If You Only Knew

by M. William Phelps

  “He talked about lending [a family member of Billie Jean’s] hundreds of thousands of dollars and not seeing any of it,” Vonlee recalled. “And he really didn’t have a say in it.”

  “What do you mean?” Vonlee asked. It was early morning. He was pouring his first glass of vodka of the day already.

  “Well, she went down to the bank and signed off on it—I didn’t know about it. She’s my wife and they allowed her to do it.”

  “That’s horrible, Don . . . ,” Vonlee said. “Can’t you do anything?”

  He shrugged his shoulders and threw his hands up in the air. He was tired. Don didn’t want confrontation.

  Vonlee decided she needed to leave as soon as possible and go back to her life in Tennessee. Her aunt was a bad influence. She was obviously doing things Vonlee did not subscribe to. Sure, going out with her to the local casinos and drinking was fun. Spending some of her and Don’s money was a good time, but this was not the way Vonlee wanted to live her life anymore.

  “I’m going back home,” Vonlee told Don.

  “I don’t blame you.”

  CHAPTER 7

  DR. ORTIZ-REYES HAD BEEN waiting for Don’s body on August 12, 2000, when it came into the OCME. Ruben Ortiz-Reyes, a medical doctor trained in pathology, had been told that he needed to be ready for an older gentleman with obvious signs of alcoholism and perhaps other, more chronic medical issues. There was “nothing abnormal” about the death scene, Ortiz-Reyes was told, and the “family had found him on the floor.” For all intents and purposes, although sad, Don Rogers’s death seemed to be a fairly common situation the OCME ran into all the time.

  Ortiz-Reyes figured he’d conduct a routine examination on what he had been told was a “natural death.” It would be one more of about two thousand that Ortiz-Reyes had been involved in during a career spanning some ten years by the time Don Rogers’s body came across his metal slab.

  The word “autopsy” means, essentially, “see for yourself.” Many pathologists report that about 25 percent of all autopsies reveal some sort of surprise nobody ever saw coming. Doesn’t mean there was nefarious behavior behind the death, but maybe the person did not know he or she had a bad heart valve or a growing tumor on the brain. Part of searching the body for answers is to give the family that much-needed closure at a time when they’re trying to figure out what happened.

  Getting started, Ortiz-Reyes first noted how Don was dressed in blue jeans, a T-shirt and undershorts. Perhaps most importantly at this juncture, Ortiz-Reyes reported: There were no . . . obvious injuries on the body.

  There had been quite a bit of discussion about Don’s alleged rectal bleeding back at the scene, Ortiz-Reyes had been told. Vonlee and Billie Jean had both mentioned Don bled a lot. Ortiz-Reyes took a quick look at Don’s anus and found no dried blood, nor any sign of fresh blood. On Don’s undershorts, where one might expect to find bloodstains, either old or new, Ortiz-Reyes did not see any.

  It was a Saturday, so Ortiz-Reyes was limited by time. He had come into the office especially to accept the body. He conducted a cursory examination, making several notes, and decided to put an actual autopsy off until Monday morning, when he could devote more time and attention to it. (If the ME, Ortiz-Reyes’s boss, warranted further examination and wanted him to cut Don open.) This was not highly unusual for a pathologist to do on a weekend. The guy had a life, too. He could not just drop everything to conduct a full-on autopsy on a Saturday morning. Sure, if there was some sort of serial killer on the loose and the autopsy was crucial in finding him or identifying a victim, he’d gladly drop everything and do it. If the TPD had requested immediate answers in Don’s death, Ortiz-Reyes would forgo any plans he had and do his work. But it was apparent that Don, an older gentleman, had died of natural causes. Putting him in the cooler and waiting until Monday morning was not going to hurt anything. On top of that, what did his family want?

  The one injury Ortiz-Reyes noticed as he wound down his hasty examination was on Don’s right eye. He had “an old injury” there. Probably two days old, the doctor later noted.

  The one thing Ortiz-Reyes was obligated to do was come up with a preliminary finding; in other words, he needed to spend enough time with the body in order to determine a cause of death that he could put before the medical examiner on the death certificate, which the medical examiner would then have to sign off on.

  Taken into account all Ortiz-Reyes had heard from responding officers and the OCME investigator sent to the scene, Ortiz-Reyes was comfortable with not proceeding with a formal autopsy on this day—i.e., cutting Don open and examining his innards, weighing organs, cutting open his brain with a buzz saw and initiating the lab to begin testing samples of tissue. Lab workers would come in early Monday, and if they weren’t facing a backlog, they would test Don’s blood and urine just to make sure there was nothing out of the ordinary as far as poisons or anything else that might cause alarm.

  “When we have a body . . . [and] nothing out of the natural is related to the death of this person,” Ortiz-Reyes explained later, “we usually see the body to check for any kind of injuries. If everything is within the normal, we don’t do autopsy.” Furthermore, Ortiz-Reyes added, because of Don’s age being in the neighborhood “where most Americans die of heart problems, I thought he had died of heart problems.”

  As Ortiz-Reyes stood over Don, still taking notes, thinking about the situation and all of the factors involved, he told himself, There is no need for an autopsy. He then reflected, This gentleman more likely died of problems in the heart . . . arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease, meaning that the heart—that the vessels around the heart are in bad shape and do not give enough blood to the heart to support the life.

  It was an educated guess, based on Ortiz-Reyes’s experience.

  Generally, when a medical examiner thinks a human being died of a heart attack, the first thing he or she does is open that person up and have a look at the heart. But because Don was so old, by Ortiz-Reyes’s swift estimation, he didn’t feel the need to do that, at least not on this day.

  Ortiz-Reyes took a sample of urine and blood from Don’s body. He posted them to the lab for examination on Monday when they came back from the weekend.

  “Heart attack,” Ortiz-Reyes later said in court that he thought at that moment.

  There wasn’t a doubt in his mind.

  Ortiz-Reyes took one last look at Don’s body, finished his notes and told the weekend staff Don needed to be put in the cooler.

  He then shut off the lights in the autopsy suite and left.

  CHAPTER 8

  VONLEE NICOLE TITLOW DECIDED to head back to North Carolina to pick up her new car, and then head home to Tennessee, where her former life was waiting for her. She could walk into the Waffle House and ask for her job back. She could explain she fell off the wagon and that she was now working with a clean slate and a clear head. She’d go back to AA. She’d clean up her life. It was a bump in the road. Everyone deserved a second chance.

  The one lesson Vonlee took away from her time in Michigan with her aunt was that “I was seeing for the first time how Billie Jean wasn’t the sweetheart that I had always thought she was.”

  Back in Tennessee as the middle of July 2000 came around, and Billie Jean was home in Michigan with her son, Vonlee went to see Billie Jean’s sister, her other aunt. She sat down and had coffee and explained what happened in Michigan with Don coming into the bed and fondling her and all that bleeding. Vonlee was concerned that she didn’t know Billie Jean and might have trusted her more than she should have. Vonlee was also asking herself a question: Why is Billie Jean so interested in me now, all of a sudden? Vonlee had not heard from her aunt in a decade, save for a phone call here and there. Why now, at this point, was Billie Jean so crazy to have Vonlee in her life?

  “I don’t want to go back there,” Vonlee told her other aunt.

  There was more to it than Billie Jean, Don and their marital and health issues. Vonlee still ha
d that guy who’d signed over his house waiting for her. She wanted to end it completely with him, but she’d left without dissolving the relationship for good. So there were personal issues at stake here for Vonlee. She knew if she went back to Michigan, she’d be closer to Chicago and eventually go back to the penthouse and likely start dating the guy again. Temptation was the root of most evil, Vonlee knew. Seeing him might ultimately lead to her getting back into the escort service business and then the drinking and partying all night. She was exhausted just thinking about it. The way she saw it now: Out of sight, out of mind. Being back home felt good.

  Billie Jean wasn’t about to let Vonlee go, however. She actually came back into Maryville and tracked Vonlee down. Her son was doing better. Don was being a pain in the ass. Billie Jean pleaded with Vonlee that she needed her support.

  “Come back, please.”

  “I don’t know, Aunt Billie. . . .”

  “You’ve got to come back with me, if not for nothing else but to settle things with [your man],” Billie Jean said. “You cannot just leave him hanging in the air, Vonlee. That ain’t right.”

  “Billie Jean had a fit over this,” Vonlee later recalled. She rode Vonlee, following her around Tennessee for a few days, until Vonlee caved in and agreed to go back to Michigan and stay with her and Don.

  Back now in Troy, Billie Jean, Don and Vonlee were once again a quasi-family. Billie Jean’s son was recovering, doing much better. Billie Jean was dragging Vonlee along to the casinos again. They were drinking and staying out all night.

  Just like that, Vonlee was back to square one.

  Vonlee still had not said anything to her aunt about Don fondling her breasts in bed that night. She thought Don did not even remember what happened. Yet, with Vonlee being back inside the Rogers household again, Don picked up his persistence that he and Vonlee get together. He became more aggressive and sexually explicit, according to Vonlee’s memory.

  “We’d be eating dinner, Billie would walk out of the room and Don would play footsies with me under the table and make eyes with me,” Vonlee said later.

  The passes continued as the end of July came around. It wasn’t overbearing to the point where Vonlee couldn’t manage, but more of a nuisance. Don would say things and make gestures. He’d grope at Vonlee. He was harmless in the sense that Vonlee never felt threatened that he’d do something forcibly. But Vonlee was constantly asking herself what in the world was she doing in that house. Why was she there? What purpose did staying at their house, subjected to this type of behavior, serve? Was it simply for the partying?

  Vonlee sat her aunt down one day. “Billie Jean, listen to me, I have to leave. Don is becoming too much for me.” Vonlee explained to her aunt that she had awoken one night back when Billie Jean was in California to find Don fondling her breasts. It was too much. Vonlee said she thought maybe he was just drunk, but now she knew he was seriously making passes at her.

  Billie Jean’s face pinched. Anger arose.

  “He plays footsies with me under the damn table, Billie . . . ,” Vonlee said again.

  No sooner had Vonlee got those words out, than Billie Jean hauled off and slapped Vonlee across the face. Then she screamed: “You are a liar! Nothing but a liar. Liar! Liar! Liar!”

  Vonlee was humiliated. “No, Billie, it’s true. . . .”

  “Liar. Stop lying to me.”

  Vonlee started to cry. This was, she recalled later, “like a scene out of a movie.”

  “Billie, I am not lying to you,” Vonlee said through tears. “It is happening all the time now.”

  “Liar!” her aunt continued yelling.

  Vonlee calmed her down. They spoke without yelling.

  “Well, I don’t believe you, Vonlee. Simple as that. Tell you what . . . I’m going to step out of the room next time and watch . . . see what happens.”

  “You go right ahead,” Vonlee said.

  The next day, as they were sitting in the formal room, Billie Jean gave Vonlee the eye and announced she was stepping out of the room and would be back in a few minutes. Don was sitting across from Vonlee.

  According to Vonlee, as Billie did this and walked out of view, Don stood up, came over to her and laid his body on top of hers. He was rubbing on Vonlee, she claimed. Touching her all over, fondling her breasts again.

  “Come on . . . come on . . . ,” Don said, according to Vonlee.

  Billie Jean came out of the shadows and stood over them, red-faced and alarmed. Don had been talking of divorce lately. He knew Billie Jean was bleeding his bank accounts dry with her gambling and spending habits, and he was threatening her with cutting her off of the finances. This was a definite threat to Billie Jean’s way of life. Without Don, Billie Jean really didn’t have anything. One could argue—and Vonlee would certainly be the one leading the charge—that Billie Jean married Don for a second time because she missed the lifestyle Don had provided. She married the guy for his money.

  “You bastard!” Billie Jean screamed as she stood.

  Don jumped off Vonlee, surprised by his wife’s presence.

  “You go right ahead and try to divorce me now,” Billie Jean said. “You see what happens.”

  “Come on, Billie,” Don pleaded. “I’m just playing around.”

  “I got something on you now, you bastard!” Billie Jean screamed.

  Then Don changed his attitude. “You know what, Billie,” he said, giving up on his let’s-make-peace offering. “I don’t give a shit what you do. I want to take her—your niece!—upstairs right now and I want to fuck her. I’ll do whatever I want, damn it all! I want to fuck her,” he said in his wife’s face. “You hear me . . . I. Want. To. Fuck. Her.”

  Billie Jean was livid. “How dare you . . .”

  “You’re a bitch! A bitch from hell!”

  Vonlee was horrified. She got up and walked away from the two of them as they continued screaming at each other.

  Billie Jean tried to say something, but Don wouldn’t allow her to finish. “You’re a bitch from hell, Billie Jean, and your kids are spawn from the Devil—you’re Satan. A fucking disgrace to women. I don’t give a shit what you think. I would fuck Vonlee right here in this house while you’re in it.”

  Billie Jean was fuming. She started to say something.

  But Don wasn’t finished. “I want my damn thirteen thousand dollars you owe me for the credit card bill. You promised me that you would stop gambling. You know our agreement . . . you promised me.” Don was right on her now. In her face. “If you don’t stop, I am going to take the credit cards away from you.”

  Billie Jean had no comeback.

  “I’m canceling the credit cards,” Don said as he walked out of the room.

  CHAPTER 9

  ON MONDAY, AUGUST 14, 2000, after Dr. Ortiz-Reyes returned to the office, he participated in the normal morning meeting. The Monday meeting was designed to review cases from the previous weekend and talk about them. See where each needed to go, who needed to do what and if there were any of those common surprises that often dictated a pathologist’s day. The chief ME, Dr. Ljubisa Juvan Dragovic, was there, as well as all the toxicologists and pathologists in the office, and even medical students and residents. One of the other reasons for the meeting was to see if anyone had a problem with what had taken place over the weekend.

  When it came to the toxicologist to talk about his findings in cases from over the weekend that he had looked at earlier that morning, it was the first time Dr. Ortiz-Reyes learned of what he later called a “surprise” pertaining to Don Rogers’s death. The toxicologist was concerned, he explained to everyone at the meeting, about something found in Don’s urine and blood.

  As it turned out, the toxicologist told the team, Don had a beyond-dangerous amount of alcohol in his urine and blood. His opinion was based on two tests that didn’t take days or weeks to come back, but were immediate. Even for a chronic alcoholic, Don’s bloodstream showed a whopping alcohol level of .44, way above even for a guy who migh
t like to overindulge, as Don clearly had. This number indicated acute alcohol intoxication. Don had enough booze in his system, in other words, to kill him. Take a man of Don’s weight—141 pounds—and height—five foot seven inches—and put that amount of booze into his system, and it was far beyond what could be called a dangerous and deadly amount. In fact, that ridiculous amount was enough to make a morbidly obese alcoholic stumble and pass out cold. For a guy that weighed 140 pounds, according to most blood/alcohol percentage charts, a .27 was enough to cause death—and Don had .17 more in his bloodstream.

  So the question became: how did all of that alcohol get there?

  Even a guy with Don’s tolerance for alcohol would have passed out by about the .30 mark. According to the McDonald Center for Student Well-Being (formerly the Office of Alcohol and Drug Education), loss of consciousness occurs at about .25, with alcohol poisoning coming in near .39, and the onset of coma at .40, with death due to respiratory arrest near that same mark. Thus, Don was physically unable to put that amount of alcohol into his system by his own hand. It was impossible. He would have passed out before he was able to do it.

  At .44, on paper, anyway, there was a pretty good chance Don Rogers was dead long before the level of alcohol in his blood reached the .40 mark.

  The entire team around the conference room table was stunned by this revelation.

  The urine sample, the toxicologist explained, was even higher: .47.

  Ortiz-Reyes indicated that he would then have to go back and change his opinion regarding Don’s cause of death and the hasty notes he had made on that Saturday morning. That was not a big deal; pathologists did this all the time. The simple fact was that yes, it could have been a heart attack that killed Donald Rogers, but acute alcohol intoxication was definitely a contributing factor. The guy didn’t drink himself to death—that was not what the doctor meant by the change from “accident” on the death certificate to “contributory cause” of death.