Charmin' Billy

A few days before the trial, Tingle had received a call from deputies at the jail. An upscale Denver jewelry-store manager was complaining that the store was getting "harassing" telephone calls from Neal, who wanted a wedding set and felt he was getting the runaround.

Tingle knew that Neal had a new girlfriend, "Julie," a "trust fund baby" in Phoenix, according to a Jeffco investigator. She sent him money regularly and had even been up to visit him since his arrest. According to the investigator, Julia had met Neal in 1995 at a Lakewood bar, where he'd introduced himself by pulling up her shirt.

Incredible. Neal was still able to cast his spells inside and outside the jail. Ted Bundy, the serial killer executed in 1989 whose exploits had become favorite reading material for Neal, had married while on death row -- but at least his bride had been able to convince herself that he was innocent. Haircuts in the jail cost $6. Tingle has seen records that Neal paid cash for his -- and left $14 tips.

Neal didn't have a job in July 1998, Tingle now tells the panel. Yet he hung out at neighborhood bars and strip joints and threw money around "like it was going out of style. He'd buy a ten-dollar lunch and leave a 150 percent tip," he says. "The problem was, it was not his money." By then, he had bilked Rebecca Holberton out of as much as $70,000 and Candace Walters out of another $6,000.

But "the walls were caving in." Holberton, a 44-year-old blonde who worked at US West, had told a friend she was ready to get Neal, who had been living with her since July 1996, out of her life. But first she wanted her money back.

And Walters was trying to find out more about her secretive lover Cody, who said he had homes in Las Vegas and Denver but wouldn't tell her where he lived. She had made him sign a promissory note for the money he owed her and was threatening to expose him to Holberton and, perhaps, the police.

"Rather than risk being exposed for who he really was," Tingle says, Neal came up with a plan.

Early on June 30, 1998, Neal drove to Builder's Square for a little shopping. He bought Lava soap, four eyebolts, nylon rope, duct tape -- Tingle goes over to the jury box in front of the prosecution table to grab some evidence -- and "a seven-and-a-half-pound splitting maul."

Half ax, half sledgehammer, the maul has a wooden handle the length of a baseball bat. Even some of the spectators who know how the murders were done groan at the sight of the tool. But it is not the murder weapon, just an identical match. The actual murder weapon waits in a clear plastic bag, still stained with blood, although the Colorado Bureau of Investigation has removed most of the gore for testing.

At the time, Neal was living with Holberton at her townhome on West Chenango Drive in Lakewood. Apparently they were doing some renovations to the place -- the carpeting had been removed from the hallways leading into the living room, and butcher paper covered the windows and the glass sliding door at the back of the townhouse.

When Neal returned home from his early-morning shopping trip, he placed a chair in the middle of the living room and invited Holberton, still wearing her bathrobe, to take a seat. He had talked about a surprise he had for her, which she thought meant he was going to repay her from the "millions" he'd come into as the result of a settlement. In fact, earlier that morning he'd had her write out checks for more than $56,000 to pay back her creditors. In Neal's own words, Tingle says, she was "filled with joy and happiness."

Neal opened a bottle of champagne to celebrate Holberton's impending financial solvency, then put his briefcase on her lap and told her to place her hands on it, intimating that it contained the cash to cover her debts. He covered her with a blanket so that she couldn't see, and there she waited for her surprise.

It came quickly. Neal fetched his splitting maul and "ambushed Rebecca from behind, unleashing a violent and ferocious attack using the hammer side of the maul," Tingle told the court. He brought the weapon down "with such force that it completely caved in the back of her skull," sending skull fragments into her brain and gouging out a two-inch piece of skull that went flying across the room.

Holberton fell to the ground, "never to rise again." Neal wrapped her head in clear plastic to catch the blood, and then, after binding her limbs and body with nylon rope, wrapped her in black plastic like a mummy and placed her against a wall of the apartment.

From his seat at the defense table, Neal looks quickly behind him, then just as quickly ducks his head beneath the hard stares. He returns his attention to Tingle and continues to scribble notes on a yellow legal pad.