Charmin' Billy

"Not wholeheartedly," she replies, shaking her head. "With the amount of money that he was talking about...and the split of time in the offices between Las Vegas and Colorado... It really just seemed mostly too good to be true. And I didn't see why he would want -- I mean, I didn't see why he would be offering me something like this."

Neal told her not to mention his offer to anybody. But when he said he wanted her to go to Las Vegas to meet with his lawyers about the job, she broke down and asked Beth if she thought he could be trusted.

"We talked about it for quite a while, and she said that she didn't think that he would ever do anything to hurt us."

For the first time in her testimony, Suzanne falters. Her voice cracks, and she wipes briefly at her eyes. But she quickly regains her composure and goes on.

With that assurance from Beth, she decided to go to Las Vegas and at least see if the offer was solid. When Neal said they'd be staying two nights, however, she balked, until he relented and said they'd stay just one. He would pick her up in the evening of Sunday, July 5, and they'd return Monday.

On Friday, July 3, though, Beth called. "He had made plans for us," Suzanne says. "She thought maybe we were going to go gambling in Central City with Cody that night, so she just said to be home and get ready to go out."

When she got home from work, Beth was already there. She showed off some new outfits Neal had bought her that afternoon. She gave Suzanne a skirt he'd said he would like her to wear.

The night began with a mystery: When they were ready, they were to walk across the street to a pizza joint. There they waited about ten minutes until Neal showed up around 7 p.m. They didn't see him pull in; he just came walking up.

He explained that his truck had a flat and that he was getting it fixed at the tire store next door. While they waited, he said, they might as well order a pizza. And then, to Suzanne's astonishment, he dropped to one knee and proposed to Beth. "She said yes, and he gave her a ring, a diamond ring." Then he left for a nearby liquor store.

Suzanne hadn't known that the relationship between her roommate and Neal was that serious. But after he left, Beth explained that the marriage proposal was just a joke.

"When that was happening," Tingle says, "what was the attitude of Mr. Neal? What was his demeanor?"

"He was very happy, calm," she replies. "He was in a really good mood, you know, like he was happy that Friday night was there, and we were going to have such a good time that night."

Tingle nods. Neal's demeanor at this point will be important for the judges to remember. Because by 7 p.m. Friday, July 3, Rebecca Holberton had been dead and wrapped in black plastic for more than three days. And Neal had split Candace Walters's head open only eight hours earlier.

Neal returned with several airline bottles of alcohol. He invited the women outside to celebrate his "proposal" to Beth. He was dressed in his omnipresent black cowboy hat, black duster and cowboy boots, but he'd eschewed his usual black T-shirt for a Western-style dress shirt.

They were outside toasting when a white stretch limousine pulled up. Neal explained that this was another joke. They weren't taking his truck tonight; they were going in style. But this wasn't a really big surprise, since such extravagance was just Wild Bill Cody's style. "It seemed like that was the way he preferred to go out," Suzanne says.

With Neal directing, they went to two bars. First Fugglies, where he went in with the women, and then Shipwreck's, where he stayed outside without explaining why. Then it was off for the night's biggest surprise: dinner at the Diamond Cabaret, a "gentleman's club" with a restaurant and lounge on one side and topless dancing on the other.

Neal, of course, picked up the tab. He had plenty of cash, having gone to an ATM machine with Candace Walters's debit card and removed $403 -- after already taking $1,287 from Holberton's account.

Following dinner, the two women went into the bathroom, where they were approached by a woman asking for Suzanne by name. When Suzanne identified herself, the woman said that "Cody wanted us to go with her." She led them into the topless section of the club, where Neal paid two of the dancers to perform in front of his two dates.

The dance over, Neal decided it was time to leave. But first he handed Beth and Suzanne handfuls of dollar bills and instructed them to put the money on a stage where a woman was dancing. "He appeared to know the woman."

The trio ended the evening at a bar the women selected, the Stampede. There they were joined by several young men trying to figure out if one of the two women with Neal was available. Wild Bill Cody was holding court, lecturing the younger bucks on how to behave like a proper gentleman.

"That they should stand up when a lady comes back to sit down," Suzanne recalls of his lecture, "and a lady shouldn't light her own cigarettes."

They got home about 3 a.m., and Neal spent the night with Beth. Suzanne didn't see him there in the morning, but he was back that afternoon when she left to spend the Fourth of July in Greeley.

Tingle pauses. The groundwork has been laid: Within days -- hours, really -- of brutally murdering two women, the polite, respectful man in the orange jumpsuit the judges see before them had been out partying. Playing jokes. Spending the dead women's money on strippers and booze. Lecturing other men on how to treat a lady.

Suzanne has held together remarkably well, but now comes the tough part. It is time to open the wound. "I would like to talk about July the 5th, Sunday."

Neal was supposed to pick her up that night about 7 p.m.; they would drive to the airport together for the flight to Vegas. Suzanne was dressed in conservative business attire -- a peach blouse and navy blue slacks -- and she'd packed another business outfit for the next day.

In the car, Neal told her they were running a little early, so they stopped for a drink at Fugglies. In the bar, he told her that before they left for Las Vegas, he wanted to show her the surprise he had for Beth. He drove her to a townhouse on West Chenango Drive, not far from the bar.

Neal pulled into the garage and shut the garage door as soon as the truck was parked. "He explained that it would be more or less like a dress rehearsal...that he wanted me to be blindfolded and he wanted to put duct tape on my mouth because that was how Beth was going to do it when she walked into her surprise."

"What was his attitude and demeanor like at that time?"

"He seemed excited and, you know, like this was a great thing that we were going to be working on together." Neal had talked about getting Beth a new SUV, and there was a new Ford Bronco in the garage.

"He had me take off my glasses. Then he tied a piece of bath towel around my eyes and asked me if I could see out of the blindfold."

Suzanne told him no, she couldn't see -- but if she looked straight down, she actually could see the floor at her feet. He then put duct tape over her mouth, which was uncomfortable but not painful.

Neal had her take his arm as he led her through the garage and up the steps into the townhome. Inside, he picked up a cat. "He wanted me to meet his cat, and he had me pet his cat." He led her down a hallway. It was then that Suzanne knew that something was wrong. For one thing, there was no carpeting in the hallway, just bare plywood. More than that, though, "It just didn't feel right."

When they reached a room, Neal turned her around and told her to sit down. The seat was further down than she had figured; she realized she was sitting on a mattress.

In court, Suzanne can't remember if Neal told her he was going to tie her up or if he just did it. Soon she was spread-eagled and on her back. Helpless.

Suzanne hesitates and, finally, begins to cry. Tingle waits until she pulls herself together. "I didn't want to be...I didn't want to be tied up," she says, "so I started to cry, and I asked him to just let me go. And I promised that I wouldn't say anything to anybody about what had happened so far...He just told me to shut up, and he said that I hadn't seen him be cold and mean and that I didn't want to.

"Once he tied me up," Suzanne continues, "he opened my blouse and cut off my bra, and he cut off my pants, and he cut off my underwear." She couldn't see the knife he was using, but she could feel the cold steel against her skin.

"Do you remember what you were thinking?" Tingle asks.

"Mostly I was thinking about not crying."

"Did you know what was going to happen to you?"

"I had a feeling about what was going to happen."

Neal took off her blindfold and duct tape. "He asked me if I had ever seen a human skull. I said no, and he left the bed and came back with an ice cream wrapper," Suzanne says quietly. "He pulled out a piece of bone...he held it in front of me, and he was touching it...there was hair on it and he said, 'Can you see that?' And then he laid it on my stomach."

"What was his attitude and demeanor like when he did that?"

"Just like he was showing off, like, 'Look at what I have.'"

"What did he do when he put that piece of human skull on your stomach?"

"I think that he just watched me to see what my reaction would be."

Neal had been crouching at her side, but now he stood and walked past a chair at the end of the mattress toward the fireplace.

"He lifted up a blanket that was by the fireplace, and he held up a leg," Suzanne says. "I could see a leg and a sock and a shoe...that's when he said that the black plastic was a body, too...Then he kicked the black plastic bag. He kicked it hard."

"What was going through your mind at this time?"

"I just thought I was going to die, because I didn't understand why he would show me what he did and then let me live."

Neal taped her mouth closed again. He fondled her breasts and legs, but there wasn't time for more of that, he said. He had to leave to get somebody else, and she'd better not make a sound. "Because there were people upstairs, and if they were to come downstairs that they wouldn't be as nice to me as he had been. And he said that, you know, one guy would come down and would rape me, and I would die."

Covering her from head to toe with a blanket, Neal left Suzanne in the dark, thinking of the horror around her. She concentrated on the country-Western music station he'd left on the television, counting two music videos and two commercial breaks before hearing him return.

Apparently he'd brought someone else with him. She could hear them whispering. Then there was the sound of duct-tape being pulled off the roll.

In his deep rumble, Neal asked the newcomer, "Can you get out of that?" There was the sound of duct tape pulling apart, and then of more tape being applied. "That's better," he said, then asked, "So, how's your day going so far?"

Suzanne heard a woman answer him. She recognized the voice: It was Angela Fite. She heard Neal ask Angie if she'd talked to Mike, her estranged husband, that day.

In his confession to the police, Neal said this was the point at which he showed Angela the bodies of Rebecca and Candace, saying, "Welcome to my mortuary." But Suzanne couldn't hear all that was said and doesn't mention this.

Instead she recalls the blanket suddenly being pulled from her lower half and a hand briefly groping her upper thigh. A moment later, the blanket was pulled from her face and she saw Angie, sitting facing her in a chair a foot or so from the end of the mattress, her wrists and legs bound to the chair's arms and legs with duct tape.

"I think it really took Angie by surprise," Suzanne recalls. "She just looked at me, and she shook her head and she said, 'I'm sorry...We're not going to get out of here alive, are we?'"

Neal ignored the exchange and kept talking to Angie about Mike. He was smoking and let his captives each have a draw from his cigarette, pulling the tape from Suzanne's mouth. Whatever he was up to, he seemed in no hurry.