If You Only Knew
Page 37
Around 4:00 P.M., with the scene secure and now overrun by all sorts of law enforcement personnel, word spread quickly around town that something was going on near CR 2191, just south of Tyler. The local media was alerted, of course. 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 one of those old-school, by-the-book guys. He was on scene by 4:55. Pizza man 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 and being briefed about the facts.
“Tyler,” Bobby Lewis said after Rathbun asked where he worked. “I was trying to find a coworker out here. I turned around in that driveway”—he pointed—“because I thought I had passed the address I was looking for.”
From there, Bobby explained the rest of what he knew.
Meanwhile, Texas Ranger Brent Davis arrived with a Bublcam Sphere 360 and the supplementary software technology needed to employ it, a sophisticated photography unit used to take aerial photos, among other things. The local district attorney’s office had purchased the expensive piece of equipment with more than a quarter million in drug money seized from several recent high-profile busts. The aerial images, once they came back, would give everyone a good indication of where possible evidence was located beyond the range of the naked eye. The camera had the capability to take photos with twenty different lighting levels, giving detectives a much clearer picture of those minuscule pieces of evidence that could be otherwise overlooked by CSIs searching the scene on the ground. No doubt about it, using the Bublcam was a high-tech way to get the upper hand on a case and give it a great shot of adrenaline out of the box.
Detective Rathbun walked down to where the victim was still lying in the same place she had been found. No one had moved her. Beyond a number of interesting factors he noticed immediately while studying the scene, Rathbun was interested in the idea that the victim was facedown, wearing white Ralph Lauren tennis shoes with that familiar polo pony emblem on the sides. The deceased was a black female, whose “pink panties” were showing through her pants only because the Capris she had on were nearly burned all the way off her body. There was a subtle, almost inherent indication within the entire scene—if only by a cop’s intuition—that her killer had left a trail directly to his or her doorstep, and that all the SCSO needed to do was put the puzzle pieces together, step back, and take a look at the picture before them. Not that this was going to be an easy crime to solve by any standards—that was a trap inexperienced cops fell into when they went down that road. However, as long as the SCSO took this one step at a time, followed each crumb left behind, this one was going to come together.
There was something on her shoes, Rathbun noticed. He took note after squatting down to have a closer look.
The shoes appeared to be very clean (maybe recently purchased), he wrote in his report of this moment. I noticed that the bottom soles of the shoes appeared to have a black-colored substance on them. It was faint, almost like a film. But Rathbun thought she had been, At one point, walking around on a surface that had black soot.... He immediately leaned toward a “mechanic’s shop” which would have “grease, oil, and other materials on the floor.”
It was an interesting calculation that opened up specific investigatory possibilities. Considering there was that red clay all over the area around the body, the residue—if it was, in fact, oil—seemed like an important clue to this intelligent, intuitive cop. It said to him, rather clearly, that she had not walked onto the surface where she was lying by herself—someone, probably driving the car whose tire tracks were left nearby, had purposely dumped her here.
Righting himself, Rathbun stared at the woman. She had not been there, he thought, for very long.
Maybe a few hours at most.
Half a day or so.
Between her legs, Rathbun observed a drinking straw, which was contained in a wrapper marked Chic-fil-A, left not too far from that plastic, empty, crumpled up Dairy Fresh creamer cup. The creamer cup, especially, Rathbun surmised, had not been on the ground long. He could tell by looking at the way it had just sat there.
After taking a walk around the area and seeing other pieces of garbage, Rathbun was certain these items near the body were fresh—and perhaps left by the killer. The other garbage looked weathered, and appeared to have been part of the landscape for some time.
* * *
Detective James Riggle of the SCSO was on the Loop 323 when he took a call to head over to the Whitehouse crime scene. He arrived near 4:30 P.M. to have a look at the scene himself and to locate Rathbun and other members of the SCSO team convening on the site.
“You’re going to be the lead on this,” one of the sergeants told Riggle after his arrival. He was then briefed on the entire situation.
Riggle soon found Rathbun after meeting with Brent Davis to verify the Bublcam imagery was in the process of being completed. Banking on the notion that the Chic-fil-A evidence was potentially explosive, the immediate plan was to find any Chic-fil-A locations in Tyler and Whitehouse and get to the surveillance equipment inside the restaurant to have a look before they erased the tape for that day and several preceding it. Restaurants generally never kept copies of surveillance tapes—even when recorded digitally—unless they were robbed or something happened. They’d record over the previous day with the next. Riggle knew the potential was there to see his victim possibly purchasing her last meal—and with any luck, which was something every murder investigation depended on, standing by her side might be a viable suspect or, at the least, someone the SCSO needed to find and speak to immediately.
As a child, Harry Titlow seemed like any other boy growing up in the Deep South: cute, happy, content.
During his grammar school years, Harry began to feel that something was very different about him.
The Orchard Hill section of Troy, Michigan, where Don Rogers lived with his wife, Billie Jean, was considered exclusive. (Photo courtesy of author)
Don Rogers spent most of his time at the home he shared with Billie Jean.
(Photo courtesy of author)
Don Rogers was a business owner and celebrated member of the Troy, Michigan, community, where he lived most of his life.
Billie Jean Rogers and her niece, Vonlee Nicole Titlow, spent most nights at the Motor City Casino in downtown Detroit, drinking and gambling. (Photo courtesy of author)
Don Rogers was found unconscious, not breathing, lying on his back, his legs crossed at the ankles, during the early-morning hours of August 12, 2000. Paramedics determined that he was dead.
(Photo courtesy of Troy Police Department Records Division)
Danny Chahine was Vonlee Titlow’s boyfriend. After hearing a story that led him to believe that Don Rogers had not died of natural causes—but might have been murdered—Chahine sat down with police and told them what he had learned.
(Photo courtesy of Troy Police Department Records Division)
A beautiful woman, Vonlee Nicole Titlow enjoyed the party scene while living in Denver and Chicago in the late 1990s, before moving in with her aunt and uncle, Billie Jean and Don Rogers.
While living in Denver and Chicago, Vonlee Nicole Titlow worked as a stripper and even started her own escort service, catering to men with unique fetishes.
While living in this Chicago apartment building, Vonlee Nicole Titlow was watched by the Chicago Police Department and finally arrested and charged with the murder of Don Rogers.
(Photo courtesy of author)
Before her arrest on murder charges, Billie Jean Rogers, Don’s wife, seemed to enjoy the simpler pleasures in life.
To the Troy Police Department, this check for $70,260, made out to Vonlee Nicole Titlow and signed by Billie Jean thirteen days after Don’s death, appeared to b
e a payout for Vonlee’s help in Don’s murder.
(Photo courtesy of Troy Police Department Records Division)
This notation on Billie Jean’s checkbook indicated to law enforcement that Billie Jean had agreed to pay Vonlee a total of $100,000.
(Photo courtesy of Troy Police Department Records Division)
The medical examiner’s report indicated that a crime had taken place.
(Photo courtesy of Troy Police Department Records Division)
The Troy Police Department, headquartered in this building, initiated the investigation into Don Rogers’s suspicious death.
(Photo courtesy of author)
Billie Jean Rogers on the day she was arrested in 2001 for the murder of her husband.
(Photo courtesy of Troy Police Department Records Division)
Vonlee Nicole Titlow in 2001 shortly after she was arrested and booked for murder.
(Photo courtesy of Troy Police Department Records Division)
In the months after her arrest, Vonlee had reason to smile after she passed a polygraph “proving” that she’d had nothing to do with murdering Don Rogers. (Photo courtesy of Troy Police Department Records Division)
In 2013, Valerie Newman argued Vonlee Nicole Titlow’s case in front of the United States Supreme Court.
Vonlee Nicole Titlow in 2015.
Notes
1 I’ve chosen to put what was said in italics because there will be several versions of this narrative as this book continues. This one is Danny Chahine’s recollection, as it was told to him the first time by Vonlee.