To Love and to Kill (6 page)

CHAPTER 14

THE MCSO FINALLY
got a lead on Heather's whereabouts. It was March 18, 2009. Two MCSO detectives took a ride to an Ocala Publix supermarket after receiving information that Heather's debit card had been used there back on March 3, at 9:11
A.M.
It was an exciting bit of evidence for the MCSO. The supermarket's ATM machines were equipped with video surveillance, so detectives could sit down and watch the video from that transaction and find out if it was Heather withdrawing the money. Who knew—perhaps Heather
was
hiding out for some strange reason? Ocala didn't seem like a place she would normally go to use an ATM, so it was possible she was trying to stay under the radar.

Forty-two dollars had been withdrawn from the work account where Heather's last paycheck had been deposited automatically. The manager of the supermarket met both detectives and gave them a CD of that entire day. Publix had a camera pointed directly at the ATM machine. When they got back to Major Crimes, the detectives popped in the CD and had a look.

A male, bald, in good shape, wearing what one detective described as a T-shirt depicting a “commercial type leaf blower on his back” had withdrawn the funds.

It surely wasn't Heather. She was nowhere in sight.

After zooming in on the T-shirt the man wore, they learned the shirt advertised a local lawn service company.

“The estranged husband, Joshua Fulgham,” said one detective to the other, “he works for that lawn service. . . .”

The MCSO had who it believed to be Josh Fulgham withdrawing money from Heather's account more than two weeks after she went missing.

Huge red flag.

CHAPTER 15

WHEN A CASE
opens up, sometimes it moves as fast as detectives can absorb the information and run it down. The MCSO had developed another bit of interesting evidence during that same March 18 day. Once they put their focus on Josh Fulgham as a potential suspect in his wife's disappearance, things started to fall in place. After investigators visited the school where Josh and Heather's oldest child attended classes, they learned from the principal that Josh had actually withdrawn his child from that school and registered her at another school, closer to his home. Apparently, Josh had shown the school a letter signed by Heather giving Josh full custody of the children. The school had a copy of the letter.

While that was happening, Detective Donald Buie had interviewed James Acome, Heather's boyfriend, and a female whom both Josh and Heather knew. During those interviews, Buie heard this from James Acome: “Heather left on a Greyhound bus bound for Mississippi on that last day she was seen around here.”

Buie grew up in Gainesville, Florida. Gainesville is south of Jacksonville, in the northern part of the state. There was no family plan of going into law enforcement or some tragic event in Buie's life pushing him toward a career as a cop.

“I just decided one day to go into law enforcement, and there I was,” he said.

Buie had been working for Cox Communications when the law enforcement bug bit and he decided to go for it. His first job was at the University of Florida Police Department. From there, Buie found himself working just outside Tallahassee, in a small police department in Perry, where he truly learned the ins and outs of community policing. It was 1998 when Buie took a job at the MCSO and made it into Major Crimes as a detective the old-school way: pounding the pavement, paying his dues. He had eight years in Major Crimes before the Heather Strong case came across his radar and he began to see that it needed further investigation.

Looking at the reports, Buie had a strong suspicion that Heather had not left town. The case just had that feel. But before he had a chance to develop the gut instinct, Buie later pointed out, it was the system the MCSO had in place that actually began to point out that this was more than your run-of-the-mill missing person case.

“To give credit where due,” Buie said, “the girls we call ‘Star Operators' get the cases . . . and they write them up in the computer.” From there, the detectives and other investigators have a look to see where they can help maybe fill in the gaps. Detectives and officers can call into the Star Operator system and dictate a report (instead of sitting down and typing it out), so it gets into the system very quickly. It's an extremely efficient and fast way to get reports into the system so everyone can have access to them. “The Star Operators see hundreds of cases throughout the year they write up in the computers and begin to develop a sense for them,” Buie added. “They saw this case of Heather Strong going missing and something just didn't appear to be right. And that's how the case was brought to my attention.”

Sometimes it just starts with a cop having a feeling. Buie then had his boss, Brian Spivey, look at it—and that was when he heard Spivey's feeling that Heather was dead.

Buie read through the case one day in mid-March. “And I immediately felt something was wrong. Lot of red flags. There was a lot of history between Josh and Heather.... Even if Heather didn't live a grand lifestyle, she still worked as hard as she could to provide for her and her kids. It was unlike her to disappear. This was obvious right away to me.”

One thing Buie noticed was that nobody had interviewed Josh and Heather's oldest child. She was eight at the time. He wrote himself a note to get over to Josh's mother's, where the kids were staying, and talk to the child as soon as possible.

Another interesting dynamic Buie found was that Josh and Heather “had a pretty open relationship.” Meaning, they often involved others in their sexual fun. Whenever that type of fact emerged, Buie knew, anything was possible.

Love, money, revenge—that's why people kill one another.

Buie needed to run down everything that came in, so he contacted Greyhound in Ocala, the only local bus depot around. Its computers did not have any record of Heather (or Josh) purchasing a ticket to Mississippi or anywhere else.

As investigators were in a meeting that afternoon talking about the case, Sergeant Brian Spivey interrupted.

“We got some information here about Miss Strong's debit card being used right now at the Reddick Supermarket.” The MCSO had the equivalent to an all points bulletin (APB) out on the debit card, so any time it was used they'd get a call immediately. “Come on, let's go. . . .”

Spivey and another detective took off for Reddick. As they drove, Spivey said, “We think it's got to be the husband, Josh Fulgham. We're told he's driving a maroon four-door Toyota car.”

As they approached a traffic light after getting off the I-75, then headed east on Highway 318, near Highway 441, they spotted a maroon Toyota traveling through a traffic light heading north in the opposite direction.

Spivey called it in.

They followed Josh Fulgham as he drove into the Pine Grove Mobile Home Park, where he now lived, but they held back and observed Josh walk into his home.

Spivey called for backup. It was time to make a move on Josh and have a more focused chat with him. Put his feet to the flame a little bit and find out what he knew.

They sat surveillance on Josh's mobile home. By early evening, they had a warrant for Josh's arrest on charges of him withdrawing forty-two dollars from Heather's account at the Publix ATM machine. According to the MCSO, Josh had committed credit/debit card fraud.

Sergeant Spivey sat and watched the mobile home as several other detectives arrived to help out. Some were parked near Josh's home; some waited across the way on Highway 441. The MCSO wanted to get Josh into its Ocala Major Crimes headquarters and sit him down, get him on record, maybe get Josh to tie himself to a signed statement. They could question him about Heather under the guise of a potential fraud charge. After all, the MCSO knew that a fraud charge like this would probably never fly in court. Josh was still Heather's husband; maybe his name was even on her account. Still, it was a good ruse to get him downtown.

Detectives Brian Spivey and Donald Buie met down the block from Josh's mobile home and then drove together. They parked in Josh's driveway and walked up to his house. A third detective, stationed across the street, kept a close eye on Josh's maroon Toyota, just in case Josh decided to head out the back door and flee. They kept in contact via radios.

Buie couldn't wash one important factor from his mind: an interview he had done earlier in the day with Josh and Heather's eight-year-old child. Something she had told Buie stuck with the detective. She said that her daddy and mommy were together on that night Heather went missing. Daddy left the house with Mommy and returned many hours later.

Alone.

It was the last time the child had seen her mother.

“During that interview with [Josh's daughter],” Buie explained, “she puts Josh and her mother together on the night Heather is last seen. This was inconsistent with statements we had that indicated Heather was last seen at the Petro.”

This didn't mean Josh killed his wife; but still, the guy had some explaining to do.

Buie knocked on Josh's door at 6:04
P.M.
Spivey was standing to his left.

“Come on in,” said a man's voice. They couldn't see him.

“Any dogs or anything in here?” Buie asked.

There were no dogs.

Josh stepped out from around a corner inside the house. They exchanged pleasantries. Josh told his kids to go into another section of the house and do their homework.

Buie took in a deep breath through his nose and smelled a strong aroma of weed. Not as though someone in the house had sparked a joint and taken a few puffs. This was much more profound and pronounced, as if someone had been sucking on a bong for hours.

Donald Buie approached Josh and asked him if he had “a wife or anything.” Josh said, “I do, but I don't know where the hell she is.”

“That's why we're here,” Buie finally said.

Buie got Josh to commit to some dates and information about Heather as Spivey, standing by, mentioned that he smelled pot smoke. They discussed where it was coming from as Spivey admitted the weed smell wasn't all that important to them at this point or the reason for their visit.

Josh said he'd fired up a doobie earlier, but that was it. It was just a little toke—nothing more.

Buie asked Josh for a timeline.

Josh said it was February 15 and Heather had called from the Petro. (There was a difference of opinion in who called whom, but phone records would later flesh out that it was Josh who actually called Heather twice at the Petro on that day.) “She told me she was fixin' to get out of here . . . because she was fixin' to get into trouble. . . .”

Buie asked if there was more.

Heather was tossing her boyfriend out of the house and she wanted Josh to come and get the kids, Josh explained. But he didn't want to go over there for fear of being set up and arrested for something he didn't do. So they met, Josh said, “at a little Subway store” near the Petro. As an afterthought, he then said after he got the kids from Heather, he brought them over to his mother's. He was living there at the time.

While he spoke, Josh seemed relaxed and calm.

A little too much, perhaps.

Probably the weed, Buie considered.

“She called me with the keys,” Josh continued, referring to something Heather had said to him on that same night. “She wanted me to come and get the keys from Petro.... She had two suitcases with her ... last time I seen her.” Josh said he gave her five hundred dollars in cash. It was all the money he had.

They chitchatted a bit more, focusing on when Josh and Heather were married. Then Josh said he had a girlfriend now, “Emilia. But we just came to the conclusion that, you know, we don't need to [argue anymore].... If we can't get along, we're not going to live together.”

When they split up—just recently—Emilia went to stay with her mom, he added. She was there now.

Buie found all of this interesting, but not at all revealing in its entirety. He had a sense Josh knew more.

“Any idea where she might have gone off to?” Buie asked.

Josh said he felt he knew where Heather was: Mississippi. He mentioned something about her taking off with some “old guy . . . she used to get money off of. . . . I think she left with him.”

Using that point as a launch, Josh did a good job of selling a story that Heather had taken a sum of money from somewhere (he didn't know where) and took off on the run, realizing that cops would soon be after her. He was basically calling his wife a thief, saying she ripped someone off for a large amount of cash and booked town.

Buie said there were no open warrants out for her arrest.

Josh countered by explaining that it hadn't all been figured out just yet. In time, the cops were going to be notified, from what he had heard, and it would all come to light.

Buie asked Josh if he knew Heather's ATM-card pin number.

Josh gave it to them and said he hadn't heard from Heather since she left.

They were sitting in the living room. The kids came in from time to time and asked their father questions about homework and dinner. The situation, despite the foul aroma of stale marijuana permeating the air, soaking into the carpet and furniture, appeared to be a father taking care of his children. Nothing, save for that smell of weed, seemed to be out of place.

Buie said, “Listen, before we leave, can you go and get us any weed you have so we can get rid of it?”

Josh showed them a few roaches in the ashtray and said that was the whole of it.

Spivey asked Buie to hand Josh one of his business cards. “If anything should come up, if somebody sees her ... we need to know so we can close this case out.”

“I mean,” Josh said, seemingly confused, “well, what's going on?”

They explained that Heather was considered a missing person. With any missing person case as old as this one, they needed to maybe get a DNA profile of Heather just in case a Jane Doe body showed up somewhere in the future. Would Josh be willing to help with that?

He said he would.

By the time they walked out the door, it was 6:31
P.M.

Spivey and Buie looked at each other as they sat in the car and prepared to leave. Both had a strong feeling they were going to be seeing a lot of Joshua Fulgham over the next few days.

He's lying,
both cops thought.
He knows more.

Spivey turned the key, fired up the engine and pulled out.

They could have arrested Josh. But for now, as a strategy, both detectives chose to let him be.