However, Allen soon came forward about the affair, and just two weeks later, Candy Montgomery was arrested. When the case went to trial in October of 1980, Montgomery and her defense team made the claim that it was Betty Gore who had initiated the attack. Montgomery told jurors that it was Betty who took the ax from the garage and first swung it at Candy, and she only struck back in self-defense after struggling to get the ax away from her.
Although the prosecutors contended that the 41 brutal blows, 28 of which were directed at Betty’s face and many of which were inflicted while she was still conscious, was clear overkill, Montgomery’s attorney had a self-defense justification lined up, via Oxygen. They put a psychiatrist, Dr. Fred Fason, on the stand. Fason was also a clinical hypnotist who examined Candy Montgomery extensively, wrote Texas Monthly. Fason attested that Betty had triggered a traumatic childhood memory in Candy by telling her to “Shhhh.” This trigger had sparked a type of “dissociative reaction,” which caused Montgomery to lose all awareness and control.
The defense’s plan worked. After deliberating for less than four hours, the jury acquitted Candy Montgomery of Betty Gore’s murder, despite the vicious nature of the attack. “We determined it never had a bearing on the verdict at all — whether it was one gunshot or 1,000 whacks,” juror Alice Doherty Rowley told The Dallas Morning News.
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