Candy Montgomery

Summary

Podcast Summary
Scams, Money, & Murder
Crime House – Episode: Candy Montgomery (July 11, 2026)

Overview of the Episode

This episode inaugurates a three-part series on the notorious case of Candy Montgomery and the killing of Betty Gore, a brutal axe murder that shattered the tranquility of Wylie, Texas, in 1980. Host Katie Ring focuses this first installment on the backgrounds and inner worlds of the two women at the center of the tragedy, the grim discovery of Betty’s body, and the first tumultuous days of the investigation. Ring emphasizes the humanity of the victim and interrogates how communities react to violence that seems unthinkable in their midst.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

Backgrounds of Betty Gore and Candy Montgomery (05:09–11:32)

• Betty’s Early Life and Aspirations

  • Betty Eileen Pomeroy was born in 1950 in rural Kansas, the oldest of three children, innately nurturing and aspired to teach.
  • She married Alan Gore after meeting him in college; their marriage began with promise but was soon beset by instability and frequent moves for Alan’s work.

• Challenges in Marriage and Motherhood

  • Betty’s struggles with loneliness and severe postpartum depression after the birth of their two daughters are explored in depth.
  • Notably candid for her era, she sought help from doctors and openly discussed her mental health with her husband.

• Settling in Wylie, Texas

  • Alan’s job at Rockwell International allowed the family to settle in Wylie, offering Betty a teaching job and a supportive church community, though Betty was never fully embraced socially, perceived as sensitive and sometimes difficult—a dynamic Ring highlights as crucial to later events.

• The Montgomerys Enter the Scene

  • At church, the Gores met Pat and Candy Montgomery. The families, outwardly similar and mainstays of church life, became friendly, especially the husbands. Candy and Betty were acquaintances, members of a tight community where expectations for women were immense.

Memorable Quote:

• “It looked like the picture of suburban stability. But that picture came with its own kind of pressure, and it felt heaviest on the women. Betty Gore and Candy Montgomery were living under that same exact weight, but were carrying it in very different ways. And that difference is where this story truly begins.” – Katie Ring (11:24)

The Night of the Murder & Gruesome Discovery (14:33–21:28)

• Alan Gore leaves for a business trip to Minnesota on June 13, 1980, promising to call—Betty does not answer.
• With growing concern, Alan phones neighbors and learns Betty’s car is at home and the house is quiet.
• Late that night, three men (Jerry McMahon, Lester Gaylor, Richard Parker) enter the unlocked Gore house; upstairs, Betty’s baby daughter is found alone and crying.
• Betty’s body is discovered in the utility room in a horrific crime scene: blood everywhere, her body mutilated by over 40 blows from an axe, face unrecognizable.

Notable Moment:

• “One of the men… slammed the door shut, and for a moment, the three of them just stood there in the hallway, stunned into silence.” – Katie Ring (15:53)

First Days of the Investigation (21:28–28:45)

• The brutality of the scene initially overwhelms investigators and neighbors—some even suspect suicide due to Betty’s mental health history, but physical evidence quickly disproves this.

• Key evidence: a wooden-handled axe (the murder weapon) found under the freezer; a bloody footprint too small for a man; a bloody thumbprint; traces of hair under the victim’s fingernails.

• The overkill element (41 wounds, many delivered while Betty was alive) indicates a highly personal attack.

• Investigative Focus Shifts

  • Police initially focus on Alan Gore but eliminate him due to his airtight alibi and the physical evidence indicating a smaller perpetrator.
  • Attention turns to Betty’s social circle and movements on the day of her death.

Crucial Break: The 5-Year-Old Witness (28:45–29:35)

• Tina, a five-year-old friend of Elisa (Betty’s older daughter), tells police she saw Candy Montgomery visit the Gore house that morning.
• Candy is interviewed; she explains her visit to retrieve Elisa’s swimsuit for a play date and seems an unlikely suspect—until Alan calls police with a new revelation.

Alan’s Confession: The Affair Revealed (28:45–29:35)

• Alan, previously withholding this fact, tells police he and Candy Montgomery had been having an affair. Candy, previously described as a model community member, is now in the investigative spotlight.

Memorable Quote:

• “The woman he’d been having an affair with was the same woman who had been the last person to see his wife alive. Her name was Candy Montgomery.” – Katie Ring (29:28)

Host Q&A Segment
(29:35–33:45)

• On the Most Haunting Detail
  • “For me, it's the baby. … When the neighbors finally got into the house…the thing that drew them through, it wasn't a sound from Betty. It was the baby crying with a soiled diaper, having been left alone all day.” – Katie Ring (29:40)
• On the Initial Misreading as Suicide
  • Katie discusses the overwhelming blood, the confusion at the crime scene, and how Betty’s history of depression briefly misled investigators and family: “Lester [the neighbor] literally slammed the door before he could fully process it.” (30:35)
• On Investigating the Husband
  • “It’s more than fair…The statistics are just very consistent. When a woman is killed, it is most often by someone close to her…What moved him down the list was two pieces of evidence…one, he had a genuine alibi…two, the bloody footprint was too small to be a grown man's.” (31:31)
• Reliability of a Child Witness
  • Katie affirms the importance of Tina’s simple, factual account: “…a five year old can be very reliable on simple, concrete facts. Did you see someone who wasn't [normally there]? … She named a person who the whole town knew." (32:38)
• On Betty Gore’s Legacy
  • “I think that she's a whole person, not just a backdrop…Some of the things people whispered about her, that she was sensitive or difficult, I think that was just a woman quietly drowning while being told she had no reason to. … Bettty Gore was a real wife, a real mother, a real teacher. And whatever happened to her in that utility room, she did not deserve it.” (33:37)

Important Timestamps

• 05:09 — Betty Gore’s early life and marriage to Alan
• 08:50 — Betty’s mental health struggles and life in Wylie, Texas
• 11:24 — Introduction of Candy Montgomery and the dynamics in Wylie
• 14:33 — The day of the murder: Alan’s trip, Betty’s fear, neighbors’ discovery
• 17:21 — Discovery of Betty’s body and the crime scene details
• 21:28 — Initial investigative breakdown and focus on personal motive
• 26:10 — Evidence review: overkill, small footprint, hair/clues at the scene
• 28:20 — Tina, the child witness, and Candy Montgomery’s statement
• 29:00 — Alan reveals affair with Candy, shifting suspect focus
• 29:35–33:45 — Q&A: Emotional impact, investigation missteps, child witness reliability, and Betty’s legacy

Notable Quotes

• “This was suburban Texas at the tail end of the 70s. The expectation was that you would be a good wife, raise kids, keep a spotless house and show up at church with a smile and never, ever complain about any of it.” – Katie Ring (10:34)
• “You don’t just hit someone 40 times in order to kill them…40 is something different. Investigators have a word for it: overkill. And it almost always points in the same direction. This was personal, a crime of passion.” – Katie Ring (22:06)

Conclusion & Context

This episode sets the emotional and factual groundwork for the Candy Montgomery case, mapping the complex relational web and emotional pressures underpinning the murder. Ring invites empathy for Betty Gore, often overshadowed by the infamy surrounding her killer. The episode ends poised to explore the motive, affair, and trial in subsequent installments.

For listeners seeking more context on true crime cases that shape American consciousness, this installment is a compelling, detailed, and emotionally resonant entry point into one of suburbia’s darkest legends.

Transcript

[Vanessa]

Hi listeners, it's Vanessa. Before today's episode, I want to take a brief moment to tell you about a show from Crime House's sister studio, Rewind that I know you'll love. It's called Government that Doesn't Suck, hosted by professors Lindsay Cormack and Greg Jackson from History that Doesn't Suck. Ever wonder how the weather forecast on your phone is so accurate? Or how your mail still gets across the country for less than a dollar? Or who actually built the highway you drove on this morning? Each episode tells the surpr of an American institution that you'll never look at the same way again. Listen to and follow Government that Doesn't Suck every other Monday on Apple podcasts and Spotify, or watch video episodes on YouTube.

[Tristan Hughes]

This is Crime House.

[Katie Ring]

On the night of Friday, June 13, 1983, men crossed a dark alley in the quiet suburb of Wylie, Texas to check on a neighbor who hadn't answered her phone all day. What they found inside her utility room was so horrifying that one of them slammed the door shut and could barely get a sentence out. Betty Gore, a 30 year old fifth grade teacher and mother of two, had been struck by an ax more than 40 times. Her baby daughter was upstairs in her crib where she had been crying alone for hours. This was a town where people left their doors unlocked, where everyone knew everyone. And now somewhere among them, there was a killer. Today I'll introduce you to Betty Gore and who she really was long before her name became a headline and take you inside the night her neighbors made a discovery they would spend the rest of their lives trying to forget. Every crime tells a story about the people involved, the system that tried to stop it, and the nation that couldn't look away. Some cases are so shocking, so deeply woven into who we are, that decades later, we're still asking, how did this happen? I'm Katie Ring and this is America's Most Infamous Crimes. Every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, I'll take you deep into cases that have a lasting imprint on society and still haunt us today. Crime House exists because of listeners like you. Want even more? Join Crime House plus and get all three parts of each week's America's Most Infamous crime stories dropped at once every Monday and ad free. You'll also get the rest of the Crime House lineup ad free and early and exclusive bonus episodes. To join, go to crimehouseplus.com or if you listen on Apple podcasts, tap try free at the top of America's Most Infamous Crime show page. And to help keep growing our community. Be sure to rate, review and follow America's most infamous crimes wherever you get your podcasts. Before I get started, please be advised that this episode contains descriptions of extreme violence and the mutilation of a body, so please listen with care. This is the first of our three episode series on Kandy Montgomery and the killing of Betty Gore. Today I'll introduce you to the two women at the center of this story, take you inside the night Betty's neighbors found her, and walk through the first days of an investigation that left an entire town afraid to leave its doors unlocked.

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[Vanessa]

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[Katie Ring]

Most people who know this case know it by one name, Candy Montgomery. But before the headlines, there were two women living a few streets apart in the same small Texas town, trying to build the exact same kind of life. And one of them, the one whose name we don't say nearly as much, deserves to have her story told. So that's where I want to start with Betty Gore. She was born Betty eileen Pomeroy on January 9, 1950, in Kingman County, Kansas. She was the oldest of three kids and the only girl, which meant that from a young age, she helped look after her two younger brothers. This responsibility at a young age can be hard, but Betty didn't mind it. She loved her brothers deeply, and taking care of people came naturally to her. It even shaped what she wanted out of life. Betty dreamed of being a teacher. She wanted to spend her days with children, and she wanted to give something back to the world around her. She met the man she would marry while they were both students at Southwestern College in Winfield, Kansas. His name was Alan Gore, and he was a few years older than she was. In fact, he was the TA for her freshman math class. Alan was smart, well read and serious about the things he cared about. And the two of them clicked almost immediately. There was just one obstacle. Allen didn't think it was right to date a student while he was her ta so they stayed friends and they waited. When the semester ended and Betty wasn't in the class anymore, things finally shifted. Within about a year, Alan proposed, and In January of 1960, 70, they got married. That's the fairy tale part of the story. But the part that came afterward was a lot harder. Married life wasn't like Betty had hoped. Allan struggled to find steady work, and they moved around constantly, chasing one job after another. It's hard to put down roots when you're always packing to leave. And Betty had trouble making friends in places she never stayed long enough to feel at home. On top of that, Allan's work would sometimes pull him away for long stretches, trips that could last weeks at a time. And Betty, who'd always hated being alone, found herself feeling extremely lonely. She told herself it was temporary, just a phase they had to get through until things finally steadied out. Then, in 1973, Betty and Alan learned they were expecting their first child. On paper, this is everything Betty had ever wanted. She'd always wanted to be a mother. But just like being married, being pregnant wasn't like she'd pictured. The morning sickness was relentless, and the depression that came with it was even worse. Betty's mental health slid, and even though she was in an era when people didn't like to talk about these things, Betty did. She confided in Allen, went to her doctors for help, and her gynecologist prescribed antidepressants to try and pull her through. In 1974, the Gores welcomed a baby girl who they named Elisa. Everyone in Betty's life told her this was supposed to be the happiest she'd ever be. She was supposed to be glowing. Instead, after Elisa was born, Betty's depression deepened into what we would now clearly recognize as postpartum depression. She felt more isolated than ever. She'd gained weight. She felt self conscious in a way that she hadn't before. She saw another doctor who prescribed more medication. This was a real heavy daily struggle, and for the most part, she was carrying it alone. Some genuine relief finally arrived when Alan landed a serious job offer in Dallas, a position with the aerospace and electronics giant Rockwell International. It was the kind of move that felt like it might be the last one they'd ever have to make. So the family packed up everything and settled into a brick house in Wylie, Texas, a small town in Collin county about 40 minutes northeast of Dallas. And in Wylie, Betty started to find her footing again. She got a job teaching fifth grade at R.C. dodd Middle School. She and Alan joined the local United Methodist Church. And almost overnight, they had something they'd been missing for years. A community. In a small town like Wylie, the church wasn't just an hour on Sunday morning. It was the center of everyone's social life. There were choir rehearsals and Sunday school classes to teach potlucks and Bible studies, even a church volleyball league. People knew them. They were invited to events and parties. And for the first time in a long time, the Gores belonged somewhere. Now, I want to be fair about Betty here because the people who knew her didn't describe her as a saint, and it wouldn't honor her to pretend otherwise. Especially because I think this dynamic played a part on how the trial ended. After a few years in town, she developed a bit of a reputation among the other women at church for being sensitive, the kind of person you chose your words around in case something landed wrong. There was gossip that she was strict with her daughter and that her own students didn't exactly like her. Some of that could probably be chalked up to small town gossip, and some of it had to be related to her depression, which didn't get any better after she had given birth to their second daughter. But it's part of who she was. And it's important to talk about because it helps explain why Betty sometimes felt like an outsider, even in the one town where she finally had a place. It was at that church in 1977 that Betty and Alan met another young couple who just moved to the area, Pat and Candy Montgomery, and on the surface, the two families were almost interchangeable. Both couples were new to Wiley, both husbands worked as engineers, both spent a lot of their free time at the church. Pat and Allan struck up an easy friendship, and while Betty and Candy were never quite as close as their husbands, they were members of the same small congregation, which made them something between friends and friendly acquaintances. If you'd driven down their street in 1980, you'd have seen exactly what you'd expected. Tidy houses, kids on bikes, two young families doing everything right, at least according to the standards of a Texas suburban life in the 70s. Going to church on Sundays, raising their kids, keeping up with their homes. It looked like the picture of suburban stability. But that picture came with its own kind of pressure, and it felt heaviest on the women. This was suburban Texas at the tail end of the 70s. The expectation was that you would be a good wife, raise a kids, keep a spotless house and show up at church with a smile and never ever complain about any of it. Betty Gore and Candy Montgomery were living under that same exact weight, but we're carrying it in very different ways. And that difference is where this story truly begins.

[Vanessa]

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[Katie Ring]

On Friday, June 13, 1980, Alan Gore flew to St. Paul, Minnesota, on a business trip with a few colleagues from work. Betty had always hated being left alone when Allan traveled, and this trip was no exception. Before leaving that morning, he promised he'd call her from the airport before he got on the plane. But there was something else weighing on Betty that week, too. Her period was late, and she was afraid she might be pregnant again. For a lot of people, that would be something to celebrate. But Betty's pregnancies had been the hardest times of her life. The depression, the isolation, the feeling of drowning while everyone told her she would be glowing. The thought of going through all of that a third time really scared her. So she was already on edge when Alan packed his bags and headed for the airport, leaving her home with the baby and her own anxious thoughts. Later that afternoon, Alan called the house before boarding the plane. As promised, Betty didn't pick up, but he didn't think much about it until he called again that night after checking into his hotel in St. Paul, and she still didn't answer. Allen tried again and again, and as the hours crept by, a low hum of worry sharpened into something closer to dread. It wasn't like Betty to not answer the phone, especially when he was out of town. So Allen started calling neighbors back in Wylie. The first person he reached was Richard Parker, who lived next door. Allen asked him to go check on the house. So Richard walked over, looked around the outside, and reported back that everything seemed quiet. He didn't notice anything wrong. Allan also called the Montgomery home because the Gore's oldest daughter, Alisa, had spent the night there. Candy told Allan she'd stopped by their house that morning around 10 o' clock and that Betty had been perfectly fine. But Allen couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong. As the night wore on, he called back and pressed his neighbors to do more than glance through the windows. He needed someone to actually go inside. One of Those neighbors, Jerry McMahon, had been settling in for a quiet Friday night when the call came that pulled him out of his chair and across the alley. He could tell that Allen thought something was really wrong and he didn't want to go over there alone. So a little before 11 o', clock, three men crossed toward the Gore house together. Jerry McMahon, Lester Gaylor, and Richard Parker. The street was dark, lit only by a few porch lights and the dim glow of windows. The they knocked on the front door, but no one answered. They tried the windows, then the utility room, then the garage, but nothing would open. Richard finally went back around the front, planning to force his way in, but when he turned the knob, the door simply swung open. It had been unlocked the entire time. A chill went through all three men as they stepped inside. A few lights were on, but the house was dead silent. They called out Betty's name. No answer. So they spread out, moving from room to room, looking for any sign of her at all. As they worked their way up through the ground floor, one of them noticed dark smears near a bathroom. It was blood. And in that moment, the uneasy quiet turned into something closer to fear. And then one of them heard the baby crying. They followed the sound upstairs and found the Gore's youngest daughter, Bethany, in her crib. She wasn't even a year old yet. Her hair was matted. Her diaper was dirty. It was obvious she had been left like that for hours, maybe the entire day. Richard Parker lifted Bethany out of the crib so he could call for help, while the other two kept looking. Elisa the older daughter was nowhere in the house. She was safe, asleep over at the Montgomerys. But there was still no sign of Betty anywhere. The men kept searching bedrooms, bathrooms, every corner they could find. The only place left was the utility room. Lester reached for the door, pulled it open, and looked inside. At first, his mind couldn't even process what he was seeing. The walls, the shelves, all of it covered in blood. There was so much of it that the little room looked like it had been painted in red. And on the floor in the middle of it all was Betty's body. Lester slammed the door shut, and for a moment, the three of them just stood there in the hallway, stunned into silence. Then the reality of it set in, and they understood what they had to do. They had to call the police. And maybe the hardest part of all, somebody had to tell Allen. As they stood there trying to gather themselves, the phone rang. It was Alan, calling yet again from his hotel in the hope that this time, maybe Betty would answer. And now one of these men had to be the one to pick it up and tell him the truth. Lester broke the news as gently as he could, but the honest truth was that he didn't fully understand what he'd just seen. All he could tell Allen was that it looked like Betty had been shot. Allen couldn't wrap his head around it. They didn't even own a gun, and he'd seen her just that morning. He talked to her before his flight. How could she possibly be dead? The police arrived quickly, and even they were just as shaken by what they walked into. The utility room was tiny, only 12 by 6ft, with a washer, a dryer, a freezer, and a few shelves. Every surface was coated in blood so thick in places that it looked almost black. Betty Gore lay face up on the floor, and her face was so badly damaged that she was nearly unrecognizable. She was fully clothed, and there was no sign of sexual assault, which, in a strange way, only made the scene harder to understand. Whatever had happened in that room had been something else entirely. It was so overwhelming that the first theory anyone reached for was suicide. Even Alan, when he first got the news, jumped to that fear. He knew Betty had struggled with depression, and his first horrified thought was that he hadn't gotten her enough help, that the weight of it all had finally become too much for her to carry. But the moment investigators actually examined the scene, the theory collapsed. There was no gun or bullet hole. Instead, Betty's body was covered from head to toe in deep gashes. Half of her face had been slashed clean away. One of the cuts was so deep, it had almost severed her arm from her body. And tucked underneath the freezer, right beside her head, was the wooden handle of an ax. This wasn't a suicide. Betty Gore had been killed in her own home in the middle of the day while her baby cried, alone in a crib just upstairs. And in a town like Wylie, that single fact was about to change everything.

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[Katie Ring]

21/TNCs apply Queen Carvania stood haloed by the morning sun. An army hung on her every word. My champions, I have sold my chariot on Carvana. Twas a lovely suv, an inexplicable, inexplicably queenly offer. They're even coming to the castle to collect it. Tonight we feast. An offer you can feast on. Sell your car today on Carvana. Pickup fees may apply. Wiley, Texas, was not the kind of place where this happened. In 1980, it was a small, growing suburb on the edge of Dallas, the kind of town people moved to so they could get away from the city. It was a place with rules. And if you got married, had kids, went to church, did your part, life would reward you with peace and stability. A savage axe attack in a suburban laundry room did not fit anywhere in that picture. Which is exactly why it terrified everyone. The police very much included. There was a ton of pressure to solve this case and to do it fast. Partly to get justice for Betty Gore, but partly to calm a community that had suddenly stopped feeling safe. But early on, the local police chief told reporters something that only made things more terrifying. They couldn't determine a motive, and they had very few clues to work with. A schoolteacher had been hacked to death in her own laundry room. And the people who were supposed to have answers didn't have any. In a town this size where the killing was front page news within 48 hours, that uncertainty spread fast. So investigators worked the scene carefully. The weapon was right there in the room with the body. A three foot axe. Betty had been struck more than 40 times, and that number told them something important. You don't just hit someone 40 times in order to kill them. One or two of those blows would have done the job. 40 is something different. Investigators have a word for it. Overkill. And it almost always points in the same direction. This was personal, a crime of passion. The rest of the scene started to fill in the picture. There weren't any signs of forced entry, which meant one of two things. Either Betty had opened the door for her killer, or, like so many doors on that street, it had simply been left unlocked. There was a bloody footprint on the utility room floor and a bloody thumbprint on the freezer door. And there was something investigators hadn't expected to find in one of the bathrooms. There was blood on the tiles, the sink, and the towels, as if, after the attack, the killer had tried to clean themselves up. There was even a pot of coffee that had been left to burn, which hinted that the killing had happened earlier in the day, sometime in the morning. But this was 1980. Forensic science wasn't what it is today. There was no pulling DNA off of that scene. What investigators could do was examine Betty's body and hope it gave them some clues. Trace evidence under her fingernails, in her hair, or on her skin. And it did. The coroner found strands of hair clutched in Betty's hands and more stuck to her feet. There was no way to know for sure whether that hair belonged to Betty or to whoever had killed her. But either way, it would have to be tested. The problem was that the hair and the thumbprint were only useful if police had a suspect to compare them against. Then the autopsy report came back, and it made the personal nature of this crime impossible to ignore. The coroner determined that Betty Gore had been struck 41 times with the ax. Some of the wounds were surprisingly shallow, barely more than glancing blows. Others, like the ones to her head, were deep enough to be fatal. But here is the detail that is truly haunting. Betty had been alive for almost all of them. This was not one clean, fatal blow. The wounds told the story of a long, brutal struggle between two people. And from the angle of the cuts, the coroner could tell that a lot of the blows to Betty's head had been delivered head on, with the killer standing directly over her body. This had to be personal. So who do investigators look at first in a case like this? Statistically, the answer is uncomfortable, but it's consistent. When a woman is killed, it is most often by someone she knows and very often by a husband or partner. So the first person the police looked into was Betty's husband, Allen. But Allen had an alibi, and it was a pretty solid one. When Betty was killed, he'd been hundreds of miles away in St. Paul, Minnesota, on a business trip. His presence there was easy to confirm, and nothing about his account contradicted what police were finding at the scene. And then there was that bloody footprint. When investigators studied it, they realized the foot was simply too small to belong to a grown man. As one former Collin county investigator later put it, they were looking for someone small in stature, a child or a woman. And to be fair to Allen, worrying when your spouse won't answer the phone for the entire evening isn't suspicious. It's exactly what a lot of us would do. So while the police didn't fully clear him, the evidence was starting to point somewhere else. A woman did this. But which woman? And why? The trouble was, the list of suspects was painfully thin. There was no obvious enemy, nothing had been stolen, and there was no clear motive. The case was in real danger of going cold. So investigators did the next logical thing. They started digging into Betty's social world, talking to everyone who knew her, trying to piece together a timeline of her final day. And that's when someone came forward with a detail that cracked the whole thing open. The witness was a five year old girl named Tina, who was a friend of Elisa. Tina told investigators that on the morning Betty was killed, she'd seen someone stop by the Gore's house. Someone she recognized. Someone most people in that town would have recognized. Candy Montgomery. Now, this didn't immediately read as a smoking gun. Candy Montgomery was a well liked, well respected woman in Wylie. She taught Sunday school. She sang in the church choir. She was a friend of Betty's. And Betty's daughter Elisa was having a play date with Candy's kids. Kids? If she'd been at the house that morning, the likeliest explanation was that she was simply the last person to have seen Betty alive, which made her a potential gold mine of information, not a suspect. So the police asked Candy to come down to the station, hoping she could help them. She came willingly. And she was visibly grief stricken over the loss of her friend. She explained that she and Betty had met through the church, and she explained exactly why she'd gone by the house that morning. She was watching Alisa and was supposed to take her to a swim lesson. But she didn't have Alisa's swimsuit, so Candy had to stop by and grab it. She and Betty had chatted for maybe 15 minutes, nothing unusual about the visit at all. Then she'd taken the swimsuit from the utility room, said goodbye and left. She said that when she walked out of that door, Betty was alive and well. As a precaution, investigators asked Candy if she'd bring in the shoes she had been wearing that day. And she agreed without hesitation. And just like that, the lead seemed to fizzle out. Police had been hoping Candy could help them, but there was nothing there. So they circled back to Alan Gore, the one person with a real direct connection to Betty. They thought he might know more than he was letting on, so they brought him back in for questioning. And again, it went nowhere. Maybe this really was a dead end and the killer was some drifter who was already three towns away and never coming back. Feedback and then the very next morning, Alan Gore called the station. He said there is something that he hadn't mentioned before because he hadn't thought it was relevant. He confessed that he'd been having an affair. For investigators, that was a jolt. An affair is motive. It was a brand new reason to take a much harder look at the grieving husband. But then Allen told them one more thing, a detail that turned this entire case completely on its head. The woman he'd been having an affair with was the same woman who had been the last person to see his wife alive. Her name was Candy Montgomery. At the end of each episode, I'd like to take a moment to answer any questions you may have about the case and share my thoughts. So make sure to comment below.

[Interviewer]

Of everything in this first episode, what's the detail that stays with you the most?

[Katie Ring]

For me, it's the baby. I think if you watch the scripted HBO or Hulu series, this hits even harder. When you hit that scene and hear the baby crying and knowing that Bethany was not even a year old and she was upstairs in that crib for hours while her mother laid dead one floor below her. When the neighbors finally got into the house, the thing that drew them through, it wasn't a sound from Betty. It was the baby crying with a soiled diaper. Having been left alone all day, I can't stop thinking about that. And whatever you end up believing about how Betty died, that's a real infant who was completely helpless in a house with a body in it. And honestly, in a strange way, the baby is the reason this case got solved at all. If Allan hadn't called the neighbors, if those men hadn't gone inside that night, Betty could have been left there longer, and an innocent baby would have been left all alone.

[Interviewer]

The neighbors and even the first police on the scene initially thought this might be a suicide. How does a scene get read that wrong?

[Katie Ring]

At least at first, I actually understand it. Even though it turned out to be completely off, Two things were working together. First, the sheer amount of blood. By every account, that room was so saturated that people's brains just couldn't organize what they were looking at. Lester literally slammed the door before he could fully process it. When a scene is that overwhelming, your mind reaches for any explanation it can grab. And second, the people closest to Betty knew she had been struggling with depression and postpartum depression. So when Alan first heard the word dead, his mind went straight to the worst fear. He already carried about his wife, which is human. But obviously, that was cleared up pretty quickly with the crime scene and the forensics, because I don't think anyone is able to hit themselves with an ax 41 times. Again, there was no gunshot, no gun wound, no gun on the scene. It was very clearly a murder.

[Interviewer]

Police went straight to the husband. Was that fair to Allen and what actually pointed them away from him?

[Katie Ring]

I think it's more than fair. When researching this case, I was working backwards because I knew who was on trial and who was killed. But before I even knew all the details, other than a woman killed another woman in her house with an ax, I knew that it had to be over an affair. Then I got to the part where Alan called the police back and admitted to the affair. And I sighed and thought to myself, oh, my God, these men are so predictable. And to be fair, so are their mistresses. So really, I'd be more worried if they hadn't looked at him. The statistics are just very consistent. When a woman is killed, it is most often by someone close to her and very frequently by a partner. So Alan was going to be the first stop. What moved him down the list was two pieces of evidence that are hard to argue with. One, he had a genuine alibi. He was in St. Paul, hundreds of miles away with colleagues on a documented work trip. And two, the bloody footprint on the floor was too small to be a grown man's. So investigators said they were looking for someone small, A child or a woman. So even before they had a name, the physical evidence was quietly redirecting the entire case.

[Interviewer]

The witness who breaks it Open is

[Katie Ring]

a 5 year old.

[Interviewer]

How much weight should we really put on a child that young?

[Katie Ring]

It's a great question because we tend to be skeptical of kid witnesses. Personally, from what I see in child essay cases, we should believe them a lot more often. Yes, there have been Instances where an adult is leading them or where it is hard for them to interpret something complicated. But a five year old can be very reliable on simple, concrete facts. Did you see someone who wasn't? When Tina wasn't being asked to explain a motive or describe a crime, she was only being asked, did you see anyone go in the Gore house? And she named a person who the whole town knew. And there's this detail that actually guts me. Tina went up and rang the Gore's doorbell that morning and nobody answered. She thought it was strange and then she just went back to playing the way a five year old would. She had no idea in that moment what she was standing next to. Her account didn't convict anyone on its own, but it gave investigators the one thread that they didn't have, and that's a big deal. In a case that was about to

[Interviewer]

go cold, we say Candy's name far more than Betty's. What do you want people to hold onto about Betty Gore?

[Katie Ring]

I think that she's a whole person, not just a backdrop. Betty wanted to be a teacher since she was a kid taking care of her little brothers. She chased that dream. She got there. She stood in front of a fifth grade classroom every day and she was carrying something heavy and largely invisible. Postpartum depression in a time and a place where women were expected to smile through everything and never say a word about how hard it was. Some of the things people whispered about her, that she was sensitive or difficult, I think that was just a woman quietly drowning while being told she had no reason to. So before we get into the affair and into the trial and all of this, parts of the story that made it famous, I just want it to go on the record. Betty Gore was a real wife, a real mother, a real teacher. And whatever happened to her in that utility room, she did not deserve it. We'll keep her at the center of this as we go. Thanks so much for joining me for this episode. To enhance your listening experience, join Crime House plus and get all three parts of each week's America's Most Infamous crime stories dropped at once every Monday and ad free. You'll also get the rest of the Crime House lineup ad free and early and exclusive bonus episodes. To join go to crimehousebless.com or if you listen on Apple Podcasts tap, try free at the top of a America's Most Infamous Crime show page. Come back tomorrow for our next episode on Candy Montgomery and the killing of Betty Gore.