DA will not retry La Porte hammer murders featured on 'Cold Justice' TV show

Charlie and Kathy Hayes were murdered in their La Porte home in 1997. Charlie and Kathy Hayes were murdered in their La Porte home in 1997. Photo: Provided Photo: Provided Image 1 of / 6 Caption Close DA will not retry La Porte hammer murders featured on 'Cold Justice' TV show 1 / 6 Back to Gallery

More than two decades after someone used a hammer to kill Charles and Kathy Hayes in La Porte, a state district judge on Monday tossed the case against the only suspect ever charged in the slayings.

The cold case that was developed into a murder investigation through a true-crime television show now seems destined to go cold again.

Earlier this month, the Harris County district attorney's office decided not to retry Gordon Craig Houser, a distant relative of Charles Hayes, citing lost DNA evidence.

The first trial last May ended with a hung jury. Without the DNA or other new evidence, the district attorney's office is not willing to take the case back to court.

"Do we think he did it?" Harris County District Attorney's Office spokesman Dane Schiller said. "What we think doesn't matter. It's: 'Can we prove this case beyond a reasonable doubt?'"

Former assistant Harris County district attorney Kelly Siegler questioned the decision to let the case go.

"The Harris County DA's Office has been known as one of the best in the country," she said. "With the office's expertise and resources and trial talent, if that can't be used in re-trying this double murder, I'm not sure what better use of the office's resources there is than doing the right thing and seeking justice on a double murder under these facts."

It was a baffling case that had all the elements of a classic thriller: a gruesome double-killing that went cold, shady acquaintances, a legendary ex-cop, lost evidence and false accusations.

Photo: Jeff Lipsky Kelly Siegler stars in "Cold Justice."

The only element missing in the 1997 murders was an ending.

That made it perfect for the true-crime TV show "Cold Justice." In 2014, host Siegler featured it in an episode titled "High School Sweethearts."

The episode uncovered new evidence pointing to Houser, 57, who continues to profess his innocence. Shortly after the show taped, he was arrested and charged with capital murder.

In May, 21 years after the murders, Harris County prosecutors finally brought Houser to trial. And once more, the story refused to end: The case ended in a hung jury.

Earlier this month, the district attorney's office decided not to retry the case, prompting Judge Hazel Jones on Monday to formally dismiss the charges.

'Blood everywhere'

Early on the morning of Sept. 27, 1997, the Hayes' older daughter, Tiffenie, woke up to the sound of her father snoring. Around 5 a.m., she padded into the living room , where she slipped in a puddle of blood.

She called 911.

"My parents are sitting here with blood everywhere," she told the operator, her voice rising in panic. "Oh my God."

Photo: Provided Charlie and Kathy Hayes were high school sweethearts.

The teen saw her Charlie Hayes sprawled out in a recliner. He was alive, but only barely. He had been bludgeoned with a hammer, apparently as he slept.

Kathy Hayes had been beaten from behind. Her pants were around her ankles, but there were no signs of sexual assault.

It did not appear to be a robbery gone wrong or a murder for hire. There were no signs of forced entry, and the neighbors had not heard anything.

At first, it was not even clear how the couple had been killed. They had been beaten so badly, they appeared to have been shot.

Immediately after the murders, police considered 16-year-old Tiffenie and her boyfriend, Brian Stanczak — now her husband — persons of interest. It seemed bizarre to investigators that Tiffenie had been in the next room and slept through the whole thing.

There were other people, too, who may have had motives, but investigators found nothing concrete.

As the years ticked by, the unsolved slayings put a strain on the family. Some still suspected Tiffenie and her husband, but the young couple stayed together and built a new life. They went to school, had five kids, and moved out of state.

"My faith just kicked in," Tiffenie Hayes Stanczak said. "I thought, 'God has a plan.'"

'Never going to die'

In 2013, Siegler took up the case. Returning to La Porte marked a homecoming of sorts: Siegler had made her name in Harris County. A courtroom bulldog who sent 19 men and women to death row, she resigned from the district attorney's office 10 years ago after a failed bid to be elected as the county's top prosecutor.

Siegler, though, did not fade away. The success of "Cold Justice" made her nationally recognized. And in the Houston area, she continued to make news, both with her role in the exoneration of Anthony Graves and her involvement in a high-profile Katy murder case in which a judge, years after the fact, found iegler had failed to disclose evidence in a timely fashion.

Now entering its fifth season, "Cold Justice" has examined 60 cases and netted 37 arrests, by Siegler's count.

One of those was Gordon Craig Houser.

With the help of retired Houston police detective Johnny Bonds and a cold case team, Siegler delved into the Hayes murders.

No forensic evidence connected Houser to the killing, but the "Cold Justice" team thought they successfully had poked holes in his alibi, and talking to acquaintances established a potential motive.

"He knew things about the murder that only the killer would know," Bonds said.

Police picked Houser up in Arkansas in 2014, following a grand jury indictment. He waited four years in county jail for his day in court.

When that day finally came, in May, only seven of 12 jurors voted for guilty.

"Frankly, they didn't have any scientific evidence such as fingerprint or DNA to show that Mr. Houser was there," defense attorney Allen Isbell said. "They didn't have any eyewitnesses that put him there. So, it was really a case they were induced to indict because it was on Kelly Siegler's show."

The district attorney's office could choose to return to court for a retrial. And Siegler and Bonds are baffled that it has chosen not to.

"It would be a miscarriage of justice if they dismissed this case," Bonds said.

"They're gearing up to retry a case that was 11 to 1 not guilty," he said, referring the high-profile case of Terry Thompson, a former Harris County deputy's husband accused of choking a man to death outside a Crosby Denny's restaurant, "and this was 7 to 5 guilty."

The district attorney's office said it chose not to go back in front of a jury because it lacks scientific evidence — specifically, fingernail scrapings lost years before the first trial.

Those scrapings, which Siegler and Bonds believe are not necessary to prove the case, were sent for testing right after the crime. Investigators discovered their absence when they started gathering materials to film the show.

"There is no statute of limitations," the district attorney's office said in a statement, "so, if that evidence is ever found or new evidence discovered, we could again present this case to a jury."

For La Porte police — the agency that originally investigated the killings — it is not the end of the road. Lt. Tammy McBeath questioned the decision not to retry. She also said that it has only steeled her resolve to keep searching for more evidence.

"We'll never quit on this," McBeath said. "It's too important. This is never going to die for us."

keri.blakinger@chron.com

Twitter.com/keribla