Needle Work: Battery Acid, Heroin, and Double Murder(24)

Carol, Tim, Jesseca and L’il Man all piled in the Caddy and tooled on over there. It wasn’t too far, maybe thirty miles as the crow flies, but for Carol, it was an extremely emotional trip.

They went to her dad’s house in Port Huron. Carol was glad Tim came along, because she was still scared of her father and what she claimed he had done to her. Even today, she wouldn’t go to her dad’s house unless there was someone else there. Even now, he still touched her and stuff … but the kids wanted to trick-or-treat with her brother’s daughter.

Tim knew all about the way Carol had been abused. She’d told him awhile back, which was why he didn’t say two words to her dad the whole time they were there. And there they were—the incestuous dad, or so Carol said, Dad’s girlfriend, Carol’s two kids, her brother, his child, and his girlfriend and Carol’s boyfriend. They really were one big, happy, dysfunctional family.

They stayed the night of October 31 and went home the next day. They began finalizing the plans for their California vacation. Child-care was all-important to Carol. Since Nancy owed her $200 for coke she’d given her, she offered to forgive the debt if Nancy baby-sat the kids while they were gone.

Nancy didn’t have any money to pay off her debt. It was a good offer. Besides, she loved the kids. It was agreed: for eliminating the $200 debt, Nancy would be home to get the two kids up and dressed for school and babysit them when they got home. When she went to work at five, she’d take the kids to Nancy’s sister Susan’s house in Pontiac and Susan would watch them for the three or four hours while Nancy was at work. Nancy would pick them up at nine or ten and get them back home in time for sleep and school the next day.

With the plan set, Carol and Tim left in her green pickup truck for California on November 4. It was Carol’s twenty-sixth birthday. They drove across the Rockies and the Great Plains, and inside of three days, they were in Sacramento, where they got a room at a local hotel. Sacramento was a large city, the state’s capital, and there were lots of motels and hotels to choose from.

Visiting her dad’s had set off a string of painful memories. Carol just had to talk about it. Tim said that he could see how uncomfortable she was.

“Maybe it’s just the way my dad is. If we could just hug and touch …” Her voice trailed off.

What Tim didn’t like was the way her dad was fondling his girlfriend in front of Carol and her brother and all the kids. Tim thought it was “inappropriate to do that in the living room in front of other people.”

“I want to kill my dad,” she finally said.

How bad did that make her look? Carol wanted to know. How bad was she that she wanted to kill her father?

“Well, just think about it. You know, we could do it and nobody would know,” Tim answered.

“What would we do?” she asked.

They could go into her dad’s place, Tim continued, and not leave any witnesses. If her brother was there, too bad. Would she be willing to kill her brother and his girlfriend if she was along?

Carol figured that if it occurred during the week, then nobody would be there but her dad. She didn’t think his girlfriend stayed with him. She pointed out that her dad had had several heart attacks and his heart was real bad. He also had some sort of disease in his spine. That led to a discussion about using heroin to kill her father.

Tim liked to cover the angles and he suggested filling up a few syringes. They only needed one to do her dad, but if they got up there and her brother was there with his girlfriend, they needed to be ready. They needed to be prepared: no witnesses.

If the brother was there, he would use his gun and make them lie down on the floor, and Carol could stick him while Tim kept her dad covered. Then it would be her dad’s turn.

“Stick one in his balls and one in his eye; so that way, whoever came in and saw this … maybe they could put two and two together and see that, you know, to see that he was a molester. Like the killer had left his calling card by killing him in that way,” Tim suggested.

Before Carol delivered the death wound, Tim wanted her to tell him, “No more. You won’t hurt me no more.” Then she would do it and just let him die.

As for the others, her dad’s girlfriend, her brother and his girlfriend, they could give them overdoses of heroin and then make it look like a robbery. Her dad had guns and money and other stuff in his house that someone would want to steal. They would also leave the needles at the scene.

After discussing it, they decided to “do” her dad when they got back. But then she realized that they were broke. They couldn’t kill him the way they wanted without the heroin and they couldn’t buy the heroin without the money. Still, Carol liked the plan.

Maybe if they got some money and got the heroin … but guilt began to eat away at her. She agreed to do it, but at the same time, she kept the thought in her mind that it wasn’t going to happen. She kept telling herself that everything would turn out all right.

On Saturday, November 8, Carol and Tim were still in Sacramento when Carol called Nancy to see how things were. It was 8:00 P.M. on the West Coast; 11:00 P.M. in Michigan. During that conversation, Nancy told her about the burglary.

Someone had broken in through the kitchen and stolen jewelry from the house. Nancy was so scared, she didn’t leave until the sun came up. Then she had to go to work.

“Well, Nancy, who do you think did it?” Carol asked.