Murder By the Book: Candy and Betty

Allan Gore kissed his wife Betty goodbye on a June morning in 1980 Friday the 13th and left on a business trip to Minnesota with several colleagues from his computer electronics firm, Rockwell International.

Betty Gore

From the outside, the Gores seemed happy. They were native Kansans. Betty Pomeroy grew up in Norwich, a town of 400 in south-central Kansas about 30 miles from Wichita. Allan was raised on a farm near Larned, 100 miles northwest of Betty's hometown. They met at Southwestern College, a United Methodist affiliated school in Winfield, Kan., and were married in 1970.

Southwestern College in Winfield, Kan.

After a series of job moves, they settled into a cookie-cutter brick bungalow on Dogwood Drive in Wylie, Tex., another of Dallas' northeast exurbs. Allan worked in computer software, and Betty became an elementary school teacher in Wylie.

Gore had become an attentive husband, no doubt owing in part to guilt over his affair with Candy Montgomery. After that illicit relationship had ended, the Gores attended two sessions of Marriage Encounter, the weekend retreat that became popular in the 1970s. The program encourages spouses to communicate openly, and the Gores had gotten in the habit of leaving loving notes for one another.

The Gores now had two young daughters Alisa, 7, and Bethany, not quite 1 and motherhood had been challenging for Betty. She had become sickly and often was bedridden with undiagnosed maladies likely psychosomatic, some cattily suggested. She was prone to depression, including the post-partum variety, and she had panic attacks when Allan was out of town.

Betty had always been a pretty brunette, but weight gain from her pregnancies had made her self-conscious. Worse, her period was late and she feared she was pregnant again as Allan left on the trip to Minnesota.