HBO Max‘s Love and Death is now streaming on Netflix, and the American public will once again be transfixed by the murderous saga of Candy Montgomery and her friend Betty Gore, the former of whom killed the latter with an ax in 1980 but was still acquitted of murder.
Hulu’s Candy already told this true-crime story in May 2022, with Jessica Biel playing the killer and Melanie Lynskey portraying the victim. HBO Max delivered a different dramatization of the same killing one year later, with Elizabeth Olsen and Lily Rabe in the lead roles of the limited series.
So, what was the story that inspired dueling TV shows from major streamers?
As The Dallas Morning News reports, Candace “Candy” Montgomery was 30 years old at the time of the killing, living in Fairview, Texas, as the wife of Texas Instruments engineer Pat Montgomery and the mother of their two kids. She attended the same church as Betty Gore, a 30-year-old middle school teacher. Candy had also embarked on — and been spurned by — an affair with Betty’s husband, Allan Gore.
Did Candy Montgomery kill her friend in a jealous rage or was it self-defense after discovering an affair? https://t.co/CgvxmiYO1h pic.twitter.com/tmUqmoerej
— Martinis & Murder Podcast (@Martinis_Murder) January 23, 2017
Betty’s older daughter, Alisa, had slept over at the Montgomery house the night before the killing, and Candy had offered to drive Alisa to her swim lesson the next day. But when Candy stopped at the Gore house in nearby Wylie to pick up a swimsuit for Alisa on June 13, 1980 — a Friday the 13th — Betty reportedly confronted her about sleeping with Allan.
During that confrontation, someone took up an ax: Candy’s lawyers would later claim that it was Betty who retrieved the ax from her garage and charged Candy with it, but it was Betty who got the upper hand as the two women fought.
And hours later, when neighbors checked in on Betty — hailed by Allan, who was away on business and couldn’t reach his wife by phone — they found her dead in her utility room. She had 41 ax wounds, with experts testifying later that many of those blows were dealt after she was already unconscious.
During the trial that October, Candy’s lawyer argued that she had acted out of self-defense, with a psychiatrist testifying that he had hypnotized Candy and determined that she had a “dissociative reaction” that day, such that she wasn’t aware how many times she brought the ax down on Betty.
Candy also took the stand during the trial. “I hit her. I hit her. I hit her,” she reportedly admitted, as the News recounted in another article. “I stood back and looked at myself, and I was covered in blood. I felt so guilty, so dirty. I felt so ashamed.”
At the end of the eight-day trial, the 12-person jury acquitted Candy of murder, buying into the self-defense claim. One juror told the News that their decision didn’t hinge on the number of ax strikes, saying, “We determined it never had a bearing on the verdict at all—whether it was one gunshot or 1,000 whacks.”
As for Candy, she moved out of state following the trial and is now in her 70s. She suffers from PTSD, according to a person who identified themselves as a relative when the News called and added, “the phone calls don’t help.”
Melanie Lynskey and Jessica Biel in ‘Candy’
Hulu and HBO Max gave new life to the grisly tale that Dallas-area locals might prefer to leave in the past.
“If you listened to talk radio and all that at the time, there was: ‘Oh, she got away with murder!’ It was all this outrage,” journalist Jim Atkinson, co-author of Evidence of Love: A True Story of Passion and Death in the Suburbs, told the newspaper. “But within that tightly-knit community or series of communities out there, they were just as happy to have it be shoved back under the rug.”
Similar to how the two shows offer different takes on the same story, Candy creator Robin Veith grappled with differing perspectives on the killing.
“We spoke to [people on] both sides of the story and 40 years later, they are entrenched in their beliefs,” the Mad Men alum told Vanity Fair. “I’ve learned, working on true crime, that you listen to everybody and take careful notes, but also remember that memory is a tricky thing.”
She went on: “How you feel about this story says a lot about you in that moment, what’s going on in your life and in your mind. That’s the fascinating — and scary — prospect of it.”
Love and Death, Available Now, HBO Max and Netflix