To Love and to Kill Read online

  HIGHEST PRAISE FOR M. WILLIAM PHELPS

  “M. William Phelps dares to tread where few others will: into the mind of a killer.”

  —TV Rage

  THE KILLING KIND

  “In this true crime book, Phelps focuses on unrepentant killer Danny Hembree . . . [who] seizes the chance to take center stage with lurid confessions of a decades-long career of violent robbery, assault, rape, and murder.... Fans of the author’s Discovery TV series, Dark Minds, will be rewarded.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  OBSESSED

  “True-crime junkies will be sated by the latest thriller from Phelps, which focuses on a fatal love triangle that definitely proved to be stranger than fiction. The police work undertaken to solve the case is recounted with the right amount of detail, and readers will be rewarded with shocking television-worthy twists in a story with inherent drama.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  BAD GIRLS

  “Fascinating, gripping ... Phelps’s sharp investigative skills and questioning mind resonate. Whether or not you agree with the author’s suspicions that an innocent is behind bars, you won’t regret going along for the ride with such an accomplished reporter.”

  —Sue Russell

  NEVER SEE THEM AGAIN

  “This riveting book examines one of the most horrific murders in recent American history.”

  —New York Post

  “Phelps clearly shows how the ugliest crimes can take place in the quietest of suburbs.”

  —Library Journal

  “Thoroughly reported ... the book is primarily a police procedural, but it is also a tribute to the four murder victims.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  TOO YOUNG TO KILL

  “Phelps is the Harlan Coben of real-life thrillers.”

  —Allison Brennan

  LOVE HER TO DEATH

  “Reading anything by Phelps is always an eye opening experience. The characters are well researched and well written. We have murder, adultery, obsession, lies and so much more.”

  —Suspense Magazine

  “You don’t want to miss Love Her To Death by M. William Phelps, a book destined to be one of 2011’s top true crimes!”

  —True Crime Book Reviews

  “A chilling crime ... award-winning author Phelps goes into lustrous and painstaking detail, bringing all the players vividly to life.”

  —Crime Magazine

  KILL FOR ME

  “Phelps gets into the blood and guts of the story.”

  —Gregg Olsen, New York Times best-selling author of Fear Collector

  “Phelps infuses his investigative journalism with plenty of energized descriptions.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  DEATH TRAP

  “A chilling tale of a sociopathic wife and mother ... a compelling journey from the inside of this woman’s mind to final justice in a court of law. For three days I did little else but read this book.”

  —Harry N. MacLean, New York Times

  best-selling author of In Broad Daylight

  I’LL BE WATCHING YOU

  “Phelps has an unrelenting sense for detail that affirms his place, book by book, as one of our most engaging crime journalists.”

  —Katherine Ramsland

  IF LOOKS COULD KILL

  “M. William Phelps, one of America’s finest true-crime writers, has written a compelling and gripping book about an intriguing murder mystery. Readers of this genre will thoroughly enjoy this book.”

  —Vincent Bugliosi

  “Starts quickly and doesn’t slow down.... Phelps consistently ratchets up the dramatic tension, hooking readers. His thorough research and interviews give the book complexity, richness of character, and urgency.”

  —Stephen Singular

  MURDER IN THE HEARTLAND

  “Drawing on interviews with law officers and relatives, the author has done significant research. His facile writing pulls the reader along.”

  —St. Louis Post-Dispatch

  “Phelps expertly reminds us that when the darkest form of evil invades the quiet and safe outposts of rural America, the tragedy is greatly magnified. Get ready for some sleepless nights.”

  —Carlton Stowers

  “This is the most disturbing and moving look at murder in rural America since Capote’s In Cold Blood.”

  —Gregg Olsen

  SLEEP IN HEAVENLY PEACE

  “An exceptional book by an exceptional true crime writer. Phelps exposes long-hidden secrets and reveals disquieting truths.”

  —Kathryn Casey

  EVERY MOVE YOU MAKE

  “An insightful and fast-paced examination of the inner workings of a good cop and his bad informant, culminating in an unforgettable truth-is-stranger-than-fiction climax.”

  —Michael M. Baden, M.D.

  “M. William Phelps is the rising star of the nonfiction crime genre, and his true tales of murder are scary-as-hell thrill rides into the dark heart of the inhuman condition.”

  —Douglas Clegg

  LETHAL GUARDIAN

  “An intense roller-coaster of a crime story ... complex, with twists and turns worthy of any great detective mystery ... reads more like a novel than your standard non-fiction crime book.”

  —Steve Jackson

  PERFECT POISON

  “True crime at its best—compelling, gripping, an edge-of-the-seat thriller. Phelps packs wallops of delight with his skillful ability to narrate a suspenseful story.”

  —Harvey Rachlin

  “A compelling account of terror ... the author dedicates himself to unmasking the psychopath with facts, insight and the other proven methods of journalistic leg work.”

  —Lowell Cauffiel

  Also By M. William Phelps

  Perfect Poison

  Lethal Guardian

  Every Move You Make

  Sleep in Heavenly Peace

  Murder in the Heartland

  Because You Loved Me

  If Looks Could Kill

  I’ll Be Watching You

  Deadly Secrets

  Cruel Death

  Death Trap

  Kill For Me

  Love Her to Death

  Too Young to Kill

  Never See Them Again

  Failures of the Presidents (coauthor)

  Nathan Hale: The Life and Death of America’s First Spy

  The Devil’s Rooming House: The True Story of

  America’s Deadliest Female Serial Killer

  The Devil’s Right Hand: The Tragic Story of the

  Colt Family Curse

  The Dead Soul: A Thriller (available as e-book only)

  Murder, New England

  Jane Doe No More

  Kiss of the She-Devil

  Bad Girls

  Obsessed

  The Killing Kind

  She Survived: Melissa (e-book)

  She Survived: Jane (e-book)

  I’d Kill for You

  TO LOVE AND TO KILL

  M. WILLIAM PHELPS

  PINNACLE BOOKS

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  HIGHEST PRAISE FOR M. WILLIAM PHELPS

  Also By M. William Phelps

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER
13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 51

  CHAPTER 52

  CHAPTER 53

  CHAPTER 54

  CHAPTER 55

  CHAPTER 56

  CHAPTER 57

  CHAPTER 58

  CHAPTER 59

  CHAPTER 60

  CHAPTER 61

  CHAPTER 62

  CHAPTER 63

  CHAPTER 64

  CHAPTER 65

  CHAPTER 66

  CHAPTER 67

  CHAPTER 68

  CHAPTER 69

  CHAPTER 70

  CHAPTER 71

  CHAPTER 72

  CHAPTER 73

  CHAPTER 74

  CHAPTER 75

  CHAPTER 76

  CHAPTER 77

  CHAPTER 78

  CHAPTER 79

  CHAPTER 80

  CHAPTER 81

  CHAPTER 82

  CHAPTER 83

  CHAPTER 84

  CHAPTER 85

  CHAPTER 86

  CHAPTER 87

  CHAPTER 88

  CHAPTER 89

  CHAPTER 90

  CHAPTER 91

  CHAPTER 92

  CHAPTER 93

  CHAPTER 94

  CHAPTER 95

  CHAPTER 96

  CHAPTER 97

  CHAPTER 98

  CHAPTER 99

  CHAPTER 100

  CHAPTER 101

  CHAPTER 102

  CHAPTER 103

  CHAPTER 104

  CHAPTER 105

  CHAPTER 106

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ONE BREATH AWAY

  Copyright Page

  Notes

  For Little Mark, Mark Jr. and Brittany Phelps—

  Big Mark would be so proud of you.

  Death is someone you see very clearly

  with eyes in the center of your heart:

  eyes that see not by reacting to light,

  but by reacting to a kind of a chill from

  within the marrow of your own life.

  —Thomas Merton,

  The Seven Storey Mountain

  CHAPTER 1

  FOOTSTEPS. THE SOFT, spongy slap of rubber work shoes against the scratched, unwaxed, filthy surface of a tile floor.

  One after the other.

  Pitter-patter.

  Squeak, squeak, squeak.

  Waitresses take perhaps thousands of steps during a shift. Always coming and going, while certain obnoxious patrons bark orders, make crass comments and groundless, tasteless judgments, before getting up and leaving squat for a tip.

  The South is full of roadside diners serving up high cholesterol and diabetes—all you have to do is walk in, sit down in a booth sporting ripped, waxy seats and grimy checkered tablecloths, and the journey into the greasy-spoon experience has begun.

  Heather Strong had been a waitress at one of these places for nearly ten years, though she mainly worked the register as a cashier these days. She took to the job because it suited her character—outgoing, loud, always on the move—and put food on the table for her children. In February 2009, Heather, a beautiful, blue-eyed, brown-haired, twenty-six-year-old mother and soon-to-be divorcée, was working at the Petro Truck Stop out on Highway 318 in Reddick, Florida. The Iron Skillet restaurant inside the Petro was a busy joint. It was one of those just-off-the-freeway pit stops filled with tired, hungry, dirty, foul-mouthed, penny-pinching, smelly men coming in off the road, filing out of their musty Mack trucks, looking for cheap fast-food meals saturated in grease. Heather drew the eyes of most of these men because she was so stunningly gorgeous in a simple American-girl kind of way. She had the figure of a swimsuit model, sure; but that exterior beauty was juxtaposed against an inner abundance of innocence and purity, a warm heart. Still, for anyone who knew Heather, there was no mistaking the fact that this young woman could take care of herself if necessary.

  There was also a hidden vulnerability there within Heather’s forced smile: You could tell she had struggled in life somewhat. But with the right man by her side (whom she had found just the previous year, but had let go of after getting back with her husband), Heather could find that picket-fence happiness all young women in her shoes longed for.

  “What’s a hot little thang like you doing in a place like this?” was a common remark Heather endured more times than she could count. She hated it every time. Paid no mind to men who spoke to her disrespectfully like that. She had a job to do. Kids to feed. She was making ends meet. It didn’t mean she had to take insults and sexually aggressive comments.

  “Give me your check and let’s get y’all cashed out?” Heather would snap back. “I ain’t got all day.”

  Heather seemed tired on this day. She’d been having a rough go of things lately, to say the least. Most of those problems stemmed from the relationship with her children’s father, her husband, twenty-seven-year-old Joshua “Josh” Fulgham, a rather complicated and volatile man with a past she had recently separated from. Since the breakup, Heather had been living with another man, more out of convenience than love. But that leash Josh had around his wife had not been severed completely. Josh wanted his kids and was afraid Heather would one day take off with them; he promised a nasty custody battle coming down the road. He was also enraged at the fact that Heather was living with a man Josh saw as a danger to his children.

  “You seen Heather around?” Heather’s boss asked a coworker a day after Valentine’s Day, February 15, 2009. It had been a normal day at the Petro: regulars, new customers, broken coffee machine, same dirty dishes coming from the kitchen, stains on the silverware. ’Bout the only thing different was that Heather had not come to work. It was so unlike her not to show up. If there was one thing about Heather Strong, work was first and foremost. She needed the money to support her kids—and that darn husband of hers, he rarely gave her anything to help out, yet always seemed to have the cash to buy “party goods” or go out and have a good time.

  “She always called,” Heather’s boss later explained.

  “I haven’t seen her,” Heather’s coworker said.

  “Huh,” Heather’s boss responded. “If you do, tell her to call me.”

  Heather generally worked the morning shift, although she did sometimes take on a double. On most days, she’d come in and set up the salad bar and then go about her ordinary duties.

  She should have been in by now, thought Heather’s boss, looking at the clock in her small office, trying to shake a bad feeling that something was terribly wrong.

  CHAPTER 2

  HEATHER’S FIRST COUSIN, Misty Strong, was at home in Columbus, Mississippi, where Heather grew up and had lived most of her life. Misty, equally as beautiful as Heather, could pass for Heather’s identical twin—the two girls looked so much alike.

  “Heather was like a sister to me,” Misty later said.

  A few weeks had gone by and Misty had not heard from her cousin. This was odd. Heather and Misty kept in touch. However streetwise Heather had become over the years, especially while livi
ng in Florida, she was green in many ways of the world, Misty knew. It seemed that Heather had only one man most of her life and he had taken her to Florida: Joshua Fulgham. Josh and Heather met in Starkville, Mississippi. Heather was sixteen, waitressing after school at a local restaurant; Joshua, one year older, was a customer. Josh was that tough, rugged, overprotective and overly jealous type. He was well known in the Mississippi town where he grew up as a bruiser and tough, troubled kid. Josh was five feet eight inches tall and weighed about 175 pounds—one of those physiques people might say he was born with, a guy who could eat anything and never gain an ounce. Josh generally wore his hair shortly cropped, but had turned to an entirely shaved head later in life. For Heather, Josh fit the image of a badass she liked so much. Heather felt comfortable around Josh. She felt protected. The two of them hit it off right away on that day inside the restaurant.

  From the start, Misty Strong later observed, Josh and Heather had issues. He was rough with her. He liked to manhandle Heather a lot when he wanted his way. The cops were often involved. After meeting, dating and then living together as teens, Heather having a child, with another on the way, Mississippi didn’t seem to entice them as it once had. So Josh and Heather made the decision to move to Florida. It was 2004. Josh had potential job prospects in Florida—or so he said. He had family down there. The move felt like a step up. Heather wasn’t thrilled at going, moving away from her family in Mississippi, but she thought what the hell, why not give it a try. They could always move back if things didn’t work out.

  Misty knew with Heather moving away, there was little she could do. Once Heather was gone, in fact, Misty had lost touch with her for a time, and Misty believed it was Josh holding her down, keeping Heather from contacting her family. One more way for Josh to govern over Heather and keep her tied down.

  “He was just too controlling,” Misty explained. “He didn’t want her around any family or anybody that cared about her.”