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The Bad Nurse
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Other Books by Sheila Johnson
Blood Lust
Blood Highway
Blood Ambush
Blood Betrayal
Dead of Night (with Gary C. King)
THE BAD NURSE
Sheila Johnson
Kensington Publishing Corp.
http://www.kensingtonbooks.com
All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.
Table of Contents
Other Books by Sheila Johnson
Title Page
Dedication
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
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Copyright Page
For Buddy
CHAPTER 1
In the little town of Ider, in DeKalb County, Alabama, the residents usually know all there is to know about their friends and neighbors. There aren’t that many secrets that remain a secret for long in most rural small towns in the South, and gossip isn’t considered an invasion of privacy or even bad manners. It is simply thought of as passing along interesting information.
Billy Junior Shaw, the owner of Shaw Saddlery, was an expert saddle maker and prominent businessman. He was a valued member of the community, known and liked very much throughout the area. When Karri Willoughby, one of his stepdaughters and a nurse, found him dead in his home on April 22, 2008, people were saddened but not completely surprised to hear of his passing. His wife, Lila “Susie” Shaw, had died only twenty-two days earlier, on April 1, and many of those who knew the couple assumed that his death might have been linked to his grief over her passing.
Karri Willoughby told the emergency personnel who responded to her distraught 911 call that she had stopped by to check on her stepfather on the way home from her job at the Chattanooga Surgery Center in Tennessee. She had found him inside his home, unresponsive.
During the customary investigation that followed Shaw’s passing, the coroner ruled that his unattended death had been caused by a heart attack. Family and friends believed that depression due to the loss of his wife had most likely been a contributing factor in Shaw’s sudden collapse. They took comfort in their faith that the two had been reunited again and were now resting beside one another in the Fuller Cemetery.
As was standard procedure in almost all unattended deaths, samples of Shaw’s blood and urine had been taken by the coroner and sent to the state forensic laboratory in Huntsville, Alabama, for testing. Results of the tests were not expected for quite some time, due to a huge backlog of cases at the laboratory. The test results would likely be routine, law enforcement assumed, confirming the coroner’s preliminary finding of a heart attack being the probable cause of Shaw’s death.
Over six months later, DeKalb County sheriff Jimmy Harris was shocked when he opened his mail one morning to find a most unexpected toxicology report from the Huntsville laboratory. An investigation into Shaw’s death was immediately started. Despite the death having initially been ruled a heart attack, Sheriff Harris and his investigators had just received confirmation from the forensic lab that Billy Junior Shaw had been murdered.
CHAPTER 2
Initially no one outside law enforcement and the district attorney’s office knew about the receipt of the unexpected results of the toxicology report, or why there was a sudden renewal of interest in the cause of Billy Shaw’s death. But as the authorities launched the investigation, information gradually leaked about the case. Whispered rumors about the circumstances of the death soon began to circulate in the community.
As those rumors gradually increased, they provided the sheriff with some surprising new information. It seemed that there were several stories making the rounds about one of Shaw’s two stepdaughters who had filed for bankruptcy more than once, and who had ongoing serious financial problems.
The authorities learned that prior to Shaw’s death, the woman had been caught on multiple occasions withdrawing funds from the bank account of her stepfather’s saddlery business. She also had been stealing the identity of her mother, applying for credit cards in her mother’s name, and taking money from her mother’s bank account by forging Mrs. Shaw’s name on several large checks.
Billy Shaw’s exhumation was ordered after toxicology results revealed he had been injected with propofol.
This stepdaughter, Karri Willoughby, was, coincidentally, the same person who had reported that she had arrived at Billy Shaw’s home, found him unresponsive, and had placed the call to 911 for help. When making a statement during the initial investigation, the 911 operator had recalled advising Karri to begin CPR, continuing until the paramedics reached Shaw’s home.
But when questioned later, after the toxicology results were received, the paramedics who responded to Shaw’s residence on the day of his death remembered that they had thought it strange at the time that there was no indication that CPR had been performed on Shaw. They had assumed that since she was a nurse, CPR should have been the first thing that Karri would have done, but that was not the case.
The casket, loaded and ready for transport to the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences Laboratory at Huntsville.
The whispers about Billy Junior Shaw’s death were beginning to build in volume. When it became public knowledge that Sheriff Harris had obtained an exhumation order to remove Shaw’s body from his grave in the Fuller Cemetery, the rumors began to fly in earnest. Harris and his officers had been attempting to keep a tight lid on their reasons for the exhumation and the renewed homicide investigation, but speculation in the community ran wild. It was, after all, the first exhumation in DeKalb County for over thirty years.
CHAPTER 3
On May 13, 2009, more than a year after his burial, the remains of Billy Junior Shaw were removed from the Fuller Cemetery in Ider and taken to the forensic lab in Huntsville for a full autopsy. Harris remained very tight-lipped about the homicide investigation, telling the press that he did not know when to expect results from the autopsy. Additionally, he explained, at the time of Shaw’s death, his department had not been aware of the possibility of any foul play being involved. There had been no indication at the scene that caused any suspicion. Harris did say, however, that the sheriff’s department and the district attorney’s office had been working in cooperation on the case and hoped to make an arrest soon.
Only five days later, on Monday, May 18, Harris issued another statement, which indicated that his department’s activity on the case had been progressing faster than he had initially led the media to believe. An arrest could possibly be made that week, he said. Harris revealed that both a man and a woman had been interviewed at length by his department in connection with
Shaw’s murder. They were both considered to be persons of interest in the case, he said, and his investigators were set to meet on Wednesday with District Attorney Mike O’Dell to plan further action toward the identification and subsequent prosecution of Shaw’s killer.
Matters, however, did not proceed as quickly as the authorities had hoped. Plans for an arrest in the case were put on hold for almost exactly another year, while information and evidence continued to pile up against the person whom law enforcement had focused in on and whom they now believed to be solely responsible for Shaw’s murder. Instead of an immediate arrest, the case was carefully solidified and then turned over to a grand jury.
Billy Shaw’s coffin stands ready to be opened in the forensic laboratory so that a complete autopsy can be conducted.
When an indictment for capital murder was issued by the grand jury in May 2010, two years after Shaw’s death, Sheriff Harris issued a statement saying that it was an unfortunate, tragic situation, but he and his investigators and the district attorney (DA) would not have presented the case to the grand jury if they had not had conclusive evidence. They had, they believed, pinpointed the identity of the killer and had established both means and motive for Shaw’s death.
Investigators carefully pumped out the Shaw septic tank to check for evidence that might have been flushed.
Contents of the septic tank were transported and emptied into a holding tank to be sure no potential evidence had been overlooked.
In the indictment that the grand jury handed down, they stated that the person they believed to be responsible for murder had “caused the death” of Billy Junior Shaw “by lethal injection and did so for pecuniary or other valuable consideration.”
When Shaw’s stepdaughter Karri Denise Willoughby turned herself in at the DeKalb County Detention Center on Friday, May 14, following her indictment for the capital murder of her stepfather, she was placed under arrest and held without bail in the DeKalb County Jail. News of her arrest sent the Ider community into immediate turmoil, and it only increased as Sheriff Harris provided further details of her indictment, surrender, and arrest to the media.
The motive for the murder was financial, Harris said in his statement to the press. Karri was set to profit from Shaw’s death, he said, inheriting a large share of his estate. Harris said that Karri had been the person who initially reported Shaw’s death, claiming that she had found him unconscious in his home in the Cartersville community, north of Ider.
Karri Denise Willoughby, a nurse who was Billy Shaw’s stepdaughter, turned herself in at the DeKalb County Sheriff’s Department after being indicted by a grand jury for his murder.
Emergency personnel from both the Ider Rescue Squad and the DeKalb Ambulance Service had responded to the scene, and Shaw had been pronounced dead by the DeKalb County coroner, Tom Wilson. Wilson’s initial findings were that Shaw had died of an apparent heart attack. However, Harris said, after discussions with District Attorney Mike O’Dell, Wilson “took measures at the scene, which later provided clues as to the cause of Mr. Shaw’s death,” referring to the blood and urine samples that were collected and sent to the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences (ADFS) Laboratory at Huntsville.
Harris finally revealed to the media why the results of that initial analysis had resulted in the exhumation and autopsy. Those first results, he said, had shown that instead of a heart attack, Billy Junior Shaw had died of a lethal injection of propofol, the drug that caused the death of Michael Jackson, the “King of Pop,” at his California estate.
CHAPTER 4
Michael Jackson’s death occurred on June 25, 2009. When his doctor, Conrad Murray, was arrested in connection with Jackson’s death, many of the countless news items mentioned that it was the third-known case of death being caused by a lethal dose of propofol.
The first was a homicide case in Florida, when a twenty-four-year-old Gainesville woman, Michelle Herndon, was found dead in her home in 2005. Herndon had no history of drug abuse, according to her autopsy findings; and as soon as test results were revealed and her death was ruled a homicide due to an overdose of propofol, authorities began looking for those people who were in some way connected to Michelle Herndon and who could have had access to the drug. They soon found that a male acquaintance of hers, Oliver O’Quinn, a registered nurse, not only had that access, but he also had obtained propofol and other drugs during his time working at a surgical intensive care unit (ICU).
O’Quinn was charged with Herndon’s murder, and his 2008 conviction marked the first time that propofol had been acknowledged as a murder weapon.
The second documented propofol death was that of Billy Junior Shaw in 2008, and Michael Jackson’s highly publicized death in 2009 became the third in which the powerful hospital sedative was found to be the cause. In Jackson’s situation, it had been administered, supposedly as a sleep aid, by Conrad Murray at the Jackson estate, at the request of the pop singer. When Jackson was found unresponsive, he was rushed to the hospital, to no avail. Murray would be found guilty of involuntary manslaughter and responsible for Jackson’s death. Following a sensational trial, he was sent to prison for up to four years.
On October 28, 2013, with little fanfare, Conrad Murray walked out of jail thirteen minutes after midnight, a free man. He had served a little under two years, half his sentence, and was released for good behavior. He immediately petitioned for the return of his license to practice medicine in Texas and California.
CHAPTER 5
Karri Denise Willoughby was liked extremely well by a large number of steadfast, longtime friends and social media acquaintances. She was very active on Facebook and wrote her own blog, with long, detailed posts about her family life and activities, always with very heavy and frequent religious references. She had lots of followers, and she followed a long list of other bloggers who were, for the most part, young mothers who had a great deal in common with her.
Karri’s Internet presence had ramped up considerably immediately after the deaths of Billy Shaw and her mother, almost as though she was preparing her loyal followers to throw themselves wholeheartedly behind her with their almost fanatical support if she should be accused of Shaw’s murder. In everything she posted following his death, she regularly mentioned how much she missed her parents and how she was soldiering on through her grief to be strong for her children and husband.
She wrote poems to the Shaws and longed, she said, for the day she would be reunited with them in Heaven. In her post following the first Christmas after the deaths of Billy and Susie Shaw, Karri told how, as her family celebrated the birth of Jesus, it was through His grace, she said, that they had also found peace in the death of their loved ones.
Oh, how it thrills my soul to know that mom and Junior are singing in the Lord’s choir now, Karri wrote. She knew, she said, that they would not come back, even if they could, nor would she ask them to out of selfishness: [B]ut I so look forward to that meeting day in the air!
Karri followed with a poem she called “Dear Mom and Dad in Heaven,” in which she wrote about how much she wished she could sit and talk to her parents that day and tell them how much they were loved and missed. An angel had come and had taken their hands, Karri said, and told them their place was ready in Heaven: You had so much to live for, you had so much to do.... It still seemed impossible, that God was taking you.
Karri ended her poem by saying that though her parents had walked through Heaven’s gate, they were never far apart. Each time she and her family thought of them, they were right there, deep within their hearts.
Karri then wrote that she had prayed and cried out to God more since losing her parents than in her whole life combined.
It seems like this past year has been a roller-coaster of emotions, she wrote, adding that losing her mom and Junior still hurt her down to her soul every day. The holidays, she claimed, only made it worse.
All the estate stuff is still up in the air too, she added, almost as an afterthought.
Karri then addressed those who regularly followed her blog, saying that those who knew her were aware that her family had to “say enough goodbyes this year,” which she said had been the hardest and most eye-opening time of her life. She missed her parents so much every day, she said, adding that it was very hard to explain to her three- and four-year-old children where Mawmaw and Pawpaw were.
Their loss, Karri said, had caused her to learn that God was “the great comforter.” And because of losing her parents, she now tried to let everyone in her life know how much she loved and appreciated them: For all you who have stood by me and supported me thus far, thank you! Your love and kindness and the grace of God has kept me from losing my sanity.
CHAPTER 6
Gradually, as time passed following Billy Shaw’s death, the possibility of impending troubles began to be very skillfully inserted into Karri’s writing, prepping her readers for things to come. A few months after the holidays, she wrote that she would have never thought that she would be a stay-at-home mom and homemaker: [B]ut I think I can do it! I must say it’s much harder than any paying job I’ve ever had!
Blood Ambush
The Bad Nurse