To Love and to Kill

by M. William Phelps

  “What do you think, Michelle?” Emilia asked, no doubt testing Michelle to see how much she knew.

  “That you tried to break Heather’s neck and you couldn’t do it, so then you-all . . . suffocated her and buried her.”

  It couldn’t be put any more simple than that.

  “Does your mom know?” Emilia asked.

  Michelle said no, Judy wasn’t aware of anything yet.

  “What made him tell you?” Emilia asked, seemingly agreeing with Michelle about what had happened.

  “It’s killing him.”

  “So what is he gonna do now?” Emilia wondered. Michelle could tell Emilia was beginning to feel comfortable with the conversation. “’Cause if he confesses to this,” Emilia added, “we both go down and we both lose our kids. And right now, the people they want is not me and Josh.”

  “Will you tell me so I know what Josh said is true? I’m not here to hurt you.”

  “I know,” Emilia said before saying she wanted to get out of the car. Suddenly she was beginning to feel funny about talking inside the car. She looked around and became a bit anxious.

  Michelle said she’d roll down the windows, but she wanted to stay put.

  “He didn’t lie, Michelle,” Emilia confessed.

  Listening inside the building just down the block, Buie and Spivey looked at each other. A hole had just opened up in Emilia’s boat.

  “He didn’t lie, Michelle.”

  “‘He didn’t lie’?” Michelle asked. “What happened?”

  “Pretty much what he told you,” Emilia admitted.

  There it was: “Pretty much what he told you.”

  Michelle asked Emilia to explain. She wanted her version. Michelle explained how much she needed to hear it from Emilia’s mouth to her ears. This was all too much to take in—so unreal, so unnerving, so disturbing. Michelle wanted Emilia to fess up. It would only make sense to her, she suggested, if Emilia explained what had actually taken place inside the trailer.

  So Emilia began to speak. She said Josh didn’t want Heather to leave again with the kids. That was how it all started. Then she insisted that Heather actually signed that letter, handing over custody of the children to Josh. But the reason why her handwriting might not have looked like her own was because signing the letter, Emilia said, “was not by choice! But she signed it.”

  Michelle gasped. Here was Emilia admitting to killing her sister-in-law, and Michelle was recording it for law enforcement. This could all backfire horribly without warning. Emilia was not some passive waif. She was streetwise and street-smart. Michelle understood that if Emilia had killed once, she’d have no trouble getting violent again.

  “I don’t know if you want to know in detail what happened or not ... ,” Emilia stated.

  “I do,” Michelle said through her own reluctance. “I can’t sleep. I can’t eat . . . so I want detail.”

  “I don’t know if you can handle it, Michelle,” Emilia warned.

  Michelle insisted that Emilia continue.

  Emilia talked about how the cops still thought it was James and his buddy, and even though it wasn’t right for Josh and her to blame two people who had nothing to do with it, Emilia said James deserved it. So she had no trouble throwing him and his friend into the fire and continuing with the ruse, as long as it kept her and Josh from being charged.

  They went back and forth for a few minutes. Michelle did most of the talking, imploring Emilia to come clean and tell her everything she could recall. It was classic the way Michelle sold it all to Emilia, telling her “three heads” were better than two in order to figure out what they could do next, and that the only way Michelle could be of any help to either Josh or Emilia was to know all of the facts, however troubling and chilling they were. Michelle was cool and calm now, realizing that Emilia was confessing.

  Emilia took a deep breath, which Buie and Spivey could hear on their end.

  That’s it, Buie thought. She’s ready. He could picture Emilia dropping her shoulders, looking down at the ground, telling herself, What the hell—why not?

  After a great big sigh, Emilia mentioned how she was never clear how Josh was able to convince Heather to come over to her house that night. Heather’s arrival with Josh baffled Emilia at first, she said. She thought it was conniving and brilliant when she found out that Josh had come up with that subterfuge of the stashed money. But nevertheless, Emilia added, Heather and Josh showed up, and Josh had it all planned from there. Josh told Emilia to walk into the trailer at a specific time and to shock Heather. The two of them would then gang up on her.

  Smartly, Michelle interrupted Emilia, asking if they had planned the murder together.

  Emilia could be heard taking another deep breath, but then she spoke. “When he called me . . . he said ... he was on his way. He pulled up. I stayed inside for a few minutes, like I was told. When I got out there, he was talking to her and he was telling her, ‘I want the truth.’ She said, ‘The truth about what?’ He said, ‘Why did you lie? Why did you have me arrested?’ She said, ‘Because me and Ben told you we was gonna put you in prison!’”

  From there, Emilia explained how Josh and Heather talked about Heather’s plan to take off to Mississippi with the kids, leaving Josh for good.

  “Every time he heard something he didn’t like,” Emilia told Michelle, “he hit her. He hit her upside the head and broke a flashlight.... She tried to run for the door”—Emilia took another one of those deep breaths—“and she knocked me down, so I had bruises on my knee ... and when she was running for the door, she knocked the window out.”

  Emilia said Josh dragged Heather back to the area of the trailer where he had that chair set up for her; then he taped her to the chair before screaming in her face, letting her know she had hurt him for the last time.

  “So, what happened next?” Michelle asked when Emilia stopped.

  “We put a bag over her head,” Emilia admitted. “We tried to snap her neck. That didn’t work.”

  “We, we, we” was about all Buie and Spivey heard. If they were gambling men watching a horse race, this would be that fist-pumping moment as their horse crossed the finish line.

  They had her.

  Michelle wanted more. Specifically, she asked, why did Emilia want to break Heather’s neck? Josh had told Buie and Spivey, and also restated in a letter to me, that Emilia came up with the neck-breaking idea because she had taken those massage therapy classes and had trained in how to crack someone’s neck without hurting him. So Emilia figured she was qualified in the neck-breaking area and could handle that part of the murder collaboration.

  “I figured it would be quick and painless,” Emilia said in response to Michelle’s question regarding breaking Heather’s neck.

  But then Emilia abruptly stopped talking. Something had startled her.

  Michelle stared at her.

  Emilia had a serious look on her face.

  After a few seconds of looking around, then staring back at Michelle, Emilia said: “You’re not recording this conversation, are you, Michelle? Please?”

  CHAPTER 68

  DETECTIVES DONALD BUIE and Brian Spivey were now greatly concerned for their undercover confidential informant (CI) after hearing Emilia ask if she was being recorded. A touch of paranoia had crept into Emilia’s voice. She sounded worried, greatly troubled and concerned. She was giving Michelle the goods here. What was Michelle’s purpose again? Just to know the facts? Maybe Emilia wasn’t buying that any longer?

  “I’m not ... I’m . . . no . . . huh,” Michelle said nervously in response to Emilia’s questioning her about wearing a wire.

  Spivey and Buie stared at the listening device.

  “I’m just trying to understand,” Michelle said. “Now, I mean, it’s about ... kids in the middle.”

  That was smart: Michelle was bringing the kids into it and making it personal for Emilia. She might react emotionally to that.

  “Yeah, I know . . . ,” Emilia said as Michelle
, Buie and Spivey took a breath of their own and felt a bit better.

  Michelle explained that Josh had taken his pants and had tied them around his neck, after Emilia pressed her for details about his supposed suicide attempt. Then Emilia went back to her “James and his buddy” argument, insisting how they needed to stick to that. From where Emilia viewed things, the MCSO was about to sign off on it and believe them.

  “Yeah . . . if he can keep his mouth shut,” Emilia said.

  Michelle wanted to clarify something. She said she heard Josh talking to Emilia one day before the murder and that she figured out later, after Josh explained to her what they had done, that the conversation she heard was part of them planning the murder. It was a brilliant move on Michelle’s part. Murder was one thing—however, premeditated, planned murder was entirely different. In the state of Florida, premeditated murder was not taken lightly. If a jury convicted you of premeditated murder in the first degree, you could be staring down the barrel of a death sentence.

  “We had joked about it,” Emilia said. “We were not really serious. I thought he was full of shit.... He never really follows through with nothing.”

  Emilia spoke about the baby she was carrying and how it would ultimately be “connected” by blood to her kids and Josh’s other children; and that once the baby was born, Michelle could step in and possibly get Emilia’s kids out of foster care because she would be a “blood aunt.”

  Michelle ignored that comment and asked, “When you-all talked, did you plan on just confronting her?”

  Emilia said she didn’t think Josh was serious. Then she talked about how the MCSO could not connect Josh or her to the crime because their DNA was supposed to be inside “that shed” anyway, and there were “strips of duct tape hanging out there all the time. . . .”

  The more she talked, the deeper the hole Emilia dug herself into by alluding to pieces of evidence in the case never yet discussed publicly or with her or Josh during their interviews. She kept returning to James and his buddy, but Michelle tweaked the focus of the conversation back to Emilia’s role and what she knew.

  The feeling here was that Emilia believed she was safeguarded from arrest and prosecution because she had talked her way out of it all by submitting to those interviews with the MCSO. Josh might have mentioned her name, she said, but there was no way the MCSO was going to believe him.

  They soon got on the subject of the backyard behind Emilia’s mother’s house. Michelle wanted to know why they chose the backyard, of all places, to kill and then bury Heather.

  Emilia actually yawned, then answered: “Because your brother just wanted her in there for a little while and he was gonna move her. I cannot believe he led them back there. Had he not led them back there, they could have questioned him all they wanted—without a body, they cannot do nothing.”

  Family came up and discussions of their situation ended things for several minutes: Who knew what? Where were all the kids living? Who said what to whom? Michelle was impressed by how strong and unyielding Emilia came across, as if none of this bothered her. The fact that she could talk about life and death with such a stoic, straight face—no tears, zero emotions and no worries—said something to Michelle about who Emilia was on the inside. Through her manner of speaking and demeanor, Emilia came across as cold and callous, as if she didn’t care about anything or anyone else but herself.

  By this point, Michelle was unable to control her raw emotions. She was shaking and crying. She said, “You’re like a rock. I need a nerve pill [and] I want to puke, and you’re—”

  “It’s because,” Emilia said, interrupting, “I’ve already cried. . . .” Then Emilia said how she didn’t want to send her body into early labor by becoming emotional.

  “I hate to ask this question,” Michelle said a bit later, “but I need to know, ’cause this has been the thing that’s kept me up. . . . Did—did Heather go peacefully, or did she—”

  Emilia interrupted again: “Did she fight him?”

  “Yeah.”

  “She fought him,” Emilia said proudly.

  “Did you help at any point during all that, or just . . .”

  Emilia breathed deeply. “Yeah . . . I helped him tape her to the chair. . . .”

  The conversation digressed back to James and his buddy. Emilia kept beating that drum, over and over. If only they could all stick to that story, the end result would be in their favor.

  Without being prompted, Emilia talked about how angry Josh had been with Heather, before mentioning (again) that James Acome was the perfect scapegoat. The cops would buy it eventually.

  Then Emilia gave Michelle some insight into Josh’s mind-set on the night of the murder. She said he wasn’t “of his right mind ... not emotionally there. He had gone to another place ... because when he went to bury the body, he couldn’t even look at it. He would cry . . . [and] he almost threw up.”

  But not Emilia. She looked on as they packaged, dragged and then buried Heather. Emilia had no feelings whatsoever.

  Nothing.

  “Really?” Michelle asked.

  Emilia said she thought Josh felt remorse later, but when it was going on, he “was glazed over ... and it wasn’t Josh—he wasn’t there.”

  Emilia was under the belief that had the MCSO developed any significant evidence against her, they’d have her in handcuffs already. She wasn’t worried because they had not arrested her yet. She also believed Josh was going to be, at some point, released. They couldn’t hold him.

  It was close to 4:30 P.M., and Michelle wondered if she should head back home. Near the end of the conversation, Michelle asked Emilia if she “strangled” Heather, adding, “You just tried to snap her neck... ?”

  “Uh-huh,” Emilia said, agreeing.

  “And then you-all put a bag over her head? So there’s no marks around . . .”

  “I don’t think so.”

  As Michelle began to say something else, she spotted a person, a man, walking toward the vehicle. “Uh . . . who is that? Emilia, who is that?” Michelle asked hurriedly.

  The guy walked closer.

  Michelle didn’t recognize him.

  Emilia looked, but she couldn’t get a clear view. “I don’t know,” she said. Then, as he stepped into view, Emilia said, “Holy shit!”

  CHAPTER 69

  INSIDE THAT WAREHOUSE, listening to the conversation, Buie and Spivey decided that they’d heard enough. As it stood, it seemed they had nothing short of a confession from Emilia on tape. There was no reason to put Michelle in any more danger. Before they had wired Michelle up, Buie and Spivey devised a plan to approach the car when the time called for it. But their tactic wasn’t to roll in with lights blaring, gold badges out, accusations and Miranda warnings flying. It was to continue the dance with Emilia.

  Take things one step at a time.

  And not blow Michelle’s cover now.

  “It’s a freaking detective!” Michelle squawked, staring at Spivey as he got closer to the window. Buie was right behind him.

  “Oh, crap,” Emilia said.

  “Uh-oh,” Michelle added, sounding scared—yet actually quite relieved to see these two guys.

  Emilia whispered, “Tell them we are talking about the baby.”

  Michelle rolled down her window.

  Buie addressed Emilia: “Hey, your momma told us you were up here.”

  “Okay,” Emilia said.

  “Can we talk to you for a sec?” Buie asked.

  Buie and Spivey wanted to get Emilia downtown and question her once again based on what they had just learned.

  Emilia opened the car door and stepped away from the vehicle with Buie so they could talk on their own. Spivey stayed with Michelle, who was beginning to flip out a bit.

  Buie asked Emilia, “Can you come down and talk to us some more? We just have a few more follow-up questions.”

  Emilia wasn’t thrilled. She said she had to go to the toilet, but she said she would go.

  Buie walked
back to the car with Emilia and addressed Michelle, who was still sitting in the car. “She’s gonna ride with you back to her house so she can use the restroom.”

  “Okay.”

  “And then she’s gonna come talk with us.”

  Buie said a few things to Michelle to throw off any scent that Emilia might have picked up on. He asked Michelle if she had been drinking and if she had a valid driver’s license.

  Everyone seemed content for right now. Michelle started the car and she and Emilia took off. The wire was still on; Buie and Spivey, following behind, were still monitoring the conversation.

  Emilia explained again as they drove that Michelle needed to make a point to tell them they were discussing the baby, nothing else. Sounding defeated, Emilia then explained how, when she got to her house, she was going to change into “gray sweats in case they arrest me.”

  Instinct doesn’t lie. Emilia could sense something was up.

  Michelle panicked. She started to breathe heavily, sweat and hyperventilate.

  “You okay?” Emilia asked, staring at her.

  “I feel like I’m having a heart attack.” Michelle was crying.

  “For what?” Emilia wondered. “Your license is good, right?”

  Michelle couldn’t talk. She had difficulty catching her breath. Her chest felt tight, heavy. It felt as if it would explode.

  “Michelle!” Emilia said. “Calm down!”

  “I’m trying. . . .”

  Buie hit the lights, indicating that he wanted to pull them over. This was by design. When Emilia and Michelle were talking back at the park, they were actually in another county. Sensing Michelle needed to be relieved here, Buie wanted to wait until they entered Marion County before actually grabbing Emilia and taking her to her house and then downtown by himself.

  Michelle stopped her car. Looked down at the floorboard. Took several deep breaths and continued to cry.