My life growing up was pretty unstable.
I wanted so bad to have that nuclear family
that I had lacked.
NARRATOR: Brian Cargill is an architect in search
of a wife and the white picket fence.
BRIAN: Kimberly was really beautiful and charismatic.
I felt like, oh, she really gets me.
NARRATOR: But when Kimberly turns into a human wrecking ball...
Just out of nowhere, she just punched me in the face.
[grunts]
She was bad and evil.
He was sleeping with the devil.
NARRATOR: No one in Brian's life will be safe.
BRIAN: I took photographs of the abuse.
We went into hiding immediately.
MELANIE: This body was so badly burned,
they couldn't identify who it was.
WILLIAM: She is one of the most vindictive,
violent female psychopaths ever.
[theme music playing]
BRIAN: I was born in Wichita Falls, Texas.
It was a great way to grow up, for sure.
The adults are like, "Kids, go outside."
And so we just played in the barn
where there's, like, big tractors and stuff.
It was really fun.
And my parents were married for
about three years, and they got divorced.
So my mom was pretty much a single mom,
and she moved us around a lot.
NARRATOR: As a boy, Brian Cargill's life
is in constant motion.
BRIAN: I ended up going to probably six different
elementary schools,
probably five or six different junior highs,
and three different high schools.
It was pretty unstable most of the time.
NARRATOR: Brian vows to build a secure future for himself,
and when he graduates high school,
he sets his sights on architecture.
BRIAN: I've always been very interested in
buildings and structures and things like that.
It just came so naturally to me.
So by the time I got to graduation time,
I already knew that I was --
I was going to go to architecture school.
NARRATOR: By 1993, Brian is a 28-year-old architect
living in Dallas.
He's happily married... or so he thinks.
BRIAN: After a couple of years,
my wife decided that she didn't want to be married anymore.
And so I was just kind of left reeling.
It was a big shock for me.
At that point, my dreams had pretty much
crumbled, and I was in an extremely vulnerable state.
I just didn't know what to do with myself.
I was just so distraught over this loss of kind of this idea
of the nuclear family -- that just seemed like
all I could think about.
NARRATOR: Nine months after the divorce is finalized,
one of Brian's friends sets him up on a blind date.
BRIAN: He described her as very beautiful and very vivacious
and intelligent, and he thought that we would be a good match.
NARRATOR: Kimberly West is a 27-year-old receptionist.
BRIAN: We met,
and I was very, very pleasantly surprised.
She was really beautiful
and just a very charismatic personality.
She had just gotten divorced.
She was in a custody situation with her ex,
and so we kind of had some things in common.
You know, we really hit it off.
NARRATOR: Over the next several weeks,
Brian and Kimberly start talking on the phone every day.
I felt like, oh, she really gets me.
That she heard me, that she identified with me in
a way that certainly my ex-wife had not done at all.
It felt very romantic and just exciting.
So it -- it was great.
Our second date was at a divorce support group at
a church, and I got there a little early,
and she was running late -- instead of waiting outside,
I decided to just go ahead and go in.
And so I sat down, and I kind of saved her
a chair next to me.
She finally came in, and she looked straight at me
and kind of gave me a, like, a mean look.
She sat in a different chair across the group from me.
And so I was very kind of mystified as to,
you know, what was going on.
After that, she really was mad at me
because I had gone in ahead of her.
She said, "This is my support group.
You're my guest."
She's, like, really kind of disproportionately angry
about that.
Then just out of nowhere,
she just, like, held me back.
It was kind of getting a little passionate.
And then she just said, "I have to leave now."
The whole thing left me feeling this is a little weird.
That whole second date was just strange.
NARRATOR: As unnerving as the experience is,
the next time Kimberly and Brian see each other,
she acts as if nothing happened.
BRIAN: It started getting much more passionate.
The chemistry between us is undeniable,
and it was very powerful,
and it was one that I had not really experienced to
that degree up until that point in my life.
Kimberly was able to stir these feelings, you know,
in me, the passionate feelings, both physically
and emotionally.
I feel like I started falling in love with her pretty quickly,
just because I did feel, like, this immediate,
really strong connection.
NARRATOR: Kimberly seems to be feeling the same way, because
she treats Brian like he is a close, trusted companion.
Kimberly has a court date with her ex-husband,
and he's going for full custody.
BRIAN: She wanted me to testify in
court for her as a character witness.
And at this point, I had known her for maybe two months.
So I went to the courthouse with her,
and when she was in the hearing,
one of her friends gave me a copy of
her psychological report.
I read through the report, but so much of it,
I didn't know what to make of it.
Like, it had a lot of psychological terms
that I wasn't familiar with,
such as narcissism and borderline personality disorder.
Now borderline personality disorder,
that's the mother of all disorders.
That's everything combined into one.
DR. GRANDE: And individuals with borderline personality disorder
have affective instability,
they have emotions that are unstable.
This is somebody who is highly impulsive, dramatic,
has an intense fear of abandonment,
and furthermore, expresses typically
some type of violence.
It can be verbal aggression, physical aggression.
I was very conflicted about the whole report
and wasn't sure what to make of it.
She told me that her husband paid
off psychologists to make fabricated
psychological reports, but in the back of my mind,
I'm thinking, this is a professional psychologist,
and they don't just fabricate reports.
And so I thought there was something
there that I needed to be careful about.
NARRATOR: The judge rules against Kimberly,
and she is devastated.
Brian feels for her and doesn't question her
about the report.
BRIAN:: I didn't want to have another
failed relationship -- in my previous marriage,
I didn't get to fight for that relationship at all.
So I didn't want to just walk away from the relationship
but kind of fight for it
and do the best I possibly could to make it work.
NARRATOR: The couple continue to see each other but live separately.
Brian walks on eggshells to avoid Kimberly's bad temper.
If I said anything at all positive about my ex-wife,
she would often jump all over that and say something pretty
mean and nasty about her.
Kimberly would often try to undermine my relationship
with my ex-wife, because she felt like
it was threatening her relationship with me.
Kimberly always could escalate, escalate, escalate.
Just acted very aggressively.
Really, what you have here is a powder keg.
She's always exploding in this fit of rage
if she doesn't get her way -- she screams,
she yells -- it's my way or no way.
BRIAN: That was making me very unhappy.
I started feeling that, okay,
I don't think I need to be in this relationship.
This relationship is starting to
be something that's negative for me.
NARRATOR: Five months into the relationship,
Brian is ready to make a clean break.
We just had one fight too many, and I had
finally solidified my resolve that I was gonna break up.
So I knew I was gonna have this conversation with her.
I had kind of prepared for it mentally.
So I don't care what she says, I'm done with this.
I was actually feeling pretty good about it.
I was feeling a little bit of a sense
of relief that I had kind of dodged a bullet.
Okay, I'm gonna put this behind me.
Just move on.
I was about to say, all right, I'm done with this.
I'm not seeing you anymore. Don't call me, et cetera.
And that's when she told me she was pregnant.
[distantly] I'm pregnant.
BRIAN: I felt like I was at the beginning of a horrible,
horrible journey.
NARRATOR: Just as Brian Cargill is about to break up
with his girlfriend, Kimberly,
she tells him she is pregnant.
In that moment, my entire body dropped, and it felt
like kind of falling over a cliff.
It's this flush of dread that
just completely fills you and overwhelms you.
But my first thought was okay, we're gonna make this work.
We're gonna take this curveball, and we're
gonna hit it out of the park.
I mean, I'm not gonna walk away
from a woman that is carrying my child.
I'm just not gonna do that.
So I did propose to her the idea that, you know,
I will stick by you during the pregnancy.
I want to be a part of the child's life no matter what.
But that doesn't necessarily mean that
we have to be married to do that.
And she put it to me very plainly.
[distantly] You'll never see me again.
BRIAN: If you don't marry me,
you're not having anything to do with this child.
Period.
WILLIAM: It is the ultimate blackmail.
"Guess what, I'm pregnant, and now you're stuck."
Anything is possible with this woman.
She'll do anything.
I felt like I had put myself in a situation
where I didn't really have a lot of a choice.
The value of being a parent
had to trump really everything else.
A couple of days later, we went
out and had a nice little engagement dinner.
In that moment,
I tried to get as much out of it as I could,
get as much joy and celebration as I could,
and kind of leave the other stuff behind.
And even though it wasn't gonna be as pure
as I wanted originally, it still could be something.
The fact that he stays with her after all
of this is a huge testament to his character.
But it also tells her,
"I can do anything I want to this guy, and you know what?
He's gonna stick around."
Why? Because he has a conscience.
She doesn't.
NARRATOR: In June of 1994, Brian and Kimberly
have a small intimate wedding in New Mexico.
BRIAN: We had a little wedding at my mom's house,
and I tried to maintain
an air of kind of celebration and that I was happy about it
and everything, but...
deep inside,
I was really scared and just dreading
kind of what was to come.
To the point where, right after the ceremony,
I kind of went in the back of the house and just kind of had
a good cry
and just kind of let out so many
of these emotions that I was having there.
NARRATOR: The couple move in together,
and a few months later in November,
Kimberly gives birth to their son, Jamie.
After Jamie was born, I was jubilant.
And so it was kind of a nice period of time.
It was pretty calm, relatively peaceful.
I felt a sense of relief that maybe this was gonna start to
be okay, maybe we can make this work.
But then things really kind of went downhill.
I remember one time, I had gone into the bedroom and locked
the bedroom door, because I was trying to kind of get away
from her, so she started, like, kicking the door.
And so I was like, okay, this is not good.
So I open the door, and I walked out,
and then this hammer comes just...
just whizzes by my head and sticks into the wall.
And I turned around, and I looked at her,
and she had kind of this wild look in her eyes.
WILLIAM: The hammer lodges itself in the wall.
And what does she do? She leaves it there.
She tells him, "Don't you touch that hammer."
Why? She wants to remind him, if you don't do what I say,
there's gonna be a price.
And I just remember just this horrible
feeling just washed over me about, man,
what am I doing?
How am I ever gonna, like, get through this?
It was just definitely just the low point in my life.
NARRATOR: Kimberly's violent streak is only just beginning.
BRIAN: We were sitting in a car, and she got angry with me
because of a conversation we were having,
and she, with her fist, just punched me as hard as
she could in the face.
[grunts]
It was just such a shock that I just said, "I'm done."
That punch in the face was really just the final straw.
I just got out of the car, and I left and never went back.
NARRATOR: Brian immediately
files for divorce from Kimberly.
Over the following months,
the battle for custody of his son becomes emotional warfare,
with Kimberly pulling out all the stops
to make Brian's life miserable.
So at this point, she was not working at all.
[phone ringing]
And she would call me all the time.
At some point, I started creating a phone log,
all the times that she called me.
I counted one day,
like, literally 50 times she called me at work.
[phone ringing]
She would call, and I would say, "I'm -- I'm busy,"
and then she would start threatening
the receptionist -- it was just insanity.
Eventually I decided to leave my first job just
because she had called me at work so many times.
But I was giving her basically all my money.
I was still paying her rent and giving her
probably 75 percent of my paycheck every month.
That was a tough time.
NARRATOR: Brian can't afford a lawyer and sees
Jamie at Kimberly's whim during the divorce process.
When the dust settles in 1995, he gets shared custody
of Jamie, but Kimberly
continues to make life difficult.
BRIAN: She would kind of do a bait
and switch in terms of visitation with my son.
That was the big thing was I was
always at her mercy when I could see him.
One time, she got really mad at me
and decided I wasn't gonna see Jamie anymore, ever.
I showed up at her house, and she wouldn't give him to me.
Another time, I came anyway,
even though she said she wasn't gonna let me have him,
and she just let me have him.
So she just liked to play games with the visitation.
NARRATOR: It's a tough blow for Brian.
I loved my son before he was born.
To see him and spend time with him,
it's almost like a spiritual,
you know -- you know what that connection is like.
Really the only hold that she has over Brian now is
the child, but that's a huge piece of leverage.
She has a piece of Brian's heart.
She knows the guy is a caring individual
and that he loves his child.
So she is totally using this child to manipulate the guy.
NARRATOR: Over the years, Jamie pays a steep price
for being Brian's son.
I was...concerned.
A lot of times, he would call me, asking me for help.
He would tell me things that were alarming,
like, "She started screaming at me,
"and so I ran out the door
and ran down the street to someone's phone to call."
Those kinds of calls are gut-wrenching.
I was really scared for him.
NARRATOR: When he's just 11 years old,
Jamie makes a chilling confession to Brian.
[indistinct distant shouting]
BRIAN: They had this big physical conflict.
[indistinct distant shouting]
She put a belt around his neck.
[actor as Jamie grunts]
[actor as Jamie gasping]
She wraps a belt and drags the kid around the room.
Let me drag him around the room,
cut off his oxygen to let him know who the boss is.
[grunting, gasping]
Could it get any more violent than that?
Jamie was at the point where he thought
he was going to be strangled.
He thought that his life was going to end.
So it was a dramatic escalation in violence.
Sorry.
Just...
I saw outright abuse that leaves bruises, marks.
I was horrified.
What parent wouldn't be horrified
to see their child injured?
When Brian hears about this, that's it.
He's got to take that kid out of that house -- he has to.
When you look at all of this building up,
building up, -[distant scream]
what is she gonna do next? -[grunting noise]
[grunting noise]
What's left? Murder?
-[grunting noise] -[gasping]
NARRATOR: Brian Cargill has just found out that
his 11-year-old son has been physically abused
by his ex-wife, Kimberly.
I finally had evidence, like hardcore,
irrefutable evidence that
I could take to a judge and make some progress.
I took photographs of the abuse
and then immediately went to an attorney.
NARRATOR: Brian reports Kimberly to Child Protective Services,
providing them with proof of her abuse.
And 10 years after the divorce, in 2006,
he finally gains full custody of Jamie.
It was a positive step, for sure, that at least
now I had some sense of stability with my son.
NARRATOR: But shockingly, the courts
still allow Kimberly unsupervised visitation.
He would go to her house every other weekend,
and there was always that worry for him.
NARRATOR: With the system failing his son,
Brian remains vigilant and keeps a watchful eye
on Kimberly,
but soon, he finds a measure of peace
after meeting a woman worthy of his love.
We met and kind of hit it off.
And after that, that was it.
It's like we didn't really date anyone else.
From our first date,
we're pretty much okay. This is it.
I knew that she would make my life better.
She is truly, like, the most emotionally stable person
I know,
so for me, that was a big -- as you can imagine,
that was a big priority.
NARRATOR: Kimberly moves on with her life, as well.
She goes to nursing school and marries another man.
They have a son.
Happy first birthday. We love you -- Keith,
Steel, Madelyn, and Hayden.
NARRATOR: But it doesn't last -- soon,
Kimberly is divorced and engaged in yet another
custody battle.
This time, it will turn deadly.
The trouble begins when she decides to hire a babysitter
for her four-year-old son
while she's at work as a licensed nurse.
A friend of hers mentions a woman, Cherry Walker,
in an apartment building not far from where she lives.
By all accounts, she's just this wonderful,
warm 39-year-old woman.
DR. GRANDE: Cherry was described as a very friendly,
agreeable individual who had an interest in babysitting.
Cherry had an IQ of 56.
So this is profoundly developmentally disabled.
So she was operating at a 6th grade level.
So someone who could arguably be very easily manipulated.
WILLIAM: She's living in an apartment by herself
for the first time in her life.
She has an aide that visits her at
the apartment to make sure she's doing okay.
And in walks Kimberly Cargill.
The devil walks into Cherry Walker's life,
and it's never gonna be the same again.
NARRATOR: Cherry is unable to say no to
Kimberly, who takes advantage of her kindness.
MELANIE: Kimberly would drop the son off at Cherry's apartment
and just leave him there for hours,
come back super late or the next morning to pick him up.
Cherry was on a very fixed income given her disability.
She relied on food stamps to buy food for herself,
and so she had this little boy at
her house who would be dropped off, hungry.
Kimberly didn't leave any money for food.
So Cherry would share hers.
Kimberly found someone she could exploit at will.
Hey, can I drop the kid off for two hours?
She'd come back eight hours later, or she'd drop
the child off and maybe not show up for 2, 3 days.
She knew that Cherry Walker really wasn't gonna say
anything about this,
that she could just continually do this over
and over and over again.
NARRATOR: The boy's father accuses Kimberly
of abusing their son.
Kimberly Cargill's child is being abused,
and social services gets involved,
and they open an investigation against her.
NARRATOR: In March of 2010,
Child Protective Services removes Kimberly's son
from her home.
A custody hearing is ordered, and Cherry Walker
is unwittingly caught up in the legal battle.
And the court subpoena Cherry Walker
to testify in court against Kimberly Cargill.
MELANIE: Cherry receives a subpoena as
a frequent caretaker of the little boy.
Immediately, Kimberly becomes concerned, because if
Cherry Walker is taking a stand in court,
it will become quickly evident that Kimberly is really not fit
to be caring for a young child.
I think that Kimberly was specifically worried
about Cherry's testimony,
because Cherry was probably gonna say
something truthful,
saying that she was a bad mother and violent.
Cherry's taking care of that child.
She had seen the abuse
and the neglect that Kimberly Cargill perpetrated
against that child.
She was really the best witness.
I think that Kimberly believed everything
was riding on this particular hearing.
This was the last son she had custody of.
This was her last hope to prove that she was
a competent mother.
This was her last chance.
WILLIAM: Kimberly's first reaction is to just
blow up Cherry Walker's phone.
She actually calls her over 70 times.
So she's panicking.
NARRATOR: Cherry is not the only
person who Kimberly is frantically calling.
On June 18th, 2010, just five days
before Kimberly's custody hearing is set to begin,
she phones her ex, Brian.
I was on the way out of town
with my wife, going on a long weekend,
and Kimberly called me.
[phone ringing distantly]
I saw it was her, and I didn't answer.
She left a message on my voicemail.
It was a bit frantic.
"Have you been subpoenaed?
What are you gonna tell them if they subpoena you?"
It was a little strange, but I just kind of disregarded it.
Kimberly was really the last person
that I wanted to hear from.
NARRATOR: The next day, on June 19th, a driver on
a small country road makes a tragic discovery.
WILLIAM: This young guy is out delivering pizza.
He's driving down the road, and he realizes he went past
the address, so he has to do a turnaround.
He heads into this gravel area where it's an open field,
and then he looks, and he sees
what appears to be a body.
So, of course, he dials 911,
and in come the crime scene guys.
NARRATOR: Investigators rush to the scene.
WILLIAM: They find a woman face down,
and it appears that she had been burned.
Her body has been charred.
Her skin is actually peeling off,
it's been burned so badly, and in between her legs,
they find this empty creamer container -- it's not burned.
They also determine that the victim has not been
there long, probably within 24 hours.
Investigators determined that this person likely died of
homicidal violence, because this body was so badly burned,
they couldn't identify who it was.
NARRATOR: Detectives can't find an ID anywhere near the body.
So they put out a media alert in
hopes of getting any information on their Jane Doe.
Across town, Gethry and Rueon Walker,
a pastor and his wife, reach out to police.
Their beloved daughter has been missing for 24 hours.
WILLIAM: This is a daughter who is constantly in touch with them.
There's not maybe four hours that go by that
they don't know where she is.
Nobody has seen her,
and there's one thing their daughter
never does, and that is miss church,
but on this day, she never shows up,
and this is when they begin
to realize something's drastically wrong here.
So where is she?
A media report goes out of this victim that's found,
and they just know in their heart
and their soul that it's her.
So they go to the police,
and sure enough,
it's their daughter, Cherry Walker.
NARRATOR: County sheriffs have identified
a burned female victim
as Cherry Walker by using her dental records.
Brian Cargill finds out about Cherry's murder
when he gets a call from Kimberly's mother.
That just -- that kind of blew me away.
It was -- it was pretty surreal, and I immediately
kind of made the connection with Kimberly.
Maybe she had something to do with this.
Jamie and I went into hiding immediately.
It was surreal for sure.
I never imagined that I would be in that kind of a situation,
where I'd be afraid that someone was gonna come
and attack us.
It was a scary thought, you know,
that maybe she had gotten into this manic state and was ready
to come out and kill everyone she knew.
NARRATOR: Investigators conduct a search of
Cherry Walker's apartment looking for leads.
WILLIAM: They're looking around, and they discover
several voicemails.
They're from a woman named Kim, who says, "Hey, Cherry,
I have to talk to you," and she sounds a bit frantic.
Cell phone records also showed that this number
had called Cherry over and over and over and over.
There were dozens upon dozens of phone calls
to Cherry Walker the day before she went missing.
So investigators immediately need to find out who is
this Kim?
They interview Cherry Walker's aide, and they ask her,
"Do you know anybody named Kim?"
"Oh yeah, I know somebody named Kim.
That's Kimberly Cargill."
So now they're getting somewhere.
MELANIE: Cherry's caregiver was one of the last
people to see her before she went missing.
And during the course of questioning her,
police learn about the situation with
Kimberly Cargill,
the babysitting arrangement, the subpoena,
and the child custody hearing.
She says, "Kimberly told Cherry not to go to court,
to ignore the subpoena,"
but Cherry wanted to follow the rules.
She was really concerned about getting in trouble.
WILLIAM: She's scared. Kimberly is blowing up
Cherry's phone, calling, calling,
calling, and she wants to meet with Cherry
to discuss the situation.
MELANIE: In Cherry's last conversation with the caregiver,
Cherry says, "Kimberly is gonna come over.
She's gonna take me out to dinner."
And Cherry's caregiver tells her,
"Do not go, lock the door, go to bed.
"Do not answer if Kimberly comes to your house,
and don't go anywhere with her."
WILLIAM: She goes, "Listen, ignore Kim, get some sleep,
and tomorrow, we'll deal with all of this."
But for Cherry Walker,
tomorrow never comes -- the aide never sees her again.
NARRATOR: Investigators head directly to Kimberly's house
to speak with her.
-[siren wailing] -[knocking noises]
WILLIAM: She comes to the door, and they say, "Hey, listen,
we want to talk to you about Cherry Walker,"
and she says, "I don't think I should
talk to you without my lawyer."
That's a red flag.
If you're a friend of this woman's,
why wouldn't you want to talk to us?
DR. GRANDE: Kimberly maintained her arrogant disposition
the whole way.
The police wanted to search
the house, and Kimberly would not permit them.
WILLIAM: So investigators park down the street,
they sit in their car, and they wait for Kim Cargill to leave.
[engine starts]
She leaves.
She starts driving.
Kimberly is really frantic.
She's totally out of her mind,
and she blows through a stop sign.
[siren wailing]
So they pull her over,
and immediately, what did they notice in her car?
One of those creamer containers.
And what do they have at their crime scene
where Cherry Walker was dumped?
They have that same empty container of creamer.
So there's a connection.
They seize her car,
and they tow that car to forensics.
NARRATOR: While the forensics team
searches Kimberly's car for evidence,
police execute a search warrant for her home.
Investigators made note that the house was messy.
There were dirty clothes, trash everywhere,
pieces of food on the floor, used takeout fast food
containers, trash in the bathtub.
It was very unclean, in disarray.
WILLIAM: And then they go into the laundry room.
They see laundry piled up for probably weeks.
But in the washing machine, there's one sheet.
Kim Cargill was washing one sheet.
Question mark -- why?
At the crime scene, they found these tire tracks,
and those match perfectly to Kimberly Cargill's vehicle.
They also find that Kimberly's DNA matches the DNA found
on the coffee creamer container found
between Cherry Walker's legs.
They have now connected Kimberly Cargill to
the murder scene and to the body.
She is arrested, and they charge her
with capital felony murder.
She's dead to rights.
There's no doubt in their mind that Kimberly Cargill
murdered Cherry Walker.
NARRATOR: Kimberly Cargill has been arrested and charged
in the brutal murder of her son's babysitter,
39-year-old Cherry Walker.
BRIAN: It was a big relief when she was arrested.
We all kind of were able to breathe, you know,
breathe a little better, sleep a little bit better at night.
There was really not a doubt in my mind
that she was guilty.
NARRATOR: In May of 2012,
Kimberly's case goes to trial in Smith County.
By this time and much to Brian's relief,
Kimberly has had minimal contact with her son, Jamie.
As a prosecutor,
I believe she killed Cherry Walker.
And I wanted to get -- to get justice for Cherry.
I believed in the evidence.
When you have an item with the DNA sample that belongs to
Kim Cargill, and Kim Cargill
knows Cherry Walker, and Cherry Walker was gonna be
picked up by her that night...
You know, it's -- it's not hard to
put two and two together on this.
You just dumped the body, killed someone and dumped
the body and set it on fire.
WILLIAM: It appears that Kimberly Cargill
strangled Cherry Walker inside her house,
wrapped her in a sheet, took her out into that field by
the road, untangled her from the sheet,
poured some sort of accelerant on her, and lit her on fire to
cover up forensic evidence.
She killed her -- she dumped her body
and burned it so she wouldn't get caught.
It all supports everything that common sense tells you,
that Kim didn't want Cherry to testify.
She didn't want her to go to that hearing, because she felt
like it was gonna be a problem, and then all of a sudden,
Cherry's dead.
So, you know, it all fits.
NARRATOR: Kimberly takes the stand in her own defense
and pleads not guilty.
Her defense was that she was there when Cherry Walker died,
but she did not kill her.
She said that she took Cherry out
to dinner to talk about the whole situation.
WILLIAM: She says she's driving down
the road, and Cherry Walker had a seizure
and that she could not save her or revive her from it,
and she died.
She said she drove around in a panic,
dumped the body into a field, and burned it
because she was afraid
even though she said she didn't kill her,
she would get blamed for it,
so she tried to dispose of the body.
There's a point where Kimberly's
behavior kind of borders on delusional.
She was supremely confident in her ability
to escape responsibility, to manipulate.
She thinks that the jury is gonna look at this excuse
and say, oh, that makes sense.
You know, your friend dies, so you --
you set them on fire and dump their body.
NARRATOR: Brian Cargill is called as a witness for the prosecution.
When I was in court, testifying on the stand,
I did not want to look at her.
I was aware of her, but I never really
looked her in the eye.
I just had no need for that.
You know, what she had done was horrible.
She took someone else's life,
which is hard to even really fathom.
NARRATOR: The jury quickly comes back with a verdict.
MAN: We the jury find the defendant, Kimberly Cargill,
guilty of the offense of capital murder
as charged in the indictment.
The verdict came in -- I felt relieved that
Kim had been held accountable for what she did.
Kimberly Cargill is found guilty on all counts of
capital felony murder, and they vote for the death penalty.
BRIAN: It didn't surprise me at all
that she would get the death penalty.
She took advantage of Cherry to that degree
and then turned around and killed her.
I mean, that's just outrageous.
It really is outrageous.
NARRATOR: In the aftermath of the sentencing,
those who knew Kimberly are left wondering how
she could have committed such a heinous act.
That always stuck out to me, that we have this spectrum of --
of goodness and kindness and a sweet person, crossed paths
with everything that was bad and evil.
Kim was someone who had no empathy for others,
no feelings of regret or remorse for anything she did.
WILLIAM: Kimberly was nothing but a menace
who abused Brian and abused her children.
I think she is one of
the most vindictive, violent female psychopaths ever.
Brian Cargill should consider himself lucky, and he
should count his blessings, because he was sleeping
with the devil.
Only the devil decided not to
kill him but to kill somebody else.
NARRATOR: Even though she met a tragic end,
Cherry's light will never be forgotten.
When the trial concluded,
there was a photo in evidence of Cherry.
She was smiling. She was happy.
I printed that photo.
I put it in a frame.
I wanted that photo in my office
to remember, as a prosecutor, why you do it.
Her father told me that I never thought...
lawyers or law enforcement would
care about a mentally handicapped black woman.
It hurt me that he had to carry that with him.
It broke my heart.
I was very proud that we were able to get justice for her,
show him that we did care deeply for your daughter.
She was a beautiful woman.
We fought hard for her, and now Kim
will be held accountable for what she did.
NARRATOR: As for Brian, he's moved on from
the turmoil and found a silver lining in his life.
BRIAN: You know, they say time heals all wounds.
It's a cliche, but I think every
single day heals a little bit more.
My kids have really taught me kind of how to --
how to love, if you will.
Jamie, he's doing much better now.
He's a chef.
He's got a good job, and he's adulting,
which is what we raised him for.
You live in a household of five, my wife and I
and three dogs.
It's great. I mean, I don't have any complaints.
We're just, we're able to live life pretty stress-free and,
you know, do what we want to do.
And so, you know, I feel pretty good.