by Gregg Olsen
Hurley turned and walked out the door of Voytek's office, five miles from the junior school, at 2:35. At about the same time, Bill was walking across the field at the junior school. Thomas Brooks, another coach, saw him and yelled out: "Hey, Bill, where are you going?"
Bill punched the fist of his right hand into his left palm and said, "Damn Hurley." But Brooks had seen Bill do that a lot lately. He surmised that Bill was on his way to meet Hurley or do something for him.
Moments later, Bill walked past Mary Clark, Hurley’s secretary, waved, and left through the school's front door. A few minutes later, Hurley rushed into the junior school and dropped the school's mail and money on Mary Clark's desk. Later she would say that her boss seemed tense, something Clark pegged as anxiety over reaching the airport in time for his daughter's flight.
After saying good night to Clark, Hurley walked out the door about ten minutes behind Bill.
At 3 p.m., Voytek drove past the junior school and noticed that Hurley's truck with the camper top was gone. Bill's was still parked next to the field house.
An hour later at the high school, Jack Young looked at his watch. It was four o’clock, and he assumed that Bill must have forgotten their appointment. He was slightly irritated, but then brushed it off, deciding that something important must have come up. When he saw Coach Brooks later that evening, he asked if he had seen Bill at school. Brooks said, "Yeah, I saw him leaving a little before three. I think he must have been doing something for Hurley."
By five o'clock Alma Booth was trying, unsuccessfully, to convince her daughter to cook dinner. Laura told her mother to go ahead and start dinner without her and that she'd wait for Bill on the porch.
Then at 6:30 that evening, Estelle Maxwell, a high school teacher, drove past the junior school. In the parking lot she noticed Bill's white pickup. Parked next to it was a black and silver van.
At 3:30 A.M. Saturday, the small towns were quiet in a way that cities never are. The air was clear and the night calm. Lynda Fleming was sleeping in her home in Hull when something awakened her. "Suddenly it was like someone fired a gun in my head.”
IN THE DAYS FOLLOWING BILL FLEMING’S DISAPPEARANCE, Hurley Fontenot did something rather remarkable. Before he’d been charged with anything, he wrote out a statement, detailing his account of what he’d done that Friday afternoon. In it, he said that he left the junior school about 2:50 and saw Bill in the parking lot. He drove Bill to his pickup and left him there. Hurley said he then left the school in his own pickup with the camper on the back. First he stopped at the post office, and then he filled his tank at a local gas station about three. From Daisetta, Hurley said he drove the 60 miles to Houston’s Hobby Airport to pick up his daughter. But Vanessa never showed up at Hobby.
Instead of calling his daughter, Hurley said he then drove another 30 miles through Houston’s rush-hour traffic to the city’s larger airport, Intercontinental, on the northern rim of the city. Again, Hurley said he waited. Again Vanessa didn’t arrive. This time Hurley said he parked his pickup and went inside the airport, where he used a pay phone to call Vanessa. When Vanessa said she wouldn’t be coming, Hurley wrote in his statement that he returned to his truck, paid for parking, and left Houston, driving to the racetrack. Late that night, not wanting to wake up his ex-wife at the house, Hurley said he drove to his sister’s and spent the night. As evidence, Hurley gave police a parking receipt from Intercontinental Airport, which clocked him out of the lot at 5:09 that afternoon.
Yet as Liberty County deputies investigated, there were problems with Hurley’s alibi. First, someone came forward to say he saw Hurley filling up his truck at the local gas station in Hull at four that afternoon, not three. The local sheriff, Sonny Applebe, and his men doubted that Hurley could have done all he’d claimed and still arrive at Intercontinental in two hours, and it was impossible for him to accomplish it all in little more than an hour. Yet law enforcement didn’t yet know what they were dealing with, since no one knew where Bill Fleming was or if he’d simply return.
Then the coach’s decomposing body was found in Polk County, in the dewberry field.
AT BILL FLEMING’S MEMORIAL IN THE JUNIOR SCHOOL, red and white banners, the colors of the Bobcats, the school’s teams, draped the stage. Although only 200 students attended the junior school, nearly all the 800 auditorium seats were filled. Many students talked of Bill as a favorite teacher and coach, and one said he was like a father to them. “We are a close-knit community that wants to know why and how this could have happened,” Voytek told Houston Chronicle reporter Cindy Horswell.
On his way back from the memorial, Hurley, too, talked to Horswell. By then, Hurley was on a leave of absence. “My ulcer problem is really acting up,” he said.
Meanwhile, the investigation was kicking into high gear.
Before long, many had come forward to tell investigators about the ill feelings between Hurley Fontenot and Bill Fleming. When deputies carrying copies of the junior school yearbook approached them, two desk clerks at the TraveLodge picked out Hurley’s photo, saying he was the man who had asked for and copied Bill Fleming’s receipt, the one that had been used to write an anonymous letter. Even more damning, the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) lab found human blood splattered inside the school camper Hurley used and diluted human blood on his pickup’s axle. In the truck, a crime scene investigator also discovered a receipt, one that revealed that the day after Bill Fleming disappeared, Hurley had steam-cleaned the camper and pickup.
Hurley’s ulcer had reason to complain, as he was brought in for questioning by Sheriff Applebe and Tommy Walker, a Texas Ranger who’d been asked to assist in the case. The interview didn’t go well for Fontenot, and a polygraph test he took only worsened his situation when the examiner pegged Hurley’s answers as deceptive.
Then there was the conflict between Hurley’s alibi and the statements given by his own daughter. Vanessa Fontenot told Ranger Walker that she’d never made arrangements with her father to fly into Houston that Friday and that she hadn’t planned to move any furniture. In early May, she repeated that same testimony to a Polk County grand jury.
Few were then surprised when a little more than a month after Bill Fleming’s disappearance, on May 16, 1985, Hurley Fontenot was indicted for murder.
I MET WITH HURLEY FOR the first time in the summer after Bill Fleming’s murder. We stood outside the junior school with his attorney, Dick DeGuerin, one of the best known in Texas, and talked about the case and Hurley’s life. What he told me was the same thing he’d told police: that the afternoon Fleming disappeared, he’d given Bill a short ride to his truck at about three, then driven off for the post office, the gas station, and Houston’s two airports to pick up Vanessa.
The day of our interview, DeGuerin ardently supported his client, voicing other theories on what might have happened to Bill Fleming. One was that his death had something to do with the mysterious black and silver van – its occupants and reason for being at the junior school that evening unknown. Like some of the townsfolk, DeGuerin speculated that the murderer was more likely someone out of Bill's rocky past. And then there was the matter of a gram of cocaine found during the police search of Bill’s apartment. Rumors circulated that the murder might have had something to do with Bill’s former business partner, the one who had disappeared years earlier. Had Bill’s death been a drug killing? DeGuerin indicated that Bill’s missing boots were a known drug gang signature, one he insisted confirmed that the killing was drug-related.
My meeting with the two prosecutors on the case, DA Peter Speers and Assistant DA David Walker, took a markedly different tone, as they described their case against Hurley as circumstantial but strong. By then a former coach at the junior school had told prosecutors he remembered a .22-caliber pistol Hurley said he kept in the glove compartment of his truck. Experts had determined that Bill Fleming was shot with either a .22- or .25- caliber weapon. As for that drug signature, neither one had ever heard of it.
/>
When it came to much of the scientific evidence, however, the prosecution suffered one disappointment after another. In this era before DNA testing, Bill Fleming’s body was too decomposed for the medical examiner to even type his blood. The result was that in a courtroom, the prosecutors would be unable to say conclusively that the blood found inside the camper and on the pickup axle belonged to the junior school coach. All the lab could determine for certain was that the blood was human.
In the months that followed our interviews, lawyers on both sides prepared for trial as the school district bought off Hurley's contract for $25,000. The former principal became a regular churchgoer, attending weekly Mass at the local Catholic church in Raywood. For her part, Laura joined Central Baptist Church in Daisetta.
When I first met with her, Laura fluctuated from day to day, wondering if Hurley had killed Bill. At one point, she shook her head and said, "No, sometimes I don't think he did it. We just weren't that close anymore for him to do something like that. He never acted like he cared for me that much." But then there were so many who believed differently. They pointed to such evidence as the diamond wedding set he’d tried to give her and a two-year-old Easter card Hurley had saved in his desk at school, one that was affectionately signed - Laura.
TALK IN THE SMALL TOWNS didn’t let up all that summer or into the fall, as the love triangle and murder continued to make national, even international, tabloid headlines.
In October 1985, the case became more mysterious when it was revealed that the bloody clothes Bill Fleming’s body was found in, along with the personal effects taken off his body, had disappeared from the Liberty County Sheriff’s property room. The statement released to the media explained that the items came up missing after the department had moved, but the defense cried foul. “This makes it impossible for us to have an independent analysis of the material,” DeGuerin told reporters. So critical was the lost evidence, he argued before the judge, that the charges against his client should be dropped.
That didn’t happen, and on January 7, a panel of 24 potential jurors filed into the brown brick and white-columned Polk County Courthouse in Livingston, 50 miles north of the junior school where the drama had begun. DeGuerin had argued that he wanted the case moved, based on the intense pretrial publicity, including TV news reports in which Liberty County Sheriff Sonny Applebe told reporters that as he saw the case, Hurley Fontenot was “guilty as hell.” Arguing racial bias, DeGuerin said that Fontenot couldn’t receive a fair trial in the county.
State District Judge John Martin, an avuncular man, listened to both sides and then sided with the prosecutors, ruling that the case would remain in Polk County, where Bill Fleming’s body had been found. In the end, ten women and two men were seated in the jury box on Monday, January 20, 1986, when opening statements began.
IN THE COURTHOUSE ON THAT first day of the trial, the scene felt like opening day at a county fair as folks from small towns throughout the area bunched in the hallway outside the locked courtroom and rushed in as soon as the bailiff opened the door. One was a duo of middle-aged women, identical twins, college classmates of Hurley’s who would come each day in matching outfits. Seats were at a premium, and those who couldn’t be accommodated were turned away. I sat with the press in one of the front rows, my place reserved, and during breaks many approached me, voicing their opinions, sometimes whispering racial slurs under their breath. One woman told me that murder was an expected outcome when someone “broke the rules of nature and paired a black man and a white woman.”
As the case was called to order, Hurley Fontenot stood before Judge Martin.
“My plea, sir, is not guilty. I did not commit any murder,” the former military man said in a clear strong voice. He then sat down, joining his attorney brother, Walter, and Dick DeGuerin at the defense table. Across from them sat the two prosecutors, both mustached and wearing cowboy boots with their suits. It was District Attorney Peter Speers who first addressed the jury, saying: “We will build one circumstance after another until the sole conclusion that you can reach is that Hurley Fontenot is guilty of murder.”
As he continued, the prosecutor contended that Hurley’s alibi wouldn’t hold up under scrutiny, and that it would have been impossible for him to do what he said he’d done that afternoon. Add to that the human blood found in the camper, the anonymous letters, Hurley’s fingerprints which had been discovered on the original hotel receipt - the one an anonymous letter had been typed on - and the evidence appeared damning. “Hurley Fontenot’s truck had been meticulously scrubbed with a cleaning solution,” Speers said. Yet the telltale blood remained, along with chips of pine bark that an expert witness was prepared to tie to saplings found at the scene where the body was dumped.
“The motive is in fact jealousy and hatred,” which had, according to Speers, resulted in bad blood between Fleming and the principal.
But it was Dick DeGuerin whose opening statement left many wondering. Early on Vanessa Fontenot had told investigators and grand jurors alike that she’d never asked her father to pick her up at the airport that day, and that she’d had no plan to move any furniture. But according to DeGuerin, that wasn’t what Hurley’s daughter would say on the stand. Instead, the defense attorney claimed that Vanessa Fontenot would completely change her account of the Friday Bill Fleming disappeared. The prosecutors were left wondering: Was that true?
Outside the courtroom that afternoon of the trial’s first day, Hurley said he couldn’t elaborate because of a gag order, but insisted that he hadn’t killed Fleming and promised that soon everyone would “know the name of the real killer.”
OPENING ARGUMENTS COMPLETED, among the first evidence presented was Hurley Fontenot’s own handwritten account of his alibi, one he’d voluntarily delivered to police days before Fleming’s body was found and before he’d been charged with any crime. Dick DeGuerin had fought to keep the document out of the trial but lost, and in the statement, Hurley said he’d seen Fleming in the school parking lot about 2:50 that afternoon and given him a ride to his truck before heading off to buy gas and drive to Houston to pick up his daughter.
At the trial, Hurley’s statement was brought into evidence while Detective Jimmy Belt, one of the investigating officers, was on the stand. It was also Belt who’d tracked down the original of the motel bill that had later been used to write one of the anonymous letters. When Belt had taken the school’s yearbooks into the motel, two clerks picked out Hurley’s photo and identified him as the well-dressed man who’d asked for a copy of Fleming’s receipt.
Under a long, arduous cross-examination, however, Belt talked about the cocaine found in Bill’s bathroom. He agreed with DeGuerin about Fleming’s past connections with his former partner, whom DeGuerin described as “a big-time cocaine drug dealer.” Adding to the defense scenario of Bill Fleming’s death being drug-related, when asked if he’d heard that the removal of shoes or boots was a sign of a drug killing, Belt said he had but had never seen such a case.
As in many such cases, it would seem that the prosecutors took a step forward, the defense pushed back, and the prosecutors attempted to regroup and marshal yet another offensive. The next day, the prosecutors fought back with witnesses who rebutted the defense’s notion that Bill Fleming’s missing boots were an indication his death was tied to drugs. On the stand a former U.S. Customs Service officer who’d worked drug cases undercover testified that, “Maybe they’ve seen [this kind of sign] on television, but not in person.”
Yet it was the testimony of Polk County Sheriff Ted Everitt that introduced jurors to the scene where the body was found. To Everitt, it appeared that Fleming was killed elsewhere and his body dumped out of a vehicle. He’d seen recently torn pine saplings still oozing sap, ones they’d cut and taken into evidence.
DeGuerin brought up the possibility of suicide, but Speers followed up, asking if a weapon had been found on the scene.
“No,” Everitt replied. How could Fleming have managed to s
hoot himself twice in the back of the head? And if he had, who removed the gun? If it was suicide, shouldn’t the weapon have been found near the body?
Despite the small triumphs, as the testimony seesawed back and forth, it seemed craters were developing in the prosecutors’ case during that first week of the trial. The first time was with what had been touted as locked-in testimony. One of the two clerks who’d been in the motel the morning someone had come in for Bill Fleming’s receipt picked Hurley out in the courtroom without a hitch, but a second woman took the stand and floundered, looking about the courtroom, unable to point to the man she’d seen that day.
As the first week ended, Hurley Fontenot’s recorded interview with Ranger Walker and Sheriff Applebe was played for the jury, one in which he talked of having a “special bond” with Coach Billy Mac Fleming. Hurley described how he’d done “something I don’t think any other administrator in America has ever done,” on the day he told the board that if they didn’t renew Fleming’s contract, he would leave as well. About those anonymous letters, Hurley had a theory: Someone tied to the school had sent them. As to his ex-lover’s relationship with the dead coach, Hurley said he’d felt no jealousy. In fact, Hurley contended that he’d been uninterested when he’d heard that they’d begun dating.
At the defense table, Hurley Fontenot’s face remained unemotional as he listened to his own voice on the tape recorder describing how he’d cried four times on the day Bill Fleming’s body was discovered.
At one point in the tape, Hurley was heard in his soft East Texas drawl insisting, “I haven’t the slightest idea” who killed Bill.
THE FOLLOWING WEEK, THE CROWD trying to shoehorn into the courtroom had grown as prosecution witnesses tried to explain the disappearance of the evidence from the Liberty County Sheriff’s office. On the stand, Linda Pruitt, an evidence officer, testified about how Bill Fleming’s clothing and personal effects could have been lost. The items, she said, had been stored away from other evidence in the department’s radio room, because of the decomposition odor that clung to them. Pruitt pegged as the most likely explanation that the evidence had been mistakenly thrown away.
