Free The Lone Star Love Triangle: True Crime by Gregg Olsen, Kathryn Casey, Rebecca Morris Page A

ordered him to commit himself to the VA hospital in Houston "and be cured of the dependency." Hurley, who’d served a stint in the Navy, stayed at the hospital for three months, until March 1981 when he returned to his job at the school and began regular attendance at AA meetings. That August, Voytek recommended Hurley for the principal's position at the junior school, which Hurley judged as a demotion. His main accomplishment, his political strength, was the agriculture program he had built up at the high school. It was his dynasty.
    WHEN HURLEY ARRIVED AT THE junior school, Laura Nugent had already been working there for slightly more than a year as a clerical aide. Although they’d lived 15 miles apart for much of their lives, Laura and Hurley barely knew each other. Laura had started with the schools under the CETA program for training the disadvantaged and unskilled. For the first time, at age 32, she was learning skills that she could use to support herself. With two bad marriages behind her, Laura had a history of picking the wrong man.
    Laura's first husband, Charles Moor, still lived across the field from her home north of Hull. He was the arm-wrestling champion of the area, and liked to ply his talent in local bars for free drinks. Their marriage lasted eight years and produced a daughter, Lisa. Laura’s second husband, Carroll Nugent, had come off a hard stint in Vietnam. When he came home late at night he would hide all the guns and knives in the house because he feared being murdered as he slept. After three years that marriage also ended, and Laura again moved into her parents' small home. The house, built on scattered cinderblocks, shuddered as lumber trucks sped past on the highway. The black-and-white photograph on her parents' dining room wall was of a beautiful but somber five-year-old Laura holding a toy phone to her ear.
    At the junior school, Hurley and Laura worked 15 feet away from each other, just inside the double-doors at the main entrance. A beige brick building with creaking hardwood floors, the school was built in the fifties and had changed little since.
    In May 1982, after nine months of spending their days together at the school, Hurley walked up to Laura's desk with his divorce papers in hand and said that he was going to end his 25-year marriage to Geneva Morris. He'd made overtures before, but Laura had refused. "See, Laura, I told you I would do it," he told her in his soft East Texas drawl. "There's no reason now why you can't go out with me."
    Their relationship developed slowly, and they were careful to hide it at school. Few knew, or even suspected, that the principal and secretary were dating. Hurley's enjoyment came from the horse races, and he taught Laura how to handicap the ponies. Her days with Hurley took her away from Hull and the confines of her parents' home, and she found it exciting. By summer, they were staying together on weekends at the TraveLodge near the racetrack. When they went to bed, Laura says, it was without any great passion, and as their affair continued, it gave her more a sense of companionship than love.
    Late in the summer of 1982, Hurley had heart bypass surgery. The month before, he’d repeatedly told Laura that he wanted his divorce finalized before he went in the hospital. He told her that he had moved in with his brother, Walter, and was trying to force Geneva out of the house. The divorce became final that November, but unknown to Laura, Geneva and Hurley continued to live together.
    The following March, parents started to complain to Superintendent Voytek that the black principal was dating the white school secretary. Voytek called in the pair and asked if there was any truth to the rumors. Both denied it, and Laura sobbed when confronted with the accusations.
    That spring, 1983, other storms began to swirl around Hurley. Local merchants complained that he had given them bad checks. Then in October 1984, $200 in junior school funds was discovered