How...? When...? Why...? and a multitude of other questions that one asks when a death occurs but that it is the death of an innocent and helpless child raises the most important question of all: Where/What is the motive?
The story started with an unprecedented event - an exhumation of Katherine Renee Goode (1991-1994) - in Alvin, Houston, Texas on 7 October 1994. The fifty-two-year old pathologist who performed the second autopsy finally removed his surgical gloves and said, "Detective, you now have a homicide investigation on your hands."
How did this troubling case begin?
On 22 January 1994, Renee Goode, a happy and healthy two-year-old, was playing happily with her sisters, Michelle and Tiffany, and cousin, Christine, as the four of them enjoyed an impromptu slumber party - playing hide-and-seek, watching television, eating cookies and pizza - at the home of her father, Shane Goode.
The next day, she was dead.
Renee's mother, Annette Tollett, and grandmother, Sharon Couch, were convinced she'd been murdered and that they knew the identity of Renee's killer - her handsome father, Shane Goode, a manipulative, emotionally abusive man who displayed virtually no interest in Renee before she was born - referring to her only as 'Annette's baby' - or in the year-and-a-half after she was born.
(Annette and Shane were divorced in 1992. Annette was awarded managing conservatorship of Renee.)
But to prove that someone is guilty of a crime is not easy. It is necessary to establish that a crime has been committed or occurred. To date, there were no physical evidence or suspicion of foul play, no history that marked Shane Goode as capable of such an unthinkable deed, no eyewitness, and to make matters worse, the medical examiner's final report said that the manner of death of Renee was undetermined. The investigation ended there.
Naturally, both sides of the family were distraught but more so for Annette and Sharon.
Shortly after Renee's funeral, Shane's ex-girlfriend, Sunny Bradley, told Annette about a $50 000 life insurance policy which Shane took out on Renee before she was born. This was the moment when the elusive motive came to light.
With the help of a courageous female police investigator and a determined Assistant District Attorney, Sharon launched a case against Shane, and had Renee's tiny coffin exhumed from Halletsville City Cemetery.
Her small corpse revealed two definitive findings - signs of haemorrhaging which could only have been caused by compressive asphyxia and what Renee's grandmother had suspected all along, that cold, calculating Shane Goode had murdered his own daughter to cash in on her death due to his financial hardship. These findings gave forward motion to the case providing necessary cause for arrest and an indictment.
On 6 April 1995, after a three-hour deliberation, Shane Goode was found guilty of capital murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. The jury's vote had been eleven to one in favour of guilty. On a second ballot, the decision had been unanimous. He is incarcerated in an Amarillo prison.
To The Last Breath (1998), an Edgar Award Winner for Best Fact Crime, is an impressive study of a truly troubling crime. Carlton Stowers dedicated this book to Brandon, Renee's brother, who was born after Renee died.
About the author: Carlton Stowers is the author of more than two dozen non-fiction books, including the Edgar award-winning and Opie award-winning (in the Reporting category) Careless Whispers (1986), the Pulitzer prize nominated Innocence Lost (1990), and Open Secrets. Among his many accolades, he was named Dallas' Best Writer by the Dallas Observer and in 1997 was honoured as "Author of the Year" by the friends of the Duncanville Library. He received a National Community Network Media Award for Exceptional Merit for an article he wrote on the deadly use of heroin by teens in Plano, Texas. He has also written two books for children - A Hero Named George (1991) and Hard Lessons (1994) - which are being used by elementary schools as part of their drug and gang prevention program.
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