Pow pow pow pow pow pow pow! Seven shots. Tia Collins sees it clearly. Capital murder in Texas. Verna McClain shoots Kala Marie Golden to death while in the commission of another felony, the kidnapping of Golden’s 3-day-old baby boy, Keegan Schuchardt. Motive: Verna had a miscarriage and needed a baby to show her fiance, who was expecting his own. Crazy, but that’s what were told. Even crazier, McClain was a vocational nurse.
This is not a crime fiction paperback sold at airports, nor is it a popular Lifetime movie. This really happened! The proof is a cornucopia of news footage coming out of Houston, print stories chalk-full of every excruciating detail you can imagine, and of course, the usual suspects, television talk shows all over it like white on rice. NG even included risque photos of a semi-nude Verna McClain, that were apparently posted on her social media accounts.
Random violence involving handguns in Texas is normal for me. I grew up with it in Houston in the early 1960s. One time, in 1960, a 7-Eleven clerk (all I remember is his name was Benny) had his head blown off in a cash drawer robbery. The store was right next to our house, and my Dad was the first person to arrive on the crime scene. I bought bubble gum baseball cards all the time at this 7-Eleven and 16 ounce Pepsis, for just a nickel.
Neither here nor there, but yea, shootings involving handguns were a dime a dozen in those raucous days. Kala Golden was shot in a parking lot of Northwoods Pediatric Center in Spring, Texas. Spring is 25 miles north of Houston; just another appendage to Houston really, which was very small when I left it in August of 1965. We hear that Verna was patiently waiting outside this clinic for any mother with a baby to emerge. This is hard to believe, but other cases such as this have popped up from time to time.
Wouldn’t someone have to be insane to actually do this? Not necessarily, but this angle will be snatched up by Verna’s defense attorney once her case is litigated in court. My own attitude is she had to be stark raving mad! And yet she planned out her crime with malice of forethought and successfully completed her intended task. When Verna went home to her apartment complex, she didn’t even bother to wipe the blood off the side of her Lexus SUV.
This seems crazy to me! And why did she drop the kidnapped baby boy off at her sister’s instead of keeping him for herself? This too seems fairly nutty to me. And what about these racy pix that Verna made public, when her chosen profession was that of nurse? Here’s another random rabbit in what looks like a confusing, hodge-podge of a picture, that is her life. And then we hear she already had three kids of her own, which she wasn’t particularly tolerant of. Why would she want one more?
And did Verna believe she’d get away with murder, when she shoots Kala Golden right in a public parking lot? I suspect she wanted to get caught. Furthermore, I sense she wanted attention. Perhaps she wanted it so much, she was willing to kill in public simply so she could make the nightly news.
As for me, I choose to forget about Verna McClain in no time flat. Come the weekend, I’ll be able to delete her from my memory. I still remember hundreds of senseless shootings, however, involving cheap handguns, from my youth when living in Houston, Texas. The random violence hit me in my face daily, radiating right out of our primitive black and white family TV set.
Verna McClain Charged: Nurse Admits Shooting Mom, Stealing Newborn Outside Texas Hospital