Don't Tell a Soul

by M. William Phelps

  “Over here,” one of the searchers pointed out to Noel Martin.

  “What’s up?”

  Next to a spray bottle of cleaner were several packets of sugar with the familiar Burger King logo on the front, a half-dozen or so alcohol prep pads still inside their packages, a set of nail clippers, a candle filled with change (quarters, nickels, dimes, pennies), a roll of paper towels, a half-filled bottle of what looked to be cough syrup or some other type of prescription cold formula, a receipt from a drugstore for the prescription, a pair of pliers, an empty flower vase (clear glass), various pieces of paper (letters and notes and homework), a dustpan (sitting on top of the table itself) filled with a coloring book, a letter from Kim Cargill’s lawyer, which sat next to a new tin of black pepper, sugar shaker, pens, a syringe (of all the things a small child could get into!) and other miscellaneous items. In the middle of it all was a Prism MC-80 microcassette tape, the type used in a 1990s answering machine or microcassette tape recorder.

  In the living room the end table between the love seat and couch was littered with papers and two self-contained, disposable 35mm cameras sold at any drugstore (with the film loaded already), several Visa statements, fast-food ketchup packets, a box of twenty-eight-gallon, black plastic bags, various pieces of what appeared to be crumpled-up paper or garbage, along with a few stray toys.

  A cop placed a placard (Number 2) on top of the end table.

  Snapped a photo.

  On the couch, next to yet another pile of papers and wrappers and even a used spoon, was a stain that the SCSO wanted tested.

  “Mark it,” someone said.

  Another placard (Number 3) was placed next to the stain, a ruler set down and a photograph taken.

  Then something interesting: a coin purse on the couch, black and gray.

  Was it Cherry’s?

  Another placard was placed next to the purse and a photo snapped.

  Inside Kim’s bedroom, in a soiled, hazardous mess of garbage and used feminine products, old food and food containers and other items, the search took on a much more solemn tone.

  “In here,” the officer shouted, entering the bedroom.

  Noel Martin walked in and looked around.

  Both cops stared at one item that seemed familiar. There was, in fact, no one at the Cargill residence search more familiar with the CR 2191 crime scene where Cherry Walker’s body had been found than Noel Martin. He had processed that entire scene just five days before. Martin was an expert in crime scene reconstruction and evidence collection. Moreover, he had an impeccable memory for this type of work. Looking down on the floor next to Kim’s bed, thinking about the CR 2191 crime scene, Noel Martin knew Kim Cargill was now looking more like a suspect in Cherry Walker’s murder than anyone else.

  19

  A MID PILES OF DIRTY LAUNDRY, empty computer printer boxes, plastic Sears bags filled with old and new clothes, garbage, books, empty Big Gulp and Sonic cups with straws, greasy and empty fast-food bags lying on the floor, old food (rotting and collecting mold), dirt and lint and hangers, underwear and nylons, telephone books and crayons and Magic Markers, empty packets of Burger King sugar (Number 6 and 7, representing where they had been found), Noel Martin knelt down and stared at two plastic Dairy Fresh creamer half-and-half cups identical to the one found between Cherry Walker’s legs at the CR 2191 scene.

  What were the chances?

  Beside the creamer cup were several old French fries and Tater Tots that had either fallen out of her bag of food or dropped off a plate and had never been picked up. It was mind-boggling to think that this was the room where Kim slept every night after caring for patients at whatever hospital she had worked that day.

  The obvious thing to do was to test these creamer cups for DNA against the cup found between Cherry Walker’s legs.

  After taking photographs of the entire bedroom, including close-ups of the creamer cups, they bagged and tagged the items.

  “In here,” said another cop.

  Inside Kim’s bathroom were several additional plastic creamer cups.

  A Styrofoam coffee cup’s plastic white lid was found inside the master bedroom bathtub. The tub was brimming with garbage, but not just any type of garbage. There were used sanitary napkins and tampons, dried and crusty blood all over them, along with what appeared to be used diapers and several other feminine products.

  Noel Martin knew that at the scene, a good distance from Cherry’s body, a spongy white Styrofoam coffee cup had been located inside an old tire. It had no lid.

  Inside Kim’s bathroom, just beyond that revolting bathtub, detectives found a pair of white tennis shoes. One of the detectives, wearing latex gloves, carefully picked up one of the shoes after having a conversation with Noel Martin, who stood nearby and watched. Bingo, there it was: that same black soot they were finding all over the house.

  “I saw the same type of material or substance,” Detective Rathbun later reported, “that I had seen on the victim’s shoes. . . .”

  A circumstantial case for murder was beginning to be backed up by forensic evidence.

  Rathbun also collected “several fast-food restaurant receipts” from area chain restaurants that Kim apparently had patronized on June 18 and 19. The SCSO would want to have a look at the surveillance footage from those places, if it was still available, and see if Kim could be seen on video with Cherry Walker on the night Cherry went missing.

  “Sergeant,” one of the searchers, approaching Noel Martin, stated, “we found something in the laundry room.”

  The Cargill residence laundry room like the rest of the house: absolutely gross and in need of not only a scrubbing, but a major sanitizing. But the lack of cleanliness was not what interested searchers. Inside the washing machine was what cops believed to be a bedsheet. Everyone participating in the search knew the SCSO had been working under the theory that Cherry Walker had been wrapped in some type of linen and taken from the place she was murdered to the 2191 secondary location—the ME had even mentioned that it could have been a sheet. The sheet itself looked to be stained with a dark-colored—maybe even once-red—substance in a particular section, even though it now appeared diluted after being washed.

  Why was there just this one item in the machine? Generally, people wash a full load of clothes.

  “It’s wet,” Martin said.

  A wet sheet in a washing machine. Not so much evidence of a murder, but another layer piling atop suspicious activity on Kim Cargill’s part.

  Further bolstering the SCSO’s theory that the sheet meant something within the scope of Cherry’s murder, the laundry room was full of clothes that needed to be washed. In fact, a basket of dirty laundry sat to the left, in front of the dryer. Yet, inside the dryer cops found only a pair of scrubs, socks and underwear. These were Kim’s clothes.

  A placard (Number 19) went up on top of the washing machine, and a photo was snapped. Another placard went up on the dryer, and another photo was taken.

  The SCSO had hit the jackpot—or so it seemed on the surface—in Kim Cargill’s home. Plenty of forensic work needed to be done in the lab, and plenty of forensic evidence that could be tested against what had been found at the crime scene.

  Would all of this be enough to get a judge to sign off on an arrest warrant?

  20

  KIM’S WHITE SEDAN WAS TOWED to the Smith County Low Risk Jail’s impound yard in order to get it out of the elements and into a secure environment. If she had used this vehicle in the transportation of Cherry’s body, it should produce some forensic evidence. In addition, the “black soot” and smudges all over the white car were an indication that whoever had driven the car was perhaps covered in the stuff.

  Noel Martin snapped on a pair of see-through plastic gloves and, with a few colleagues, went to work on the car to “conduct,” as he later put it, a “systematic search for evidence.”

  First thing Martin did was to make sure the integrity of the vehicle had not been compromised. After a detaile
d perusal of the paperwork accompanying the car, he was confident that all seemed well in that regard.

  Inside the vehicle—which was a horrible mess—Martin uncovered a Burger King hot cup, a roll of silver duct tape and several hairs (African-American). The hairs were found on the passenger-side headrest, midway up the seat. It was not a stretch to think that Cherry Walker, at some point, had sat inside this vehicle.

  Martin swabbed the door handle on the passenger side.

  “We were looking for stem cells or epithelial (that thin layer of skin on the outside) DNA,” he explained.

  If at some point Cherry Walker was inside this vehicle with Kim Cargill, DNA testing would prove it by odds that were too large to argue with.

  Along with Martin, the ADA April Sikes was present at the vehicle search. As Martin was going through the car, Sikes pointed to the floorboard: “Look there.”

  A section of the car’s carpet had been pulled back—probably by one of the searchers. There, sitting by itself, underneath where the pulled-up section of carpet would have covered, was “the top portion” of a Dairy Fresh creamer cup; it was the plastic lid piece you tear off so you can pour the creamer into your coffee. It was sitting underneath the carpet on the driver’s-side floorboard. By then, detectives had checked and found that Burger King gave those same Dairy Fresh half-and-half coffee creamer cups out with its coffee orders.

  With the evidence found at Kim Cargill’s home and in her vehicle, it appeared law enforcement had enough for an arrest warrant. The best-case scenario was to get Kim into the station house and shine a light in her face. Get her inside the box and see what she had to say for herself. Would she be able to explain all of this circumstantial and potential forensic evidence away? Or would she plead the Fifth and not say anything at all?

  As it would turn out, however, the SCSO would not need to bring Kim in on those charges. Kim Cargill, after all, had other legal problems mounting—which had little to do with Cherry Walker.

  PART TWO

  “Psychopaths don’t change,” [Professor of Developmental Psychopathology, at the UCL Faculty of Brain Sciences, Essi Viding said]. “They don’t learn from punishment. The best you can hope for is that they’ll eventually get too old and lazy to be bothered to offend.”

  —The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson

  21

  IT WAS THURSDAY AFTERNOON, June 24, 2010, a hot and humid summer day, when the Whitehouse Police Department served an arrest warrant on Kim Cargill.

  The charges?

  “Injury to a Child.”

  Serious accusations stemming from a complaint made by the father of one of her kids regarding an incident on March 17, 2010—though, as time would soon tell, the incident would pale in comparison to other claims made by Kim’s kids and ex-husbands.

  Brian (pseudonym), one of Kim’s sons, did not call his mother “Mom”—which said something about their relationship. Brian called Kim “KC.” While sitting on the witness stand, Brian would later describe in horrific detail how growing up in the Cargill household was a chronic abusive experience for all four children. Brian had been savagely and repeatedly abused by KC, he testified, and so had his three brothers. It was not once in a while, or when they acted up and got on KC’s nerves, but rather on nearly every day they spent with KC. On a daily basis one or more of the kids was at the receiving end of her volatile, ferocious and violent temper.

  Inside the Waterton Circle home that the SCSO had recently searched, Brian had always slept with the family dog, Oreo (until the dog went mysteriously missing one night). Brian would lie in bed and stare at the ceiling, wondering what was going to happen next. For the most part Brian endured what he said were “slaps” in the face from KC on a regular basis. That was a good day. He’d do something she didn’t like and—bang!—she’d hit him, leaving an imprint of her hand in red on his face.

  There were other instances, he explained, when he’d watch as KC “choked” the younger kids. This didn’t happen as often as the slapping, but it happened enough to impart fear in the kids. KC generally used her hands, Brian said, when she choked them. But there was one time he could never forget. His brother Blake (pseudonym) had been acting up. KC and Blake got into an argument over something trivial, which caused Kim Cargill to explode in a volcanic rage the children knew meant something bad was going to happen.

  Angry and ranting, Kim ran into Blake’s bedroom. Brian looked on, worried for his brother, scared to step in for fear of suffering a worse punishment than she was preparing to dish out. Brian watched as Kim grabbed a belt. It was not to whip Blake—that would have been tolerable, in this one instance. Because tonight Kim decided to place the belt around Blake’s throat and choke him with it. As she did this, Brian later said, he watched his brother’s face turn red as he tried desperately to cry out. Kim kept up pressure until she knew she had to let go or the child was going to pass out and possibly die.

  “You little motherfucker” was a common vulgarity Kim screamed at one of the kids. “You will listen to me.”

  Brian wore ortho-k contact lenses. He had trouble sometimes getting one particular lens into his eye. He recalled one time when KC walked over to help him out.

  “Stand still,” she said with that look on her face. Brian didn’t want to ask his mother for help to begin with. He knew she had no patience and a low tolerance for anything even remotely aggravating or difficult. It was strange for the boys when they thought of her as an LVN, someone who went to work every night and cared for people.

  Brian was “flinching” and “blinking,” he explained. He couldn’t help it. She was forcing the lens into his eye. It hurt like the dickens.

  “Stand. Still. Damn-it-all!” Kim yelled. She liked to grind her teeth when she became angry. Call the kids names: “You stupid son of a bitch, don’t move while I do this.” Things like that, Brian remembered later. Insults and constant demeaning taunts meant to intimidate and scare.

  He continued to squirm and blink as his body recoiled. She used zero finesse or love to place the lens into his eye.

  As Brian told her she was hurting him, KC reached in back of her. They were in the bathroom in her bedroom. Stuff everywhere. There was a can of hair spray on the counter. She grabbed it.

  “I looked up at her and I just saw her hand rear back and hit me with the edge [of] the bottom of, like, the hair spray can . . . ,” Brian recalled.

  A severe blow to the head with a metal can left a large welt on Brian’s forehead.

  * * *

  There was another instance Brian recalled when KC had chased him down a hallway inside the house. She had an old TV stored in the same hallway near an air conditioner vent. Brian was “backpedaling,” walking quickly backward, making sure to stay out of her way, while at the same time keeping his eyes on her.

  “I was scared she might do something to me.”

  The boy knew: Kim Cargill was on a mission to hurt one of her kids and he happened to be the chosen one that night. Simple as that.

  Kim chased him down the hallway. She was “looking at [him] with, like, gritted teeth and eyes that were fierce.” She waited until he was near the TV, and when Brian reached that section of the hallway, she hurled him over the TV set with the momentum they both had accumulated while walking fast down the hallway. He fell down and over the TV set and scraped up his back pretty badly. Brian knew KC wanted to hurt him. She needed Brian to feel pain.

  He felt pain.

  * * *

  When KC would abuse the other children, she would sometimes employ Brian to help out. He said he was far “too scared” not to help her.

  “[Blake], you get over there,” Kim snapped one day.

  Blake knew by the sound of her voice that he was in for a solid “spanking,” as Brian later called it. Blake walked over. It was such an insignificant thing—not that there is any excuse for abuse in any form—that Brian later could not recall what it was Blake had done to make her mad.

  Brian was nearby. Kim had
a hard time giving the “spanking,” Brian explained. She couldn’t hold the child down. When she was overly angry or in a state of rage, KC had a hard time managing the beatings. “She misses our butt and hits our lower back or hits our thighs,” Brian recalled in court. As she had Blake bent over, KC took out the belt and began whacking him, but he grabbed the belt and wouldn’t let her have it back.

  “Go get me the other belt!” Kim ordered Brian.

  “Yes, KC.”

  Brian retrieved another belt, gave it to his mother. She placed it around the boy’s neck and “began choking him,” Brian remembered. Brian generally never stuck around to watch what was happening. It was far too painful and scary. There was a screen door, though, and as he walked back “to his room, so I could cry,” he said, he happened to look behind and watch as KC placed the belt around Blake’s neck.

  * * *

  On another occasion Brian was in his underwear one morning and KC was on the warpath around the house, looking for some reason to scold the kids for another “thing” they had done wrong. Brian was on his way to the bathroom. He had to go really badly.

  Blake was doing his chores, but he was speeding through them. “What are you doing?” KC screamed at Blake. “Slow down. Do them right!”

  Blake knew that “do them right” also meant “or else.” So he walked off into another room to get out of KC’s way.

  She was now immeasurably angry. Turning around, KC saw Brian come out of his room and begin walking down the hallway toward the bathroom.

  She needed to release her anger.

  “So she turned around and just looked at me,” he later recalled. He saw the gaze in her eyes they all knew by then—all of that rage boiling up to the surface, looking for a release. KC needed somehow to get it all out of her. Brian was just there. He hadn’t done anything.