and this is "Dateline: Secrets Uncovered."
It was the little girl who learned it first,
the 12 year old,
she who was there at the beginning
when the family secret was born.
- Why did it get started?
- Why did she keep it so long...
- She was all I had. - While it did its evil work?
- To think that he had walked away--
We couldn't even stand it. - What would that secret do?
- Everybody has a secret or two, but this?
**
- Hello, and welcome to "Dateline: Secrets Uncovered."
College student Sandy Ford
called her dad, Lloyd, every week.
When her parents divorced, Lloyd remarried,
but Sandy stayed close with her father,
until he disappeared.
Sandy did not know what happened,
but others did.
Now what's that saying?
Two people can keep a secret,
but only if one of them is dead.
Here's Keith Morrison with...
- Ah, yes, families.
I suppose you could say this one,
the family, if not the secret,
got started in the middle of nowhere,
which is what they like to call it
here in Ainsworth, Nebraska.
It wasn't so surprising, perhaps,
that when young Lloyd Ford was done with school,
he'd gone out, joined the Navy,
sailed off to see the wide world from an aircraft carrier,
this man at the center of the secret.
Sandy Burke is his eldest daughter.
- My dad was just a fun guy. He was very fun loving.
Um, he loved people. People loved him.
People tended to gravitate towards my dad.
- Especially women.
That was not a secret.
When Lloyd went back to little Ainsworth
after his stint in the Navy,
one of the hometown girls caught his eye
at the County Fair.
Before long, they were married,
and that's how Sandy came along,
and her little sister, Pamela, who loved her dad,
but apparently wasn't the only one.
- All of the women around here had huge crushes on him
and his brother,
and I've always heard he had to have a woman in his life.
- And when Lloyd and his wife
took their little family out West,
it was, so they say, to get away from some other woman.
Anyway, that's where little Tommy was born,
and Lloyd learned to be a real family man.
- He loved fishing. He would take us fishing,
and we'd just bring strings of fish home,
or sometimes, we'd bring no fish home, but--
- We usually ate 'em for breakfast.
- Yeah, we did. - And then, well,
the kids are always the last to know what happened or why,
but it wasn't long before their mom suddenly packed them up
and headed back to Nebraska.
- A lot of times, in divorces,
a child will take one side or the other,
and I took my mom's.
- They loved him still, of course,
even when he started courting a new woman, Judy,
twice divorced, three kids of her own,
including Kimberly, Judy's only daughter,
who, all in all, was happier on those rare occasions
when there was no man around her mother.
- I personally liked it best when it was just...
her, the boys, and I.
No husband.
'Cause her attention would focus.
- You'd lose her. - Yeah.
- When a new man came along,
what was she like with that person?
- They were it.
We still got fed and taken care of,
and the norm, you know,
but it was all about them.
- And in 1973, it was all about Lloyd.
They married, and then divorced,
and then remarried,
and tried to pretend a Brady Bunch life
at this very house on Clark Street
in Boise, Idaho.
Lloyd drove long-haul trucks. Judy styled hair.
They joined the Shriners, went bowling,
planned fishing trips.
Lloyd's youngest, Tommy,
lived with him and his stepmom,
but Pamela stayed with her mother in Nebraska
and rarely visited.
By 1980, Sandy was 20 and off at college,
but still, as always, called Lloyd every week,
until the day Judy answered the phone.
- And when I first called,
Judy told me he was away on business,
so I called back a few days later,
and she said, oh, no, he isn't home yet,
and I thought, that's funny, 'cause he's usually only gone,
like, two or three days, and he'll be back.
And, uh, I called the next week, and he still wasn't home,
and I called my mom,
so I think that my mom called out to Judy,
and she said, well, the truth was
she thought that Lloyd had ran off with another woman,
and she didn't think he was coming back.
- Days went by, then weeks.
No word from their dad.
At the end of the school year,
Tommy's stepmom sent him back to Nebraska
to live with his birth family.
- It was hard.
I mean, my dad, for Tom and I especially,
he was everything to us.
- And you thought he loved you. - He did.
- And now it seemed, perhaps, he didn't even care.
- You know, when we first heard,
I think we really believed he'd be back.
If he left Judy, he would be back to get us.
- That summer, Lloyd's father hired a private investigator.
- My grandfather would come in almost every week
to give me updates on, you know,
had we heard anything?
The detective hadn't found anything.
He was following leads, but nothing was coming up.
- They heard stories.
He moved to Michigan.
He boarded a plane and never made his connection.
Even a story that he was on Mount St. Helens
when it erupted.
Sandy and her sister, Pam, longed for answers,
a phone call even,
but there was nothing.
Where was their father?
Whatever happened to Lloyd Ford?
Here's a hint.
Sandy didn't know the family secret,
nor did Pam, but Kimberly did.
She knew all about it, where Lloyd went and why,
because she was there,
but if she revealed it,
would anyone even believe the chilling tale
she'd carried and hidden for so long?
- I spent my whole life
waiting for the other shoe to drop, you know?
- And here it was.
- When "Dateline: Secrets Uncovered" continues.
**
- The sad thing about a family secret
is all the pain that's apt to trail behind.
When Lloyd Ford dropped off his family radar back in 1980,
left them all for another woman or some other life,
whatever it was,
the children of his first marriage
felt utterly abandoned, devastated.
- I mean, the ground you stand on
doesn't seem stable anymore,
because every single thing that we had built
our trust and security in was gone.
- These sisters couldn't know
that the answer to their decades of questions
might involve the complicated relationships
in Lloyd's new family,
particularly between a mother and daughter,
between Judy and her daughter Kimberly,
little Kim, nervous, needy,
desperate to be perfect.
How does a little girl
attempt to be perfect for her mother?
- She tries not to make her mad.
You know?
Do things that I know would make her happy.
Clean the house.
We all worked in the yard.
Everything had to be just so,
so it looked nice when somebody came over,
so it looked normal.
- And if it did, the love could be so good,
so warm, enveloping, happy,
if only the furies could be kept at bay.
- You learned to read her moods? - Oh, yeah, really well.
If she wasn't in a good mood,
we stayed gone, out of the house.
- Stayed out of her way. - Oh, yeah.
- Because? - You didn't want to see her upset.
- That, said Kim, was the woman her children knew so intimately,
not like the Judy who presented herself
one way or another to the outside world.
- She was different for everybody.
To a newcomer or her friends,
she was a very loving, giving person.
But what they didn't see was she would do
whatever it took to get what she wanted.
- You saw this happening when you were a little kid?
- Sure. She knows in a certain situation
what she needs to say.
You know, "I should laugh here,
"or, you know, maybe I should cry."
- Watching this, said Kim, she knew very well
that love, one moment to the next,
could be given or withdrawn.
- She was the one we feared. You did as you were told.
- If she wanted you to do something,
and you just kind of, uh, didn't do it?
- Oh, no, we never did that.
We never--
You just didn't want to rock the boat, you know?
I was so afraid she was gonna leave.
- And thus, it was abandonment Kim feared
when her mother brought men home.
- She was all I had.
- 'Cause it was changing all the time,
and all these men would come into her lives,
your life, and then go again.
You had her. - Right.
- Anyway, Judy stayed put.
It was Lloyd who would not be sticking around.
After her husband seemed to disappear
off the face of the Earth, Judy filed for divorce.
And when Lloyd didn't show up at the hearing,
Judy got everything.
Kim remembers a rainy afternoon
when her mother pawned off their wedding rings.
She remarried, a man named Tom Gough.
Life went on.
A quarter century passed.
By 2007, Kim was 40,
the single mother of two teenagers of her own,
still held in her own mother's emotional web,
but unspoken guilt increasingly clouded her mood,
even at work.
This was her boss, Gary Ziegler.
What did she seem like to you?
- It always seemed like she was, uh,
carrying something deep down inside her,
some kind of baggage.
Don't-- You know, couldn't put my finger on it for a long time.
- Gary had-- What would you call it?
Antenna for these things.
- He had called me to come have a cup of coffee with him,
and he could read me really well,
and, uh, he's like, "What's wrong?"
And I fell apart.
- Told him the whole thing? - Told him everything.
- And that's how the family secret,
contained for more than 20 years,
was leaked for the first time to an outsider
who listened in something like disbelief.
- Everybody has a secret or two, but this?
I deliberated for days before telling anybody.
- You decided not to keep a secret.
- Correct. I knew the way I was raised,
I needed to do the right thing.
- So Gary called the prosecutor's office,
which called the Boise Police Department,
which opened an investigation into Lloyd's long-ago departure,
a 27-year-old disappearance,
a case they never knew existed.
But they certainly did now,
and that's how, one day,
the cops showed up on Kim's doorstep.
- I spent my whole life
waiting for the other shoe to drop.
You know?
- And here it was.
- What really happened to Lloyd?
Kim shares the bone-chilling details.
- She says, "How would you like it if Lloyd was gone?
And I'm thinking, there's no way she'd do it.
Who would do that?
- When "Dateline: Secrets Uncovered" continues.
- Kimberly had a secret,
a terrible, unspeakable, guilty family secret.
She'd kept it, nursed it, cried about it,
for a quarter century,
until, finally, no longer able to hide the awful truth,
she'd spilled it to her boss,
and now she's about to tell us.
- It's real hard to face the truth.
It almost killed me.
- It was late afternoon. Spring was coming.
It was 1980. Lloyd was still around,
the rest of the kids outside.
Kim was, as usual, trying to be the perfect little daughter,
helping around the house.
They were in the kitchen, Kim says,
when Judy looked down at her
and asked a very curious question.
- She was just cookin' dinner, and she says,
"How would you like it if Lloyd was gone?"
"Gone" to a 12 year old--
going, divorcing, moving out.
- What'd you think when you heard that?
- Sounded all right.
- Kim was used to Judy's uneven love life.
Divorce didn't sound like disaster.
She loved having her mother to herself.
Here's Kim's memory of what her mother said to her.
- "Oh, you know, woudln't it be nice if he wasn't here,
"and, you know, we could be together, you know?
"Just you guys and me and wouldn't that be nice?"
- The way it used to be. - Just like I always wanted it.
- But then, subtly, unmistakeably, said Kim,
her mother's idea changed,
didn't sound like divorce after all.
- She made a list of all his faults and--
- Do you remember what you said?
- I never really questioned her.
You just sit there and let her talk, you know?
- Safer. - Yeah.
- And this went on? - A couple days, maybe a week.
And each day, it was a little more revealing,
until finally, she just blurted it out, you know?
"What would you think if he was dead?"
- Did you think that meant-- What? That he was--
- Well, I thought he maybe had cancer or he was sick,
or-- You know. - That maybe he was gonna die,
and she was preparing you? - Yeah, I mean, you never know.
- But that was not what Judy had in mind, said Kim.
And soon it was much clearer what she did intend.
- And then she said, you know, "What if I killed him?"
- "What if I killed him?" - Right.
But she was being so vague.
And I'm thinking, there's no way she'd do it.
It was so surreal. Who would do that?
- And then that was the last that was said for a while,
or what? - For a bit,
and then she started going through scenarios, you know?
"What if I smothered him? What if, you know,
"what if I slit his throat?" And you're sitting there,
and you're like, "Why are you telling me this?"
- She was 12, desperate for her mother's approval,
which is why, she said,
she muffled the silent voice in her head
that asked why she was being sent to the store
to buy sleeping pills.
When you went on that errand,
did you have any notion of what they were for?
- She sent us to the store all the time.
- Later on, you saw her doing something
with those sleeping pills? - Crunching them up.
- Crunching them up? - Mm-hmm.
- To a powder. - Uh-huh.
- Kim watched Judy prepare Lloyd's favorite dessert,
ice cream with butterscotch topping,
watched Judy mix in those crushed sleeping pills,
watched Lloyd devour it.
Next morning, when the boys went off to school,
Judy kept Kim at home,
so she knew her stepfather stayed in bed,
saw her mother crush more pills in Lloyd's coffee,
in his soup, in more ice cream.
Later, said Kim, she heard a racket
behind the bedrooom door.
- Lloyd was trying to get out to go to the bathroom,
and they had their fishin' poles behind the door,
and he had the hooks in his hands.
- Ow. - Yeah.
And I don't even know that he felt the pain.
- Yeah. Did he say anything? - But he was just
all tangled up, and he was mumbling,
and the only thing I understood was Lloyd had said,
"What in the hell is wrong with me?"
And he kept falling into the wall,
and she's, you know, telling him he's gonna be fine,
and, you know, "You'll feel better soon."
- Then, Kim says, Judy turned 'round to her,
gave her another errand.
- I was told to go outside and get the trunk, um,
clean it out. - Did you understand
why you were doing this? - But I wasn't--
I think I was too afraid to comprehend what was going on.
I was just living second to second,
doing what she was telling me to do.
- But she remembers, she said,
clear as if it was this very morning, what happened
when she dragged an old trunk back into the house.
- She had come out of the bedroom,
and she was standing there, smoking,
and I was in the living room,
and she just put it out and said, "I'm ready."
- One moment of horror, and a lifetime of pain.
- You just...
stuff it deep inside.
- Welcome back to "Dateline: Secrets Uncovered."
I'm Craig Melvin.
Judy spiked her husband Lloyd's food with sleeping pills
as her daughter, Kim, looked on.
What happened next would haunt Kim for years,
until the secret became too much to bear.
That's when the floodgates finally opened,
and the terrifying truth came spilling out
about that day so long ago.
Back to Keith Morrison with "The Family Secret."
- Kimberly, 12 years old,
saw her mother standing in the living room
in their house on Clark Street in Boise, Idaho.
Behind the bedroom door, her stepfater was in a stupor,
induced by the very sleeping pills
Kim said her mother had sent her to buy.
Now, said Kim, she heard her mother say, "I'm ready."
- She told me to go in the bedroom,
which I didn't like,
'cause we weren't allowed in there.
She had been in there prior,
checking on him and whatnot,
at some point had put him on the floor
on a sheet,
and I really didn't know
exactly how she was gonna do it until I walked in
and saw the gun at the end of the bed,
and she went over
and turned up the stereo really loud,
and she said that would cover the noise.
First, she asked me to pull the trigger.
- She gave you the gun? - No, no, she was holding it.
- She was holding the gun. - And she wanted me
to pull the trigger. - Pointed at him.
- Right. - Where at him?
- At his chest, and then said,
"Well, help me pull the trigger."
And I basically refused to do it,
and I started screaming at her, "What do you want?
"What do you want from me? What do you want me to do?"
And she said, "Just cover my ears."
And so I put my hands on either side of her,
and I closed my eyes really tight,
and she kept saying something,
and it seemed like forever, and I just screamed.
I said, "If you're gonna do it, just do it."
And it was just a moment later.
It was this loudest noise I ever heard in my life.
And I ran out to the back yard
into the alley.
- Kim cowered there,
shaking and listening.
- I was horrified. I just sat there.
I mean, I was crying and screaming,
rocking back and forth, and...
listening. - Listening for what?
- For his voice, her voice, something.
- 'Cause you didn't think she had actually one it?
- I wasn't sure. Maybe she missed.
Maybe he woke up. You know?
There was a part of me that really wanted him to wake up,
but I made my way back to the house.
- Back to her mother.
- I think she hugged me, told me she loved me.
- That was supposed to make it okay?
- Yeah. - And did it?
- No.
- What happened then?
- I had to go into the room,
and the smell was still there.
- The smell of what?
- Gunpowder, and, uh,
I didn't look at him.
I just grabbed the end of my sheet,
did as I was told. - The sheet he was lying on.
- Pulled him down the hall. She had one end.
I had the other. - Right.
- And he was too heavy. He was so heavy.
- This is where you got in close.
- I had to touch him.
- What did it feel like?
- He was still warm.
- But very obviously dead? - Yeah.
- But she was not finished then. Not even close.
Her mother, she said, had another job for her.
- She said, "Well, we gotta lift him up
and put him in the trunk."
I had to grab him under his legs.
He was so heavy.
And we got him in there, and...
she just shut the lid.
Closed the latches.
We drug it out back and put it next to the house.
- Out the door on the porch?
- Stacked some boxes on it.
- Judy rented a carpet cleaner.
Kim helped her clean the blood off the floors.
She scrubbed the blood off the wall.
She made it look normal.
But that trunk kept sitting there on the porch.
What'd she do with it? - A couple days
before she murdered him, she told the boys
that we were gonna plant a peach tree out back,
and so they were to dig a big hole to put the tree in,
and a few days after the murder,
the hole's filled in, but there's no peach tree.
She changed her mind.
- Did you ever figure out how she got that trunk
from the porch to the hole and got it filled in?
- She had asked my brother, Shane.
- So now there are two people in on it,
you and Shane.
Did you talk to Shane about it?
- Not really. - You're brother and sister.
Did the two of you say, "My God,
"she just killed him and we're complicit."
Did-- and that conversation never happened?
Why not? - We didn't talk about it.
She swore me to secrecy,
made me promise.
- There was more to the secret then.
Judy, said Kim, devised a cover story.
And when she said it, it sounded true.
- She totally lived the,
"My husband left me for another woman."
- And that was really believable?
- Yeah. And there was such a short time
after Lloyd left--
Lloyd was murdered...
- Funny how that's stuck in your head, "Lloyd left."
- That's what-- - Because that was the fiction
for so many years. - That's what we had to say.
- Kim stuffed it all inside, locked up the secret,
kept her mother happy. But it wasn't over.
A few months later, she said, Judy had another job
for Kim and her brother Shane.
"Couldn't leave a body in the backyard," said Judy.
They'd have to dig it up, move it.
They had buried it in an old trunk
they had on the property back then.
Out in the yard, said Kim, they started digging.
- We were digging for quite a while,
and we came to the trunk,
and it was falling apart.
- They looked at their mother. What should they do?
- And she's-- was just so cold and matter of fact.
Just, you know, "Grab what you can."
- As we started pulling it out,
there was this horrendous smell.
- He hadn't disintegrated? - Not much.
And you could still see his tattoos on his arms.
They had decided that
it wasn't going to work and to just rebury him.
- So he stayed there. - He stayed.
And you just...
stuff it deep inside,
and try to be normal.
- But of course it wasn't normal at all.
And over the years, said Kim,
it was only her conflicted ties to her mother,
that powerful emotional glue, that kept the two close
and the secret horror bottled up.
That and her mother's promise.
- Hundreds and hundreds of times
she reassured me that, you know,
"I'll go turn myself in if it'll make you better."
- What should she do? A perfect daughter
could never betray her mother,
nor could anyone, apparently,
in the circle of deceit that grew and grew.
But betrayals were coming, and not just one.
Finally, Kim would learn what could happen
to a daughter who disobeyed her mother.
- Coming up--
The police have a job for Kim--
go undercover to catch her mother.
When "Dateline: Secrets Uncovered" continues.
- Kimberly was the keeper of an awful family secret,
a secret she had never been able to tell
her own step siblings, Lloyd's children--
that she had attended the murder of their father.
And so they knew nothing.
Nothing at all.
In 1981, less than a year after Lloyd's murder,
Judy got married again, and life went on as before.
Fifteen years after the murder,
Judy sold the house on Clark Street
to her youngest son, Kim's little brother,
who moved in with his new wife,
who learned about the secret and insisted,
"Get rid of the body."
So now Kim, married with two kids of her own,
returned to that childhood home
and told her siblings where to dig.
- I had to go show them where it was
'cause nobody remembered.
- But you did. - Sure.
It's still burned in my memory.
- Kim's brothers and a cousin dug up Lloyd's remains,
took them to a dumpster. The secret circle grew.
And Kim felt she loved her mother still,
but warned her, too.
It was ever harder to keep silent.
- I guess I had made a deal with her,
which was I would never
come right out and tell anybody.
And I told her that unless somebody
asked me directly,
'cause I won't lie.
She didn't like that answer.
So she'd always call and do a mental check on me
and then do her old standby promise
that she'll do the right thing.
- If and when the time came. - Right.
- But she didn't.
And now Kim had told, and 27 years after the day
she helped her mother cover up a murder,
Detective Brian Lee was at her door.
- I think my first reaction was one
of disbelief almost. Really?
Could this have been kept quiet that long?
- What did she look like when she came to the door?
- I wouldn't say she was surprised.
Almost expecting, probably, that we were going to be there.
- So she told it again, relieved to be getting rid of it.
And then came the request she didn't expect.
More than a request, really.
She'd have to go undercover and record
an incriminating phone call with her mother.
What was that conversation like?
- It was so hard.
I was going to have to betray her
to get what they wanted.
- Here, as the call begins, they chatter for a bit
about nothing much. And then...
The call was over, a failure.
What'd you think when you heard that?
- Made me a little nervous. - I bet.
- But she was pretty keen to what was going on, I think.
- Then, Judy called back.
They pushed the record button.
- The police had what they needed.
But Judy wasn't finished.
- I felt like I was going to die.
I betrayed her and I betrayed my whole family.
- And now,
the police wanted more.
- They wanted me to go over to the house
and show them where everything had happened.
- Once again point out the spot where he was buried?
- Yeah. - It was, of course,
burned into her memory.
For three days the police dug up the past
in the backyard on Clark Street.
- We had to go over and process that area that--
where we were told the body was.
It's part of validating the story that Kim told.
- So was there anything left?
- We found fragments of bone and bone.
- Seven bone fragments, all that was left of Lloyd Ford.
Police were able to determine that at least 10 members
of Judy's family had helped keep the secret.
In your experience, when that many people
are aware of such a dark thing,
does it stay hidden for very long?
- No. That's what was puzzling to us,
was how it was kept quiet for that long.
- It suggests a measure of control
over those folks, which would be unusual.
- Very much so.
- But the statute of limitations applied now.
Only one person could be held accountable.
Only Judy, and, thus,
the law would ensure that Kim's awful secret
would be exposed in court,
the crime revealed, justice served.
But would it be justice or even the whole truth?
Kim had turned on Judy,
but this mother hadn't quite finished yet
with her daughter.
I know she was screaming, "Do it! Do it! Do it!
"Just do it!"
- Judy tells her story,
and there's one more twist in store.
- A jury could acquit her.
- Lloyd Ford missed his children's birthdays,
missed their graduations, their weddings.
Sandy Burke's brother, Tom, walked her down the aisle.
Lloyd missed all that because, or so his family was told,
he'd left them all, just didn't care.
- Just not having him there was really hard,
but to think that he had walked away...
We couldn't even stand it,
to the point that my brother and I
would never have pictures of my dad out in the house,
because if you have a picture there,
someone's gonna have to ask about your dad,
and you're gonna have to admit
that the person that you thought you were closest to
in the whole world had just turned and walked away.
"Where's your dad now?" "I don't know."
- But, of course, it was all a lie.
Their father never left them,
and the truth, when police finally called to tell them?
- It was just almost indescribable
to think that he had been murdered
the way that he had been murdered,
with absolutely no regard for human life, just none.
Just treated like a piece of garbage.
That was hard.
- Yes, and then they discovered that Lloyd's own son, Tom,
had unknowingly dug his father's grave
when Judy told him to prepare a backyard hole
to plant a peach tree.
- I think it's almost impossible to comprehend
that type of evil.
- Sandy watched online
as the Boise Police dug up all that was left of their father,
those seven bone fragments.
They tried to understand
how Judy got her own children to help murder their father.
- My dad was the only dad these kids knew,
and yet, somehow,
she got these kids to participate in the murder,
to bury the body,
to dig up the body later that year,
how do you get your kids to do something like that?
Where is your mind
of someone that would do something like that?
- On September 28, 2007,
Judy Gough, now a 61-year-old grandmother,
took her dogs for a walk,
and that's where police arrested her,
but when they took her downtown...
- She requested an attorney right as we sat down.
- That was it. - Yeah, there was no interview.
- No surprise. - Not to me, really.
She had 27 years to think about that decision.
- Judy was charged with first degree murder,
and that's when Patrick Orr, then of the "Idaho Statesman"
began reporting the story.
- This was somebody who had no criminal record.
Her friends described her as a kind, loving person,
somebody they trusted, so there was a lot of confusion.
There was a lot of shock.
- Judy appeared before a judge,
who determined she was not a risk and granted bail,
and six months later,
her public defender went on the offense
with a stunning claim.
Lloyd, she said, was an abuser.
She'd killed him, she said, in defense of her life
and her children.
- This is a woman who loves her family,
who'd do whatever she can for her family.
- Reporter Orr spoke to Judy's youngest son.
- He told me that Lloyd was abusive.
- Lloyd? Abusive?
His own children were outraged at the accusation.
- That wasn't who my dad was.
It was ludicrous to think that there was anything
going on in the home with my dad and Judy.
- No abuse. - No abuse. Nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
- But as the date for Judy's trial approached,
her claim that Lloyd was an abuser hit the paper,
became big news around Boise.
Would Judy try a battered wife defense?
Lloyd's children, furious and upset
about what they considered vicious libel,
bit their tongues when the prosecutor told them,
"Don't say a word in your father's defense.
"The truth will come out at trial."
Except it didn't.
The trial didn't happen. Judy struck a deal...
- Please state your name for the record.
- Judy Rae Gough.
- ...to plead guilty to second degree murder and confess,
though the confession wasn't quite the story
her daughter Kim remembered.
- I-I had a rifle.
I was sitting on the edge of the bed,
and I had the gun across my lap.
He was sitting on the floor by my dresser,
kitty-corner from me.
The gun went off.
It was a terrible smell.
And he was dead.
- When you say, "The gun went off,"
what do you mean by that?
- Your honor, I--
I must have pulled the trigger.
- Then the judge asked about her daughter Kim's role
in the murder.
- So had you talked to your daughter
about killing your husband?
- You know, she said that I did.
I don't really recall that part.
- Did you call your daughter to come into the room?
- I don't think so.
I don't know why she was there.
I know she was screaming, "Do it! Do it! Do it!
"Just do it!"
- Was she now accusing Kim here in court?
Was she blaming her own daughter somehow?
- For the past 30 years, she's telling you,
"I'll do the right thing if it'll make you better.
"I love you that much."
And when zero hour came...
- She threw you under a bus.
- She left me there.
- So the emotion is what, abandonment?
- Sure.
- You're still that little girl
who's trying so hard to make her mom happy.
- That's one of my last pieces of my puzzle I'm workin' on:
Abandonment.
- Abandonment is a family issue, apparently.
Lloyd's first family struggled with it for 27 years
until they discovered he didn't leave them at all.
But now that they ached to defend him
from a charge they believed to be a cruel lie,
they could not,
not without a trial.
Had the prosecutor abandoned them now?
- Why was it so important to you to see this go to trial?
- This was my dad.
This was the only thing that we could do for him.
We felt the truth would come out.
It would give him back his reputation.
She had taken his life.
Then she has to take his reputation, too?
Hi. I'm Sandra K. Burke.
- In March, 2009, Lloyd's kids returned to Idaho
for Judy Gough's sentencing hearing.
- We sat through her whole sentencing,
and in the ending,
the judge acknowledged us six kids and Judy as victims,
never once mentioned my father.
- Does this feel like justice?
- No.
It feels like they wanted to get this case over with,
that it wasn't important to them.
- Roger Bourne, then Chief Deputy
of the Prosecutor's Office, defended the decision.
- We thought that-- that going through a trial
where Judy Gough gets to take the stand
and vilify their father for hours at a time,
would not be productive for them, and, um,
would not be productive for the people.
The risk, of course, is that a jury could acquit her.
Uh, that, from our standpoint, that would be the worst thing.
- The sentence for drugging and killing Lloyd?
For having the kids bury him, dig him up,
keep their awful secret?
Ten years in prison.
Judy has declined our interview requests,
and Kim has written a book
called "Unworthy: What Would You Do for Your Mother?"
- How do you feel about her now?
- I don't feel a whole lot about her now.
She's dead to me,
and I don't mean that angry and bitter.
Because then I'd be like her,
but that's not my mom.
My mom left a long time ago.
- The house on Clark Street sits empty,
the backyard overgrown,
the secret, the deadly secret,
bound the family almost three decades.
The unraveling tore it apart forever.
- That's all for this edition of "Dateline: Secrets Uncovered."
I'm Craig Melvin. Thank you for watching.