Dead of Night (29 page)

Chapter 4

When Cherokee County investigator Michael B. “Bo” Jolly was dispatched to the pond off County Road 941, he was one of a group of several officers who were the first to arrive at the scene. A 911 caller had reported finding a woman’s body floating in a farm pond, apparently shot and killed. This was a very uncommon occurrence in rural Cherokee County, Alabama. When such calls went out on the scanner, they quickly drew responses from every officer and agency in the vicinity.

At that time, Jolly had been an investigator for the sheriff’s office for three years, and had spent a total of seven years in law enforcement. He had served as the lead investigator on countless cases during that time, but this case would prove to be the main focus of his career for many months to come.

The 911 call had come in to the dispatcher just before seven o’clock, and by 7:10
P.M.
, Jolly and Deputies Kirk Blankenship and Kneely Pack had begun gathering at the scene, along with Drug Task Force officers Charles Clifton and Scott McGinnis. Clifton, commander of the task force, had arrived first, and had already started securing the scene. He had also identified the witnesses who had placed the initial 911 call, Sammons and Williams, and had gotten them and Waits started on writing their statements with details about how they had come to be at the pond that evening, and what they had found there.

When he arrived at the pasture, Jolly walked with Clifton down to the pond and looked at the body floating, facedown, not very far out in the murky water along the edge of the pond. It appeared to be the body of a Caucasian woman, probably in her mid-thirties, who had been shot several times at very close range, causing extensive damage to her head, back, and arms. The wounds appeared to Jolly to be consistent to those made with a shotgun. The victim was fully clothed in tan pants and a tan blouse, but a piece of light green plastic stretch wrap had been looped around her neck.

A short distance away from the pond, a late-model white Nissan Murano SUV had been driven into a clump of bushes in what looked to the officers like an attempt to conceal it from passersby on the road. The vehicle had not been wrecked, but there was damage to the lower front end, where it had been driven from the gate into the pasture, then through the mud and high weeds. When the Alabama license tag bearing the number
13BO341
was run, the SUV had not been reported stolen, and the name and address of its registered owner was determined. The address, the information revealed, was only a couple of miles farther down the road from the pasture. When they received that information, the officers knew that there was a strong likelihood that the driver of the SUV was, in all probability, the woman whose horribly mutilated body was now floating in the pond.

A short time later, Investigators Mark Hicks and Jimmy DeBerry and Cherokee County sheriff Larry Wilson arrived and joined Jolly and Clifton at the edge of the pond. Sheriff Wilson quickly decided that his department needed to call and request immediate assistance from the Alabama Bureau of Investigation (ABI), and the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences (ADFS) was also notified that they would need to be en route. In the meantime, the daylight was rapidly beginning to fade, so the investigators began placing evidence markers and photographing the scene while they waited for the ABI agents and forensics personnel to arrive.

Chapter 5

Vernon Roberts couldn’t understand why his wife, Darlene, was not answering his repeated calls to her cell phone. She had called him earlier, around 4:45
P.M.
, to tell him she had just arrived at Walmart in Rome, Georgia, to shop for groceries on her way home. She asked him if there was anything that he needed her to pick up for him, and said she’d be home soon. After they hung up, Vernon went back to the work he’d started as soon as he had gotten home, painting the upstairs hallway. When he finished, he worked on the faucet in the upstairs bathroom, then cleaned the bathroom in preparation for his brother’s arrival for a visit. His work done, Vernon took a shower, expecting his wife to be home before he was finished, but she still wasn’t there when he got out of the shower. He began to get concerned, and he called her to see if everything was okay.

There was no answer on her cell phone. Vernon called Darlene’s daughter, Heidi, to see what time her mother had dropped her off at home after work. He told Heidi he couldn’t get in contact with Darlene, and after trying unsuccessfully to call her mother’s cell phone, Heidi called Vernon back and told him she hadn’t been able to contact her mother, either.

Vernon told Heidi he was going to go out looking for Darlene, thinking that she might have had car trouble or a flat tire in an area where there wasn’t a good cell phone signal. He got into his pickup truck and hurried down County Road 941, and as he drove, he tried again several times to call as he headed toward Rome. The calls continued to be unanswered; he still could only get Darlene’s voice mail.

Vernon drove all the way to Walmart and rode up and down all the rows in the parking lot looking for Darlene’s vehicle. When he didn’t find it, he turned around and started back toward home, expecting that they could easily have missed each other en route. He hoped that Darlene would be at the house waiting for him when he arrived.

Vernon was talking to Heidi again, telling her he was nearly home and would let her know if her mother was there, when he saw a large crowd of emergency vehicles at the pasture entrance and down at the pond, with their flashing lights, blue and red, lighting up the dusk. He told Heidi what he could see up ahead, only a couple of miles from their house, and he told her, “I think Darlene’s been hurt.”

He didn’t have time to give Heidi any further information; when the officers saw Vernon’s pickup coming up the road, they stopped him and checked his identification. They immediately knew that he was the husband of the victim in the pond, and they detained him, loaded him into a patrol car, and transported him to the Cherokee County Narcotics Office on the other side of the county, in Leesburg, Alabama, for questioning. They did not give him any information other than to tell him that his wife had been hurt and they needed him to come with them so they could talk.

Chapter 6

At around 10:00
P.M.
, ABI agents Jason W. Brown, Brent Thomas, and Wayne Green arrived at the crime scene where the Cherokee County officials waited for them. They all immediately began collecting evidence and taking additional photographs with the help of ADFS investigator Mark Hopwood. Cherokee County coroner Bobby Don Rogers pronounced Martha Darlene Roberts dead at the scene, and her body was transported to Cherokee Medical Center, to remain until it could be turned over to the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences for autopsy.

Severe weather was on the way for the overnight hours, and the officers tried to work as quickly as possible before the coming storms moved into the area. There would be much additional work to do during daylight hours on the following day if weather permitted at all, but the scene would need to be carefully preserved during the night. It was decided that several officers would spend the night at the pasture to keep the crime scene secure, and the work of searching for evidence would resume as early as possible, on the next morning. In the meantime, Vernon Roberts was being held a distance away, in law enforcement offices in the Leesburg City Hall, being questioned by two deputies, who had not yet told him exactly what had happened to Darlene. Vernon was not at all pleased at being detained, and he was getting more and more disturbed at being held without an explanation and interrogated. However, the officers were determined to uncover any inconsistencies there might be in his account of his whereabouts during the time before his wife’s body was discovered.

Lieutenant Jimmy DeBerry and Cherokee County Drug Task Force commander Charles Clifton knew, like all law enforcement personnel, that the spouse is almost always the first person who falls under suspicion when a husband or wife has been murdered. They left no doubt that they expected not only cooperation, but a complete and detailed account of Vernon’s activities for the entire day.

The handwritten statement, given by Vernon Roberts at 8:45
P.M.
, said that he and Darlene had gotten up that morning at six o’clock as usual, and Darlene left around 7:00
A.M.
to pick up Heidi and give her a ride to work. Vernon left home around 7:10
A.M.
on the way to Temple-Inland Paperboard and Packaging, Inc., in Rome, Georgia, where he and Darlene both worked in the same building and were scheduled on the same shift.

Vernon said that he left his office around 10:00
A.M.
for a doctor’s appointment and returned at noon in time to have lunch at the mill with Darlene and their friends Leesa Norton, Danny Alexander, and Lynn Willoughby. Vernon said that he returned to his office around twelve-thirty, and Darlene called him at four-thirty to let him know she was leaving work and planned to pick up Heidi, give her a ride back to her home, and then stop to get some groceries at Walmart on the way.

Vernon said that he went home from work and started the chores he had planned to get completed on that afternoon before his brother arrived for the weekend, and he said that Darlene called him to see if he needed anything from Walmart while she was there. After finishing his work and taking a shower, Vernon said, he was surprised that Darlene hadn’t come home yet, and he grew concerned that Darlene didn’t answer her cell phone. He called Heidi to see exactly what time her mother had dropped her off at home. He claimed that he told Heidi he was getting worried because he couldn’t contact Darlene after repeatedly calling her, and he said that Heidi also had tried to call her mother and had no luck, either.

Vernon stated that he told Heidi he was going to look for Darlene; then he went to Walmart, didn’t find her there or anywhere else on the way back from Rome, and headed home, only to be stopped on the road, detained by the officers, and brought to the Leesburg office for questioning.

Vernon then signed a waiver of rights, and the interrogation began in earnest.

Chapter 7

After confirming that his wife’s name was Martha Darlene Roberts, Vernon answered the officers’ questions with mostly the same information he had already given in his written statement. A few additional things came to light as he recalled details, such as a white convertible that came past his house while he was working on his chores, sometime between 6:00 and 7:00
P.M.
, turning around in the driveway of a house up the road, then driving back past the house, and a couple of shots he’d heard coming from the direction of the pond while he was outside the house, working on the pool. He believed, he said, that he’d possibly heard the shots after Darlene had called him for the last time, from Walmart.

“I didn’t give it a thought,” he said of the gunshots. “That area is just covered up with deer and turkey, and she wasn’t late yet, so I didn’t think anything about it.”

Vernon also remembered seeing Williams and Sammons on the Gator.

“I saw the two guys on the Gator, and I thought they were down there weedeating around the pond so people could fish better,” he said, adding that Darlene’s son, Benji, had talked about doing that same thing on one occasion, because the grass and weeds were very tall around parts of the pond.

“That’s what I thought those guys were doing. I didn’t care if they fished in that pond. It’s not mine, so go ahead.”

Vernon said that when he was stopped by the officers on his way home, “I knew there was something bad, wrong.

“Heidi called, and I said, ‘Something’s wrong, there [are] police cars all over, the ambulance . . .’

“Heidi is going to panic,” Vernon said. “She was very nervous about her mother, when she wasn’t able to get in touch with her. I went home thinking she’d probably be there already, but I got stopped. You said she’d been injured, but what happened? Did somebody shoot her?”

One of the officers said later that he had found it very odd that Vernon had not been more upset. He had not, at that point, been told whether or not his wife was dead, injured, or just exactly what it was that had happened to her, or why he was being interrogated.

“I just said to him that all I knew was that she was hurt bad,” the officer said.

Heidi called Vernon’s cell phone during the interview, and Vernon handed the phone to the deputy, who told her that she needed to come on over from Georgia, and the officers who would be there at her mother’s home would explain to her what had happened when she arrived.

During the course of the questioning, Vernon had been becoming increasingly agitated, and as the questions grew more personal, tempers began to flare.

“What about another woman in your life?”

“Never!” Vernon answered emphatically.
“Never!”

“Have you ever been in any trouble, or hit an ex-wife or anything?”

Vernon said the only trouble he’d ever been in was a charge of driving under the influence years earlier in Texas, and he’d never hit any of his wives. He had earlier reported his first wife as being Janice Dunaway, the mother of his two daughters, and his second wife was Barbara Ann Comeaux, who lived near Atlanta, he said. He and Darlene had been married for about four years.

“Who’s mad at your wife?” Lieutenant DeBerry asked.

“Nobody,” Vernon replied.

“Who’s mad at your wife?”
DeBerry shouted.

“Nobody!”
Vernon shouted back.

“Somebody was mad at her and knocked her in the head! Did you knock her in the head?”

“No!”
Vernon shouted. “I would never, ever hurt her, I cherished her with all my heart. We adored each other!”

Vernon claimed he would never be unfaithful to Darlene, no matter what.

“That’s what makes me think that something’s wrong,” Clifton said. “Something might have happened today between you and her that might have caused you so much anguish.... There’s no way, if you hurt this woman, that we’re not going to find out.”

“I told you on the way over here,” Vernon said, “I worshiped that woman.” He told the officers to have his hands tested for gunshot residue for having shot a gun that day. He and the officers then argued at length about whether he would get jealous if somebody hugged his wife, with DeBerry asking repeatedly if it would make him mad if a coworker or friend hugged his wife in front of him.

Vernon yelled, “My wife is injured and I’m sitting here listening to
this
?
This is crap!
I love my wife!”

Vernon was then asked if he’d found his wife with somebody else. He replied that Darlene had been taking antibiotics for a serious yeast infection.

“Do you think she’d try to be with anybody else like that?” he asked the officers, infuriated by their questions.

“There’s no two people on God’s earth that gets along all the time, never has a disagreement, never gets pissed with each other—it don’t happen,” DeBerry said. Vernon immediately disagreed, and said he and Darlene always got along.

“Now, if she’s going to be okay and I ask her, will she say you never disagreed over anything? If there’s something you need to tell us, tonight’s the night. Extenuating circumstances could cause a man to do something he’d never do otherwise in a million years. We’re offering you a chance to tell us now. Right now the district attorney will take everything into consideration—tomorrow’ll be different. Right now, whoever hurt your wife is behind the event. They need to be out front of it.”

Vernon talked again about his last call from Darlene when she called to see if he needed anything from Walmart.

“The last thing I told her was that I loved her,” he said.

“Is that what you said right before you shot her, looked her in the eye and told her you loved her? You told me you never let her out of your sight, that’s what you said. Jealousy will eat you up. Now’s the time to help yourself—”

“I told her that on the phone!” Vernon interrupted. “Look at the phone records! She called me on her cell phone from the Walmart parking lot! I’m not worried about Darlene being unfaithful. I love my wife. I didn’t have to worry about not trusting her because we genuinely loved each other, not because I was jealous of her! You did say she was injured, didn’t you?”

“I’m going to say she was hurt bad,” the officer said, repeating his earlier statement.

Vernon showed Clifton and DeBerry how to bring up the last numbers on his cell phone to verify the calls he’d sent and received that day. Then, as tensions eased a bit, he said that he and Darlene had a good life, living out in the country.

“My second wife hated it and couldn’t handle it,” he said, “and she moved back to Texas.”

Vernon was asked if he’d noticed a hard-cover black Dodge pickup in the area that day, or if he knew anyone who owned one, and he said no. Then he was asked if he owned a shotgun. His wife’s son, Benji, had left one at their house when he moved out after living with them for a time, he said. Benji had taken the shotgun, which had belonged to Darlene’s father, and he’d had the barrel sawed off. Darlene took it away from him and hid it somewhere in the house, Vernon said, but he did not know where it was.

When he was asked if he and Darlene had ever had any trouble with Benji, he said Benji and his mother had argued over his continuing use of drugs, calling it a “knock-down, drag-out fight,” after which Benji had moved out of their house and gone to live with his girlfriend in Rockmart, Georgia.

When asked if Darlene had any problems with her ex-husbands, Vernon said she did not. He made several disparaging comments about the character of one ex-husband, but he went on to say that she had never had “an ounce of trouble” from him. Her other ex-husband was the father of her two children, Benji and Heidi. There were no current problems with him, either, according to Vernon.

When the questioning concluded, Vernon agreed to his home being searched, and he was returned to the scene. A thorough search of the house, however, turned up nothing that could help with the investigation. So far, Vernon Roberts had an airtight alibi.