The wounds Dow sustained to his head were fatal. There was no argument from Dr. Young there. If that shot to the side of his chin wasn’t enough, another round entered the right side of Bob’s face below his earlobe. There was “no soot or stippling” Dr. Young could find near this wound, either. What was interesting about the projectile was how it had perforated the skin and subcutaneous tissue of the right side of Bob’s face and then entered his skull, continuing into the “calvar-ium” through the “right petrous ridge and the brain. . . .” What would become important later was that the path, or “trajectory,” of this bullet went “upward, front to back, and right to left.” The shooter held the weapon—the evidence left behind would presume—at an angle with the handle of the weapon
below
Bob’s jawline, the barrel facing upward, toward his head. The shooter was likely positioned, one might determine from this evidence, in front of Bob, almost as if sitting on top of him. What turned out to be good news for the MWPD was that Young had been able to recover this bullet, too.
If one looked at this bullet wound without speculating where the shooter was positioned, however, one could also argue that Bob Dow’s killer could have snuck up on him and put a cap—maybe the first one—into the back of his head near his ear. And there was one killer, any good investigator knew, that this sort of procedure worked best for: the hired hit man. Organized crime. If one took a complete look at Bob’s life as it presented itself this early, one would have to take into account that he was treading in several areas of treacherous social water. For example: Did the father of one of these girls he was videotaping find out what was going on and pay back a pervert with a little bit of vigilante street justice? Had the brother, boyfriend, or father found out that Bob was supplying his sister, girlfriend, or daughter with unlimited amounts of dope for sex and thus sought revenge by murdering Bob and making it look like someone else had done it? In a case like this, it’s easy to put blinders on when the evidence seems to be stacking up against one particular suspect. However, cops with integrity don’t do that. They sit back and wait for
all
of the evidence to emerge, and then they evaluate their case, which was why Dr. Young’s autopsy became so relevant.
Young noticed that another .22-caliber projectile had entered the right side of Bob’s head, “posterior to the ear.” There was no soot or stippling there, either. This shot entered Bob’s brain also. Young recovered the fragment. The trajectory was basically the same: It went front to back, right to left, upward.
When the doctor put them together, these three shots had likely been fired in succession. Some type of order. Although there was no way to tell which was first or last, the shooter had done this quickly.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
And then an anomaly popped up. The doctor found a projectile entrance wound on Bob’s “left upper arm.” It was centered nineteen and a half inches “below the top of [his] head.” On this wound, there was “sparse stippling” extending two inches “above and below the defect.”
The shot had fractured Bob’s left humerus, but had done nothing else. It was a strange wound, all told, when taken into context alongside the three money shots, which were certainly intended to kill the man. It almost appeared as though this shot took place
after
the fact.
Or was this shot meant to stun the man to allow the three kill shots to do their business?
A toxicology test was conducted on Bob’s blood. The Dallas County medical examiner found no alcohol in his blood, but there was .05 milligrams of cannabinoids (cannabis) per liter of blood, which meant Bob had used marijuana not long before he expired. In addition to the cannabis, doctors found .002 milligrams per liter of blood of metoprolol, a heart medication, along with .012 milligrams of diltiazem, another heart med. Those made sense, seeing that Bob’s heart weighed in at 640 grams, slightly more than double the weight of a normal heart. (The pathologist came to find out that Bob Dow was in terrible health and in desperate need of a new heart.) On top of that, there was a larger than normal amount, 1.3 milligrams, of meprobamate, a tranquilizer used to treat anxiety, uncovered. The drug is marketed as Miltown, but meprobamate is a short-term–relief drug designed to take the edge off if an individual is high-strung.
Another finding by Dr. Young was the presence of “black circular material” that resembled “gunpowder.” These “flakes,” as Young described them, adhered to the skin on Bob’s “left lower chest,” his “right upper abdomen,” as well as the “dorsal surfaces of the hands bilaterally.”
What did finding gunpowder residue on Bob Dow’s chest mean?
Gunpowder would not be present on Bob’s chest and stomach if the shooter
stood
in front of him and fired. The shooter would have to have been straddling Bob Dow (sitting on, or leaning over, his chest) in order to leave gunpowder flakes where the doctor found them. The only other possibility was that Bob fired the weapon, holding the gun out in front of himself, maybe framing someone for the crime.
Still, could a man fire three shots into his own head and one into his left arm?
It did not seem possible.
Brian Boetz and Penny Judd
pulled up to Dorothy Smith’s house. Dorothy lived in a modest white ranch-style home with a marvelous, almost picture-perfect, birch tree in the front yard. Looking around the family-skewed, suburban neighborhood, a globelike Texas skyline stretched as far as the eye could see. This part of Texas is flat as a griddle. Down the block, the one piece of visible infrastructure was an old water tower projecting into the sky like a rocket ship taking off.
Boetz and Judd looked around as they approached the porch.
Boetz knocked.
Clearly upset by their presence, Dorothy was expecting them.
“Come in,” she said. “Come in.”
CHAPTER 10
A
CCORDING TO BOBBI JO SMITH
, she had known Bob Dow for six years, as far back as 1998. Bobbi was twelve years old when she was first introduced to Bob.
“I met him,” she explained to me, “through his stepson . . . my son’s father.”
Bobbi said Bob Dow became “a father” to her. “And I treated him as such.”
From a young age, Bob had taught Bobbi how to work construction and wire electrical outlets and circuits.
“He had his own maintenance service and I helped . . . and did a lot of work for him.” Thinking back on it all, Bobbi said, she was grateful for the skills, trade, and experience Bob Dow had given her. And his tragic, untimely death, Bobbi added somberly, was devastating to her, regardless of the (“perv”) twisted things Bob Dow had done throughout his life.
“Robert fed me drugs from the time I woke up until I passed out,” Bobbi admitted. “Sometimes I prayed that I’d
never
wake up.”
Friends of Bobbi’s said she was quiet, mostly, and would do anything for anyone.
“Bobbi had a huge, huge heart,” said one of her girlfriends. “There is nothing that Bobbi wouldn’t do for a friend in need, whether she was high or not.”
Bob had a fixation with young females. Bob’s first wife, Charlene Kay McQueary, was “ten or twelve” when she and Bob met. Bob married Charlene as soon as she turned sixteen. Incidentally, the age of consent in Texas has always been seventeen. So having sex with anyone under the age of seventeen (who is
not
your spouse) is illegal in the state. Unless Bob Dow married Charlene when he did, he would have been committing sexual assault.
“I’ve known [Bob] all my life,” Charlene later said in court. “We were married for a while when I was sixteen and we . . . remained friends forever.... We just decided we couldn’t have an intimate . . . a personal relationship. But we have always remained friends.”
Charlene claimed she could live with Bob “under the same roof,” but she just couldn’t “have a real good working relationship. . . .”
There was one part of Bob Dow’s character that Charlene talked about rather ambivalently when later pressed: The notion that he was heavily into witchcraft and satanic worship. Inside Bob’s trailer at one time were all types of bizarre books about witchcraft and satanic worshipping. Bob, Charlene explained to police, was very possessive of these books, as far back, she said, as 1997 and 1998, when she became involved in a personal project and needed some books to “cut up to do decoupage.”
“There’s a bunch of books over there,” Bob had said. He lived in an apartment in Fort Worth then.
“Great,” Charlene responded, heading for the shelf.
Bob followed. He pointed to his collection of books on witchcraft and satanic worship. “Any books but those. Do not touch those.”
Bob did not believe in God, Charlene claimed. “He told me that.”
A woman Bob married in 1982, Elizabeth Smith (no relation to Bobbi Jo), the mother of Bob’s only child, said he could be a good man, but once he started hanging out with young girls at his mother’s house and his trailer (where Bobbi Jo also stayed from time to time), Bob changed.
Elizabeth Smith divorced Bob six months after marrying him.
Why?
“Bobby cheated on me with my best friend,” Elizabeth explained—“who also happened to be my younger brother’s wife.”
They had been together for nearly four years before marrying. And even after the divorce, Elizabeth stayed in touch with Bob.
“We ran an apartment complex in Eastland, Texas,” Elizabeth later explained in court. They took care of the maintenance and other duties. After the split, however, Bob moved to Weatherford, the Twin Oaks section. He started living inside a trailer and working for a railroad. From there, Bob moved into his mother’s house in Mineral Wells after his brother had a heart attack and passed away. That was December 2003. Elizabeth stayed in contact with Bob because, she explained, “We had a child together.”
“He did the best he could as a father,” Elizabeth claimed, defending Bob.
Yet, those who knew him said Bob was not always the best man he could be to his son; but once in a while, he tried to make up for it by paying a little bit of attention to him.
“I think he done a wonderful job in spending time, you know, and he always provided what [his boy] needed,” Elizabeth added. “Whatever [he] needed, it was there.”
Elizabeth routinely saw Bob throughout the years after their divorce. If she didn’t spend time with him, she spoke to Bob on the phone. Bob was alone after his brother passed. He had no other siblings and his father had died many years before. Lila Dow, Bob’s mother, was paralyzed on one side of her body after suffering a terrible stroke. After Bob’s brother died, Elizabeth even stepped in and bathed and fed Lila because Bob just couldn’t do it. It was one of the reasons, Elizabeth said, that Bob was forced to move in with his mother: to care for her. While Bob spent more time at his mother’s house, Elizabeth, who had been stopping every weekend at Lila’s, caring for her, saw Bob on a more regular basis. They got to know each other all over again.
By January 2004, Bob was living at his mother’s house in Mineral Wells, just about full-time, taking fairly good care of Lila, according to Elizabeth.
“In the beginning, Bobby took very good care of his mother. He cleaned her. He bathed her, which was hard for him. He never had to do anything like that in his life. And, you know, there was—she never wanted for anything. And he didn’t mind paying anybody to come and do what he couldn’t do.”
By then, Lila Dow could only feed herself if food was placed in front of her. She couldn’t bathe herself or go to the bathroom without help.
Bob’s life went along this path for about a month. Then February 2004 came, Elizabeth explained, watching all of this from the sidelines. At this point, someone Bob had known when she was a child reentered his life.
“Bobbi Jo came into the picture . . . ,” Elizabeth recalled. She had never met Bobbi Jo before that February day when Bobbi showed up and began staying with Bob at his mother’s house.
“Hey, Liz, this is Bobbi Jo,” Bob said, introducing Elizabeth to Bobbi. They were inside Lila’s house. “She’s one of my workers.... I’ve known her for years. She’s going to be staying here.”
Elizabeth thought,
Well, this is okay. If she helps take care of “grandma” and cleans and what-have-you, it’ll be fine.
“Nice to meet you, Bobbi Jo.”
“Same here,” Bobbi said.
And yet, what was clear to Bobbi later was how much Elizabeth despised her from that day on. Bobbi felt this coldness from Elizabeth, as if Elizabeth felt Bobbi was intruding on a good thing Elizabeth had going with Bob.
“She hated me,” Bobbi said. “I don’t know why.”
As a “preteen,” Bobbi Jo Smith said, she dated Bob’s stepson. It was her first romantic relationship with a boy (with any person, in fact), and she added, “All that I knew.” Bobbi had a child when she was sixteen, fathered by this same man. They planned on getting married. But the relationship didn’t last, obviously, and Bobbi split with her soon-to-be husband. She was distraught and broken, not knowing what to do. She didn’t really feel as though she could go to her mother, a woman Bobbi said had abandoned her at a young age and didn’t teach her many social skills to survive the world.
So Bobbi Jo went to see Bob Dow, a man she knew and trusted to help her.
“He opened his door to me,” Bobbi recalled, “and treated me just like one of his own children.”
At the beginning, that is.
Bobbi blames her fiancé for introducing her to, as she put it, “hard-core drugs.” She loved the man, she said, but it was the drugs and “infidelity” that drove their relationship into the ground. Bobbi never mentioned that her sexuality had anything to do with the demise of the relationship. But one would have to assume that suppressing homosexual feelings by staging a white-picket-fence family life and having no one—especially a mother figure—to turn to and discuss those feelings, would have a momentous effect on any relationship.
“I couldn’t take it anymore,” she said of his cheating and drugging, “especially after my son was born.” Bobbi wanted to make it work because of the child. She wanted a better life for her son, whom she referred to as “the
only
love I’ve ever known and truly felt. . . .” She would have stayed with this man, despite having feelings for females, in order to give her son a home with a mother and a father.