Needle Work: Battery Acid, Heroin, and Double Murder (18 page)

As far as Skrzynski was concerned, he was holding a straight flush.

“The state calls Sergeant Mike Messina.”

Messina came forward.

“Raise your right hand,” said the clerk.

Messina raised his hand.

“Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?”

“I do.”

Messina took his seat in the witness box. Without wasting time, Skrzynski asked Messina to relate the substance of his interview with Carol Giles.

“Tim told Carol to ‘stick her,’” Messina testified.

He told the court how Carol Giles and Tim Collier injected Nancy with battery acid and how Collier beat her with his gun. They finally killed her by smothering her with the wet towel.

According to Giles’s confession, after Nancy was dead, Collier wondered “what it would be like to have sex with a dead body.” Giles told Collier he was “sick,” Messina testified. “Tim asked if they could have sex and she said yes.”

No mention was made of the tearing in Nancy’s rectum indicative of sodomy and the strong possibility that Tim Collier had violated Nancy Billiter just before her death and perhaps stayed inside her afterward. It was just too horrible to contemplate. Besides, they still hadn’t gotten back the results of the DNA testing.

They had, however, gotten back the results of the tire analysis at the crime scene. After eliminating the police cars and other support and investigative personnel, there could be no positive identification of any other car at the scene. That meant that, forensically, there was nothing to tie Carol Giles’s car to the scene. Messina did not mention that, either, nor was he obligated to.

After Messina came the Oakland County medical examiner, L.J. Dragovic. He testified that it was he who had performed the autopsy that showed eleven puncture burns on Nancy’s body. He, too, omitted mention of the anal bruising. It would add nothing to the state’s case except make it more gruesome and more difficult for the family.

Some of Nancy’s relatives couldn’t take what the newspapers the next day described as a “gruesome tale.” They walked out of the courtroom; some in tears, never hearing, at least not yet, how Giles and Collier took almost twenty-four hours to dispose of the body, and when they did, how they tried to burn it to cover up the evidence.

“I just can’t believe someone could do that to someone else, especially someone who was supposed to be a friend of my sister’s,” Doug Billiter said afterward.

At the end of the hearing, the court handed down first-degree murder indictments against Timothy Orlando Collier and Carol Giles in the death of Nancy Rae Billiter. The state then made the decision to try the defendants with separate juries, simultaneously, in the same courtroom. While unorthodox, trying two defendants with two juries had been shown to be efficient in other criminal cases in Michigan. The judge agreed.

It meant a little bit of people jockeying when one jury was allowed to hear evidence while the other, for various legal reasons, could not. But it was efficient, since many of the same witnesses needed to testify in both cases, like the medical examiner, police officers and people who knew the decedents.

As to any lingering doubt that the trials might not take place because one or the other of the defendants would take a plea to lesser charges, Skrzynski quickly erased that possibility.

Giles and Collier were charged with capital crimes. The state might not have the death penalty, but they still took murder seriously. It was capital murder—the worst kind of crime—cold-blooded and premeditated. There was no talk of making a deal to spare the state the expense of two trials.

Besides, Giles had already flipped on Collier, and the self-confessed California gang banger was set for the fall. Skrzynski was betting on Carol Giles’s statement holding up at trial.

Unfortunately, sure things do not exist.

Despite what Carol Giles had stated to the cops, when the judge asked her how she pleaded, she had answered, “Not guilty.” That meant that her attorney, in any way he could, would try to suppress or downplay her confessions. Plus, Tim Collier had given the police two statements in which he said that she was the murderer, not him.

Who would the jury believe? They wouldn’t know until they went to trial.

January 8, 1998

Helton received a report from the Michigan State Police Crime Laboratory regarding the examination of evidence submitted for latent fingerprints. Examined were the gas can, the charcoal lighter can, Billiter’s driver’s license, which had been found in a search of the Giles home, and the .32-caliber Titan handgun found under the seat in Carol’s car.

No matches were made with the submitted comparison prints of Collier and Giles. That meant that, forensically, none of that evidence could be tied into either defendant.

Despite this setback, the prosecution pressed on.

January 9, 1998

Giles and Collier were back in Judge Avadenka’s court, to hear a new set of murder charges, this time for killing Jessie.

Messina testified to Giles’s confession, that she and Collier had conspired to and had killed Jessie by lacing his insulin with heroin. Dragovic took the stand and said under oath that tests on tissue samples from Jessie’s body showed a lethal level of morphine.

“Anytime you inject heroin into the body, it changes to morphine,” he explained once again. “It was injected in a substantial amount and caused rapid intoxication,” then death, he said. Because of Jessie’s poor health history, there was no reason to suspect foul play and an autopsy was not done at the time.

Speculating on other causes of death, Dragovic said, “Every other consideration is out of the question in this case. It was a homicide. That’s the bottom line.”

Tim Collier was not going to go gentle into that good night. Whether he believed it or not, he testified that he wasn’t in any way, shape or form involved in the killing of Jessie Giles. He’d had nothing to do with it.

At the end of the hearing, both he and Carol Giles were formally charged with first-degree murder in Jessie’s death.

March 2, 1998

The guilt swirled in Carol Giles’s mind like a carousel she couldn’t get off. There was nothing to look forward to now, except a long prison stretch if convicted. She wouldn’t be able to see her kids grow up, go to school, have babies. She’d be stuck in prison someplace, getting old.

Somehow she got a hold of a bottle of Tylenol and ate the pills like candy, hoping she’d take enough to die. But she didn’t really want to check out, at least not yet, because she told a prison counselor what she had done.

She was rushed to the POH Medical Center in Pontiac. Emergency room doctors pumped her stomach. Afterward, she was placed on a twenty-four-hour suicide watch.

All of the evidence had been gathered and catalogued in both murders. The state made the decision to press forward with the case against Carol Giles and Tim Collier for murdering Jessie first, and a trial date of June 15 was set, with the trial for killing Nancy set for July. Evidentiary hearings, including pretrial motions, would be heard in May.

Neither Carol Giles nor Tim Collier had any money with which to hire a private attorney. Both defendants were therefore given court-appointed attorneys to work their defense. Representing Carol Giles was John Basch; Howard S. Arnkoff performed the same function for Tim Collier.

The lawyers knew that the whole case came down to Giles’s confession. Basch and Arnkoff knew that if they could cast doubt on her statements, one or both clients could walk. Skrzynski knew that with the confession he had a strong case against Carol Giles, but it was not nearly as strong against Tim Collier.

It would always be her word against his, because the case, ultimately, was circumstantial. No blood—so far—or fibers had been found on Collier to tie him directly to either murder. And he continued to deny any wrongdoing.

May 21, 1998

Tim Collier was tired. He was tired and drugged and didn’t know what he was saying when he spoke to police after Nancy Billiter’s death.

“My head was kind of cloudy,” Collier said, stating that he had gone 144 hours straight without sleep. Anything he said to police had been influenced by that lack of sleep and too many drugs in his system.

Collier told all this to Judge Rudy Nichols at the pretrial hearing to determine the admissibility of the statements he made to police after his arrest. It was what prosecutors feared, the “I didn’t know what I was saying because I was under the influence” defense.

Nichols listened patiently. But he heard nothing to make him believe that Tim Collier was telling the truth. To Skrzynski’s relief, he ruled that Collier’s statements were still admissible.

May 26, 1998

It was now Carol Giles’s turn to try the same tactic.

Her attorney, John Basch, read the transcript of the polygraph examiner’s interview with Giles and thought he saw some daylight. The record showed that when Chester Romatowski, the polygraph operator, questioned Carol prior to the test, their conversation went like this:

“Are you withholding any information?” Romatowski asked. “Do you want to speak to an attorney?”

“I want to speak to an attorney,” Carol answered.

That was it. The interview should have ceased, Basch argued. His client had asserted her right to counsel prior to giving her most incriminating statements. Therefore, questioning should have ceased. Everything she said after that violated her Miranda rights, and the confession should have been thrown out.

When it was Skrzynski’s turn, he argued that after Carol Giles said, “I want to speak to an attorney,” the record showed that Romatowski answered as follows:

“You may speak to an attorney if you wish or you can speak to a detective.”

Carol had thought about her answer and then replied: “I want to talk to the detective.”

By agreeing to talk to a detective instead of an attorney, she waived her Miranda rights. The police were therefore under no obligation at that point to provide her with an attorney. He cited case law to prove his point.

After carefully considering both sides, Judge Nichols ruled that Carol Giles had waived her right to an attorney when she gave her statement. She had not been coerced. The confessions stood.

“She confessed; there’s a video of the confession, and the jury will hear it,” John A. Basch, Carol’s attorney, told the press afterward. It was time to put a little spin on things. “But that’s only part of the story.”

No kidding, thought Skrzynski, listening.

“She intends to testify and fill in the blanks.”

Now that was something Skrzynski could look forward to. It was rare for a defendant to testify on her own behalf in a capital case because then the prosecution gets their shot at breaking down their defense during cross-examination. Courtroom confessions only happen on TV, never in real life. Still, a skilled prosecutor can show the discrepancies in the defendant’s story while he or she is on the stand.

“I think the jury will be captivated, and the outcome of this case, despite what the prosecutor may believe, is not a foregone conclusion,” Basch continued.

John Skrzynski, of course, disagreed.

“The case is pretty strong against Giles because she gave a pretty detailed statement about what happened,” Skrzynski told the press when it was his turn. “Collier did also and it’s fairly incriminating.

“Since there were no witnesses to Giles’s murder except Carol Giles, the case hinges on their testimony. Whatever the jury thinks of their statements is what their decision will be,” Skrzynski continued.

Tim Collier, of course, disagreed. He came up with a novel defense. Howard S. Arnkoff, Collier’s attorney, told the press why his client should be acquitted.

“He was in Pontiac when Giles was injected,” said Arnkoff. “They claim he gave Carol Giles advice, but that isn’t true. She allegedly injected her husband first and then called Collier up wanting to know why he wasn’t dying fast enough.”

Mike Messina sat at his desk and looked back.

It had been nine months since Jessie was murdered. His killers had almost gotten away with it; they still might.

Jessie’s wife was in jail for killing him. So was his friend Tim Collier. His children were now living with his sister. It was a lousy situation any way you looked at it.

In the end, Messina knew that there was only one thing left. It was an abstract concept at best, one best left for philosophers and not cops. But once in a while, Messina knew, it happened. It really came out.

The truth.

Fourteen

DNA testing is complicated. It can take months before the results come back. In the Billiter case, when they did, it was not to the satisfaction of the prosecution.

Nancy Billiter’s torn anus came back negative for Tim Collier’s DNA. None of his fluids were present, not blood, mucus, saliva. That meant that if he had inserted his penis into the body cavity, he had to have been wearing a condom. The other possibility was that she was raped with an unidentified object. Helton had thought it might be the Coke bottle/piggy bank, but that came back negative for Nancy’s fluids.

But someone had sodomized Nancy Billiter. She hadn’t been anally bruised by accident. That much was clear. Then who had done it, and how had it been done?

Women don’t usually engage in forcible sodomy; men do. And Carol had no reason to force herself on Nancy that way. Forcible sodomy shows an inexpressible amount of rage and anger, like the type Tim Collier carried around with him all the time.

If Carol Giles was telling the truth, that she never saw Tim rape Nancy, then there was only one explanation: Collier sodomized Billiter, either with an object or with his protected penis, when Carol wasn’t around. When had it happened?

In going back over Carol Giles’s first statement, Helton noticed the following interchange between her and Shanlian:

“What happened after Tim and Nancy smoked crack? What time was that?” Shanlian had asked.

“About eleven-thirty. Then about one-thirty, I went upstairs to check on my children, who were sleeping. When I got back to the basement, Nancy was on the bed tied up with nylons and she was screaming,” Carol answered.