Don't Tell a Soul

by M. William Phelps

  “No, you’re not,” Jill said, consoling the child, holding him. “I’ll say I did it, okay?”

  The child bowed his head and nodded.

  “Just come and sit down on my couch,” Jill told the child. He had started to run up and down the stairs again. “I will clean it up. You’re not going to get into trouble. Don’t worry.”

  “My mama is going to spank me. My mama is going to spank me,” the child was repeating while continuing to run up and down the stairway.

  “No, she’s not,” Jill kept saying.

  One of the older kids came into the house. He looked at what happened and he, too, began to run around inside Jill’s house. In fact, he ran so hard and with such force that he purposely ran straight at a sectional, near where Jill had been sitting, and knocked it over. Then “he became so frightened,” Jill later remembered, “he ran over to me and grabbed me by the neck.”

  KC walked in sometime later, saw the remnants of what had gone on and asked, “What happened here?”

  “I did it,” Jill said, and stood.

  “No, you didn’t, Jill,” Kim said in a low voice, staring at her young boy.

  “No, Kim, I threw the ball,” Jill tried to explain.

  KC stared at her, then at the kids. “I’ll help you clean this up.”

  “No, that’s okay,” Jill said. “I’ll clean it up.”

  Incidents such as this made Jill take a serious look at her so-called friend and step back, telling herself that there’s much more going on than a mother “spanking” a child. Jill could tell by the reactions of the children and Kim’s tone with them, plus the threatening looks and stares, that there was serious abuse going on inside KC’s house.

  * * *

  Not long after that incident Jill took a call from KC. “Jill, they’re going to call you. What are you going to say?” This was right around the time Timmy was being taken away from KC and she was often hiding the child at Cherry’s. KC was referring to DFPS calling Jill to ask about the children: Had she ever seen anything? Had the children ever said anything? What was KC’s behavior around them?

  Jill was going to be honest, though she did not relate this to KC on the phone that day. There were times when Jill had seen KC scream and yell at the top of her lungs at the kids and “jerk” them around—something that had been reported by many sources close to KC. If one of the kids got out of line or was acting up in public, KC would walk over, grab him by the arm and jerk it, hurting the child. It was abuse, no two ways about it.

  DFPS called and asked Jill about an incident with Brian. He’d had some injuries his father had reported. KC had been interviewed by the police. She said the incident involved Brian falling and hitting his head on a table or the television set. (It was in reference to the incident in which KC had pushed Brian over the TV set and he scraped his back.) Jill told DFPS she recalled seeing something happen once and watching Kim jerk Brian backward and he fell into the television set and hurt his head and face pretty badly. (A second altogether different incident!)

  All of this was extremely upsetting to Jill to have to witness as it began taking place in front of her and she took a step back from the relationship. It was hard to walk away entirely, Jill said, because of her concerns over the children’s safety—but also equally troubling to have to sit and watch. One thing that bothered Jill—for the sole reason that Jill herself had been described as “such a doting mother,” still making her eighteen-year-old sandwiches to take to work—was having to sit by and see Timmy (two at the time) be made to fill his own bottles with milk.

  “If he cannot pour his own bottle,” Kim would say when Jill had a “WTF” look on her face, “he will have to do without!”

  Jill was unable to help KC or her kids any longer. The only way she could be of value was to be honest with DFPS.

  One of the kids went to Jill and explained that KC had “punched” him in the face. He was frightened. What would she do next?

  The same child had his tonsils out. KC brought the child over to Jill’s office straight from the hospital after the operation—which Jill found to be strange in and of itself. KC walked in and placed the child on Jill’s couch in the reception area and then walked into Jill’s office. Jill went over to the child to see how he was feeling. Did he need a glass of water? Some Popsicles? Ice cream? Some motherly TLC? Maybe something to soothe the pain? Why had Kim just dumped him on the couch and walked away as if she could have not cared less about him?

  “He was just as white as . . . sick,” Jill said later, quite unable to articulate exactly how she felt about the boy and how he looked just out of the hospital.

  Brian had a gaze about his face that Jill said she could never forget. He was petrified of whatever was coming next. Jill looked toward her office and then bent down and whispered to Brian, “Do you want to go home?”

  He looked at her. He was terrified of something. He said, “Uh-uh.”

  “Are you scared?” Jill whispered.

  The boy nodded yes.

  Jill wrote her number down on a small piece of paper and put it in his hand. “You keep this from her . . . and you use it to call me if you need anything.”

  He said okay.

  Any child after an operation might be scared, or feel sick to his stomach. But this was not a look that said, “I’m sick and scared. When will I feel better?” It was pure terror, Jill believed. The boy did not want to be alone with his mother.

  “It was a look of fear I have never seen before in my life,” Jill recalled.

  * * *

  When KC engaged Jill in conversations about her mother, it often brought out a side of KC that Jill rarely saw. Part of it was sad, Jill recalled; the other part, well, quite terrifying. Jill could never understand how much KC “despised” her own mother, Rachel Wilson. She’d rant and rave and degrade her mother anytime her name was bought up in conversation.

  “Joan Crawford,” KC told Jill one night when they were talking about Rachel. KC was referring to the memoir written by Crawford’s daughter, Christina, exposing the antics and abuse perpetrated by the famed actress. (Moviegoers are familiar with the Crawford role played by Faye Dunaway in the 1981 film that took the book’s title, Mommie Dearest.)

  “That bad, Kim?”

  “My childhood was a nightmare,” KC said.

  At the time Jill had not met Rachel Wilson or Kim’s stepdad. “I believed everything [KC] was telling me about them. And it broke my heart . . . and when I met her mother and stepfather, I realized that was not the case, as far as I could decipher between the two stories.”

  Jill soon figured out that everything KC had said, the stories she told—about her childhood, about her ex-husbands, one of whom she claimed had taken off years ago and she had never heard from him again—were all part of a tale of manipulation KC was plying her with. KC was filling her with that “poor me . . . look at my life” rhetoric, hoping to make Jill feel sorry for her. When Jill took a close look at the facts, however, she wondered whether KC was describing herself when she spoke of her Joan Crawford–like mother.

  “I couldn’t watch them not have groceries or diapers or the lights [being] cut off or the air conditioner in the car not working,” Jill said of KC and the way she lived. It all became too much to bear. She had a tough time standing by and not doing anything. Then, when Rachel moved to Texas from Mississippi, and Jill began to discuss the situation with Rachel, “I knew something was very, very wrong up here—and so I just kept trying to distance myself. . . .”

  “I cannot do it anymore,” Jill told Rachel one day as they talked about KC. “I cannot watch this [go on, in front of me].”

  The behaviors KC was displaying with regard to her ex-husbands, the kids, the way, “in the flash of an eye,” Jill said, KC could change from a nice suburban mom to a vengeful maniac made Jill decide enough was enough. Even Jill’s own children told her, “There’s something wrong with that woman.”

  * * *

  Of course, there was the h
ouse: the ants, the bugs, the terrible smells in the kids’ bedrooms, the mess everywhere. KC was not doing any cleaning up.

  “This is the filthiest place I have ever seen,” Jill said one day, half jesting, when she and KC had first met. “You could grow plants on the console. There is so much coffee and sticky stuff everywhere.”

  KC’s car was the same.

  In addition, there was always some drama playing out in KC’s life. Work. The kids’ fathers. Other friends. The state. There was always a thing KC was involved in, and it was always, of course, somebody else’s fault, always directed against her. Poor KC. She could never catch a break. She showed borderline personality disorder, antisocial disorder and pure sociopathic behaviors; she did not care what anybody felt.

  If she didn’t like something Jill did or said to one of the kids, KC would keep the child from seeing Jill. One child was kept away from Jill for five months. Just over something Jill had said to the child that KC didn’t like.

  * * *

  Jill recalled when KC introduced her to Cherry Walker. “It was, like, fifteen seconds,” Jill recalled. Kim had explained she used Cherry to babysit because Cherry was cheap and KC couldn’t afford day care. It was not Cherry that Jill objected to. She had no idea that Cherry was mentally challenged. It was where Cherry lived that made Jill realize just how devious and manipulative and downright mean KC could be when she wanted to be.

  Jill had gone along with KC on a day when KC dropped off Timmy at Cherry Walker’s Citadel apartment. Cherry came running out, grabbed the boy and ran back in. It was as though she was trying to hide him.

  “Kim, um, isn’t that where [Timmy’s dad] lives?” Jill asked. She thought she’d recognized the building.

  KC smiled.

  “Kim! Does [Timmy’s dad] live in the same building?”

  It was true: Timmy’s father lived right above Cherry. For two years Kim had been bringing the boy to this same building—first to Cherry’s neighbor, Marcie Fulton, and then to Cherry—and the dad never knew his son was right there in the same building, underneath his nose—literally. What’s more: “He hid behind a wall,” Jill explained later. “She kept him—made Cherry keep him inside the bricked-in wall.” Cherry, in other words, had a hiding place for Timmy whenever things heated up. Jill said if she knew that Cherry was mentally handicapped and watching Timmy, “I would have flipped.”

  That “bad man,” whom KC had told Cherry to be on the lookout for . . . was Timmy’s dad.

  At times KC would say, “I wish I had your life, Jill. Your relationship with your parents . . . I wish I could have that with my mother.”

  Still, that seemingly caring sentiment would turn cold in an instant.

  Jill and KC were discussing Rachel once and KC said, “I’d kill her if I could do it and get away with it.”

  Jill stared at the friend she did not know. The look on KC’s face, Jill knew, meant that Kim had not been playing around with words—she was serious. If she could murder her mother and thwart justice for the crime, she would follow through with it.

  Jill was out of town when she heard Cherry had been murdered. It was on that Sunday, a day after Cherry’s body had been found, when police called Jill and asked: “Did you hear about the murder?”

  Jill went down to the SCSO on Monday morning, June 28, and sat down for an interview. The SCSO had acquired Jill’s name from the state’s child endangerment case against KC—Jill had been subpoenaed to testify.

  When she heard about Cherry, Jill later recalled, “I knew.” There was no doubt for Jill that it was KC who had murdered Cherry.

  How confident was she that KC had murdered Cherry Walker?

  For three nights after she got back home, Jill Lowe slept on her couch with a gun beside her.

  “I was afraid she was coming for me.”

  She only moved back upstairs and put the gun away after Kim Cargill had been arrested and taken away.

  23

  KIM WAS IN JAIL ON a bond of $500,000. One might think that jail would keep KC out of trouble. But that was not to be the case. It was June 26, 2010, two days after her arrest on charges of Injury to a Child. The SCSO knew Kim was not going to be bailed out. So they had her where they wanted as detectives built a case for murder. Considering the potential charges and what had been done to Cherry, the SCSO was looking at a likely capital murder case against Kim Cargill.

  As an inmate in Central Jail, KC was a nine on a scale of one to ten—ten being the most difficult inmate—one of Kim’s jailers, Adrienne Barnes, later said. Barnes had worked at Central Jail for four years and no one like Kim Cargill had ever come through the doors.

  Barnes brought Kim her breakfast tray on Saturday morning, June 26.

  “That’s not what my doctor ordered,” KC snapped at Barnes. Apparently, KC was now allergic to certain foods, had met with the jail’s in-house physician and had been put on a special diet. “Take it back.”

  “Excuse me?” Barnes said.

  KC threw the tray back out of her cell through the tiny slit Barnes had sent it through earlier. She yelled, “I’m not eating that!”

  This was just one of the many ways in which Kim Cargill decided to rebel against authority. She was “constantly,” Barnes later explained, talking about calling her attorneys over everything and anything she didn’t like in her surroundings. She would threaten the guards. It was always somebody else’s fault for the predicament KC found herself in.

  “We’re going to sue this place,” she would scream from her cell when she didn’t like the food, the way she was being treated or something a guard had said or done.

  She was “controlling, manipulative and bossy.”

  Another guard called her “demanding.” When they told her no, she “tries to force it upon you to say yes.”

  One night, following orders from a supervisor to go through all of KC’s paperwork, a guard went into her cell to have a look at anything she had in her possession. Inmates weren’t allowed to have staples or paper clips in any of their papers. These stationery supplies could be turned into weapons and tattoo needles.

  “I need to go through all of your paperwork,” the guard said to KC. She handed KC the summons, a piece of paper clearly outlining that she was following protocol and orders from the top. KC was told to hand over any papers she had.

  KC became squirrely, walking back and forth inside her cell, pacing. The guard could tell she was “very upset” over having been told what to do, especially regarding her papers—anything she had collected from her case, or anything her lawyers had given her. The guard explained that she was not going to look at any of it. She just wanted to take out all of the staples and paper clips.

  “No, you’re not doing that,” KC sniped.

  The guard took it all, anyway, telling KC: “Look, I’m turning all the wording downward so I cannot see any of it.” She didn’t really care what KC had in her files. She just needed to take out the stationery contraband.

  “Miss Cargill, I’m doing this.”

  “You are not supposed to be doing that,” KC said. She was loud and obnoxious.

  The guard didn’t know what to say.

  “I’m not writing you up,” KC warned. “I’m telling my lawyer and we’re taking you to federal court.”

  Kim Cargill frequently threatened the guards with lawsuits, but she never followed up. The guard later said that KC “was more manipulative and tried to get under your skin” than anything else. She would do anything she could to undermine authority and see if she could get a rise out of the guards.

  Another guard later described dealing with Kim Cargill as something akin to being on a “roller-coaster ride.... You get on that ride and you strap yourself in.” KC could be nice. She’d ask, “Hi, how are you?” But then once things got going, watch out: “All of a sudden . . . you’re in for a bumpy ride.”

  KC liked to create problems with other inmates. An inmate might ask a guard a question and KC, inside her cell next door, eavesd
ropping, would yell, “Don’t listen to her. She don’t know what she’s talking about. They’re lying to you. I know how things should be done.”

  Within a week of her stay at Central Jail, KC began to give away clues about herself and her potential role in Cherry Walker’s murder. KC didn’t realize—or maybe she did and she did not give a damn—that all jails monitored and recorded outgoing phone calls that inmates made. With someone as vain and self-centered as Kim Cargill, it was only a matter of time, detectives knew, before she opened her mouth—because Kim Cargill, in the end, could not and would not shut up.

  24

  CHECKING HER E-MAIL ONE MORNING during the fall of 2009, Suzanne Jones-Davis sat at her desk and took an immediate interest in an e-mail from Classmates.com. Suzanne’s twenty-fifth high-school reunion was coming up and she was being formally invited. Suzanne had been sick, “like a lot of people” in her region that autumn, she later explained. Feeling like maybe the flu was coming on, she did not end up going to the reunion. However, she did manage to reconnect with several fellow high-school peers on Facebook.

  A former friend from junior high that became more of an acquaintance in high school, Kim Cargill reached out to Suzanne on Facebook. It had been almost twenty-five years since the two of them had seen or heard from each other. Several alumni were talking on Facebook about how disappointed they were about being sick and unable to make the reunion. One of them suggested: Well, let’s just do something else, since none of us got to go.

  It sounded like fun to Suzanne: old friends, reliving memories, reconnecting. Suzanne was married, but she did not have kids. She had a home near the bar where everyone had made plans to meet.

  Thus, on February 7, 2010, Suzanne and several others, including Kim Cargill, met and had what Suzanne later called a “happy-hour reunion” at a local pub. KC and Suzanne had been talking offline beforehand and Suzanne made it clear she was glad to open up her home to KC for the night because KC lived so far away.

  * * *

  “I have three kids,” KC said.