If You Only Knew

by M. William Phelps

  Armed with her morning drink, she told Danny, “Let’s go.”

  Vonlee didn’t speak much as they drove. She drank the cranberry and vodka, hoping to bite the hair of the dog that had mauled her the night before.

  Inside the house, Billie Jean was preparing to clean. As Vonlee walked through the door after kissing Danny good-bye and saying she’d call him later, her aunt implored Vonlee to help.

  “I need another drink first,” Vonlee said. She’d consumed the vodka and cranberry. There was no way she could get on her hands and knees to scrub floors, clean toilets and vacuum without getting rid of what was still a dreadful hangover.

  So Vonlee made a Bloody Mary, one of about “four or five” she’d have throughout the day. On an average morning, Billie Jean would get up around five and see Don off to work. Then she and Vonlee would have a few drinks, decide whether to go to the casino, or hang around the house and drink the day away. Don would come home around 3:30 or 4:00 P.M., and then start drinking with the two of them if they were around, or by himself, if not.

  Vonlee was feeling much better as she and her aunt cleaned the house and drank throughout that afternoon. In fact, by the time Don walked through the door after work, Vonlee was feeling pretty damn lit all over again.

  Just before Don walked in, Vonlee pulled her aunt aside and asked, “Why don’t we all go to the racetrack tonight?” Vonlee knew Don loved the track: the excitement of the dogs, the crowds, the drinks, the food. It was a good night out. Being the arbitrator inside the house between the two of them, trying to convince Billie Jean to head out to the track, instead of the casino, and to bring Don was just another step to see if she could convince them to get along.

  “Sometimes you have to give in and do what he wants to do. Simple things make a man happy. You can still gamble there, Billie.”

  “Yeah, sounds good,” her aunt said.

  Don walked in, fixed a drink, and Billie Jean made dinner. The three of them sat and ate peacefully, Vonlee later explained. Don had a few pops of straight vodka before dinner and he was feeling those. During his final days of drinking, Don did not require much to get loose.

  After dinner, the two women sat in the family (or “great”) room, as Vonlee sometimes referred to it. The TV was on. By that point, Vonlee recalled, she’d had at least “seven or eight” drinks since finishing her breakfast of vodka and cranberry. Vonlee was now well on her way to a good drunken evening.

  Billie Jean looked into the kitchen, where Don was sitting by himself after dinner, drinking. This was not his usual spot to drink. Don liked to idle in his recliner in the great room and pound straight vodka until his body told him he’d had enough. But he obviously wanted away from his wife on this night because they had been fighting again.

  “You see there,” Billie Jean shouted to Vonlee after she saw how out of it Don seemed. “I knew we wouldn’t be going to no fucking racetrack tonight. He cannot stay sober long enough to go anywhere.”

  “She was highly upset with him at this point,” Vonlee recalled.

  “He’s too damn drunk again,” her aunt added as Vonlee sat and listened. “I’m not taking him anywhere.” She made it clear to Vonlee that this was another letdown on a long mental list she had been keeping. Vonlee said this was a common narrative inside the house while she was there: Don getting drunk and screwing up most of the plans Billie Jean made with him.

  It was well into the early evening by now. As she and her aunt were talking in the living room, they heard a loud “plop” (Vonlee’s word) from inside the kitchen.

  Billie Jean shook her head. She knew what that sound meant.

  “Fucking passed out again,” Billie Jean said more to herself, shaking her head.

  “Don had gotten up to fix himself a drink and he had fallen on the floor,” Vonlee explained. “I heard a chair flip over.”

  Vonlee stood up from her seat. Her aunt didn’t move. Yet, in defense of her aunt not jumping up out of her seat to help her husband, Vonlee recalled, “This was not at all surprising—the fact that Don fell out of his chair. It wasn’t like she was being cold, Billie not rushing to his side. This was normal. He passed out almost every night.”

  Vonlee walked toward the kitchen and saw that Don had fallen on the floor and was now lying on his back. Standing between Billie Jean (who was still sitting in the living/great room) and Don in the kitchen, Vonlee said, “Hey, he just passed out on the floor.”

  Billie Jean shrugged.

  “I’m going to help him up, Billie, and get him off to bed.”

  “You might as well,” her aunt said without moving.

  Before tending to Don, Vonlee later told law enforcement, she walked around Don and into the laundry room area, where she had some pants in the dryer she was planning on wearing that night. They were dry. So she took the pants out and folded them. Then she walked over to Don and knelt down, shaking his shoulders, hoping to “wake him up” enough to get him off to bed.

  “It almost looked like Don laid down on the floor,” Vonlee remembered.

  Don didn’t respond to Vonlee’s nudging. In fact, still as a brick, he didn’t move at all.

  “Don!” Vonlee yelled, hoping to rustle him awake enough to pay attention. “Come on, get up now.... Let’s go upstairs.”

  Vonlee stood, walked over to the entryway between the two rooms, and told her aunt that her husband was not getting up. “I cannot wake him up, Billie. . . . I think something’s wrong.”

  Normally speaking, Vonlee explained, “it was not hard to wake Don up after he passed out.” They generally shook him a little bit, called out his name, then helped him up onto his feet and guided him to bed.

  But not on this night. Don was not moving.

  Billie Jean stood.

  “He’s not responding at all, Billie,” Vonlee reiterated. “Help me out here. . . .”

  Her aunt walked toward the kitchen.

  Vonlee stood in the back of Don’s head. Billie Jean came into the kitchen, grabbed the bottle of vodka from off the counter, and then she stood by the side of Don’s face for a moment, staring down at him.

  “I’ll get him up,” she said.

  Vonlee recalled a nefarious, chilling aura coming over Billie Jean. There was something different about her, Vonlee explained, and the look she had on her face scared Vonlee.

  CHAPTER 51

  BILLIE JEAN KNELT DOWN near Don’s head and poured a shot of vodka into Don’s mouth, according to Vonlee’s recollection.

  Don suddenly came to and spit it out.

  “Hold his mouth and hold his nose,” Vonlee claimed Billie Jean told her at that moment.

  “No,” Vonlee said.

  “I am extremely inebriated by this point myself and I’m thinking, ‘Okay . . . she must do this all the time.’ He responded, after all—he spit out that shot. I thought this was how she woke him up when he was really out of it.”

  Billie Jean handed Vonlee the bottle and said, “You pour a shot in his mouth.”

  Vonlee took it and did what she was told, thinking that following her suggestions would help wake Don up and out of his stupor.

  Nothing happened.

  Billie Jean went back to trying to get Vonlee to hold her hand over Don’s mouth. Her aunt had pinched his nostrils together so he couldn’t breathe out of his nose.

  “Do it,” she said. “Put your hand over his mouth.”

  This would cut off Don’s oxygen supply, Billie Jean explained, and Don would begin to choke for air and subsequently wake up. The way Vonlee saw it, Billie Jean had done this routinely and it had worked.

  Still, Vonlee did not want any part of cutting off Don’s oxygen completely. It didn’t feel right.

  “No! I’m not doing that, Billie. I’m afraid of hurting him.”

  “Well,” her aunt said, “come on. Just hold your hand over his mouth.”

  Vonlee thought about it. She felt comfortable placing her hand on Don’s mouth and spreading her fingers out with gaps in betwee
n each so as not to close off Don’s mouth totally to oxygen. Vonlee said later she could feel that Don was definitely breathing at this time.

  She understood it was hard for most people to comprehend why she would take part in doing something like this, Vonlee later said. She related this particular portion of the night back to childhood. There had been a man who rented a room at her grandmother’s house. He would pass out drunk from time to time. Vonlee was just a child. When he would pass out, she and the other kids would “do things like holding his nose and mouth.” Mess with him, in other words. “Pinch his nose, cover his mouth . . . and make him wake up. We’d stick straws up his nose. Tickle him. We played with him.” It was akin to a frat house using a Sharpie on a passed-out fraternity brother and painting up his face.

  Childish games.

  “What she was doing to Don, it was kind of like that to me,” Vonlee explained later. “It was like the same thing. At least, for me—that’s what I was thinking.”

  Not once, Vonlee said, was she thinking, Billie wants me to help kill him.

  “Not in a million years. I don’t even think if she would have said it at that moment, I would have believed it. I would have probably thought, ‘Oh yeah, I’d like to kill a lot of people’ . . . a figure of speech.”

  After a few seconds of holding his mouth with one hand (with those spaces between her fingers), the bottle of vodka in the other hand, after pouring a shot into Don’s mouth, Vonlee let go and backed away, telling Billie Jean, “I’m not doing this. I can’t do it.”

  Her aunt then grabbed the bottle from Vonlee’s hand and poured a shot of vodka, according to Vonlee’s recollection, up Don’s nose.

  “I never held his mouth to where he couldn’t breathe,” Vonlee later insisted. “I was very, very intoxicated, and I was thinking that it was just . . . I don’t know. I didn’t know.... She did this all the time.... This is how she wakes him up. I really wasn’t thinking.”

  And she was drunk.

  When Vonlee saw Billie Jean pour the vodka up Don’s nose, she took a step back from the situation. “My whole demeanor changed,” Vonlee said. Something happened in that one moment. She saw evil come over her aunt. Vonlee now knew that she was on a mission. What might have started out as a playful way to rustle Don out of a drunken sleep had now turned into Billie Jean making sure Don did not wake up.

  “Oh no, Billie, this isn’t right!” Vonlee said.

  Billie Jean looked at her.

  Vonlee grabbed the bottle from her aunt. “Listen to me! You leave him alone. You are going to end up hurting him, Billie. You need to stop this right now. Go get dressed. Let’s get out of here and go out.”

  In her mind, Vonlee considered that if she could just get her aunt out of the house and over to the casino, everything would be okay.

  “Come on now, Billie. Just get dressed and we’ll go to the casino.”

  Billie Jean stood. She appeared to back off and emerge from whatever fog she had gone into while trying to basically drown Don in vodka.

  Vonlee felt as though her aunt was finished with whatever she had been doing. She placed the bottle of vodka on the countertop and poured herself a stiff glass.

  “I’m going to get ready,” Vonlee told Billie Jean. “You do the same, Billie.”

  Vonlee left the room.

  CHAPTER 52

  WHILE SHE WAS INSIDE the bathroom, getting ready to go out, Vonlee took a few pulls from her drink and calmed down. She was using the restroom off to the side of the kitchen, not too far from where Don was lying passed out on the kitchen floor. The door was closed. Vonlee stared at herself in the mirror. She applied lipstick, puckering up, and teased her hair with some hair spray. She thought they’d likely go out to the casino and have another night of drinking and gambling. Billie Jean would be fine after some time at the tables and slots. Once that woman was inside a casino, gambling, she was an entirely different person, totally wrapped up in the action.

  Vonlee sprayed a bit of perfume on her neck, took one last look at her reflection, then walked out of the bathroom. Immediately after opening the door, she saw the backside of Billie Jean, whose front side was facing and kneeling down near Don’s head. So Vonlee walked around to the opposite side to see what she was doing.

  Upon figuring out what was going on, Vonlee became horrified, seeing clearly what Billie had now planned.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” Vonlee yelled.

  According to Vonlee, her aunt had a throw pillow from the living room in her hands and she was covering Don’s face with it, smothering him.

  “And that’s when everything, from that point on, went downhill,” Vonlee later said.

  The look her aunt had on her face while she was suffocating her husband, Vonlee claimed, she would never forget.

  “Possessed. Determined to do this. A woman on a mission” was how Vonlee later described it.

  There was no turning back. Don was not moving. He wasn’t struggling for air, gasping, kicking and fighting. There was no telling how long Billie had the pillow over his face because she must have begun doing it when Vonlee went into the bathroom.

  “Billie . . . what the fuck are you doing?” Vonlee yelled again.

  But her aunt was done. She stood. Turned toward Vonlee.

  “I had to do it.”

  “What the fuck do you mean? You ‘had to do it’?”

  “You want that money, don’t you?” Billie Jean asked.

  Vonlee was confused. “What money, Billie? What are you talking about?”

  “You need the money for your surgery, don’t you, Vonlee?”

  “What?” Vonlee said. She then gasped.

  Oh, my . . .

  According to Vonlee, in that moment, Billie Jean said to her, “Listen, I’ll give you twenty-five thousand.”

  “Billie, no . . . no . . . no. Are you crazy?”

  “You want fifty thousand?”

  “No, Billie. No. No, no! And I am not going to jail for you.”

  “Yes, but you . . .”

  “No! Billie, listen to me: I am not going to hell for you.”

  Vonlee walked over and bent down next to Don. She felt for a pulse. Put her ear to his heart.

  He was not breathing.

  Standing up after realizing Don was gone, Vonlee announced, “I’m calling 911, Billie. Do you realize what the fuck you’ve done here?” Vonlee walked over and made another drink. She took a long, slow swallow. “Do you understand what you have done, Billie?”

  Vonlee thought about doing CPR, but she had no idea how to do it.

  Call 911 kept playing over in her head.

  “You had better not,” Billie Jean said after Vonlee indicated she was going to phone the police.

  The scene became “surreal” for Vonlee as she paced inside the kitchen, with Don’s body now going cold. Billie Jean just stood, expressionless.

  “I became numb,” Vonlee added. “I remember this so clearly. I could almost see myself in the kitchen . . . from another place watching it all happen. From the time I pinched his nose, until I realized what she’d done. It really wasn’t me there—it was like it was someone else.”

  After some time, Vonlee switched gears. She needed to make sure they did not get caught for this. She felt she needed to “take over.” Her aunt couldn’t do it. And one of them needed to.

  “You have to understand something,” Vonlee explained to me years later, “I still feel responsible for this. I accept . . . I feel . . . that it’s my fault. I should not have been involved. I feel that it’s my fault he’s dead.”

  Vonlee stared at her aunt. She didn’t say it, but Vonlee was certainly thinking: What have you done?

  “If I hadn’t killed him,” Vonlee claimed Billie said in this moment, “he would have known what we were doing earlier.”

  “Earlier”? What is she talking about? Vonlee thought.

  So she asked Billie: “What do you mean by ‘what we were doing earlier’?”

  As Vonlee reme
mbered it, when Don was on the floor in the kitchen passed out before she went into the bathroom, “We were trying to wake him up. . . .” The way Danny Chahine later described this, per Vonlee telling him, they were fooling around with Don—a sort of “drunken play,” Vonlee had called it.

  “Danny Chahine later made it out to be me saying, ‘Stop wasting the good vodka,’”—which Danny would later tell police Vonlee had told him she said to Billie—“but that’s not true. I was just trying to get Billie to leave Don alone.”

  After Vonlee mentioned for a second time that she was going to call 911, Billie Jean said, “Whose word do you actually think they would believe, Vonlee? I’m in my sixties . . . never had a parking ticket.... You are, Vonlee, a transsexual. You’ve been arrested for prostitution.... Come on, honey. Get real.”

  Vonlee was stunned by this. “I froze . . . ,” she told me.

  Billie Jean walked over to Vonlee. “Come on, sit down. Let’s talk.”

  “No,” Vonlee said.

  “Vonlee, listen to me. . . . I can give you money. Twenty-five thousand dollars.”

  “No. I do not want your money, Billie.”

  As Vonlee explained this part of the night to Danny Chahine, she said to him, “And I remember crying and telling Billie . . . ‘I did this for you! I did it for you! That’s the only fucking reason I did it is I did it for fucking you!’”

  It was holding Don’s nose, Vonlee later explained she meant.

  Not murder.

  Taking over, after going around and around with Billie Jean about calling 911, Vonlee switched into cover-up mode.

  “Grab that pillow and that bottle of booze,” Vonlee said she directed her aunt.

  “I am thinking now that there’s no way I am going to jail for this.”

  In Vonlee’s mind, she didn’t kill Don and had no part in what she described as a cold-blooded murder. And so as she thought about it, while standing in the kitchen hovering over Don’s dead body, Vonlee decided to help Billie Jean. It was her only way out of it all, Vonlee now believed.