Bernie Tiede’s Freedom Was More Than a Feel-Good Sequel
Chuck Lindell Published 12:01 a.m. CT May 18, 2014 | Updated 7:23 p.m. CT Sept. 25, 2018 | Read it at statesman.com online!
Dark secret and flexible prosecutor provided the key to his release.
It is tempting to write the story of Bernie Tiede’s release from prison as the quirky sequel to “Bernie,” an offbeat movie about a real small-town Texas murder.
Like the film, Tiede’s real-life story is populated by larger-than-life personalities, a significant plot twist and a can’t-believe-that-happened quality.
The true-life version, however, is far sadder.
Bernie Tiede and Marjorie Nugent, an East Texas widow, were inseperable before Tiede killed Nugent in 1996. The murder was the subject of the Richard Linklater film, "Bernie". Austin American-Statesman
The revelation forced prosecutor Danny Buck Davidson to reconsider Tiede’s fate and, after much soul-searching, agree to seek a lighter sentence.
Critics, arguing that plenty of abuse victims don’t go on to commit murder, attribute Tiede’s May 6 release from prison to a star-struck East Texas legal system that was blinded by the bright lights of Hollywood.
Davidson bluntly disagrees.
A honey-tongued Republican with a penchant for showmanship — portrayed by actor Matthew McConaughey in “Bernie” — Davidson proudly sent Tiede to prison for life in 1999, convincing a jury that the beloved pillar of the Carthage community was in reality a remorseless killer and greedy psychopath.
Known to all as Danny Buck, the Panola County criminal district attorney never wavered from that straightforward explanation of murder.
Tiede confessed to shooting Marjorie Nugent, a rich widow he had befriended, four times in the back with the victim’s .22-caliber rifle. He tucked Nugent’s body into her stand-alone freezer, taped it shut and went on a nine-month spending spree with Nugent’s money.
“He goes on that day as if nothing happens. He shoots her at, let’s say 11 o’clock, goes that afternoon to a dress rehearsal for ‘Guys and Dolls,’ takes the cast out for pizza — and he acts like nothing’s happened,” Davidson told the American-Statesman. “So I think, if you can kill someone and put it out of your mind and go on, then you are a cold-blooded killer. It kinda looks to me like he doesn’t have much of a conscience.”
If you’ve seen “Bernie” or read the insightful 1998 article in Texas Monthly that inspired it, you know there’s more to Tiede’s story.
But late last December, Davidson learned there was one more plot twist coming — the sexual abuse that Tiede had never divulged, that was gradually revealed by a caring therapist and confirmed by Cole, mental health professionals and a brave Louisiana man, a fellow victim who knew Tiede as a teenager.
It was a lot to digest, Davidson said.
“If there is one word to describe me, it’s ‘scrambling.’ I was scrambling. I was trying to find higher ground, a defensible position,” he said. “I had many, many sleepless nights.”
‘He got a bad deal’
Supremely kind, personable and generous with his time, Tiede was a beloved figure in Carthage, a Piney Woods town of 7,000 about a 50-mile drive from Shreveport, La.
An assistant funeral director, Tiede lent his smooth tenor voice to many a graveside service, and afterward he paid particular care to the town’s new widows, bringing small gifts, running errands and lending comfort.
That’s how Tiede, to the surprise of many in Carthage, struck up a lasting friendship with Nugent in the early 1990s.
Nugent was acerbic, standoffish, some would say snooty. But despite the 43-year age difference, their friendship blossomed, and Nugent hired Tiede as her business manager in 1993. They took overseas trips, often traveling first class. A healthy advance let Tiede buy a home, and Nugent — feuding with her only son — quietly made Tiede the heir of an estate estimated at $5 million to $15 million.
The relationship degraded over their five years together as Nugent, increasingly belittling and scornful, demanded more and more of Tiede’s time and attention. Eventually, Tiede later admitted, the toxic situation became unbearable.
On Nov. 19, 1996, as he was in the garage preparing to drive Nugent to Longview, Tiede picked up a nearby rifle and repeatedly shot his 81-year-old benefactor. He would later say he wasn’t thinking clearly, that it felt like somebody else was pulling the trigger.
Until her body was discovered nine months later, Tiede explained Nugent’s long absence by saying she was traveling or ill or recuperating from a stroke in an out-of-town nursing home. Townspeople, none of whom were close to Nugent, bought the ruse.
Meanwhile, Tiede converted much of Nugent’s fortune into college scholarships, cars for people who needed one, a home for a struggling couple, startup funds for small businesses. After his 1997 arrest, a smitten Carthage rallied behind the jovial and generous Tiede, with many blaming the cranky Nugent for pushing him into a horrible, but ultimately understandable, act.
Davidson saw things differently.
“Mrs. Nugent was a hard lady, and she was not friendly,” he said. “She would be the kinda person that if she was providing our money, she woulda probably felt like she had bought and paid for us.”
But no matter how bad things had gotten, Tiede could have walked away at any time, Davidson reasoned, so over objections from friends and neighbors, he pushed hard for a murder conviction. In 1999, jurors agreed, sentencing Tiede to life in prison. He would not be eligible for parole until 2027.
Richard Linklater, a rising independent filmmaker and screenwriter, was in the courtroom audience. It would take 12 years to make “Bernie,” but he never forgot the soft-spoken Tiede.
“I felt sorry for Bernie. I thought he got a bad deal. He was prosecuted as if it was a premeditated act, when it just seemed like it wasn’t,” Linklater told the American-Statesman last week.
‘He drops a bombshell’
“Bernie” is not an activist film, urging viewers to rise up in Tiede’s defense.
But after the movie’s Austin premier, it inspired Cole to hand Linklater her business card. As a lawyer, she too was uncomfortable with the length of Tiede’s sentence, Linklater said
.
The break came in an obscure document — a list of items found in a police search of Tiede’s home. Buried in the catalog of book titles, Cole found four self-help volumes for victims of child sexual abuse. One such book might have a benign explanation, but four?
Cole gave the information to Noel Bridget Busch-Armendariz, a University of Texas psychologist already working with Tiede, who “after many months” helped him acknowledge the ongoing sexual abuse he experienced as a teenager, court records show.
Cole also called in Richard Pesikoff, a widely respected Baylor College of Medicine psychology professor who examined Tiede in prison last December.
Pesikoff determined that Tiede demonstrated a syndrome common to sex abuse victims — the inability to leave an abusive relationship as an adult.
Moreover, Tiede’s ability to cope with his childhood abuse was overwhelmed by the “repeated and extensive psychological abuse he suffered from Ms. Nugent,” resulting in a “dissociative experience” that let Tiede compartmentalize his feelings about the shooting and continue with life as if nothing had happened, Pesikoff concluded.
“Like waves in the ocean beating on rocks, Mr. Tiede’s coping skills were ultimately erased, leading to his inability to suppress these emotions and resulting in his outburst of aggression toward Ms. Nugent,” Pesikoff said in a report.
A skeptical Davidson turned the report over to his expert, Edward Gripon, a specialist in forensic psychology who was a prosecution witness at Tiede’s 1999 trial.
“I trust Dr. Gripon. He’s my hero, a real straight shooter,” Davidson said.
Gripon examined Tiede on Jan. 24. Four days later, “he drops a bombshell on me,” Davidson said. “He agrees with Pesikoff.”
'Chilling letter, brave man'
Two other pieces of evidence helped Davidson come to a decision.
First was a letter Tiede received in prison from his abusive uncle, who fondly recalled their times viewing pornographic tapes and recounted his recent sexual exploits with an unidentified “friend” from the neighborhood.
“Talking about all that, I sure do miss you and I think about all our good times together,” said the 2010 letter, signed: “Love you, Unc.”
The letter was chilling enough. But Davidson also met Todd Hine, who spoke about being abused as a child by Tiede’s uncle, an account that also was detailed in court documents submitted by Tiede’s lawyers.
Hine, in an interview with the American-Statesman, described, sometimes tearfully, his difficult and ongoing recovery from the abuse — what he called “the fight for the rest of my life.”
Bernie’s abuse occurred during family trips to his uncle’s home in Louisiana, according to court documents. Hine, now 46, lived nearby, he said.
Unfortunately, Davidson said, the statute of limitations prevented the uncle from being charged despite recent outcries by Tiede, Hine and at least one other victim.
The prosecutor in Davidson yearns to put “that pervert” away, but the out-of-state uncle is out of his jurisdiction.
Tiede’s case, however, needed a decision.
First, Davidson acknowledged, the new psychologists’ reports explained the actions that had led him to push for a life sentence — why Tiede never left Nugent, why he snapped, how he could deliver church sermons knowing his victim was stuffed in a freezer.
Second, Davidson realized that he would have sought no more than a 20-year sentence had he known about the sexual abuse, particularly with his expert and the defense expert agreeing on how it influenced Tiede’s actions.
Under Texas law in the mid-1990s, a murder conviction could be reduced to a second-degree felony — carrying two to 20 years in prison — if jurors determine during the trial’s punishment phase that the defendant acted “under the immediate influence of sudden passion arising from an adequate cause.”
The psychologists’ reports on Tiede’s state of mind fit that description exactly, Davidson said.
“Now I had to answer a question: What was the right thing to do?” he said. “A guy that I have a lot of respect for told me that prosecutors are the good guys, that we should always follow the truth no matter where it leads us. That guy is Michael Morton” — a fellow East Texan who spent 25 years in prison for a Williamson County murder he didn’t commit.
Davidson was ready for the next step.
‘See that justice is done’
On May 6, Davidson stood in a Carthage courtroom with Cole and Tiede. The audience was full of reporters. Hine was there too.
Saying it was the duty of prosecutors “not to convict, but to see that justice is done,” Davidson announced that he and Cole had agreed to seek a new punishment hearing for Tiede, during which the prosecution would request a sentence of time served — 17 years.
“Had Mr. Tiede been sentenced in the two to 20-year range, he would have been released outright or been on parole by now,” Davidson said.
Visiting Judge Diane DeVasto agreed, sending the matter to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals — which is under no obligation to grant DeVasto’s request for a new punishment hearing. Lawyers declined to speculate on the appeals court’s options.
While the state’s highest criminal court weighs the matter, DeVasto agreed to free Tiede from prison on a $10,000 personal bond, requiring Tiede to live in a garage apartment at Linklater’s Austin home, work in Cole’s office (he obtained his paralegal certificate in prison) and avoid all contact with Nugent’s family and the media. Cole also was barred from speaking to reporters.
Linklater said Tiede, now 55, is keeping a low profile, but he still gets recognized around the neighborhood.
“Cars pull up, people yell, ‘We love you, Bernie,’” Linklater said. “Friends and neighbors are giving him stuff, including a bike.”
A stranger approached Tiede in a grocery store and welcomed him to Austin. “It’s been nothing but positive interaction,” Linklater said.
“He feels very blessed, that it’s a miracle Jodi (Cole) came into his life. I don’t know if I believe in miracles, but I told Bernie that if there’s any karmic payback, you are getting it now because life didn’t deal you a fair hand from the time you were a boy,” Linklater said. “I’m glad to see him have this next act in life, because I think he’s going to be a good citizen and a good friend and do some good in this world. He certainly wants to.”
Members of Nugent’s family opposed Tiede’s early release.
“After hearing the facts and his defense, the jury sentenced him to a life sentence for committing murder. Justice was served,” said family spokesman Ryan Gravatt. “We believe Tiede must serve his full sentence for murdering our mother and grandmother.”
Davidson, 67 and running unopposed for a sixth four-year term in November, is at peace, too, despite popular sentiment in Carthage shifting in favor of keeping Tiede behind bars. “It’s about 20-to-1 against me,” he said, “but I’m comfortable with what I did.”
“I think I was just doing my job, doing what was right,” Davidson said. “The whole incident was a tragedy. There are no winners.”
Real-life cast of characters, only Austin skyline photo of Jodi.
