Blood Ambush
Authors: Sheila Johnson
A NIGHTMARISH SCENE
When Jason Sammons and Ellis Williams saw a late-model SUV sitting partially hidden in some willow bushes in the pasture beside the road, they drove down to check it out. It just didn’t look like the type of car someone would drive into a rough pasture like that, too nice and new to be driving around through the high grass and over the rough ground....
Sammons glanced over toward the small pond a short distance away and noticed that something at the water’s edge didn’t look quite right.
“Man, what’s that down there in the pond?” he asked Williams. “Do you see it?”
Sammons steered toward the pond to a place where he could get a better look at what he saw floating in the shallow water. He started driving slowly, but slammed on the brakes, his heart pounding, when he saw what looked like a body lying at the edge of the pond....
When they stepped a few feet closer, they could see that it was the corpse of a woman, floating facedown in the brackish water. She appeared to have suffered horrific injuries to the head and back. There was absolutely no question that the woman was dead.
As the two men stood there, hardly believing they had stumbled onto such a nightmarish scene, Sammons noticed that some shotgun shells were lying nearby on the ground, two blue and one red, looking fresh and clean, as if they hadn’t been lying there very long. He recalled hearing several gunshots while he and his friend were standing outside at his home, and he realized that what he and Williams had heard was more than likely the firing of the shots that had killed the woman in the pond.
BLOOD AMBUSH
SHEILA JOHNSON
PINNACLE BOOKS
Kensington Publishing Corp.
All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.
Table of Contents
For Mary Coffey Wood,
a daughter of the Old South,
and the closest thing to royalty
I’ve ever known.
a daughter of the Old South,
and the closest thing to royalty
I’ve ever known.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
There are a great many people without whom this book would not have been possible. Their help has been appreciated, and, hopefully, none will be omitted. But if I should fail to mention anyone who lent me a hand with their information or expertise, please know I am very grateful.
District Attorney Mike O’Dell, Assistant District Attorney Bob Johnston, and their staff have, as always, been there for me with their help and support, and Cherokee County Circuit clerk Dwayne Amos and the courteous and competent ladies in his office have gone out of their way to assist me in locating information. I thank them for their patience and consideration.
Cherokee County sheriff Jeff Shaver and his officers, lead investigator Bo Jolly, Mark Hicks, Charles Clifton, Jimmy DeBerry, Tim Hays, and all the other sheriff’s department personnel who worked on this case and offered their input, I thank you very much. I appreciate all your hard work, as well as that of the agencies that assisted you, the Alabama and Georgia Bureaus of Investigation, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the officers of the out-of-state departments who contributed to the investigation.
I would like to extend my thanks and appreciation to the circuit judges of the Ninth Judicial District, whose wise and thoughtful decisions I have reported on for many years. The people of DeKalb and Cherokee Counties in Alabama are fortunate to have two such dedicated public servants as Judges Randall Cole and David Rains to sit on the bench and devote their lives to the cause of justice.
Attorney Rodney Stallings has given me access to so much material that has helped me to understand this case and all the legalities and personalities involved; this book would not have been at all possible without his generous assistance, and I greatly appreciate his help and that of his staff.
Despite his impatience with me for “pushing the deadline,” my husband, Tim Johnson, took the time to haul my copier up and down the courthouse steps, copy stacks of papers and keep them in perfect order, and lug huge file boxes in and out of offices for me. Without his help and support, there is little I could do in any area of life. I’m lucky to have him.
My heartfelt thanks go to Edie Comeaux, a sister of Barbara Roberts. Despite all the pain and worry, Edie loves her sister with all her heart and has made that very clear in all my contacts with her. Edie is a generous, loving, and devout person, and I greatly appreciate the touching contribution to this book that she wrote and allowed me to include, verbatim.
Finally I would like to thank Barbara Roberts herself. Her correspondence with me has helped give me a far greater understanding of bipolar disorder and related mental illnesses. Her story has shown me the consequences of insufficient or irregular treatment of mental illness, as well as the changes that can eventually result from regularly receiving the proper care. Thank you, Barbara, for your trust, and I will always wish you well.
1
Early evenings in April are a treat for the senses in almost any part of the country, but even more so in rural northeast Alabama. Pastures and fields are bright green with new growth, dogwood trees and fruit orchards stand covered in fragrant pastel blossoms, and the smell of freshly tilled soil carries for miles on the breeze. And sometimes, when the wind is right, the workers plowing the fields can catch the equally pleasant scent of the great lake that covers a large percentage of the area that makes up Cherokee County, Alabama.
Cherokee County adjoins the Georgia state line and is best known as the location of Weiss Lake, one of the finest fishing and recreational areas in the southeastern United States. Countless professional fishing tournaments are held year-round, drawing entrants from all over the country, and the hundreds of miles of shoreline have become lined in recent years with lakefront homes, docks, campgrounds, and boathouses.
The lake, which covers forty-five square miles, is a result of the Coosa River being dammed in the 1950s by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) in order to provide hydroelectric power for a large portion of northeast Alabama. Construction of the dams caused the extensive flooding of hundreds of acres of farmlands on all sides of the river. The huge lake that resulted is surrounded on almost all sides by the fertile fields and pastures of the county.
Darlene Roberts left her job in Rome, Georgia, on the afternoon of Thursday, April 6, 2006, on her way home to Cherokee County, Alabama. It was a fairly short commute, and she and her husband, Vernon, enjoyed living out in the country. They had been married for four years, and had met where they both worked, at Temple-Inland Paperboard and Packaging, Inc., near Rome, where Darlene worked in personnel management and Vernon was a supervisor.
Vernon had gone for a doctor’s appointment that morning, and had been told by his physician that he would have to start taking medication to lower his high blood sugar levels. He got back to work in time to meet Darlene and some friends for lunch, and told them about his diagnosis. Darlene immediately began planning ways that she could change their diet in order to help get Vernon’s blood sugar levels down, and she assured him that they’d make it just fine with the changes that she had in mind.
Vernon left work a little early that afternoon to do some painting and plumbing work around the house; he expected his brother to come for a visit over the weekend, and Vernon wanted to get things finished up before his guest arrived. He went home and started work, fixing a sink and painting the upstairs hallway, planning to have the jobs completed by the time his wife came home.
After she left work, Darlene gave her daughter, Heidi Langford, a ride to Heidi’s home. Darlene often gave Heidi rides to and from work; it gave them a chance to spend time together, and sometimes they went shopping together. After she dropped Heidi off, Darlene stopped by Wal-Mart in Rome to shop for some of the foods that would work well with the dietary changes she had talked about with Vernon and their friends during lunch. Her shopping list included lots of fresh vegetables, flour tortillas, pinto beans, and other ingredients for a nice dinner of fajitas. She also picked up some chicken fingers, corn dogs, and a few of Vernon’s other favorites that he could still enjoy while keeping his blood sugar level lowered. Before Darlene went into the store, she called Vernon on her cell phone. She told her husband where she was, and asked him if there was anything else that he needed her to pick up for him while she was shopping. They both ended the call as they almost always did, telling each other, “I love you.”
Charles Edward Young Sr. and his wife and stepson, Ryan Kyle Tippens, enjoyed spending time on Weiss Lake, and they had a weekend house on the lake in the Wildwood Acres area in Alabama, where they kept their boat and often went fishing. Despite the pleasant weather on the afternoon of Thursday, April 6, 2006, clouds were beginning to gather rather quickly, and severe thunderstorms had been predicted for the coming evening. The Youngs and Tippens decided to move their boat from the lake house to a nearby campground with a boat launch they regularly used.
At around 5:30
P.M.
, Young and his wife were on their way to meet Tippens at the lake house, where he planned to take the boat out onto the lake and meet his stepfather at the dock at the campground to load the boat back onto its trailer. As the Youngs drove down Cherokee County Road 941 toward the lake, they saw an unfamiliar black Dodge pickup truck with a hard bed cover backed in at the double gates beside the entrance to a pasture and farm pond that adjoined the road. A few minutes later, Tippens drove past and also noticed the truck sitting beside the gate. He saw two people there—a large gray-haired man and a shorter woman. Tippens didn’t think anything seemed particularly strange or out of the ordinary; people from the neighborhood often fished in the pond. He continued on his way to the lake house, got into the boat, and took it around the lake to the campground to meet the Youngs.
P.M.
, Young and his wife were on their way to meet Tippens at the lake house, where he planned to take the boat out onto the lake and meet his stepfather at the dock at the campground to load the boat back onto its trailer. As the Youngs drove down Cherokee County Road 941 toward the lake, they saw an unfamiliar black Dodge pickup truck with a hard bed cover backed in at the double gates beside the entrance to a pasture and farm pond that adjoined the road. A few minutes later, Tippens drove past and also noticed the truck sitting beside the gate. He saw two people there—a large gray-haired man and a shorter woman. Tippens didn’t think anything seemed particularly strange or out of the ordinary; people from the neighborhood often fished in the pond. He continued on his way to the lake house, got into the boat, and took it around the lake to the campground to meet the Youngs.
After the boat was pulled out of the water and secured onto its trailer, the Youngs started back down County Road 941. Around an hour had passed, and there was now a late-model white sports-utility vehicle (SUV) sitting a short distance down in the high grass and willow saplings of the pasture. The black truck was still in sight, but it had moved down to the end of the road at the intersection with County Road 182. Young Sr. noticed that the same two people who had been with the black truck earlier were still there, but now the hard cover of the truck bed had been raised.
A short time later, Tippens drove past, pulling the boat and its trailer. He, too, saw the same black Dodge pickup he had noticed earlier on his way to the campground. The truck was sitting beside the road, but it began to pull away as Tippens got closer. It looked to him like the truck was being driven by the same gray-haired man he had seen earlier.
Jose Luis Richiez was leaving for his home in nearby Summerville, Georgia, after a day on the job at Wildwood Acres Farms. Richiez had heard the local weather reports calling for possible severe weather moving into the area overnight, but he looked forward to the ride back to Summerville. On such a nice spring day, even with a few clouds beginning to gather in the west, it was going to be a pleasant trip.
Just before reaching the intersection of County Roads 941 and 182, Richiez saw a black Dodge Dakota pickup stopped on the side of the road with its hard bed cover raised. Thinking the truck might have broken down, Richiez was intending to stop and ask if he could help. As he got closer, he saw a man and woman fighting on the roadside beside the truck. The man was big, gray-haired, with a mustache, and the woman was smaller, wearing a light-colored shirt and jeans. Richiez was shocked when he saw the man hit the woman in the face and throw her back into the passenger side of the truck.
When the man hurriedly took off his shirt, tossed it into the back of the pickup, and jumped back into the cab, Richiez decided his safest move might be to mind his own business and continue on his way without stopping. As he passed the black truck, it pulled out onto the road behind him and closely followed him to a stop sign at the intersection. Richiez began to get uneasy; the gray-haired man had looked very big. When he pulled away from the intersection out of sight of the black truck, it didn’t follow him any farther, much to his relief. Richiez didn’t see the truck again, but he kept a close lookout in his rearview mirror all the way home, just in case.
While Richiez was being followed down the road by the black Dodge truck, another member of the Young family, Charles Edward Young Jr., was going toward his home on County Road 941 and noticed the white SUV sitting down in the pasture, near the pond. It looked to him like it might be stuck, so he stopped and called out to see if anyone was around that needed his help. No one answered, and no one was in sight at the vehicle or nearby in the pasture. Young Jr. started to walk down into the pasture and check on the condition of the vehicle, but he was wearing a pair of sandals and decided he’d better not try to push through the tall grass and into the field without having on a sturdier pair of shoes. He didn’t notice anything else unusual in the pasture near the SUV, and thought that if anyone had needed help, the motorist had probably already left the pasture, so Young Jr. went on his way.
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