Kelly Siegler Speaks Out About David Temple's Retrial: "It's Time for People to Hear the Truth"
In the two-hour Prosecuting Evil season premiere, Siegler addressed the 1999 murder of expectant mother Belinda Temple and accusations of prosecutorial misconduct.
Prosecuting Evil with Kelly Siegler is back for a second season, diving headfirst into a case about the 1999 murder of a high school teacher and her unborn child in a special two-hour season premiere. It was a disturbing case marking the last of Siegler’s career, and one that made her life “a living hell.”
Not only was Siegler accused of withholding evidence during the initial murder trial, but it presented a dire scenario in which she might have sent a wrongfully convicted man to prison, she tearfully explained in Season 2, Episode 1.
“I think it’s time for people to hear the truth of exactly what happened to Belinda’s family and to me, to finally get that justice for Belinda and her baby,” said the veteran prosecutor.
The murder of Belinda Temple
It all started with a 9-1-1 call placed by David Temple on January 11, 1999, at 5:38 p.m. David Temple claimed someone had broken into his Katy, Texas residence and shot his wife, Belinda Temple, to death. David Temple said his wife’s “brain [was] on the floor,” and that she was eight months pregnant with their unborn daughter.
Officials with the Harris County Sheriff’s Office (H.C.S.O.) noted an apparent “forced entry” at the back door, before finding Belinda Temple dead upstairs in the walk-in closet of the master bedroom.
“It’s clear it was a shotgun blast because there’s pellets on the ground, there’s shotgun wadding, and brain matter all over the wall,” Sgt. Dean Holtke told Prosecuting Evil.
While a television had been toppled over and drawers opened, nothing appeared missing from the home. It seemed the purported intruder, based on the far-reaching position of glass shards, could have only broken the back door’s window if the door was wide open, lending to the theory that someone staged the scene to look like a burglary.
Suspicions fall on David Temple
David Temple reported taking their young son, Evan, to the park and running errands while his wife went up to the bedroom to nap.
Though the husband refused to take a polygraph test, law enforcement didn’t have enough evidence to take him into custody. However, upon questioning the victim’s friends and coworkers at Katy High School, H.C.S.O. Sgt. Tracy Shipley heard reports that Mr. Temple would call his wife “fat” and referred to her relatives as “rednecks.”
Detectives also learned that David Temple, who coached football at Alief Hastings High School, was having an ongoing sexual affair with his coworker, Heather Scott.
In the season premiere, Siegler noted a 36-minute window in the husband’s timeline between what should have been a 10- to 15-minute trip from the Brookshire Brothers’ grocery store to Home Depot, something of a “discrepancy” based on surveillance video showing David and Evan Temple.
“So, what was he doing for the rest of that time?” Siegler wondered.
As investigators kept a close eye on the husband, relatives of the Temples offered another suspect worth looking into: Riley Joe Sanders, 16, the Temples’ next-door neighbor and student at Katy High.
“A couple of months prior to the murder of Belinda Temple, Riley Joe’s parents were gone, he had a party, and there was some broken glass in the Temples’ yard,” said H.C.S.O. Sgt. Mark Schmidt. “Belinda told his parents, ‘Your son had this party,’ and they grounded him. And so, David Temple’s family said, ‘You need to look at Riley Joe, he’s got an axe to grind with Belinda.’”
Adding to suspicions, Sanders was absent for part of the school day on the day of the murders.
Sanders took three polygraphs, according to Sgt. Chuck Leithner, but the results could not be used at trial because of suspected marijuana use.
School employee emails between David Temple and Scott kept the husband on law enforcement’s radar. It turned out Mr. Temple regularly visited his coworker without his wife knowing.
“I couldn’t believe that he would actually cheat on my sister,” Belinda Temple’s twin sister, Brenda Lucas, told Prosecuting Evil. “After that, there’s no doubt in my mind, he killed Belinda and [their unborn daughter] Erin.”
Still, it wasn’t enough to charge the widower, and the case went cold.
“David went on with his life,” according to the victim’s sister.
Eventually, David Temple sold the Katy home and moved some 20 miles south to Richmond, Texas. Two years later, he and Scott became husband and wife.
Siegler is assigned to the Belinda Temple case
Against the backdrop of the 2002 high-profile case of Laci Peterson, an expectant mother murdered by her philandering husband, Scott Peterson, Siegler was assigned to the Temple homicide. Reviewing the case with fresh eyes, she noted the peculiarity that, despite Belinda Temple retreating to the bedroom to nap, she was killed while still wearing her shoes and eyeglasses.
She also recalled that Buck Bindeman, one of David Temple's former high school classmates, reported seeing David Temple driving north of town at 5:00 p.m. on the date of the crime, during the timeframe in which the suspect couldn’t account for the gap in his purported drive between the grocery store and Home Depot.
“Why didn’t David Temple mention that, and what was he doing up there?” Siegler wondered.
Siegler built a circumstantial case based on Bindeman’s statements, the inconsistent timeframe, Mr. Temple’s infidelity, and the scene staged to look like a burglary. And, on November 20, 2004 — nearly five years after the homicide — she approved the arrest of Belinda Temple’s husband.
It wasn’t long before David Temple made bond and hired famed defense attorney Dick DeGuerin.
The first murder trial of David Temple
At the October 2007 trial, DeGuerin alleged the glass of the back door shattered in an unusual manner, not because it was staged, but because the purported intruder slammed the door open with great force. He said investigators “ignored other leads,” namely the teen next door, Riley Joe Sanders.
For the prosecution, Siegler emphasized the Temples’ aggressive family dog, questioning how someone other than David Temple could have passed the intimidating animal. Additionally, the prosecutor attempted to poke holes in David Temple’s timeline, suggesting he traveled north because he wanted to dispose of the murder weapon — which was never recovered — in the rice fields before rushing to Home Depot 14 minutes later to establish an alibi.
To press motive, Siegler brought Belinda Temple’s best friends to testify about the rocky marriage and David Temple’s ongoing affair with Heather Scott. By then, David Temple and Scott had been married for six years.
In a head-scratching move, David Temple testified on his own behalf. He struggled to explain away the inconsistencies Siegler found, and denied Buck Bindeman’s statements that he’d driven north of town on the day of the murders.
When asked why there wasn’t a speck of blood on his body despite his claims that he took life-saving measures to save Belinda Temple and their unborn daughter, David Temple had no answer.
“How does that happen?” Siegler told Prosecuting Evil. “And the best answer he could come up with is ‘I don’t know.’”
In another bombshell strategy, Siegler called Riley Joe Sanders in as a rebuttal witness. Sanders praised Belinda Temple as a teacher during his testimony and said he fully understood why she went to his parents about skipping school.
“It was clear to everybody in that courtroom that this 16-year-old kid had cooperated completely and had no motive in the entire universe to wanna kill Belinda Temple,” said Siegler. “[It] blew up in Dick DeGuerin’s face, and it was a beautiful thing to watch.”
After a month-long trial, a jury found David Temple guilty of murder. He was sentenced to life in prison.
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David Temple is granted a new trial
Following the verdict, Siegler unsuccessfully ran for Harris County District Attorney before landing her role as a special prosecutor for the Wharton County’s D.A.’s Office. In 2012, she followed her heart for cold cases to film the Oxygen original series, Cold Justice, now available on Oxygen.
However, things changed in 2015, eight years after David Temple’s conviction. After multiple failed appeals, defense attorneys announced a fresh witness in the case could prove David Temple’s innocence.
“A brand-new witness named Daniel Glasscock who supposedly heard Riley Joe Sanders say that he killed Belinda Temple,” Siegler told Prosecuting Evil.
Glasscock’s claims that Sanders confessed to shooting Belinda while trying to shoot the Temples’ family dog didn’t add up. However, defense attorneys Casie Gotro and Stanley Schnider accused Siegler of prosecutorial misconduct for not proposing Sanders as a potential alternate suspect, also known as a Brady violation.
“Brady evidence is any evidence that is exculpatory or mitigates punishment or affects the credibility of a witness. All of those things are things that have to be turned over by the prosecution to the defense,” Siegler explained. “In my opinion, I turned over every single thing that anyone could define as exculpatory or Brady in this case.”
David Temple’s defense outlined 38 instances in which Siegler allegedly withheld evidence, including the F.B.I.’s profile report, all of which the prosecutor denied.
“We didn’t hide anything from Dick DeGuerin, but the entire case file was not turned over because back in 2005, Dick DeGuerin asked for an examining trial to see if a judge finds probable cause to indict,” Siegler explained. “But, if you ask for an examining trial, the office policy at that time dictated that the file would then become closed to you … I remember saying to him, ‘Why do you want to do that, Dick? You know that the file’s gonna become closed if you do that.’ And he said to me, ‘Don’t you tell me how to do my job.’”
Dick DeGuerin declined Prosecuting Evil’s requests for comment.
In December 2016, the Texas Court of Appeals granted the defendant a new trial based on the defense’s claims of prosecutorial misconduct.
“I just couldn’t believe it,” Siegler admitted. “I was mad.”
David Temple is convicted of Belinda's murder for the second time
David Temple was released on bond after nine years in prison to await a second trial. Special prosecutors Lisa Tanner and Bill Turner of the Texas Attorney General’s Office would go after David Temple a second time.
A fresh look at the evidence Siegler presented during the initial trial convinced prosecutors, once again, that David Temple was guilty of killing Belinda and baby Erin Temple.
“We all saw it the same way,” said Siegler.
David Temple’s second trial began in August 2019, one and a half years after his prison release.
One of the prosecution’s key witnesses was Angie Vielma, who’d visited her friend across the street from the Temple home on the day of the murder. She reported seeing David Temple pull into his driveway at 5:25 p.m. However, Vielma didn't see David Temple react to the crime scene and then take his son to a neighbor as he had previously claimed.
“All of those things would have drawn the attention of anybody,” Turner told Prosecuting Evil. “But Angela walked by their house at 5:25, just walked across the street, just a few hundred feet, and then sat on the porch for 10 minutes, and none of that happened.”
Prosecutors said David Temple called 9-1-1 at 5:38 p.m. to report the break-in and murder.
“So that put David Temple in the house for approximately 10 or 11 minutes, and it is our position that for 10 minutes, David Temple was staging the house,” Turner continued. “He made sure things were just right before he let third parties know that this happened.”
A glass expert also supported the prosecution’s stance that the back door’s glass was positioned in such a way that it could have only been staged. Tanner and Turner also pressed that the only person who had a motive to kill Belinda Temple was her unfaithful husband.
As was the case in the first trial, the defense pointed to Riley Joe Sanders as an alternate suspect. But even after the then-36-year-old cooperated with authorities and testified for a second time, no motive could be determined.
The defense came up empty-handed on their promises to present new evidence in the case, and, for a second time, a jury found David Temple guilty of murdering his wife and unborn baby.
“So, to all those people out there that say I hid something, where in the hell is it?” Siegler asked producers.
Following delays due to COVID-19, in April 2023, the defendant was sentenced to life in prison.
He continues to appeal his case from behind bars.
Watch all-new episodes of Prosecuting Evil with Kelly Siegler, airing Saturdays at 8/7c on Oxygen.
