Billie Jean drove. Vonlee had the bottle and pillow on her lap.
“And I don’t know why we did this,” she said later, “but I threw them out the window on the way to the casino.”
Vonlee did not recall being at the casino, though she knew they arrived and walked in and drank and gambled. She even vaguely recalled seeing Danny Chahine there on that night.
The next thing Vonlee could recall was arriving home very early the next morning. Then her aunt called 911 and both of them talked to the police after they arrived.
Of course, Don Tullock, Don Zimmerman, the TPD and eventually the prosecutor’s office had a problem with this: Because as one recorded conversation between Vonlee and Danny ended, Vonlee said at this point during the early-morning hours of that day of Don’s death, she told her aunt, “I know that you’re not going to live long and I know you want . . .” She just stopped short of saying, one might speculate, that she knew Billie Jean wanted Don’s money. “He was dying,” Vonlee told Danny. “I mean, he was definitely, definitely dying. I know that for a fact. I mean, the man wouldn’t go to the hospital. He was bleeding everywhere. Every day he splatted blood all over the place.... He’d get up and fall face-first. He had a black eye, where he had [fallen] down. I mean, you’d have to help him up. . . . [He’d] come home from work and drink to the point he was so miserable. I asked myself, after it happened, ‘I would rather somebody had killed me than to let me go through that every day.’”
Was Vonlee justifying a murder she claimed her aunt had committed?
“I mean, basically,” Vonlee concluded, “they said his whole insides were just.... He was fucked up.”
Speaking to Danny, she paused. She thought about what she had just said.
Then, perhaps pulling back, added: “But, I mean, nothing makes it right.”
PART 3
Justice is an essential element of the divine economy; otherwise, we would be too easily reconciled to the human capacity for betrayal, and even atrocity.
James Carroll, Christ Actually
CHAPTER 53
BILLIE JEAN ROGERS WAS a beautiful woman. Even with the deer-in-the-headlights look she had on her face as the TPD snapped her mug shot on March 13, 2001—after she was finally taken into custody and booked on murder charges—Billie Jean displayed signs of a once-elegant and attractive woman. She revealed smaller traces of a younger, sexier Billie Jean: her piercing blue eyes, whitish blond hair, fairly healthy-looking frame, perhaps marred by time and personal demons. Had she taken better care of herself over the years, had she lived without succumbing to her vices, had she overcome the anger for her husband spreading inside her like the cancer she had, she could have transformed her natural beauty into untainted grace. From decades of smoking, however, Billie Jean had those creased lines above her upper lip, as well as age spots and deep wrinkles on her face mapping a hard-core life. Billie Jean was sixty-one years old on the day she was charged with first-degree premeditated murder. If convicted, Billie Jean Rogers faced life in prison without the chance of parole.
The Oakland County Prosecutor’s Office (OCPO) had the job of making any charges against Billie Jean and Vonlee stick. This task was not going to be easy, considering the lack of evidence in both cases. Billie Jean might have been a lot of things, she was already saying from prison, but a murderer? Good luck proving it, she warned.
Vonlee was preparing to celebrate her thirty-fourth birthday behind bars, unable to convince a court to allow her to go free on bond. Because of Billie Jean’s terribly deteriorating health situation, she was free on a hundred-thousand-dollar bond. Newspaper headline writers had fun with the story, many of them following along the salacious headlines initiated by the first Associated Press (AP) story: WIDOW CHARGED IN MAN’S DEATH IN ALLEGED PLOT TO GET CASH FOR SEX CHANGE.
With that, Billie Jean’s lawyer, Walter Piszczatowski, lashed out: “The codefendant, [Vonlee] Titlow, made a statement to a third person who he was romantically involved with. There is no evidence whatsoever tying Mrs. Rogers to the crime except that statement.”
This declaration, in all of its perceived desperation, was very true. Where was the evidence linking Billie Jean Rogers to the murder of her husband?
Handcuffed and being led into court for a preliminary hearing on March 21, 2001, Vonlee looked as though she had not showered or gotten any sleep in days. Though she cut a rough, somewhat slim figure, her face looked swollen and bloated. She had obvious bags under her eyes; her bleached-blond hair was a bit wiry and wild, black roots now visible, most of it pulled back into a flimsy ponytail like a rooster’s tail. She wore clogs, white socks, police-blue slacks and a black-and-yellow sports jersey, which made her look heavier than she was. In a photo the AP snapped of Vonlee sitting at the table with her lawyer, she stared directly into the camera, a look of sheer defeat and disgust on her face. Not in a legal sense, mind you—but one rooted more in the sheer rawness of her gaze—it was a look that said she was at the end of a long road paved with a war on addiction.
Billie Jean was there, too, seated not far from her codefendant. A probable cause hearing is basically a way for the court to decide if, in fact, there is enough evidence to send a case (or cases) to trial. Not all cases end up at trial. Almost all are pleaded out before, during, or after the preliminary hearing phase. Unlike a grand jury proceeding, which is held in secret, during a preliminary hearing (overseen by a judge), the defendant has a chance to defend him- or herself.
Piszczatowski was there to represent Billie; attorney Richard Lustig was on hand for Vonlee. John Skrzynski, the assistant prosecuting attorney (APA), sat studying his notes and preparing to lodge his case on behalf of the state of Michigan.
It took a mere two minutes after the morning opened before the state called its first witness, one of the police officers responding to Don Rogers’s home on that early morning when Vonlee made the 911 call. And throughout the day, three witnesses in total—two police officers and an EMT—were summoned to the stand to endure direct- and cross-examination questioning, consequently describing a scene at the house that at first appeared to be a natural death. However, as they thought about it and conversed with detectives over the course of the morning, and the days and weeks that followed, they concluded something along the lines of “Well, you know what, yeah, there was something strange going on in that house on the night Don Rogers died.”
Retrospect is an eye-opener; hindsight an easier way to see guilt. Anybody knows this. And here, as each witness testified over the course of that first day, he or she had the advantage of going back over behaviors and comments with a new outlook. The new perception was now backed up by a coroner and investigating officers who, after going through the case again themselves, believed that Don had been murdered.
On March 22, 2001, day two of the hearing, the state brought in the medical examiner and chief medical examiner to explain how they had first decided Don died of acute alcohol poisoning and a heart attack, but then changed that determination after the TPD called and explained several extenuating circumstances, one of which was a man who had come forward with new and striking information.
Concluding the second day, that man, Vonlee’s former lover, Danny Chahine, was called to tell his tale of Vonlee admitting to him what had happened to Don.
* * *
Danny Chahine laid out to the judge his account, focusing on how “bad” he felt for Don and his problems with alcohol and how Billie Jean had treated him unfairly by spending all of his money at the casino. When he heard from Vonlee that Billie Jean and Vonlee had potentially killed him, he was taken aback because he felt Don was on a collision course with death, anyway, and these two “women” had taken it upon themselves to hurry that up.
Vonlee’s attorney objected repeatedly during Danny’s direct testimony, as most defense attorneys will do during a preliminary hearing. It wasn’t going to do any good, however. As she listened, what became clear to Vonlee was that the judge was going to drop the hammer
and send them both to trial. As much as they are touted as fair legal processes, a balanced alternative to a grand jury proceeding, perhaps, preliminary hearings are absolutely biased against the defendant. Judges rarely side with defendants in preliminary hearings. The thought is: if there’s enough evidence to warrant a preliminary hearing, there’s enough to take it to trial.
By the end of the second day, all the attorneys agreed there would be nobody else called by the state, and the defense would need only one day to call its witnesses. So the judge talked it out with both sides and agreed to meet back in court on April 5, 2001.
* * *
When that day came, attorneys for Vonlee and Billie Jean called Don Tullock, Dr. Dragovic, who was the chief medical examiner, Danny, and Don Zimmerman. Billie Jean’s and Vonlee’s lawyers both conducted direct questioning and focused their questions on the noticeable ambiguity of the entire case, from the way in which the body was found to the cause of death to the way Billie Jean and Vonlee were later questioned by TPD cops. Both women were presumed guilty at some point by Zimmerman and Tullock, and then both cops, the defense lawyers argued, tried to fit their theories into that context by talking to various witnesses—all of which was built around what Danny Chahine had recorded. They did not investigate the case with the possibility that the women could be innocent, in other words. The attorneys maintained that, in turn, the TPD as a whole had viewed the women as guilty and worked its investigation from that perspective.
The words “speculation” and “hearsay” became rather popular during this part of the proceeding, but again, as Vonlee sat and listened, she felt the wind of that hammer coming. There was no way this judge was going to rule against the state. Vonlee could sense it. She knew that no matter what she said, or what Billie Jean said, these cops were never going to view it any differently than through the static-filled prism Danny Chahine had provided them via that choppy, at times inaudible, tape-recorded ride in his truck.
Piszczatowski made a good point when he asked Danny if at any time he ever thought Vonlee might be joking or kidding around and making up stories when she talked about that night Billie Jean had supposedly coerced her into helping to kill Don.
“No,” Danny said.
Billie Jean’s attorney wanted to know if at any time Vonlee had told him that if she didn’t get her hormone shots on time, and on a routine basis, that “it made her crazy.”
“No,” he said.
After all, the attorney pointed out, Vonlee had tricked Danny into thinking he was a female. She was obviously good at conning Danny.
“And did you have sex with her on more than one occasion before this revelation [of her being a male]?” Vonlee’s attorney asked Danny.
“Yes.”
By the end of the day, the lawyers made their final arguments to the judge. The APA said, quite simply, putting the People’s case into a legal opinion, “The crime of aiding and abetting of a murder has occurred—[Vonlee] clearly assists defendant Rogers before the smothering with the intent that the crime of murder should be accomplished. And her aiding and abetting of the murder, therefore, is accomplished even before the smothering occurs.”
The judge listened to both sides before he went through the testimony he had heard—each witness, one by one—as if describing his observations would explain the decision he was about to make. The judge found all of the witnesses to be believable or, as he put it, “credible.” In fact, beyond Danny Chahine’s statements and the recording, the judge explained, the medical examiner proved to the court beyond a reasonable doubt that a homicide had occurred. And if a murder had taken place inside that home, there were only two people that could have committed the offense.
In short, toss out Danny’s testimony and you’re still left with a man who was murdered, at least according to the medical examiner.
Yet, the judge failed to indicate that had the medical examiner not heard from the TPD in those days after Don’s body was cremated, when they indicated that a homicide had occurred, there was no way he could have come to the conclusion he had.
“So I found a homicide,” the judge declared. “I mean, I do find that . . . the homicide rises to the level of first-degree murder. Secondly, that it should be admissible as to finding that Mrs. Rogers was, in fact, a participant and involved in this particular matter.” He then added how “the burden of proof” was “certainly not beyond a reasonable doubt as may be required or is required at the trial level.”
Thus, coming as no surprise, the judge concluded he was “binding the matter over on . . . both counts” and bond would continue in the same manner as it had before the hearing.
Vonlee would stay put in jail, while Billie Jean, battling cancer, would be free on bond to wage war against a dreaded disease that had put Billie Jean, her lawyer said, “on her last leg. . . .”
Billie Jean was placed under house arrest with a GPS tether attached to her ankle.
By 5:31 P.M., with no indication as to how long it would take for both trials to begin (separately), court ended as Vonlee was led back to her holding cell. One burning question faced everyone as they filed out of the courtroom: would Billie Jean Rogers live long enough to face trial?
CHAPTER 54
THROUGHOUT THE SUMMER OF 2001 motions were filed and dates assigned as lawyers on both sides argued the legalities of each case. By August 1, 2001, Billie Jean’s trial date had been set for October 29, a decision that set off a litany of court filings by the state and her attorneys.
As Vonlee sat in jail and thought about her future and how a first-degree murder conviction might land her in prison for the rest of her life, she considered that maybe it was time to play “let’s make a deal.” Why not? Vonlee had felt, all along, that she’d had nothing to do with Don’s death—if anything, she had tried to stop her aunt from killing him. Yes, Vonlee knew, she had shared in the cover-up afterward, but she was not a murderer. And as she thought about her aunt, spoke to family members back home in Tennessee, Vonlee believed Billie Jean had set out from the moment she showed up at the Waffle House to manipulate her into helping to kill Don.
With Billie Jean’s trial date set, Vonlee decided to enter into plea-bargaining negotiations.
“They want you to prove that you had nothing to do with the murder,” Vonlee’s attorney explained after speaking with the prosecutor’s office. The thought was that the state had zilch against Billie Jean without Vonlee’s testimony. Billie Jean was going to walk if Vonlee wasn’t a state’s witness testifying against her.
“How?” Vonlee wanted to know.
“Lie detector test.”
Vonlee and her attorney, Richard Lustig, met with Don Zimmerman and a polygraph specialist at the John Nichols Law Enforcement Complex, where the examination was set to take place. The test was going to be based on what was an “official statement” Vonlee would subsequently make to the prosecutor’s office, or the PO. This was common practice. After she gave a statement of the facts, the lie detector test would determine the “veracity,” a report claimed, of Vonlee’s involvement in the death of Don Rogers based on that statement she had given. The test would, effectively, tell the PO if Vonlee was going to be a good witness. Putting a liar on the stand, someone who had taken part in a murder, was not a good idea for any prosecution. It would backfire. Accusations would be tossed at Vonlee and she’d crack. But, if she was telling the truth and had nothing whatsoever to do with Don’s murder, placing the onus on Billie Jean as the mastermind and sole offender, Vonlee would be a strong witness in the end. She would presumably make the state’s case against Billie Jean Rogers.
The deal Richard Lustig brokered was for the first-degree murder charge to be dropped to manslaughter. Vonlee had reached a plea bargain with the PO that involved her spending “seven to fifteen years” (the actual number would be up to a judge) behind bars for manslaughter, providing she testified truthfully against Billie Jean after passing a lie detector test. For Vonlee, this seemed fair because she did feel a
s though she had taken part in the cover-up.
Before the actual lie detector test began on October 25, 2001, near 6:00 P.M., as Vonlee sat waiting to be interviewed, the polygraph examiner conducted a “pretest.” This gave Vonlee an opportunity to talk about her story and tell it, for the most part, from beginning to end, focusing on those pertinent details affecting the test. This way, when the polygraphist conducted the actual lie detector test, he could ask simplified “yes” or “no” questions. No explanations by the person taking the test would be needed.
Vonlee explained during the pretest that Don had been drinking and passed out on the kitchen floor early that evening—and it should be noted that from the time of her arrest, she was always referred to as “Vonlee,” “Titlow” or “he,” never as a female, in any of the documents or interviews.
Without a prior plan, the report clarified, Titlow and Mrs. Billie Rogers poured vodka down Rogers’ throat and then Mrs. Rogers suffocated him with a pillow. Mrs. Rogers and Titlow then went to the casino.
Thus, according to this pretest narrative, Vonlee claimed Billie Jean killed Don before they left the house, not when they returned, and that she played no part in the actual murder itself, but still left the house knowing that Billie Jean had smothered him.
When they returned from the casino later, the report of Vonlee’s statement continued, they called 911 and reported finding him dead. Titlow denied killing Rogers personally. Titlow denied that he planned the death. Titlow denied lying in his statement to the prosecutor.
The polygraphist then “formulated and reviewed” the entire list of questions with Vonlee, going through each question before asking in an official manner: “Do you understand them?”
“I do.”
Vonlee got settled in her seat. The polygraphist hooked her up to the machine and they took a few deep breaths together to get comfortable. Vonlee was not nervous, she later claimed, because all she had to do was tell the truth. She knew what she had done and not done.
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