Bad Girls

by Phelps, M. William

  What’s important here within this version of the event Bobbi described for me in several letters is the timeline. Jen had the timeline a bit off. In court, Jen didn’t account for an entire day. It got lost in her telling of them being bailed out of jail and heading over to Bob’s house on the day the murder occurred. The way Bobbi explained it, after they left the jail and made it back to Bob’s house, they stayed the night there (in Mineral Wells).

  So the next morning, Bobbi wrote, Bob came and got us—and my mom was with him. He dropped us off at my mom’s [boyfriend’s house] in Weatherford . . . and Jennifer runs into my mom’s house in tears and freaking out. I was puzzled. Bob was leaving. Jennifer claimed he tried to have sex with her. I was in shock.... He’s a big perv. He’ll flirt, but I didn’t know what was going on—I wasn’t out there.

  According to Bobbi, Bob had not been pressuring Jen to sleep with him. Sure, he had asked from time to time, but it wasn’t as big a deal as Jen later made it out to be. The idea that Bob was hounding Jen for sex was all part of the ruse, Bobbi explained, the story they made up on the run in order to get Jen out of killing Bob.

  From there, Bobbi said, her mother drove them to her grandmother’s house. Bobbi had her mom stop at Bob’s along the way so Bobbi could pick up her things, including a “set of clothes and my wallet.”

  Bobbi said the house was open and she went in to get a few things and realized her wallet wasn’t there. Bob wasn’t home.

  Underneath her bed at the party house, Bobbi kept those guns she said (and several others confirmed) had been given to her by Bob. So Bobbi grabbed the weapons, explaining to me: “I was going to have my mother pawn them . . . so I could have some money. She told me, ‘Hell no!’ The guns were mine, a gift from Bob. . . . After my mom refused, we were dropped at my grandmother’s house.”

  “I wish like hell I had pawned those guns for her,” Tamey Hurley explained, confirming this portion of Bobbi’s story. “I should have done it.” Tamey also said she knew Bob had given her daughter the guns. “Because he told me he did. She needed that money from pawning those guns.”

  Bobbi and her mother have weathered a fractured, love/hate relationship. (“I don’t even know my own mother,” Bobbi told me when we first started talking.) Tamey Hurley explained that Bobbi’s father ran out on her when she was sixteen and pregnant. She was living in New Mexico at the time. Bobbi’s dad? “I think [he] has spoken to her once,” Tamey said. “It broke Bobbi’s heart,” Tamey added, “when Bobbi was old enough to realize that her own father didn’t want anything to do with her. And for a good while, after I turned seventeen and had Bobbi Jo, it was just us,” Tamey said. “Growing up, Bobbi Jo was quiet, loved sports.... She was a tomboy, but then so was I. We were poor.”

  “I’ve never known [my father],” Bobbi said. “Never seen his face, except in a photo.”

  The question people routinely ask, Bobbi said, is one that she cannot answer: Has she always known she was gay?

  “No one really knows. I grew up a bit confused. I was attracted to women, but was always told it was wrong. I’ve never been comfortable with men, because of being molested. My son’s father and I were friends, and I began to trust him. But I am not physically attracted to men, like I am to women.”

  Part of Bobbi’s experience as a child centered on spending a lot of time with Tamey’s mother and father, Dorothy and Fred Smith. Fred taught Bobbi how to work on cars and take apart motors and put them back together again.

  Throughout the years, Tamey had five more kids.

  “I was young and dumb,” Tamey said. “I’m ashamed, really, of how the kids were raised by me. But, you know, you cannot replace the past. You have to deal with it. Bobbi and I were always together when she was young, but then we grew apart because I, well, I had a drug problem. I didn’t want to see my daughter around it.”

  Tamey’s problems with drugs, she said, stemmed from the sexual abuse she sustained as a child by someone close to her.

  That dreadful, evil cycle. Bobbi got sucked into its whirlwind.

  “When I could, I left,” Tamey said. “I guess”—and she paused here, carefully choosing her words through a barrage of tears—“I guess you learn from your mistakes. I cannot ever fix what was done in the past.... I thought I was . . . I thought I was . . . doing the right thing for Bobbi [in leaving her] . . . ’cause I loved her so much. I just didn’t want her to see me like I was. That was the only way I could heal myself.”

  In her statement to police (which Bobbi later confessed to me was a mixture of lies and truth to cover the story she and Jen had concocted while on the run), Bobbi recalled going over to Bob’s house, Jen breaking in, both taking some of their belongings, and then heading to Graford, where they were dropped off at her grandmother’s house. Again, dates line up here with Bobbi’s version. She claimed they stayed the night at her grandmother’s house, which would have made the date of the confrontation that ended Bob’s life May 5.

  According to Bobbi, she never stole any weapons while at Bob’s (as Jen later claimed). In addition, Bobbi didn’t want anything to do with guns at that point, she later insisted. Yes, there are photos of Bobbi squaring off in that traditional gangsta-type pose—the weapon turned sideways, pointed at the camera—along with photos of girls placing the barrels of the guns into their vaginas. Yes, Bobbi wound up with those weapons. But on the day before Bob was murdered, Bobbi and her brother were firing the weapons in the backyard of her grandmother’s house and something happened. (Likely, this was the day Jen could have later confused and said she actually saw Bobbi loading the weapon in her grandfather’s room.)

  “When my brother and I started shooting them [at an old car at the back of my granny’s house], they scared my son,” Bobbi clarified. Her boy was terrified of the loud, booming noises. His panic, in turn, freaked Bobbi out. She made up her mind that she wanted nothing to do with guns ever again. The reason why she fired them, to begin with, was twofold: for some fun and because her mother had refused to pawn them. Bobbi said she was “checking them so I could sell them to an old-school [gun] dealer, who lived down [the street] from my grandmother’s.”

  Tamey later backed up this claim by Bobbi, adding that Jen had been with them, shooting the guns in the yard on that day, too.

  “Jennifer was obsessed with Bobbi Jo,” Tamey said. “It was like Jennifer had one leg tied to Bobbi’s. . . .”

  Why Bobbi changed her story, she said, became a combination of both wanting to defend Jen and stick to the same story Jen was telling at the time, and also being young, stupid, and naïve. Bobbi believed if she and Jen lied about what happened, they would both get out of it and face no trouble with the law.

  “I never wanted to lie,” Bobbi said, referring to her explanations of the week leading up to Bob’s murder and what happened inside the party house. She was talking about changing her statement and lying to police about how things went down. “I loved [Bob], but I was (in telling those lies) trying to protect Jennifer by telling the same story that she was—until she changed it, and kept changing it. That’s why I’ve remained silent all these years.” (Bobbi Jo has never been interviewed about her case before.) “I admitted to having guns because they were mine. Bob had given them to me as gifts. As a matter of fact, I had four of them.” But after that incident the day before the murder, when Bobbi’s son freaked out, Bobbi said, “I gave Jennifer all my guns (after not being able to sell them). Obviously, she kept them. Where she kept [them] or put [them], I don’t know.”

  The point being: Jen had access to the weapons.

  Bobbi said she didn’t care “how much [Bob] loved sex and women.” That wasn’t what mattered to her when she thought back on those years with Bob and what ultimately happened. Not even the abuse she claimed to have suffered under Bob’s hand made a difference with regard to how she felt about him.

  “It still does not justify him to be murdered,” Bobbi said.

  The reality of the situation was “the only peopl
e who know what happened on that day is [Bob] and Jennifer—however, she and I both know the truth . . . ,” Bobbi added.

  And with that being said, Bobbi concluded, “It’s time for it to be told.”

  CHAPTER 35

  BOBBI AND JEN hopped inside Bobbi’s grandmother’s truck and took off to go find Bob (according to Jen’s first statement to police). Bobbi was looking for her last paycheck of $150. As they drove toward Lila’s Mineral Wells house on May 5, 2004, Jen claimed, Bobbi suggested Jen kill Bob. (Yet, this revelation from Jen does not come until later, in court, at a hearing, when Jen is facing sentencing for her crime—Jen never gave this information to the police.) They had a gun. It was loaded. As Bobbi drove, Bobbi brandished the weapon, Jen claimed. Made sure no one was around. Then Bobbi fired two shots into the woods from the window of the truck as they sped down the road. Bobbi wanted to be certain, Jen said, the gun was loaded properly. The way Jen framed this part of the murder narrative made it sound as though they were two wild chicks in love, higher than hosanna, on their way to commit the ultimate act of evil.

  In a nervous mishmash of words, Jen later spoke to the court deciding her ultimate fate (she had pled guilty already), explaining part of Bobbi’s alleged strategy behind having Bob killed: “That I was—that I was going to . . . to give in to the . . . to the sexual favors for him—and that during that time, I was . . . I was going to kill him.”

  The ruse would be the sex that Bob had asked Jen for earlier inside his truck.

  Jen claimed Bobbi outlined the plan in detail as they drove toward Bob’s. And while she listened to Bobbi’s plan for her to commit murder, Jen supposedly snapped back, “No! It’s not going to work.”

  What changed her mind, Jen later said in court, was Bobbi’s “continuing of insisting that I needed to do it. Just the idea of me and her being apart if . . . if I didn’t do this for her.”

  Here’s where Jen’s version of a motive falls apart, however. Jen later said under oath that Bobbi never “threatened to leave” her if she didn’t go through with the murder.

  “Not verbally,” Jen clarified after being asked to explain how vulnerable she felt while heading toward Bob Dow’s on that day. “She [Bobbi] did not say that. But in a sense, she was saying, if I didn’t do this for her, then, yes, she would leave me, that there would be no us. Because Bob was the one person that was getting in the way of us being together.”

  One of the problems with this statement is that Jen could not recall Bobbi ever specifically saying, “You kill him, or we’re finished.” It was simply a “feeling” Jen got from Bobbi.

  Then there’s the whole issue of them leaving Bob’s with their belongings. They could have easily stayed at Bobbi’s grandmother’s house. Bobbi had never felt threatened by Bob; and neither had Jen, for that matter. Moreover, did Bobbi really care if she and Jen split up? Bobbi was sleeping with a half-dozen females at the time. There was no ticking clock for them to leave the party house. Bob wanted them to stay, yes. But he never held the tapes over their heads, blackmailing them with releasing them, or giving the girls an ultimatum. Furthermore, whenever Bobbi wanted to get away from Bob in the past, she’d simply head over to her grandmother’s and stay a few days. But Bobbi always went back to Bob.

  Why?

  The drugs.

  The booze.

  The job.

  The girls.

  Perhaps Jen was in one of her “reading Bobbi’s mind” modes, which she was accustomed to, after getting high? Who knows?

  Regardless, what’s utterly imperative here became a question Jen could not answer: How could Bob Dow keep these two girls apart? He didn’t have that much power over them. All they had to do was leave—which both Jen and Bobbi agreed later they were in the process of doing on that day and the day before, anyway. Jen could always crawl back to her father, Jerry. Killing Bob for the sake of “being together” made no sense in the scope of their relationship or their lives.

  In any event, Jen and Bobbi later agreed that when they arrived at the house, Bob was home. But as they walked up the sidewalk toward the front door, Jen later said, Bobbi “handed me the gun and I stuck it in . . . my pants and my back.”

  (It’s important to note here that both Bobbi and Jen’s second statements align with this scene. They both agreed on this part of the murder narrative at the same time they were asked.)

  “Just as we planned to do,” Bobbi said. “We had a story. We were sticking to it.”

  Throughout that brief period after a decision had been made to kill Bob, Jen claimed, Bobbi was “continuing” to say “that he needed to die . . . just the statements of her saying that that [was] the only way we could be together.”

  Following Jen’s version, Bobbi knocked on the door.

  (Why would Bobbi knock on this door? She came and went, in and out of the party house, at will. In Bobbi’s second version to police, she claimed to have waited outside while Jen walked into the house alone.)

  Also, according to Jen’s version, Bob opened the door. He didn’t speak. Instead, he turned and walked back to where he had gotten up from. Bob didn’t look so good. A U.S. Navy veteran, having repaired aircraft and aircraft carriers, after being treated recently at the Dallas Veterans Affairs (VA) Medical Center for a reported “leaky” heart valve, Bob had been put on a waiting list for heart surgery. On some days, he looked pasty and moved around lethargically. He didn’t have a lot of energy. Add to that all the dope and alcohol the guy consumed, and Bob Dow was probably a good candidate for an early death.

  According to Jen, she and Bobbi didn’t say much as they walked in.

  Bob went back to lying down on the mattress in the living room, saying, “I’m not feeling well.”

  Jen later claimed Bobbi said, “I need to talk to you, Bob.” She stood over the man, looking down at him. Jen stood by her side. All part of a plan they had designed and whipped up before entering the house, Jen claimed.

  Bob got up begrudgingly, mumbling something to himself. Then he and Bobbi walked into the back room of the house through the kitchen. Jen stayed behind in the living room.

  Then, according to Jen, Bob stopped before exiting the living room, turned around, and addressed Jen directly. “Look, I’m sorry for saying that earlier. I really didn’t mean it.”

  So Bobbi and Bob disappeared for a few moments into the back room and then reappeared in the living room. As part of their plan, Bobbi took the truck, Jen said, and drove down to the corner store at that moment.

  Jen said she then sat down on a rocking chair in the living room by the front door and Bob sat across from her on a green chair. At some point, she said, Bob walked over and squeezed her leg.

  Jen recalled that Bob said, “I cannot believe you told them.”

  (“I had to push my leg down to get him to let go,” Jen told police.)

  Jen then got up and walked into Bob’s bedroom, she explained, “to get my purse.”

  Bob followed.

  (“I picked up my purse, turned around—and Bob shoved me on the bed.”)

  “If you don’t [have sex with] me, I am going to kill you,” Bob allegedly uttered between clenched teeth.

  Jen took off her clothes.

  Bob did the same.

  “Now you lay there and don’t move!” Bob ordered.

  “He got on top of me,” Jen explained in her first statement to police. “Then he went down to the end of the bed and started kissing my foot, then he moved up and started kissing my leg, and then he got to my private part and started kissing and licking me.”

  After that, Bob stood. He said, “I want you to play with yourself.”

  “He then . . . got some lotion off the nightstand and straddled me and started playing with himself,” Jen told police. And, almost as an afterthought, Jen then said in her statement that there was loud music playing in the background. So Bob didn’t hear the door open when Bobbi returned from the corner store. But when Bobbi walked in and found them, realizing what was goi
ng on, Jen first claimed, in a fit of rage, Bobbi snapped and pulled Bob off Jen. A one-hundred-pound female was, apparently, able to grab hold of a two-hundred-pound male and heave him off the bed.

  “He slapped her and they were on the floor fighting,” Jen first explained to police. “I covered myself up and was trying to figure out how to get out of the room.”

  Bobbi and Bob got up on their feet. Bobbi pushed him and he landed on the bed.

  “I was getting off the bed as Bob was falling on the bed,” Jen claimed.

  It was then that Jen said she grabbed the weapon (in fear)—which, she first claimed, was on the dresser next to the bed, but then she later changed this to say it was inside a blanket—as Bobbi and Bob continued to fight on top of the bed. At some point, Bobbi grabbed what Jen described as a “pillow” (it was actually a laundry bag) and placed it over Bob’s face.

  (“I leaned over the bed,” Jen told police, “and shot Bob twice.”)

  Bobbi backed away immediately, Jen said in her first version, and yelled, “I cannot believe that you just did that!”

  (This is inconsistent with Jen’s story of Bobbi insisting during the ride over to the house that Jen kill Bob. If Bobbi had designed this plan and provided Jen with the weapon, why would she utter that statement?)

  Jen walked around to the other side of the bed and Bob was shaking, trying to raise his arm in a gesture for help, apparently sensing what was coming next.

  (“I started shooting again,” Jen told police.)