On a hot Friday, June 13, 1980, 410 Dogwood Drive in Wylie, Texas, was the kind of house you drove past without a second glance. It was a modest, 1,700-square-foot brick ranch on a quiet street where the roofs lined up in neat rows. Back then, Wylie was just a small commuter town of about 3,150 people between two lakes. It was the kind of place where everyone went to the same church, recognized faces at the grocery store, and rarely bothered to lock their doors.
By the end of that day, however, that completely ordinary address was leading every newscast in North Texas.
The story started within the young, church-centered middle class that was moving into Collin County. Candy Montgomery and Betty Gore were practically the picture of suburban life. Both couples went to the Methodist church in nearby Lucas. Candy’s husband, Pat, and Betty’s husband, Allan, were both engineers. The families volunteered together, their kids played together, and they shared the same web of potlucks and softball games.
Candy and Pat had even built a custom, party-friendly home in Fairview, designed by architect Stephen Chambers, with high ceilings and big windows meant for entertaining.
But things took a turn when Candy and Allan started a carefully scheduled affair. They met regularly at the Como Motel, a mid-20th-century motor court with a glowing neon sign off U.S. Highway 75 in Richardson (an area that would later be dubbed the “Telecom Corridor”). The affair ended months before the killing, but the tension didn’t—it just moved into silences and things left unsaid.
On the morning of June 13, Allan was away on a work trip. Candy stopped by the Gores’ Wylie home to pick up a swimsuit for Betty’s older daughter, who was spending the night at the Montgomerys. Sometime after Candy walked through the door, Betty confronted her about the affair. An argument in the utility room turned into a full-blown fight.
By that evening, neighbors Richard Parker and Lester Gayler, unable to reach Betty, forced their way into the house. They found her body in the laundry room, she had been struck 41 times with a wood-splitting ax. Betty’s infant daughter, Bethany, was found alive in her crib.
For several days, before anyone named a suspect, Wylie panicked. Residents lived with the terrifying idea that an unknown ax murderer was on the loose. Local TV footage from KXAS captured kids on bikes riding up to the police station to see what was happening. Suddenly, doors that had never been locked were bolted shut, and parents kept their kids indoors.
When Candy finally surrendered to the Collin County Sheriff’s Office, the legal drama got messy immediately. She was held on a $100k bond. Her criminal defense lawyer, Robert Udashen, claimed the defense team was ambushed from the start. He accused the district attorneys of breaking an agreement to keep the press away during her surrender. Even worse, after Udashen arranged a bondsman, the sheriff refused to release her.
Two days later, Judge Tom Ryan orchestrated a hearing—supposedly about a gag order—but used it to launch into a surprise hearing about her bond, throwing Candy right back in jail.
At the eight-day trial in McKinney in October 1980, the state’s argument was straightforward: the affair gave Candy a motive, and striking someone 41 times with an ax was murder, not self-defense. They pointed out she could have simply run out the door.
Candy’s lawyers, Udashen and Don Crowder, told a stranger story. They argued Betty picked up the ax first. During the struggle, Candy got control of the weapon. According to psychiatrist Fred Fason, who testified after placing Candy under hypnosis, Betty told Candy to “shhh.” That simple word triggered a deep childhood trauma, causing Candy to slip into a dissociative state and unleash the flurry of blows.
The jury of nine women and three men believed her. After just over three hours of deliberation on October 30, 1980, they delivered a not-guilty verdict. Candy walked down the courthouse steps as crowds screamed, “Murderer!”
Legally, the story was over. Candy and Pat left Texas for Georgia, eventually divorcing. Candy went back to her maiden name, Candace Wheeler, and built a quiet life working as a mental health counselor. Now in her 70s, she has no public social media and reportedly turned down requests to participate in recent TV dramatizations.
But while Candy got to change her name and slip into anonymity, the house at 410 Dogwood Drive couldn’t outrun its history.
Decades later, the case is back in the spotlight thanks to the reissue of the true-crime book Evidence of Love, Hulu’s Candy (2022), and Max’s Love & Death (2023). Viewers binge the shows and immediately hit Zillow or Redfin, staring at the exact same house, now updated with granite countertops and cheerful staging.
The property has changed hands multiple times, selling quickly in August 2020 and March 2022 at normal market prices. In Texas, under Property Code §5.008(c), sellers aren’t required to disclose a past homicide, though real estate agents usually bring it up off the record. Experts note that while “stigmatized properties” might initially take a 10 to 25 percent hit in price, they eventually bounce back. In a fast-growing suburb with limited inventory, buyers often care more about the vaulted ceilings and the commute than what happened in the laundry room 46 years ago.
That is what makes the Montgomery case so unsettling. It undercuts the idea that terrible things only happen in creepy, isolated places. It’s part crime legend, part real-estate riddle—a reminder that some of the darkest moments happen in normal tract houses on quiet streets, in rooms built to feel perfectly safe.
The People Behind the Candy Montgomery Case
The Candy Montgomery case wasn’t just about one crime—it was about a whole circle of people caught in the aftermath. A young mother lost her life. A family was torn apart. Friends, lawyers, pastors, and detectives found themselves pulled into a story that no one in small-town Wylie, Texas, could have ever imagined.
To really see the case in full, you have to look at the people behind it. Each of them, whether they were in the courtroom, at the crime scene, or at home quietly picking up the pieces, played a part in how this tragedy was understood.
Here’s who they were, and why their stories still matter.
1. Betty Gore
Betty Gore was the victim in the case. She was married to Allan Gore and was found dead in her home.
Before she became the victim of a notorious Texas murder, Betty was a devoted 30-year-old schoolteacher, a wife, and a fiercely protective mother of two.
Because the media and recent TV shows (like Hulu’s Candy and Max’s Love & Death) naturally gravitate toward the sensationalism of Candy Montgomery’s secret affair and shocking acquittal, Betty’s humanity often gets lost in the shuffle. The spotlight almost always lands on the suburban mom who committed the crime and walked free, rather than the innocent woman who never got to see her daughters grow up.
The true tragedy of this story isn’t just the controversial court verdict; it’s the permanent, devastating void left behind. Betty’s death shattered her family and completely stripped a quiet town of its innocence. She wasn’t just a plot device in a Hollywood script—she was a real, specific person who loved her kids, and she deserves to be remembered for how she lived, not just how she died.
