Don't Tell a Soul

by M. William Phelps

There was a problem, the manager said. “I’m not sure how to download the videos.”

  This was a good problem to have; it meant the video surveillance was still in the computer system and that the computer (or a human being using the computer) had not erased it.

  “I can have someone do it for you if you want to come back tomorrow,” the manager explained.

  They made plans to meet up at ten o’clock, the following morning, June 20, 2010.

  Riggle and Rathbun drove to the Chick-fil-A eight minutes away on South Broadway in the same town. It was more unlikely, considering the out-of-the-way location of the restaurant as compared to the crime scene, but they needed to check every possibility.

  This Tyler area was built up and loaded with your standardized, corporate retail stores and strip malls, gas stations, convenience stores, check-cashing windows, banks, elementary schools, apartment buildings, condos and cookie-cutter homes, surrounded, of course, by that distinctive Texas acreage. Named after President John Tyler, because he had supported admission of Texas into the United States, the town of Tyler had seen its economy go from boom to bust to a solid balance as the corn and cotton fields gave way to a peach crop, which eventually succumbed to a blight outbreak, paving the way for a rose industry. Tyler’s medium income is about $9,000 below the state average of $50,000; but with a population hovering around 100,000 any given year, there is plenty of money to go around.

  “Monday,” the manager of the South Broadway Chick-fil-A told Riggle. That was when the SCSO could come back. “We’ll see about what we can do to get you that video.”

  So it wasn’t going to be as easy as the first hunch a cop had. It never was. However, this sort of case, Riggle and Rathbun knew, was not going to go cold. There was too much evidence at the scene. The dumping of the body was hasty and not planned out. The key was going to be identifying the victim. There were prints and dental traces left behind. Most killers who don’t want you to know who it is that they killed will leave the scene with the heads and the hands of their victims, if they cannot get rid of the bodies altogether, taking with them any means of identifying their victims—if he or she is not part of the national DNA database. With this victim, it was obvious from the way in which she had been placed there—out in the open, facedown, for anyone to come upon her corpse—that her killer was not worried about the victim being identified, or she hadn’t thought of this particular contingency.

  It might take a while, but the SCSO was confident it would be able to locate her relatives and begin looking into family and friends.

  * * *

  On Sunday morning, June 20, 2010, Riggle took a call to head out to a “residence off Highway 31 east,” a roadway that cut directly through the center of Tyler, running east to west. Word was that they might have an identification on their victim. A girl thought to fit the description of the DB had not returned home. She had been gone for several days.

  Riggle showed up and spoke with the girl’s parents. Nice people. Worried and concerned for their child. He spent thirty minutes with them.

  As they talked about their daughter and showed him photos, it was clear they were talking about two different people. After he left the home, Riggle got a call that they had located the missing girl: she was alive and well and on her way home.

  Good for that family, Riggle considered. Bad for another.

  Riggle went back to that first Chick-fil-A. The manager informed Riggle the detective could sit in the office inside the restaurant, if he wanted, and watch the videos on the manager’s computer.

  And so that’s what he did.

  5

  LATE ON JUNE 20, 2010, Rueon and Gethry Walker were at home, nervous and worried, waiting for Cherry to call, hoping for word from somebody that she was okay. Neither the Walkers nor Cherry’s brother, cousins, nieces, nephews, any of her friends—including Cherry’s neighbor—had heard from her in close to two full days. During the leading up to Cherry going missing, Rueon had been trying to break Cherry away from depending on her and Gethry—and now she was questioning that decision.

  “Let me say this. The . . . main reason was for her, because she had a quality of life, she could function—and her father being in his eighties and I’m in my sixties, and we wanted to see from a distance . . . how she could maintain if we wasn’t there.”

  Cherry was ready. Rueon and Gethry could not take care of the girl her entire life. She was able to function on her own. She could take care of herself with the help of her aide, Paula Wheeler. She was able to make decisions. Somebody just needed to cut the cord so she could grow even more.

  Something had happened. Rueon was certain of it. It was past five o’clock on Sunday evening. Rueon was calling Cherry’s cell phone number every thirty minutes, but there was no answer. They had gone to Cherry’s apartment. Nothing was out of order other than the apartment not being its usual immaculate space, cleaned and tidied up. However, the apartment had an air of finality Rueon could not shake.

  Rueon took to the couch and then to her bedroom to think about what their next move might be. It was going to get dark in a few hours. Cherry was still not responding to text messages and calls.

  When the nightly news came on, Rueon felt she needed to watch. It was being reported that a body had been found about fifty feet off the road in Whitehouse, just over the Tyler town line. These early reports had a few of the facts wrong, but there was enough information to jar Rueon into sitting up and taking notice.

  “. . . And when the news person was talking about it, they were saying they had found a person, a young woman ... ,” Rueon recalled.

  Rueon didn’t need confirmation after watching the report. A mother or father doesn’t need proof. She knew, right then and there.

  Cherry is in trouble....

  Rueon decided not to tell Gethry right then. He was sleeping, anyway. No need to rustle him awake and get his blood stirring, his heart racing, his nerves in a state of unrest.

  After Rueon saw the number on the TV news, she “eased” herself out of the bed, she later explained, being sure not to wake Gethry, and wrote it down. Then she made a decision. If she had not heard from Cherry by morning, she would tell Gethry about the news report and call the number.

  * * *

  The following morning, June 21, a Monday, town residents began to talk about what might have happened outside Tyler on the CR 2191. A Smith County sheriff released what the entire team of investigators had agreed was the most accurate description of the woman the pizza deliveryman had found, with the hope that someone would come forward to say my daughter, wife, friend, sister, mother, has not been home in a few days and fits the description:

  [A] heavyset black woman . . . dressed in a black and green floral shirt, black Capri pants, white shoes and socks.... [Her age is estimated to be] from 18 to 34 years old.... Foul play may have been involved in her death.

  Notably missing from this early report was the fact that the woman’s body had been set on fire and burned horrifically. This omission was by design. Cops held back certain crime scene elements in a case because they would need the information down the road when questioning suspects and witnesses. They knew the fact that someone had tried to burn the victim’s body would eventually come out, but the longer they kept this fact from the public, the better off everyone would be—namely, the victim’s friends and family, who did not need to hear this shocking, gruesome detail from a news account.

  Rueon said later that when this latest report was made public, it confirmed her suspicions. There was only one thing in the world that would have stopped Cherry from calling them by now, Rueon said. “A tragedy.”

  Indeed.

  After talking with Gethry, Rueon had the feeling that the girl found on the side of the road had to be Cherry.

  “We knew her size and her age and it seemed like that was . . . Well, it might be, could be, can’t be,” Rueon later told a local television station. The tragic situation was in strong contrast to how well Cherry ha
d been doing the past year. She was evolving beyond a learning disability and was becoming her own person. Her move out of the Walker residence into an efficiency apartment was the result of hard work and determination on Cherry’s part. If it was Cherry on the side of that road, who in his or her right mind could have wanted to harm someone like her? Somebody so innocent and sweet. Why?

  “Please, please, please let me move out on my own,” Cherry had told Rueon many times before Christmas 2009. For months they had been discussing her entry into adulthood, beginning with her own apartment. Rueon and Gethry believed Cherry, with the help of an aide, was ready to be on her own. It was such a hard decision, but Cherry was the type to make a promise and work toward keeping it.

  Cherry was still struggling with certain tasks, and Rueon and Gethry were a bit nervous, but they had taken her to see that studio/efficiency apartment on East Houston Street in Tyler one day and Cherry fell in love with the place. The smile on Cherry’s face as she walked around the small apartment showed she was “elated,” Rueon later explained. Cherry could picture herself here, alone, living a life.

  It was perfect.

  They discussed the situation and decided to move Cherry in. It was an apartment Rueon and Gethry thought was ideal for Cherry to start out in: small kitchen, with a bedroom and living area all in one, a small bathroom off to the side of the kitchen, a tiny closet.

  “Small” was the key word here, and “what she could handle,” Rueon said.

  Right away Cherry showed that her parents had made the right choice. On her own she was going to the Laundromat to wash her clothes and going to the bank. She had been able to accomplish routine life chores that many of us do every day without a second thought. These were big obstacles Cherry had taken on and had overcome with the help of Paula Wheeler, who visited Cherry every morning. Cherry lived between a Papa John’s Pizza and Church’s Chicken and “loved both of them,” Rueon recalled. Her quality of life had gone from being sheltered and at home all the time, whisked to one doctor’s appointment and the next, to being out in the world on her own, learning how to be the thirty-nine-year-old adult she was.

  Rueon and Gethry were excited for their daughter. The restaurants and Laundromat were close by. Cherry was happy about being able to do things for herself.

  The Dairy Queen was a bit farther away from her apartment. One night Cherry called her stepmother, “I’m going to try it tomorrow. I just love those [Blizzards].”

  After building up the courage to venture off to the Dairy Queen, Cherry was confident enough to walk to the Dollar General, which was even farther away. Cherry had an affinity for cleaning supplies and air fresheners and she always bought more than she needed. This was okay, Rueon and Gethry felt. The girl wanted what she wanted and it kept her focused. She was building self-esteem, self-confidence and self-assurance. One day at a time.

  The Andrews Center in Tyler, a behavioral-health facility, helped people like Cherry integrate into society. A part of Community Access, a nonprofit, state-run operation, Andrews calls itself a “comprehensive mental health and mental retardation center.” Rueon and Gethry had been working with Andrews for years. Cherry was part of the system, receiving disability, Social Security and welfare benefits. She was also given government assistance wherever she needed it. Andrews had always, it seemed, been a part of Cherry’s life. In just the past ten years, from the time Cherry was twenty-nine until her death, she had made significant strides in overcoming her disability. In 1995, Cherry had tested with an IQ of near 60 (significantly below the average person, 100). In 2000, one of her psychologists from Andrews, who had worked in the mental retardation department of the facility, claimed Cherry was age equivalent to someone between five and six years old. Her “communication domain,” or the ability she tested at communicating with other people, came in at about four years, four months; her “daily living skills” were about nine years; her “adaptive behavior” measured at six years, six months. Since then, Cherry had made considerable advancements.

  As she developed new skills through the years, someone from Andrews had called Rueon and explained how they could offer Cherry a caregiver to teach her more about living on her own than Rueon or Gethry ever could. This was what had sparked the idea that Cherry would one day be able to move out of the house and into an apartment.

  The one problem Rueon and Gethry had been working with Cherry on was the ability to count money. Cherry had an issue with it. She understood what a $5, $10 or $20 bill was, but adding them together became something Cherry struggled with. Still, she would master it—as long as she had a little help. Thus, with everything heading in the right direction for Cherry, her outlook was positive and full of excitement for where life could take her. Cherry had even considered a man she saw from time to time to be her boyfriend.

  Once the SCSO identified Cherry Walker positively as their DB, they were quite interested in speaking to that man.

  6

  GETHRY AND RUEON KNEW THAT with Cherry missing all weekend, their daughter’s sudden disappearance was not by her own will. Cherry “lived in the Lord,” Gethry said. She would be in church no matter what—that was what had done it for him. With Cherry not sitting that past Sunday in the same pew she had for years, Gethry needed no additional proof that something bad had happened.

  Unable to turn away from what they believed was the inevitable, Rueon called the SCSO and faced whatever it was the Lord had in store for them.

  Rueon explained that the woman on the side of the road mentioned in recent news reports fit a description of their missing daughter. She described the clothing Cherry had been wearing last time they saw her: “Black Capri-style pants, white tennis shoes, Polo.” Rueon said she could not recall what type of shirt Cherry had on.

  “We’ll send someone right over,” an officer told the Walkers.

  Detective James Riggle showed up at the Walker household not long after the call came in. He sat down and asked the Walkers to talk about Cherry.

  “Last time we heard from her was Friday,” Gethry said.

  “Gethry picked her up at the beauty salon,” Rueon added.

  Gethry explained further that he picked Cherry up at the salon, dropped her off at her apartment, and then returned home by about 4:00 P.M. It was like any other ride, any other normal day, any other errand.

  The Walkers had not seen her since.

  Rueon remembered this was the last time anyone had seen Cherry, further telling Riggle, “Cherry needed me so much more than any other child I had ever had, that’s why we bonded. On that Friday I was talking to my [other] daughter that lives far away.” As they spoke, Rueon explained, another call beeped into the line. It was Cherry. “She called me by my name, Rueon. She said, ‘I’m ready—I’m at the beauty shop, and I’m ready to go.’ And I said, ‘Okay, your daddy is on his way.’”

  Riggle took notes.

  “She would always call, but especially on Sunday mornings so we could pick her up for church. But she never called,” Rueon added. She told Riggle about one distinguishing characteristic that could perhaps help identify Cherry. She’d had a hysterectomy three years back—an important factor that would help a medical examiner (ME) make a positive identification.

  When they had not heard from Cherry, Rueon said, they went over to her apartment. She said they’d kept an extra key to the apartment for this very reason.

  “What’d you find there?”

  Rueon explained that the door was locked, so they let themselves in. Cherry was nowhere to be found.

  “How did the apartment look?” Riggle wondered.

  “Nothing was out of place. Cherry liked to keep that place very neat, in good order, very clean.”

  “Can we get a phone number for her apartment, any cell phone numbers she might have had, and perhaps a release of her medical records?”

  The Walkers said they would help with all of those things and anything else the SCSO needed.

  The detective could not get over the tho
ught that everything he was being told seemed to fit. It was her. No doubt.

  “Dental records, too?” Riggle added.

  “Yes, of course.”

  “We cannot confirm that it’s Cherry, I want you to know this,” Riggle said, explaining that the dental records were the standard way of positively confirming a person’s identity.

  The Walkers said they understood.

  “I’m sorry, but it could take several days.”

  Again, the Walkers were a patient couple.

  Riggle asked if the SCSO could have a key to Cherry’s apartment; it would help if they could get in there and look around. Cops are trained to see things others might overlook. There could be a telling clue or something alerting them to where Cherry had gone off to.

  Rueon gave the detective the key and told him the SCSO was welcome to have a look.

  “Has anybody [else] been inside?”

  As far as they knew, nobody else.

  Riggle wondered if there was anybody the Walkers could think of that the SCSO should speak to—friends, other family members, neighbors, anyone that might help.

  “Paula Wheeler,” Rueon said right away. “She’s Cherry’s caseworker and friend.” Wheeler was probably the closest person to Cherry. She saw Cherry every workday, even sometimes on weekends. She worked for Community Access. She helped Cherry cook, clean her apartment, shop, make it to her appointments on time; she took Cherry to the doctor, the store, just about anywhere she needed to go. “If anyone might have seen or talked to Cherry, it’s Paula,” Rueon said.

  “Did she have any other friends?” Riggle asked.

  “Cherry did not really have a lot of ‘friends,’” Rueon explained, Gethry nodding in affirmation. “She does have a white boy she sees, Ron . . . or, um, Rob?” Rueon wasn’t certain of the name. “He borrowed some CDs from her and I recall she had a problem getting them back. I don’t think she has spoken to him in a long time, though.”

  Killing a woman and torching her body over a few CDs didn’t seem at all probable—but cops know that human beings kill each other for far less. Perhaps there was another layer to the relationship between Cherry and this man the Walkers were unaware of. One had to include any motive, any suspect, any situation at all, despite how insane or inconceivable it looked. If Cherry had a young man she was seeing, the narrative of their romance went deeper than some borrowed CDs.