Needle Work: Battery Acid, Heroin, and Double Murder (15 page)

Messina read Collier his rights via the Miranda card. Tim waived them.

“I’ll talk to you,” he stated.

“Well, you don’t have to talk to me if you don’t want to.”

Collier insisted that he wanted to talk.

“Well, I don’t want to talk about the crime you’re in jail for now.”

Tim waited.

“You’re right,” Messina began. “Carol did kill her husband, but I need to clear up some things that are bothering me.”

Again, Tim waited.

“How did it go that Carol asked you about killing her husband?”

Tim said that Carol and Jessie weren’t getting along anymore, and she asked about getting someone to shoot him. He told Carol:

“You can’t shoot somebody in West Bloomfield—people will hear and cops will be all over the place. If I was gonna do it, I’d give him heroin, which would make it look like a heart attack.”

But it was just an idea, a hypothetical idea, nothing more.

“Doin’ it was all her,” he stated emphatically.

“Then why’d you get the heroin for her?” Messina asked.

“I didn’t know what that was for when I gave it to her,” Tim answered sincerely. “I got it in a two for one deal. I didn’t know she was gonna kill Jessie. I thought it was for someone else.”

“I know that she went to your house right after she did it.”

Tim didn’t blink.

“I met her down the street,” he corrected the cop. “She brought some money and some drugs. Hell, that’s all I was interested in.”

As for her story to cops when she found the body: “She could make up any story about getting her hair done or anything. It was her thing, not mine.”

Messina then asked Tim if he would write out a statement about what they had just talked about.

“Okay,” he agreed, and wrote out his statement.

The statement he wrote left out much of what they had talked about, and Messina asked him if he wanted to write some more.

“It’s all there,” Tim said, signing the “confession.”

Messina witnessed his signature and then had Tim returned to his cell.

They had Carol and Tim for two murders—Jessie’s and Nancy’s. The one thing that was most important for the jury to understand was why these people had to die. That was something the prosecution would bring out at trial. But putting a murder case together for prosecution is a lot more difficult than convincing a suspect to give you a statement, or statements.

In many instances, the suspect will recant his confession once his counsel has had a chance to talk to him and tell him what an idiot he was in the first place talking to the police. Or maybe the judge throws it out because the suspect was under the influence of alcohol or some other drug at the time. If that’s the case, the individual is not responsible for his statements.

Even if the statement stays in, the prosecution is not out of the woods yet. If the jury believes that the suspect was in any way coerced into giving the statement, they not only can discount it, they should discount it.

With the statement out, what are you left with?

That’s why, even after a statement is given, the cops continue working the case. The goal is to put together a chain of evidence with the perpetrator as the strongest link. If the statement stays in, so much the better; if it’s thrown out, then they have everything else they’ve gathered.

The autopsy of Nancy Billiter was consistent forensically with the details supplied by Carol about the method of death and disposal of the body. But both Carol and Tim’s statements claimed the other was principally responsible for the injections. That left many possibilities.

The jury could believe Carol and convict Tim, giving her a reduced sentence because they sympathized with her “plight” as a woman psychologically and physically abused by her husband, then psychologically used by her boyfriend for his own nefarious ends. Or, they could look at Carol as a “black widow,” an awful woman who killed her husband, lied about it, and was really the mastermind behind Nancy’s death.

In that scenario, Carol gets convicted and Tim gets the reduced sentence. In the worst case scenario, the jury believes Tim and sets him free while Carol takes the fall.

Messina saw Carol as someone who, “because of her lousy experiences in life, could shut out everything. Nothing mattered. Tomorrow is tomorrow; today is today. She didn’t have to plan on anything long distance. You do what you have to in order to survive.”

He may have appealed to her conscience to get her to talk, but the detective sergeant didn’t believe Carol had a conscience—at least not in the way most people do. In his opinion, Carol was a master of rationalization. It was like Carol was saying, “Yeah, I killed my husband, but it was something that just had to be done”; that was her attitude. As for Nancy: “Yeah, she was my friend, but what could I do?”

What could she do?

How about not pumping acid into the poor woman’s veins?

In all his years in police work, Messina doubted he had seen a more painful way to die. It was torture, plain and simple. In Carol’s mind, she wasn’t thinking about how much she hurt Nancy. Carol was thinking about the end product.

The end product was Nancy’s death, but what was the goal of the torture? Bad guys tortured for one of two reasons. Either they enjoyed inflicting pain before the victim was killed, or they were trying to elicit important information before the victim succumbed.

Nancy could have been shot, nice and neat, with one through the head. If they’d done it someplace secluded, like the park in Flint, there would have been no mess and no one the wiser. It might even have been chalked up to a problem Nancy had with some drug dealer.

No, they didn’t have to torture her. Messina was convinced that Carol hadn’t told the whole truth. He believed that the reason for the torture was that Tim, and maybe Carol, too, was trying to elicit information from Nancy. But what?

Someplace, in his heart of hearts, Messina wanted to believe that this was a sadistic crime that made sense. To believe otherwise meant Tim Collier was a true monster—and true monsters made even experienced cops shiver.

Monster or not, a criminal’s motives are complex. No one ever knows the whole truth. It’s a goal to aspire to, but it’s just that, a goal. Motive, though, wasn’t necessary for a conviction. Just facts that a jury believed.

Problem was, while Carol Giles’s second statement seemed reliable in terms of means and opportunity, her first was inconsistent. If Collier had a good defense attorney, he would pounce on those inconsistencies to try and show that his client was the victim of an affair gone wrong.

No, they needed a stronger case to guarantee both convictions.

A child’s toy, a piggy bank in the shape of a Coke bottle, had started it all. Carol stated she swung and hit Nancy with it. Where was it? It had not shown up in any of the Dumpster searches; yet it, too, was a murder weapon. Tom Helton kept wondering where it was.

With Carol’s help, they had recovered the syringes used to kill Nancy, and they had the acid she was carrying out of the house and the stuff she put in the Dumpsters, including the bleachladen towel Tim had used to smother Nancy. But what about the piggy bank? Helton went over Carol’s statements again.

In one of them, Carol said that the piggy bank had originally been on a shelf, where she and Tim placed it in advance of the murder. She had then taken it off the shelf and confronted Nancy with it. Soon after, she struck her. Helton reasoned that if they had not gotten rid of it, and there was nothing in any of their statements to indicate that, it should still be someplace at the crime scene.

On top of his desk, on a large pile of papers, was a thick manila folder. The words on it read
BILLITER HOMICIDE.
Helton opened the folder and pulled out a bunch of photographs. He laid them flat on his desktop. He spread them out so he could see better.

They were crime photographs. He shuffled them, until he found the ones he wanted.

Helton looked down at shots of the basement, where Carol and Tim killed Nancy. There were all kinds of shots of the Ping-Pong table, the walls, the floor the mattress and box springs had lain on before they were moved to the garage’s rafters. There was the bookcase.…

The bookcase!

In one of the bookcase’s lower shelves, Helton spotted a large object, apparently plastic, shaped like a soda bottle with the Coke logo. Helton rifled some papers from underneath his pile and came up with the statement Carol had given to Shanlian in which she said that she struck Nancy with a piggy bank “shaped like a Coke bottle.”

Helton immediately notified Messina and then called Assistant District Attorney McNamara to obtain a search warrant. He took the warrant to the 48th District Court and swore to it before Magistrate B. Smith. With the warrant thus authorized, he and Messina drove down Walnut Lake Road to Carol Giles’s house.

Inside, the place was empty. Carol and Tim were in jail; the kids were with Jessie’s sister. They really would have been surprised if anyone was there.

In the basement, they found the Coke bottle piggy bank on the shelf, exactly as it had been in the photo. To preserve the evidence, Helton pulled on a pair of rubber gloves and picked it up. The base of the bank was cracked and broken, probably from the impact with Nancy’s face.

The bottle was placed in a large envelope and transported back to the police department, where it was tagged as evidence. Then, following procedure, Helton took the piggy bank over to the Michigan State Police Crime Lab at Northville, where it would be tested for latent prints, blood, fiber and other substance analysis. Later that day, Helton received the results.

There had been a positive match for Nancy’s blood; Carol’s prints were also on the bottle. Helton was batting a thousand.

The kids, Jessie Jr. and Jesseca—what did they know about the murders? Were they witnesses? Had their mother said anything to them? The police needed to know.

Helton picked up the phone and called Maddie Marion, Jessie’s sister. The kids were staying with her while Carol was in jail. After the usual introductions, Helton requested an interview with the kids. But Marion was very concerned about the children’s well-being. She didn’t think it a good idea to be interviewed by the police. Neither, it seems, did Carol.

The night she was placed by Helton in Haven, she made calls to her sister-in-law. She knew Maddie to be a great person, a responsible person. And Carol knew she was in deep trouble.

Carol had done everything she could to keep her kids away from the line of fire, from the actual murder and the cover-up. Admittedly, she had left them home alone when she and Tim disposed of the body on Thursday night, November 13. But wasn’t that at least better than taking them along?

What was she supposed to have done? Tell Collier, “Tim, I need a baby-sitter. I can’t leave the kids alone while we go to Flint to get rid of the body”?

Wham!
The barrel of Tim’s automatic would have cracked across her cheek and she’d have a broken face like she’d given Nancy. Then where would she be? Maybe Tim would get nuts; he’d go upstairs and do Jessie Jr. and Jesseca, too.

“No witnesses,” Tim always said.

No, Carol had done the right thing. As soon as Nancy was out of there, Carol sent the kids to Jessie’s sister. For safekeeping. She made plans that if she faced incarceration, Maddie would take Jessie Jr. and Jesseca in. And she had. Now, Marion was telling Helton over the phone that she didn’t want the kids to be interviewed.

Helton thought for a moment.

“Mrs. Marion,” he said after a long pause. “I understand how you feel and sympathize. I’ve got kids of my own. What about this? Why don’t you meet me at Pete’s in West Bloomfield? It’s a family restaurant. We can have a cup of coffee there and talk.”

Marion thought that was a good idea and agreed.

At the appointed hour, Helton saw a middle-aged, attractive black woman walk into the restaurant. Maybe it was the attitude or the sport jacket, the type cops wear in real life and in the movies, that identified him. Whatever it was, she introduced herself first; they got a table and some coffee.

“The kids,” Marion explained, “they’ve had a rough time of it. Their father died about six weeks ago.”

“I know,” said Helton sympathetically.

“I feel the children have not recovered emotionally from their father’s death, and to question them about a murder, well, that’s probably more than they can handle.”

Helton explained that this was a very serious situation. They may have knowledge of the murder and he promised to be tactful and understanding when he questioned them.

Marion certainly understood the police’s need for information, but the kids hadn’t said anything about what had been happening in their house. Certainly, nothing unusual. And they seemed to be okay.

If the kids had been traumatized, Helton felt sure Marion would have mentioned it, which indicated they probably knew and saw nothing. Carol had done a good job of keeping them out of it. Of course, she had killed their father, too.

“Let me know if they make any mention of what took place in their home,” said Helton, rising and taking the check.

Marion said she would.

Back in the squad room fifteen minutes later, Helton sat down in his cubicle. His was the one closest to the door. Maybe when he got a little more seniority, he’d get one in the middle of the room. Or maybe an office? He had to smile; he’d need another promotion for that to happen.

The next thing for him to consider was tying Collier in forensically to Billiter’s body. Helton called Judge Edward Avadenka from the 48th District Court for the purpose of swearing to a search warrant for blood, saliva and hair samples from Tim Collier. He faxed the warrant to the judge, and after swearing to the fact and signing it, the judge faxed over a signed copy.

Helton took Collier to a local hospital, where he provided the police with hair, saliva and blood, which would be used for DNA comparison tests with any unknown fluids found on Billiter’s body and, in particular, her anus.

He went back and reread the autopsy report. On page 4, halfway down, there was the following statement from the medical examiner: