Poisoned Dreams Read online

  To portray Denise Woods in a hard hat with a loop belt strung with hammers and chisels around her waist, or possibly in a welding mask à la Jennifer Beals in Flashdance, would be stretching it. The fact is that, at least in her partnership with George Sheban, Denise’s participation in the actual deal-making or supervision of the construction crews was minimal. Her main contribution to the success of the business had to do with her gender; any company fifty percent owned by a woman is entitled to federal preference as a minority contractor and all the advantages thereto. It was Denise’s first experience in business on her own, and she was to make the most of it. She was an astute observer and a fast learner, and she was to use the Houston experience wisely in her future business dealings.

  Richard’s first encounter with Denise, during the week following the trip to Sierra Tucson, had to do with a serious problem. She was far behind schedule in her work, and if the restaurant wasn’t ready to open on time, the mall’s owners were to suffer rental penalties. It was up to Richard to either get Denise into high gear to finish the work, or off the job and replaced with a contractor who would. Denise and her partner had an hour-long meeting with Richard in a booth at Sam’s during the afternoon business lull. Since it was a weekday, customer traffic in the mall was sparse. Richard sat on one side of the booth while Denise and George Sheban, side by side, were across from him. All three drank iced tea.

  Just what went through Richard’s mind in that first meeting with the azure-eyed, flip-haired blonde is known only to him, but it is clear that he felt an immediate and strong attraction. Whatever his reaction to her charms, the meeting ended without a resolution; Denise’s company retained their contract and the work continued at a snail’s pace. During the ensuing months Richard was to face a lot of heat over Denise’s work on Sam’s Cafe. He was to receive weekly instructions from the owners to give Denise and her partner a lesson in hardball. If Sam’s was to desert its lease because of the delays, the owners said, the next call Denise would receive would be from the mall’s attorneys. Richard’s weekly recommendation to the owners was always the same: Denise was doing her best, many of the delays were not her fault, and the owners should let her go on. The cafe’s opening was indeed delayed, but Sam’s Cafe kept the leasing agreement and Denise Woods received full payment on her contract. Richard’s true motive in allowing her to continue on the job is anybody’s guess.

  Richard confesses that even though he and Denise were adversaries to begin with, from the day of that first encounter he couldn’t get her off his mind. For Denise’s part, she viewed Richard originally as only a business acquaintance; she knew that he was married. Not only that, she was into her own relationship at the time. So the afternoon meeting at Sam’s Cafe, as opposed to the picture the prosecution would attempt to paint at trial, didn’t hurl Richard and Denise spontaneously into each other’s arms. It was a beginning, though.

  16

  Richard wasn’t the only one worried about Hughes Industries’ finances. During the company’s final turbulent months the list grew to include creditors, owners of projects the company was in the process of building, and, ultimately, employees who fell victim to bouncing paychecks in Hughes’ death-rattle closing weeks.

  Carol Poor was more loyal than most, sticking firmly by the company until her need to eat overcame her desire to help Hughes Industries over the hump. That’s when she sought and found employment with a downtown Dallas law firm. While with Hughes Industries, Carol acted as Richard’s secretary and assistant, and during the months when he spent virtually all of his time in Houston, Carol in effect acted as Richard. She fielded his calls, answered his correspondence, and—somewhat unwillingly, but effectively, due to Carol’s genteel and cooperative nature—became Richard’s and Nancy’s go-between. Carol is a pretty brunette, a fervently religious young woman who was willing to do what she could not only to help Nancy and Richard with their marital problems, but to aid Nancy in her confusion over her adolescent incest. During Nancy’s final year of life she took Carol into her confidence and told her many things that she told no one else, and that included her family. Nancy and Carol often prayed together.

  “I didn’t have any use for that Denise,” Carol says. “I let Richard have it more than once over her.”

  “Do you think it was her personally,” the interviewer says, “or just her relationship with Richard?”

  “Both. Anyone carrying on with a married man.”

  “He was separated,” the interviewer says.

  “Not when it began,” Carol says rather curtly. There is a plate of lemon chicken on the table before her; Carol’s preference is Chinese. The interviewer wonders briefly how many different kinds of food he’s going to sample before his research is over. It is mid-afternoon; the restaurant is an inexpensive place located in an East Dallas strip shopping center. The table’s centerpiece is a Chinese lantern with a light bulb glowing inside.

  “When did Nancy begin calling you?” the interviewer says.

  “We spoke to each other the whole time I worked there. When she’d call for Richard, you know. It was right after that Sierra Tucson trip, though, when we started getting on a personal level.”

  “What do you think caused her to confide in you?”

  Carol shrugs. “She knew that I was interested, that I really cared. Richard wasn’t helping her any, even before his affair started. I think Nancy hoped I could talk some sense into him.”

  “And did you try?”

  “As much as I could. Richard became pretty distant during that period. All he seemed interested in was getting his hands on that woman. I think now he’s come to his senses, though it’s likely too late for him. I’ve got a letter where he’s telling me, ‘If this isn’t hell it’s the next thing to it.’ He’s into prayer in prison. I’m praying for him.”

  “Did Nancy talk to you about her counseling?”

  “All the time. There was a lot more to that incest business than what they brought up at trial, at least according to her,” Carol says.

  “Did the counseling seem to help her?” The interviewer toys with his own plate of Moo Goo Gai Pan. On a scale of one to ten, Chinese food is around number nine on his list.

  “I don’t think the counseling did much for her. She wrote down a lot of things, a lot of things that troubled her. She needed Richard badly at that time, but he just wasn’t there for her.”

  “And in spite of all that, you don’t think he killed her?”

  Carol is firm here. “I know he didn’t.”

  The interviewer is puzzled. “He was having an affair. Without her inheritance he had nothing, and there was the half-million in life insurance.”

  Carol wrinkles her nose. “Bull. She changed the beneficiary on the policy to the kids a long time before she died.”

  “But Richard didn’t know that. Lynn Pease, you know, the nanny? She testified that after Nancy died, she’s the one that told Richard that the kids got the life insurance money, because Lynn witnessed Nancy’s signature on the policy change. Richard put a letter into evidence where Nancy notified him of the change in beneficiary, but the letter was typewritten and Lynn testified that Nancy couldn’t even type. The prosecution’s position was that Richard phonied up that letter along with the other writings.”

  Carol firmly folds her arms. “Nancy told me she’d changed the policy. And all those writings of hers that Richard submitted in court? Nancy wrote every bit of that, I don’t care what any experts said. Richard didn’t profit a dime by Nancy’s death, and knew all along that he didn’t get the insurance money. Lynn, the nanny? She didn’t know near as much as she said she did. I think Richard pointing Lynn out as a suspect in the poisoning made her mad, and that’s why she said those things.”

  The interviewer frowns. “Carol, Nancy told you about changing the life insurance policy?”

  “That’s what I said. I don’t know why Richard’s lawye
r didn’t put me on the stand. I was ready to testify all along.”

  The interviewer is silent, wondering about the defense’s motives in not using Carol as a witness, but then he understands. Her testimony about what Nancy told her would have been hearsay, which makes it even more ironic that Nancy’s statements to Dr. Bagheri were admissible in court while what she had told Carol wouldn’t have been allowed. The interviewer sighs. “What’s your theory, Carol? One of the other suspects? Bagwell maybe? Bill Jr.?”

  Carol’s expression softens. “I wouldn’t begin to accuse anyone, I’m not even acquainted with those other people. What I do know is, I’m just sure as we’re sitting here that Richard didn’t do it.”

  “In all your talks with Nancy,” the interviewer says, “all your prayer sessions together, she never said anything that made you think she was afraid she was going to die?”

  Carol appears thoughtful. “Not that she was going to die, exactly. But there were things in her incest counseling. She told me more than once that there was discussion in those sessions about incest victims committing suicide. And I’ll tell you something else. Nancy was so worried about her marriage breaking up, so obsessed with Richard, I don’t think it’s impossible that if she was sure she was going to lose him, she might have killed herself. It’s not impossible at all.”

  Relations between Richard and Nancy were miserable during the summer after the Sierra Tucson trip. Nancy’s determination to continue her incest counseling was a constant thorn in Richard’s side, but certainly wasn’t the only bone of contention between the couple. They argued often about everything from money—the real estate crash had put them in a position where the rents from their duplexes didn’t cover the amount of the monthly notes, and the couple was constantly in a bind and having to borrow from Big Daddy to get by—to sex, which for them was nonexistent, and they often slept in separate rooms. It was during this time that Nancy first experienced frequent illnesses. She missed quite a bit of work during the period, and went in late often due to feeling under the weather.

  Richard says that her suspicions drove him up a wall. She constantly accused him of sex addiction, and of sleeping around (even though his affair with Denise Woods wasn’t to begin until the fall, he complains). There was one incident that summer, however, related by Richard from the witness stand at his trial, which shows that Nancy’s fears regarding his sexual appetite weren’t totally unfounded.

  “She used my car one day,” Richard said, “and for some unknown reason took it on herself to search the trunk. What she found in there blew her mind. There were some Playboy magazines and a sex aid in there, and when I got home, there she stood with those things. I tried explaining to her that since we weren’t sleeping together, I had to get relief somewhere, but she just started in about the sex-addiction thing. It wasn’t a pleasant scene.”

  This testimony brought a few guarded snickers, both from the prosecution table and the defense side in the courtroom. The sex aid mentioned was still in Richard’s car when the police eventually searched the trunk after Nancy had died, and was in fact a soccer ball with holes punched into its surface at various strategic locations. Whatever his other activities at the time, Richard was indeed desperate for love.

  Richard’s sexual frustration finally came to an end on a warm September night in downtown Houston when, after months of verbal foreplay, he and Denise went to bed together. Since she was at the time living with George Sheban, her business partner, it was a somewhat risky venture for her as well.

  After another in the seemingly endless string of afternoons haranguing over Denise’s failure to stay on schedule with the Sam’s Cafe contract, she offered to take Richard to dinner as a sort of peace offering. They chose a secluded Italian restaurant in downtown Houston close to Richard’s hotel, the Remington, and in addition to linguini with clam sauce consumed two bottles of wine and more than a few scotches with water. The lights were dim, the candlelight flickering, the conversation intimate. Before either was aware of what was happening, they passionately kissed.

  Since Richard was well known at the Remington and couldn’t afford to be seen there with a woman, he rented a room for the night at the more upscale Ritz Carlton. He later confided to close friends—and finally announced to a packed courtroom and the nation at large—that the sexual experience with Denise that night was the most wiltingly satisfying of his life, before or since. Denise bristles at any discussion of her bedroom life with Richard, but acknowledges that she was as taken with him as he was with her. Whatever. The evening charted a new course in Richard’s destiny. In addition to fueling his reckless passion for Denise, and forever driving a wedge between him and Nancy—if the events of the previous months hadn’t already placed an insurmountable barrier between the two—the amorous encounter put the erotic career of the soccer ball indefinitely on hold.

  17

  Once Richard had given in to his yearning for Denise, he pulled out the stops. His affair was a secret for a very short time; once the Pavilion Mall project was complete, Denise returned to live full time in Dallas. So did Richard, reporting to work at the floundering Hughes Industries by day and using every possible excuse—they were numerous: night work, charity projects, fictitious board meetings at the St. Phillip’s School—to be away from home in the evening to be with his lover. To say that Richard was less than discreet about his affair is putting it mildly; he openly escorted the lithe, azure-eyed blonde to the best restaurants and nightclubs along the Greenville Avenue strip and Addison’s Belt Line Road, and often didn’t return to his Shenandoah Avenue duplex until three or four in the morning. Evenings on the town weren’t nearly enough to satisfy his need, real or imagined, to be with Denise; during the following months he concocted fictitious business trips and took Denise along with him to New Orleans, New York, and on a journey to Los Angeles that included a couple of days’ stop-off for Colorado skiing.

  North Dallas in general and Park Cities in particular are small, small towns within a big city. As in all upscale yuppie areas whose residents have plenty of extra money to spend, philandering is common among Park Citizens. The participants’ names are generally known to all, except, of course, for the cuckold spouses. The players believe—erroneously in many cases—that there is safety in numbers; the I-won’t-tell-on-you-if-you-won’t-tell-on-me attitude is prevalent. But comeuppance works the same way among the philanderers as in a network of drug dealers; one caught, all caught, the apprehended cleansing their souls by ratting on the rest of the gang. Nancy heard about Richard’s affair less than a month after it had begun.

  Nancy was crushed. Now, in addition to dealing with her incest recovery and the even more devastating problem of a husband who showed no compassion for what she was going through, she was the subject of nasty gossip. In the S&S Tearoom (the “in” Park Cities ladies’ lunching establishment) and in the trendy hair salons in Highland Park Shopping Village, tongues were a-wagging. Nancy knew the system and knew it very well.

  At first she didn’t confront Richard. Typically, Nancy felt guilty and was certain that she’d driven her husband into another woman’s arms. She still had her hangups about sex, but was determined to do anything within her power to save her marriage. Hesitantly but willingly, she once again invited Richard into her bed. Tragically, she immediately became pregnant again.

  To what degree her turmoil over incest counseling, coupled with her anxiety over Richard’s affair—not to mention the threatening letter received at her office over the Bagwell case—contributed to Nancy’s second miscarriage will never be known, but likely all three were factors. In early November 1989, Nancy once again entered Presbyterian Hospital for an emergency D&C, the official reason being listed as fetal demise. No matter what she tried, no matter which way she turned, things simply refused to get better for her.

  The upkeep on three duplexes, the extravagant affair with Denise, and the general cost of living in Park Cities put a t
errible strain on Richard’s (and Nancy’s) income. Moreover, another in the series of disasters leading up to her death occurred in mid-October when Hughes Industries finally gave up the ghost and sought the protection of the bankruptcy courts. Richard was out of a job. Since his lifestyle had never permitted him to stockpile any cash reserve, and since he now had to rely solely on his wife’s salary to pay the monthly bills, to support his extramarital activities he was forced to go to work on the credit cards.

  Richard was later to portray himself in the courtroom as a man satisfied with the simple pleasures, and Denise was to state defensively that “Richard was the most unmaterialistic dude I’ve ever run across,” but the record from September to December of 1989 bears out neither assertion. In Richard’s trips with Denise, the couple traveled first class and stayed in the best hotels. During a trip to New Mexico he charged a $4,500 watch as a present for Denise, and on other occasions showered her with numerous smaller—but still pricey—gifts. Denise liked golf, so Richard charged an expensive set of woods and irons along with a Proline leather bag for himself so that he could join her on the course. He also bought an Alfa Romeo on credit. Before the year was out, Richard’s debt to American Express was to exceed $25,000.

  Nancy became frantic over Richard’s erratic spending, almost as frantic as she was crushed over his affair. She finally confronted him with the rumors she’d heard that he was seeing a flashy blonde. Richard denied all. Nancy persisted. He clammed up and left the house in a huff. Totally at a loss over what to do, she went to Big Daddy and tearfully spilled the beans.