Doris Angleton
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Template:Cleanup-date Doris McGown Beck Angleton (April 11, 1951 - April 16, 1997) was a Texas socialite who was brutally murdered.
Doris McGown was born on April 11, 1951. She and younger brother Steve grew up in Port Lavaca, Texas, the daughter of Randy McGown, a Dow Chemical engineer, and his wife, Ann McGown Borochov.
McGown graduated from the University of Texas with a degree in pathology. After graduation she began a career as a schoolteacher, and later became a sales representative for a pharmaceutical firm.
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Two marriages
In 1976, Doris met William ("Bill") Beck, a representative for an office products company. They married and moved to Clear Lake, Texas.
Doris met Robert Angleton at a bar in the Houston West Loop when she was 28 years oldTemplate:Fact. According to Angleton, Bill Beck was a client of his bookmaking business, and that is how they met.
The two were already married, yet both of them were attracted to each other. He was also wealthy; Doris would find out he was a bookmaker before they married. Doris also helped Bob with his bookmaking business in the early days. The two married in 1982Template:Fact.
Robert ran a sports-betting scheme and became rich while doing so. Robert took all of the market by becoming a police informant and reporting his smaller rivals to the Houston Police Department. He grew so rich on the bookmaking that he moved his family to the River Oaks area of Houston, Texas.
Doris knew how the bookmaker made his money. Doris seemed to have the perfect life to her friendsTemplate:Fact. Doris wanted out of her marriage when she grew tired of the bookmaking, and despite the fact that her husband sent her love letters and giftsTemplate:Fact, she went ahead with the divorce process, and she wanted to take fifty percent of the couple's assets. The divorce proceedings were expected to reveal that her husband was a bookie.
Murder
She filed for divorce two months before she was murdered on April 16, 1997 in the couple's River Oaks home. She sustained multiple gunshot wounds in the head, chest, and abdomen.
Doris' failure to return to a softball game sparked suspicion in her twin daughters, who were twelve years old at the time. Their father came to their house, called 911, and found Doris dead.
Arrests
Doris' brother in-law, Roger Angleton, was arrested for unrelated charges. Police found a suitcase that revealed him to be the perpetrator of the crime. Roger committed suicide in a Houston Prison cell by cutting himself with razor blades. He admitted to killing Doris in his suicide note.
Robert Angleton became a suspect and was also arrested. Doris was in the process of divorcing him. She wanted to take some of his money with her, and the divorce would have exposed Bob's sports betting scheme. Robert Angleton was tried and found not guilty for the murder of his wife. However, the state found all of his money collected from the sports betting scheme and punished Angleton. The U.S. Department of Justice indicted and jailed Angleton.
Robert tried to flee the country, but was arrested by the Dutch. A Dutch court ruled that he could not be extradited on the murder charge because he had already been found not guilty of the murder for which the extradition was being sought, but he could be extradited on tax chargesTemplate:Fact.
Trivia
Writer Vanessa Leggett was found in contempt by a federal district court judge on July 20, 2001 for refusing to give up some of her interviews for a book that she wrote about the Doris Angleton caseTemplate:Fact. She was sent to prison for some time. The case grew controversial over whether or not she should have been found in contempt. She was released in January 2002.