Texas Confidential
(Page 1 of 10)
March 11, 2006
Doris Angleton was 46 years old when she was murdered in
1997. (CBS/48 Hours)
(CBS) Doris and Bob Angleton lived in an upscale Houston
neighborhood, raising their twin daughters and leading,
on the surface at least, a perfect life. But there was
trouble brewing and the family was shattered in 1997
when Doris was murdered inside their home. |
 |
As correspondent Richard Schlesinger reports, the
subsequent investigation uncovered a crucial piece of
evidence, an audio tape on which two men could be heard
discussing the details of this murder. What would follow
is a story of secrecy, money, affairs, and murderous
accusations between two brothers.
Niki Angleton says it's not hard for her to remember her
mother Doris. "I remember really specific things. Like
every morning we would wake up to her laughing, and she
had an incredible laugh like, really, really loud,
really like vibrant, and it just made you want to get up
and go downstairs and see what's going on."
Niki and her twin sister Ali Angleton were 12 years old
when their mother Doris was murdered.
And then, four months after the twins lost one parent,
they lost the other. On their 13th birthday, their
father Bob was arrested for killing their 46-year-old
mom.
Asked if she understood the charges her father was
facing, Niki says, "No. Nothing was ever explained to us
very well." The twins say they have never believed the
charges are true.
"Well if you knew my dad you would know. I just, I just
know," Ali explains. "I know him, and he didn’t do it,"
Niki adds. "That’s just the bottom line and it doesn’t
matter what anyone else thinks, really."
Niki and Ali were 15 years old when 48 Hours first
started interviewing them for this story. Today, almost
ten years after the murder of their mother, they are
about to graduate from college.
But this story is still not over for them, or their
father. In the beginning the question was who killed
Doris Angleton and why. Now it isn't so much who did it,
it's how to prove it and how many times Bob will have to
stand trial for it.
Bob has always maintained his innocence; he spent one
full year in jail waiting for his trial.
"Can you imagine when your children come visit you when
you're in jail that you have to put on an air of
everything being ok, and that it will work out, because
they're still counting on you," says Bob.
In July 1998, more than a year after the murder, the
trial finally got underway.
By far the best piece of evidence against Bob was a
garbled audio tape of two men planning Doris' murder.
The prosecution claimed one of the voices was Bob's, a
claim he has denied.
In the end, the jury thought the voices on the tape were
too muffled to identify and they couldn't be sure if one
of them was Bob's.
Bob was acquitted and the girls got their father back.
For the next few years they settled into what one could
call "normal" teenage life.
When Bob heard "not guilty," he thought his legal ordeal
was over but it was far from over.
Texas Confidential
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March 11, 2006
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Doris Angleton was 46 years old when she was murdered in
1997. (CBS/48 Hours)
Lyn McClellan, the prosecutor who lost the state's case
against Bob in 1998, is still convinced Bob Angleton is
a guilty man.
"I'd love to get him. Yeah, I'd love to have another
shot at trying him again," McClellan says.
|
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Asked why he didn't just move on, McClellan says,
"Because I didn’t think the verdict was correct. You
shouldn't get away with murder."
Three and a half years after being acquitted of murder
by the state of Texas, Bob was arrested again for his
wife's murder, now facing a federal murder charge.
Angleton’s attorney Mike Ramsey said the new charges
amounted to "double jeopardy," being tried for the same
crime twice, which is unconstitutional.
"We shouldn't have two trials just because there's an
acquittal and some sore DAs for getting beat," Ramsey
said at a press conference.
But McClellan denies it's double jeopardy. "Well, it’s
not double jeopardy when the feds try you for a state
case. So, if they have a federal case that they can
make, then they have a right to make that."
Bob's only consolation this time was that he got out on
bail. And as his second trial approached, Bob prepared
for the worst, facing the possibility of a conviction.
He went to visit his daughters, who had started college
that fall, to say what he feared could be his final
goodbye.
Asked what he said to his girls, Bob said, "I may go
away to jail for the rest of my life. That means when
you need something, you can’t call me for advice. That
means I don’t exist."
"Some people might ask why you don’t just get up and
leave?" Schlesinger asked.
"I'm not allowed to," Bob replied. "I'm not in a
situation where I can make plans. The only plans I have
right now are in case I am found guilty. Because, the
minute that I am found guilty, I will have no time to
make any plans."
When Angleton told 48 Hours that back in 2003, he was
being somewhat less than honest.
In fact, Bob did have a plan, one he had been setting up
for more than a year. Just four days before the start of
his second trial, he followed that plan and walked out
of his Houston home for the very last time.
At first his attorney feared the worst, wondering if Bob
might have killed himself.
But the choice Bob made didn't involve leaving this
world, it involved just leaving the country. Armed with
a fake passport, a fake driver's license, and a fake
Social Security card, Bob had decided to become a
fugitive.
Angleton wrote about what he did next in a journal,
which his daughters have read.
"Going to jail for life is for sure a dead end. So this
is the only choice," Niki read from the journal. "Saying
goodbye to life and leaving with one small suitcase and
one carry on. Imagine trying to repair your life with
the possibility that you'll never – you'll never hold or
hug your children, your friends every again," Niki read
on.
Bob ended up far from home and had become very difficult
for 48 Hours to reach but he was still eager to talk,
even if it couldn’t be face-to-face.
Speaking by phone, he said he decided to flee for the
sake of his daughters.
"I figured their best peace of mind would occur if I was
safe and that was the only idea I could come up with was
to flee," he explained.
Texas Confidential
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March 11, 2006
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Doris Angleton was 46 years old when she was murdered in
1997. (CBS/48 Hours)
(CBS)
When he fled, Bob said he took about $135,000 in cash
with him, stashed inside a checked suitcase and a
carry-on.
Bob and his money bags landed safely at his first
destination, Amsterdam.
Bob knew he committed a crime by fleeing the country but
didn’t think he had a choice. Bob says he told federal
prosecutors who had killed his wife, but they weren’t
listening.
Niki admits her father's flight didn't look good. "If I
was someone on the outside and heard about this guy, who
was supposed to go to trial and then he ran, yeah,
that’s pretty guilty. It looks really bad. But there is
so much more to the story that nobody knows."
Part of the story includes a confession letter from the
man who admitted he had killed Doris as an act of
revenge against Bob. It was a letter jurors were never
allowed to see.
So why did Bob decide to become a fugitive? He had been
acquitted of murder in one trial and as he faced a
second trial, he had a powerful alibi. He wasn't
anywhere near the crime scene at the time of the killing
and had an entire girls' softball team to prove it.
The afternoon of April 16, 1997 started like any other.
Doris dropped off her twin girls for an hour of softball
practice before the start of the game. Bob was the
team's coach.
After the game, Bob drove the girls straight home.
"As I pulled into my spot, I noticed the back door was
open. Now I was concerned," Bob recalls.
Bob called 911, with his girls still waiting in the car.
Police officers entered the home, and then broke the
news to Bob.
"He came out, looked me in the eyes and said, 'Was your
wife wearing a white shirt?' The message was clear," Bob
recalls.
Doris Angleton's body was found lying in the hallway
next to the kitchen. She had been shot seven times in
the face, five times in the chest.
"I started bursting out crying because I knew by his
face that she was dead," remembers Niki.
Doris' brother, Steve McGown, walked through the house
the day after she was murdered.
"Nothing was disturbed. No glass was broken on the door,
there was no forced entry. I couldn’t see anything that
was taken. The only reason anyone was in there was to
kill my sister. Why? Show me a good reason why?" says
McGown.
Niki says "everyone" loved her mother, and Bob says,
"Doris was a queen."
In an interview with Bob two years before he fled to
Amsterdam to avoid a second trial, he couldn’t stop
talking about his late wife.
"She was a perfect wife, a perfect mother, a perfect
lover. She was perfect in every sense," he said.
"Everyday we'd come home, we'd have perfect dinner set
up for us, we'd have everything we wanted. It was
perfect," Niki recalled.
The girls say their father had no reason to destroy all
that.
For Bob, there was no mystery. The night of the murder,
Bob told police he knew who killed his wife – a man who
had been on the run since the day after Doris' murder.
Bob said that man was his own brother, Roger Angleton.
And Bob said his brother had a motive: to hurt him and
his family.
Texas Confidential
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March 11, 2006
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Doris Angleton was 46 years old when she was murdered in
1997. (CBS/48 Hours)
Bob says he and his brother had been rivals from the
start. Bob was always the more successful son and Roger
was jealous.
"Roger said there was resentment that I was the favorite
child. I guess you'd say he was a problem child," says
Bob.
Roger couldn’t hold a steady job while Bob was
supporting a family in style, earning around $1 million
a year.
"I put it on the level as a successful doctor, or
successful lawyer," Bob said.
But Bob wasn't a successful doctor or lawyer. He was a
bookie, taking bets on sporting events, which is illegal
in Texas.
His business was booming and Bob realized he needed
help. At the time, his brother Roger needed a job.
Despite their troubled past Bob hired him. It turned out
to be a big mistake.
Less than a year later, in the summer of 1990, Bob fired
his brother. And that’s when things started getting
nasty.
"He felt like I owed him money," Bob explains. Roger
believed Bob had cheated him out of a lot of money, some
$200,000.
Despite their fallout, Bob says his brother showed up
months later on Halloween dressed as a big bunny rabbit.
Bob says Roger was trying to get close to the family
again. "Little did I know it was part of his extortion
plot," he says.
It almost worked. After winning back his brother's
trust, Roger convinced Bob he had scheduled a closing
for him on a real estate deal. He told Bob to bring
along $200,000 in cash and to meet him beforehand in
this parking lot.
"He’s sitting in the back seat, saying 'I want the
money, Bob, I want the money,'" Bob recalls.
Roger pointed a gun at him. "And I’m going 'Whoa.' Yes,
this is my brother," says Bob.
Roger had a hard time keeping his mouth shut and told
the whole story to his lawyer, Jim Skelton.
"He had planned to kill Bob, unless Bob paid him. He was
telling me about it," says Skelton.
Bob was able to speed away without getting shot. And
Roger didn’t get his money. "That’s when I realized he
was truly off the edge," says Bob.
But Roger wasn’t about to give up; Bob says his brother
knew another way to hurt him.
Bob says Roger threatened to put him out of business, by
reporting him to the IRS.
"At first, I didn’t take him seriously. Then he actually
did make phone calls to customers, posing as an IRS
agent. And I quickly started losing customers," recalls
Bob.
Bob realized Roger could actually shut down his bookie
business and finally agreed to start paying off his
brother in installments.
Bob says he paid Roger $2,500 per month.
Texas Confidential
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March 11, 2006
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Doris Angleton was 46 years old when she was murdered in
1997. (CBS/48 Hours)
Paying off his brother worked for a while but Bob says
Roger demanded even more cash and in 1997, Roger made
one more threat.
Bob says he received a letter from Roger saying if he
didn’t get the money – quote – "I will hurt you in a way
that will be with you for the rest of your life."
Bob says he ignored the letter. Six weeks later, Doris
was dead.
"Whoever walked through that door was getting blown
away. That’s what I think," says Bob.
That's Bob's story. So why didn't police believe him?
Because they started learning more about him, and his
marriage.
Although investigators had little to tie Bob to the
murder of his wife, they never took their eyes off him
and the more they dug up, the more they believed Bob had
a few reasons to want his wife dead.
For starters, Doris had filed for divorce just two
months before she was murdered.
Bob says he was shocked and surprised when he learned
about the divorce. "Because to me, I thought things were
pretty good. And to her, obviously she was seeing
another side of it," he says.
According to Tom O'Connor, Doris' divorce attorney, she
was about to become a very rich woman.
Asked if he was willing to give Doris half his money,
Bob says, "I hate to say we were in a situation that was
so comfortable it really wouldn’t have made a
difference. It irked me, but it didn't get me that
angry."
But there was more. When Doris thought her husband might
not pay her what she wanted, just like Roger, she
threatened to expose Bob's multi-million-dollar,
strictly cash bookie business to the IRS.
"Is that a motive for murder?" Schlesinger asked.
"No, and there is no motive for murder," Bob answered.
"There’s plenty of motives for murder," Schlesinger
said.
"There's not enough motive for murder for anybody," Bob
replied.
But police kept digging and found what they thought was
one more potential motive.
"Their marriage toward the end was not good. She would
stay on the Internet most of the night, in chat rooms
and stuff," says Doris' close friend and hairdresser
Larry West.
Doris told Larry that she was having an affair with a
man she met online.
"In fact just a week before Doris' murder, she was in
the salon. And she was telling me about the boyfriend.
And she had been to see him that prior weekend," says
West.
Bob says he never even knew about the affair. "I did not
know about any boyfriend until after she was dead," he
says.
Texas Confidential
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March 11, 2006
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Doris Angleton was 46 years old when she was murdered in
1997. (CBS/48 Hours)
Even with all that information, there still wasn’t
enough to tie Bob to his wife’s murder. And Bob was
still insisting to police his brother was the killer. It
took two months to find Roger; when police finally
arrested him in Las Vegas, they found an audio tape in
Roger’s briefcase.
On the tape was a conversation between two men planning
Doris' murder.
"I think you ought to blow her away. Go out the front
door and just blow her," a male voice on the tape could
be heard saying.
"Boom, boom, boom. And then when she’s down, I go up to
her and finish her off," a second male voice could be
heard saying.
Everyone thought the voice of the trigger man was
Roger's but it was the other voice that intrigued
prosecutor Lyn McClellan.
McClellan was convinced it was Bob Angleton, the alleged
brains behind the operation and the man who had pointed
police toward Roger in the first place.
"You're waiting she comes in, alright? You hit her," the
male said.
"Right," the second man replied.
"So that means you kill her and go," the man said.
"Right," the second male replied.
For McClellan, it wasn't just the speaker's voice that
was convincing – it was the words he used.
The unidentified man talked about a dog. "I thought you
decided you were gonna put her in a little cage?" the
male said.
"What other hit man worries about what they’re gonna do
with a dog?" asks McClellan. "The owner of the dog, Bob
Angleton."
Also on the tape, the man could be heard saying he
didn't want any fingers cut off.
"You said go for the diamond," the second man said.
"You don't have to cut the f****** finger to take the
diamond," the other voice replied.
"You’re killing the woman. What do we care if we cut her
finger off or not, but Bob didn’t want that," says
prosecutor McClellan.
"She’ll have to tinkle, so she’ll go right in the
bathroom by the door," the unknown voice said on the
tape.
"Some hit man is not going to be telling Roger, 'Okay
when she comes home, she always goes to the bathroom.'
How would he know?" asks McClellan.
Asked if it is his voice on the recording, Bob maintains
it is not.
The tape was all the police needed to arrest Bob for
murder. And Lyn McClellan was prepared to offer his
brother Roger, the trigger man, a very sweet deal.
The deal could have resulted in Roger walking out of
jail a free man. All Roger had to do was testify against
his brother Bob and describe their murder-for-hire plan.
And for that, he would walk out of jail a free man.
McClellan says he expected Roger to accept the deal. But
what McClellan didn't know – and neither did Bob – was
that there were even more secret audio tapes. Roger had
already started talking, and the listener, was all ears.
Texas Confidential
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Doris Angleton was 46 years old when she was murdered in
1997. (CBS/48 Hours)
When Vanessa Leggett heard about the high-profile case,
she starting visiting Roger in jail. At the time, she
was just an aspiring true crime writer looking for a
story. And this time, she got lucky.
Leggett says Roger told her it was Bob's idea to kill
Doris. Asked if she believed him, she said, "Yes, I do."
In January 1998, Leggett visited Roger in jail and tape
recorded about 50 hours of conversations.
"Bob had asked him for some help on something. That he
had a problem. And would Roger come to Houston?" says
Leggett.
According to Roger, Bob wanted his wife dead and he
asked him for help.
"I knew he was dead serious," Roger told Leggett,
because of the way he allegedly acted, saying his
brother was "calm and determined."
"Bob said he's having a problem with Doris, were the
words that he used and that he asked Roger to help him
have her killed," Leggett recalled.
Roger even confessed to Leggett that he had killed
Doris. "He said he came through the front door at around
7 o'clock that evening. And he waited there," Leggett
explained. "And he said when he felt she was really
close he said and 'I jumped out on two feet with both
guns.'"
Roger said the brothers had made a deal that Bob would
pay him to kill Doris, disappear and keep quiet forever.
"Roger asked Bob to give him 24 hours to get out of
town," Leggett said.
Remember when Bob went to the police after the murder
and told them his brother Roger killed his wife?
"What was going thru his mind? Rage," says Bob.
Roger said that too was all just part of their plan.
"So Roger wrote out letters that were threatening to Bob
saying 'you owe me money if you don't I’m going to hurt
you or someone you love. Pay up,'" says Leggett.
Roger told his attorney, Jim Skelton, the same story and
swore him to secrecy.
"The fee was for a million dollars. I think that was it.
It was supposed to be $100,000 down and $100,000 every
year for ten years," says Skelton.
But their elaborate plan unraveled, Roger says, when he
got arrested in Las Vegas, and police found those audio
tapes in his briefcase.
Roger told Leggett that he recorded his brother helping
him plan the murder in case he ever needed the tape to
use against him. Skelton believes the tape was Roger's
insurance policy.
"He was worried about Bob paying him so he kept a lot of
incriminating evidence on the murder he could later use
to blackmail Bob if Bob didn't pay him the money," says
Skelton.
Asked if he hired his brother to kill Doris, Bob says,
"No."
Texas Confidential
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March 11, 2006
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Doris Angleton was 46 years old when she was murdered in
1997. (CBS/48 Hours)
Bob says there never was a plan. His theory is that
Roger wanted to destroy him and so Roger not only killed
Doris, he also tried to frame Bob as his accomplice by
making a fake audio tape.
Each brother was pointing the finger at the other.
According to Bob, the whole murder-for-hire story was
part of an elaborate lie, dreamed up by Roger to
incriminate Bob.
"If I was going to hire somebody to do something, why
would I hire a person that had been extorting me?" Bob
says.
Schlesinger replied, "Because it would give him a motive
and it would divert attention away from you and here was
a guy who wanted to hurt you so he killed your wife. It
made a good story. Good cover."
"If they want to convict me they have to have a theory
of why I did it. To me it makes no sense," Bob said.
But in 1998 the state of Texas thought it had a decent
case against Bob, especially with that audio tape from
Roger's briefcase.
But McClellan had no idea what was about to hit him.
Right before McClellan was about to offer Roger the plea
deal to testify against Bob and get out of jail, Roger
chose a different way out. He shocked everyone when he
committed suicide in his jail cell by cutting himself
more than fifty times with a razor.
But what he left behind was an even bigger surprise:
Roger left a suicide note that said he had killed Doris
on his own, Bob wasn’t involved, and the murder was
exactly what Bob had been saying it was all along: an
act of revenge.
The note read, in part, "I began an elaborate plan to
frame Robert for Doris’ death as further leverage to get
my money…. He is innocent."
"He did tell me that he had planned to kill himself to
save his brother," says Leggett.
Leggett believes, as strange as it sounds, that Roger
killed himself and left that note because he had
promised his brother he would take the rap for killing
Doris.
"He even showed me this letter over a week before he
ended up dead. And told me that he had to do this to
help his brother, so that hopefully his brother would
get off the charges. And he said he really didn’t know
whether the judge was going to accept it," Leggett says.
Although the prosecutor’s star witness had flipped sides
on him and killed himself, in the end, it didn’t matter.
McClellan convinced the judge that the suicide note was
hearsay, and therefore, inadmissible.
Going into trial, McClellan still had the audio tape
found in Roger's briefcase as his best evidence against
Bob and hired an audio expert who once worked for the
FBI to identify the voice.
Steve Cain spent hours analyzing the tape.
McClellan was pretty confident but he got some bad news
when he called Cain.
"I am very confident that it is not Robert Angleton’s
voice on those tapes," Cain said.
Cain had no idea whose voice it was but that didn't
matter to Bob’s defense attorney, Mike Ramsey. "Truth of
it is, it was a godsend. I mean how can you have better
piece of evidence fall in your lap?" says Ramsey. "It’s
a lawyer’s dream."
Texas Confidential
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Doris Angleton was 46 years old when she was murdered in
1997. (CBS/48 Hours)
Bob Angelton’s dreams were about to come true. After
listening to that tape over and over again, the jury
acquitted Bob and the state of Texas had to set him
free.
But federal prosecutors were now determined to get him.
And three and a half years later, they did. And they
planned to use evidence the state never used – the
Vanessa Leggett tapes of her conversations with Roger.
Facing a second trial, Bob saw only one way out: run. He
boarded a plane in Texas, intending to leave behind his
past even though he had no specific plans for his
future.
Asked what his plan was, Bob admitted he wasn't that
prepared. "I would be able to subsist, at least, for six
months to a year. And then find myself some type of
employment."
But just after he arrived in Amsterdam, Bob learned he
wouldn't have to plan that far ahead. The fake passport
he was using looked a little too fake.
"As I walked up to the immigration or passport agent,
when he put his hands on the passport, I knew right then
and there, I was done," remembers Bob. "He started
rubbing at it, looking at it. I think in my mind, I was
thinking, 'Oh, should I turn around and run? No, that's
not smart.'"
Bob was taken into custody by Dutch officials after just
24 hours on the run.
"I was angry, disappointed and somewhat surprised. I
didn't expect him to run," says Stan Schneider, who was
the only attorney on Bob’s defense team who agreed to
keep representing him after he fled the country.
Asked if he blamed him for running, Schneider says,
"Probably not. I thought we had a chance of winning. But
the pressure of another trial? Who knows what a jury
would do?"
The United States immediately asked the Dutch government
to extradite Bob back home and his Dutch lawyers didn't
have much hope.
"They said the United States never loses. They always
win. Every case, they always win. And I was preparing
Bob for the worst," Schneider recalls.
Bob's lawyers argued an international treaty signed by
the U.S. protects against double jeopardy and prohibits
the Dutch government from sending Bob back to face
murder charges a second time. Not only did this court
agree, so did the prosecutor.
So Bob beat the odds and won big. The Dutch government
refused to extradite him for murder.
Bob might not have to face murder charges but he wasn’t
about to go free. The Dutch courts finally did agree to
extradite him but not before the U.S. agreed to
prosecute him only on new charges of passport and tax
fraud.
Texas Confidential
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Doris Angleton was 46 years old when she was murdered in
1997. (CBS/48 Hours)
In September 2004, Bob was brought back to the U.S.,
pleaded guilty to passport and tax fraud, and was
sentenced to 12 years in federal prison.
The only good news for Bob's daughters, who are now
living in California, was that Bob was moved to a nearby
prison. To this day, Niki and Ali say they till believe
their father is innocent.
"It's just like me and Niki and our dad," says Ali.
"That's what we consider our family," Niki adds.
The twins says they still have a strong relationship
with their father.
48 Hours' last interview with Bob was from his prison
cell in California. With the Dutch court ruling, that he
could not be tried for Doris’ murder again, Schlesinger
asked Bob that one, all-important question one last
time.
"Did you hire Roger to kill Doris?" Schlesinger asked.
"No," Bob replied.
Asked if her hired anyone else or had anything to do
with her death in a legal sense, Bob said no.
"And you say that now, even though you have that Dutch
ruling in your hands?" Schlesinger asked.
"The ruling doesn't make a difference. The truth is only
thing that really counts," Bob replied.
While Bob spends his time behind bars, federal
prosecutors are likely to spend their time trying to
figure out a way around the Dutch court ruling and
prosecute him again for Doris' murder. And even Bob's
own lawyers are betting they will.
"Your best guess, will Bob Angleton ever be a free man
again?" Schlesinger asked Schneider.
"Probably not. If you put the numbers to it…. It’s a
long shot," Schneider replied.
But Angleton’s daughters are still betting that their
father will, one day, be free again.
"Do you think he'll be able to come to your weddings?"
Schlesinger asked the sister.
"Oh, yeah. He will," Ali said. "I'll put it off for a
while. Good excuse not to get married. Put it that way,"
Niki added.
"There's no way, there's no way I would get married
without him there," Niki said. "It will all work out. It
will."
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