“How did she manage that?” Steve asked.
“According to her diary, she had met the homeless man several months before, and she regularly brought him food. She gave him a hundred dollars the Thursday before and told him to be at the casino Saturday morning at 9:00 a.m. He was to act belligerent and get the sheriff’s office called. Once the deputy arrived, she told him to calm down so as to avoid arrest and leave peacefully around 9:45 a.m. She promised him another hundred dollars if he performed well. This put Deputy Blackburn in his patrol car five minutes from the Scottie residence when the 911 call was made.”
Booger shook his head. “I guess that means she is the one who talked Ashley into making the call and setting Scottie up.”
“Exactly. She talked Ashley into making the 911 call and told Scottie that if anything weird happened, like a 911 call, he was to leave immediately and go back to the hotel. It’s all there in the diary.”
“It sounds like she was a puppet master over all these people,” Steve said.
“You have to remember,” Booger said, “none of these people realized she was delusional. It is very easy to talk people into doing things when they trust you. Look at Charlie Manson or Jim Jones. Most importantly, she wasn’t getting Ashley or Scottie to kill themselves or others, just to do things that seemed somewhat reasonable.”
“True.” Battel said. “The most interesting thing is that her original plan was for both Deputy Blackburn and your client to look equally guilty so that neither could be convicted. She set Scottie up with the 911 call, the scratches, etc. She even took a pair of his tennis shoes and put them on before she killed Ashley and purposefully left bloody shoe prints in the house. For Deputy Blackburn, she was going to make an anonymous call the following Monday telling them he was Gabriel’s father and to search his home, where they would find the bloody knife. Since he was the last person to see her alive and the knife would be found in his possession, she figured he would be convicted of the murder despite the evidence she planted against Scottie. Unfortunately, Walters accidentally left the knife at the house in her rush to get out. I assume Ashley fought her harder than she expected, and it took Walters longer to kill Ashley than she had planned. She had set an alarm on her phone, and when it went off, she dropped the knife in her haste and ran out the front door. Once in the driveway, she quickly changed shoes and then ran around back and through the field to where she had hidden her car.” “She set an alarm?” Steve asked.
“Yes. Like I said, she had everything planned meticulously. She knew how long it would take Deputy Blackburn to get to the residence from the Racino. So, as soon as the call was made, she set an alarm on her phone and put it in her pocket to ensure she would not be seen by Deputy Blackburn when he pulled up to the house.”
“Okay. Start from the beginning. You have given us a lot of different information,” Booger said. “Now, put it all together and give us the timeline of how the murder occurred.”
“Walters went to the Scottie residence around nine o’clock that morning. At the same time, the homeless man was causing a commotion at the Racino to get the sheriff’s office called. When Walters got to the house, she talked to Ashley about the affair your client was having and convinced her to set him up for a weekend in jail. While in the house, she excused herself to the restroom, grabbing the tennis shoes and unlocking the back door without Ashley noticing. Then, she left the house and texted your client, telling him it was okay to go home. While he was driving over from the hotel, she took her car around the field and parked. From there, she walked back to the house. She put the tennis shoes on and waited outside the back door while everything went down between Ashley and your client. When the 911 call was made, Walters set an alarm on her phone for four minutes and thirty seconds. As soon as your client left, she went inside and attacked Ashley with the butcher knife. When the alarm went off, she dropped the knife by accident, walked out the front door wearing the bloody tennis shoes, and changed shoes in the driveway. That was why the bloody footprints ended in the driveway. It was obvious from the blood splatter the shoes were placed into the secure Walmart bag in the driveway. We always assumed Mr. Pinkerton did that right before he left, since we never found any of Ashely’s blood in the car.”
“Yeah, I wondered about that too,” Steve said.
“Since she left the knife, she decided not to mention Deputy Blackburn and Gabriel’s relationship?” Booger asked.
“Correct,” Battel said. “God told her that, because of her mistake, she wasn’t going to get to be with your client yet. She was now supposed to help get him convicted.”
“What about her two alibi witnesses?” Steve asked. “Eloise Blackburn and Florabelle Martin. Deputy Blackburn’s investigative notes said his grandmother told him Walters was at the bake sale when the murder happened, and Martin backed that up when we talked to her a few weeks ago.”
“Once again, Walters used her charm to get what she needed. Eloise Blackburn was her friend from the bake sales, and she told Eloise a story about her husband making her late that morning, convincing her to call her grandson and tell him Walters was at the bake sale before ten, even though she didn’t get there until almost ten thirty. Eloise was just trying to be a good friend because she never imagined Walters was the real killer. Apparently, she thought she was helping both Walters and her grandson by lying about the timing because then, he wouldn’t waste time investigating Walters and Walters’ fight with her husband wouldn’t become public knowledge. Plus, he was having liaisons with Walters at the time. So, Walters herself also convinced him to focus his investigation only on Scottie. How she got Martin to be an alibi witness is even more interesting. She began visiting Martin every Saturday morning when you started snooping around the case a few months ago. She would go see her at ten o’clock on the dot every Saturday. She would talk to Martin about how she was always on time and how she was incredibly organized. Walters basically planted the thoughts in that poor old woman’s head. When anyone talked to Martin about Walters, she would talk about nothing but her timeliness.”
“Wow,” Steve said, “the detail of her planning almost reminds me of the Kevin Spacey character in that movie, Seven.”
“That’s not all. She was even the one who got Brent Whitmore to send you those threats. She tried to seduce him, but I guess he actually loves his wife and didn’t fall prey to her advances. However, she was able to persuade him it would be a good idea to send you those threats. She even tricked him into getting the burner phone long ago with some sob story about domestic abuse. She held on to it this whole time waiting to use it when you got appointed because she had learned the federal court always appoints a new attorney to death penalty cases. After you got appointed, she convinced him to start sending the threats in hopes you wouldn’t do anything to keep Mr. Pinkerton from getting the sentence Brent truly thought he deserved.”
Steve turned to Booger and said, “You see, someone in this deal is good. Whitmore didn’t cheat on his wife.”
“I told you once, and I’ll tell you again,” Booger said with a sigh. “Ain’t no one in this world’s truly innocent. You realize you are referring to the man who sent you death threats as the one good person in this whole mess?”
“Oh, yeah. I guess there is that little fact,” Steve said sheepishly before he looked back at Battel and asked, “Why did she decide to kill Deputy Blackburn and me in the end?”
“According to The Book of Heather, God told her that she and your client had suffered enough for her mistake of leaving the knife at the scene of the crime. He said she needed to kill you both to set your client free; that was the only way she and Scottie could be together. Once again, God gave her a meticulous plan to follow. Several weeks before everything went down at your house, she had Deputy Blackburn show her his gun collection. You know, most police officers have pretty extensive collections. When he showed it to her, she noticed one gun in particular had a silencer attached. On the morning she attempted to kill you, she went to his house and gave him ‘oral pleasure,’ as they say. From previous experience, she knew he would fall into a deep sleep after completion. Once he was asleep, she got the gun and ended his life in a way that made it look like suicide. That psycho even made it appear he had masturbated right before he shot himself.”
“Doesn’t she know the time of death would have been off?” Steve asked.
“Actually, the time of death is a best estimate within a window of an hour or two,” Booger replied. “They can’t narrow it down to an exact minute. So, as long as she killed you within an hour of the time she killed him, and neither body was discovered for a while, the timing would be close enough for no one to ask questions. Once again, people fill in the blanks with what seems most likely. A murder-suicide, considering everything else going on, would have been the most likely conclusion. It’s an example of the Occam’s razor principle being used to determine the wrong answer.”
“Well, now we know how she did it, does this diary tell us why?” asked Steve.
“Like I said earlier, Walters’ mother died giving birth to her. As she grew older, her stepmother regularly told Walters that her mother’s death was her own fault, and she eventually felt a tormented sense of responsibility for it. Her father, Henry, worked at the fishing reel factory just outside of town. He was a machinist on the assembly line. Walters was supposed to be the first of many children for the Robertsons; instead, Henry became a single father in just one day. When Walters was three, her father married a woman named Debbie Parker, whom he’d met at the First Baptist Church of Claremore. They had one child together, Mary, a year after their marriage. Shortly thereafter, Debbie legally adopted Walters. Unfortunately, a drunk driver killed Walters’ father in an automobile accident two years later as he drove home from work one night.”
“She lost both of her parents before the age of seven?” Steve asked.
“Yes,” Battel said. “Moreover, Debbie was what one might call an evil stepmother. She always felt jealous of Walters because her mother was Henry’s true love, and Debbie knew it. Once Henry was gone, Debbie stopped pretending to like Walters. She would lock Walters in a closet all day long while she played with Mary, her biological daughter. Sometimes, she would bring Walters a pet and tell her she was in charge of it. When it did something wrong, Walters would be punished. She would even use the pets themselves as punishment. On several occasions, she would beat the dog in front of Walters because she didn’t clean the house properly or got a bad grade in school.”
Booger frowned. “Sounds like that lady deserves the death penalty, if anyone does from this whole mess.”
“True,” Battel said. “And the only things Debbie let Walters take into the closet were a Bible and Boopie, her stuffed elephant. I had a clinical psychologist review the diary and, according to him, around the age of twelve, after six years of spending hours alone in the closet any time she was at home, Walters started showing signs of disassociation to the point of having a psychotic break, which led to her believing her dead mother was speaking to her. Her mom said she was in heaven with God and that He had a plan for her. Boopie told Walters to listen to her mother, and that as long as she followed her mom’s instructions, she would eventually find true happiness.”
“Can we charge Debbie with three counts of murder?” asked Steve seriously. “It sounds like she is truly the one to blame for all of this.”
“Unfortunately, no,” Battel said. “It is too late to even charge her with child abuse; the statute ran out on that several years ago.”
Steve and Booger spent the next few hours reading through The Book of Heather. They were shocked at how deep Walters’ anti-social behavior went and surprised at the detail contained in the account of her life story. Each section was numbered like a passage in the Bible. “Heather 4:15” was the story of the first time Boopie told Walters to start listening to her mother’s voice because her mother was relaying information straight from God. “Heather 10:26” described how Walters felt when she stabbed Ashley the first time. The accounts went on and on, up until her plan for killing Deputy Blackburn and Steve.
At 4:50 p.m., Battel walked back into the room.
“It’s almost five, so we are going to have to shut this down. I’m sorry, I know you haven’t had enough time to read everything, but I hope I answered enough questions to help you sleep at night.”
“Yes,” Steve said. “Thank you very much for sharing. I know you didn’t have to, and it was beyond the call of duty to let us in here.”
“You’re welcome. It is the least I could do, considering what you’ve been through and all that you’ve done to bring justice to this case. By the way, I just got a call from Deputy Warden Gilcrease at Big Mac. They are releasing your client at 10:00 a.m. tomorrow.”
They both thanked the assistant district attorney before they left.
CHAPTER 42
Booger and Steve spent most of the drive to McAlester talking about the surprising news that Donald Trump would be the presidential nominee for the Republican Party. When they arrived at the prison, they were equally surprised to see Brent Whitmore waiting outside the main entrance to the facility. As they approached Whitmore, he walked over with an outstretched hand.
“I would like to humbly apologize for threatening you.
