Authors: Steve Jackson
Love Me To Death (18 page)
His other choice was to be a minister. He’d been named after a family pastor, William Lee. One of his uncles was also a minister. “He was kind and gentle . . . and he helped people who were hurtin’. I loved The Word and Lord Jesus, and I liked going to Sunday school ’cause people just seem to be nicer on Sunday.”
Neal paused, furrowed his brow, and growled, “Never did like mean people. . . . My sister told me there was a bad storm when I was born, and that was the reason there was a light about me. I always got along with everybody and loved people.” When he was twelve or thirteen years old, he said, the light was extinguished. An older, married woman invited him to apply lotion to her legs, “and it went from there.” The woman’s husband was running around on her, he said, so she was using him as a way to get even. The guilt was enormous.
“I couldn’t wash myself enough,” he said. Nor could he talk to anybody about what was going on. “She said if I ever told, my family would disown me.” On the other hand, sex with a beautiful woman wasn’t all bad. “It was such a contradiction. I enjoyed it, but afterward I would feel so guilty.”
In the interview room, Neal rubbed his palms together. “It was like the two sides in me was sanding each other, and there wasn’t much left in between.” The affair continued for about six months, during which time he turned the tables and began molesting a young girl.
The older woman was the one who finally called the affair off. They never talked about it again until he got out of the army, which he had joined shortly after his seventeenth birthday in October 1972. The woman was divorced by this time and, he said, eager to resume their affair. “I told her, ‘You had me as a boy; now have me as a man.’ ” When he was ready to leave, he said, she was talking about staying together, even marrying. “But that’s where it ended. I turned and walked away.
“I have no ill feelings towards her. Lord knows what she’s goin’ through now, wonderin’ if she was the cause of all of this. She was just passin’ on her anger and pain, almost like it was a demon, and givin’ it to me. I don’t blame her, but that’s when the light went out.
“I became more distant from my family, not as cheerful. I started gettin’ into trouble more. I knew I couldn’t be a minister or an FBI agent . . . not after what I done.”
There are other claims of sexual abuse in which he was the “unwilling victim”—once by a church elder while in his teens and once by an army sergeant.
In September 1998, when Neal sat down with investigators Aceves and Zimmerman, he complained plenty about the women in his life—from the married woman, to his four wives, to his four victims in June and July of 1998. But, he said, he didn’t want it to sound like he was blaming his rampage on others. . . . Except, he said, there was one thing that females did to him that he still resented. When they were all kids, his sisters used to lie and say that he hurt them to get him in trouble, he complained. “They’d make up stories that I hit or choked them. They’d even do things like squeeze their arms or necks and then say, ‘Look what Bill did.’
“Then Dad would beat the tar out of me with his belt while my sisters would peek in at what was goin’ on and laugh. I’m not sayin’ I never did any of that . . . but ninety percent of what they said I did wasn’t true. . . . Just like what people are sayin’ about me now, a lot of it ain’t true.”
Years later, with their mother dying of cancer, he said, his sisters confessed how they’d framed him. “My mother was furious with them for getting me beat for something I didn’t do.” His eyes welled up again at the thought of his mother on her deathbed.
Suddenly the young man in the cubicle next door threw his head back and shrieked with laughter as his poor mother wiped at her eyes and tried to smile. Neal paused in midsentence; his mouth hung open and a scowl creased his face. He looked at his breakfast waiter and shook his head as if he couldn’t believe that he had to live with people who acted . . . well, so damned crazy.
“It’s like going to bed one night,” he said quietly, “and waking up in the pit.”
Sixteen
September 20, 1999
William Lee “Cody” Neal shuffled into the Jefferson County courtroom in the standard-issue Halloween-orange jumpsuit, white T-shirt and socks, and blue slippers. Hunched over as he waited for the deputy to unlock the handcuffs behind him, he risked a quick glance back at the spectator gallery.
If looks could kill, he would have crumpled immediately to the floor of the courtroom. The families and friends of his victims, who’d been seated first, filled the three rows of pews in the gallery behind the prosecution table and spilled over to the other side. Their eyes bored into Neal; jaws clenched and voices muttered angrily. The one victim who survived his rampage, Suzanne Scott, leaned against the shoulder of her mother.
There was not enough room in the courtroom for all the rest who wanted to get inside. However, few were there for Neal. The first row on the defense side was kept empty by the deputies in charge of court security—as much for his safety as anything else. The second row was reserved for his family, of which none were present, as well as those few supporters he had, such as Jim Aber, the public defender and staunch death penalty opponent Neal had fired.
One of Neal’s supporters was Byron Plumley, a representative of the anti-death-penalty American Friends Society and adjunct professor of religious studies at Regis University in Denver. Also present was a thin, middle-aged woman dressed in black who claimed that her sister used to date Neal and that she herself was “like a sister to him.” Next to her was a short, heavyset woman with crosses for earrings; she’d met him at Shipwreck’s.
In the far corner of the back row—most of which was occupied by members of the press, as well as courthouse personnel who managed to squeeze in for opening statements—was a pretty, petite young woman who nestled against a thin, young man. Jennifer, the defendant’s fourth wife, had appeared on television newscasts following his arrest in July 1998, apologizing on behalf of herself and his family for her former husband’s atrocities. She had avoided the press after that but now felt that she needed to see and hear what had become of Wild Bill Cody, the man who had swept her off her feet and then made her life hell.
The escorting deputies released the handcuffs from behind Neal’s back, and reattached them to a belly chain at the front. He sat down next to his advisory counsel, Randy Canney, and began rearranging the items in front of him: dictionary, yellow legal notepads, pens—which he arranged into a neat row—and a monitor for viewing the photographs that the prosecution would be entering into evidence. He wasn’t seated long before the bailiff called those in the courtroom to their feet as the three judges—Thomas Woodford, the presiding judge from Jefferson County, and Frank Martinez and William Meyer, both from Denver—entered and took their seats on an enlarged dais built five months earlier.
The dais had been constructed especially for death penalty hearings at the Jefferson County Courthouse. In 1995 the Colorado legislature had changed the state’s death penalty statute to remove the decision from the shoulders of jurors and place it onto those of a panel of three judges: the presiding judge from the trial and two selected at random by a computer from adjoining districts. The law had gone into effect in 1996, but the first test case had been the Robert Riggan hearing in April 1999, also in Jefferson County. That panel had spared Riggan, who had been accused of murdering a twenty-one-year-old prostitute in May 1997, because the jury had convicted him of murder, but not premeditated murder.
Few in the courtroom expected Neal to receive a similar judgment. Two days before the death penalty trial, Canney had attempted one last time to raise the issue of competency. The lawyer even called Neal’s sister, Sharon, the one family member still talking to him, who over a speakerphone testified that her brother would go “from being rational to incoherent in the same conversation” and that he talked about being “a prophet of God.” Her brother, she said, once even claimed to have been “possessed.”
The lawyers were, of course, arguing “competency” as it is meant in a legal sense. What might seem like a “crazy,” or insane, act—to the general public such as butchering three innocent women—does not in itself make a defendant mentally incompetent to stand trial. For a defendant to be deemed legally insane, a psychiatrist must show that the defendant didn’t know right from wrong at the time of his crime, and/or the defendant is not psychologically able to understand the charges against him or assist in his defense. Woodford noted that Neal had shown no signs of mental disease in any of his multiple court appearances, and the psychiatrists had determined that Neal understood what he had done and its ramifications. The hearing would proceed.
Now at Woodford’s invitation, Chief Deputy District Attorney Charles Tingle rose to deliver the prosecution’s opening statements. At the table behind him were Deputy District Attorney Chris Bachmeyer and the lead investigator in the case, Jose Aceves.
Tingle had noticed something different about Neal when the defendant sat down a few minutes earlier: the killer and rapist was wearing a new gold wedding band.
It wasn’t a complete surprise, a few days before the hearing he’d received a call from the deputies at the jail. An upscale Denver jewelry-store manager was complaining to them that he was getting harassing telephone calls from Neal. The defendant wanted to purchase a wedding set and felt that he was getting the runaround. Even knowing what Neal was capable of, the revelation of his impending “marriage” had come as a shock. Tingle was aware that Neal had a new girlfriend, a wealthy “trust fund baby” from Phoenix, Arizona, named Julia. They knew from his jail accounts that she sent him money regularly and had even been up to visit a number of times. According to one of their investigators, Julia said that she’d met Neal in 1995 at Fugglies, one of his bar hangouts.
Incredible, Tingle had thought, Neal was still able to cast his spells from inside a jail. Ted Bundy, the serial killer who was executed in 1989 and whose exploits had become favored reading material for Neal, had married while on death row. At least there, the woman was able to convince herself that he was innocent. There were no such doubts with Neal, who’d told anyone who’d listen that he’d killed the women.
Tingle wondered if the “wedding” was another ploy by Neal to manipulate the judges, as well as keep some poor woman on the line to supply him with money for his needs in jail and prison.
Walking to the lectern in front of the prosecution table, Tingle paused to look one more time at his notes. Preparing for the hearing, he’d worried about making a mistake that might cause the judges to spare Neal. He and Bachmeyer talked about how to approach arguing a case in front of a panel of judges as opposed to a jury. Judges were not going to be impressed by courtroom theatrics; they agreed that they were going to have to walk a fine line between presenting “just the facts” and still imparting the enormous suffering that Neal had caused. They were also going to have to be careful to avoid looking like they were taking advantage of a
pro se
defendant.
pro se
defendant.
Tingle’s own feelings toward Neal were of anger and outrage, but he knew that he had to temper that passion. “Rebecca Holberton, Candace Walters, and Angela Fite were all vulnerable in one way or another,” he began in the hushed courtroom, “and in search of happiness, and he preyed upon each one of them.
“He promised to rescue them emotionally and financially. But he was a phony. A master manipulator . . . and he sucked them in with his lies and deceit.”
Neal didn’t have a job in July 1998, Tingle told the panel of judges. He hung out at neighborhood bars and strip joints. Yet he threw money around “like it was going out of style. He’d buy a ten-dollar lunch and leave a one hundred fifty percent tip. . . . The problem was, it was not his money.” He had bilked Rebecca Holberton of as much as $70,000 and Candace Walters of another $6,000.
However, in the weeks and days leading up to the murders, “the walls were caving in” on Neal, the prosecutor said. Holberton, a forty-four-year-old blonde who worked at US West, was unhappy and broke. She had told a friend that she was ready to get on with her life, without Neal. But first, she wanted her money back.
Meanwhile, Walters was trying to find out more about the secretive Cody, who said that he had homes in Las Vegas and Denver, but wouldn’t tell her where he lived. She had made him sign a promissory note for the money that he owed her and was threatening to expose him to Holberton and the police.
“Rather than risk being exposed for who he really was,” Tingle said, “Neal came up with a plan.” A week or so later, he implemented it.
In the early morning of June 30, 1998, Neal drove to Builder’s Square “for a little shopping.” He bought Lava soap, four eyebolts, nylon rope, duct tape and . . . Tingle went over to the jury box in front of the prosecution table and picked up . . .“a seven-and-a-half-pound splitting maul.”
Even some of the spectators who knew how the murders were accomplished groaned at the sight of the maul. But it was not
the
murder weapon. Just a facsimile. The real weapon, still stained with blood, waited for the judges’ later inspection in a clear plastic bag.
the
murder weapon. Just a facsimile. The real weapon, still stained with blood, waited for the judges’ later inspection in a clear plastic bag.
By the time Neal left Builder’s Square, Tingle said, placing the maul back, the defendant had “all the tools he needed to inflict immense pain, suffering, anguish, and death.” He returned home and placed a chair in the middle of the living room. Calling Holberton into the room, he invited her to take a seat. He had talked about “a surprise” that he had for her, and she was, in Neal’s own words, Tingle said, “filled with joy and happiness.” He opened a bottle of champagne, placed a briefcase on her lap, and then covered her with a blanket to await her surprise.
Neal fetched his splitting maul and “ambushed Rebecca from behind, unleashing a violent and ferocious attack using the hammer side of the maul,” Tingle said. He brought the weapon down “with such force that it completely caved in the back of her skull,” sending skull fragments into her brain and a two-inch piece of bone flying across the room. Her hands came up on the first blow and were injured when caught by the second blow. The coroner, Tingle said, had been unable to ascertain exactly how many times she had been struck because of the extent of the injuries, but “it was multiple times” with both the blunt and sharp sides of the maul.
Holberton fell to the ground, “never to rise again.” Neal wrapped her head in clear plastic to catch the blood and then, after binding her limbs and body with nylon rope, wrapped her in black plastic and placed her against a wall of the apartment.
From his seat at the defense table, Neal looked quickly behind to see the audience’s reaction, but just as quickly ducked his head away from the hard stares. He returned his attention to Tingle and took notes on the yellow legal pad.
The day after killing Holberton, Tingle continued, Neal told Walters about a trust fund worth millions that had finally been unfrozen upon his just settled divorce. Walters, who half believed that he was a onetime hit man for the Mafia, was informed that she would now be “paid handsomely for maintaining her silence” regarding some of the stories that he’d told her. Tingle explained to the judges how the amount had changed radically in the weeks and days before her murder. One hundred thousand dollars. A million. Two-and-a-half million. “There would also be a new home, a mansion really, down the street from his own mansion in Las Vegas.”
Neal was the consummate liar. So good he persuaded her to sell her car, in anticipation of a new one, and asked her to look into what it would take to have a large amount of money wired into her account. On July 3, Tingle noted, Walters saw her daughter, Holly, “for what would be the last time.” Holly Walters had her own concerns about Neal, he said, but it had been a long time since she had seen her mother so happy, so she let her misgivings slide and went on her trip to Missouri.
The next day, Neal took Walters to the town house on West Chenango Drive. She, too, sat happily in the chair, wearing a white sundress, waiting for her “surprise.” But she wouldn’t accept being covered with a blanket “because she didn’t want her hair messed up.”
Neal disappeared from her sight, Tingle said. When he returned, he was once again carrying the maul, “which he brought crashing down on the back of her head with a tremendous impact.” This time, however, he used the blade side of the maul and struck four times.
“Candace Walters died a horrible, violent death,” Tingle said. “For what? . . . Unarmed, defenseless . . . hoping for a better future and life.” Candace’s death, however, wasn’t enough. He “denigrated and abused her corpse. . . . He couldn’t leave her in peace, even in death, and urinated on her head and shoulders as she lay in a pool of her own blood . . . an ultimate act of debasement and disrespect for human dignity.” He then wrapped her head in white plastic, and he moved her body to the ground “and covered her with a blanket so she could not be easily observed.”
The defendant, Tingle noted, had killed two women in four days, “but that did not satiate his appetite. . . . It was far from over.” He took Holberton’s and Walters’s credit cards and withdrew money from their bank accounts. “It was time to party and have a good time.”
The prosecutor described the night on the town Neal enjoyed with Beth Weeks and Suzanne Scott. Before Tingle finished his account, another young woman, Angela Fite, was dead, and Scott, who sat in the spectator gallery crying quietly on her mother’s shoulder, had been raped and terrorized.
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