Charmin' Billy

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.

William Neal walks over to the lectern to make his opening statement. The freedom to move across the courtroom is part of the deal he's worked out as he plays the part of his own lawyer, but the deputies take a couple of steps closer, just in case. As with most defendants who appear in today's courtrooms, Neal was offered the opportunity to dress in civilian clothes. But he'd turned it down, saying he deserved only to wear his inmate orange.

"September 20, 1999, Monday morning, a day that's much more to some, much less to others," Neal begins. It's Yom Kippur, "a special day." The day of atonement, he notes, a day for "reconciliation, forgiveness...peace."

He shakes his head in apparent disbelief. "This is one of the most horrendous things I ever heard of," he says. "How could someone do what I have done? I wish I could say I was innocent. There is no excuse for this crime. I can't wash my hands enough for this."

He is guilty as charged, he says. "Mr. Tingle is an honorable man, and he speaks the truth. He has been honest with me and did not exaggerate anything. I would not change what he said, except maybe to fill in some blanks."

By doing so, he will be the voice for "three wonderful, trusting, beautiful women."

But first Neal launches into his now-standard spiel about the truth setting him free. He had been molested as a child, he notes, an excuse that let him spend his life blaming someone else while refusing to "look at myself."

Now he's a changed man, one who would gladly exchange his life for those of his victims if he could. There's an old Turkish proverb, he says: "No matter how long you've gone down the wrong road, turn back, turn back."

He's turned back, he says. "Even a wretched life means something," he implores the judges. "Even a wretched life can change. I do not want to die, for I know I've turned around."

He wants to live, Neal says, so that he can "zealously" serve Jesus in prison. He also promises to make "full restitution," although he does not say how. And finally, he promises not to cross-examine his rape victim or the murdered women's families so as to spare them further pain.

In his opening, Tingle didn't really outline the aggravators the state will seek to prove. So Neal does it for him.

The crime was "especially heinous, cruel and depraved," he says. "That's an accurate assessment." He killed two or more people by "lying in wait." True. He "intentionally" killed two or more people with "universal malice and extreme indifference to the value of human life." True. He killed a kidnapped person. True. He killed to prevent prosecution. "That's what precipitated the whole thing." And he killed for monetary gain. "Yes," he concludes, "all of the aggravating factors are present."

As for mitigators, Neal suggests there are only three, starting with the "age of the defendant." Although he was 42 at the time of the crimes, earlier traumas had left him "a child...hiding and stalking...scared of being punished for what he had been doing and what he had become."

And the defendant may not have been in the frame of mind to "appreciate the wrongfulness of his conduct," he says, speaking of himself in the third person before quickly admitting, "I knew that what I was going to do was wrong and chose to do it anyway." He only half-heartedly attempts to argue that the defendant may have been under "unusual and substantial duress... I've been through a lot of tough times in my life, but I don't see it."

What he had become, Neal says, did not "happen overnight...It took time to build a box to live in and hide. There's no light in that box, just the presence of evil -- and evil cannot stand the light."

No mitigator that can morally justify the crimes. "How can you justify the murder of three women and the rape of a 21-year-old, who'll be forever haunted by what she saw?" he asks. Neal says he wants to take "responsibility for the whole thing. I will not accept less." But on the other hand, he adds, "I want to live, and my only chance is to tell the truth."

Of one last, potential mitigator, that he does not pose a threat to society, he shrugs, then says: "I never expected to do what I did, but I did it."

On the second day of the trial, a small, young blond woman rises from the first row of spectator seats behind the prosecution table and approaches the judges. If this case had gone to trial, the woman would not have been allowed into the courtroom until her testimony. But since William Neal has already pleaded guilty, she is free to attend as much of the trial as she can stand.

Although she avoided all the hearings leading up to the death-penalty trial, she came for opening statements the day before, staying in the protective shadow of her mother or boyfriend as Tingle briefly outlined the horrors she suffered.

Now she keeps her eyes on Tingle and away from Neal as she meets the bailiff and swears to tell the truth on the witness stand. She states her full name for the record at the prosecutor's request; that name is not to be used by the media.

"How long have you been in Denver?" Tingle asks.

"My entire life," "Suzanne" answers. Twenty-two years. Her voice is so soft that she's asked to pull the microphone closer, which she does self-consciously by sliding her chair closer.

Tingle is worried. He can't testify for her: Suzanne has to be the one to put the judges in the middle of the crime scene and describe how horrific it was so that they know exactly the sort of defendant they are dealing with. After what she had been through, had Suzanne been adamant about not wanting to testify, the prosecutors would have understood. But she seemed to know how vital her testimony was going to be, and she never expressed the slightest hesitation about going forward. The prosecutors could tell, though, that she was scared to death.

In late 1997, Suzanne was roommates with "Beth," a woman she'd met at her work. Beth was older, divorced with three kids and struggling to make ends meet. They became close friends, rooming together and often going out for drinks and to dance. One hangout was a bar near work called Shipwreck's.

That was where she first heard about a guy named Cody Neal. Beth and some of her other co-workers knew him: He was a regular at the bar, where he could often be found from noon on.

"Do you have any specific recollection about how Mr. Neal was dressed when you would see him?" Tingle asks.

"Yeah, he always had a black cowboy hat on. When it was colder, he would wear a longer black, like a duster, coat and always wore boots...always in blue jeans," she replies.

It was Beth who wanted Suzanne to go on a double date with Neal and Jimmy, Beth's boyfriend. She wasn't thrilled about the idea -- Neal was quite a bit older -- but after some persuasion, she agreed to go.

Neal called and told Suzanne to meet him at the Sheraton Hotel at Sixth and Union. She was to let the front desk know that she was with him and his party, "and he said that they would take care of me."

Although Beth and Jimmy were already there when she arrived, Neal didn't join them right away. But she could see that the guy had pull. "From the time that I arrived at the hotel and they knew that I was with this group of people, everybody at the hotel was very nice and very accommodating, really catering to whatever our needs were."

Soon after that night, Beth and Jimmy broke up, and Beth began seeing more of Neal. As his relationship with her roommate warmed up, Suzanne began to see him more, too.

"What was your understanding, if you had any, about his financial situation by May and June of 1998?" Tingle asks. His voice is soft, guiding, as he keeps his eyes on Suzanne's. He began with easy, non-emotional questions to let her get comfortable, and she is responding very well so far.

"At certain times, it would seem like he had quite a bit of money, and he was not discreet about having the large amounts of money," she answers.

This is good; she is requiring very little prompting. "Can you elaborate for us?"

"There was an occasion before my birthday, and he came and gave me a hundred dollars," she says. "At that time, we weren't that close of friends, I don't believe."

Neal and Beth had been out that night; Suzanne woke up when they returned. "Then Cody came in," she says, "and he had a hundred dollars in one-dollar bills...He just threw them all over my bed, and he just, you know, said that we could use that when we went out to celebrate for my birthday."

Neal was always a "very generous tipper," she says. "He would never allow anybody to buy anything, you know, so whenever I went out with him and Beth, he was the one that always paid."

Neal never told the women where he lived, not exactly. He said he split his time between Denver and Las Vegas, where he had a home. "But he had never stayed there," she says. "He was waiting until his little girl could stay with him before he would stay in that house."

Neal had even showed her photos of the Las Vegas home, which he kept in a white, three-ring binder with sheet protectors. "A very huge house." A mansion.

He was always full of surprises. So it was not unusual when, in mid-June, he began talking to Suzanne about a surprise he wanted to give Beth. They were at a bar, and Neal was talking about wanting to help Beth out of the financial mess she was in. "He had talked about getting her a new car and different things like that."

But Neal also seemed to have another girlfriend, Angela Fite, whom Suzanne met about this same time. "Cody and Angie were at the Broker at the Tech Center," she remembers. "Cody had asked that Beth and I come down and see them so that we could have a drink together to celebrate my birthday."

They stayed for only one drink, but Suzanne left with the impression that Neal and Angela were boyfriend and girlfriend. But her roommate seemed to be getting more involved with Neal as well. "She was really starting to care about Cody more...their friendship had just really gotten a lot closer."

In fact, after the meeting at the Broker, they seemed to be going out all the time -- which is how Suzanne began to hear more about Neal, but she didn't know what to believe. Some of their friends at Shipwreck's insisted that he was a bounty hunter, but that wasn't what he'd told her.

In mid-June, Neal started talking to Suzanne about coming to work for him in the mortgage-lending business. "When he told you about his business and made this job offer, did you believe him?" Tingle asks.