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

he stepped in between them, ordering David to stop talking to his mother that way,” Cindi says. From that point on, Darren said David turned his anger on him. The argument between the brothers escalated, and David grabbed a shotgun and held it in Darren’s face, backing him into a corner. Darren told Cindi that he’d had to beg his brother for his life, and their mother begged, too, pleading with David to put the shotgun down.
    “Darren said David’s whole demeanor changed,” Cindi says. “His eyes got big and he stared at them with a blank look. Finally, David put the shotgun down and left the room.”
    As Darren told her about what had just transpired, Cindi said she was shocked. “I’d never seen Darren like this before. He was angry and hurt,” she says. “He’d cry, then he’d be angry again.”
    That evening, Cindi’s father flashed the porch lights, signaling her to come inside. When she did, she told her dad what Darren had just described. “And I never forgot,” Cindi said. Yet, looking back, she didn’t find the episode completely shocking. “It was David being David.”
     
     
    By his junior year, David Temple was garnering interest from colleges watching his performance on the football field. “He had a collection of letters from all the big-name schools,” says a friend. “Oklahoma, Nebraska, the University of Texas. David had so many, he made a collage and pasted them onto his bedroom wall.”
    On the Katy High campus, as well, David Temple’s legend grew. The Rebels were born that year as part of an intramural volleyball game. David and his friends decided they needed a name for their team. They chose the Rebels because of a popular song at the time, British rocker Billy Idol’s “Rebel Yell,” with lyrics that depict an insatiable girl who screams, “More, more, more.” In the song, the lyrics say the man would “sell his soul” to have the girl he calls his “little angel.”
    “One of the guys had a rebel flag, and we liked the lyrics,” says one of the group. The cheerleaders and the boys’ girlfriends became known as the Rebel Women.
    “There were a lot of people jealous. We were the athletes,” says Tommy Raglin, one of David’s close friends. “That was just the way it was. A lot of people in high school said David was crazy and fearless. It was just boys being boys.”
    Teenage years are a time when many feel indestructible, but David, as he did with so much in life, took his boldness to the extreme. Once he dove from a high dive trying to hit the shallow end of a pool. Another time, when the team was staying at a hotel, David jumped into a swimming pool from a second-floor balcony. And whenever the possibility of a fight opened up, David appeared ready. “Everyone wanted to fight David because he was huge,” says Raglin. David’s celebrity grew, based, at times, on no more than gossip, like the time rumors circulated that he’d beaten up three guys at a mall. “It never happened,” says Raglin. “When David heard the story, he laughed.”
    It was a heady coming of age, one in which David and the other players felt on top of the world, singled out for greatness. On Fridays the teachers at Katy High School and most of the student body wore red, in support of the football team. At the afternoon pep rallies, the football team was called out to the gym floor by the principal and coaches, where they were lauded for their accomplishments. There was reason to celebrate. The Tigers did well David’s final two years at Katy High School. “As David progressed, so did the team,” says Coach Clayton. “By senior year, we were winning, and David was outstanding.”
    Throughout the football season, as the team won game after game, David’s renown grew in the small town. Before long, he walked into local restaurants with his parents and townsfolk got up out of their chairs and stood to congratulate him. On Friday nights, nearly 10,000 filled Rhodes Stadium; news vans