5. Robert Udashen
Robert Udashen served as an assistant defense attorney working alongside Don Crowder.
In 1980, Robert Udashen was just 27, with barely three years of legal experience, when he joined Don Crowder’s defense team for Candy Montgomery. The case — a churchgoing housewife accused of killing her friend Betty Gore with an ax, was already a Texas media storm. Udashen’s calm precision balanced Crowder’s theatrical style, and together they pulled off what most thought impossible: an acquittal.
Candy admitted to killing Betty but said it was self-defense, that panic and buried trauma took over when Betty attacked. Udashen helped frame the story not as cold-blooded murder but as psychological collapse — fear, repression, and flashpoint violence. The defense used hypnosis and expert testimony about dissociation, an approach that divided the public and the legal community alike. After eight days of trial and less than four hours of deliberation, nine women and three men found Candy not guilty.
Crowder took the spotlight; Udashen handled the spine of the case — motions, structure, the careful legal logic that made the emotional argument stick. It was his first taste of high-stakes defense, and it launched a long career built on rigor rather than showmanship.
The trial shifted more than one life. It cracked open conversations about women, self-defense, and the unseen weight of emotional trauma inside domestic spaces. For Udashen, it also marked the start of a steady climb. He went on to specialize in appellate and post-conviction work, taught at Southern Methodist University, earned state recognition, and eventually ran his own Dallas practice.
HBO’s Love & Death later brought him back into view, the young attorney in the shadow of a sensational case, learning in real time how psychology, law, and public opinion could collide in a single Texas courtroom.
