Read Shattered: The True Story of a Mother's Love, a Husband's Betrayal, and a Cold-Blooded Texas Murder for Free Online

from the Greek, translating as “to build up,” and the drugs increase the production of proteins and thwart the breakdown of muscle. Although outlawed in all major sports, they can give athletes a competitive edge. At times, they also have psychological or emotional side effects, including angry outbursts, called roid rage. By increasing testosterone levels in the body, it’s thought that aggression is accentuated and, in extreme cases, paranoia and anger.
    Coach Clayton maintains that he saw no evidence that David was on steroids, and that he viewed the muscle building David did his senior year as simply the well-earned product of hard work. “We’d see the players walk around after showers, and I never saw David’s back break out or any of the other telltale signs of steroid use.”
    Yet one of David’s fellow players who admitted using the drugs during his junior and senior year at Katy High School was told by his supplier the names of others who were customers. “David was huge. He bulked way up and could out weight-lift everybody else on the team. The guy who sold me steroids said he was selling to David,” says the Katy player. “I never asked David about it, but I also never questioned that it was true.”
    When David made his return, he dominated on the field and became even more feared on the campus. “The football team had a sense of owning the school,” says Fleener. “We had our own table at lunch, and it always seemed like we could get away with things. The football players and the cheerleaders were on the A-list. David was cocky, but so was the whole team. Since David was a star, he was cockier than the rest of us.”
    Players would remember seeing David get into heated arguments with the coaches, especially Mike Johnston. When David thought he or any of his fellow defensive players was being unfairly treated, he became insistent and his size made him frightening. One player recalled how David screamed at the coach, his face inches from Johnston’s. Both of them were furious. “David crossed a line and possibly I did, too,” Johnston would say years later. “When I’d see him get out of control, I’d intervene. Sometimes I talked to him about keeping the aggression on the field, where it belonged. David could be explosive, and he didn’t always know how to turn it off.”
    By then, David Temple had a bad reputation at Katy High School. “It was common knowledge among the teachers that David was a problem at school,” says one of his teachers. “He tried to intimidate the teachers, and sometimes he succeeded. He was a big kid, and a lot of people were afraid of him.”
    A close friend would say that Maureen and Kenny Temple weren’t heard to raise their voices to David, and that they were perpetually patient and soft-spoken with him. But then David was a different kind of kid than his brothers. “Wound tighter,” the friend maintains. “He needed constant stimulation.”
    One Katy High teacher would say, “We got really tired of David Temple’s mother coming up to school to get him out of trouble.”
    It was sometime about then that an incident was whispered about, one some of David’s classmates gossiped about but never knew if it was true. Years later, it would take on a frightening forbearing.
    At the time, Cindi Thompson dated David’s older brother, Darren. They’d been together for a year or more, and their relationship would take her through high school. She always enjoyed the entire Temple family, and found David to be fun. But she’d heard rumors in school that he was getting into trouble. That fall, Cindi says there’d been turmoil in the Temple family. Ken Temple was out of work, and David worsened the situation by getting into trouble at school.
    One night, Darren showed up at Thompson’s house, shaking and upset. He said that David and their mother had been arguing about David’s behavior. “Darren said David got disrespectful to Maureen, and then Darren said that