Darrell North: A Builder Is Torn Down

Pool Contractor Curtis Pope Goes off the Deep End
(“Constructive Criticism,” Forensic Files)

Practically everyone has a complaint about a contractor: He installed the sink basin so it’s crooked or he used the wrong accent tiles or he never cleaned up the paint that dripped on the microwave cart.

Over the years, Darrell B. North Jr., a wealthy construction-project manager, had so many encounters with disappointing results that he ended up firing his subcontractors fairly often.

Violence precipitated. And he didn’t let favoritism get in the way of quality. When Curtis Wayne Pope Jr., a pool installer who Darrell had mentored, did inferior work, he couldn’t let it continue.

No one knows exactly what was said between the two men as a rainstorm pounded away on the night of Feb. 22, 2000, but investigators believe that Darrell dished out some tough love, either criticizing Curtis or firing him, or both. Then, Curtis flew off the handle and stabbed him to death.

For this week, I looked into Curtis Pope’s whereabouts today and searched for more background on Darrell North.

So let’s get going on a recap of “Constructive Criticism” — which like so many other memorable Forensic Files episodes, takes place in Texas — along with additional information culled from online research.

Young lovebirds. Darrell Bonnett North Jr. was born on March 27, 1937, and lived at least part of his younger life in Lonoke, Arkansas.

At the age of 20, while still attending Abilene Christian College, he married native Texan Judy McGowen, 21, at the North Park Church of Christ in Abilene, Texas. The wedding announcement said Judy worked at Galbraith Electric Co.

Darrell later owned the North Construction Co., which seemed to afford the couple and their son and daughter a comfortable life.

American splendor. In 1979, the Oak Crest Woman’s Club Tour of Homes included the Norths’ house at 408 Arcadia in Hurst, Texas.

The Star-Telegram noted its 28-foot-high cathedral ceilings, fireplace in the master bedroom, and “1890 Franklin stove in game room.”

By 1985, Darrell had either sold or closed his business. He joined Bigelow Development Corp., a firm that built Budget Suites hotels.

Nice chunk of work. It’s not clear exactly how and when Darrell met Curtis Pope, a swimming pool builder with a moderately troubling legal record, but Darrell saw potential in the younger man and took him under his wing.

In 1999, Darrell introduced Curtis to Bigelow officials and they agreed to hire him to build pools at the Budget Suites hotels, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

Curtis also did some repair work to the Norths’ own pool and constructed a new one for friends of theirs.

But the Curtis-Darrell juggernaut slammed to a halt on February 22, 2000.

Ominous weather. That night, an electrical storm raged, leaving Judy North with no lights or phone as she waited for Darrell to come home for dinner.

When Darrell hadn’t shown up by 8 p.m., Judy hoofed it to a convenience store — she had no car because the electric garage door wouldn’t open —and called her son. He picked her up, dropped her off at home, and went to look for Darrell.

Mark and possibly his brother-in-law (accounts vary as to whether Mark was alone or not) drove to Darrell’s job site, a Budget Suites construction area on the 3200 block of Northeast Loop 820 in Fort Worth.

Conflict boiled over. He saw Darrell’s Ford Taurus sitting at the site but found the door to his trailer office padlocked shut. Peering through the window, Mark saw his father, 62, lying on the floor face down.

Fort Worth firefighters cut off the lock and found Darrell North’s lacerated body and a trail of blood and disarray throughout two of the trailer’s three rooms.

Clearly, a violent struggle had taken place.

Love turns to hate. Darrell had tried to fight back, possibly grabbing a hole punch and swinging it as a makeshift weapon (he should have just dropped it on his attacker’s foot — those things are heavy), but the assailant managed to stab him 46 times using two different knives, and nearly decapitated him.

Investigators noticed the bent hole punch and a clean machete in the trailer. A second machete normally kept there was missing, they learned.

During his Forensic Files interview, Mark North said that his father’s body was so distressed that he made his mother and sister, Kelly Landis, promise they wouldn’t look at it. “If you don’t ever do me another favor in your life, do this for me: Don’t come here,” Mark recounted his words in court.

Him? Never. Police learned that on the night of the murder, all the workers at the job site had gone home because of the storm, but Darrell had stayed to keep a meeting with Curtis Pope at 5 p.m. They were going to discuss problems with a pool that Pope installed.

But Darrell’s widow, Judy North, told police they were wasting their time investigating Curtis Pope.

Curtis had once said that Darrell treated him better than his own father did. He also had sobbed over his lost friend at the subsequent funeral.

What a heel. Pope, 37, lived in New Braunfels, Texas, and had a wife and a young daughter — and a police record for petty theft and vehicular manslaughter. But he denied killing Darrell, and passed a polygraph test.

And police had another subcontractor with a motive to get rid of Darrell North. Darrell had fired roofing contractor Bob Johnson a couple of weeks before the homicide. Two days after Darrell’s death, Johnson called to see about getting his job back.

Investigators hadn’t found any forensic evidence pointing toward Johnson at the scene, however. In fact, at first, their biggest find was a heel print bearing the name Justin, a brand of locally made boots.

If the shoe fits. But the fact that the assailant wore Justin boots didn’t exactly crack the case wide open. “How common are they?” an investigator said in a favorite Forensic Files quote. “You’re probably not from here if you don’t own a pair.”

It turned out Bob Johnson had such big feet that even the heels of his Justin boots were distinguishably larger than the one in the heel print at the scene.

Curtis Pope soon became the No. 1 suspect. He wore the right size of Justins and there was plenty of circumstantial evidence stacked against him.

Blood will tell. Investigators discovered that Curtis’ swimming pool business was not all fun and games. He was drowning in debt and couldn’t pay suppliers, and his only remaining big client was Bigelow Development.

On Curtis’ home computer, someone had downloaded a book on how to beat a polygraph test.

Investigators found one perfect blood drop on Darrell North’s pants, which meant the bleeder was standing still above him, and DNA testing revealed it came from Pope as did blood stains in 10 other areas in the trailer. (Pope likely cut himself accidentally during a struggle for one of the knives.)

Bail, really? Investigators concluded that Curtis Pope and Darrell North argued in the trailer and Pope snapped.

Authorities indicted Curtis Pope in December 2001, and he posted $50,000 in bail.

But instead of showing up for the first day of his trial on Feb. 24, 2003, he high-tailed it toward the Canadian border (strange he didn’t flee to Mexico — it was a lot closer).

Northern exposure. At 11:30 p.m., local police in Watertown, New York, noticed a pickup truck driving in the wrong direction on a one-way street. The officers believed Curtis Pope’s claim that he was heading north to meet some hunting buddies in Canada. But the next day, they discovered he was a fugitive.

Media sources vary on how they found out. Police either plugged his license and registration number into a database or were informed by authorities.

They tracked Curtis down at the Econo Lodge — the night before, he had mentioned to the police where he was staying, according to an AP account.

Real-life drama. Twelve local and state police officers showed up at Curtis’ hotel the next day.

“The Lord just intervened in this,” Judy later told the Midland Reporter-Telegram. “If he had gotten into Canada, they might never had caught him, and my family would have lived in limbo like we have for the past three years.”

To those present, however, the big capture probably looked more like marginally divine comedy than divine intervention. As a Fort Worth Star- Telegram story described it:

Before police could nab him, Pope, wearing a jacket and no shirt, sneaked out the back and into 15-degree weather, [Watertown Detective Sgt.] Damon said. He slipped into a second motel about a block away and, once again, went out the rear exit as authorities closed in. Finally, realizing there was nowhere else to run, Pope surrendered at a nearby shopping plaza. “He just walked up to a patrol officer, put his hands up and said, ‘OK, you’ve got me,'” Damon said.

Curtis said he fled because he was innocent.

Neighborhood beef. The arresting police didn’t buy it, but Curtis Pope had plenty of believers back in Texas. Friends and family members showed up to support him on each day of the subsequent trial.

Curtis’ lawyers, Jeff Stewart and Stephen Handy, said their client loved Darrell and they implied that Darrell might have acquired some enemies closer to home.

Darrell had threatened to sue people who were doing construction work near his house, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

The defense also contended that the blood evidence, tested by an independent lab called GeneScreen, had been mishandled and analyzed with outdated equipment.

Prosecutors Joe Shannon and David Lobingier countered that if the DNA testing really was below par, the defense would have called more blood experts to testify in Pope’s favor.

A Mother’s Love. In a bit of prosecutorial theater, Shannon counted out loud from 1 to 20 in court to connote the first 20 times Pope stabbed North. The prosecution alleged that Pope used his own knife in the attack, then grabbed the afterwards-missing machete to finish off Darrell.

In April 2003, a jury convicted Curtis Pope of first-degree murder.

Curtis’ wife and mother broke into tears upon hearing the verdict. The latter, Maggi Shepherd, said that Curtis was a Christian who had always been “passive” and incapable of such a crime, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported on April 12, 2003.

Attempted manipulation. At the sentencing hearing in May 2003, the prosecution noted Pope’s prior involuntary manslaughter conviction, for a Nevada car accident that killed one of his friends.

Meanwhile, the defense tried to pull the court’s heartstrings with mention of the Popes’ 10-year marriage and child.

District Judge George Gallagher handed Pope a life sentence, then gave the victim’s loved ones an opportunity to speak.

Poetic justice. “When you killed him, you killed half of me,” said Judy North, who was married to Darrell for 42 years, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported.

North’s 16-year-old granddaughter, Shelby Landis, read an original poem including the verse, “God broke our hearts to prove to us that he only takes the best.”

The judge gave Curtis a life sentence.

Behind razor wire. Texas rejected Curtis Pope’s 2004 and 2006 appeals, which both questioned the blood evidence again. Court papers noted that the chance of the DNA coming from someone other than Pope was 1 in 41.7 million. The 2006 decision stated that tests of the scrapings under the victim’s fingernails pointed to Pope and excluded another onetime suspect, Donald Fortenberry.

Today, Curtis Pope probably isn’t doing a lot of swimming. He resides in the James V. Allred Unit, a maximum security prison in Iowa Park, Texas.

The Texas Department of Criminal Justice doesn’t provide a recent mug shot of him but, at 5 foot-11 and 237 pounds, he is presumably getting enough to eat.

Water damage. Eligible for parole in 2033, Curtis has plenty of time to wallow in his regrets.

As one YouTube commenter put it, “Yep, killing your last remaining client is totally going to save your business from going under.”

“Moral of the story,” another wrote, “swimming pools are money pits and they will ruin your life.”

That’s all for this post. Until next time, cheers. — RR

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