Charmin' Billy

The day after killing Holberton, Neal told 48-year-old Candace Walters, a woman he'd met in December 1997 when she was working as a bartender at the Sheraton Hotel off Sixth Avenue and Union, that he was about to receive $52 million. He told her that in the old days, when he was "a hitman for the mob," he'd warned one of his assigned targets, and the man, who lived in Las Vegas, had been so eternally grateful that he'd left his estate to Neal. Now that his benefactor had died, Neal told Walters, he'd be able to pay off his former wife, a stripper, and get custody of his daughter.

Neal's heartwarming battle for his daughter was one of the things that had endeared him to Walters. She was told that she would now be "paid handsomely for maintaining her silence" about his former occupations. Just how handsomely had changed radically that final week. First she was to get $100,000, many times what she was owed, and they would fly to Las Vegas to get the money. Then it was $1 million and a new Toyota 4-Runner, which they would drive to Las Vegas to get the money and attend a wild party with "the family" for which he had once worked. Finally the amount reached $2.5 million -- one million in cash and the rest to be wired into a bank account. There would also be a new home -- a mansion, really -- down the street from Neal's own place in Las Vegas. He showed her pictures of both that he kept in a white photo album. They were beautiful.

On July 1, 1998, Candace Walters saw her daughter, Holly, for what would be the last time. Holly, who had hired her "best friend and mother" to work for her real-estate financing company and had also offered Neal a job, was leaving in a couple of days to set up a branch office in Missouri.

Holly had her doubts about Neal, particularly his tales of being a former hitman and the magnanimous gift. But it had been a long time since she had seen her mother so happy, and Neal was so warm and attentive toward her that Holly ignored the feeling that something wasn't right.

At Neal's suggestion, Candace Walters called her bank and asked how to go about wiring a large amount into her account. And on July 2, with Rebecca Holberton dead three days, she sold her car to an auto broker. She wouldn't be needing it: Cody was bringing that new 4-Runner that they would drive to Las Vegas.

The next morning, Holly called. Candace told her that Cody was running late but that she expected him anytime. And in fact, a little while later Neal showed up and took her to the townhouse on West Chenango Drive, where the 4-Runner had been delivered, he said.

Whatever sunlight made it in through the covered windows of the townhouse probably wasn't enough to illuminate the fine drops of blood on the wall and ceiling above the chair where Neal had Candace sit. Nor, apparently, did she see the mummy-like object in black plastic a few feet away. She happily sat in the chair, wearing a white sundress, waiting for her surprise. But she wouldn't accept being covered with a blanket. She didn't want her hair messed up for their trip.

Neal disappeared, Tingle tells the court, and returned carrying the maul, "which he brought crashing down on the back of her head with a tremendous impact." This time, however, he used the blade side of the maul and struck four times.

"Candace Walters died a horrible, violent death," Tingle says. "For what?...Unarmed, defenseless...hoping for a better future and life."

Even after that, Neal couldn't leave her in peace. He urinated on her head and shoulders, "an ultimate act of debasement and disrespect for human dignity." Then he wrapped her head in white plastic and moved her body a few feet off to the side, covering her with a blanket.

The man now sitting in front of the judges' panel had killed two women in four days, "but that did not satiate his appetite," Tingle says. "It was far from over." He took Holberton's and Walters's credit cards and accessed their bank accounts. "It was time to party and have a good time."

A time that left another young woman dead and a fourth raped.

The people will be proving six "aggravating factors," Tingle says. Whatever mitigators the defendant might offer to counter the weight of the prosecution's case will "pale in comparison." It is Tingle's hope that the court will look at the "horror of this murder, the brutal contempt for human life" and render the appropriate punishment.

It can be only death.