To Love and to Kill (4 page)

CHAPTER 7

AFTER A FEW
additional weeks of not hearing anything from Heather, MCSO deputy Beth Billings took another ride over to the Iron Skillet, on March 18, after hearing that the Petro manager had more information regarding that final conversation she'd had with Heather.

Brenda Smith, Heather's boss, was concerned about her friend, coworker and employee as she thought about the circumstances surrounding Heather's disappearance back on February 15. Heather had taken two calls on that day, Brenda told Billings. She was very upset. When the second call came in, Brenda went out into the restaurant and found Heather.

“Come back into the office. You have a call ... sounds urgent.” Brenda had no idea who was calling, but only knew that it was a male's voice she did not recognize.

When Heather and Brenda returned to the office, the line was dead.

“What's going on, Heather?” Brenda asked. “Do you think something is wrong with the kids?”

“Well, I'm going to call.”

Brenda waited. She heard Heather call Joshua Fulgham and ask, “Are the kids okay?” Then Brenda walked out of the office to give Heather some privacy.

Heather finished her phone conversation and soon went back to her station, where she was prepping the salad bar. Brenda walked over to see if things were okay.

She noticed Heather was crying.

“Heather . . . are the kids okay?”

“It's Josh,” Heather said through tears.

Brenda left it there. It was the last time she spoke to Heather—because Heather had left work shortly after that conversation and never came back.

CHAPTER 8

SCARS—EMOTIONAL OR
otherwise—were something Heather Strong had a lot of experience with, especially after Josh Fulgham came into the picture. Their relationship, almost from the time they met as teenagers, was punctuated with problems, mainly beset by Josh's inability to contain his violent tendencies.

“It was a big party at my house every day,” Josh explained to me. He had lost his job on that riverboat for not showing up. Meth had become Josh's number one priority in life.

“I got Heather started using the drug,” Josh claimed. “That was when things started really going downhill for us.”

You think!

Josh said after they began using methamphetamine together, “I became abusive.” He also confessed to stepping out on Heather. Life had not so much turned into one big party than it had gone from two unfettered kids, not realizing what they were getting themselves into, to two jaded adults, now trying to figure out life. One of them had a savage addiction to a drug that showed no mercy—all with kids now depending on them.

Meth does not discriminate or care who it brings down; it is a drug that has such a strong withdrawal that doing it is seemingly the only remedy for the user. As the cliché claims, it is a vicious cycle once the addict is caught up within it. We've all seen those before-and-after photos of meth addicts aging decades inside of a few years of chronic use.

Using meth—even once—can easily be considered a death sentence.

Not long after Heather gave birth to their first child, they agreed it would be best for Heather to go live with her grandmother. Josh and Heather were toxic together; maybe they (and their child) had a chance if apart.

“But I was still going over to her grandmother's, visiting and bringing drugs,” Josh explained.

The drugs kept them together and also having sex. Soon Heather was pregnant with their second child.

“I am not sure,” Josh said years later, “that one is mine.” (Josh's proof is only that, according to how he feels, the child does not look like him.)

While Heather was pregnant this second time, Josh's mother, Judy Chandler, moved to Florida. Josh said it was around then that he “became a bum,” although it's hard to argue that before then he was anything else.

What Josh meant was that he had no place to call his own at that time. He was simply bouncing around, all doped up, staying with friends and an occasional night sleepover with Heather, when she decided to put up with him.

“I hooked up with this guy who was in the meth game and started staying with him, inside an old school bus.”

According only to Josh, Heather continued to use meth, this after they started not seeing each other regularly. Josh soon met another woman, he said, which was “more lust, not love.” The woman was thirty-two, and Josh twenty-one at the time. She loved him, he claimed, but he had no feelings for her other than as a bed and meth-smoking partner.

There was one day when his new girlfriend took off for work. Josh stayed in bed, but managed to get up at one point and walk into the bathroom.

“I had been up for almost two weeks,” he claimed. It was a meth binge like he had never been on before. The drug had taken over. Josh had no more control of his life.

After going to the bathroom, Josh happened to stop and look at himself in the mirror. The creature he saw looking back was not a man he had recognized. It scared him. He showered and shaved, figuring that would help.

Problem was that Josh couldn't wash off the addiction he had to meth.

“I looked like a zombie from some horror movie. . . .”

Josh had seen enough, he said. He was tired of ripping and running.

“Mom,” Josh said a few minutes later on the phone. He was desperate and in tears. “I cannot do this anymore. I cannot live this life any longer. I have to get my life together. I have children.”

Josh's mother had been speaking to Heather once a week because of the kids. Although she had moved to Florida, Josh's mother stayed in contact with everyone she could back home. According to Josh's later recollection, his mother told him that Heather had said recently that she still loved him and wanted to get back together and be a family for once in their lives. It was something Heather, like all new mothers, dreamed about: a good man, jobs, a house, cookouts, neighbors, school functions, birthday parties for the kids with family. Simple dreams any young girl might have. The drugs had gotten in the way of it all. But Heather—and apparently, Josh—was ready to give up the street life and make a go of it.

Heather, alone and young, gave up that baby for adoption, Josh explained. As she dealt with that loss, he spent months getting his act together. Soon they were reunited in Florida.

“I got myself back in good health and was working every day, doing like I was supposed to do, taking care of my family.”

They found a home in Citra. Heather got herself that job at Petro. Life was not necessarily a citadel of happiness and all things good and healthy, but it was okay. They weren't rolling in money, but they were living somewhat normal lives. They were getting up and trying to do the right thing every day.

It was 2006 when Heather got pregnant again. It was a welcomed blessing this time around. Josh was running a lawn care crew of a few men. He had his life together as best he could.

“We were a happy, little family,” Josh told me. “But there was something missing there. We had a poor sex life—and that caused us to argue a lot.”

It was around this time that Josh fell in with a new group of people he had met in town. One of them was Emilia “Lily” Yera, who was dating a guy Josh knew. Josh's buddy, Adam Stover, told him how hot the sex was with Emilia. She was a firecracker in bed, like nothing the guy had ever experienced. Josh seemed interested. Due to an abusive childhood, he had serious issues with sex, which would be revealed much later. For Josh, sex was something he needed to control, especially the time and place. Inside his own home, he wasn't getting anything like that sex Emilia was giving his friend. He often wondered what it was like to have such an experimental, sadomasochistic life in the bedroom. He didn't know it then, but Josh's psyche was craving a certain type of sex because of what he had been through as a child.

One night, Adam made a suggestion to Josh. He said, “Josh, you want to make a porn film with us?” The friend was speaking of himself and Emilia.

Josh was stunned by this, but the prospect seemed intriguing. According to what Josh said many years later, at the time he didn't think Emilia, the way she looked then, was all that attractive, but he believed “she had potential.”

“Yeah,” Josh said. “Okay. What the hell!” He was reluctant, but it sounded like a good time. It would be Josh, Emilia, and Adam in the movie. Emilia was all for it, Josh was told. She was entirely into it.

When the specific night for the tryst and filmmaking came, Josh backed out. It just seemed too crazy and unlike anything he had ever done.

Josh and this guy, however, became close friends.

Soon they were best friends.

“I'm moving to Tennessee,” Adam told him one day. “Me and Emilia.”

“Wow, really?”

Josh knew that it was a good move for his friend, but he'd miss him like the dickens. They were really tight.

“Truly, they were like brothers,” Emilia told me later, describing the friendship between Josh and Adam Stover.

Adam moved to Tennessee with Emilia, and Josh went back to his life with Heather and the kids. He missed his friend. They kept in touch via phone, text, and saw each other on occasion, but Josh longed for that daily interaction. He couldn't shake missing the close companionship and the way they had shared everything between them. They had relied on each other for life advice and support.

Some time went by, and then that call no one wants came into Josh's home. He and Heather were still together, but this second time around, it wasn't that bright and new relationship it had started off as. They were falling into old habits and fighting again. They had moments, but Josh was not the easiest man to get along with. He was demanding and often flew off the handle for no reason. He'd strike Heather from time to time. She'd hit him back, according to several reports. And there was always that on-edge feeling being around Josh—as though, Heather knew, the guy could snap at any moment and either come home blazed on meth, running around like a wild man, drunk and stumbling and mumbling, or simply pissed off and in a rage because life had not been what Josh expected it to be.

“Accident?” Josh said, responding to the phone call. His best buddy had gotten into a car accident in Tennessee.

“I'm sorry,” Josh was told, “he's dead.”

After he hung up, Josh didn't want to believe it. “I'm going to Tennessee,” he told Heather a day later. “I need to speak with Emilia.” Josh wanted to talk to someone who was close to Adam during his last days. He needed to hear from Emilia how his friend was before he died, what he was talking about, what was going on in his life.

There was no “connection” there between Josh and Emilia; they were friends because of the mutual love they shared for the guy who had died. They sat and talked, sharing stories about their relationship with Adam. It was good, Josh said, to sit and speak to someone who knew his friend as Josh had. He needed that.

“Remember when he thought we could make porn?” Josh said to Emilia.

They laughed about it.

The more Josh got to talking to Emilia, the more he saw beyond his lack of attraction to her physically. They were connecting on a much deeper level. There was this sudden, shocking tragedy between them, in a way bringing them closer together.

“Here's my cell number,” Josh said to Emilia as he got ready to leave. She had come into town to be there in this time of need. “If you ever need to talk, call me.”

They hugged and said their good-byes. Josh went back to his life in Florida with Heather and the kids.

CHAPTER 9

DEPUTY BETH BILLINGS
felt there was something in what Brenda Smith had said regarding those two calls Heather had received that day she went missing. Call it a cop's instinct, or that little voice every cop has on his or her shoulder, whispering,
“Follow this lead. Listen more intuitively to this witness. Don't believe him.”

“Heather would confide in me regarding her relationship with Josh,” Brenda explained to Billings on March 18. Billings had brought along Officer David McClain. The investigation was widening, expanding in scope and sensitivity. The MCSO was growing more curious (and suspicious) as each day passed and Heather had not returned or been heard from. With several detectives now involved, it was about gathering as much information as possible from all the parties, tallying it up and making a decision where to take the investigation next. Obviously, something was wrong here. It had been nearly a month and Heather had not called or come back to check on her kids—not once. She had simply vanished.

“What would she say about her and Mr. Fulgham?” Billings asked Brenda.

Brenda skipped that question and moved right into the heart of the matter, at least from her point of view: “I'm scared. I fear for Heather's life.... He (Josh) was continually harassing her and threatening to do her harm in some way. . . .”

CHAPTER 10

BARTOW, FLORIDA, IS
nearly smack in the middle of the state. East of Tampa, southeast of Orlando, Bartow is one of those areas of Florida that is close to the flashy tourism the “Sunshine State” so much depends on: Disney World, Universal Studios, Busch Gardens and so on. Emilia Yera was born on August 4, 1984, and grew up in Bartow, but soon her family moved to McIntosh, a little over two hours north, where Emilia would spend the rest of her life. It was the birth of her little sister, Milagro, “born with thirteen birth defects,” Emilia told me, when the family decided to move north into the Orange Lake region of McIntosh.

“My childhood was a freakin' nightmare,” Emilia said, adding how she “endured years of abuse, regardless of the form.” She claimed two immediate family members, her father and grandfather, “sexually abused” her from the time she was four until the age of fifteen. “I finally came forward when I found out my sister was to be next.” Emilia couldn't allow that to happen. She had to do something to protect Milagro.

Both parties were charged, and Emilia and family members would later testify about the abuse in court. Emilia later withdrew the charges of sexual abuse.

“Before his trial,” Emilia said of her father, “my dad tried to have me, my mom and grandma killed so we couldn't testify.” Her father was later convicted of attempting to solicit the murders of family members and given a four-year prison sentence.

“My childhood consisted of responsibility, secrets and sexual perversion,” Emilia told a newspaper reporter during an interview.

She described a typical night from her childhood as sitting in bed while experiencing terrifying anxiety over hearing the floorboards in front of her door creak. It was because Emilia knew that if those floorboards made that creepy sound in the middle of the night, it was her father coming into her bedroom to sexually assault her.

“You'd hear that floorboard creak and you'd think, ‘It is going to be tonight,'” Emilia told that same interviewer.

It was a noxious and abusive upbringing, Emilia concluded, with the lack of a healthy male role model in her life. That absence set her up for future failures as she grew into her teen years and adulthood—not to mention all of the abuse she claimed to have survived.

Emilia said she dropped out of high school as a teen. From there, she was a frequent guest in foster homes. People “whispered” about her, she felt, wherever she went. Emilia was “that girl”—the one who'd been through hell and back and had been touched mentally by it all. She was the talk of the town. For her, small-town life in the South, Emilia said, was not an episode of
The Andy Griffith Show,
featuring a red-haired boy, fishing pole slung over his back, whistling as he walked down a dirt road. Hers was a form of torture, Emilia explained, a living hell she could not escape from.

“I got pregnant with my first son at the age of seventeen,” Emilia said. “I married his dad to keep the man from going to prison courtesy of the age difference.”

It was all of this, Emilia said, that made her emotionally unavailable to people in her life as she grew into adulthood. Emilia had no traditional family structure or parental guidance to fall back on. She had to learn how to live and survive, essentially, on her own.

With a son, Emilia realized she needed to work in order to care for him properly—she certainly couldn't rely on her husband. Theirs was a relationship that was doomed from how it had started. It wasn't supposed to work. After that relationship ended, Emilia jumped right into another. She constantly needed to have a man in her life. This was a subconscious need for her always to be on the lookout for that one person who would rescue her, take care of her, tell her everything was going to be okay, the suffering was all over:
“I'll now be your protector.”

“I dated because I was ‘supposed to be' with men,” she said. “Yeah, you gotta love the South!”

Emilia said she grew up figuring out that it was best not to let the people around her “know everything” about her. Keeping secrets became a way of life. Hold on to personal things and never reveal the truth about you. Develop a shield from your emotions, not allowing anyone to get too close. Keep people at arm's length. This was how Emilia walked through life.

All that ever mattered to Emilia were her kids. As time moved forward, Emilia got her GED and became a certified massage therapist, giving herself a chance for a life. She was determined to break the cycle, get out of poverty and abusive relationships and find peace and happiness.

Through one new relationship, as Emilia dated James Acome (before Heather got him), she said she'd see Josh “around town” once in a while. “Josh and Adam Stover,” Emilia said, “were like joined at the hip. James had always tried to get close,” Emilia added, “but James could hang out with them, but couldn't come close to being what those two were.”

It was James, Emilia said, “who was my first when I was fifteen.” Emilia was “with James,” she said, when Josh went off to Tennessee to visit Adam from time to time. It was James who came “flying into my mother's front yard” that day, Emilia said, announcing (in tears) that “Adam was killed in a car wreck. . . .”—which then sent Emilia running up to Tennessee to be near him.

“Has anyone told Josh?” Emilia asked James. She knew how close Josh and Adam were.

“I couldn't. . . . I just couldn't,” James had said.

It was Emilia who ended up telling Josh over the phone that night before she headed out herself for a quick visit to Tennessee to be Adam's friend.