Needle Work: Battery Acid, Heroin, and Double Murder(60)

Judge Nichols looked down on the convicted double murderers with a cold gleam in his eye.

“You look at these actions, at man’s inhumanity to man, and you cannot even fathom it,” he began.

Then he sentenced them to life in prison without parole.

“You will spend the rest of your life in prison trying to remember what it’s like to be a real human being,” he concluded, and banged down his gavel.

Michigan didn’t have the death penalty; if the state did, Tim Collier was one person who might benefit from it. At least that’s what Tom Helton thought.

Some of Nancy’s family had initially wished the state could impose that punishment. After sitting through the trials, they changed their minds.

“With the death penalty, they would not have suffered like my sister suffered,” said Karen Clason, Nancy’s sister, to one of the press people.

“Does it [life in prison] make it better?” asked Susan Garrison, also speaking to the press. “Nothing will make it better.”





Epilogue


Carol Giles and Tim Collier are now serving their time in the Michigan State penal system. They will be there for the rest of their natural lives.

Carol Giles’s children continue to live with Maddie Marion, Jessie’s sister. No one knows what the long-term effect of their mother’s incarceration for their father’s death will be.

In March 1999, John Skrzynski got the conviction of a lifetime when he convicted Jack Kevorkian of second-degree murder. The conviction was based upon a celebrated tape Kevorkian had shown on 60 Minutes, where he administered a lethal injection to Thomas J. Youk.

Mike Messina is still a detective sergeant in the West Bloomfield Township Police Department. He is scheduled to retire in 2002.

Largely on the basis of his fine work in the Billiter/Giles case, Tom Helton has not been rotated back to patrol. He continues to work as a detective on the West Bloomfield Township police force.

Kevin Shanlian is still solving murder cases in Flint. He still has to consciously remember to wear his gun when he goes out in the field.

And the Billiter family? They continue to grieve. They also had some practical problems to consider.

“We were getting bills from the ambulance company that picked Nancy up and took her to the hospital,” says Susan Garrison. “It was like we don’t need this right now.”

Carol Giles and Tim Collier get all of their medical care for free.





A WORD ABOUT SOURCES


The story you have just read is true, but certain names were changed to protect the privacy of those individuals on the periphery of the case.

Interviews, official documents, as well as local news accounts, have all been used in the writing of this book. A few scenes have been presented out of chronological order not for dramatic effect but to simplify the narrative. Likewise, the investigation presented in these pages involved many police officers. For the sake of clarity, the story is presented principally through the eyes of the three lead cops.

The documentation on the investigation of both murders covered in these pages was the most detailed I have ever seen. One can never predict what the appeals courts will do, but it is highly doubtful either defendant will ever be freed on some police or prosecutorial irregularity.

In particular, I want to thank Tom Helton for his tireless cooperation. Mike Messina, Kevin Shanlian and Susan Garrison were also incredibly helpful in providing information about the case and, in particular, their feelings.

Finally I’d like to thank my editor Paul Dinas for his support.





AUTHOR’S NOTE

Throughout the writing of this book, I kept two pictures of Nancy Billiter on my desk.

The first was Nancy, in death, as the police first discovered her. The second was a nursing school photo; Nancy with a bright smile in her nurse’s cap. The contrast could not be more startling and more indicative of the life Nancy Billiter lost.

Both the Billiter and the Giles families did not want this book written. They felt that it was dredging up old wounds, which they preferred to keep closed. One family member I spoke with accused me of making money off the dead.

Patiently, but angrily, I explained that if that were true, so were the Detroit Free Press, the Detroit News, the Associated Press and all the local stations in Detroit that covered the case.

What I do plead guilty to is painting as clear and as bloody a picture as possible of the murders. To do anything else would be to cheat Nancy and Jessie, just as Carol and Tim did.

It is only in the harsh light of investigation, in an attempt to make sense out of senseless events, that the most barbaric of acts can be finally understood. And accepted.

If in the process I have spoken for the dead, then I feel that I have done my job.

Fred Rosen can be contacted at crimedoesntpay.com





APPENDIX


Note: Carol Giles actually gave three statements to police. Because much of what she said was repetitious, they were edited down in the text.

Yet, despite all she said, the one question that was never answered to anyone’s satisfaction was whether or not Nancy Billiter had been sodomized after death. Did Tim Collier perpetrate this crime while Carol Giles watched? Tom Helton felt that the first statement she gave police, in which she said she went upstairs while Tim remained downstairs, was the key to proving this heinous act.