As Lann looked at this, she thought of one item: bedsheet. Someone might have wrapped Cherry’s body in a sheet of the sort found in any household.
Other evidence supported the theory of a premeditated plan to kill Cherry Walker.
Cherry had been found lying on her stomach. It would seem that she had been lit on fire where she was found, because there was a “unique distribution over primarily the back, and then the upper portions of the torso, to include the right flank and lower right extremity on the back of the thigh and then shoulders as well.” From the position of Cherry’s body in situ, it appeared that her killer had dumped her and she landed face-first on the ground. From there a flammable liquid was poured over her as she lay on her stomach. Then her body was set on fire.
Lann found a few minor abrasions in the area of Cherry’s head. These injuries, the doctor was almost certain, took place right before or during death, because “there was no healing” and “blood was stilling pumping” at the time those injuries—superficial as they were—had occurred.
Lann couldn’t say definitively if Cherry Walker was dead when she was lit on fire and burned over nearly the entire back portion of her body and her neck. The only medical certainty Lann could conclude—and she wasn’t 100 percent certain about this, either—was that Cherry Walker “wasn’t breathing” when her body was on fire. A look inside the lungs told the doctor this. However, that finding could be deceiving. Horrifying as it sounded, Cherry could have been unconscious when she was lit on fire.
Without having to say it, Lann and the SCSO knew that only a sadistic psychopath could pour gasoline or some other accelerant on a human being, strike a match and set that living, breathing human being—unconscious or not—on fire. The object of this autopsy was to find that person as quickly as possible and understand the “what, where, when and why,” so a case could be built and justice served for Cherry Walker.
14
TO FIND OUT HOW DEEP the relationship between Cherry Walker and Kim Cargill went, detectives needed to have a chat with Kim. Kim was in serious trouble with DFPS and had used Cherry in more ways than just as a babysitter and caretaker for her child. Yet, all of that, as bad as it seemed, did not mean Kim Cargill was a murderer. In fact, to call her such would be a leap: How does one go from a mother and wife to a predator that strangled a mentally retarded woman before lighting her body on fire? It sounded impossible—especially since Kim didn’t have any police record to speak of.
Sure, there were domestic issues, fights with her husbands and partners, but there did not seem to be any indication that Kim Cargill was capable of such a gruesome, violent act. Of course, she could have hired someone to do it for her. However, if she had done that, the case was going to be easier to solve. The more people involved in a homicide, the more likely it is that one will talk about it sooner or later. Additionally, if this was a murder-for-hire killing, the death penalty would most certainly be part of the prosecution. In Texas, if the accused was sentenced to death, after his or her appeals were exhausted, the execution chamber was put to use. Convicts did not sit on death row for life in Texas.
Kim Cargill could have a good alibi and might even be able to help their investigation, pointing detectives in the direction of the perpetrator. Kim had interacted with Cherry in those days (and hours) before Cherry went missing and was murdered. Perhaps Kim had valuable information.
There was only one way to find out.
* * *
Before knocking on Kim’s door, SCSO detective Ron Rathbun wanted to find out as much as he could about her from independent sources. Know your subject and her movements surrounding your timeline better than she does and you have the upper hand walking in.
Detective Rathbun headed out with a colleague to 4801 Troup Highway in Tyler, a nondescript one-floor office complex near a Food First fuel-and-convenience store. Across the street were a paint company, a family-owned cleaners and a Volkswagen dealership. As he pulled up onto Troup Highway, the landscape of rural Texas was vivid: the plush green grass, fertilized and cut with a surgeon’s precision, the white-lined parking spaces in front of the redbrick building with plate glass windows and stenciled company signs on the doors. Similar strip-mall-like complexes are scattered all across Texas—and across America.
The SCSO was working on a tip that Kim Cargill had worked for Excel Staffing, a business that supplied nurses to local hospitals. An LVN, Kim was considered to be a “skilled health care worker,” someone that aided nurses and doctors throughout the course of their workday. It’s an “entry-level” health care position. Some take it on, love it, and stay, never going further, while others use it as a stepping-stone toward becoming a registered nurse (RN) or other career goals.
For Excel, Kim was making about $24 per hour. Rathbun and his colleague sat down with staffers Gina Vestal and Paula Maris. Both knew Kim personally and had effectively “staffed” her at numerous local East Texas hospitals: Athens, UT (a host of facilities under the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center banner), Quitman, Pittsburg and Gilmer. These were all facilities Kim had worked for periodically. In fact, after they looked it up in the computers, Vestal and Maris confirmed that Kim had worked at Athens back on that previous Friday, June 18, 2010, the day on which Cherry went missing. Athens was a forty-five-minute drive from Tyler. It wasn’t Kim’s favorite gig, but it provided the dollars she needed to take care of her family.
“How long has she been here?” Rathbun asked Vestal.
“Oh, three months or so—since March 31, 2010, it says right here in her file.”
“Can we get a copy of her schedule over the past several days?”
“Absolutely, Detective.”
Vestal provided the SCSO with “copies of [Kim’s] time sheets.” It appeared that Kim had worked on Friday, June 18, at the East Texas Medical Center (ETMC) facility in Athens, between the hours of 7:00 A.M. and 7:30 P.M.
Kim Cargill had been close enough to the Tyler/Whitehouse area to have met up with or at least spoken to Cherry Walker beyond those phone calls the SCSO could verify.
After she had worked in Athens on that Friday, one of the Excel staffers said, “They called asking me to call [her] because she—they didn’t know if she had given an antibiotic to a patient or not. It wasn’t documented.”
This was fresh on the minds of the Excel staff because Kim had always been someone whom they never, ever had trouble reaching. She always answered her phone.
Rathbun wanted to know what they meant by that.
Anytime they called Kim, no matter when, she’d either pick up the phone or call them back immediately. Yet, on that Friday, when this important question came up, Vestal called Kim, over and over, but could not reach her. Protocol required that no matter what hour of the day or night it was, if there was a patient issue, Excel would call the nurse repeatedly until they connected. Records indicated Excel staff members had called Kim incessantly that Friday night, and did not stop until 11:56 P.M. Kim had not picked up during that entire time.
At 12:33 A.M., Kim called back.
“I’ve been trying to get hold of you all night, Kim,” the Excel staffer had told her. “You need to call over to Athens immediately and tell them whether you gave a patient an antibiotic or not.”
“Oh, sorry . . . I’ve been sleeping,” Kim responded.
This seemed odd, because they had called Kim at all hours of the night over the past few weeks since she’d starting working at Excel and she had always picked up, sound asleep or not, within a few rings.
Kim did call the hospital right after she got off the phone.
Later that morning, a staffer then recalled, which would have been Saturday, June 19, Excel called Kim first thing. They needed someone to work. Kim was a go-to in a sudden situation because she was always asking for extra hours.
Except on this day.
“I can’t,” Kim said.
Looking deeper into her schedule, Detective Rathbun found that Kim was not scheduled
and did not work on Saturday, June 19, but did return to work in Athens on Sunday, June 20. This opened up the opportunity—that is, unless Kim could show she was somewhere else—for Kim to have been with Cherry on Friday night and into Saturday.
Further supporting this theory, Rathbun later connected with the Athens hospital and obtained security footage, which showed Kim arriving at the hospital late at 7:04 A.M. on June 18 and leaving the hospital later that same day (early) at 7:08 P.M.
Maris explained that she knew Kim had Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday off.
Rathbun wondered if she had vacation days or plans, as these were not her normal days off. What had made her take those specific days off?
“She told us she’d need those days off to prepare for a child custody hearing. She did come here on Monday [the day preceding Rathbun’s interview], though, to pick up her check,” Maris said.
They talked more about Kim’s work ethic and how often she was able to fulfill her duties and work a full week.
“Kim liked to work,” Vestal said. Kim had no trouble doing lots of hours for Excel, even fifty or sixty per week. She always appreciated the extra hours.
Just not last Saturday, Rathbun thought. Knowing she was going to take three days off in a row, she still refused that Saturday gig.
Interesting.
There were times, Vestal explained further, when Kim was forced to find a babysitter on the spot if she wanted the hours, but it never seemed to be a problem. Excel could call her at four in the morning and Kim would find a babysitter within the hour.
That babysitter had to be Cherry Walker, Rathbun knew.
Evidence was mounting that Kim was likely the last person to see and/or speak with Cherry. Clearly, she had a window of opportunity to have been involved on some level in Cherry’s disappearance and death. Rathbun met with Riggle and they decided it was time to knock on Kim’s door.
15
THE SMITH COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE on 227 North Spring Street in downtown Tyler is a stuccolike-textured white building. Two giant stars painted on the front glass doors greet people as they walk in. Just a few steps outside is a road made of tightly packed, shiny red bricks. It’s elegant and nostalgic, reminiscent of what the city might have been like 125 years ago as horses pulling buggies trotted down the avenues under the gaslights of the day. Across the street is a parking garage attached to a tall building with glass windows, rising into the Texas skyline.
Early the week of June 21, SCSO detectives James Riggle and Ron Rathbun had Joe Mayo come in and meet them for a second interview on the seventh floor of the building. They wanted one more conversation with Joe before they wrote him off entirely, while part of his alibi was still being investigated.
“We were good friends,” Joe said of his and Cherry’s relationship. He didn’t know what else he could add that he hadn’t said already.
Rathbun and Riggle wanted Joe back in this environment to break the news to him that Cherry had been murdered. They wanted to gauge his reaction firsthand. Seasoned detectives simply know: You lay important information from a case on someone. If they haven’t been involved in any way, they show a certain involuntary, visceral response without even trying. Whereas, you tell a man who has killed a woman about his crime, and his denial generally includes a certain arrogance—a feigned compassion, which he tries to manipulate into the conversation.
Joe Mayo was stunned as the news was relayed to him, according to both Rathbun and Riggle. Rathbun later wrote in his report: He seemed genuinely shocked and surprised.
“Where were you, Joe, last Friday?” one of the detectives asked again.
“I told you. I was singing at the Caretta’s.”
The SCSO cut Joe Mayo loose. Then both cops sat and talked about where they stood at this point in their investigation—but also, most important, where they needed to go. Any murder strikes caring cops, like Rathbun and Riggle, in the heart. They feel a need, which they cannot explain, to solve the case.
As they discussed the case in detail, there really was only one other place left for these detectives to take their investigation: Waterton Circle, Whitehouse, Texas.
16
YOU DRIVE SLOWLY DOWN THE gravel and concrete roadway of Waterton Circle, which surrounds the neighborhood where Kim Cargill lived, and it appears to be a toymaker’s vision of a small plastic community, handpicked and perfectly crafted for the landscape of a child’s train set. The houses are all kept up to date, red and/or white brick; the lawns manicured, green as Irish pastures; the trees, mostly maples and spruce, are planted in locations chosen to accentuate the beauty and family-oriented atmosphere of everything around them.
This is rural Whitehouse, Texas, in its essence: Young working couples. Husbands and wives. Two-point-two kids. A boat, a dog, a cat. Children’s toys in the front yards and on driveways. Playscapes and slides and aboveground pools out back. Basketball hoops, garbage and recycling bins alongside the two-car garages. Boxwoods and evergreens curving up the front walkways, leading to the doors into the homes where suburbanites lived the American dream.
It all seems tranquil on the outside. Yet, there are no white picket fences here. It’s not that type of community. It is almost as though, driving around, you’ve somehow been teleported into the back lot of Universal in Hollywood to the set of a crime drama. You sense that underneath the perfect neighborhood façade, something sinister, something menacing, is lurking in the shadows, unseen. It is much more devious and violent than anyone could have ever imagined.
Criminal Investigations Division (CID) sergeant Mike Stinecipher, with James Riggle and Ron Rathbun, rolled up to Kim’s house on the early evening of Tuesday, June 22, 2010, without a search warrant. The feeling was that Kim was in enough trouble with DFPS and would allow them inside her home to have a cursory look around, answer a few questions; then they could be on their way. If Kim had nothing to hide, they figured, what was the problem? They wanted her help to find the killer of her babysitter. Why wouldn’t she want to help find Cherry’s killer?
“We went there to see if we could get a consent to search the residence,” Stinecipher said later in court, explaining how this night unfolded.
For the SCSO this was a turning point. Some detectives had a feeling that Kim Cargill had a lot to hide. Others thought, Why not give this woman the benefit of the doubt? Cherry’s murder was a seriously violent crime. It was hard to imagine that a woman of Kim’s stature and size—she was not a large woman at 120 pounds—could pull it off. If she did, how could she manage it alone? Cherry was a big woman. How could Kim Cargill move Cherry’s body from one place to another as deadweight? Of course, Cherry could have been murdered where she was found. But every forensic analyst and investigator believed she had been killed elsewhere.
Riggle had called for another cop to head over to the Cargill residence. Detective Dan Garrigan’s assignment was to stand watch at the house after they left the scene. They were all under the impression that Kim Cargill was unpredictable and volatile, and experience told these intuitive cops that a situation like this one could go any number of ways. As a cop you can never expect anything to go the way it should. Never believe people will do the right thing—because criminals don’t think that way. Criminals have one thing on their minds: themselves.
Was Kim Cargill a criminal?
* * *
Riggle, Stinecipher and Rathbun stepped out of their vehicles and walked up to Kim’s door. One of the cops knocked on it.
Kim answered. At forty-three years old she looked tired. Her blue eyes were hazy and bloodshot. You could tell she’d had a hard time the past week or more. She was running on adrenaline. Kim had always kept up her shape and looks—this was important to her. At one time she had been a gorgeous woman: dark blond hair and fair skin, a welcoming smile, blue/green eyes gleaming underneath plucked eyebrows, pouty and red sensual lips. Men were attracted to Kim; she never had trouble finding dates. On this evening, however, she came across as standoffish, with
a nervousness that suggested a woman hiding something. The officers got a clear indication right away that Kim Cargill, despite how long she had known Cherry, did not want to help the SCSO find Cherry’s killer.
Stinecipher explained that they were hoping to conduct a walk-through of the house, with her permission, of course. They were investigating the death of someone Kim knew, and they needed some answers from Kim. They weren’t there to arrest her or cause any trouble. They just wanted to come in and have a look around, ask a few basic questions.
“No, cannot do that,” Kim said from behind the open front door. “I need to speak with my attorney about this.”
Roadblock. Without Kim’s consent, the SCSO needed a search warrant. For a search warrant the SCSO needed evidence, circumstantial or forensic, or a judge would never sign off on the warrant.
Riggle, Stinecipher, Rathbun and several other officers left Kim’s house—a procession of law enforcement vehicles leaving the residential neighborhood as if escorting the president. If the neighbors weren’t talking about Kim already, they surely would be now.
The SCSO couldn’t do much else at Kim’s residence. She’d told them to leave; she’d had every right to do that. Detective Riggle, the lead in the investigation, decided the next step was to finish writing up a search warrant for the house as quickly as possible. Kim now knew that the SCSO was seriously interested in her. She would be on the move. If there was evidence inside the home, it was a race against the clock for them to get the warrant signed before she was able to hide or destroy it.
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