To Love and to Kill (19 page)

CHAPTER 53

JOSH GOT OUT
of the local jail on February 6, 2009. By then, he had heard, James Acome was back living with Heather. From all he had been told, Josh was livid at the idea that James and Heather were not watching the kids the way Josh thought they should. Imagine: Josh was stepping out of jail after forty-plus days of not seeing his kids and the first thing he did was judge the adults taking care of them. It seemed absurd when placed into that context, but that was Josh Fulgham. Josh never looked at himself. He was always concerned with what others were doing to him.

According to Josh, he had heard stories about the kids being neglected. This was never proven, mind you, but Josh didn't need proof to be enraged about anything—he needed only to get it into his head that it was going on and there it could fester like a tumor, growing each day, becoming more of an annoyance to his thought process.

Josh thought about it, though; after consulting with Emilia, he decided that he had better watch himself messing too much with Heather and maybe ease his way back into the kids' lives. His great concern was that Heather would make something up about him and he'd be right back in jail. Nevertheless, he needed to abide by all of Heather's rules whenever he had the children. Or else ...

“She did set him up for that gun charge,” a source later said. “She made it all up.”

One night shortly after Josh was out, he took his mother's car (Heather still had his car; Emilia had never gotten it back, as she had promised) and drove over to see Emilia. After picking up Emilia, they were at a stoplight in town when Josh spotted his car coming through the intersection, going in the opposite direction.

“Look at that, Emilia!” Josh yelled.

“Oh, my.”

Josh could not believe his eyes. James Acome was driving
his
car. Not only driving, but “spinning the tires out,” Josh recalled. “[He was] cutting in and out of car lanes like he was in a race. . . .”

Josh followed him. James ran out of the car after stopping at his parents' house.

Josh decided to call the cops, instead of chasing James inside and putting a hurt on.

The police came and Josh proved it was his car and James did not have permission to be driving it. The cops got the car back.

“But this pissed Heather off,” Josh recalled.

A day later, Heather called him: “If you don't give me that car back, you will
never
see your children again,” Josh said Heather threatened.

“You will not get the car and I am taking your ass to court to get my kids back!” Josh screamed.

The War of the Roses
was back on, in full force.

As he thought about it in the days ahead, however, Josh thought he'd had enough this time around.

By the following weekend, February 14 and 15, when Heather disappeared, she kept to her word and told Josh he wasn't going to be seeing the kids.

Not then. Not ever again.

So Josh decided to put into action that plan he'd come up with while in jail.

CHAPTER 54

ON FEBRUARY 14, 2009,
Ben McCollum stopped by the Petro with his kids for something to eat. He hadn't even realized Heather was working there. By then, Ben had severed all contact with Heather. As much as he loved her, he had moved on with his life.

Heather walked over to the table.

The kids went wild; they loved her. For a fleeting moment, there it was, like old times at Ben's house when they were all a family.

Ben and Heather didn't say much of anything to each other right away. Both just stared. Here it was Valentine's Day and Ben was out with his kids. He hadn't moved on, as far as finding someone else yet. Ben could tell Heather was still thinking about him. She had that look Ben knew all too well.

However, she also seemed nervous, Ben thought. Not in an anxious-to-see-him way, but unlike anything he had seen while he was with her. It wasn't because Ben was there. He felt that. Heather's anxiety stemmed from something else. Something was going on. Something major was bothering Heather, Ben considered.

“How are you?” Heather asked.

“Good, Heather. I'm okay.”

They had been through so much it seemed that Ben and Heather were destined to meet on this day (which, Ben did not know then, would be the last time he ever saw her).

Heather sat down. “I have something for you.”

“What?” Ben asked. He was curious.

Heather reached into her pocket. She'd happened to have a letter she was about to mail to Ben. With tears in her eyes, she handed it across the table. Ben was feeling the moment himself.

“What's this?”

“Read it,” she said. Then Heather got up and walked away.

After eating, Ben took the kids and went out to his vehicle without seeing Heather again. He sat for a moment before starting his truck. Then he opened the letter and read.

Heather wanted him to know that she was sorry for everything. She wished she could come back and live with him. Her life with Josh was a joke. The guy was an animal. That chapter of her life, Heather explained, was over for good. There would never be Josh and Heather again. Regardless of her reconciling with Ben, Heather wrote, she and Josh were finished for good. The guy was toxic; she needed to be rid of him.

Ben believed her and was taken by the letter. He thought maybe he should reconsider his strict stance on not taking her back once she had left and dropped those charges against Josh. Maybe he was being pigheaded and inconsiderate of Heather's situation. Giving her another chance might be just what Heather needed.

So Ben took a ride over to his father's house. He wanted the old man's advice on his dilemma.

“Should I take her back?” Ben asked his father. “What do you think?”

“Nope, nope ... stick to what you decided and said, you know.”

Looking back on his relationship with Heather, Ben thought that maybe she couldn't handle being truly loved. He'd treated her with respect and kindness, like any lady deserved to be treated. He bought her classy clothes and nice things, and she felt like a real woman, an appreciated mother, as though they had a natural relationship devoid of the dysfunction she had lived with her entire life. Heather felt good about herself when she was with Ben. He was good
for
her. But when Josh watched all of this taking place, it messed with his head, Ben believed. Josh couldn't fathom that she could move on without him and lead a “normal” life—or Josh didn't want to let her.

Not taking her back when his heart told him to, Ben said later, was a decision that both him and his dad later greatly regretted. Also, not doing something about Josh when they had the opportunity was a consequence of that same regret.

“I should have killed that motherfucker long ago myself,” Ben said as he concluded his thoughts about his life with Heather Strong.

CHAPTER 55

ACCORDING TO JOSH'S
version (the one he shared with me) of what happened that weekend of February 14 and 15, it all started with a drug and alcohol binge Josh had begun on Saturday morning.

“I went and bought me a bunch of pills and a bottle of liquor and decided to stay the weekend at Emilia's house.”

He rented a “bunch of DVDs . . . watched movies and got fucked up.”

On Saturday night, Emilia and Josh hit the bedroom and “had hot, wild sex for four hours,” Josh explained. It was so intense, he added, that he woke up the following morning with a severe back issue. Emilia, however, wasn't hearing any of it.

“That morning, the little nympho had to have more,” Josh said. This just screwed up his back even more, so he popped whatever pills he had left from the night before. Josh fell asleep, then woke up to his sister calling him.

“What? What?” Josh said. He was still in a fog.

“Heather has been calling and calling. You need to come home and talk to her.”

Josh got dressed and drove to his mother's house. Michelle Gustafson, Josh's sister, was there. She talked about how Heather had been at work and calling, looking for him. It sounded urgent. He needed to straighten his ass out and call her back.

“Okay,” Josh said. His head was pounding. His back was sore. His mind was scattered.

Josh told me
he
called Heather at work, but he later told police that Michelle called Heather for him.

Either way, “Where are the kids?” was the first thing out of Josh's mouth.

“Listen to me . . . ,” Heather said.

“No,
you
listen to me . . . where are my babies?” Josh had little patience at this point. He knew that Heather was now finished, as was he, with the relationship. And a battle had ensued between them. Both were jockeying for position in what was presumed to be a fight for the kids—one that Josh had to know he would never win.

The next thing Heather said, however, enraged him. Maybe it was the hangover? Or everything that had been going on? Possibly it was because Josh was now with Emilia—which was not how he had planned to celebrate his recent release from jail. Regardless, Josh said, Heather explained over the phone that the kids were at the house alone with James Acome, who was watching them.

(To Detective Donald Buie in one interview, Josh claimed Heather “told me the whole deal that was going on with James at home and I told her ... go on and do what you were going to do with putting him out and she told me she was gonna put him out ... and I said go on and do that and call me back.” Thus, from what Josh told Buie, that first phone call was centered on Heather telling Josh she was kicking James out of the house.)

Hearing and sensing the resentment and sheer disgust in Heather's voice at his asking where the children were, Josh explained to me later, “I saw nothing but red when she told me that because allegedly [James had had a relationship with an underage girl].” According to how Josh later told it, Heather was throwing it in his face that James was alone with the kids because she knew it would twist and turn the knife already in Josh's back.

“Josh, if you do not give me that car back,” Heather supposedly said next, “I am taking the kids
back
to Mississippi—and you know what happened to me when I was a young girl staying with my mom.”

(Josh did not mention this to Buie during any of his interviews. But in a letter to me, he explained that Heather was allegedly saying that she was going to put the kids in harm's way because she had been sexually assaulted by someone in her family back when she was a teen. To Josh, this was the proverbial final nail—something had to be done to protect those kids.)

While on the phone with Heather, Josh thought back to when they lived in Mississippi with Heather's mother and what was going on inside Carolyn's house. Lots of alleged perverted acts were taking place, according to Josh. He did not want his children subjected to this.

Those thoughts, he told me, made him rage—but still, Josh thought of something other than yelling and screaming and threatening his wife.

“You're bluffing, Heather. You wouldn't do that.”

“I am not. I've already called the station to see when the bus leaves.”

“You are really going to take them away from me again?”

“Yes!”

Josh hung up the phone. He paced. He rubbed the back of his neck. That rage he'd felt in the past—whenever Heather pissed him off and he would strike her—brewed. He was a pressure cooker. He needed a release. Quickly. He needed to do something. Act on that internal rage. He couldn't allow Heather to have the last word, no less take the kids, leave town and bring them into what he viewed as a devil's lair.

After hanging up with Heather, Josh said later, he called Emilia—and claimed to have said: “Do you remember what you was trying to get me to do in December?”

Josh recalled Emilia responding “yes,” on that night.

“Well, it's time,” Josh said, “because she is about to take the kids to Mississippi, and, on top of that, she has gone and left them with [James Acome] alone, all day long.”

“Get her over here tonight,” Emilia told him—at least according to Josh's later claims.

They hung up.

Josh immediately called Heather back and, acting as though he was giving in, agreed to allow her to have the car back. He said, “Call me when you get off work so you can come and pick it up. I'd bring it over to you now, but I need help with something.” Josh never said what he told Heather he needed help with, but she bought into his scenario, if we are to believe him.

(This alleged agreement Josh managed to facilitate seems highly suspicious. It is odd that Heather would, without asking what was up, agree to help a guy she was bickering with and, at this point, absolutely despised. On top of that, the idea that Emilia first came up with this plan to kill Heather, as Josh suggested to me, also has some problems—because during that one recorded phone call from inside the jail weeks before, Josh floated “that thing” for Emilia over the phone and she came across as legitimately not having any clue as to what he was talking about until she figured it out and then went along with it. In addition, in Josh's first statement to Detective Buie about his role in Heather's murder, he never mentioned that Emilia had said
anything
in December about a plan to kill Heather.)

Josh called Emilia back and they “concocted,” according to what Josh told me, a plan revolving around some money to get Heather into that trailer in the back of Maria Zayas's house.

With that part of the plan decided, Josh set things in motion by calling his mother to tell her that he was upset because Heather was going back to Mississippi, but there wasn't much he could do about it. Josh said Heather was going to leave the kids with him because she needed some time to straighten her head out.

This gave a reason for Heather turning up missing in the coming days and the kids being left at Judy's house. Josh involved his mother—without her knowing—in a conspiracy to kill Heather. He laid these details out for me in a letter he sent me.

“If that is the case, Josh,” his mother told him, “you need to draw up some type of an agreement with Heather over the kids being left with you.”

“Can you do that, Momma?”

Judy said she would.