Needle Work: Battery Acid, Heroin, and Double Murder(55)
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.
Checking her car trunk revealed blood spots. A search of the home turned up blood marks in the basement. The bloody mattress was discovered stashed in the garage.
Mike Messina testified as to Carol Giles’s confession and played it, all two hours, for the jury to hear. Then the prosecution rested and it was the defense’s turn.
September 14, 1998
Wearing a white T-shirt and black jeans, Carol Giles took the stand in her own defense. She maintained that it was Tim Collier who murdered Nancy Billiter. And to prove it, she finally told publicly why Billiter had to die. As the cops had always suspected, there was a much more plausible reason for her death than a simple burglary.
On October 1, 1997, just three days after they killed Jessie, Tim Collier drove the Caddy west along Interstate 80 for California. He was headed for Sacramento, where he planned to 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. Everything was going to be fine. Finally. Then Tim Collier got homesick.
Tim never expected that he would miss Carol and the kids so much. But after a day in California, he called every night. He said that he missed her, that all he could think about was her; he wanted to come home.
The wires from Sacramento to West Bloomfield burned up; they talked on the phone for hours. Tim knew he was showing too much weakness for her, but what could he do? He really loved and missed her. Hadn’t one of the reasons for killing Jessie been to be with her?