

and then he bought himself a new house in Richmond, Texas.

Two years after the murder...

he married Heather.

Heather ended up being the person who raised Evan.

Belinda should have been raising Evan.

I didn't want to be around her.

Not that I didn't love Evan.

I love Evan.

So Belinda's family had no further connection

or relationship at all with Evan.

It was tough.

Month to month, year to year, just dealing with,

is this case ever going to be taking a trial?

And then a case a lot like this one starts hitting the news

all over the country, the Laci Peterson murder.

There's a lot of similarities

in the Laci Peterson case and the Temple case.

They were both pregnant, both schoolteachers.

Both their husbands were having affairs.

In late 2004,

the Peterson case goes to trial,

and Scott is ultimately convicted

of murdering Laci and their unborn child.

That gets people around the Katy Houston area

taking another look at the Belinda Temple case.

We wanted justice.

Laci Peterson was getting it. We wanted it for Belinda.

Tom Lucas, Belinda's dad,

called the district attorney of Harris County,

Chuck Rosenthal, and told Chuck,

"How come California can get a verdict on a case like this,

"but y'all can't do your job here in Harris County?"

Chuck Rosenthal called me and said,

"Kelly, do you know what case Tom Lucas is talking about?"

And I said, "Yeah, that's that Katy football coach case."

And I remember taking it home, and I read it over the weekend,

and that's how I first got the case.

Rhonda, how you doing?

Kelly was a top prosecutor in the office.

She had a great conviction rate for murder cases.

Today, I would like to see the David Temple evidence.

- Oh, wow. - It's a lot.

Kelly Siegler already had a notch in her belt

for getting a conviction in the Susan Wright case,

a pretty high-profile, dramatic case.

So here's his door.

You know how important this door was to that case?

Kelly's marching orders were to take a look at this case

with a fresh set of eyes and see if she thought

that there was enough there to move forward with an indictment.

-So here's his boxes. -Oh, wow.

-These three right here? -Yeah.

- All right. Thank you, Rhonda. - Uh-huh.

Oh.

When I read the files, I did the same thing I do.

Now, I call justice, I'm taking notes for to-dos

and questions and things that need to be addressed.

Wow, these are the shoes

that Belinda had on that day when she got off of work,

still on her feet, nine months pregnant

when she went upstairs and was found in her closet.

And all of her girlfriends and her sister talked about

how the first thing Belinda would do

when she'd get home every day is kick off her shoes,

especially when they were swollen

as they would have been being so pregnant.

David Temple told law enforcement back then

that she was taking a nap.

Well, I don't think very many women

nine months pregnant take a nap with their shoes on.

And she still had her glasses on.

Look, that's still the brain matter

and blood on her glasses.

The timeline was always the big thing

to make a jury understand in this case.

Using the initial statement David Temple gave

the night that Belinda was murdered,

along with all the reports

and everything gathered by the sheriff's department

up until this point in the investigation,

this is what was known at the time

I started working on the case.

David Temple said that Belinda stopped at his parents' house

to pick up some soup and then got home at 3.45 p.m.

Then she went upstairs to take a nap.

David Temple says that Evan started to feel better,

so he took him to a park to play,

but he doesn't remember which park it was.

Then to a grocery store.

The time stamp showed David and Evan

coming to Brookshire Brothers at 4.34 p.m.

and leaving at 4.38 p.m.,

where they bought a bag of cat food and a Coke.

Next, David Temple said

that they drove to the Home Depot,

which is about a 10-minute drive from Brookshire Brothers.

But he and Evan weren't captured on the Home Depot video

until 36 minutes later, which makes no sense.

Until Buck Bindeman comes forward,

who says that he sees David Temple up in the area

north of Home Depot and Brookshire Brothers,

close to the house where he grew up,

close to all the rice fields, at around 5:00 p.m.

at the intersection of Morton Ranch Road

and Katy Hockley Cut Off.

Katie Hockley Cut Off, Morton Ranch Road intersection.

Why didn't David Temple mention that?

And what was he doing up there?

Buck Bindeman is the key to this case.

And then you throw in the staging of the burglary,

the motive for the affair.

And I got all finished with it.

And I thought to myself,

I would file this case right now.

This case is like the pinnacle

of circumstantial evidence cases.

And a lot of prosecutors want more than that

before they'll do their job.

To me, circumstantial cases are beautiful.

There might be more work required to tell the story

as opposed to a DNA case or a confession case.

But they're the best cases there are

because the truth is in the details.

Just after Thanksgiving 2004,

five years after Belinda's murder,

I said, "All right,

"let's call the Sheriff's Department

"and let them know it's time to arrest David Temple."

That was a great day in all our lives.

Mr. Temple was pulled over on his way to work.

I would have loved to seen his reaction

when they put him in that patrol car.

And as we're driving downtown,

all I said was, "You know what this is about, right?"

And he said, "No, what?"

I said, "Belinda."

He's like, "You got to be kidding me.

"This crap's been going on for almost six years now."

He was taken into custody, and he quickly bonded out.

Temple family, who is of means,

realizes once Kelly Siegler gets involved,

we got to make sure that we're going after

the best defense, and that's Dick DeGuerin.

I'm an innocent man, and I have all the faith

in the legal system.

Doesn't get any better than hiring

one of the most famous attorneys, not just in Houston,

not just in Texas, but nationally.

He's a fantastic attorney. He's one of the best.

And him and Kelly going at it is a sight to see.

When I tried the Dror Goldberg case,

going up against Dick DeGuerin, the trial lasted four weeks,

and I lost 10 pounds.

But I learned more in that trial,

watching him at work, than I ever learned in my life.

And the funny thing that nobody knows is,

right after the Dror Goldberg trial, he told me,

"You know, Kelly, you ought to run for DA.

"You did a good job."

But by the time we went to trial on David Temple,

I had tried and won a couple of other cases

against Dick DeGuerin and his firm,

so he didn't really like me as much anymore.

Because if anybody was going to put this puzzle together

and then actually prove it to a jury,

it was going to be Kelly Siegler.

It was going to be the battle of the titans.

Going to the trial, you had a line to get in.

It was like a "standing room only" trial.

I think that the old adage is true,

that you have to open with a bang.

Belinda Temple was discovered lying on the floor,

on her tummy, with her face down,

dead of a shotgun wound to the back of her head.

And the other life that perished that day

was a perfectly healthy six-pound little baby girl

with its heart beating inside her mommy's womb.

Usually, we go chronologically with life events.

In this case, chronologically would be starting with

when they got married and the downfall of their marriage,

and he meets Heather, and then the murder.

But I didn't.

I decided to start with the crime scene.

The call goes out, law enforcement shows up,

and what do they see?

And start with that to explain

what they saw, what they didn't see,

what doesn't make sense, and then go back in time

to build the rest of the story.

The other thing that opening statements have to do,

I believe, is address the weakness of your case.

The truth is in the details.

She explains that she has no smoking gun.

She has no forensic evidence.

But she has a lot of little bits and pieces to the puzzle,

and everything points at one person,

David Temple.

Five months before Belinda was killed,

well, David Temple met a new woman.

On January 8th 1999, a Friday,

the defendant says to Heather Scott,

"You know I'm falling in love with you."

Three days later, Belinda Temple was executed

in the back of the head in the home

where she lived with this man.

You never know when you give an opening statement

if the defense is going to give one at all,

but Dick gives an opening statement right behind me.

It's true that David had an affair,

but David would never...

I'm going, "What?"

Then he says that the glass in the back door broke

because it slammed against this hutch

that the Temples had behind the back door.

And as he goes into the house, he throws the door open.

So the defense tries to,

I guess, give an explanation

for why the glass wasn't where investigators thought

it should be with somebody punching in the glass.

After Dick tries to explain the glass from the back door

being in the wrong place for a burglary,

he then points his finger at the person that he believes

is the one who broke into the house

and killed Belinda.

The evidence will show that they ignored other leave.

And that suspect is Riley Joe Sanders.

Opening statements end

and the prosecutors start calling their witnesses.

I questioned Dean Holtke a lot

about all the evidence at the scene,

all the unusual things that he saw,

but we spent an extra amount of time with him

talking about the way the glass was spewed

from the door once it was broken.

The glass was all facing at an angle

consistent with the door being open

because if the glass had been shot with the door shut,

it would have gone straight ahead.

On cross-examination, Dick tried really hard

to pick apart Dean's theory

of why that glass ended up where it did.

He was trying to say David came in like a linebacker

and threw the door open.

If the door slammed into the hutch,

which there's no evidence that it did

because there was little figurines on this hutch

that they weren't falling down,

you would expect that if the door hit there,

you'd see a bunch of glass right there.

Besides the evidence having to do with the glass,

another huge piece of the case had to do

with the Temple's dog, Shaka.

And there was a lot of testimony from a lot of witnesses

about how vicious that dog was.

Dick DeGuerin was trying to tell us

that David had the dog locked up in the garage

while he was gone that day.

But why would he do that with his wife in the house?

I mean, that's her protection.

If Shaka had been in the backyard that day,

there is no way any burglar would have gotten

into that house to get to Belinda.

Don't you think that if David Temple

could have said back in 1999,

"Well, the burglar got into my house

"because my dog was in the garage,"

he would have said it.

The dog was in the backyard.

And how in the world did a burglar

ever get past that dog?

Then we got into the interview

that was done with David Temple the night of Belinda's murder.

The beautiful thing about Chuck Leithner's interview

of David Temple is that

David Temple is locked into his story.

The problem with his story is that

even though he's on videotape

and we know when he was at the Brookshire Brothers

and at the Home Depot, there is an extraordinarily

long period of time between those two places.

That's when we called Buck Bindeman to the stand.

I argued to the jury, the reason Buck Bindeman

saw David Temple is because David Temple drove

where the rice fields are to get rid of the shotgun.

And as he's coming back to hurry up and alibi himself,

that's when Buck Bindeman saw him.

When he leaves here at 4:38

and he gets to Home Depot at 5:14,

that's 22 plus 14,

that's 36 minutes unaccounted for.

And it just so happens to coincide with the coincidence

that Buck Bindeman sees him at that intersection

in that time period.

After we got all through presenting the evidence

having to do with the timeline of that day

when Belinda was murdered, then we moved on to the part

talking about motive.

We tried to make the jury understand

the relationship between Belinda and David Temple,

who they are, what their marriage is all about.

And we did that through bringing in

Temple's at the time, very best friends,

Quinton and Tammy Harlan.

They were the ones who best could talk about

the way David treated Belinda behind closed doors,

about the way David Temple called her fat,

the way David Temple told her

that she was white trash from Nacogdoches.

And then Quinton talks about, at school,

the happy hours where they were flirting

with the other teachers, specifically Heather,

and how that relationship between

David Temple and Heather evolved.

When we first learn about Heather Scott,

the hot young teacher that David Temple

was showing interest in, she kind of blows it off

like it was just a casual relationship.

But by the time David Temple's trial comes around,

she's married to him and is now Heather Scott Temple.

Heather and David Temple had been married for six years.

She was not cooperative. She did not want to come.

She was subpoenaed to come to court, and she did.

But she was not my friend in this case.

Everybody's wondering, what is she going to say

when she takes the stand?

You have a marital privilege

if conversations you have are said while you're married.

David Temple was not married to Heather

at the time the murder happened.

She takes the stand,

and I have to pull the words out of her

to get her to answer the question.

The answers came eventually.

I think the significance of her is the motive.

She admits that they were flirting heavy.

She admits that he tells her he loves her on Friday,

three days before the murder.

She talks about Valentine's Day after the murder.

They're doing the roses and chocolates thing.

They get caught being seen out to dinner with each other.

She even acknowledged that he wasn't crying and sad.

And then I called a witness

that I never knew I was going to have.

An opening statement, Dick brought up

that David Temple only ever owned a 20-gauge shotgun,

and that made the news.

A man named Clint Stockdick,

who grew up with David Temple's younger brother, called in,

and he told me about how he hunted

with the Temples his whole childhood,

and he was mad that David Temple would try to say

that he only ever owned a 20-gauge shotgun

when Clint Stockdick knew better.

I had a new witness,

and I remember all the Temple's family's faces.

They were mad.

I rested my case,

and then Dick began presenting his case.

DeGuerin tries to refocus the jury.

And so he talked about the hutch.

Well, what he didn't know is that Tom Lucas

had the hutch at his house,

so we let Dick do his thing,

and then Dean drove up to Nacogdoches

and got the hutch and brought it back,

and then we put it in the courtroom

to blow up their theory.

You can imagine the surprise in the courtroom,

particularly from the defense.

I'm sure they never expected to see the hutch again.

And Dean's able to show how the dings on the door

don't match the dings on the hutch,

and the hutch has nothing to do with why that glass is broken.

Then Dick DeGuerin makes a bold move.

He puts David Temple on the stand.

You don't normally see

defendants charged with murder taking the stand,

especially someone who's charged

with murdering his pregnant wife.

Maybe the thought was David Temple's Mr. Clean Cut,

and if he does a really good job testifying for himself,

it might cause jurors to have doubt.

David Temple does a really good job on direct,

maintaining his composure.

You don't see any flashes of temper.

He speaks wonderfully of Belinda

and of Evan and of Heather.

Then Kelly stepped up to cross-examine David.

I was just hoping to poke a few holes in that veneer.

Watching Kelly was like watching a shark seizing onto a prey.

Kelly laid out the timeline and really grilled David

on where he was and what he had done

on the day that Belinda was murdered.

I asked him all the questions everybody wanted to know.

Why'd you take your son to the park if he was sick?

Why did you go to that store that was six miles away?

Why did you feel the urgent need to buy cat food and a Coke?

Why'd you go to Home Depot because you didn't buy anything

or even look at anything in the store that day?

He didn't have answers.

I asked David Temple about Buck Bindeman,

but David Temple kept insisting

that he went straight to Home Depot

when he and Evan left Brookshire Brothers.

An interesting moment in the trial

was when Kelly Siegler asked David,

"You were trying to save the life

"of your wife and your baby.

"Why didn't you have any blood on you?"

Don't you think if David Temple really happened upon the closet

and found Belinda on the floor

in her own pool of blood,

there would have been a speck of blood on his whole body?

He says he checked her pulse, her carotid artery.

But there's no blood on him.

How is there not a speck of blood on you?

How does that happen?

And the best answer he could come up with was,

"I don't know. I don't know."

Really, there should have been blood on him somewhere.

Did he really try to save her?

Objection. Beyond the record.

I never got so much exercise in my life

standing up and down for all the objections

that were made by Dick DeGuerin.

We object it. We ask that she stay in the record.

Then Kelly asks David Temple

about his relationship with Heather Scott.

I asked if he had sex with Heather

during his marriage to Belinda and he said he had.

That New Year's Eve weekend,

telling Heather that he loved her on Friday

and golly, a burglar's burglarized

in his house three days later

and his wife ends up dead.

The questions Kelly's asking is setting the scene.

She's showing what was going on

in the Temple household between David and Belinda

in the weeks leading up to her murder.

It was quite a sight to see.

David Temple doesn't like being challenged by anybody.

David Temple thinks the world revolves around him

and to have little Kelly Siegler,

this pit bull, just firing off.

I think that the points that I needed to make were made.

You just can't ignore the coincidence.

When David Temple got off the stand,

I'm pretty sure he was glad that was over.

Throughout his whole case,

Dick DeGuerin kept coming back to the idea

that Riley Joe Sanders, the kid living next door,

was the person who killed Belinda Temple.

So then Kelly calls a surprise witness.

We called Riley Joe Sanders as a rebuttal witness.

We knew Dick DeGuerin

was going to blame it on Riley Joe Sanders.

He always blamed it on Riley Joe Sanders.

So when Dick presented his case

and his defense was that Riley Joe Sanders was the murderer,

at that point, because he's put on evidence,

we have the right to call rebuttal witnesses.

That is when we called Riley Joe Sanders to the stand.

I asked Riley Joe, "What did you think of Miss Temple?"

And it was clear to everyone in that courtroom

how much he liked Belinda as a neighbor, as a lady,

as a friend, and as his teacher.

He understood why she told his parents

he was skipping so much school.

It was clear to everybody in that courtroom

that this 16-year-old kid had cooperated completely

and had no motive in the entire universe

to want to kill Belinda Temple.

Riley Joe Sanders talks about how it felt

when he heard Miss Temple was killed,

how it felt to be blamed for it, what he went through.

It was wonderful.

The 16-year-old neighbor kid they want to blame it on

obviously didn't do this, blew up in Dick DeGuerin's face,

and it was a beautiful thing to watch.

After Riley Joe Sanders testified on rebuttal,

of course Dick was able to cross-examine him.

But yet he never asked him the million-dollar question,

"Did you kill Belinda Temple?

"Are you the one who fired that shotgun into the brain

"of Belinda Temple and her unborn baby?"

He never asked anything close to that.

Why didn't he?

I think we all know the answer to that.

The first thing that I told y'all a month ago

was the truth is in the details.

The truth is in the details and what that means is,

the lies that this man told

and the things that he chose not to say,

the actions that this man took

and the actions that he chose not to take

are the little pieces that are the truth.

That family has decided they have the right

to grant absolution to this defendant

and they want you to do the same thing.

The problem with that is it overlooks the truth

and it denies justice to Belinda and Erin.

That was the longest final argument I ever gave.

It was over an hour long

but this case, to me,

had so much detailed circumstantial evidence,

and I needed to remind the jury

of all those details one more time

so that they could try to remember all of them

when they went back to deliberate.

Buck Bindeman is circumstantial evidence

because he's got no reason to lie

and the circumstance just happens to fit

during the time period

that David Temple forgot to tell the police about

in between alibi one and alibi two

and what Buck Bindeman said nine years ago, remember,

was he didn't know David Temple

or what he drove after high school.

Medium blue, short wheelbase, single cab,

Chevrolet '91 or '92 truck.

Got it exactly right.

There was nothing Dick DeGuerin could do about it

because that is a circumstance

that's unchangeable because it's the truth.

And Mr. DeGuerin tells you that the explanation

for all this circumstantial evidence

is that Riley Joe Sanders is the killer.

Riley Joe Sanders wants to kill Belinda Temple

because she told his parents he was missing a lot of school

for his own good

or because there were some broken beer bottles

out on the street one day.

Mr. DeGuerin wants that to be a reasonable doubt?

Please.

You know with all your heart

David Temple is guilty of murder

and today, almost nine years later,

it's time to let the souls

of Belinda and Erin in heaven rest in peace.

It was a very scary situation.

I mean, I had no idea what to expect.

It's hard to predict.

You've got 12 people trying to decipher

a very difficult case without a "I gotcha" moment.

I'm hoping that they see what we see

that David Temple was the only one who had the motive

and had the means and wanted to kill Belinda.

The trial lasted for about a month.

The jury came back in just a few hours.

Mr. Foreman, I understand you have a verdict?

We, the jury, find the defendant David Mark Temple

guilty of murder as charged in the indictment.

When they came back and said David Temple is guilty,

you could watch the relief on Belinda's family

and you could see it visibly.

Temple family was just dumbfounded.

They were floored.

I mean, they stormed out.

The jury went back to deliberate on punishment,

and they came back and gave him a life sentence

and a $10,000 fine,

which is the very most he could get.

And the jury told me afterwards

they wanted to stand up and clap at the job Riley Joe Sanders did

defending himself and his innocence.

We got the guilty verdict.

I mean, it was such relief.

I don't know if there's any words to describe

how happy we were

to finally get justice for Belinda

and our niece Erin.

When the David Temple trial ended,

I went back to doing my job in special crimes.

And it was in January 2008 that I filed a run for DA.

Getting justice means working with law enforcement

and knowing how to be a prosecutor.

It's what I've always done.

Dick kept saying to the media,

"Kelly Siegler is finally convicted an innocent man.

"She'll do anything to win."

Before that, media loved me,

and I saw how they turned and what they would write.

I thought, "What's happening?"

David Temple's guilty as hell

and now all of a sudden I'm a monster

and I did something wrong?

What?

Dick DeGuerin was trying to make sure

I didn't become the DA,

and I didn't, I lost.

After I lost the race for DA,

I didn't know what I was going to do next.

Eventually I took a job as the special prosecutor

working with the Wharton County DA's office

but I knew that I knew how to work on cold cases.

So around 2012,

I worked on the episode

that would become the pilot for Cold Justice.

It felt good. That was what I knew how to do.

That was what I was good at.

And then the Temple case started up all over again.

Eight years after David was convicted

the defense announces

that they have a new witness come forward.

And that witness can prove

that David Temple is innocent of Belinda's murder.

After a case goes through the normal process of appeals

it should be over.

The only way to keep it from being over

is to claim that you have newly discovered evidence

or that something happened

with your prosecutor during the trial.

There rose to the level of prosecutorial misconduct

that necessitates a new trial.

Now David Temple's defense team is claiming

they have new evidence.

A brand new witness named Daniel Glasscock

who supposedly heard Riley Joe Sanders say

that he killed Belinda Temple.

All of a sudden the case is in the news all over again.

They eventually get Daniel Glasscock in

to testify about what he says

Riley Joe Sanders told him

about the day Belinda Temple was murdered.

When he went to the house, as he went upstairs,

the dog attacked him, he shot the dog,

heard Belinda,

put the dog in the closet, panic and ran.

But we all know the Temple's dog was never shot

so that all blows up.

So then the defense's only avenue left to get a new trial

is to say prosecutorial misconduct

because I withheld evidence

because when you can't prove your client is innocent

because they're not,

that's the throw down answer for a defense lawyer

to claim the prosecutor forgot to give you this

or hid something or cheated or lied

or did something improper.

At this point Dick DeGuerin no longer represented David Temple.

These new claims are being brought

by Stanley Schneider and Casie Gotro.

Prosecutorial misconduct

and the way it played in this case

was the defense claimed Kelly Siegler did not turn over

all the evidence about a potential alternative suspect,

Riley Joe Sanders.

It's called a Brady violation.

Brady evidence is any evidence that is exculpatory

or mitigates punishment

or affects the credibility of a witness.

All those things are things that have to be turned over

by the prosecution to the defense.

In my opinion I turned over every single thing

that anyone could define as exculpatory

or Brady in this case.

And the defense says, "Well, she had

"38 instances doing something wrong."

No, I didn't.

Look at them one by one by one.

Not one of those is truly exculpatory evidence.

I mean, here's one that I didn't turn over.

The FBI profilers report

where they say usually a white male did it,

he doesn't like his mom, he's unemployed,

not kidding, that I didn't turn that over.

And it goes just like that through all 38 of them.

We didn't hide anything from Dick DeGuerin,

but the entire case file was not turned over

because back in 2005,

Dick DeGuerin asked for an examining trial

to see if a judge finds probable cause to indict,

but if you ask for an examining trial,

the office policy at that time dictated

that the file would then become closed to you.

That was the policy.

Dick DeGuerin used to be a Harris County prosecutor.

He grew up in the courthouse world

just like I did.

He knows office policy.

I remember saying to him,

"Why do you want to do that Dick?

"You know that the file is going to become closed to you

"if you do that."

And he said to me, "Don't you tell me how to do my job."

I'm like, "Copy that."

On my left is the complete

investigative report.

This was never seen.

You know, what can you do?

You just have to kind of suck it up and take it.

And I was also trying to be strong for Belinda's family

because they would call me going, "Kelly,

"what are we going to do?"

And now there's another hearing called

about whether or not David Temple should get another trial.

I was called to testify to explain all of my actions

while I handled this case

and to answer all the accusations

that I hadn't given them certain pieces of evidence.

Many people told me, "You need to have a lawyer."

I thought, "Why? I didn't do anything wrong.

"I'm not going to walk in that courtroom

"like a defendant with a lawyer."

But you know what?

I was treated like a defendant.

Exactly like a defendant.

I testified for five full days.

And on December 2016,

the Texas Court of Appeals grants David Temple a new trial.

The ruling came down

that there was going to be another trial

based on prosecutorial misconduct.

I just couldn't believe it. I was mad.

On the Court of Criminal Appeals,

four judges voted

that David Temple gets a new trial.

One judge concurred with that.

Three judges said no and one abstained

because he used to be a prosecutor in my office.

So that's how close that ruling was

to make the proclamation

and the finding he gets a new trial.

It's kind of a gut punch to-- to get word

that that's going to happen.

Back in 2007, we got the guilty verdict.

I thought it was over.

He was going to prison for life,

and I could go on with my life.

I never thought

that the ruling would ever be overturned.

Never, never would have dreamed that could have happened.

I remember all the accusations

about all that evidence that I supposedly

didn't disclose and hid, and you would call me

and we were both-- we did tell him

it came out in the trial.

Yes.

It was all a bunch of smoke and mirrors.

I wanted justice for Belinda in there, and...

Belinda was everything to me.

She was my protector when she was here

and I'm going to try to do everything...

to continue to get justice for Belinda.

I feel that's my job.

The frustrating thing is

all that you've been through

and then all you had to go through

with the criminal justice system and how it let you down

and how we let you down.

You did not let me down, Kelly.

David Temple is now released on bond.

He's out of prison.

He's a free man again and awaiting a new trial.

I was scared for my life.

I was the only one

in the Lucas family that testified.

I feel like I had a huge role in getting him convicted.

My brothers had me go out and buy two guns.

I mean, he killed Belinda and his daughter.

Why wouldn't he kill somebody else?

The defense is saying that

they had all this new evidence.

Everybody's wondering what is it?

If there was new evidence in the file on the case

that proved that David Temple was innocent,

I wanted to know what it was.

Maybe I had judged this case wrong.

We're waiting for justice to be served once and for all

and for the people that put me there

and lied and cheated to be held accountable.

When we were waiting to hear

who was going to be the prosecutor

for the new trial,

I was very worried that somebody wouldn't appreciate

all the details to the case,

and David Temple may be walking free

and have gotten away with two murders.

So when I heard that the case had been assigned

to Lisa Tanner and Bill Turner,

I started crying because I was so relieved.

Bill Turner was a guy

that a lot of us have learned from.

Lisa Tanner was more of my companion.

We grew up together as prosecutors.

She is phenomenal in the courtroom.

By this point, 15 years had passed

since Belinda Temple's murder,

but for Lisa and Bill, all the documents,

all the exhibits, everything was still perfectly preserved.

When we got the case,

the defense attorney, Stanley Schneider,

had a huge advantage.

He knew the case backwards and forwards

and he started filing motions for speedy trials

and motions to have Mr. Temple deposed as quickly as possible

and we kept telling him,

"We got to have time to learn this thing.

"Give us a break here."

So we did what we would always do

in a case like this.

Start from the beginning.

When Bill and I got the case,

David Temple was innocent as far as we were concerned.

We walked through all the evidence.

Lisa and Bill saw all of the evidence

the same way that the rest of us did

and that I presented at the first trial.

And came to the conclusion,

"Look, if you want to follow the presumption

"that David Temple is innocent,

"the door is just closed no matter which way you move."

David Temple's timeline made no sense.

His affair with Heather, the dog,

that he never had a 12-gauge shotgun,

all of it, we all saw it the same way.

In the end, we were convinced David Temple was guilty.

Lisa and Bill planned to present the same evidence

that I presented at the first trial,

but they wanted to present a couple of things

a little differently

and they're bringing in a glass expert

to make sure that that too is presented even clearer

in the minds of the jurors.

In the new trial, the first thing we did

was looked at the home invasion part of it.

It just didn't make sense.

I think there's all kinds of reasons

to show that David Temple killed Belinda Temple

as soon as she got home.

On the night of the killing, David Temple said

he drove into the garage, shut the door,

got his son out, put him on a bicycle

because he was just going to go tell Belinda they were home.

Same as in the first trial.

We were able to show that there was no room to ride a bicycle

with two cars in a two-car garage and the door down,

so that didn't make any sense.

And then we called Angela Vielma.

She testified in the first trial.

What was significant about Angie was the timing.

Angie was a girl that lived in the neighborhood

several blocks away.

The day the murder was committed,

Angie had a fight with her boyfriend

and she decided that she was going to leave

and go to her friend Roseanne's house.

And Roseanne lived across the street

from the Temples.

Angie started walking, but she had to stop

before she could pass the Temple driveway

because David Temple was pulling into his garage.

And she had the time pegged almost exactly at 5:25.

That ends up being important

because David Temple's statement was

that at 5:25 he got out of his car,

put Evan on a bicycle,

took a few steps into the backyard,

saw that the door was broken open,

grabbed his son, and ran across to the Ruggieros.

All of those things would have drawn the attention to anybody,

but Angela walked by their house at 5:25,

just walked across the street just a few hundred feet,

and then sat on the porch for ten minutes,

and none of that happened.

The next time David Temple is seen is around 5:35 p.m.

when he takes his son over to his neighbors,

the Ruggieros, prior to calling 911.

So that put David Temple in the house

for approximately ten or 11 minutes.

It is our position that for ten minutes

David Temple was staging the house.

He made sure things were just right

before he let third parties know that this had happened.

And then we felt like the jury had to hear

the situation with the dog.

There's three places Shaka could have been.

Shaka could have been in the garage,

Shaka could have been in the backyard,

or Shaka could have been in the house.

As the garage door was going down,

Angie told us she saw David Temple's legs

walking beside the truck.

One thing that was significant to me was she saw his legs,

but she didn't see a dog.

So Shaka was not in the garage

because he would have been right there with David Temple

if he had been in the garage.

Also in the crime scene pictures,

you see a bowl full of wet dog food,

and I have big dogs.

I know how big dogs are.

We told the jury, "There's no big dog

"that's going to leave wet food in his bowl.

"That doesn't make sense."

So same as in the first trial,

if the dog was in the backyard,

no stranger's going to get by that dog to get to Belinda.

Another huge crossroads was

when we enlisted the help of Dr. Ravi, the glass expert.

Ravi Schoendart's amazing.

He's the guy that does stress of all objects,

so he's the guy that keeps our airplanes in the air.

But one of his specialties was measuring

what happens to glass when it breaks.

One of the defensive theories was

that when David Temple ran back to the house

and discovered Belinda's body,

he went through the house with such force

that it bounced against the hutch,

and that caused the glass

to discharge into the living room.

Dr. Ravi came back and said that couldn't be.

The glass break expert agreed with the testimony

that was brought up in the first trial.

It became obvious that it was staged.

And the next question then is,

does Belinda Temple have anybody with a motive to kill her?

She had no enemies.

There was only one person

with a motive to kill Belinda Temple...

and that was David Temple.

And just like in the first trial,

Lisa and Bill knew that they were going to have to call

Heather Scott Temple to the stand.

During the first few days of the trial,

we find out that Heather filed for divorce from David.

Wow. What timing.

I was in Florida working on a case on Cold Justice,

and I got my text messages, breaking news,

that Heather Scott Temple filed for a divorce.

And I was like, "Oh, my God.

"Good for you. Good for you."

The issue is, okay,

how does this influence her testimony?

Is she going to stick with her original testimony?

Is she taking an opposite position?

Is her motive now to try to hurt David Temple?

Did she hold something back in the first trial?

Is she going to tell us now?

No one had any idea what she was going to say this time.

The hope was maybe there was some other little piece

that she had always known but didn't come forward with

that might come up in the second trial.

But she was consistent.

She told what she knew, and she did what she needed to.

I think all in all, the way she testified

at the first trial was accurate

as to what the testimony was at the second trial.

So we had no indication

that her divorce influenced her testimony.

In my opinion, she didn't know

that fool was going to go execute his wife and child,

and then she's stuck with the rest of her life ruined

because he's that selfish.

And then just like in the first trial,

the defense pointed at Riley Joe Sanders

as an alternate suspect.

It certainly appears from all of the records

that in the first trial,

the defense did receive

at least some information

about the investigation into Riley Joe Sanders.

And by the time we got the case,

the defense attorney, he had the whole file.

I mean, he even had Kelly's notes.

But in an abundance of caution,

we copied it again and gave it all to him a second time.

Riley Joe Sanders is now 36 years old

when he's called to testify again in this case.

We've got nothing to fear about Riley Joe Sanders on the stand.

When you met him, you realized a couple of things.

Number one, that at the time Belinda was murdered,

Riley Joe Sanders had just been

a really dumb, dumb kid.

And then secondly, you realized,

you know, this many years later, he was a really nice guy.

He had no motive

to kill an eight and a half month pregnant woman.

I understand

why the defense made him a scapegoat.

But more just from the human level,

I just felt so sorry for the guy.

His family lost their home.

They had to hire a lawyer

and they used all their savings

over this case.

And then Stanley Schneider said,

"The defense rests."

Think about that.

The defense had everything, the entire file,

including my work notes.

And with all that, everything,

there was not one scrap of new evidence

they presented in their big new trial

that they had been squawking for,

for all these years.

No new evidence.

There wasn't anything that the defense did

we weren't expecting.

So to all those people out there that say I hid something,

where in hell is it?

It's our position that Belinda Temple was

killed almost immediately when she entered her home.

The testimony from David Temple was that when Belinda got home,

she was tired and went up to sleep.

When her body was found,

her shoes were still on her feet.

Her glasses, which were driving glasses,

were still on her head.

So she did not kick off her shoes.

She didn't go up to bed and take off her glasses.

She was killed before either of those two things happened.

And David Temple did it.

When the second jury went out to deliberate,

a lot of people were pretty nervous.

Nobody knew if they were going to come

to a different conclusion than the first.

I was working a case in Fort Myers, Florida,

and I got a text message...

"He's guilty again."

And I went to my room at the hotel and started crying.

It was the exact same case and trial and evidence,

and he was just as guilty as he was in 2007.

I wanted to scream, "I told you."

It was relief and it was anger.

The immediate things that came to my mind

are justice for Belinda Temple,

justice for the Lucas family,

justice for Riley Joe Sanders,

justice for Kelly Siegler.

We went to the punishment phase...

and the punishment range

was five years to 99 years or life.

Well, Evan Temple took the stand.

Here's somebody that's lost their mother

and their dad's going to be

in the penitentiary forever.

And so for him pleading for his father's life,

I think it's a significant, significant thing.

We were very careful and treated him with kid gloves.

What a horrible situation to be in,

to lose your mom and then have your dad charged with that.

And finally, the jury sends a note that they're deadlocked.

In the punishment phase,

the judge has to declare a mistrial.

So now we're waiting for a retrial

on the punishment phase of someone

who's been convicted twice of murder.

It broke me.

It broke me.

I will try my best to keep David in prison.

What happens in March of 2020?

COVID. Everything's shut down.

And we wait, and we wait.

And finally, in April of 2023,

the punishment phase resumes.

I went down to the courthouse, and it brought back

a lot of emotions, mostly feeling bad

that they were all having to do it again.

And I was very hopeful

that it was finally going to be over with.

The jury came back with a verdict in two hours.

We, the jury, assess his punishment

at confinement in the Institutional Division

of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice for life.

The jury came back with a punishment

of life in the penitentiary as well as

the maximum fine of $2,000,

which meant that the jury was outraged.

I mean, there's no reason to fine somebody

if they get a life sentence, right?

You made the decision to kill Belinda.

That was all your decision.

I want you to think about that for the rest of your life

while you sit in prison and rot in hell.

Three trials, three juries.

Finally, David Temple is back where he belongs.

So much relief.

So much being able to just say,

"Thank God, finally, it's over."

You want to see all your cases cleared,

but some of them are going to touch you in a different way.

I have never in my career ever seen a case like this.

I hope to hell I never see a case like this again.

Disappointed by David Temple sentence

said the defense team plans to appeal on several grounds.

It's not over till it's over.

I already booked my appointment with the parole board,

dude, and we're all going to be there.

And you ain't getting out.

We got him. He's where he needs to be.

If you could say whatever you wanted to say

to David Temple today, what would you say?

You didn't have to do this.

Could have gotten a divorce.

David, you robbed

Evan and Erin of a wonderful mother.

What would you say to other family members out there?

Just never give up.

I mean, it took us over 24 years,

but we did get justice for Belinda.

Just don't give up.

I feel like this case would still be cold

if you wouldn't have went forward with this case.

I truly believe that.

And I love you for that.

I've told you before, you remind me of Belinda a lot.

With your determination, your heart of gold,

I just...

I love you, Kelly.

Bye baby, bye.

Bye.

I give Belinda's family an awful lot of credit.

They never backed down.

They sought justice, and they were there

every single day for three trials,

24 years.

36 jurors have found him guilty.

Think about that.

David Temple committed this murder

because he's that selfish.

He thought he could commit a murder

rather than get a divorce and have to split up custody

and child support payments.

And his family accepted it and moved on and forgave him.

With this case, I learned a lot about how it feels

when things go wrong with the criminal justice system.

Sometimes it is unfair.

I saw what it did to the sheriff's department,

to Belinda's family, to me.

We all got a whole lot more cynical

and upset with the system as a result of this case,

I think.

But you know what?

There were people out there

who wanted to make sure that

Belinda Temple got justice along with her baby,

and there were a lot of them.