Needle Work: Battery Acid, Heroin, and Double Murder (16 page)

“There is dried blood within and around the anus with superficial tears present at the 9 o’clock and 12 o’clock positions of the anal ring.”

Anal tears didn’t happen by accident. They happened when a person was sodomized. Contrary to Giles’s statement, what if Collier used an object to sodomize Billiter before she died? Or was it his penis?

They needed the results of Collier’s DNA testing to rule the latter out, which would leave only the former as the logical conclusion.

PART THREE

Twelve

November 17, 1997

At 4:40
P.M.
, Sammy Upchurch sat uncomfortably in one of the interview rooms at the Genessee County Sheriff’s Department in Flint.

“At about three-fifteen today, you contacted me in reference to your vehicle being towed, is that correct?” asked Kevin Shanlian.

“Yes, I did,” Upchurch replied.

“And I stated to you that I was assisting West Bloomfield Township Police in reference to a homicide case and I stated there was some evidence in your vehicle. Is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“And when I made that statement, what did you tell me was in the vehicle that was evidence in this case?”

“Probably, could have been that gas can.”

“And why did you think it was the gas can?”

“’Cause I knew my nephew [Tim Collier] had gave me that gas can and some charcoal lighter fluid.”

“Okay, and then I advised you that your vehicle was at the Sheriff’s Department pursuant for a search warrant being obtained from the West Bloomfield Township Police Department and you advised that you would give us consent to search. Is that correct?”

“That’s right.”

Helton had called Shanlian and told him of the substance of Giles’s statement. He requested that “Tim Collier’s uncle Sammy Upchurch” be contacted. Helton said that he was attempting to locate a five-gallon plastic gasoline container and charcoal lighter fluid that were used in the homicide and to which Giles had obliquely referred in her statement.

Shanlian and his partner, Melki, subsequently drove to Upchurch’s home, which they easily found through an on-line database. They passed by the house slowly and saw there was an attached driveway. In the vehicle in the driveway, they observed a five-gallon plastic gasoline container. After failing to contact Upchurch by knocking on his door, Shanlian called Helton.

“What do you want to do?” Shanlian asked.

“Why don’t we ask the lawyers,” Helton suggested.

Shanlian called the Genessee County prosecuting attorney’s office. After conferring with one of the assistants there, he was told to have the vehicle towed, until a search warrant could be secured.

While the car was being towed, someone came up to Shanlian, who was overseeing the operation.

“Hey, I know the guy that owns that car,” the guy said.

Shanlian handed him a printed card.

“My number’s on there. Have him call me if he wants it back.”

The guy looked at it.

“I’ll have him call you,” he said, and disappeared into the crowd that had gathered to watch the proceedings.

At 3:20
P.M.
the same day, Upchurch called Shanlian.

“Yeah, I own that car,” said Upchurch.

Shanlian explained that the vehicle had been towed per the request of Detective Thomas Helton, because it contained evidence relevant to the murder of Nancy Billiter.

“Only the gas is evidence,” Upchurch stated.

But he agreed to let the detectives search the vehicle without a warrant. They did. After that, Shanlian called Upchurch back and asked him to come in for an interview. Sammy Upchurch said he would.

“Should I bring the lighter fluid, too?” he asked.

“Yes. Bring it in a paper bag,” Shanlian answered, which was how Sammy Upchurch happened to wind up at police headquarters that day for his interview.

Shanlian pushed the tape recorder on the table a little closer to Sammy Upchurch.

“So now that you’ve come in,” Shanlian continued, “you’ve filled out a consent to search your vehicle? Is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“And I advised you you’re currently not under arrest at this point, not under any force or coercion, you’ve given us permission freely?”

“Yes.”

“Then the second time I called you back, you asked me if you could bring another item down?”

“Right.”

“What was that item?”

“Charcoal starter fluid.”

“And why did you think that item was involved in this case?”

“He gave that to me when he gave me the gas. Asked me did I want the charcoal fluid and some gas, but he wanted the gas can back, though.”

“Who are we talking about?” Shanlian asked.

“Tim Collier,” Sammy Upchurch answered.

“What relationship is he to you?”

“A stepnephew.”

Upchurch went on to describe his stepnephew’s first visit on the afternoon of the murder. While Carol waited for him back in West Bloomfield, Tim went to his uncle’s.

“He was by hisself and he wanted to take a bath.”

“Was he bloody or anything?” Shanlian asked.

Upchurch said he wasn’t. Collier stayed maybe two hours, took his bath, decided to leave, and said he may come back later.

“Did he leave any clothes at your house?”

“No, he hadn’t. He took his clothes with him. On his back.”

Shanlian remembered that Collier’s crime scene clothes had been recovered during the search that Giles had led the cops on before she was taken to the Oakland County lockup.

“Did he have a change of clothes with him?”

He had, Upchurch answered. In a duffel bag.

“When was the next time you saw Mr. Collier?”

“Maybe around nine or ten that same evening.”

Shanlian knew he had to be off. Carol said it was past midnight when they got there. He couldn’t alter the man’s statement, but unless he clarified it, a good defense attorney could rip holes in it because of inconsistencies with Carol’s statements.

“Okay, it was late at night, it was dark out?” Shanlian asked.

Upchurch said it was.

“And he comes by with his girlfriend?”

Upchurch said yes. He’d seen her with him before. The girlfriend was white, a blonde, slim. She was tall and wore glasses. Clearly, it was Carol Giles.

“We were just setting and in the living room, just talking anyhow, they were just talking about, you know, everyday things really. Really, nothing really that I can remember.”

“Did they seem agitated or upset?”

Upchurch said no.

“Did they appear nervous?”

He said they didn’t appear nervous, either.

“Did they seem like they were sad over something?”

“No, they just seemed like they were just regular, you know, just like nothing happened.”

“Were they smoking crack cocaine at that point?”

“Yes, well, he was; I never seen her smoke anything. Anyway, he went back in the bathroom a couple of times. I heard the lighter flick while he was in the tub.”

Apparently, Collier had decided to take another bath. Maybe he was washing Billiter’s blood off.

“So he was smoking crack there and they were just acting normal? How long did you talk to them?”

“Maybe fifteen or twenty minutes or so.”

“Then what did you do?”

“I went to my bedroom and watched TV. I was tired. I was sitting on the bed there and that’s when he was talking about getting the gas and stuff out of the car. And he comes in and says, ‘You want some gas?’ He asked me, ‘Did I need some charcoal; could I use some charcoal lighter fluid?’ I told him, ‘Yeah, I could use it.’ He said, ‘Well, I got some gas,’ but he wanted the gas can back.”

There was only about a gallon of gas in the gas can, Upchurch remembered. Shanlian knew that the rest of it was back in the park, on Nancy Billiter’s body and the trail leading up to it.

It was a good thing that neither Collier nor Giles was a firefighter or arsonist. Otherwise, they would have been successful at burning Billiter and then the cops’ job would have been doubly hard.

A burned body was exceptionally hard to identify. If the features were beyond recognition, or the fingers burned to the point they couldn’t lift a print, the police had to rely on a forensic dentist to do the ID off the victim’s teeth.

Shanlian wanted to know who brought the gas can and stuff in. Upchurch said “the girlfriend” did. Then Sammy Upchurch put all the stuff in the hallway upstairs.

“And that’s where [the items] stayed the whole time until I called?” Shanlian asked.

“The lighter fluid did, but the gas can was up there about three hours and I didn’t want to take a chance. I was cooking, you know, baking some cakes and pies, but I thought about them.”

Uncle Sammy Upchurch hardly seemed like the Martha Stewart type, but who knows? Maybe he was a good chef.

“I had the oven door open,” Upchurch continued, “and I didn’t want that gas can by my door, so I moved the can myself down to the bottom of the steps. I poured the gallon of gas in my car and put the gas can in my car so the can wouldn’t be in my house and put no fumes in my house.”

After they gave him the gas, they stayed maybe another hour and then left.

“When was the next time that you saw Mr. Collier?”

Upchurch had gone out on Friday, November 14, but his cousin had stayed over and it was his cousin who said Tim came to visit later that day. They went to a local motorcycle club, hung out there for a while. But all Tim did was visit. He brought nothing with him, left with nothing, and according to the cousin, he discussed nothing unusual or suspicious.

“Has Tim contacted you since?”

“No.”

“Are you involved in any way, including helping dispose of the body of Nancy Billiter?”

“No!”

“Did you assist Mr. Collier or Mrs. Giles in any way with this homicide?”

“No!”

“Did you have any knowledge of this homicide prior to newspaper reports or TV reports?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“At no time did Mr. Collier advise you that he had committed a homicide?”

“No, he didn’t.”

“At no time did Mr. Collier appear upset or nervous or sad or anything like that in that time frame that you dealt with him?”

“No. But I did hear one thing, though.”

Shanlian was curious.

“Which was?”

“My cousin told me that before they went to the motorcycle club on Friday, Tim was over there and Tim doesn’t usually drink, but that night he did.”

“So he drank quite a bit that night?”

“That’s all.”

At approximately 5:10
P.M.
, Shanlian released the vehicle back to Sammy Upchurch so he could drive home. The search of Upchurch’s vehicle had produced no further evidence.

After Upchurch left, Shanlian sat down at his cluttered desk to think.

Collier had given the can containing the gasoline he’d poured over Nancy Billiter’s body to his uncle Sammy, who had, in turn, secreted it in his car. And that night, when Collier went up to Flint while Giles slept, before he came back to dispose of the body with her, he got drunk with another relative. Yet, Tim Collier didn’t drink.

Why did Tim Collier drink the night after they got rid of Nancy Billiter? Did he have a conscience, too? Did he drink out of guilt for causing Nancy’s death? Or was he drinking in celebration of it? Was he even capable of celebration?

The one thing Shanlian had no doubt of was that Tim Collier was capable of double homicide.

November 17, 1997

The Oakland County Prosecutor’s Office issued warrants for both Carol Giles and Timothy Collier. The charges were first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder.

They were arraigned in Judge Edward Avadenka’s 48th District Court. Sitting in on the proceedings were Phyllis Burke, Nancy’s mother; and Stephanie Johnson, Jessie’s daughter, whom the kids referred to as Aunt “Stephi.” As they were led into court in their orange prison jumpsuits, Carol Giles and Tim Collier did not talk to each other.

“How do you plead, Mr. Collier?” Judge Avadenka asked.

“Not guilty to both charges,” Tim announced.

“Mrs. Giles?”

“Not guilty, Your Honor.”

“Your Honor, considering the seriousness of the crime, I ask that the suspects be held without bail,” said assistant Oakland County prosecutor Kate McNamara.

“Suspects held without bail, pending a preliminary examination [formal arraignment] on December first.”

He banged down his gavel. Outside the courtroom, reporters jockeyed to get statements from the principals.

“How long they took [to murder Nancy] is unclear, but she did suffer,” said McNamara. “They accomplished their objective, which was murder, and they took their time doing it.”

“Everyone assumed [Jessie] died of natural causes,” added deputy Oakland County prosecutor James Halushka. “Now we’re going to have to petition a court to have his body exhumed.”

The medical examiner had told prosecutors, Halushka said, that he could employ various toxicology tests to determine if Giles died from a heroin overdose.

Stephanie Johnson, twenty-three, who had come to court after prosecutors told her that her stepmother was a suspect in her father’s death, told reporters that Carol received a significant inheritance when Jessie died. That implied a financial motive for the killing.

“She got a boyfriend pretty quickly. But there were kids involved. Whoever this man is, he’s good,” Johnson observed, implying Collier had conned his way into the Giles family. She blamed Tim Collier for masterminding the killing.

Reporters moved down the courtroom corridor to speak to Phyllis Burke. She recalled a conversation she had had with her daughter soon after Jessie died.

“Nancy told me, ‘Mom, Carol’s the best friend I’ve got and I’m not going to let anything happen to her.’ This just makes me so sick.”

Eddie Grant, Nancy’s boss at the restaurant, said that he gave Nancy a warning before she died.

“I told her, ‘I know she’s [Carol’s] got problems, but you should try to get as far away as possible from her.’ She had a big heart and that kind of turned out to be her downfall.”

Late that day, Helton passed by South Boulevard Station on his way home from work. In the twilight, a sign on the window out front said,
WE MISS YOU, NANCY.