When truck driver Lloyd Ford was murdered, it took 27 years before the wheels of justice caught up to the killer — his wife.
Judy Gough blasted her husband into oblivion, and then in a gruesome twist, got two of her young children to help her bury his body in the backyard, where it remained hidden for nearly three decades.
Her sick secret finally surfaced when her long-suffering daughter told cops what had happened.
Now 63-year-old Judy has been sent away for 10 years after pleading guilty to second-degree murder in a plea bargain.
The shocking crime took place in 1980 when Gough was living in Boise, Idaho, with Lloyd. They each had three children from previous marriages.
At the time, her children, ages 14, 12 and 9, were living with them, as was Ford’s 14-year-old son. One of his children, a daughter, was living with her mother, while his other daughter was away at college.
Gough claims she killed Ford because he was abusive to the children – a claim his kids vehemently deny. “Judy is playing the abuse card,” fumed Sandra Burke, one of Lloyd’s daughters. “I am tired of her lies. My father was totally against violence toward women.”
Authorities say Gough killed Ford with a hunting rifle after drugging him by grinding up sleeping pills and putting them in his caramel-topped ice cream sundae.
Gough claimed her 12-year-old daughter Kimberly urged her to kill Ford. “She was screaming, ‘Do it. Do it. Just do it,’ ” she maintained. Kimberly denies it. “She chose to use me as a scapegoat, which was her plan from the beginning.”
Prosecutor Josh Haws said that before the murder, Gough got her 14-year-old son and her husband’s 14- year-old son to help her dig the hole in the backyard where she buried Ford.
“They thought they were digging a hole to plant a tree,” Haws told The ENQUIRER.
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