Free Shattered: The True Story of a Mother's Love, a Husband's Betrayal, and a Cold-Blooded Texas Murder by Kathryn Casey

had difficulty keeping track of his funds before, suddenly he monitored his checkbook. He seemed easier to get along with, and his wild side was tamed. David, it appeared, was finally growing up.
    “They attributed that to Belinda, that David was becoming a man,” says Cindi. “She brought out the good in him. David loved Belinda, and from the start, Kenny and Maureen loved her, too.”
    Perhaps David’s parents saw in Belinda what others would remark on later, believing she was someone strong enough to hold her own with David. When they played Monopoly with her during one visit, Belinda and David fought for properties so hard that Ken and Maureen later said they wouldn’t play with them again.
    That fall, at a baseball game, a friend brought a litter of dogs for sale, chows. Belinda and David played with the puppies, and Belinda picked one out, a ball of fur they named Shaka. The dog would eventually grow to look like a small bear, with long brown fur that stood at attention. Chows are a protective breed, and Shaka was especially so. From puppy hood on, he bared his teeth and growled at anyone who came near David or Belinda. “That dog scared the fire out of me,” says Rios.
    Although the dog lived in their apartment, David’s roommate didn’t trust Shaka. “Even if you knew him, it could be iffy,” Moore would say. He felt more certain of that assessment after his girlfriend once crawled in through a window to retrieve something after being locked out. Although she knew the dog well, Shaka snarled at the girl, warily watching her. “She had to talk the dog down to get inside,” says Moore.
    That fall, Maureen and Ken met Tom and Carol for the first time. Tom was impressed with the young man his daughter was dating. “It was hard not to be, with the boy’s picture all over Nacogdoches advertising the football team,” he said, with a glum expression. “We’d go places, and people would get up to greet him, like he was a big shot.”
    The meeting between the two families seemed to go well, but when Belinda’s roommate met David’s family, Rios felt even more distrustful of Belinda’s new boyfriend. Like their son, Maureen and Ken ribbed Rios about her accent, but she didn’t take it as if they were kidding. It felt more like ridicule. At one point, Rios admitted her doubts to Belinda, telling her that the Temple family, especially David, had overblown egos. “You know, being a redneck isn’t the worst thing in the world. There are worse things than talking like you’re from the country,” Rios said. “That boyfriend of yours is a horse’s ass.”
    “David’s just teasing you,” Belinda insisted. “He really likes you.”
    At that point, Staci reasoned that she’d had her say and dropped it. Plus, she kept reminding herself that David and his family didn’t treat Belinda the way they acted toward her. The Temples appeared to adore Belinda, and David, as contentious as Rios found him, at least on the surface was good to Belinda. “I thought maybe I was wrong,” Rios would say years later. “I wanted Belinda to be happy, and she was.”
    Coach Graves had known the Lucas family for years and watched Belinda grow up. Although he knew how violent the middle linebacker could be on the field, when Graves saw David with her, he, too, reasoned that all was well. “They looked like they were very much in love,” says the coach.
    Yet Belinda’s twin, like Staci Rios, questioned the wisdom of her sister’s choice in a boyfriend. When Brenda met David, she was struck by the way he turned every conversation around to football. “It was all he wanted to talk about,” she says. “Football was everything.”
    Then Brenda noticed what Staci had, the way Belinda acted around David. For the first time Brenda saw her feisty sister take a backseat to a boyfriend. If David disagreed with her, Belinda went silent. Brenda thought about how odd it was that Belinda was willing to abandon her usual confidence for