Kiss of the She-Devil

by M. William Phelps

  They drove to Cathy’s connection and “waited there for probably two hours or so, until they got it.”

  “You know where I can get me some more bullets?” Kevin asked Cathy, who had become like some sort of intern. She could tell by now they had stopped in Akron to use her to get the things they needed for whatever they were up to. But she didn’t want to say anything, obviously.

  “There’s a pawnshop nearby,” Cathy said. “They probably sell them. Let’s check it out.”

  “Let’s go.”

  Patrick, Sybil, and Cathy sat in the car while Kevin went into the pawnshop.

  “He came out,” Cathy later explained, “with a brown paper lunch-size bag that had a box in it.”

  Kevin drove. Cathy requested to be dropped off. “I need to get back home, Kevin. It was nice seeing you.”

  “Sure,” he said.

  Kevin, Patrick, and Sybil dropped Cathy off at her apartment in downtown Akron, said their good-byes, and headed northwest, toward Lake Erie. They had about a four-hour drive ahead: up and around the left tip of Lake Erie, through Toledo and Detroit, and then finally past the Rochester Hills region of Lake Orion, where Gail Fulton was at home preparing to go to work at the library for what would be the last day of her life.

  About six hours before Gail was murdered, Donna Trapani e-mailed George and asked if he had billed a company for several claims CCHH processed back in September. According to Donna, the claims amounted to “lots of money.” She listed seven of the actual claims George was supposed to have billed. The e-mail was all business. Nothing personal.

  George responded at 6:38 P.M., saying he didn’t have all of his notes in front of him in order to bill the company accurately—and that was it.

  Gail was at work by then.

  Donna Trapani was at home in Florida.

  A band of murderers was on its way to Lake Orion.

  52

  BACK AT THE pawnshop in Akron, where Cathy Baxter brought Kevin, Kevin went inside the shop by himself and asked the owner if he had a speed loader for his .38-caliber weapon. A speed loader allows the shooter to load all the rounds at once into each chamber, instead of one bullet at a time. In asking for this speed loader, what was Kevin planning? Did he have a change of heart? Was he going to mow down everyone who walked out of the library with Gail in order to make it look like some nutbag had “gone postal” in Lake Orion? Surely, six shots were enough to take out Gail. Why would he need to reload the weapon so quickly?

  The pawnshop clerk said he didn’t have a speed loader for that six-shot model .38.

  At this point of the trip, Kevin later remarked, he did not even know the name of the town they were heading into to commit the murder. All Kevin knew, he said, was that it was near Detroit. So as they passed through the Motor City, breezing by the seat of Wayne County, Kevin pulled over and parked the Malibu at a gas station. Before stepping out of the vehicle, he leaned over the seat and looked at Patrick. “You drive from here. I have to go get some cigarettes.”

  When he came out of the gas station, Kevin was looking at the back of the Malibu as he walked toward the car, shaking his head. “Shit . . . that’s great. Just great.”

  Sybil and Patrick heard him and looked at each other.

  That damn broken taillight.

  Kevin walked back into the gas station and bought some tape. The taillight was hanging. During their trip north, the tape Patrick had put on in Florida had come undone. During the entire time he did this, Kevin had his .38 packed in the side pocket of his leather jacket, as if he were some sort of professional hit man.

  After he finished taping the taillight back together, Kevin sat in the backseat, and Sybil moved into the front with Patrick. Patrick and Sybil had been up here already; they knew where they were headed. Kevin didn’t even want to think about it. He was focused.

  “We’re close,” Sybil said. “Lake Orion is right up the road. Let’s get ready here.” She got out of the car. Patrick followed. Sybil popped the trunk and took out that ski mask. She handed it (and a map) to Kevin, who was still sitting inside the car. Sybil and Donna had written notes all over the map, plotting out Gail’s every move: where she went on a certain night, where she lived, where she worked and went to social events. It showed the systematic nature of planning this murder from Sybil’s and Donna’s perspective. Kevin, a male, was more focused on the mission—getting there and committing the kill; Sybil and Donna, however, were fixated on the mechanics of the murder: the intimate ins and outs of every possible scenario, as if they enjoyed the choreography involved in plotting and planning.

  “Here,” Sybil told Kevin, “take the mask.”

  “Right,” he said, staring at it on his lap. “Let’s go.”

  An eerie silence took over inside the vehicle as they drove toward the library. It was near eight o’clock at night. Gail didn’t leave work until nine. Sybil wanted to case the parking lot, though, and Kevin wanted a handle on how many people were still around. Additionally, they needed to find out if Gail was actually working. For all they knew, she might have left early or called in sick.

  After some time Patrick took the right on Joslyn Road into the Orion Township Library parking lot and drove around the inverted J-shaped entrance drive. Pine trees as perfectly straight as arrowheads lined the lot. When they took the corner and the parking lot appeared before them, closer to the building, where patrons and employees parked their vehicles, Kevin was shocked to see how many people were still there this late into the night.

  “There was a whole bunch . . . there,” Kevin said later.

  Kevin had no idea what type of vehicle they were looking for, but Sybil and Patrick had stalked Gail. They knew her van. Where was it?

  Patrick drove the Malibu through various lanes, passing white-lined parking spaces. It was dark, even though there were plenty of overhead lights. The southwestern portion of the parking lot was surrounded by dense, thickly settled woods; the northern side was lined with a row of pines in front of the South Newman Road neighborhood adjacent to the parking area. There was a long, multiple-acre field directly in the back eastern portion of the lot. So there was good cover all the way around. The only witnesses they had to worry about were people coming out of the library, or anyone pulling into the parking lot to pick up someone.

  “There it is,” Sybil said, pointing out Gail’s van. “Pull up over there.”

  “No way I’m doing this with all these cars and people around,” Kevin said from the backseat, his eyes darting side to side. “No way.”

  Patrick stopped the Malibu near Gail’s van.

  At first, they stared at Gail’s van without speaking. Then Kevin and Sybil started talking, figuring how it could be done.

  Sybil got out. She walked over and checked to see if Gail’s van was unlocked.

  “Patrick, you go into the library,” Kevin ordered from the backseat. “You find out for me how many people are still working.”

  “Yup.”

  Patrick walked into the library.

  Kevin got out of the car, and he and Sybil spoke.

  “If it’s not locked,” Sybil said, “you can get in, and as she leaves, do it then.”

  Kevin liked that idea. Come up from behind Gail while she drove—and pop her in the back of the head. No one would see a thing. Just a flash of light inside a van. Gail wouldn’t have a clue it was even coming.

  “It’s locked,” Sybil said after trying all the doors. “Damn.”

  “Shit.”

  Patrick came back. They all sat inside the Malibu.

  “Any ideas?” Sybil asked. “What’s the best way?”

  Kevin didn’t say anything. He was thinking. Patrick knew his place by now and kept his mouth shut.

  “I got it,” Sybil said. “Cut one of her tires. She’ll get stuck there after everybody else leaves.”

  Kevin remained quiet. Then he got out, looked around the parking lot, took out his knife, and slashed the back passenger-side tire of Gail’s va
n.

  A loud hissssss . . . and the van sank to one side.

  “Gail’s working now,” Patrick said. “There’s four or five employees with her.”

  “Leave,” Kevin said. “Go. Get out of here.”

  Patrick took off out of the parking lot.

  53

  KEVIN NEEDED TO make certain some of the people cleared out. So he had Patrick drive around the town of Lake Orion for “about a half hour.” Patrick took a right out of the parking lot onto Joslyn Road; then he headed toward South Newman and Square Lake, just around the corner.

  Patrick Alexander originally thought of this plot to kill Gail Fulton as some sort of “crazy idea” Sybil had cooked up with Donna: a revenge-driven pipe dream that would never happen. Sybil was always going on about her wild side, Patrick later said. She was an idealist, easily manipulated by Donna, who knew Sybil’s weaknesses and insecurities better than anyone else, and used them against her. Sybil was her own worst enemy.

  Still, Patrick Alexander went along with Sybil’s plan simply because he was having great sex and did not believe half of what she said.

  “It blew my mind,” Patrick later told police, “to think that stuff like this—something you usually see on television—and there it was before my own eyes and . . . something that happened in real life.” Not so much a wordsmith, or confident while explaining himself, but Patrick made his point. “That was my exact thought—‘Man, here it is in my life and it’s happening to me!’”

  The first time it occurred to Patrick that he was involved in a bona fide conspiracy to commit murder was when he stood by and watched Donna offer Sybil money to find someone to kill Gail, or do it herself. He knew then that they were serious about the plan.

  “Here is somebody offering me money to go kill someone and stuff like that.... I used to see this stuff on TV. That’s what blowed my mind.”

  According to Patrick, Donna’s first offer was $15,000. She had made the offer to Sybil, but Sybil said she would think about it. Before she agreed to anything, Sybil wanted to discuss it with Patrick and see what he thought.

  “I would tell her ‘No, it’s not the right thing. You’ve got kids. You have to think about that kind of thing.’ But as time grew on, it got harder, to where we were having to scratch and scrape to get money to buy the kids food and everything. So we decided to do it.”

  “We.” Patrick admitted he and Sybil were equally culpable, had made this decision together. And yet, same as Kevin and Sybil would soon bullhorn, Patrick was also saying that Donna Trapani was the mastermind behind it all.

  Donna had been badgering Patrick and Sybil for a month, Patrick claimed, before they took off to do the job, begging them, frosting the situation with the idea that the money they made (“You won’t get caught . . . trust me. . . .”) would take care of Sybil’s kids for quite a while. Donna kept harping on it and asking them to go through with it, but Sybil couldn’t do it by herself, she said, and certainly didn’t want to have Patrick do it for her. The guy could barely do laundry by himself. So to get Donna off her back, Sybil told Donna about Mike, the biker, explaining how Mike was the right person for the job.

  The pressure Donna put on the both of them, Patrick later said, became sweeping and all-consuming. They could not get away from Donna. It was as if Donna had had some sort of hold on Sybil.

  “Very much to the point where, see, that was her boss lady, you know, and she (Sybil) couldn’t work nowheres else, so she pressured us to the point, you know, to where . . . I mean, sure, we had other options we could have taken, but we didn’t feel like that, you know, ’cause she had, more or less, had us hanging by a string ... ’cause she controlled Sybil’s money and everything.... It was basically a long, drawn-out process.”

  So they drove around Lake Orion, near the public library, for a half hour and returned.

  “I’ll drive,” Sybil said.

  “Yeah,” Patrick said.

  “No, I don’t want to now,” Sybil said.

  “Come on,” Patrick said. “I’m tired of it.”

  “Shut up,” Kevin shouted from the backseat. “Just pull over.” They were a few miles from the library entrance.

  Kevin hopped into the front seat and drove. When he got to the entrance, he pulled over and told Patrick to take the wheel. Sybil did not move. She sat in the front seat and kept her trap shut. It was not yet nine o’clock, so they sat on the side of the road until it was a few minutes before the hour.

  Then Patrick drove the car into the parking lot.

  “Pull over there,” Kevin directed, “to the back end of the parking lot and park the damn car.” Tension was taut. Nerves were frayed. Kevin knew the time was coming to play this thing out. He needed to produce. They had come all this way.

  Patrick parked. Kevin got out and placed a white T-shirt over the license plate of the Malibu, in case someone heard the shots and came running out. Finished, he walked over to the car, hopped in, and told Patrick, “Go inside and find her.” This time (according to Patrick’s recollection), Kevin handed him a photo of Gail, which “Donna had given him.”

  “Make sure she’s still working,” Kevin said.

  Patrick got out and walked inside the library.

  When he came back a few minutes later, he said, “Yup. She’s in there.”

  “Pull up and park a few spots away from her van,” Kevin instructed, taking complete control. At times it sounded as though Kevin found himself dealing with two idiots who couldn’t get out of their own way.

  Patrick did what he was told. Sybil wasn’t saying much of anything.

  “Now we wait for her to come out,” Kevin said, sounding like a boss.

  As they sat and watched the employee entrance, workers emerged just past the nine o’clock hour. They walked out of the employee doors and into the parking lot; they all reached into their purses and jackets to fetch car keys.

  Then they all got into their cars and left.

  “That’s her,” Sybil said, pointing to a woman walking out of the door by herself. The parking lot was clear by now. Gail was alone.

  Perfect.

  Here was Gail: slowly and unknowingly walking toward her death.

  “Stay put . . . ,” Kevin said. They agreed she would get into her van, realize the tire was flat, and then stop. Kevin had the mask Sybil brought for him. He put it on. Sybil coiled her long blond hair up and stuffed it inside a baseball cap.

  Gail did exactly what she was supposed to do, right on cue.

  “Now you pull up behind her,” Kevin told Patrick, who started the car and drove around one of the islands as Gail pulled back into the same spot she had just pulled out of.

  They were now directly behind Gail’s van.

  Gail got out. She walked toward the back of her vehicle. She looked down at the back tire. Then she turned to see who was driving up on her.

  Kevin stepped out of the car. He walked hurriedly toward Gail.

  She realized immediately what was happening.

  “I shot four times,” Kevin said later, describing that next moment.

  Gail looked directly into his eyes.

  The first shot was aimed. “In the head,” Kevin explained. The next three were shot at random. It was over in a matter of seconds.

  Kevin jumped back into the car. “Go . . . go . . . go!”

  Sybil and Patrick said nothing.

  Patrick took a sharp left out of the library’s entrance, chirping the tires, speeding toward Route 24 to make the connection with Interstate 75. The plan was to make it to a truck stop near the Ohio border as soon as possible, head through Toledo, then make a fast track south.

  As they sped down the street outside the library, Patrick pulled into an apartment complex and parked.

  Kevin jumped out and ripped the T-shirt off the license plate.

  “Go, man . . . drive.”

  They made it to a truck stop near the border in good time. Kevin was in need of some alcohol to calm his nerves. He sent Patrick
into the store to get “some change,” he said, but did not explain further why he did this. Nevertheless, as Patrick walked around the store, Kevin and Sybil spoke outside.

  “He can probably keep his mouth shut,” Kevin said to Sybil, meaning Patrick.

  “Yeah.”

  Patrick returned and gave Kevin his change; then Kevin went in to get some booze.

  Kevin took over driving from there. They made it, he said, “all the way down to Kentucky” without stopping much.

  “I’m too tired to drive anymore,” Kevin said as they crossed the border. “You want to get a hotel or drive?” he asked Patrick.

  “I’ll drive,” Patrick said. He’d had his fill of Sybil by now. As Kevin drove from Ohio down toward Kentucky, Patrick and Sybil had had sex in the backseat several times.

  As Patrick drove, Kevin lay down in the backseat and slept.

  “You know,” Patrick said a while later, “I think I’d like to stop and get a hotel.”

  It was close to five in the morning. They grabbed a room and slept until checkout at ten. Then they got back on the road, grabbed some breakfast, and headed toward Birmingham, Alabama, where Kevin’s car had been parked.

  “I had a cooler in there, some CB equipment, and some tools, and various odds and ends,” Kevin later said. He wanted to pick that stuff up before they returned to Florida.

  “Find a pay phone,” Kevin said to Patrick after they drove away from his abandoned car.

  Patrick spotted a phone up the road and pulled over.

  “Page Donna,” Kevin ordered Patrick.

  “Okay.”

  Kevin went into a nearby convenience store to grab a coffee and some smokes. They all sat in the car, “sitting there, waiting for her (Donna) to call . . . waiting and waiting, and it didn’t seem like she was going to call back.”

  Donna knew what the call meant as her pager went off. She had spoken to the police over the phone just a few hours before.

  Patrick and Sybil walked back to the car and took a load off. They were tired of waiting for Donna. Kevin waited by the pay phone, smoking cigarettes, thinking about what he had done. There was no turning back now. He had killed a woman. He wanted his money.