If you've been watching Love & Death on Netflix lately, you've probably fallen down the rabbit hole of this absolutely wild 1980s Texas crime story. The case still hits different when you realize how close these people all were—church friends, neighbors, the whole suburban dynamic that made everything even messier. So here's what actually went down.

Candy Montgomery seemed like your typical suburban housewife in the late 70s. She and her husband Pat Montgomery had two kids and moved to Wylie, Texas in 1977, living what looked like the dream life. They joined The Methodist Church of Lucas, where they met Betty and Allan Gore. Betty and Candy became tight friends pretty quickly, which is exactly what makes the whole thing so dark when you think about what happened next.

But here's the thing—Candy was bored. Really bored. She wanted what she called fireworks in her love life, and her marriage to Pat wasn't giving her that. So when she literally collided with Allan Gore at a church volleyball game in summer 1978 and thought he smelled sexy, something clicked. After another volleyball game, she straight up asked him if he wanted to have an affair. He said no at first because Betty was pregnant, but then he kissed her anyway. Classic move.

They started their affair officially in December 1978 and kept it going for months, even after Betty had their second child in July 1979. Eventually Allan and Betty did some marriage counseling and he ended things with Candy, telling her he wanted to make his marriage work.

Fast forward to June 13, 1980. Candy went to the Gore house to pick up their daughter's swimsuit for a sleepover. Allan was out of town. Betty confronted her about the affair, grabbed a three-foot axe from the utility room, and attacked. The two of them struggled over the weapon, and Candy ended up striking Betty 41 times. Forty of those hits happened while Betty's heart was still beating. Candy only stopped when she was completely exhausted.

When neighbors found Betty, there was what they described as oceans of blood in the utility room. The infant daughter was left alone in her crib. Police quickly figured out Candy was involved, especially after Allan admitted the affair to investigators. She was charged with murder but claimed self-defense, and honestly, the jury believed her. On October 29, 1980, she was acquitted.

After the trial, Candy basically disappeared from public view. She started going by her maiden name, Wheeler. Around 2010, reports surfaced that she and Pat Montgomery had moved to Georgia, where she was working as a certified family counselor. Yeah, you read that right—after everything that happened, she went back to school to become a counselor. Her victim's brother said it still baffles him that she thought she could do that work.

Meanwhile, Allan remarried pretty quickly after the trial wrapped up, though he's since divorced. Betty's parents ended up raising their two daughters in Kansas.

What's wild is how this whole story has resurfaced now with the HBO Max series. It's one of those cases where everyone involved just kind of scattered after it was over—Candy and Pat Montgomery moved away and built a different life, Allan moved on too, and the Pomeroy family raised Betty's kids. It's the kind of crime that feels like it should have destroyed everyone involved, but somehow life just kept going for most of them.