The Lone Star Love Triangle: True Crime (8 page)

At 9:00 p.m. Vandiver looked at Davis and said, "It's time - let's go." As they divvied up the dinner bill, Irwin asked Vandiver if she could give him a personal check for her share. "Is it okay? Can you cover it?"

Vandiver laughed. "I think so. I've got $42,000 on me."

Davis dawdled at the table, seeming somewhat reluctant to leave. But the friends soon said goodbye in front of the restaurant.

AS VANDIVER AND DAVIS HEADED HOME, Mathes, Covington, Makosky and Holland gathered in a Best Western hotel room north of Houston. Covington was carrying a .38-caliber revolver. Mathes had a .25-caliber pistol. The samurai sword was outside in the van. The men sat around snorting coke and smoking pot while Mathes sketched a map of Vandiver's ranch.

Sometime after 11:00 p.m., Mathes called Vandiver to tell him that he was on his way. Then the four men loaded into the van. As they drove to the ranch, Mathes handed his personal two-gram vial of coke to Covington and told him to pass it around. While Mathes drove, Covington, in the seat next to him, loaded the guns. A few minutes later Mathes casually remarked that he would shoot Vandiver in the back first. "Mathes said John had a bad back and that should lay him up,” says Holland. And then Mathes matter-of-factly added, "If his old lady is there, she's got to die, too."

AT THE RANCH, DAVIS WAS ON THE telephone with her mother, Sheila Davis. "I was feeling kind of under the weather,” Mrs. Davis says. “And I was procrastinating about whether or not to make a trip I'd planned to McAllen, Texas. Debbie said, 'Go, Mom. It'll be fun for you. You need the break.'"

"I love you,” Debbie said, before hanging up.

Then Debbie, dressed in her nightgown, climbed into bed. After setting up the stereo equipment to dub some tapes, Vandiver turned on the television and settled into a large overstuffed chair to await Mathes's arrival.

At approximately 12:30 a.m., Mathes drove the van past the cabin. "You'll have to get down on the floor,” Mathes said. “John will be highly pissed off if he knows I brought somebody up here to his house."

Silently, Mathes pulled into the driveway. With the pistol in a shoulder holster under his jacket, he exited from the van through the door on the driver's side. A moment later, Holland heard him enter the cabin.

"I felt like I was in an episode of Miami Vice,” Holland says. "A million things were going through my mind. Tom was inside for maybe ten minutes when we heard two shots. It seemed like an eternity."

"All the time the cocaine kept telling me, 'Everything is going to be all right,’" says Makosky. "Then there are shots fired. Someone is getting killed. Cecil hollered out, 'Let's go.' As I was jumping out, Cecil handed me my sword."

Holland, the first to reach the cabin door, remembers looking through the window. "I saw John laying there on his stomach,” he says. "He'd been shot in the back, and he was cussing at Tom, calling him a son of a bitch. Cecil pulled the door open and pushed me in. John looked up at me, and I'll never forget his expression. He looked relieved, like 'Somebody is here to help.'

"A minute later, I saw Debbie Davis on her knees in a closet. She was holding her hand against her chest. There was blood dripping in front of her. She was crying."

Mathes, waving the pistol in Vandiver's face, demanded money. Suddenly aware that the strangers were not there to help, Vandiver whispered, "On the shelf in the bedroom. Wrapped up like a Christmas package. Take whatever you want, just don't shoot anymore."

With a knowing look, Mathes slapped the pistol into Covington's open hand, turned to Holland and ordered, "Watch the girl,” as he and Makosky disappeared into the bedroom.

Then Holland watched Covington turn and fire into Vandiver's neck and head. While Vandiver was still alive and groaning, Holland says, "Cecil handed me the .38 and said, 'Shoot him.' I aimed at John's head. He was holding a large glass ashtray over his head, trying to shield his face. There was a lot of blood. I turned my head and squeezed. I shot him in the top of the head. The shot went through and came out the other side. After I shot him, things went blank. I froze. The last thing I remember him saying is, 'Please don't shoot anymore.'

“Behind me, I heard Davis kind of whisper, 'No, no, Tom.' Tom just stood there smiling. And then there were shots. Cecil was over there unloading the .25 into the enclosure. I walked over and looked at Debbie. She was lying there in a little closet. She had been shot all in the chest. All she had on was this little see-through blue negligee. I heard a gurgling noise, and I told the others, 'She's still alive.' Then I hit the door - fast."

After Holland ran from the cabin, Covington turned to Makosky and demanded, "Where's your sword at?"

"I'd thrown the sword outside, under a tree on my way in,” Makosky says. “I didn't want anything to do with what was going down, but something about the way Cecil and Tom looked at me I was afraid. I ran outside, paranoid that someone would see me, and I got the sword. Cecil told me, 'Go over there and make sure she's dead. Cut her throat.' I was afraid not to. I kept remembering what Tom had said about the Colombians: 'Well, if they can't get you, they'll get your family.' " Makosky pushed the sword into her chest again and again, but it kept hitting a bone. So he pulled it out and ran it across the front of her throat.

"In the van, Tom looked like Cool Hand Luke,” Holland says. “When we got back to the hotel room, Joe gave me the sword. It was covered with blood, and he just couldn't deal with it. I took it in the bathroom and washed it off. It was the next day, after the coke finally wore off, when it hit me - I killed a man last night.

"Two weeks later that song 'Smuggler's Blues' came out. When I heard it for the first time, it blew my mind. It fit so perfect: 'Someone's got to lose, it's the smuggler's' blues.' None of it seemed real. It was all like something you would see in a movie."

VANDIVER'S AND Davis’s murderers fled with more than $40,000. They left behind over $100,000 in cocaine and marijuana and another $13,000 in cash. It took six months for the police to unravel the events of that night. Lured by a $10,000 reward raised by Vandiver's and Davis's families and friends, Michael Charbeneau finally came forward to finger Mathes.

In the end, Dennis Holland turned state's evidence and pleaded guilty to Vandiver's murder. Joe Makosky pleaded guilty to the murders of both Vandiver and Davis. Tom Mathes and Cecil Covington were convicted of murdering Debbie Davis; Mathes's conviction was for capital murder, which carries a life sentence.

Photo Archive II

Debbie Davis and John Vandiver.

Shake Russell and John Vandiver.

Tom Mathes.

Cecil Covington.

Dennis Holland

Joe Makosky.

Hurley Fontenot — The Lone Star Love Triangle
By Kathryn Casey

LAURA NUGENT KNEW SOMETHING WAS WRONG. She had been sitting for hours on the porch of her parents' small home 40 miles east of Houston, waiting for her lover, Bill Fleming, to drive up in his white pickup truck. He never came. He had said that he'd be there by 4:30 to have supper with her family. It was already 6:00, but she still expected him to arrive at any moment. By 7:00, she was pacing the porch of the white clapboard house, nervously tugging the ends of her long, ink-dark hair. By 8:00 that April evening in 1985, she was frantically driving the dark country roads near her home, searching for him. On Saturday, she used her key to check his apartment. It was empty.

On Sunday, Laura found Bill's truck parked at Hull-Daisetta Junior School where he coached, but Bill wasn't there either. Fearful and discouraged, she again took to her car, driving slowly down deserted roads, watching for any sign of the man she loved.