To Love and to Kill Page 3

  So Josh decided to go into his own business.

  Yet, instead of buying meth and then selling it for a profit, Josh Fulgham decided he was going into the business of cooking up batches of the drug himself.

  CHAPTER 5

  DEPUTY BETH BILLINGS needed to track down Josh Fulgham and see what that supposed last call between him and Heather at her work was all about. If it had sparked some sort of reaction from Heather to the point where she packed her bags and took off, it must have been pretty heavy. In addition, maybe Josh knew where she had run off to.

  Josh was at a friend’s house, where he had been staying. Billings found him and asked if he didn’t mind answering a few questions about his wife, Heather.

  “Not at all,” Josh said. He seemed sincerely interested in what was going on. Cops don’t show up every day asking about your soon-to-be ex-spouse.

  “When did you last speak to Miss Strong?”

  Josh had difficulty recalling the exact date and time, but he decided it must have been back on February 15. “Yeah, I know it was now ... she called me. She wanted me to meet her at Petro, where she works out on the 318.”

  “Did you go to meet her?”

  “I did. I did, yes. It was, oh, I don’t know, somewhere around nine, nine-fifteen that night.”

  “What did she want?”

  Josh explained that Heather appeared flustered. There was something going on with her that she would not talk about. “She told me she ‘needed time to clear her head’ . . . and asked if I could take our children.” Josh further added, “She had two suitcases with her. She was going somewhere, but she wouldn’t share where with me.”

  “Did she say anything else?”

  “I’m not sure when she was set to return, because she wouldn’t tell me.”

  “Any idea where she is now?”

  Josh scratched his bald head. He took a breath. “I do. I think she’s with this older dude. I only know him as Wayne. He’s helped her with money in the past.” Josh said he had no idea where Wayne lived or how to get hold of him.

  Billings told Josh to call the MCSO if he remembered anything else, or if he heard from Heather.

  He said no problem.

  LITTLE JOE’S TRAILER Park was a sparsely spread-out mobile home community on the 13200 block of Jacksonville Road in Citra. From outward appearances, it looked as though the office to Joe’s—with a mud-stained and rusted steel mailbox out front, a small wicker bench seat, discolored from dirt and wear, a nearly unreadable sign hanging from a rotting wooden pole—had been abandoned long ago. The beige paint on the building itself was faded, the rust red trim cracking and in need of lots of TLC. In back of that office were mobile homes, those, too, a bit shoddily kept, brush and trees overgrown and camouflaging nearly all of the homes.

  Beth Billings found the landlord and had a conversation about one particular trailer, where Heather had lived recently. Billings wanted to know about any movement or people at the mobile home recently. Had the landlord seen anyone?

  “Nope,” she said. “I ain’t seen nobody there since two weeks ago now. But about four or five days ago, Mr. Fulgham, he called me and, after stating he was Miss Strong’s ‘ex-husband, ’ asked if he could get into Miss Strong’s trailer.”

  “Did he say why?”

  “Yup. Said he wanted to get the children’s clothes and things.”

  “What’d you tell him?”

  “I told him no.”

  Beyond that, the landlord said she knew nothing more.

  And so Beth Billings went on her way to the only other place she knew might provide some information about where Heather had run off to, perhaps.

  CHAPTER 6

  THE FIRST BIT of information raising the eyebrows of Beth Billings as she searched for Heather Strong—a true missing person case or a woman who had taken off on her own accord—came from a visit to Heather’s workplace, the Iron Skillet restaurant inside the Petro center. Billings found the assistant manager and pulled her aside, hoping to clear up a gut instinct the deputy had that Heather had not gone off on her own—that there was more to her disappearance than a woman scared of something, running from her problems.

  “She took an ‘emergency phone call’ on February fifteenth,” the Iron Skillet manager explained to Billings. “I knew it was from Joshua Fulgham, her ex, because she told me. It was short. When she got off the phone, Heather was visibly upset.”

  But Mr. Fulgham said Heather had called him? Beth Billings knew.

  “Did she say what Mr. Fulgham said to her?”

  “No, she didn’t.”

  As they talked, Billings got the impression that this type of stressful phone call was not at all out of the norm for Heather Strong.

  “She’s had ongoing problems with him,” the manager explained. “It was not unusual for her to get a phone call and for her to be upset after speaking with him.”

  The manager went on to describe how the last time she saw Heather was at 3:00 P.M. that day, when Heather’s shift ended. This made sense with what James Acome had reported: Heather had shown up at the house at three-thirty, although James had it wrong that Heather was working a double; she was not. “She was supposed to return at eight A.M. the following morning, but never showed up and never called. That is very unusual for Heather. She generally shows up, or if not, she always calls in.”

  “Anything else you can think of, ma’am?”

  “Here’s the thing,” the manager said, “Heather never picked up her paycheck.”

  So she left town, as Joshua Fulgham thought, without any money?

  This scenario didn’t make much sense to the deputy. Heather would surely want as much money as possible with her if she had run away.

  “Is there any other way for her to get that money?”

  “Well, yes, now that I think of it. She could still access the money from her bank without actually having the paper check. Our bookkeeper would be the only one who could tell you whether she withdrew that money or not.”

  Employees had special debit cards given to them by the company so they could withdraw their paycheck at any time after it was deposited into their account.

  “Can I talk to her?”

  “She’ll be here tomorrow morning at eight.”

  Beth Billings headed back to the sheriff’s office in Ocala to file her report and issue a BOLO (be on the lookout) order. Then she called Misty Strong to report back what she had found out. It was Misty, after all, who had initiated the search.

  “Call us if you have any additional concerns,” Billings told Misty after the deputy explained to Heather’s cousin all she could. “Right now, there’s not much more we can do.”

  By March 2, 2009, the MCSO was growing increasingly concerned about the well-being of Heather Strong. Heather’s family kept up the pressure on the sheriff’s office. They were firm in their belief that Heather had not left town by her own volition. When an investigator contacted the bookkeeper from the Iron Skillet on that following morning, additional unease emerged as the MCSO learned that Heather’s account had been accessed back on February 19, but not at any time after that date. Her most recent paycheck funds had not been withdrawn. Heather had never gone back to the restaurant to pick up her last paycheck and did not withdraw those funds from the bank. Like a lot of people, Heather lived paycheck to paycheck. There was no way, family members told the MCSO, that she would have left town and not contacted family or friends, and not cashed or accessed her last paycheck. But beyond all of that, Heather would have never left town without her children.

  Her children were her life.

  With all of that, Heather’s case went from missing to “missing and endangered.”

  It was a simple move by several curious and experienced cops that would change this entire investigation.

  CHAPTER 7

  AFTER A FEW additional weeks of not hearing anything from Heather, MCSO deputy Beth Billings took another ride over to the Iron Skillet, on March 18, after hearing th
at the Petro manager had more information regarding that final conversation she’d had with Heather.

  Brenda Smith, Heather’s boss, was concerned about her friend, coworker and employee as she thought about the circumstances surrounding Heather’s disappearance back on February 15. Heather had taken two calls on that day, Brenda told Billings. She was very upset. When the second call came in, Brenda went out into the restaurant and found Heather.

  “Come back into the office. You have a call ... sounds urgent.” Brenda had no idea who was calling, but only knew that it was a male’s voice she did not recognize.

  When Heather and Brenda returned to the office, the line was dead.

  “What’s going on, Heather?” Brenda asked. “Do you think something is wrong with the kids?”

  “Well, I’m going to call.”

  Brenda waited. She heard Heather call Joshua Fulgham and ask, “Are the kids okay?” Then Brenda walked out of the office to give Heather some privacy.

  Heather finished her phone conversation and soon went back to her station, where she was prepping the salad bar. Brenda walked over to see if things were okay.

  She noticed Heather was crying.

  “Heather . . . are the kids okay?”

  “It’s Josh,” Heather said through tears.

  Brenda left it there. It was the last time she spoke to Heather—because Heather had left work shortly after that conversation and never came back.

  CHAPTER 8

  SCARS—EMOTIONAL OR otherwise—were something Heather Strong had a lot of experience with, especially after Josh Fulgham came into the picture. Their relationship, almost from the time they met as teenagers, was punctuated with problems, mainly beset by Josh’s inability to contain his violent tendencies.

  “It was a big party at my house every day,” Josh explained to me. He had lost his job on that riverboat for not showing up. Meth had become Josh’s number one priority in life.

  “I got Heather started using the drug,” Josh claimed. “That was when things started really going downhill for us.”

  You think!

  Josh said after they began using methamphetamine together, “I became abusive.” He also confessed to stepping out on Heather. Life had not so much turned into one big party than it had gone from two unfettered kids, not realizing what they were getting themselves into, to two jaded adults, now trying to figure out life. One of them had a savage addiction to a drug that showed no mercy—all with kids now depending on them.

  Meth does not discriminate or care who it brings down; it is a drug that has such a strong withdrawal that doing it is seemingly the only remedy for the user. As the cliché claims, it is a vicious cycle once the addict is caught up within it. We’ve all seen those before-and-after photos of meth addicts aging decades inside of a few years of chronic use.

  Using meth—even once—can easily be considered a death sentence.

  Not long after Heather gave birth to their first child, they agreed it would be best for Heather to go live with her grandmother. Josh and Heather were toxic together; maybe they (and their child) had a chance if apart.

  “But I was still going over to her grandmother’s, visiting and bringing drugs,” Josh explained.

  The drugs kept them together and also having sex. Soon Heather was pregnant with their second child.

  “I am not sure,” Josh said years later, “that one is mine.” (Josh’s proof is only that, according to how he feels, the child does not look like him.)

  While Heather was pregnant this second time, Josh’s mother, Judy Chandler, moved to Florida. Josh said it was around then that he “became a bum,” although it’s hard to argue that before then he was anything else.

  What Josh meant was that he had no place to call his own at that time. He was simply bouncing around, all doped up, staying with friends and an occasional night sleepover with Heather, when she decided to put up with him.

  “I hooked up with this guy who was in the meth game and started staying with him, inside an old school bus.”

  According only to Josh, Heather continued to use meth, this after they started not seeing each other regularly. Josh soon met another woman, he said, which was “more lust, not love.” The woman was thirty-two, and Josh twenty-one at the time. She loved him, he claimed, but he had no feelings for her other than as a bed and meth-smoking partner.

  There was one day when his new girlfriend took off for work. Josh stayed in bed, but managed to get up at one point and walk into the bathroom.

  “I had been up for almost two weeks,” he claimed. It was a meth binge like he had never been on before. The drug had taken over. Josh had no more control of his life.

  After going to the bathroom, Josh happened to stop and look at himself in the mirror. The creature he saw looking back was not a man he had recognized. It scared him. He showered and shaved, figuring that would help.

  Problem was that Josh couldn’t wash off the addiction he had to meth.

  “I looked like a zombie from some horror movie. . . .”

  Josh had seen enough, he said. He was tired of ripping and running.

  “Mom,” Josh said a few minutes later on the phone. He was desperate and in tears. “I cannot do this anymore. I cannot live this life any longer. I have to get my life together. I have children.”

  Josh’s mother had been speaking to Heather once a week because of the kids. Although she had moved to Florida, Josh’s mother stayed in contact with everyone she could back home. According to Josh’s later recollection, his mother told him that Heather had said recently that she still loved him and wanted to get back together and be a family for once in their lives. It was something Heather, like all new mothers, dreamed about: a good man, jobs, a house, cookouts, neighbors, school functions, birthday parties for the kids with family. Simple dreams any young girl might have. The drugs had gotten in the way of it all. But Heather—and apparently, Josh—was ready to give up the street life and make a go of it.

  Heather, alone and young, gave up that baby for adoption, Josh explained. As she dealt with that loss, he spent months getting his act together. Soon they were reunited in Florida.

  “I got myself back in good health and was working every day, doing like I was supposed to do, taking care of my family.”

  They found a home in Citra. Heather got herself that job at Petro. Life was not necessarily a citadel of happiness and all things good and healthy, but it was okay. They weren’t rolling in money, but they were living somewhat normal lives. They were getting up and trying to do the right thing every day.

  It was 2006 when Heather got pregnant again. It was a welcomed blessing this time around. Josh was running a lawn care crew of a few men. He had his life together as best he could.

  “We were a happy, little family,” Josh told me. “But there was something missing there. We had a poor sex life—and that caused us to argue a lot.”

  It was around this time that Josh fell in with a new group of people he had met in town. One of them was Emilia “Lily” Yera, who was dating a guy Josh knew. Josh’s buddy, Adam Stover, told him how hot the sex was with Emilia. She was a firecracker in bed, like nothing the guy had ever experienced. Josh seemed interested. Due to an abusive childhood, he had serious issues with sex, which would be revealed much later. For Josh, sex was something he needed to control, especially the time and place. Inside his own home, he wasn’t getting anything like that sex Emilia was giving his friend. He often wondered what it was like to have such an experimental, sadomasochistic life in the bedroom. He didn’t know it then, but Josh’s psyche was craving a certain type of sex because of what he had been through as a child.

  One night, Adam made a suggestion to Josh. He said, “Josh, you want to make a porn film with us?” The friend was speaking of himself and Emilia.

  Josh was stunned by this, but the prospect seemed intriguing. According to what Josh said many years later, at the time he didn’t think Emilia, the way she looked then, was all that attractive, but he bel
ieved “she had potential.”

  “Yeah,” Josh said. “Okay. What the hell!” He was reluctant, but it sounded like a good time. It would be Josh, Emilia, and Adam in the movie. Emilia was all for it, Josh was told. She was entirely into it.

  When the specific night for the tryst and filmmaking came, Josh backed out. It just seemed too crazy and unlike anything he had ever done.

  Josh and this guy, however, became close friends.

  Soon they were best friends.

  “I’m moving to Tennessee,” Adam told him one day. “Me and Emilia.”

  “Wow, really?”

  Josh knew that it was a good move for his friend, but he’d miss him like the dickens. They were really tight.

  “Truly, they were like brothers,” Emilia told me later, describing the friendship between Josh and Adam Stover.

  Adam moved to Tennessee with Emilia, and Josh went back to his life with Heather and the kids. He missed his friend. They kept in touch via phone, text, and saw each other on occasion, but Josh longed for that daily interaction. He couldn’t shake missing the close companionship and the way they had shared everything between them. They had relied on each other for life advice and support.

  Some time went by, and then that call no one wants came into Josh’s home. He and Heather were still together, but this second time around, it wasn’t that bright and new relationship it had started off as. They were falling into old habits and fighting again. They had moments, but Josh was not the easiest man to get along with. He was demanding and often flew off the handle for no reason. He’d strike Heather from time to time. She’d hit him back, according to several reports. And there was always that on-edge feeling being around Josh—as though, Heather knew, the guy could snap at any moment and either come home blazed on meth, running around like a wild man, drunk and stumbling and mumbling, or simply pissed off and in a rage because life had not been what Josh expected it to be.

  “Accident?” Josh said, responding to the phone call. His best buddy had gotten into a car accident in Tennessee.