Needle Work: Battery Acid, Heroin, and Double Murder (21 page)

A few days later, Jessie was buried. With him at last in the ground, Carol was now ready to take her relationship with Tim to the next level. Tim moved in—lock, stock and pit bull.

Tim had a pit bull. The day he moved in, he brought the dog over to the house with him. Carol wasn’t crazy about having the dog around her kids, not with the reputation of the breed. Tim assured her that the dog was okay, the kids would be fine, and nothing would happen. In fact, he was so certain of that, he decided that Carol could take care of the animal herself.

As soon as he moved in, Carol gave him the keys to Jessie’s gold-colored Caddy. Jessie loved that car. It was a status symbol. Now it was Tim’s, and Tim decided to use it for a road trip.

On October 1, 1997, just three days after they killed Jessie, Tim drove the Caddy west along Interstate 80 for California. He was headed for Sacramento, where he’d visit his mom and some friends. He told Carol he’d be home November 3, in time for her birthday, November 4.

As Tim drove west into the setting sunset, Nancy Billiter moved in to comfort her friend and her kids over their loss.

“I just want people to know why I did what I did,” Carol said. “When I did it, I looked at it as the only way out,” Carol continued, finishing her direct testimony.

“No more questions,” said Basch.

Judge Steven Andrews looked at Skrzynski, who got up and began the cross-examination from the lectern.

“Mrs. Giles, how did you feel after your husband died?”

Carol said she was relieved when Jessie died and his death was initially thought to be by “natural causes. I didn’t think in doing this that I was going to spend the rest of my life in prison,” she said, wiping tears from her eyes.

What else could the prosecutor ask her? She had done his job for him. At the defense table, Tim Collier bowed his head. After that, Basch rested his case.

“I’ve been a judge for twenty-three years and I’ve never heard a defendant get on the stand and say, ‘I murdered my husband,’” Judge Andrews commented after the juries left the courtroom.

“I advised her that if she testified, she would make up the elements of first-degree murder,” Basch told reporters afterward. “That’s exactly what she did.”

Why had she done it? Was it guilt that drove her to make the confession or anger at Tim Collier for suggesting murder in the first place?

Collier had no choice now. He, too, had to take the stand.

June 17, 1998

Tim Collier swore to tell the truth and then promptly testified under oath that he knew nothing of Carol Giles’s plan to kill Jessie.

They were not intimate lovers, as she had insisted. No, he was just using her for casual sex. He never gave her any heroin or even suggested she kill her husband. He had no desire and no reason to want to kill Jessie. Why would he?

That was Tim’s story. It had been his story right from the time that he’d been arrested and it was still his story. He was sticking to it.

June 18, 1998

During closing arguments, Skrzynski didn’t have much to say about Carol Giles’s guilt; she had said it all for him and he reminded the jury of that. As for Tim Collier, Skrzynski told the juries that beyond Giles’s allegations of abuse, Collier had his own motive for murder.

“The idea was for them to be together, and once Jessie was dead, he lived in Jessie’s house with Jessie’s wife and drove Jessie’s car. Carol Giles told you the truth.” He reminded the jury that Tim had told her, “The best way to get rid of the pain was to get rid of your problem.”

In his closing, Collier’s attorney countered that that statement was just casual advice.

“Tim Collier had no reason to kill Jessie Giles. Carol Giles has admitted to first-degree murder and now she wants to take somebody else with her.”

John Basch stated unequivocally during his closing statement, “Carol Giles never had a chance.”

Basch reviewed Carol Giles’s testimony that she was just fifteen years old when she ran away from home and was taken in by Jessie Giles, a man more than twice her age, who got her pregnant twice before marrying her.

“She worked for him, sold drugs for him, and when the fights became more frequent and more abusive, she tried to leave him,” Basch continued. “When she couldn’t, she turned to Tim Collier, thinking he was a friend. He turned out to be a monster. She sought comfort from a man who schooled her in murder. He told her to kill her husband and he showed her how to do it. The saddest part of this whole case is that she listened to him.”

It was an eloquent defense and he implored the jury to take all this into consideration when considering their verdict.

With closing arguments concluded, the judge charged both juries, explaining the laws, the crimes and what the sentences could be. Then he dismissed them to separate jury rooms to consider their verdicts.

How long can a jury be out considering its verdict? Days, sometimes weeks. But minutes? No one had ever heard of that.

Yet there it was, the bell in the courtroom ringing, signaling the jury had a verdict in Carol Giles’s case, and they had only been out a total of twenty minutes. Court quickly reconvened. Carol Giles took her place at the defense table.

“Has the jury reached its verdict?” Judge Andrews asked.

The foreman answered in the affirmative. He handed the verdict to the court clerk, who read it out loud.

“In the matter of the death of Jessie Giles, we the jury find Carol Giles guilty of first-degree murder.”

At the defense table, Carol slumped forward and fought back tears. Her jury had taken less time to find her guilty of first-degree murder than she had taken to commit the crime. Handcuffed and manacled, Carol Giles was led out through a side entrance of the courtroom.

That left Tim Collier’s jury. Ostensibly, because it was her word against his, it was a more difficult verdict to consider. It was. This time, it only took one hour for the bell to ring in the courtroom.

“Has the jury reached its verdict?” Judge Andrews asked after court was convened and all the principals were in place. Tim stared at the jury.

“We have, Your Honor,” said the jury foreman, who handed the verdict to the clerk, who published it.

“In the matter of the death of Jessie Giles, we the jury find the defendant Timothy Orlando Collier guilty of first-degree murder.”

Tim looked like he’d swallowed a snake. He must have been wondering, what the heck was the jury thinking? As far as he was concerned, he had done nothing wrong. With a backward glance at the jury, he, too, was led off in chains.

Outside the courtroom, Phyllis Burke and her daughters cried. The three cops shook hands and John Skrzynski allowed himself a brief smile. One down and one more to go.

July 22, 1998

For Nancy Billiter, Judgment Day had come in the basement of the Giles home in West Bloomfield. It had been a bloody, painful end. Carol Giles and Tim Collier had it easier.

First, Carol was led into court for sentencing, wearing manacles and de rigueur orange prison jumpsuit. She took her seat at the defense table by her lawyer. Court was convened when Judge Andrews ascended the bench.

“Does the defendant have anything to say before I hand down sentence?”

Carol rose. She looked pale and bit her lip.

“I just want to apologize for all the trouble I have caused. I never meant for this to happen.”

Judge Andrews looked down at Carol Giles with eyes that showed no pity.

“I’ve heard from people who claim they are victims, but I haven’t heard from the victims in this case—your children. How sad a day when a child has to say, ‘My mother murdered my father.’ May God have mercy upon your soul.”

With that biblical pronouncement, Andrews gave Carol the decidedly unbiblical sentence of life in prison without parole. She was led out. Soon, Tim Collier shuffled in. Nonplussed, Tim took his place at the defense table by his lawyer and looked up at the bench. At that moment, the judge looked huge, like God pronouncing judgment.

“Does the defendant have anything to say before sentence is pronounced?”

Tim Collier rose.

“Yes, Your Honor,” he said. “I don’t feel justice has been served. I am innocent and wrongly convicted. That’s basically it.”

He sat down. Judge Andrews paused for a moment, looking at his notes, and then he looked down at Tim Collier.

“The truth is you are a cold-blooded killer; you have no remorse in your body,” snapped Judge Andrews, his voice seething with anger. “You planned and helped execute another human being.”

Most importantly, he had shown no remorse, maintaining his innocence. But the judge wouldn’t buy it. He gave Tim Collier the mandatory sentence of life in prison without parole.

Sixteen

Tim Collier was royally pissed off. How dare that judge convict him of murder when he didn’t do anything! And that stupid attorney of his, what kind of defense did he put up?

He had another trial approaching. The last thing he needed was to be convicted of two murder-one charges. Dissatisfied with his representation, he asked the court for a new attorney and the court agreed, appointing J. Herbert Larson as his new counsel. Quickly, though, they had a “personality disagreement.”

September 1, 1998

Herbert Larson told Oakland Circuit judge Rudy J. Nichols during a special hearing that he could not represent Tim Collier. He claimed that Collier had threatened him.

Larson said that the threat came during a jail-house visit when the two differed over “trial philosophy,” and Collier told him “there’s a bullet on your head, Larson.” Collier was apparently making it clear that if Larson didn’t get him off at the next trial, there would be hell to pay.

Collier denied ever making such a threat. But the judge decided to err on the side of caution; he agreed to Larson’s request and appointed a new lawyer, Mitchell Ribitwer, to take over Collier’s defense.

Afterward, Larson wouldn’t discuss the threat with reporters except to say, “I think you can say there was a complete and total breakdown in the attorney-client relationship.”

Larson said that Collier had wanted him to file motions that would not have been appropriate or in keeping with the law. The threat itself left Larson perplexed, but he wasn’t worried.

Asked to comment on his client’s defense at the second trial, Ribitwer told the press, “When it went down, he was completely freaked out by it. He didn’t know she was going to kill her [Nancy Billiter]. He probably will testify.”

John Basch conceded it would be difficult for jurors to look past the horrendous nature of the case.

“The problem we have is her confession,” said Basch. “We have to rely on the jury to do its duty to listen to all the evidence before they make up their minds.”

“It was a brutal murder and the evidence will show that” was Skrzynski’s reply.

Once again, two juries would hear the evidence and decide each case individually; this time, it was before Judge Rudy Nichols.

September 10, 1998

The motive for the murder of Nancy Billiter was still the weakest part of the prosecution’s case. What was the reason Giles and Collier had killed her? Prosecutor Skrzynski had a theory.

During his opening statement, Skrzynski told the juries that Carol Giles and Tim Collier killed Nancy Billiter to cover up the first murder of Jessie Giles. Because Nancy had knowledge of what they had done and had to die.

Skrzynski then reviewed the physical and forensic evidence against them, including the battery acid police recovered from Carol Giles’s possession that had been injected into Nancy’s blood. While he couldn’t promise it, he felt that if Carol Giles testified on her behalf once again, he could get the truth out of her. He would have Carol Giles tell the jury why Nancy Billiter had to die.

Defense attorney Basch told the jury of Carol Giles’s abusive life and how, despite her statements, it was Tim Collier who killed Nancy Billiter, not Carol Giles. Ribitwer, Collier’s latest attorney, claimed the opposite of course: It was Carol Giles who killed Nancy Billiter, not Collier.

The prosecutor’s first witness was medical examiner Dr. L. J. Dragovic.

It took Dragovic almost an hour to describe to the jurors the dozens of injuries Nancy had suffered, including the eleven puncture wounds and injections with battery acid and bleach, her broken ribs, broken nose and, most tellingly, her sodomizing. For while it could not be pinned down to who had violated Nancy Billiter, it was clear that a violation had occurred. The prosecutor would leave it to the jurors to draw his or her own conclusions.

During the ME’s testimony, Skrzynski took careful pains to make the jury understand that the injections, though painful, did not kill her. He wanted them to understand what a slow, torturous process her death was.

“What did kill her?” Skrzynski finally asked.

The ME testified that blood from her injuries had flooded her lungs and windpipe.

“She drowned in her own blood. Death was by asphyxiation by inhaling her own blood,” Dragovic said.

“Could the process of death been quickened by someone holding a towel to Nancy’s mouth, preventing her from coughing up blood from a smashed nose?”

“Yes.”

“Are the wounds on her face and head consistent with being beaten by a pistol?”

“Yes.”

Dragovic testified to, and showed the jury graphic pictures of, all the wounds. The jurors’ response was to stare with revulsion at the defendants. Some of Nancy’s relatives found the testimony so sickening, they left the courtroom in tears.

“Carol was supposed to be her friend. If I could ask her [Carol] one question, it would be, ‘Why? Why the brutality?’” Phyllis Burke told the press after the day’s testimony.

“She had her life ahead of her,” Burke continued. “We’re not supposed to bury our children. It’s just not right.”

September 11, 1998

Kevin Shanlian testified that Billiter’s burgundy pullover aided identification because it bore the name of South Boulevard Station, the bar where she worked. Fellow employees, who supplied police with the Walnut Lake address where Billiter lived with Giles, identified her picture. Then, when police questioned Giles, her answers were evasive.