Where Is David Temple Today? Inside His Life 27 Years After Killing His Pregnant Wife By Caroline Blair

David Temple was arrested in 2004 for killing his wife, Belinda Temple, but he only recently received his final sentence.

On Jan. 11, 1999, David frantically called 911 and claimed that he had returned to his Katy, Texas, home to what appeared to be a home invasion. He alleged that he had found his wife, Belinda, shot and alerted authorities that she was eight months pregnant with their second child.

For years, Belinda’s murder went unsolved until detectives determined that gunshot residue found on Belinda’s clothing matched the same residue found on David’s clothing from that day. He was arrested in 2004 and was convicted for the first time in 2007 and sentenced to life in prison.

In the decades since his first trial, David appealed his conviction and was granted a retrial in 2016. He was found guilty for a second time in 2019 and was sentenced to life in prison again. During the 2023 sentencing, Belinda’s brother and sister shared victim impact statements where they reminded David of his crimes.

“Belinda was my life. It has been hell for me for the last 24 years,” her twin sister, Brenda Lucas, said, per KHOU 11. “I have suffered from PTSD. I have felt survivor’s guilt. Belinda should be here.”

Here’s everything to know about where David Temple is, nearly 30 years after he murdered his wife.

High school teachers David and Belinda were married for seven years

Both David and Belinda grew up in small towns outside of Houston, Texas, before eventually attending Stephen F. Austin State University. David played football at the university, while Belinda was also an athlete there, according to ABC News.

“Belinda was…quite an athlete, and I’m sure that’s probably what attracted David to her, being, you know, the sports big man on campus star that he was,” Andy Kahan, director of victim services and advocacy at Crime Stoppers Houston and a spokesperson for the Lucas family, told ABC News in 2019.

They met at the university, and after a year of dating, David proposed to Belinda on the 50-yard line of the school’s football field, per Covering Katy News. They married in 1992.

Both David and Belinda went on to get master’s degrees in education. Shortly afterward, they moved back to David’s hometown of Katy, where she became a special education teacher at his alma mater, Katy High School. Meanwhile, David was a teacher and football coach at the neighboring school, Alief Hastings.

They welcomed their first child together, son Evan Temple, in 1995. Three years later, Belinda found out that she was pregnant with their second child and planned to name her Erin, per ABC News.

Belinda was 8 months pregnant with their second child when David shot her to death

During the early evening of Jan. 11, 1999, David was running errands with their then 3-year-old son, Evan, when he returned home around 5:30 p.m. Upon coming home, he claimed that he saw their gate open and the back door broken.

He alleged that he ran to his neighbor’s house and dropped off Evan before running to check on Belinda. Once there, he said he discovered that his wife had been shot in the back of the head in the closet of their bedroom.

David subsequently called 911, and authorities began investigating the crime. Police later determined that the perpetrator had shot Belinda with a 12-gauge shotgun in the back of the head.

In addition to Belinda’s murder, the crime scene also initially appeared to be a home invasion. However, authorities noted that there were things that felt off about the supposed burglary at the time — including inconsistencies with the broken door, randomly opened drawers and jewelry left out that the supposed thief didn’t take.

“As an investigator, you just know when you see something that doesn’t look right,” Sergeant Dean Holtke of the Harris County Sheriff’s Office told ABC News. “Where you would expect to see glass from a broken door, you don’t see it, and where you don’t expect to see it, there it is.”

David was arrested in 2004 and convicted three years later

Just hours after David called 911 about his wife’s murder, he was brought into the police department for questioning. Initially, he alleged that he had taken Evan to the park, a grocery store and a hardware store before returning home around 5:30 p.m.

However, investigators noted that David was telling slightly different stories each time he recounted the events of the day. For instance, former Harris County Detective Chuck Leithner recalled David giving the names of “two different parks” he took Evan to, per ABC News.

Police later determined that Belinda’s time of death was around an hour before David called 911. At the time, David had been confirmed to be running errands with Evan, per surveillance video and was dismissed as a suspect.

Around the same time, authorities began looking into one of Belinda’s students and their neighbor, Riley Joe Sanders III. Police learned that prior to Belinda’s murder, she had spoken to his parents about Sanders’ tendency to skip class, which may have given him a motive. Sanders also had access to a similar gun that was used to kill Belinda — which was never recovered. However, he was cleared after police interviewed several witnesses who confirmed his alibi.

Despite his apparent alibi, David was brought back into the potential ring of suspects after police learned that he’d been having an affair with another teacher at his school, Heather Scott. They later learned that David and Heather’s relationship had gotten more serious and that they had fallen in love. Two years after his wife was found dead, David and Heather married.

Even with the affair, David’s alibi appeared to be solid, so Belinda’s murder went unsolved for years.

In 2004, David was arrested after forensic results found the same gunshot residue on both Belinda and David’s clothes from the day she was murdered. He was charged with first-degree murder but denied any involvement.

David went to trial in 2007 where his attorneys successfully threw out the gunshot residue evidence. However, a jury still found him guilty after prosecutors alleged that he killed Belinda in hopes of starting a new life with Heather. He was sentenced to life in prison.

David is serving his life imprisonment sentence in Texas

Even though David was convicted of killing his wife in 2007, he’d go on to fight his charges for two decades.

Five years after his first conviction, David’s attorney, Dick DeGuerin, filed an appeal in hopes for a second trial after one of Sanders’ friends, Daniel Glasscock, alleged that he overheard Sanders confess to killing someone in a burglary gone wrong.

“I remember him saying nobody was supposed to be there, when he went into the house,” Glasscock said in a videotaped deposition, per CBS News. “As he went upstairs, the dog attacked him, he shot the dog, heard Belinda, put the dog in the closet and they panicked and ran.”

Glasscock was initially confused, as the Temples’ dog was not shot, but he later came to believe that the “dog” he was referring to was Belinda.

Former Harris County District Attorney’s Office Investigator, Steve Clappart, revisited the case and noticed that several pieces of information about Sanders were not presented in trial. In 2016, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals read the appeal and granted David a new trial, which started in 2019. David was briefly released on bond while awaiting the retrial.

David’s attorneys used the new evidence to try to implicate Sanders in Belinda’s death. Sanders testified in the second trial and reiterated his first alibi that he was with friends before taking a nap when his father woke him to the news of their neighbor’s murder. He denied having any involvement.

Meanwhile, prosecutors argued that David’s family owned the murder weapon that was never found and that his alibi wasn’t as airtight as he initially made it seem. They alleged that David killed Belinda after she returned home and then he purposely ran the errands to be seen on surveillance footage. After running the errands, they claimed David returned home and staged the burglary before running Evan to their neighbor’s house and reporting the crime.

The defense’s attempt to implicate Sanders wasn’t successful, and David was convicted of murdering his wife for a second time. Although the jury found him guilty, they couldn’t agree on his sentence, but a third jury ultimately sentenced him to life in prison in 2023.

Ahead of his sentencing, David and Belinda’s son, Evan — who was 24 years old at the time — shared a statement in which he maintained his dad’s innocence while calling him his role model.

“I want my dad out of prison. I lost my dad once, I don’t want to lose him again,” he said, per KHOU 11. “My father was a big influence, even when he wasn’t present. He got to write letters, calls maybe three to four times a week.”

Despite his efforts to overturn his conviction, David is serving his life sentence at the Alfred D. Hughes Unit within the Texas Department of Criminal Justice located in Gatesville, Texas, according to inmate records.