February 20, 2010 10:55 PM
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48 Hours Mystery: The Guessing Game
The night Belinda was murdered in January 1999, David told police he had no idea who did it, but, later, he wondered about one of her students, the Temples' next door neighbor, Riley Joe Sanders.
At the time, he was 16 and perpetually truant. Belinda had reported him to his parents. Asked if he thinks he Riley killed Belinda, David says, "I honestly don't know."
Sanders told a reporter he was in school all day, but later admitted to police he cut out to smoke pot with friends. He was known to use his father's twelve-gauge shotguns without permission; his friends had stolen shotguns a few weeks earlier. Sanders was in the area around the time that other neighbors heard a sudden and startling noise.
Growing up, Ed and Herman Roberts lived in the house behind the Temples. Police spoke with them shortly after the murder.
The boys say they are sure they heard one gunshot. But when exactly did they hear that bang?
The brothers happened to be watching Dr. Doolittle at the time, and nine years later they remember the exact point in the film when they heard the bang - a scene 24 minutes and 50 second into the movie.
With that information, the police could calculate when the boys heard that noise.
They were dropped at the bus stop around 3:45 p.m., came home, did what they estimated to be 10 to 15 minutes of homework, horsed around a little, and started the video. It the boys are right, it means the shot was fired around 4:30 p.m.
That was the time that David was out shopping. He and Evan were caught by a surveillance camera at the grocery store.
Within days, police discovered that Riley lied about where he was and asked him to take a lie detector test. He agreed, and failed at least twice.
But there was no way to link any of the shotguns Riley and his friends had to the crime, and there was no other evidence to put him at the scene. What's more, police had another suspect in their sights.
Dean Holtke looked at the Temples' broken back door. Something about the way the pieces of glass fell seemed odd to him. "You would expect the glass to go in the direction of the break. Yet the glass in this one was inside the house, further into the living room."
He took a lot of pictures, and a lot of what Holtke saw that day made him wonder if a burglar had really broken into the home. The TV was down on the floor, but was not unplugged. "If you're there to steal a TV, first you'd unplug it, right?"
He started to think the scene had been staged. "There's jewelry out in the open," he remembers.
And there was more: detectives were troubled to learn that David Temple had become a little too close to a fellow teacher named Heather Scott. David had neglected to tell police how close they were. "We started e-mailin', flirtin' through the e-mails, talkin' just about goin' to Happy Hour, callin' her sexy. It's nothin' what I would call nasty or provocative," David says.
Police questioned Heather twice. The first time, she said that although she and David had never been alone, they had what she called a "casual romantic relationship."
But Det. Shipley took a second statement from Heather, given after Heather consulted a lawyer. "She said, 'I just need to explain our situation a little more. He was at my house for New Year's Eve,'" Shipley says.
And this time, Heather said the relationship was somewhat more than casual. "She said that they had had sex," Shipley says.
Temple admits he spent that New Year's Eve at Heather's apartment, and that he had told Belinda he was going hunting. But he insists Heather meant nothing to him. He says it wasn't love, just a "physical" thing.
"You left your wife while she was pregnant to be with this other woman. And you felt nothing for her?" Schlesinger asks.
"I enjoyed the attention," David says.
He says he was happy with Belinda. "I loved my wife very much. Would have laid my life down for her. What I did was wrong."
But Heather's signed statement says that just three days before Belinda was killed, "David said something like 'I think you know I have totally fallen in love with you.'"
David denies saying that. "I didn't want to be with Heather. Heather knows that."
Whatever the relationship was, it was not a secret anymore. And David knew that put him under suspicion.
Three months after the crime, a grand jury was convened. In the end the jury indicted nobody - not Riley Joe Sanders, the neighbor who police all but dismissed as a suspect, nor David Temple, the man police believed committed the crime.
With no hard evidence connecting anybody to this murder, the case went cold. David got on with his life, and went back to teaching.
A year and a half later, he remarried. His new wife? Heather Scott.
Asked when he fell in love with Heather, Temple says, "It'd be hard to pick a day."
It's an important detail, because no matter what the grand jury thought, investigators were convinced Temple fell in love with Heather before Belinda was killed.
Copyright 2010 CBS. All rights reserved. At the time, he was 16 and perpetually truant. Belinda had reported him to his parents. Asked if he thinks he Riley killed Belinda, David says, "I honestly don't know."
Sanders told a reporter he was in school all day, but later admitted to police he cut out to smoke pot with friends. He was known to use his father's twelve-gauge shotguns without permission; his friends had stolen shotguns a few weeks earlier. Sanders was in the area around the time that other neighbors heard a sudden and startling noise.
Growing up, Ed and Herman Roberts lived in the house behind the Temples. Police spoke with them shortly after the murder.
The boys say they are sure they heard one gunshot. But when exactly did they hear that bang?
The brothers happened to be watching Dr. Doolittle at the time, and nine years later they remember the exact point in the film when they heard the bang - a scene 24 minutes and 50 second into the movie.
With that information, the police could calculate when the boys heard that noise.
They were dropped at the bus stop around 3:45 p.m., came home, did what they estimated to be 10 to 15 minutes of homework, horsed around a little, and started the video. It the boys are right, it means the shot was fired around 4:30 p.m.
That was the time that David was out shopping. He and Evan were caught by a surveillance camera at the grocery store.
Within days, police discovered that Riley lied about where he was and asked him to take a lie detector test. He agreed, and failed at least twice.
But there was no way to link any of the shotguns Riley and his friends had to the crime, and there was no other evidence to put him at the scene. What's more, police had another suspect in their sights.
Dean Holtke looked at the Temples' broken back door. Something about the way the pieces of glass fell seemed odd to him. "You would expect the glass to go in the direction of the break. Yet the glass in this one was inside the house, further into the living room."
He took a lot of pictures, and a lot of what Holtke saw that day made him wonder if a burglar had really broken into the home. The TV was down on the floor, but was not unplugged. "If you're there to steal a TV, first you'd unplug it, right?"
He started to think the scene had been staged. "There's jewelry out in the open," he remembers.
And there was more: detectives were troubled to learn that David Temple had become a little too close to a fellow teacher named Heather Scott. David had neglected to tell police how close they were. "We started e-mailin', flirtin' through the e-mails, talkin' just about goin' to Happy Hour, callin' her sexy. It's nothin' what I would call nasty or provocative," David says.
Police questioned Heather twice. The first time, she said that although she and David had never been alone, they had what she called a "casual romantic relationship."
But Det. Shipley took a second statement from Heather, given after Heather consulted a lawyer. "She said, 'I just need to explain our situation a little more. He was at my house for New Year's Eve,'" Shipley says.
And this time, Heather said the relationship was somewhat more than casual. "She said that they had had sex," Shipley says.
Temple admits he spent that New Year's Eve at Heather's apartment, and that he had told Belinda he was going hunting. But he insists Heather meant nothing to him. He says it wasn't love, just a "physical" thing.
"You left your wife while she was pregnant to be with this other woman. And you felt nothing for her?" Schlesinger asks.
"I enjoyed the attention," David says.
He says he was happy with Belinda. "I loved my wife very much. Would have laid my life down for her. What I did was wrong."
But Heather's signed statement says that just three days before Belinda was killed, "David said something like 'I think you know I have totally fallen in love with you.'"
David denies saying that. "I didn't want to be with Heather. Heather knows that."
Whatever the relationship was, it was not a secret anymore. And David knew that put him under suspicion.
Three months after the crime, a grand jury was convened. In the end the jury indicted nobody - not Riley Joe Sanders, the neighbor who police all but dismissed as a suspect, nor David Temple, the man police believed committed the crime.
With no hard evidence connecting anybody to this murder, the case went cold. David got on with his life, and went back to teaching.
A year and a half later, he remarried. His new wife? Heather Scott.
Asked when he fell in love with Heather, Temple says, "It'd be hard to pick a day."
It's an important detail, because no matter what the grand jury thought, investigators were convinced Temple fell in love with Heather before Belinda was killed.
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