According to the files, Ann’s and Willard’s colleague, Randy Bledsoe (who was also one of the men from the bowling outing where Eric had first gotten sick), told investigators that Willard had appeared almost clinically depressed during the summer of 2000. Like most of his coworkers, Willard was apparently very concerned about the merger taking place at their company. But Bledsoe said Willard took it harder than the rest of them, that he appeared to be almost suicidal, a situation that deeply concerned his colleagues. But in the early fall of 2000, Bledsoe told investigators, Willard’s behavior changed dramatically, that he was practically a different person once Ann started paying attention to him.
Bledsoe told police that Ann’s flirtation with Willard lifted him out of his funk. His coworkers were so relieved by Willard’s turnaround that they overlooked Ann’s obvious pursuit of this vulnerable man.
This made it very clear to Morgan, “crystal clear,” that Ann had used Willard as an instrument, a tool, someone she could manipulate in order to accomplish her goal— Eric’s death. Ann was the aggressor and Willard was her pawn. Willard’s colleagues told investigators that the whole thing was very out of character for Willard, who tended to be quiet and reserved.
When Morgan started to match the time line of Ann’s relationship with Willard along with the autopsy information showing that Eric had been poisoned throughout the summer of 2000, he realized that Willard could not have taken part in it since he hadn’t been in the picture at that time. To Morgan, this meant that all the little “preview” doses of arsenic Dr. Clark said Eric had received over the summer
had
to have come from Ann.
Medical records contained in the file also piqued Morgan’s interest. They contained Eric’s clinical diagnosis during each hospitalization. Most of it was Greek to Morgan, but after poring over it time and time again, he got the point. In Morgan’s mind what it boiled down to was that although Willard may have
tried
to kill Eric Miller that night at the bowling alley, the dose he gave him was insufficient to do so, it was not a deadly dose. The dose of arsenic that killed Eric Miller came later, a dose given to him by
Ann
alone.
“On that night it was like the stars lined up. Eric’s parents were out of the house, he was there alone with Ann and baby Clare,” Morgan elaborates. “Ann prepared food for Eric that night. It was the only time that had happened since he had been released from the hospital. It was just too much to be a coincidence. Ann Miller gave Eric that last dose of arsenic the night before he went back into the hospital for the final time.”
This scenario fell right in line, as far as Morgan was concerned, with Willard’s suicide note disclaiming any responsibility in taking Eric’s life. He may have tried to kill Eric at one time, but he failed. Derril Willard didn’t kill Eric Miller. He was being honest in his last words to his family and friends.
“The big thing was [that] Ann was alive, Derril was dead. And I still maintain that Ann is at least morally liable for Derril’s death. When Ann intervened in his life, she essentially signed his death warrant,” Morgan states.
There was another part of the file that recounted interviews detectives had done with Willard’s wife, Yvette, on three separate occasions. This ended up to be the gem that Morgan had been looking for, a clue that had not been discarded, but had been lost beneath a pile of other information. Yvette had told investigators that her husband had not only admitted the affair to her, he’d also specifically told her that he’d had no part in Eric’s death. She’d told them she knew that her husband had gone to see Rick Gammon for legal advice. Yvette said that Gammon told her husband he could be charged with attempted murder.
“I kept saying, ‘This is it! Why hasn’t anybody told me about this before?’ ” Morgan says incredulously. “I suddenly realized I had found my
in
.”
Morgan’s hunch had been right all along. Willard had poisoned Eric Miller that night at the bowling alley. But since Miller didn’t die that night, Gammon had told his client he could be charged with
attempted
murder, not murder, or conspiracy to commit murder. To Morgan this distinction made perfect sense. Willard was a gentle soul who had been led so far down the garden path by his lust for Ann Miller that he
attempted
to kill the man he perceived to be his romantic rival. But then he quit. It was up to Ann to finish the job.
Morgan knew Gammon was a straight shooter, a good lawyer, one of the best, and that he wouldn’t have given Willard bad advice. Gammon didn’t tell Willard he could be facing a murder charge because Willard must have told him the whole truth, that Ann had given Eric the deadly dose. This meant that Rick Gammon
knew
Ann was guilty. But it was a secret still locked up tightly in the vault of attorney-client privilege.
THE WIDOW
Morgan is a tough guy with a soft heart. The next step in this case was something he dreaded with a passion, but he knew he had to do it. Before this thing went any further, he needed to talk to Yvette Willard face-to-face, not just read about what she had said to other investigators. He needed to see her for himself, see her expressions, judge her truthfulness, hear the words
attempted murder
roll off her tongue. So he called upon all of his manly courage and made the call.
“I thought there was a strong chance that Yvette Willard probably associated me with her husband’s suicide, probably
blamed
me for her husband’s suicide,” Morgan says. “Undaunted, I summoned all the charm and guile that I had and put in a call to Yvette Willard.”
She agreed to meet with Morgan the following Friday night after work. Dr. Michael Teague accompanied Morgan on the visit. Teague was there to observe, but he was also there for moral support. Morgan felt a little like he was treading on a dead man’s grave, but at the same time he knew it was something that had to be done.
Morgan figured that from Yvette’s point of view, her dead husband’s reputation hung in the balance, and nothing, including the arrest of Ann Miller, could bring that reputation back. In fact, the investigation would only continue to further tarnish Willard’s memory, something Morgan knew the mother of a young child did not want. He felt sorry for her. In his mind she was also one of Ann’s victims. From the little that he knew about Yvette Willard, Morgan honestly believed the woman had tried her best to be a good wife, had tried to keep her marriage and her family together, but Ann’s magnetic hold on Derril Willard was just too strong for Yvette to fight.
“I told her what I felt to be the truth. I felt like Derril was essentially a victim in this case, too,” Morgan says, recalling how he tried to find common ground with the grieving widow.
And then Morgan asked Yvette Willard the question detectives had asked her before. He asked her if Rick Gammon had really told her that her husband could be charged with attempted murder. She told him emphatically “Yes.”
Yvette Willard was the traction Morgan had been looking for.
THE MOMENT OF TRUTH
Who to call?
Morgan knew he couldn’t call Tom Ford. He would get shut down faster than a bar at closing time. The more he thought about it, the clearer it became. There was certainly one person he was convinced would do the right thing: Deputy District Attorney Howard Cummings.
Cummings always spoke quietly, methodically, often without a trace of emotion in his voice or a hint of expression on his face. It was obvious that he chose his words cautiously. Cummings was a balding man with glasses and a dry wit, sometimes so dry that Morgan couldn’t tell when he was being serious or making a joke. Yet beneath his lack of affectation, it had always been clear to Morgan that Cummings paid attention to every word you said. When he listened, he really listened and thoughtfully processed what he heard.
“Howard [Cummings] never appeared to be overenthusiastic. He says, ‘Well I need to think about this and the possible implications,’ and from there Howard apparently took the bull by the horns and went directly to Colon,” Morgan says with admiration.
Morgan knew that District Attorney Colon Willoughby was the only one who could authorize taking the case to the next level. Willoughby was the pilot, while Cummings was his very able and steady copilot.
Willoughby’s boyish good looks belied his fiftysomething years. He spoke with a measured southern drawl, walked with an easy gait, and frequently flashed a mischievous smile. He was known as a bright and honest prosecutor whose conservative approach often reined in investigators looking for more immediate results.
Morgan was making one of his periodic checks on Ann Miller in Wilmington, tailing her to be exact, when he got the call that changed everything. It was rotten duty, but someone had to do it. Morgan had decided that even though he was now officially in charge of the unit, he still had to get his hands dirty. He was knee-high in muck when Willoughby called.
“I’ll always remember the exact words of our esteemed district attorney. He said, ‘Now, is this information that we’ve just uncovered or is this just something we just realized is there?’ ” Morgan imitates the D.A.’s words with an exaggerated southern drawl.
Willoughby was a smart man who would have made a great poker player. He rarely ever got ruffled. It was almost impossible to know what he was really thinking. But Morgan knew him well enough to realize that he wouldn’t be calling if he wasn’t very interested in pursuing this new angle.
Morgan told Willoughby that the information from Yvette Willard had been there all along, but that he had just put two and two together recently after reading the complete case file. He told Willoughby that he felt that this information was the key to getting a judge to compel Gammon to talk because it showed that Willard and Gammon had spoken about something
substantial,
something that might just solve the case. On the other end of his cell phone, there was silence as Willoughby listened intently to what Morgan had to say.
COURT OF PUBLIC OPINION
The more Morgan interacted with Eric Miller’s family, the more desperate he became to help them. In his heart he felt that Gammon was the key to pushing the case forward, and now, with Yvette Willard’s corroboration of what Gammon had said to her husband, Morgan felt as though it
had
to move forward. Either the D.A. would take it to the next level or Morgan would do so himself.
“I had to give this family something to hope for. I felt like I was essentially backed into a corner. I didn’t have a whole lot of ammunition, I didn’t have a whole lot to work with,” recalls Morgan. “I decided that our next-best strategy was to try the case in the court of public opinion.”
Using his contacts in the media, Morgan knew he could get an audience for this story. Just a few simple calls would get all of the local networks scrambling their cameras out the door at his beck and call if he chose to take that route. If the state wouldn’t go after Ann Miller, he felt sure that ordinary citizens hearing about the case would go after the state.
Confidentially, Morgan told the Miller family that he intended to have a press conference and reveal the details of the case if the D.A. didn’t do something by March 1, 2002. As part of what he called “Plan B,” Morgan lined up newspaper and television reporters to be on standby in case Willoughby wouldn’t, or for some reason couldn’t, pursue this new angle. Unlike other cops who had an innate fear of the media, Morgan knew how to use reporters like they used him. It was a mutually beneficial relationship. He wasn’t above exploiting it when it needed to be exploited.
“If Colon [Willoughby] had not taken the bull by the horns, he would have ended up sometime in early March with a hell of a public relations problem,” Morgan says. “If Colon wasn’t going to do the right thing, then I was going to essentially put him in a position where he was forced to do something.”
Luckily, it didn’t come to that. Willoughby informed Morgan that he would file a petition asking the court to compel Gammon to talk. Together, Morgan and Willoughby prepared an affidavit to attach to the petition. They included all of the major details in the case, just as they had done in the affidavit to search Willard’s house. But at this point in the investigation, more than a year after the crime, they had amassed many new details that made the case both stronger and more salacious.
Some juicy details, however, were deleted from the affidavit after Willoughby objected. For example, Morgan claims that on the weekend prior to the bowling outing, Derril Willard and Ann Miller had spent a weekend holed up at a Ritz-Carlton in Chicago. Yvette Willard had confirmed this clandestine rendezvous, which Morgan saw as Ann laying the groundwork for getting Willard to poison Eric. Morgan imagined that Ann and Willard had spent the weekend in bed as she tried to convince him to poison her husband. Ann had worked him for months, but it was in that bed, in that hotel room in Chicago, that she broke him. There was no going back.
Morgan says that Willoughby felt that releasing the information about the Chicago weekend would be showing too many cards at one time. Always the stone-faced poker player, he told Morgan that they had to hold something back and Morgan agreed. Morgan was so pleased to finally have Willoughby’s support that he would have agreed to just about anything at this point.
“Colon is a hero in this case,” praises Morgan with a shit-eating grin.
WHEELS OF JUSTICE
The Miller family had returned to Raleigh for the hearing on Willoughby’s petition. While their previous trips to Raleigh had been bittersweet, this one was tinged with a hopefulness that Morgan hadn’t seen in them for months.
The courtroom was packed with media from all over the state, along with cops, lawyers, and gawkers. Morgan greeted Rick Gammon with what he called a “manly half hug.” Gammon was a small man, with a buzz cut, a neatly trimmed mustache, and an affable personality. He exuded confidence, the kind that let you know he was comfortable with just about anything you could throw at him. He always greeted people with a sincere smile and an easy handshake.
Let the games begin,
Morgan thought.