Needle Work: Battery Acid, Heroin, and Double Murder(37)

He said that it was Carol who injected Nancy; it was Carol who had killed her. He also said that it was Carol, not him, who had used gasoline and charcoal lighter fluid to ignite Billiter’s body in the park in Flint, where they dumped it. As for having sex with Nancy either alive or dead, he denied ever having sexual contact with Nancy Billiter at any time. As for Jessie Giles, he had a lot to tell about that death, too.

On September 28, 1997, Carol Lynn Giles murdered her husband, Jessie Giles, Tim claimed, by lacing his insulin injection with heroin. Previously, Carol had indicated that a girl she worked with had wanted to kill her husband who was a diabetic, but she did not know how to go about it. That is, without raising any suspicion. This girlfriend wanted it to appear that her husband died of natural causes. Collier then suggested that this could be accomplished by lacing his insulin injection with heroin.

But, Tim said, he had no idea that Carol Giles was really talking about her husband.

On September 28, 1997, Carol contacted him by telephone at his home and said, “I did him. But it’s taking a long time.”

Tim asked her, “Did what?”

And Carol replied that she had injected Jessie with the heroin/insulin, but he wasn’t dead yet. Tim wasn’t happy that Carol had done this. He had been having an extramarital affair with her, and some people might become suspicious about Jessie’s death because they knew of the Collier-Giles affair. Tim said that he had decided to go to California for two weeks until things “cooled off.”

Tim’s “new” confession was verbal, not written. Helton briefed Messina on its substance and immediately had him brought out to be interviewed in the same room where he’d spoken to Carol. The chair was still warm.

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.