Authors: Steve Jackson
Love Me To Death (24 page)
Holly Walters knows she will spend the rest of her life wishing she had looked harder into Neal’s life. But her mother was usually very selective about the men she got involved with—and she was so happy.
“My mother was an extremely trusting person who gave a lot of herself in relationships and expected a lot in return,” Holly said shortly after the hearing. “I think she was tired of being alone, and he offered her the moon. He had a charisma she found irresistible.
“But it was never about the money. . . . The really outrageous numbers he was throwing out only happened in that last week. For none of these women was it about the money. It was everything to do with his presence and the way he communicated.”
Like many other family members and friends of the victims, Holly is adamant about getting one point across: Neal picked intelligent, attractive women for his targets, and he was a master at finding out where they were vulnerable.
“These women had dreams and hopes,” she said. “He offered them a glimpse of a future.”
There are four other women who can attest to the damage that Neal has done: his former wives. Although they survived their marriages to him, they still bear scars.
Jennifer Tate attended only the opening statements of his death penalty hearing. She saw the ring that he was wearing and thought for a moment that it might have been the wedding ring that she’d given him. When she realized it wasn’t, she felt sorry for whomever he had won over with his lies for a fifth time.
Even his opening statement was an act. For one thing, he claimed to have never read anything more demanding than a dictionary as part of his “aw shucks, good ol’ boy” routine for the judges. The man she knew could quote Thoreau and Voltaire.
It made her ill to hear how he’d sucked in Candace Walters with that story about wanting custody of their daughter. Of the two years between their daughter’s birth and their divorce, if she totaled every day, every hour, and every minute that Neal spent any time at all with their child, it would have amounted to “maybe two months,” she said.
“All the photographs I have of him and her, he has this expression of ‘Hurry up and get it over with.’ Only when he was in public and trying to impress people did he ever act like she was his.”
Tate has met a young man closer to her own age, not particularly well schooled in romance but absolutely dedicated to family life. Together they are raising her first child plus his from a previous marriage, and a baby that’s theirs. They live in a little house, where Tate is content to be a stay-at-home mom. She couldn’t be happier . . . except for the fear that Cody Neal will find a way to get at her from prison. The fear is so great that even after he was placed on death row, she hardly let their daughter out of her sight.
When Karen Wilson learned of the murders, she didn’t know where to turn. The district attorney’s investigators in Colorado were kind as they listened to her story, but she knew that it had to be hard for them to understand how a woman could fall for Neal’s lies and manipulations. She wished that there were someone she could talk to who would understand. Then one of Neal’s sisters put her in contact with Tate, who was dealing with the same waves of guilt and fear, and somehow they found courage together.
As they got to know each other, Wilson recognized that Neal had treated Tate, and probably every other woman he’d ever met, the same way. That’s why, despite her fear, it became so important to her to let the families of his victims know that this behavior wasn’t new. He didn’t suddenly snap. He’d been building toward this—if, indeed, this was his first act of murder, and she had her doubts about that—for a long time.
“The thing that made these women so wonderful, trusting, loving, were the things that made them targets,” she said. “He found things in all of us that he could exploit. I just hope someday to be able to convey to the families that it could have been any woman in their daughter’s and mother’s shoes. None of us were stupid.
“He’s just the con artist from hell. There was nothing they could have done to stop him from picking those women. If he wanted them, he was going to get them.”
Some days she wonders if he ever loved her. Whether the creature hiding behind that smile and those blue eyes was even capable of love. “All I know is that life, and love, is not about bubble baths and rose petals,” she said. “Be careful, and if you ever run into a man named William Lee Neal, turn and walk away.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author would like to thank those who assisted in the writing and publication of this book. He wishes to express his admiration to those victimized by William Lee Neal who had the courage and strength to help tell this story so that Rebecca Holberton, Candace Walters, and Angela Fite are not forgotten, nor the memory of them sullied by the many lies and manipulations of their killer—thanks particularly to Betty Von Tersch, Tara Brewer, Holly Walters, Karen Wilson, and Jennifer Tate. We would do well to remember, too, that Angela Fite was a victim of violence before she met Neal; domestic violence remains a largely hidden but deadly serious epidemic in the United States. The author also expresses his gratitude to the Jefferson County District Attorney’s Office—David Thomas, Mark Pautler, Pam Russell, Charles Tingle, and Chris Bachmeyer, as well as Defense Attorney Randy Canney—for their candor in so far as the code of professional conduct would allow them while Neal awaits the results of his appeals process. As always I am grateful to my agent, Michael Hamilburg, and his consigliere, Joanie Kern, for their faith and hard work, and to my gem of an editor at Kensington, Karen Haas. To my family, my love and thanks for being the antidote to the poisons of monsters like Wild Bill Cody. For anyone who might wish to create some good from this tragedy, please contribute to: The Memorial Fund for the Benefit of the Children of Angela Fite, Wells Fargo Bank, Southwest Plaza, 8500 W. Bowles Avenue, Littleton, CO 80123.
Victim Rebecca Holberton, 42.
(Photo courtesy Jefferson County District Court)
(Photo courtesy Jefferson County District Court)
Holberton lived in a rural community northwest of Denver.
(Photo courtesy Jefferson County District Court)
(Photo courtesy Jefferson County District Court)
Candace Walters (left) and her daughter Holly.
(Photo courtesy Jefferson County District Court)
(Photo courtesy Jefferson County District Court)
Victim Candace Walters, 48.
(Photo courtesy Jefferson County District Court)
(Photo courtesy Jefferson County District Court)
Victim Angela Fite, 28. (
Photo courtesy Betty Von
Tersch)
Photo courtesy Betty Von
Tersch)
Angela Fite (right), 10, and her sister Tara, 7. (Photo courtesy
Betty
Von
Tersch)
Betty
Von
Tersch)
Fite at 13 years old.
(Photo courtesy Betty Von
Tersch)
(Photo courtesy Betty Von
Tersch)
Angela Fite (right) with her mother, grandmother, and baby son in June 1993. (Photo courtesy Betty Von
Tersch)
Tersch)
Fite (right) and her mother Betty Von Tersch at Christmas in 1995. (Photo courtesy Betty Von Tersch)
Police scaled fence at the back of Holberton’s town house so they could look through sliding glass doors.
Police outside Holberton’s town house where murders took place. (Photo courtesy Denver Post)
This type of seven-and-a-half-pound maul was used to kill the three women.
On July 8, 1998, William Cody Neal, 42, was taken into custody after telling police he had killed Holberton, Walters, and Fite.
(Photo courtesy Jefferson County District Court)
(Photo courtesy Jefferson County District Court)
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