11. Charles Robert Pomeroy
Bob Pomeroy was Betty Gore’s father, who expressed his disappointment over the trial’s outcome.
Bob Pomeroy’s life changed in an instant in June 1980 when his daughter, Betty Gore, was killed by Candy Montgomery in Wylie, Texas. Betty was a young teacher, a wife, and a mother of two, and her violent death tore through the family’s quiet Kansas life. What followed was grief made public, a private tragedy turned into one of the most scrutinized murder cases in the state’s history.
The trial only deepened the pain. When Montgomery was acquitted, Bob spoke openly about his anger and disbelief, saying the justice system had failed his daughter. Learning that Betty’s husband, Allan Gore, had been having an affair with Montgomery only added to the humiliation. Every new headline seemed to pull the family’s grief back into view, and Bob became a reluctant figure in the public narrative of the case.
In the years that followed, he and his wife, Bertha, took in their granddaughters, Alisa and Bethany, raising them in Norwich, Kansas. Caring for the girls gave their grief a direction, something to hold on to as the attention around the trial finally began to fade. Still, the weight of Betty’s absence never lifted completely.
The constant media coverage surrounding the trial made privacy almost impossible. Reporters described it as “trial by media,” and Bob’s frustration often turned into a kind of advocacy, a plea for fairness in a system that, to him, had lost sight of justice. His voice carried the raw truth of a father watching his daughter’s story turned into entertainment.
More than four decades later, Bob Pomeroy is remembered as a man defined by loyalty and quiet resolve. He spoke plainly about loss and about how no verdict could bring real closure. His story stands as a reminder that the violence of a single act doesn’t end in the courtroom; it echoes through the families who are left to live with what remains.
