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Overview
Cherry Walker was a devoted, trusting, uncommonly innocent young woman who loved caring for a neighbor's little boy. But when she was asked to testify in court against his abusive mother, Cherry never got the chance. She couldn't lie if her life depended on it—and it did. Cherry's body was found on the side of a Texas road, after being doused with lighter fluid and set aflame.
Attractive, manipulative, and violent, mother of four Kim Cargill had a wealth of dirty secrets she'd do anything to keep hidden. This in-depth account by bestselling investigative journalist M. William Phelps takes you inside Cargill's shocking trial—and into the mind of one of the most conniving female psychopaths in recent history—and on death row.
Praise for M. William Phelps
“One of America's finest true-crime writers.” —Vincent Bugliosi, New York Times bestselling author of Helter Skelter
“Phelps is the Harlan Coben of real-life thrillers.” —Allison Brennan, New York Times bestselling author of Tell No Lies
“Anything by Phelps is an eye-opening experience.” —Suspense Magazine
“Phelps is the king of true crime.” —Lynda Hirsch, Creators Syndicate columnist
Includes sixteen pages of shocking photos
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780786037278 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Kensington |
| Publication date: | 03/01/2017 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 496 |
| Sales rank: | 78,664 |
| File size: | 3 MB |
About the Author
Touched by tragedy himself through the unsolved murder of his sister-in-law, Phelps is able to enter the hearts and minds of his subjects like no one else. He lives in Connecticut and can be reached at his website, www.mwilliamphelps.com.
Read an Excerpt
Don't Tell A Soul
By M. William Phelps
KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.
Copyright © 2017 M. William PhelpsAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7860-3727-8
CHAPTER 1
She had a southwestern charm that people adore: calm disposition, a Texas twang, a relaxed outlook on life, an admirable Christian manner. Since 2002, sixty-eight-year-old Rueon had been married to Gethry Walker, eighty-three years old, a man pretty much set in his ways by now. Gethry was a gentle spirit — one of those rare men that listened more than he talked. He was an old-school, churchgoing Texan who almost every day wore suspenders, dress shirt and slacks, along with a subtle, elegant tie. When Gethry did have something to say, he spoke it at the altar behind a lectern during services at the Greater Love Temple Church in Tyler, Texas.
Both Gethry and Rueon were God-fearing people. They believed in Jesus Christ, redemption of the cross, penances paid for wrongs committed, justice, and facing demons and coming to terms with who you are under the guidance, influence and faith of God.
On Saturday, June 19, 2010, when Gethry and Rueon had not heard from Gethry's daughter, thirty-nine-year-old Cherry Walker, they felt something was wrong.
Where is Cherry?
Perhaps she had simply decided not to call. Cherry was entitled to her own life. Plus, she could be absentminded. Cherry had suffered from "learning disabilities" all her life and had just gone off to live on her own. She was almost thirty-nine, her birthday four months away. Classified as MR, "mentally retarded," by her doctors, she'd made great progress.
That Sunday morning (which also happened to be Father's Day), as Gethry and Rueon got ready for church, Rueon wondered again why Cherry had not called. She would always call before church to check in or ask what time the van was coming to pick her up. But as the morning wore on, there was still no word. Almost two full days now and not a peep.
Totally out of character for Cherry.
Rueon fixed her hair and figured the church van, which Cherry's brother drove, had picked her up for services and they'd meet her at Temple Love. She told Gethry not to fret. They'd go to church and run into Cherry there. No worries. Rueon could kindly scold Cherry and remind her that calling Rueon and Gethry once a day, if not every other day, was what they expected from her. They could explain to Cherry she needed to take responsibility, be done with it, and enjoy Sunday service, praising Jesus.
Gethry and Rueon, Cherry's stepmother, looked for Cherry as they walked into Temple Love. Cherry had her favorite seat down in the front row of pews, her name on it. But when Rueon reached the front by the altar, she looked around and Cherry was nowhere to be found.
Rueon sought out Cherry's brother. "Where's your sister?"
"I thought she was with y'all," he said.
"No, we thought she was coming with you."
Throughout that Sunday service, as anxiety turned more into a deeper concern, Rueon called Cherry at her apartment and Cherry's cell phone number.
"We got no response," Rueon said later.
If there was one thing about Cherry that Rueon and Gethry and anybody close to Cherry knew, it was that the girl did not go anywhere without two things: her money purse and cell phone. These two items were part of her, attached.
For Rueon and Gethry it was easy to tell themselves that Cherry probably just went to church with someone else.
"She sometimes did," Rueon explained later.
When Rueon and Gethry got home, Rueon called Cherry several more times, but got no response.
"You know," she told Gethry, "I'm going to git her."
Cherry had struggled, but worked hard, and she'd managed to overcome many difficulties and disabilities to carve out a life for herself with a small studio apartment across town in Tyler, not far from Rueon and Gethry's home. She had help from an aide, who came to see her every day, but Cherry was living on her own, doing things for herself. They could think of no reason for Cherry to fail to call them for this long. It just did not make sense.
"Call her again," Gethry suggested.
No answer.
"Let's go eat, and if we don't hear from her by the time we're done, then we can stop by Cherry's apartment and check in on her," Rueon suggested.
Gethry nodded.
They ate lunch and still heard no word from Cherry. Leaving the restaurant, they stopped back at home to grab the spare key to her apartment and headed out to East Houston Street in Tyler, the Citadel apartment complex.
Rueon walked in first. She couldn't believe it. The place was in "disarray," which was entirely unlike Cherry, a neat freak who fixated on cleaning and cleaning supplies in an obsessive-compulsive way. She'd never, under her own will, leave her apartment with "everything" all over the place. "Her ironing board was up. ... Her bed was unmade ... and things were just kind of scatter-y," one source later recalled.
"This is not Cherry, ain't it, Gethry?"
"Sure ain't," he said.
In addition, Cherry would have never walked out of her apartment without taking a bath, changing her clothes — all of which needed to be ironed before she'd wear them — or tidying up. Everything in her apartment had its place, and there was a place for everything. That was how Cherry lived her life.
Structure.
Focus.
Detail.
"This was the first thing I noticed," Rueon later explained. "And you just kind of get a feeling, you know."
A sense. That sinking pit in your gut. A woman's intuition — something was off.
Rueon looked in Cherry's closet. In her kitchen. All over. She searched for Cherry's cell phone or the coin purse Cherry always carried with her. Not finding either gave Rueon a bit of comfort, because there was no chance Cherry would leave the house without both of them. With both being gone, there was a bit of relief in knowing that she wasn't whisked away in some sort of home invasion or kidnapping.
Still, walking around the apartment, Rueon couldn't shake the feeling: Something's wrong.
The comb was on the vanity counter, the mouthwash by the faucet, the spray bottle of tile cleaner on the floor by the shower, where Cherry always left it, the smiling kitty cats on the ironing board apron underneath of pair of socks waiting to be ironed, two cases of water on the floor by the wastebasket, a roll of paper towels on the kitchen table, Cherry's favorite poster — from the horror film Shutter — taped to her wall, her velvety red chair against the wall, stacks of DVDs, mainly horror and other R-rated movies around the television, and the TV remote sitting on the bed.
Everything in Cherry's life was there waiting for her, but she was missing.
Rueon didn't see it then, but on a calendar on Cherry's wall, two dates stuck out: June 18, the previous Friday, and the following Wednesday, June 23. On both days, in pen, somebody had written, Babysit.
Another possibility existed, Rueon thought. One of Cherry's closest friends or even her caseworker, Paula Wheeler, a woman who saw Cherry almost every day, may have come by and picked her up to go out to eat or to shop. Rueon had been getting on Cherry lately, in a motherly way, "Girl, you know ... you're [thirty-nine years old] now, and you need to grow up."
They had been trying to show Cherry what Rueon called "hard love," based on the idea that Rueon and Gethry could not be with Cherry forever — she'd need to spread her wings and go off on her own. Was this Cherry doing that very thing, going it alone? Had she taken Rueon's advice?
There was another side of Cherry, however. Her collection of DVDs. She liked to watch horror films such as Saw, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and her favorite, Paranormal Activity. Yet she played with children's toys and could not read or write much more than her name and a few numbers and letters. She was very much a child in an adult's body.
Rueon and Gethry decided to go home and wait for Cherry to call.
CHAPTER 2Bobby lewis was on his way back to work. Such a common, routine task that so many perform each day. Waking up, heading off to a job, collecting that paycheck on Friday, then enjoying a weekend of rest and relaxation.
On Saturday, June 19, 2010, the day before Rueon and Gethry Walker grew concerned that Cherry had not called or shown up at church, Bobby was driving along an area near Smith County Road, known locally as the CR 2191, in Whitehouse, a small town north of Houston and east of Dallas, Texas. It was just outside Tyler, directly west of Lake Tyler, a massive body of water shaped like a cluster of clouds.
Bobby had the radio on. The windows rolled down. That familiar hot and heavy, wet Texas air was blowing into his face. It was a peaceful ride on a lovely day — and should have been nothing more.
Somewhere just before three o'clock, however, Bobby Lewis's rather predictable life took a turn into the Twilight Zone. He worked at Domino's Pizza in Tyler. He was in Whitehouse on this afternoon to pick up a coworker before heading back into the restaurant for more deliveries.
Passing the 15900 block of CR 2191, after pulling into a driveway and turning his car around, thinking he was lost, Bobby saw something off to the side of the road.
What in the hell?
He pulled over and stopped his vehicle.
Bobby got out. There was a dirt area, "overgrown with weeds," in a thickly settled part of town — mostly red clay, some sand, trees and forest on all sides, save for several buildings and a few homes to the southwest. It was a semisecluded area, just to the west of the famed Piney Woods section of the state. Whitehouse is small-town America: About seven thousand souls resided there in 2010. The median household income fell in the neighborhood of about $70,000 per year, with Texas, overall, coming in at about $50,000. So there was some money here in Whitehouse. Most people, 85 percent of whom the recent census termed as "white," weren't poor by any means.
From his vehicle Bobby Lewis saw a charred black patch of land. After stepping out of his car, curious, he walked closer. It was probably the residue of some kids burning up an old mattress or a campfire from a keg party. Maybe even a load of trash some knucklehead had tossed out and set on fire. The charred remains spread over a small area of the sandy and red clay ground. The pile had not burned entirely, however, and the pizza man noticed that something about it beckoned a closer look.
Bobby went in for a more personal view.
Getting within about fifteen feet of the debris, he could clearly see that, in fact, it wasn't a pile of trash, an old campfire or the remnant of an ordinary fire. Approaching the pile from about three yards away, he did not want to get any closer, Bobby later told police, because in that moment he realized what he was looking at.
Anxiety throbbed as Bobby Lewis stepped back, pulled out his cell phone and, with index finger shaking, dialed 911.
CHAPTER 3She was lying facedown about fifty feet off the side of CR 2191, where Bobby Lewis waited for police to arrive. "I knew what it was," he said later. "So there was no need to go any closer."
It was a dead body (DB) — probably a female, by the look of what little clothing was left and the feminine shape of her body. It was difficult to say for certain, because the person was lying on her stomach. Still, the contour appeared to be that of a large female.
The DB had one arm at her side pointed downward, and the other was pointed up above her head as though she was raising her hand in class to ask a question. Her legs were about a foot apart, toes pointed into the dirt. She wore black Capri pants (what was left of them), white sneakers with black oily stains and no dirt on the bottoms, indicating that she had not walked to this location on her own, but had been dumped here. (Her shoes, otherwise, would have been caked with the same red clay that was on the ground all over the place.)
It was unclear what type of shirt she had on because it had melted to her charred skin, which had peeled and creased in some sections, spotted in others, burned entirely off in small areas. The shirt, best Bobby could tell from the pieces still intact, was green with a floral pattern — another indication that the body was female. Even more horrifying: All of her hair was gone. Her face, pushed into the ground, appeared to be nearly burned off. The entire area of her neck was burned. She was unrecognizable. Bobby did not know from looking at her how old she could be. Best estimate from him was that she was young, maybe late teens to early thirties.
She had no name.
No identification.
Bobby had no idea where she had come from or who had put her here.
Much less, why.
He waited, staring at "the ash all around [the] body," not touching her or anything within what was now, he realized, a crime scene.
* * *
Whitehouse police (sometimes referred to as "peace") officers Joshua Brunt and David Roberson arrived at 3:03 P.M. They surveyed the scene, secured it and unspooled a roll of yellow police tape, tacking the plastic rope up around the immediate area and closing most of it off. Preserving a crime scene as quickly as possible might be the most important action any cop can take within this type of investigation.
Outdoor crime scenes pose so many inherent problems from the onset that safeguarding the scene is as important as combing through it with a magnifying glass. It was imperative to have a scene protected from footsteps, passersby, animals, untrained cops, the elements and anything else that might contaminate the scene and its surrounding area.
Officer Roberson, per protocol, started a crime scene log, a notebook detailing time, date, action, personnel. Soon the entire area, which had otherwise been quiet, would be teeming with cops and crime scene investigators (CSIs) and detectives and sheriffs and Texas Rangers, all looking to unravel what had happened — that is, after the most important task began: identifying the girl, contacting family members and beginning to learn "who, what, where, when and how."
Whitehouse Police Department (WPD) officer Rod Langinias arrived and spoke to Roberson and Brunt, who stood with Bobby Lewis, and talked about how Bobby had come across the scene. The first suspect in any case was the person who found the body.
Bobby explained how he had pulled into that driveway, turned his car around, and there she was. He said he didn't realize at first what he was looking at, but after getting out and surveying the scene, it hit him. She was dead. Someone had lit her body on fire.
No, he had not touched anything.
A sergeant arrived. After talking to Bobby Lewis, Officer Langinias asked his sergeant, "You want me to take some photos until the boys from [CSI] arrive?" Langinias mentioned that he had spotted some tire tracks in the red clay and skid marks on the road closest to where the body was located. That sort of stuff needed to be documented before it was contaminated or, even worse, destroyed.
"Stay out of the crime scene area and wait for the crime scene people to come," the sergeant ordered.
"Got it," Langinias said.
Langinias and several other officers blocked off the road, so no one could drive down it. There was a rolled-up carpet nearby, some charred ashes just north of the body. Between the victim's legs was a grade-A, homogenized, half-and-half Dairy Fresh creamer cup, one of those tiny plastic containers you get with your coffee at McDonald's or, in this case, Dairy Queen. The item was used, crumpled up. It had no age to it.
Other latent trace was visible right away, mainly those tire tracks and some carpet fibers and other small pieces of what looked to be potentially important evidence. For CSIs the best thing about red clay was that it acted as a mold. Footprints and tire tracks had left solid imprints. There was some sand around the area, too, and they wouldn't get much from that, but the red clay was a bonus. It might not lead to finding out the identity of the woman, but it would certainly help at some point in the investigation when suspects were identified and their cars and shoes were examined.
Ultimately, this was a Smith County Sheriff's Office (SCSO) investigation, with the Tyler Police Department (TPD) and the local WPD, along with the Texas Rangers, lending assistance. In Texas everyone understands his or her role when solving crimes: to find and arrest the bad guy.
Around 4:00 P.M., with the scene overrun by law enforcement personnel, word spread around town that something was going on near CR 2191, south of Tyler. The local media was alerted. Many would hop into their satellite trucks and little cars with the broadcast banners written in bright blues and reds on the doors and head out to the location to see what could be reported.
SCSO detective Ron Rathbun took a call to head down and find out what he could. Rathbun was an old-school, by-the-book guy. He was on scene by 4:55 P.M. Bobby Lewis was still there, sitting, shaking his head in disbelief, ready and willing to answer any questions he could. Rathbun located him not long after arriving. Rathbun asked him where he worked.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Don't Tell A Soul by M. William Phelps. Copyright © 2017 M. William Phelps. Excerpted by permission of KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP..
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