O’Dell told the press that the prosecution was receptive to a deal, but said that they were not expecting to receive it that morning, five minutes before walking into the courtroom. The state had been fully prepared to go ahead with the trial, but he said the prosecution was relieved to bring the case to a successful conclusion.
“It’s been a very difficult time for everyone involved. We were satisfied with the deal, and Mr. Shaw’s family was satisfied with the deal,” he said. Many of Karri’s supporters had said his office and the sheriff’s department were “out to get her, but that was not the case. We had no ill will toward her. It was a search for justice and truth. This brings closure to the Shaw family and the community. I also know there is disappointment with those who have supported her.”
“Disappointment” was hardly the word for the emotions that Karri’s loyal friends and followers were feeling as they left court. The woman they had believed, whom they had defended and had sworn that they had 100 percent faith in, had pulled the rug out from under them in an instant. They felt that they had been totally betrayed, used, and lied to.
There were still quite a few of her followers in complete denial, however, loudly claiming that there had to be some reason for her to enter a guilty plea, other than actually being guilty. But most of the Karri legion was left bewildered, shocked, and confused, not understanding what had happened or why.
CHAPTER 22
District Attorney Mike O’Dell addressed the media following Karri’s shocking admission of guilt, telling them that if there was one thing he had learned over the course of the investigation into Billy Junior Shaw’s death, it was how much Shaw had loved his stepdaughters.
“This was a man who took in those little girls as his own,” providing for them and loving them, “and one of those betrayed him. Now there are children without a father and children without a grandfather.”
Karri had laid the case out for herself, O’Dell said, because she loved to talk and the investigators had been able to disprove every statement she made. When asked about rumors that Shaw had used the drugs Karri took from her job to kill himself, O’Dell said that many people had thought Shaw was depressed and suicidal because of his wife’s death three weeks earlier.
“We talked to people who had spoken to him in the days before his death,” O’Dell said. “At one point, he was out mowing the lawn. He was planning to go fishing and offered to plow up a garden for a friend.”
Shaw had also remained active in his saddle business—and as far as the claims that were made about the drugs being taken for use in subduing a bull, O’Dell said there was no bull. Propofol could not be used to sedate a bull, “and if you can get close enough to inject a bull with a needle, you could just throw a rope around its neck.”
O’Dell also disclosed that the state’s expert witness would have been Dr. Steven Shafer, the premier authority on propofol who had testified for the prosecution at Conrad Murray’s trial and conviction in the death of Michael Jackson. Shafer had initially said he did not want to be a part of the prosecution, O’Dell said, because he had just finished with the media circus that was the Jackson trial.
Karri Willoughby claimed that Billy Shaw asked her for propofol to tranquilize this bull prior to selling it.
“We sent him our materials and he reviewed them for four weeks,” O’Dell said, “then he issued a report.” The report, O’Dell said, “would have knocked your socks off.”
The conclusions in the report were dramatic and on point, he said, and Shafer had offered to testify for the prosecution without pay because he wanted to help them find the truth. Shafer’s report completely ruled out the possibility that Shaw’s death had been a suicide, saying there was no way Shaw could have done it himself.
Bruce Gardner said that the defense would have offered the jury another theory of how Shaw had died. It would have been based on their own expert witness’s opinion as to what the cause of Shaw’s death had been.
“He’d been embalmed and in the ground for a year before anyone did an autopsy,” Gardner said. “That changes things. We would have said that they couldn’t have claimed that the acute propofol intoxication was the sole cause of death.”
The defense would have produced testimony through their expert, he said, that the state could not make that call without considering the pseudoephedrine, postmortem redistribution throughout the body. Gardner said he would have asked Shafer about his knowledge of postmortem redistribution. Gardner claimed that when the body dies, a substance like propofol or other toxic substances would redistribute and perhaps leak out.
“Postmortem blood is not the same as what’s pumping through your body right now,” Gardner said. He also pointed out that Shafer admitted that in his laboratory findings, he dealt only with plasma.
“Our attack would have been to contest every assumption he made,” Gardner said, “by saying the forensic numbers weren’t reliable and arguing the amount of propofol Mr. Shaw was given.”
His presentation in court would have probably started by acknowledging that Shafer probably knew as much or more than anyone else in the field about the use of propofol on living people, Gardner said. However, he added, Shafer’s report was not pertinent to the matter of Shaw’s death, saying that he felt Shafer had little, if any, experience in forensic pathology.
“He had no experience in postmortem toxicology,” Gardner said. The studies Shafer mentioned in his report were all very interesting, he said, but testing live patients in a clinical environment was irrelevant to Shaw’s case. The testing had nothing to do with what could be expected to be found in a person who had been dead and embalmed and in the ground for over a year.
Gardner also said that Shafer had assumed that the results obtained by testing done in the Pennsylvania laboratory, which had been hired by the state to determine the amount of propofol in Shaw’s body, had been accurate, and that wasn’t necessarily the case.
“Part of our defense would have been to cast doubt on the accuracy of the amounts of propofol in Mr. Shaw’s body,” Gardner said.
It was obvious that Gardner and his team had worked long and hard on Karri’s defense, and would have liked the opportunity to present their case in court. But when Karri made the decision to enter a guilty plea, her attorneys had to concede that their client was, more than likely, guilty. Their work on her behalf to prove otherwise would be to no avail. She seemed to have reached the decision that she would fare much better by entering the plea than if a jury had heard her case. She knew what the “Truth for Karri” actually was, and the time for lies and manipulations had clearly run out. Karri had evidently decided that her best bet was to cut her losses.
CHAPTER 23
Dr. Shafer’s report would have been extremely hard to discount in front of a jury. When it was released as a part of the case files, it left little doubt as to exactly what the cause and manner of Billy Shaw’s death had been. Shafer said that because of the amount of propofol in Shaw’s body and due to it being found in his urine, there was no doubt that he had been alive at the time the drug was administered.
If Shaw had been dead at the time the propofol was injected into his arm, Shafer said, there would have been none of the drug in his urine because his circulation would have been stopped and the propofol would have remained in his arm vein. Shafer also said he believed the Norcuron had been given to Shaw orally. He outlined what he thought had likely been the steps taken to cause Shaw’s death.
“I believe the first event was the administration of a combination of Norcuron and pseudoephedrine,” Shafer stated, “with the expectation of death from paralysis, and falsely implying death from pseudoephedrine overdose.” However, he said, because of the delayed onset of the Norcuron, “it was necessary to subdue Mr. Shaw, who had some residual strength.”
Shafer said Shaw was then given an injection of Anectine into an arm vein, which left him paralyzed within a minute. Then, he said, Shaw was given the injection of propofol in the opposite
arm vein.
“Because of his emphysema, and the effects of the Norcuron and Anectine,” Shafer said, “Mr. Shaw’s lungs had little oxygen at the time of the propofol injection.” The result was circulatory arrest within five minutes of the injection, Shafer continued.
Shafer said that the claim that the drugs had been obtained for use in subduing a bull was quickly discounted.
“The explanation by Ms. Willoughby that propofol, Anectine, and Norcuron were provided to Mr. Shaw for veterinary purposes is rejected. There is no documented use of these drugs for that purpose,” Shafer said, citing The Merck Veterinary Manual.
CHAPTER 24
Four days after Karri Willoughby’s court appearance and her bombshell guilty plea, her disillusioned friends and followers would get yet another tremendous shock when the state released its discovery evidence as a matter of public record. The media quickly descended on the files, which had become available for viewing at the courthouse.
When the contents of the files were detailed on television news reports and newspaper articles, Karri was revealed as being drastically different than the loyal wife and dedicated Christian that she had carefully portrayed herself to be. When the truth about her activities while in jail was exposed, the shock wave that resulted would be far more hurtful to most of her admirers than even her confession to murder had been. After all, many of them still believed that she must have had some reason for entering the guilty plea—and surely she didn’t actually commit murder.
As soon as the evidence files had been made public, Times-Journal reporter Lindsay Slater immediately set about reviewing them in detail, especially the letters Karri had written while in jail. The letters to her husband, Jason, were as could be expected, telling him how much she loved him and their children and how much she was looking forward to seeing him when she got out of jail. But there were other letters—to other men—some of which bordered on outright pornographic. This was especially true of her correspondence with her fellow jail inmate Nathan Wilder, who had murdered his wife and was waiting for his day in court.
The faithful Christian wife spoke of her adoration of Wilder and her plans for their future. She was going to “officially” marry him when they got out of jail, she said, writing that she loved him beyond her wildest hopes and dreams, and calling him “sweetheart.”
You and the kids are everything to me, she wrote. Only God comes before y’all.
These statements astounded her friends, probably the few members of her family who still supported her, and her faithful and long-suffering husband, Jason. But what came next was even more shocking.
A four-page letter detailing Karri’s sexual fantasies about Nathan Wilder was so graphic that newspapers were unable to report on it, other than saying that Karri titled the episode “Freak Nasty Dream.” After that venture into pornographic writing, the letter followed up with further professions of her great love for Wilder. Ironically, Karri wrote that she didn’t ever want Nathan to worry about her love and faithfulness to him.
You’re the best thing that ever happened to me besides my kids, she claimed, adding that she trusted him and his judgment and was looking to him as the head of their household now and would follow his counsel.
You and God are my strong towers, baby, she professed, continuing by telling Wilder he was her rock, her shelter when she was weak, her counselor, her love, her husband.
I love you for all you are and for all you are becoming, she wrote, adding that, [your love] fills me up and sets me free from all the hurt that I’ve been holding onto for so long.
She was so fortunate to have Wilder in her life: So blessed to have you love me. You are an amazing man, Nathan Wilder! All my love is yours! Thank you, baby, for loving me like you do!
One might think that this long, long letter had reached its conclusion, but Karri continued on, writing as enthusiastically as she had earlier, when she was blogging. She wrote down the lyrics of a song by Evanescence called “Broken,” which she evidently thought had special significance to her relationship with Wilder. Then she called him “my love,” and described her thoughts and dreams of their future together: [It was] what gets me through these long, hard days. Our souls and spirits are already intertwined, and one day our bodies will be also.
Karri then wrote one of her poems for her lover, telling him, I’m not a poet, but I wanted to express to you that I want you and need you every hour of every day. My heart beats for yours.
She loved Wilder, she said, not for what he could give her, but for the very essence of who he was, saying she couldn’t wait to cradle his face in her hands and kiss him.
I love you and give you all I have within me, my sweet love, she wrote. I am forever yours.
CHAPTER 25
Despite her declarations of undying love and faithfulness to Nathan Wilder, Karri evidently had enough time on her hands while in jail to cultivate another relationship simultaneously. It is not known whether she was writing to a fellow inmate or to one of the jail staff. No name was found in that letter, but it contained some telling hints as to Karri’s true nature.
In that letter, Karri told the unknown object of her affection that she wanted them to have a beach wedding, make love every night, and bring their families together.
I want to be your wife, she wrote. I love you. I am in love with you. Doesn’t that matter to you? I’ve already sent you two other letters with no response.
Whoever this mystery lover might have been, it was probably one of his better decisions not to have responded to Karri’s entreaties, otherwise his identity would have been plastered throughout the case files for all the world to see.
Karri didn’t just spend her time writing to Nathan Wilder and the mystery man. There were well over a dozen letters in the evidence file to other people, including Nathan Wilder’s mother, Karri’s family members, and her children. There were also letters to her husband, although from the amount of time Karri was spending on her jailhouse romances, it would seem there was little time left over for Jason Willoughby.
Nonetheless, she managed to squeeze in a little correspondence to him. She wrote to him about missing Christmas with him and the children and how she wished she could be with them. She told him about how her visiting privileges had been revoked because of her refusal to cut her hair. She talked about how much she missed being there for the children, saying she couldn’t imagine being away from them while they were growing up.
I want to be there for them as their mother, she penned.
Karri knew, however, that it was looking less and less likely that would be the case, despite her massive public relations campaign waged online and on the roadsides of north DeKalb County. Shortly before she shocked the courtroom with her surprise guilty plea, she wrote to Jason that she wanted to win the trial: I should win it because I’m innocent, but I don’t think it’s going to go my way. She said Billy Dalton, her brother-in-law, was going to lie, and Kim, his wife and her sister, was going to say that Karri stole their mother’s identity.
And Nancy is going to say mother was upset at the bank, she wrote, admitting that she did sign out the drugs that were in her stepfather’s system.
I have no alibi, she revealed, and who is going to believe I was really taking a nap on the side of the Interstate? Plus, she said, she had two bankruptcies before she was thirty: [A]nd now this sex letter. Let’s face it, it doesn’t look good.
Through it all, even presumably through the mention of the sex letter, which she undoubtedly had tried to convince Jason was a fake, Karri always professed her innocence on every opportunity.
If I go down, I go down fighting and clinging to that truth, she wrote.
CHAPTER 26
Karri’s blogs and Facebook postings always hyped her deep and abiding love and faithfulness to her husband, saying how blessed she was to have Jason for her husband and as the father of their children.
He is not perfect, she wrote, but he is perfect for our family.
He was more than she could ever ask for and much more than she deserved, she said, but God had somehow brought them together and guided them every step of the way through their marriage, blessing them with two beautiful children.
I love him with all my heart, she wrote. My soul is for Jesus, but Jason has the rest of me! Karri said she didn’t tell him often enough how much she appreciated him and everything he did for their family: I don’t know what we would do without him.
Karri went on to say that Jason had “more than honored” the vows they took almost fourteen years earlier. She wrote that in sickness and in health, in good times and bad . . . he has honored me all the days of our marriage.
He was a Christian role model for the children, Karri wrote of her husband, saying that Jason loved the children, but he was a disciplinarian when it was needed.
I can’t say enough good things about him, I am truly a blessed woman. Thank you God for bringing Jason and I together, and thank you Jason for being the man you are, Karri committed to paper.
It would seem that Jason would surely begin to doubt his wife’s professions of abiding and undying love and faithfulness when the jailhouse love letters were made public. With Karri writing to one man about their beach wedding and making love every night, while at the same time writing sexually explicit letters to Nathan Wilder about her desire to be his wife “officially” and claiming to love him beyond her wildest hopes and dreams, where did Jason Willoughby fit into her plans?
In one of her letters to her husband, Karri wrote that it was Christmas night, foggy and drizzling rain, and how she wished she could be snuggling on the couch with Jason, watching the children playing with their new toys.
There’s nowhere on earth I’d rather be, she wrote, than cuddled up in your arms.
The Bad Nurse Page 5