Voices from Death Row

by Kelly Banaski

  Kimberly Cargill

  Kimberly DiAnne Upton was born in Laurel, Mississippi in 1966, according to her own account to me in an early 2017 interview, but moved with her mom and stepfather to Richardson, Texas as a young girl. At age one-and-a-half her stepfather adopted her and she became Kimberley Pitts. “Mom and Dad owned multiple businesses over the years, she said, and I lived an upper-middle-class life. Definitely everything I needed and most of what I wanted.” She spent her teen years involved in teen things such as sports, dance and YoungLife, a Christian faith teen organization. A good student and bubbly cheerleader on the school dance team, she surprised her family when she elected a life as a mom and wife right out of Lloyd V. Berkner high school instead of going to college in 1984. She was searching for the ideal home life she had had growing up. As with many first love situations, the romance dissolved and Kimberley left with a young son to support on her own while still in her early twenties.

  Taking a receptionist job at a medical company, she supported herself and her son as she fought his father for custody. A battle she eventually lost. The loss combined with the unusual harshness of the fight, took a toll on her emotionally. While she was still able to retain visitation rights, the loss of custody was detrimental to her emotionally.

  In 1992, a mutual friend introduced her to a man named Brian Cargill and the two had a blind date with another couple. Brian was enamored with her outgoing aura and larger than life personality and it was only three months before Kimberley was pregnant with his baby. Soon after the birth of her second son, however, her personality changed. She was short-tempered, edgy and snappish. Three years into the marriage the two decided to divorce and go their separate ways.

  Kimberley found a new boyfriend for a short stint but moved on when things turned sour. The trouble was, she was once again pregnant. By the year 2000, Kimberley had three children, two of which she had custody of. In an effort to improve her circumstances, she packed up the kids and moved to Tyler, Texas to attend Tyler Junior College from which she eventually graduated as a licensed vocational nurse, LVN.

  Brian Cargill, her second husband, had started custody proceedings shortly after their divorce and by 2006 had reached some measure of success. Kimberley was none too happy to give up even a smidgeon of control when it came to her son and when he began to refuse to speak to her, she blamed Brian. He claimed their son wasn’t interested in seeing his mother. The embittered former couple fought viciously over the custody and visitation of the boy. All the while, Kimberly was beginning a new relationship.

  In 2005 she met and married her third husband. A year later, she had another son. Another year passed and this marriage too ended in divorce.

  She worked hard, and although she knew she had to abide by the rules of the custody agreements, it was a hard pill to swallow. Hard work paid off for her and eventually she was able to support herself and her children in an upscale suburb of Tyler, Whitehouse, Texas, working for a well-established chain of hospitals tending to patients after surgery. Like most nurses, Kimberley worked long hours and babysitting problems began to arise.

  Kimberly Cargill hired 29-year-old Cherry Walker to help her with the children while she worked. Cherry was a friendly woman with some mental disabilities. She had been diagnosed with the daily living skills of a 9-year-old. She often kept Kimberly’s 4-year-old son, Luke, at her own home that she shared with her father and stepmother.

  Kimberly was a normal Texas mom in many ways, including a fair amount of personal issues. Previous husbands and family persistently describe her as bossy, high maintenance, and impatient. Even rude and irritable. A pretty woman with a fresh open look, her manner of always insisting on her own way sometimes surprised people. She’d been through four husbands and found herself in the middle of a custody battle with a felony charge of Injury to a Child knocking on her door in March of 2010. She’d been arrested and bonded out to wait for the hearing to take place. Worried that she would lose custody of her children, when she found out Cherry had been subpoenaed to testify in the case against her on June 18, 2010, she panicked and was desperate to know what Cherry planned to say. Kimberly arranged to meet with Cherry. Kimberly had asked her to agree to wait out the hearing in hiding so as not to testify.

  What happened during that ride is still a mystery. The state says Kimberly Cargill deliberately lured Cherry Walker out to kill her. Kimberly states that Walker had a seizure during the ride and she panicked, setting the woman on fire on the side of a state road in Smith County, Texas. Kimberly maintains that Cherry went into convulsions as she drove and had fallen unconscious by the time she could pull over. Once the car was stopped, so had Cherry’s breathing. Kimberly pulled her from the car, covered her in lighter fluid and set her ablaze before returning to her home.

  Cherry’s charred body was found the next day. Police found a coffee creamer package near the body. They found Kimberly’s DNA on the container and an identical product in her bedroom later. She was arrested and charged with the murder of Cherry Walker. Investigations pointed to Kimberly’s state of mind in the days before Cherry’s death. Much of Kimberly’s family claimed she’d asked them to testify on her behalf in the upcoming hearing. She was panicked and erratic, as any mother facing such an ordeal would be.

  During her stay at the Smith County Jail, authorities found correspondence to friends and relatives asking to change her Internet passwords and remove possible evidence, such as the clothing she wore the night of the murder, from her home. An affidavit shows she had planned to send letters containing her passwords to an old high school friend. She asked another friend to remove an orange child’s bicycle from her home. She feared it could be used as evidence against her. It was later found at the friend’s home.

  The murder trial of Kimberly Cargill began in May of 2012. Attorneys expected it to last six months at least. The Smith County District Attorney's Office was seeking the death penalty. Outside earshot of the jury, both sides of counsel argued in front of the judge to the relevance of text messages found on Kimberly’s phone. Eventually, they agreed to leave out text messages about other offenses or the child custody case.

  The prosecution’s opening statement was two hours long. It detailed the plastic coffee creamer container with Kimberly’s DNA on it found near Cherry’s body. There was also a straw near her body, but DNA tests could not link it positively to Kimberly, nor exclude her. Her cell phone calls were analyzed and it was found that several calls to Cherry from Kimberly had been made the day of her death.

  To set the scene for Kimberly’s motive, prosecution informed the jury that one of Kimberly’s sons had been removed from her home in March of 2010 and a new charge of Injury to a Child had brought another child custody hearing for her.

  A psychologist, Richard Wilson, who had examined Cherry for Social Security benefits, reiterated her mental challenges and revealed that at age 26, Cherry had developed major motor seizures and was on medication for treatment. He also testified that her IQ was 56. The defense made no opening statement.

  On the second day of trial, a woman, Gina Vestal, who had placed Kimberly in past jobs as well as her current, testified that the night Cherry was murdered, Kimberly took off from work at the allotted time and left the building. Records were insufficient to tell if all of her patients had received their medicine. When the staffing agency attempted to call Kimberly, she did not pick up until after midnight, something the director stated was unlike her. The defense maintained that she had worked a 12-hour shift that day and had been asleep for several hours after work. Loren Puig, Kimberly’s neighbor, was called to testify. She told the court she had seen Kimberly leaving her house early on the day after Cherry’s death. When asked where she was headed to so early, Kimberly replied she was off to wash her car. A state employee, Bill Selmon, was also called to testify. He told the court of his friendship with Kimberly and that she once went on an angry tirade, hitting and slapping herself in the face while driving when Selmon could not help he
r with child visitation by supervising a visit. He remarked that he had never seen Kimberly’s car so clean as the last day he had talked with her.

  Cherry’s caregiver, Paula Wheeler, was brought in to testify on the third day. She testified to the work she did as a caregiver for the mentally disabled through Community Access. On the day of her death, it was Wheeler’s testimony that Kimberly called to speak with Cherry and also with her, saying that she would come pick up Cherry later and take her out to eat and discuss hiding her out until after the child custody hearing. Wheeler testified that, as she dropped Cherry at her hairdresser’s salon, Cherry told her she didn’t want to go with Kimberly and felt uneasy about it. Paula told her not to answer the door when Kimberly arrived and to just go to bed.

  Both the state and defense rested on the eighth day of trial after a plethora of witnesses and testimony. Closing arguments took only a few hours. The prosecution elucidated on their most important facts, saying what a manipulative, lying, controlling and selfish person they believe the evidence showed Kimberly to be. The defense reiterated Cherry’s existing seizure issues and pointed out the evidence showed it was possible that Cherry died as Kimberly explained. She was known to begin shaking uncontrollably whenever she was upset. They maintained if she was so manipulative and calculating, she would not have dumped Cherry’s body on the side of the road and set it on fire. There would have been an attempt to hide the body if she had planned the crime.

  Jury deliberations began around 1 p.m. She was found guilty. After nine hours, they had decided upon the death penalty.

  I first wrote to Kimberly several years ago, we have kept in contact, and she remains one of the oddest people I have ever met behind bars. Despite accusations of abuse to her children and strange fits of violence on herself, I find her continually docile. The daily threat of violence she faces in prison brings out a passiveness that keeps her to herself most of the time. She avoids the high drama associated with prison life. She is skittish and approaches every situation with caution.

  Kimberley has unwittingly sabotaged herself. Her reputation as a snappish, cruel woman when she wanted something tarnished her image before she ever went to court. She had to face already damning evidence with the black smear of her rage across her face which made it harder than ever to prove that while she was never going to win a mother of the year award, she did not end Cherry Walker’s life. The way she lived her life and treated her exes may have backfired on her even further than she ever dreamed. “I cannot be specific about the [custody] battles or the lies my exes perpetuated and even helped each other [with]. We have proof of their conniving and orchestrated plans because their emails were caught in the net of discovery papers during my capital trial. At some point I will release copies of that and investigative reports during custody/CPS to show how devious and untruthful a few of my exes have been to the media and certain journalists.”

  When I told her I wanted to include her in this book, she said she would consider contributing but had a few questions. She also wanted corrections made to a blog post I’d written about her. She wanted to know what type of book it was and who else was in it. She asked if they were only innocent people on death row presented or if the book held all types of cases. I had complained to her about other inmates flip-flopping on their commitments, and she wanted to know what those commitments were. I asked her for childhood tales and pictures, and she wanted to know why. After each letter, she would say she would decide soon whether she wanted to contribute, after speaking with her lawyers, and finally decided that it could only help.

  Although she avoids prison drama, outside drama still affects her quite a bit. In one of her last letters to me before this book went to print, she wrote of her irritation at a comment on the blog post about her. The comment was from a man she had dated and stated that she had abused his children for 10 years and deserved everything she got.

  One month ago, one of my ex-assholes made a hateful comment on it. If you only know his story, you would see how hateful and duplicitous his comments are about me getting what I deserve. That comment shows anyone willing to be objective the kind of crap with him I had to deal with. I deserve to die for something I didn’t do? Just because he hates me? And the abuse for 10 years is a load of crap to say the least. I soon will be forced to be more public and defend myself in the near future due to a few of my exes telling outrageous lies.

  Kimberly Cargill very well may be an innocent woman. Her skittish nature and pervasive questioning may be a byproduct of prison life. It is also her way of trying to control the outside world, whether purposely or not. She is another inmate with ‘friends’ on the outside. They read blog posts, comments and news articles and report back to her. The result is a headache for anyone attempting to break through the hype and make significant positive actions inside prison walls.

  Kimberley staunchly insists had her exes not formed a united front and agreed to manipulate the truth surrounding their relationships, her actions at the moment of Cherry’s demise would have been far different. “All their drama and all these issues were factors in my panic to not be believed when I failed to revive Cherry. I cannot and won't justify what I did wrong after her death. It was wrong and selfish.”

  When asked about proof of her innocence, she continually refers to claim one of her writ.

  Regardless of what anyone says or thinks about me, I am not magic and I cannot duplicate certain medical findings in the autopsy that clearly supports she had a seizure. Claim one of my writ pretty much says it all.

  Pam Moss

  In 2012, Pamela Carole Moss was a 54-year-old woman with a dark past, living in a gated community, River North, in Macon, Georgia. She had spent eight years behind bars for the involuntary manslaughter of her mother, whom she was accused of poisoning. Years of therapy later, she was diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder, or multiple personality disorder. Pamela married Urban Eugene Moss after her release from prison. He died in October of 2011 at the age of 71. She maintained a decent life for herself by writing grants and setting up nonprofit organizations.

  It was in this capacity that she met a wealthy local businessman, Doug Coker, 67 years old, who struck a deal with Pamela to write a grant for a pending nonprofit project to build homes for homeless people. He had given her $85,000 to begin work. When things didn’t pan out with Pamela’s work as Coker required, he began to ask her about returning the money.

  Doug and his wife Judy lived in Henry County, Georgia. They had been married over thirty years when the morning of March 13, 2012 arrived. They readied for work together and Doug headed out to run an errand for her before heading to the meeting with Pamela to discuss the grant and return of the money. He never returned home. Judy had begun to worry when several hours had passed with no call from her husband. At day's end, she called their nephew and had him contact the police. Thinking he may have fallen ill or become injured at one of his many real estate properties, authorities began to search through each one but there was no sign of Doug Coker in any of them. His cell phone was no longer working either. Family, friends and the local community rallied around Judy and began to make flyers and send out search parties only hours after his disappearance. Volunteers searched by plane and walked through the rivers all to no avail.

  Investigators checked the last cell tower his phone had pinged from and followed his trail to a McDonald's in Macon, Georgia where he enjoyed a cup of coffee and left alone. The surveillance camera footage was the last image taken of him. They watched him walk into the restaurant at 11:02 a.m., order a cup of coffee and stop at a table to answer his phone and write something down. They tried to read what he’d written but the camera was too far away. Noting the time of the call, they subpoenaed his phone records to find out who called. In the meantime they checked his schedule to find who he was scheduled to meet that day.

  Eventually, the investigation led to Pamela Moss in her quiet Macon home. They find out that she is also the person Doug had spoken to in
McDonald's when the phone records arrived. Police contact her and meet in a coffee shop. They ask if they met and she says she was late and met him in the parking lot as he was leaving. She explained they only spoke for a minute. When more days passed without any new clues, police decide to revisit Pamela to ask what Doug may have been writing down during their call, which she claimed was only to inform him she was running late.