Love Me To Death (21 page)
Authors: Steve Jackson
When at last the tape ended, the courtroom was silent. Stunned, numbed.
“That’s me, OK?”
The judges looked as drained as everyone else in the courtroom. Bachmeyer hoped that the tape got across the contrast between the man who could discuss extremely graphic violence without flinching in September 1998 and the contrite, “I’ve found Jesus” defendant who delivered his own opening statements saying that he was a changed man.
“That’s me, OK?”
The judges looked as drained as everyone else in the courtroom. Bachmeyer hoped that the tape got across the contrast between the man who could discuss extremely graphic violence without flinching in September 1998 and the contrite, “I’ve found Jesus” defendant who delivered his own opening statements saying that he was a changed man.
Neal was a walking contradiction of everything he claimed to be. He said that he loved animals, yet he pitchforked a cat and punched in the skull of a puppy. He claimed to have been raped and haunted by the trauma of it, yet he raped the most innocent young woman that he could find. He said he loved Rebecca, Candace, and Angie, yet he robbed them, duped them into thinking he had arranged for something to make their lives better, then split their skulls open with an ax.
Neal was right about one thing, Bachmeyer thought, he was a predator. If not “better than Bundy,” then straight out of the same mold.
The next prosecution witness was Dr. Ben Galloway, the forensic pathologist, who drew a red circle on the back of a Styrofoam head that he was handed by Chris Bachmeyer. He was nationally recognized as one of the best in his field—a veteran of more than nine thousand autopsies, many of them the victims of violent crime. He’d never seen worse than this.
In a courtroom, he came across as friendly and warm, a country doctor, even when matter-of-factly describing where the two-and-a-half-inch piece of skull had flown from Rebecca Holberton’s head. The wound, he said, was consistent with her having been struck there with the blunt end of the maul.
There were also defense wounds on Holberton’s hands, Galloway testified, indicating that for all of Neal’s supposed care to kill instantly, she had reacted to that first blow by raising her hands to her crushed skull. However, the destruction was massive as the back half of her brain had been “mashed” and fragments of bone had pierced deep into her brain. But she’d been dead and decomposing for more than a week before her autopsy, and it had been impossible for him to determine how long she may have lived after the attack.
Candace Walters was another story. She’d been struck hard with the sharp edge of the maul twice above her left ear, above her right ear, and again at the base of her neck, along with other more superficial cuts, according to Galloway.
“How long did it take for her to die?” Bachmeyer asked.
“Three to four minutes,” the doctor answered. He knew that because there had been blood in her airways from aspiration and swelling in her lungs that wouldn’t have occurred after death.
Angela Fite had also lived for several minutes after being struck six times on the head, neck, and back, Galloway testified.
As the autopsy photograph of Angela was produced on the monitor, there was a gasp from the gallery. “Oh, my God,” a woman sobbed. “Oh, dear God.”
“Were you able to determine the cause of death?” Bachmeyer said. It seemed like the answer was clear, but it was still a necessary legal formality.
“Each died from massive trauma to the head,” Galloway answered.
Charles Tingle wrapped up the prosecution case by calling the victims’ family members to the stand. He’d asked them to write letters to the deceased describing the impact of their murders on them. He told them that he was going to ask them to read them aloud in court, knowing that otherwise it would be difficult for them to speak without breaking down. There was one caveat: they could ask for justice to be served, but the law prohibited them from asking for a specific punishment.
Of Holberton’s family, only Debbie Lacomb, her sister, made it to the trial; her mother had Alzheimer’s disease and hadn’t been told of the murders. There wasn’t much that she could say about Neal, she’d never met him, but when it was time for her letter, Lacomb cleared her throat and read aloud:
“Dear Rebecca, I want to tell you how much I love you. I’m sorry I never really told you that before.
“I miss you so much. I even miss the arguments we used to get into sometimes. I miss talking to you about Mom and the funny things she does. She asks about you quite often, wondering where you are, but I don’t tell her.
“I have your ring. I wear it all the time. It makes me feel close to you, like you are with me.
“It makes me so sad to think of how awful your life must have been those last few months. So full of pain and sorrow. I wish you would have told me what was going on. Maybe, in some way, I could have helped.
“You will always be with me. I will see you again in another place, a happier place free of pain and sadness.”
Holly Walters was next to take the stand. She wore her blond hair short and looked coldly at Neal through her wire-rimmed glasses. She’d taken it upon herself to be the main spokesperson for the families to the press. The strong one . . . but it was just a brave face now that the best part of her life had been taken from her.
She’d been unable to even get through her letter the night before without breaking down entirely. The hardest part of the trial for her had been listening to Neal on the tape describing how “cute and studious” her mother had looked sitting on the chair as he approached with his ax. Until he bashed her head in, she thought, wondering how he could have gone from one to the next as though choosing what to have for dinner. Most people that she knew didn’t equate “cute and studious” with wanting to murder somebody.
Ever since her mother’s death, she had lived for the day when she could confront Neal and verbalize what he had taken from her. She wanted to look in his eyes and try to understand the person behind them. Seeing him from the witness stand, she found it difficult to comprehend that he’d looked at her mother with those same baleful blue eyes as he prepared to kill her.
Like many other family members and friends of the victims, Holly wanted more than anything to get one point across: Neal picked intelligent, attractive women for his targets, and he was a master at finding out where they were vulnerable. The women all had dreams and hopes . . . and he’d offered them a glimpse of a better future with his money and attention.
With one last look at Neal, Holly Walters turned her attention to Tingle, who asked her how long she had lived in Colorado. Twenty-six years. The prosecutor produced a photograph of her mother. “Who is that?” he asked.
Holly smiled. “That’s my mom, on Mother’s Day, 1997. I’d popped over to let her know I had not forgotten.”
Under Tingle’s gentle questions, she recalled growing up the only child of a single mother. “I was fortunate to have a mom who spent a lot of time with me. . . . We were extremely close. The older I got, the closer we got.” They had enjoyed going on almost-daily walks in the hills near where she lived.
“Her dreams were simple . . . a house and a dog and as much free time as possible to enjoy her hikes.”
Neal, she said, was charismatic and caring . . . sitting with her mother all night after work just talking in a booth. He invited her to a New Year’s Eve party. “He was renting a whole floor at the hotel.”
The relationship got “fairly intense, fairly quickly,” which was unusual for her mother, who had last been in a committed relationship several years before her death, but had said “she was going to stay away from men.” Holly paused, then added while looking at Neal, “I wish she had.”
Holly Walters was concerned about the man with all the tall tales and seemingly endless supply of money. But her mother was “happier than I had ever seen her” and so she’d let her misgivings slide. She wasn’t supposed to know about the promises that Neal was making. “He was very explicit about that,” she said. Concerned about her mother’s loans to Neal and his mysterious ways, she was the one who suggested that they try to find out more about him.
The last time Holly Walters saw Neal, they had both just arrived at her mother’s apartment. “He gave me an extremely warm hug. He was in a very, very good mood. He could be quite charming when he wanted,” she said, turning to face the defendant, who looked quickly away.
Holly told the court about the trip that her mother had planned with Neal, the outlandish promises of money. Then the foreboding and the trip back from Missouri, knowing as each mile passed that something was wrong. She talked about reaching Neal on his cell phone and his lie about the accident with the deer.
When he was through asking her questions, Tingle asked Holly Walters to read her letter. She looked down at the piece of paper and took a deep breath. She knew she had to get through it somehow:
“Dear Mom, there is so much I want to say to you, so many things I want to share. And I am hoping that this letter finds its way to you somehow. I have been struggling to find a reason for all that has happened, and why it was you that had to be taken from me. Of all the people in this world, I will never understand why someone who loved life so very much and had so much to offer, had to be the one to fall.
“My life has been changed forever and words can never convey how very much I miss you. I miss your laughter, your smile, your warmth. I miss the comfort your hugs once brought me. I miss the walks, the conversations, the silence we shared on Sunday afternoons, when all we needed was each other’s company. I miss sharing my life with you.
“In the silence of my quiet moments, I try and remember each detail of our lives together and the details of you as the person that you were. I listen for the sound of your laughter in my mind, the tone of your voice; I imagine your bright blue eyes and your tender touch . . . although it often brings me to tears, the memories are bittersweet.
“When I walk, I try and take familiar paths that we once walked together, remembering the conversations, the happiness I felt at that time. I feel the breeze and wonder if you are there with me still, if you can feel me trying to hold on to you.
“I want you to know that I haven’t forgotten all that we experienced together . . . or all that you taught me. From the simple things like roller-skating and cooking to the important things like how to treat others, to live my life as full and as passionately as possible, and to take advantage of each moment I have here on this earth. I am still learning from you, and I ask myself each day if I am doing things like you would have wanted, to take my time with people and try and send love out to those less fortunate.
“Although I can hardly imagine bringing a child into this world at this point, I know that one day I will. I regret that my child will not have a grandmother to love, and God knows I could use your guidance. But I will do my best to teach my child who you were, and what you were about. The beliefs and morals my child will learn are yours, and so a piece of you will be passed on, and my love for you will be shared. I love you, Mom. You were . . . You ARE the best Mom I could have ever been blessed with. I hope I can make you proud, and that you are up in Heaven right now, smiling down on me.”
It was not in her letter, but Holly had one more thought as she came to the end and looked again at Neal. “I never thought that someone who meant so very little to me could take so much from me.”
Angela Fite’s sister, Tara, climbed up into the witness box and turned cold eyes on the defendant. She’d gone ahead with her July 25 wedding to Jeb; for those weeks leading up to the event, though, she often woke in the morning and didn’t want to get out of bed. But her mother insisted that Angela would have wanted her to go on with her life.
When she thought of her sister and what she’d been through with the last two men in her life—Matt Rankin and Cody Neal—she could only believe that Angie was happier now. But she missed her and was grateful that Jeb had a way of calming her in the worst moments.
She was haunted by nightmares. The night before her wedding, her three bridesmaids and stepbrother from her father’s second marriage were spending the night at her house when the subject of Neal came up. “What if he has friends?” one of the bridesmaids said, voicing a fear that they all shared. The women decided to spend the night sleeping in the same bed. They even persuaded Tara’s stepbrother to sleep in front of the bedroom door.
That night Tara had another nightmare. In it she was awake and listening in the dark to the sound of someone crawling on the ground around her bed. Then she realized that the noises were being made by a skeleton as it crept nearer to her. She could not scream but only make a strangled “mmmmm” sound.
Realizing that Tara was having a bad dream, one of the bridesmaids touched her to wake her. Tara grabbed her arm and bit her, hard, and the young woman screamed, which startled the others out of their sleep, as Tara’s stepbrother burst into the room. Someone managed to turn on the lights, which helped calm the situation, but they got up and went to the living room where they remained awake all night.
Tara would experience more nightmares, including one in which she woke up screaming during her honeymoon. But there was also one other dream, one that helped her get through the next year.
Again she dreamed that she was lying in bed, on her stomach with the covers down, listening to the sound of something crawling toward her. Only this time, the sound was replaced with the feeling of someone blowing gently on her back. Turning over, she found herself looking into the face of Angie. Her sister looked beautiful; her blue eyes were clear and bright, her cheeks and lips pink. Angela was smiling and it was then that Tara knew it was all right to go on with her life.
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