Luggage By Kroger: A True Crime Memoir (2 page)

Homicide detectives spoke briefly
with her after they left the scene. Questioned at the police
station, Catherine dazzled with her verbal footwork and
intellectual agility. Later, for a magazine interview in 1980, she
would recall the interrogation and laugh about the end of it. As
she started to leave, she would say, one detective leaned over and
asked, "Just one more question. Did you love him?"

Cackling with laughter, Catherine
would describe her response: "I guess he was expecting me to break
down and cry out, 'Yes, yes, and I killed him!' But I just said,
'No' and walked out."

Detectives believed they had the
right track with her. But the murder was horrific and raised many
questions about Catherine. Could a woman actually have beaten
someone like this? Did she have an accomplice? And what purpose did
Tedesco's murder serve? Didn't she need the divorce to get her
share of their alleged community property?

They had an answer to that last
question soon enough. Within days of the murder, Catherine Mehaffey
marched into the Harris County Clerk's office and filed a new cause
of action. No longer just the estranged wife of George Tedesco, she
sought new status as the doctor's widow. She wanted the whole
estate and planned a probate action to grab it.

The cops realized they needed
additional brainpower and legal savvy on this case. So they
recruited assistance from the Special Crimes Bureau of the Harris
County District Attorney's office, a unit created to unravel
criminal activities too complex for the regular cops.

And I'm sure that Catherine was
tickled giddy by the attention. For her it would have been like the
county just raised the bounty on her reward poster.

At least, that's what she told me
later.

TWO

Summer 1979

I wouldn't
formally meet Catherine until about nine months after Tedesco's
murder. Before I did meet her, however, I had become
well-acquainted with her reputation throughout that year after his
death. You might call it part of my job description. As the
criminal courthouse reporter for
The
Houston Post
, I made my
living through knowledge of newsworthy crimes. Although the Tedesco
murder remained unsolved with no one charged and nowhere near a
trial, it certainly looked like a case eventually headed my
way.

And she was just
getting started. Twenty years later, award-winning journalist
Howard Swindle eventually would summarize her career for a
Dallas Morning News
article noting that in the "high drama" of Catherine's life
"the characters around her are stalked, threatened, wounded, or
killed while the diminutive star eludes an ever-changing cast of
investigators. Hers is a real-life road show of cat-and-mouse that
has played in five Texas counties over three decades. The script is
byzantine, the scenes often brutal. Many of those who have been
cast as victims share a story line: They had close associations
with the fifty-something blonde that, at the time of their
misfortune, had turned bitter."

Today, I couldn't have said it
better. But back then I didn't realize I was about to audition for
a crucial role in her opening act.

Surprisingly by the summer of 1979 the Tedesco
murder had not generated much news interest, even though it boasted
all the elements for a prime time splash in the two newspapers and
local television. The victim was a doctor brutally murdered, and a
possible suspect was an attractive female lawyer back in the days
when female lawyers were pretty rare, particularly among those
slugging it out in the sewer of the criminal courts. In fact,
Catherine was probably one of about five females even practicing in
my courthouse back then, and it was among the largest in the
country.

Then came the unique twist of her
decision to start a probate court battle for Tedesco's estate. It
wasn't supposed to be an exceptionally large estate, maybe two
hundred thousand dollars in a region known for multimillion dollar
probate wars. But Tedesco's parents in Argentina decided to fight
for it, something Catherine might not have anticipated. Instead of
snatching Tedesco's estate quickly by filing as his widow, she
immediately found herself backed against the wall. Challenging her
claim as their son's widow, the family hoped to use the discovery
afforded them as litigants to implicate her in his murder. They
hired attorneys and a private investigator to work toward two
related goals: destroy her claim on the estate and find enough
evidence to charge her with murder.

In response, she hadn't flinched.
Catherine had managed to persuade a couple of lawyer pals to
represent her as the estate case moved toward a September jury
trial in Harris County Probate Court. She seemed to enjoy this high
stakes game that included a private eye on one hand dogging her
tail and the police continuing to hit dead ends on their leads. She
would laugh later telling me how one of her lawyer drinking buddies
had called the Tedesco family's reward hotline masquerading as a
Greek sea captain who knew the identity of the killers. Indeed, the
probate and investigative files for the Tedesco estate case read
like black comedy, introducing a colorful cast of characters with
Catherine leading the pack.

Tedesco's next door neighbor told
investigators she saw Catherine and her law office partner hopping
the fence at Tedesco's townhome the evening of January 15, 1979,
just after police had left the scene. Catherine would later explain
the episode as one of her attempts to secure her "community
property." According to the neighbor, however, Catherine did not
even feign the role of a weeping widow.

"You'll be sorry if you don't
forget everything you've seen and heard," the neighbor recalled
Catherine's threat when interrupted while using a crow bar to open
Tedesco's back door. The neighbor said Catherine continued: "If you
do talk to anyone about what you've seen and heard, you'll be
sorry, I promise you, you'll regret it."

Later on Catherine would cackle
with glee telling me how lawyers from all over town pillaged
Tedesco's place for weeks after his death, helping her reclaim her
share of their estate so the parents couldn't haul it
away.

Police and Tedesco's investigator
thought they had a good lead when they discovered Tedesco's stolen
Corvette parked at a shopping mall. They staked it out for three
days until they spotted a man sneaking around only to discover he
wanted to steal the thing himself. So they gave up and just listed
the car as abandoned.

Their investigation of Catherine's
client base and previous life did turn up a connection to another
possible suspect named Tommy Bell. He was destined to become a
defendant with Catherine in an unsuccessful, last gasp, $10 million
wrongful death civil lawsuit filed by the family one year after the
murder alleging the two of them had conspired to kill
Tedesco.

Investigators uncovered other sordid tales of
repeated confrontations with the men in her past. A former court
bailiff said an extramarital affair with Catherine had ended with
her blackmailing him for money so she could abort his child. Then
she told his wife anyway, destroying his life and leaving him
penniless.

Farther back in her mid-1970s law school days
at the University of Houston, they found a former law student who
had dated her. After their break-up, he suspected her in several
acts of violence that included the beating of a new girlfriend, the
burning of his apartment, and the ramming of his car in a fit of
rage. After graduating, he said, he took his law degree, joined the
US Marine Corps, and quietly relocated to another state, glad to be
out of her life.

Prior to that, they learned
Catherine had been married to a classmate from the University of
Texas who had joined the Navy and taken her to Tokyo with him. The
product of a private Catholic girls' high school in Houston, she
had returned home after that split determined to become a lawyer.
She earned her undergraduate degree in 1974 from the University of
Houston and stayed on to collect a law degree there in 1977. But
the first husband, like most everyone else in her past, remained
out of sight as foggy rumors filtered into the investigation. They
heard tales of a military probe that followed complaints she had
tried to shoot him while they lived in Japan. But no firm evidence
emerged to do more than just color her reputation.

Although frustrated by their
failure to tie her to Tedesco's murder, the family's investigators
still felt confident they could destroy her claim to ever have been
Tedesco's common law wife. And the lawyers waited with great
anticipation for what they believed would be the highlight of their
pretrial campaign: the July deposition of Catherine herself and a
chance to question her under oath in a setting where invocation of
the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination would blow a big
hole in her desire to convince any jury she deserved George
Tedesco's estate.

THREE

July 17, 1979

To win Tedesco's estate under
Texas' common-law marriage rules, Catherine would have to convince
a jury that the three months they had lived together in late 1977
constituted a state of informal matrimony. She could argue that
length of cohabitation is not an element in proving a marriage, and
Texas laws would bolster that contention. Texas allowed couples to
declare themselves married without the trappings of a ceremony if
they chose. But she knew jurors likely would want some strong
evidence to counter any disgust with the short duration of their
actual cohabitation. So she hammered that philosophy repeatedly
during a marathon, ten-hour pre-trial deposition most remarkable
for its moments of X-rated anecdotes and angry exchanges with a
pair of lawyers representing the parents of the murdered
anesthesiologist.

Unencumbered by the need to clear
all questions, answers, or voluntary responses with a judge, that
session deteriorated immediately into a legal free-for-all with
Catherine using the forum to torment her adversaries. Just like
police detectives investigating Tedesco's murder, the Tedesco
family's team of estate lawyers would leave the session with
nothing in the way of confession about the crime. But they would
compile a written record confirming suspicions that Catherine
boasted special skills for frustrating anyone who stood in her
way.

The session was scheduled to start
promptly at eleven in the morning with Catherine, her attorney, the
two Tedesco lawyers, and a certified stenographer to make an
official record. But Catherine managed to delay until after noon
with an unusual demand that a third party attend and watch the
entire proceeding. That third party was an attorney named Robert
who had known Catherine since their days a few years before as law
students at the University of Houston. He also had represented
Tedesco in some business matters, and Catherine came determined to
embarrass him with wild allegations about everything from sexual
antics of his former wife to his relationship with Tedesco. She
capped off the day insisting that Robert answer some questions
himself under oath in a night-cap session that didn't begin until
forty minutes after ten.

During all of this, neither lawyer
ever asked her directly if she had killed Tedesco or knew who had.
But it became apparent early in the day that she had come prepared
to deny any involvement and hint her own theory that Tedesco might
have been killed by a gay lover, disgruntled drug smuggling
associates, or…Robert. While slipping those theories into the
record, she managed to avoid answering a number of specific
questions about her background by forcefully ordering the Tedesco
team to "move along" whenever they asked something she didn't
like—such as the date of her birth.

"George made known his feelings
that he wanted to be married, and that he felt that you could be
married without a piece of paper, and that he felt he was married
to me," she said recounting a discussion she said occurred in
October 1977. She believed that sealed their love when she moved
into his townhouse about then. She conceded, however, that their
common-law marriage had lasted only until January of 1978 when she
vacated the place. But she couldn't be too specific about the
date.

"There was much moving in and out
between the 21st of December and the 31st," she said. "You don't
just move out in one day when you are moving out. You move out some
things, and you come back and get some more, and then you move out
some more things."

She had met the anesthesiologist a few months
before when introduced by a female acquaintance who worked for
another doctor.

Catherine told the lawyers: "He
started calling me but I didn't remember him…I usually don't go out
with people that have accents. I mean, I have never except for
him."

Asked if she had ever admitted
targeting Tedesco for his money, Catherine denied it, then added:
"Undoubtedly one of George's endearing qualities was that, I
suppose, he did have some money. But nobody really understands. I
think I am probably one of the only people in the world who ever
really cared about George, and I would have liked him if he had
acted a little better even if he didn't have any money."

She said: "If I was going to get
somebody's money, I wouldn't go around telling everybody about it
first. I can get money for myself through my honest
labors."