Officer Merritt answered a call from an unknown female (whose identity, it would later be determined, was Kim Cargill).
“Have any threats been made this morning?” the caller asked.
“Well, ma’am, I’m not sure what you mean,” Merritt responded. He was thinking, Threats? What is this woman talking about?
“Threats!” she said, losing a bit of patience. “Has anyone called in to claim any threats of any kind that have been made to them?”
“Well, what kind of threats?”
Odd, here was a caller phoning the RPD, trying to pump information out of a cop about something that may or may not have taken place.
After being prompted to explain herself further, the caller said, “I told my ex-husband that I was going to find his . . . wife in an alley somewhere and I was going to twist her head off!”
Merritt was perplexed. The way the caller had said it, she was admitting to making a threat herself.
“Look, ma’am, that in and of itself is a threat and you could be held responsible for it,” Merritt advised.
The caller hung up without saying anything more.
38
ON AUGUST 1, 1997, SONJA’S ex-husband, Roy, contacted Kim—the two were apparently close friends now—and asked her to pick up his daughter when she went over to Mike and Sonja’s to collect Travis for a scheduled visit. By now Kim had worked herself up to picking the child up and dropping him off without supervision.
Sonja was home with the two kids, Travis and her daughter. Mike was at work. Sonja’s ex-husband was at work also. Sonja had been at work, too, and the nanny was there, watching the kids. However, as Sonja told the story nearly two decades later in court (still married to Mike West, by the way), “We (Mike and I) never let these pickups and drop-offs happen without one of us being there.”
Who knew what Miss Unpredictable would do next?
“Kim is picking up [our daughter] for me,” Sonja’s ex-husband told Sonja during a phone call before Kim arrived.
Sonja thought it strange, but she agreed to it.
Kim showed up. Mike did not allow Kim into their home. Although she sometimes burst in, barging through the door, announcing her arrival, yelling about something, on this day Kim knocked and waited outside. (There was one report claiming she walked into the house uninvited and used the bathroom before this event took place.)
Travis walked out the door and up the few flights of stairs leading into the driveway. He later said he dreaded visiting his mother. He understood that building a relationship with KC was—or could be—a good thing, had she wanted to participate, but the idea of her coming to fetch him for a visit always caused him great anxiety.
Sonja’s daughter, six years old at the time, stood by her mother and said good-bye as they stood near the door. Kim, growing a bit agitated and nervous, making it clear that it was taking too long, watched them. In fact, while Sonja said good-bye to her daughter, Kim got fed up with waiting, walked over, grabbed the small child by the arm and, in one of her signature abusive moves, yanked the kid toward her. She jerked the little girl hard and walked away, with the child’s tiny feet dangling off the ground.
“Come on, let’s go!” Kim said through clenched teeth as she walked away.
Sonja was amazed by the sheer gall of Kim.
The child began to “scream” and “cry.”
Travis was waiting to leave. He turned and saw what was happening, Sonja recalled. Travis could not believe what his mother was doing to his young stepsister.
Sonja ran toward her child—“This happened all so fast,” she later explained—and tried to pick her up so she wasn’t hanging from Kim’s grasp. The little girl’s legs were off the ground and, undoubtedly, her arm socket was in terrible pain.
Kim let go. Not because she wanted to, Sonja later said, but for the sole purpose of confronting Sonja. The child was in her way, an obstruction.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Sonja said. She could tell Kim was “enraged at that point.” Everyone who knew KC described her angry look in a similar fashion: the eyes narrowed to slits, the grimace, the red face and the clenched fists.
Kim, without warning, kicked Sonja in the stomach as hard as she could. Then she took one of Sonja’s arms, a hand specifically, and “we had a brick wall, and she threw it against the brick wall.” Then Kim kneed Sonja in the stomach and began “flailing about.”
Here was Kim Cargill in one of her violent rages, overwhelmed with an overpowering need to inflict pain. The kids had experienced it; so had Mike West and James Cargill. Kim’s mother, cops and social workers had witnessed and felt it. Now Sonja was experiencing it; Kim was going ballistic.
Travis stood by, watching it all, feeling helpless. He took the blue duffel bag he was carrying (his weekend clothes) and swung it at his mother, hoping she would withdraw from beating Sonja.
“Stop it! Stop it!” the boy shouted.
When he realized he couldn’t do much, though, Travis took off running.
The little girl stood behind her mother, scared. She had a hand in her mouth and was flinching. Sonja was shielding the child from Kim’s fury.
Travis stood by a fence near the property line, scared to be anywhere near a woman he knew could hurt and cause injury when she wanted. When Kim finished beating on Sonja, screaming obscenities, she took off toward Travis and grabbed him.
The boy was crying.
Kim picked him up off the ground and placed him over her shoulder like a sack of potatoes. While Travis kicked and screamed (“Let me go.... Let me go. . . .”) and pounded on her back, she shoved him into the car through an open window. She treated Travis as though he were a package—her possession, her property.
Inside the car, watching all of this, was young Blake, about three years old at the time.
Mike and Sonja’s nanny stood inside the house and looked on. She was scared to walk outside and get in the way of this crazy woman on a rampage. Everyone in the West household had had run-ins with Kim and knew she was dangerous.
The nanny picked up the phone and dialed 911.
In her Initial Application the appellate lawyers for Kim Cargill described this scene on her behalf in one sentence: Kimberly and Sonja had a physical altercation on a day when [Sonja’s ex] asked Kimberly to pick up [his child] from Sonja’s house.
After tossing Travis through the open window, Kim jumped into her car and took off, not giving the boy a chance to say he didn’t want to go with her. She left Sonja’s child there—not that Sonja would have allowed her to take the girl, anyway.
Standing in the driveway, watching Kim speed away, Sonja looked down and saw that Kim had manhandled Travis with so much force that as she tossed him in through the open window, one of his shoes had fallen off. This was now the only sign of what had just transpired, besides the physical wounds on Sonja’s body and the emotional confusion the children would take with them for life.
Sonja ran to the phone and the nanny handed it over. Sonja wanted to make sure Kim did not get out of Rockwall County.
As Kim approached a nearby 7-Eleven, an RPD police officer pulled her over.
“Can you come down to the police station with me, ma’am?” the officer asked Kim after the usual dialogue about license and registration.
Kim said she did not want to talk about anything.
“Just please stay right here,” the officer explained.
He went back to his vehicle and ran a check on her name and license number. There it was: Kim had several outstanding warrants for traffic violations and unpaid tickets.
While Kim was at the RPD being booked and asked about the confrontation she’d had with Sonja, another cop stood nearby, listening. At some point, while Kim was rambling on, she said, “If I ever find that woman (Sonja) in a dark alley, I am going to twist her head off.”
Brad Merritt, the officer standing by, stopped her, realizing that the comment had a familiar ring to it. Merritt was the same officer who had taken a call
the previous week from a woman who had failed to identify herself, but had used those same words while asking if a threat had been called into the RPD. The cop put two and two together.
Merritt walked over to Kim. “Hey, wait a minute,” he said. “That’s verbatim, exactly what I . . . I got a call back on July twenty-fifth. . . .” Merritt paused. He looked at the other cop, then at Kim.
“We need to advise you, ma’am, of your rights. You have the right to remain silent... ,” Merritt said, fully Mirandizing KC, who was now under arrest on a variety of charges. None of the allegations included the assault she had just committed. That charge would come later.
It appeared that Kim might need to see an emergency medical technician (EMT). She had some injuries—superficial as they were. Both cops asked her several times if she needed medical attention.
She said no.
They had her sign a release, which indicated they had asked and she had refused.
Kim signed it.
Sometime later, Kim posted a cash bond and was released.
About fifteen minutes later, Kim walked back in and asked for the same two cops she had been dealing with.
“She was very irate,” one of the officers later described. “She was uncooperative. She was upset.”
“I am going to sue all of you!” Kim raged. She had that look: squinted eyes, red face, clenched teeth and tensed fists.
The officers looked at each other. What is she doing back?
“Ma’am, please . . .”
“I am suing everybody!”
“What is the problem?” an officer asked.
“You did not provide me with medical care,” Kim claimed. Kim was now saying she asked for medical treatment and was denied.
This was ridiculous. Both cops that had arrested Kim that day later testified that they had asked her if she wanted to see an EMT and she declined. Kim had signed a release, saying she refused medical treatment. What was she talking about? Why was she even back? Did she want to be arrested again?
“I want to file charges against my ex-husband’s wife,” Kim said, changing the subject.
“Ma’am, you’ll want to make sure you clear your particular cases before you pursue charges against Mrs. West.”
Kim left the RPD, seething.
Kim was ultimately convicted of assault. (She pleaded out her case.) She was sentenced to twelve months deferred adjudication probation. While she was on probation, she attacked Matt Robinson’s grandmother, twisting her arm and tossing her out of her chair in the backyard. In her Initial Application, then, Kim talked about this arrest and later conviction as though it was some sort of misunderstanding she wound up taking the fall for: Kimberly could not risk a felony on her record because she was trying to get her nursing license, so she had to plead guilty to a lesser charge.
Kimberly had to do that!
For Travis, Kim and her incidents of acting out in her violent outbursts were becoming all too much. Granted, he was referring only to those incidents he was willing to talk about later, not everything that had gone on inside the house. Travis indicated to his dad that he did not feel safe around his mother. Seeing her attack Sonja showed Travis who his mother was and what she was capable of doing.
Travis’s father encouraged the boy to tell her.
Thus, there came a time when Travis sat down with his mother within a Family Connection session and explained the decision he had reached: “I’ll talk to you from now on when I want to.”
When later asked what he recalled most from that time when he was living with his mother and would visit her after the divorce, Travis had a very simple, sobering explanation: “That I always wanted to run away.” It was also quite clear that although a requirement was for Kim to have someone supervise the visits, she was able to manipulate the situation to where she could get the children alone.
“I don’t want to see her anymore,” Travis told his dad after that meeting with his mother.
“Okay.”
That meeting with Kim was the last time Travis ever saw his mother.
39
IN 1997, KIM CARGILL WAS able to get her licensed vocational nurse certification, also called licensed practical nurse—LPN—in some states, from North Texas Professional Career Institute (NTPCI). Kim had her college and apartment paid for (while going to school and after) and received “just about anything she asked for, materialwise,” one of Kim’s doctors later reported. KC’s mother and stepfather, trying to show love, spoiled her, giving her what she needed to make a life for herself.
LVNs choose this field, particularly, because it is, as a vocation, a rewarding experience. The hands-on approach to nursing is focused on people of all ages. You’re a frontline provider. A close bond is often fused between patient and LVN because of the intimate, prolonged contact they have on a daily basis. Did the job description fit Kim Cargill in any way? Was her chosen vocation a good match for her character/personality/temperament? Was she the type of person to give tender, loving care to the patients she would spend copious amounts of time with? Could Kim hit her child, lock him in his room, scream obscenities and insults at him, bully him, fight with her ex-husband’s new wife, and then head off to a job that required her to be a loving, caring, all-purpose medical professional, caring for sick and needy people for eight, ten or twelve hours at a time?
Apparently, the board at NTPCI, which gave her that LVN license, thought so.
While she was in nursing school, Kim met Tammy (pseudonym) and charmed her to the point that she asked if Kim was interested in meeting her brother, Matt Robinson.
“Sure,” Kim said. She didn’t have a boyfriend at the time. And if there is one aspect of human life that stimulates the borderline personality/narcissistic sociopath’s mind, it’s being involved in a romantic relationship. Where borderline people are concerned, a romantic relationship presents the opportunity to fill their emptiness; it is a chance to replenish the emotional well they will often claim to be dry since early childhood. The relationship provides a stable, readily available place to release their aggressive and violent emotion. So when the chance presented itself for Kim to have a man in her life, she rarely resisted. And, as would be the case with Matt Robinson, she often dove in headfirst.
* * *
Matt lived with Kim for the first eight months they were together. But as time went on, Matt became aware of the true person Kim Cargill was and decided he did not want to stay. She was far too needy and unbalanced. When he came home from a hard day’s work, the last thing Matt wanted was to walk into his home and not know what he would be facing, what type of person he would be dealing with or how the night would progress. There was always a drama brewing with Kim.
Those eight months for Matt, as he got to know Kim and realize how angry and erratic she was, were longer than Matt planned to stay after he realized he had moved in with a monster. Matt later explained, “I tried to stay there as long as I could, because I knew [Blake] wasn’t safe—I should have left a long time [before I did].”
Blake was around three years old during the time Matt lived with the child and Kim. Matt saw what he later called a “whole lot of crazy stuff” Kim did to the child. Matt protected Blake in many instances, but he couldn’t be there all the time.
“I want to go to your sister’s,” Kim said to Matt one day. This was near the end of the eight months Matt lived with her.
“Why, Kim?”
Kim wanted Matt to “start a fight” with Tammy “because she was mad about something.” Kim worked with Tammy at times. She could have been angry for any number of (silly, inconsequential) reasons, Matt later explained. Her perception of the world was different from anybody else’s. Everyday conflicts had become almost impossible for Kim to handle without becoming hostile. The way Kim experienced her own emotions was vastly different from that of the average person.
Matt decided to oblige her, though he had no intention of starting a fight with Tammy. They took off in Matt’s car—Kim, Matt and
Blake—and drove out to Matt’s sister’s house.
When Matt refused to start a fight at his sister’s, Kim became so upset she stormed out to the car, sat down in the front seat and put Blake on her lap. She was stewing, probably thinking of a way to get back at Matt for disobeying her.
Matt took this as a sign that it was time to leave. He said good-bye to his sister with a roll of his eyes; then he collected their belongings and walked outside to the car. It was pitch-dark, about ten or eleven at night.
Matt sat down in the driver’s seat. The car was parked over a concrete sidewalk. Kim had her door open, with little Blake still on her lap.
“Why didn’t you start a fight with her?” Kim asked in her best calm-before-the-storm voice—it was a scornful, scathing tone that Kim could always muster without any effort at all. Matt knew it well by this point. She meant business. Kim was leading up to something when she used that irritated inflection.
“Kim—” Matt tried to explain, but she cut him off.
“I told you to pick a fight.”
“Kim, I am not—”
Before Matt could finish what he was about to say, Kim tossed Blake “out of the car, onto the sidewalk,” Matt explained later. It was as though Blake needed to pay for the anger she felt toward Matt. By doing this, she would teach Matt not to ever disobey her again. Kim knew Blake was a child Matt cared for and that hurting him would cause Matt pain. For Kim there was always a price to pay—whether by one of her kids, Matt or somebody else—for not doing what she told them to do.
Yet Kim was not finished.
Before Matt could react to the child being thrown out of the car, Kim punched Matt in his eye socket. A solid shot.
Pow!
Even though Matt had seen Kim choking Blake and “throwing him around like a rag doll,” he could not believe what Kim had just done to Blake. He was a helpless, tender, innocent, lovely child. She could have cracked his skull open. Blake could have wound up in intensive care, his brain swelling. Kim’s utter lack of concern for her child’s welfare was startling to Matt.
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