Needle Work: Battery Acid, Heroin, and Double Murder(22)
September 28, 1997
Carol had just come home from shopping when she found Jessie, unconscious, by the side of their bed. She picked up the phone and dialed. It was 2:00 P.M.
“He’s so cold,” Carol told the 911 operator. “I think he’s, you know, I think he’s already dead. He’s cold.”
“Well, just lay him on his back the best you can,” the operator repeated for the third or fourth time.
With the help of her landlord and his son, they were finally able to get Jessie, all 468 pounds of him, on his back. The operator told her to start CPR. Carol held his nose, opened his mouth, and almost threw up.
There was something really gross in his throat. She couldn’t be sure what it was, maybe some sort of puke. Ugh!
Carol heard sirens. Squealing brakes. Heavy feet pounding on pavement. The cop seemed to be by her side not more than a few seconds later. She stopped the CPR and told the operator that the police were there.
A moment later, the paramedics ran in, put their equipment down, tore Jessie’s pajama top open, and attached EKG leads. While checking the digital readout, a medic asked Carol the last time she saw him conscious.
Carol told them that the last time she’d seen Jessie alive was eleven o’clock. She had gone out shopping, and when she returned, she had found him unconscious and propped up on one elbow beside the bed.
She said that Jessie seemed like he was going to have a heart attack and he wanted her to leave the house. He wanted to be alone. The implication was he knew the end was near and wanted to die alone, with dignity.
“There’s no heartbeat,” the medic said finally, withdrawing the leads from Jessie’s bare chest. His skin was ice cold and rigor mortis had begun. The guy looked up at Carol.
“Looks like he’s been dead for a while,” he said sympathetically.
The medic asked Carol a few questions about Jessie’s overall health. She told him about the stroke, heart attack, and diabetes. The medic called North Oakland Medical Center and relayed that information to a doctor on duty, who declared Jessie officially dead.
One of the cops gathered up all of Jessie’s medications to list in his report; then he called the medical examiner, which was standard procedure in Michigan whenever a police officer arrived at the scene of a death. It didn’t mean an autopsy, of course. It was, obvious to everyone present that Jessie had died of natural causes.
Carol watched as the death professionals shared the information about Jessie’s health history and medications. An hour later, the man from the medical examiner’s arrived. He was the ME on duty. He did a cursory examination of Jessie’s body, still on the floor where he had fallen. He announced that, coupled with what they knew about his medical conditions, Jessie had died from a heart attack.
The state released the body. Carol had to call to have the body picked up. She looked through the phone book and found the name of a funeral home nearby. She called and they said they’d be right by to pick him up.
It was dark by the time the guys from the funeral home arrived. They were big, strong men and were able to pick Jessie up and transfer him to a rolling table, the kind with legs that collapsed as soon as you pushed it into an ambulance. Or a hearse.
Since the house was a ranch, they didn’t have to worry about steps. If they had, they didn’t know what they would have done. They wheeled Jessie out and down the driveway to their black van. They opened the door and lifted him up; the legs collapsed and they pushed him in. With a satisfying snap, they closed the door and got into the cab.
Carol pulled the drapes aside and watched from an inside window. The van drove down the street. After a few seconds, it was out of view. And just like that, Jessie Giles’s life ended. How was she going to break the news to their kids?
Later that night, the phone rang at Phyllis Burke’s house. Her forty-five-year-old daughter, Nancy Billiter, answered it.
“Nancy, its Carol.”
“What’s wrong? You sound—”
“Nancy, Jessie died.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry!”
“It was a heart attack.”
Jessie was Nancy’s cocaine dealer. That’s how the two women had met. Carol would drop in at South Boulevard Station on the way home from work for a drink. South Boulevard Station was a big restaurant with a friendly bar in Auburn Hills, another Detroit suburb. Nancy worked there as a waitress.
The two women just seemed to hit it off. They had a common interest in mystery novels and traded paperbacks frequently. Despite their age difference, they exchanged life stories, the way drinking buddies do at bars, but they took it a step further and began socializing.
Nancy was living at her mom’s house with her eight-year-old grandson, Garret; she had custody of the boy and was hoping to get together enough money to get their own place. Carol would come over to visit with L’il Man and Jesseca and they would play with Garret.
Nancy noticed that Jessie Jr. was having trouble learning how to ride a bike, so she spent hours with the six-year-old, helping him ride a two-wheeler, guiding him up and down the sidewalk in front of her mom’s house. Nancy was such a good person.
When Carol told her that the big man had died, she couldn’t get there fast enough. She had thought the world of Jessie. Rushing up the steps of Carol’s house, she couldn’t help but remember how she had helped Jessie and Carol move in barely three months before, and now tragedy had struck.