Needle Work: Battery Acid, Heroin, and Double Murder(59)

Carol took the piggy bank off the shelf and confronted Nancy with it. But when Nancy denied having any part in the burglary, Carol whacked her with the bottle/bank and Nancy’s cheekbone sank like a crater.

Bleeding, Nancy fell back on the mattress. She was dazed. As her cuts seeped blood and her cheek turned black and blue, she managed to right herself by instinct and crawl back up to the foot of the bed.

After her hands and feet were tied up, Tim slapped her, over and over; hard blows rained down upon her face and head.

“No, don’t, please,” Nancy pleaded.

As Carol continued to describe the last moments of Nancy’s life, she said nothing about questioning Nancy about the overheard conversation. But the cops knew they must have. That was the reason for the method of death: Tim had tortured her with the acid injections to find out if she had told anyone else.

Tim had punched her over and over in the stomach. With each punch, Nancy had groaned in pain. Carol gagged her, and Tim had her start the injections. After the first one, he probably removed the gag to ask who had been told. When Nancy said “no one” and screamed, Carol would have put the gag back in.

A second injection. Carol removed the gag. Nancy was probably breathing heavily and groaning in pain.

“Nancy, did you tell anyone else about Jessie’s murder?”

Of course, she would have denied it, because the whole thing was doubtful to begin with. And after her second denial, a third injection happened. At that point, Tim may have been so frustrated by Nancy’s lack of cooperation that he attempted the rape, only to be repulsed by her until later. Maybe a few more questions, followed by a few more injections; until Tim would have proclaimed, “She won’t answer.”

It was then that he would have smothered her; when he knew for certain, when he felt in his gut, that she hadn’t told anyone about Jessie’s death and they were free and in the clear—if they could just kill her and get rid of the body so it couldn’t be tied back to them.

On cross-examination by Collier’s attorney, Carol Giles didn’t deviate from her story. Just like with Jessie, Tim Collier was the planner. Whatever she did to Nancy, it was what Tim forced her to do, at threat of death.

Then it was Tim Collier’s turn to turn the tables, or at least to try.

“I never planned to do it. I never wanted anyone to die,” Collier testified, countering Giles’s claim.

It was Carol who killed Nancy. He denied hitting her with a gun. Tim told the jurors he just wanted to frighten Nancy, and that was why he helped tie her up.

On closing, Skrzynski said that even if Collier merely watched he was guilty of first-degree murder because he suggested smothering Billiter.

“You couldn’t write a more premeditated murder than what was going on in that torture chamber,” Skrzynski said.

What could Basch and Ribitwer do? If the jury believed her, Carol Giles’s testimony was fatally damaging. They could only counter that the other guy did it.

The closing arguments over, the judge charged the juries and sent them off to deliberate. This time, the verdicts didn’t come back in twenty minutes or ninety minutes.

It took two hours. And at the end of that time, both juries pronounced Carol Giles and Tim Collier guilty of first-degree murder in the death of Nancy Billiter. Neither Giles nor Collier looked stunned by the verdicts.

“That’s what she gets!” Stacy Billiter, Nancy’s twenty-six-year-old daughter, shouted out when Carol Giles’s verdict was read.

Stacy clapped loudly. Tears flowed down her face. She had flown in from her Savannah, Georgia, home just to see justice done. As Giles was led out, she glanced back at Stacy with a wistful look in her eyes.

“Not only have I lost my mother, but also my father, sister and brother because she was all of those things to me,” said Stacy afterward to the press. “She went out of her way to help friends, like she tried to do for Carol and Tim.”

As for Tim Collier’s contention that Carol had done it and not him, one juror said afterward that Collier’s testimony was “totally unbelievable.”

“There’s no way in the world Nancy knew about Jessie’s murder,” said Phyllis Burke. “I don’t know if we’ll get through this or not. Nancy was a good person. She loved everybody. That’s what I don’t understand. She was good to Carol.”

October 9, 1998

One more earthly judgment day before the Final Judgment would be rendered. They would have to wait for the latter, Tim and Carol, and they would have a lot of time to think about where they were going.

All of the lead cops were there—Shanlian, Messina and Helton. So was Nancy’s family, packed into the courtroom; some members were weeping as they listened throughout the sentencing.

Dressed in jailhouse orange, shackled at hands and feet, Carol Giles and Tim Collier were brought in and took their seats with their lawyers at the defense table. The ex-lovers sat several feet apart and did not exchange so much as a glance or a word.

“Do the defendants have anything to say before I pronounce sentence?” asked Judge Nichols.

This time, Collier declined to say anything. It was probably best; his last speech didn’t help. Carol Giles, though, stood.

“I just want to apologize to the family because I know they’ve been hurt,” she said in classic understatement. “I can’t explain how all this happened, but no matter how many times I say I’m sorry, this won’t change.”