Needle Work: Battery Acid, Heroin, and Double Murder(49)

The prosecution rested. Time for lunch.

Carol spent much of the break hunkered down in the empty jury box, where she was allowed to stay instead of the holding cell. She looked out at the courtroom, with only a few people seated in the gallery during lunch. Her head swiveled around, looking at the people, and then suddenly her head whipped back so fast, she just about gave herself whiplash.

“Oh my God!”

Sitting there in the front row was Nancy Billiter. Carol continued to stare at the ghost and then her eyes focused on the woman next to “Nancy.” That calmed her down.

It was actually Nancy’s niece. Susan Garrison’s twenty-two-year-old daughter bore an amazing resemblance to her aunt. She was sitting in the front row with her mother.

Behind the scenes, a drama was unfolding.

John Basch had been arguing with Carol Giles, trying to talk her out of testifying. He didn’t want her to testify. He didn’t want Skrzynski to get a shot at her. But Carol was insistent. She wanted to tell her side of the story. When court reconvened in the afternoon, Basch stood when the judge asked if the defense was ready.

“Call your first witness,” said the judge.

“Carol Giles,” said Basch.

The courtroom erupted into hushed whispers. The accused murderess got up slowly from her chair and walked across the well of the courtroom.

“Raise your right hand,” said the clerk. “Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”

“I do.”

“Please be seated.”

Messina, Shanlian and Helton thought Carol would violate the oath. Why not? It was time to save her ass. More than likely, she would try to lay the blame for what happened on Tim. At least if she was smart, that’s what she would do.

Basch asked her to describe what happened.

“I meant to kill Jessie,” Carol said.

Holy shit! thought Helton, just about falling off his seat.

“I know it will establish elements of first-degree murder, but I want to tell my side of the story,” said Carol.

It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. Only in movies and on TV does a suspect confess to murder on the stand. But here it was, real life, and Carol Giles was about to do exactly that.

Carol’s testimony was 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. He got her pregnant twice before marrying her in 1993.

Carol said she spent much of her marriage nursing her 468-pound husband through severe health problems, including a stroke and a heart attack, despite the abusive way Jessie treated her.

“Why didn’t you just divorce him?” Basch asked.

“I had to rule it out,” Carol said, “because I was afraid what Jessie might do to me and the children. My kids mean everything to me.”

Carol Giles testified that she met Tim Collier at St. Joseph Mercy Hospital, where she worked as a secretary and he as a custodian. They had an affair. Eventually she began to confide in him about the problems in her marriage. Tim responded to her complaints by telling her: “The best way to get rid of your pain was to get rid of your problem.”

“It was Timmy who told me how to kill Jessie and gave me the heroin to mix with his insulin. Tim figured that with Jessie’s history of heart problems, his death would look like it was from natural causes.”

In a hushed, emotional voice, Carol described in detail how she had killed her husband, Jessie Giles.

She couldn’t remember what started the conversation about killing Jessie. What she did remember was it happened in October 1996. What day exactly, she couldn’t be sure.

She and Tim started talking about Jessie. They had talked about him before, of course, about how difficult he was and how sick he was. Tim always listened with a compassionate ear. Only this time, Tim seemed to steer the conversation in a different direction.

“Jessie’s really sick with a stroke and he just had a bad heart [attack],” Carol said.

She just hated being with him. Tim rationally explained that she didn’t have to go on feeling so bad. There was an alternative.

“We’re fighting all the time, all the time,” Carol lamented.

Tim told her that he could get a gram of heroin and they could mix it with Jessie’s insulin. They could make it look just like he had a heart attack, Tim explained. As Tim talked, Carol listened, really listened.

She thought that, well, it felt like the only way out.

“I told him okay.”

Sure, she’d be killing her children’s father, she reasoned, but was that any better than living with parents who hated each other, who bickered all the time? And was Jessie better off living with his diabetes and his stroke and his heart?

Jessie’s time on earth was limited. One of his ailments would get him sooner or later. Maybe it was better to end it now. He’d be out of his misery and so would she.

Carol Giles and Tim Collier talked and plotted a little more until they were ready to act.

September 27, 1997

Carol made sure that the kids were staying at their aunt’s house that weekend. She didn’t want them around when she killed their father.

That Saturday, Carol went over to Tim’s house. He had gotten her the heroin and told her to put it on a spoon and mix it with the insulin. She tried doing it and saw that it was a dark brown color, whereas insulin was crystal clear.