Murder for Millions

ISBN: 9781964201658

Published June 22nd 2016

Publisher: Mark W. Faler

Kindle Edition

To all the people in my life who have helped me.

My love for you is never-ending.

Table of Contents

CHAPTER  1  2013

CHAPTER  2  The Clark Family

CHAPTER  3  2013

CHAPTER  4  The McCoy Family

CHAPTER  5  2013

CHAPTER  6  Bella Cassidy

CHAPTER  7  2013

CHAPTER  8  The White Couple

CHAPTER  9  2013

CHAPTER  10  The Coopers

CHAPTER  11  2013

CHAPTER  12  Ryan London

CHAPTER  13  2013

CHAPTER  14  Zimbabwe Africa

CHAPTER  15  2013

CHAPTER  16  Reverend Parker T. Justice

CHAPTER  17  2013

CHAPTER  18  Merry Christmas Edwin Palace

CHAPTER  19  Everything Comes To An End

CHAPTER 1

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2013

On Monday afternoon, the county courthouse was crowded with people, yet it was almost silent. It had been 4 years since my partner- Detective Frank Conway and I closed the Paul Winston serial murder case which ended up being one of the biggest cases in Sugar Land Texas. We chased Winston from Sugar Land to the outskirts of New Jersey, California New York City, and Vegas back to Sugar Land. We finally found him in 2004 doing 5 months in Lafayette State Correctional Institution in Fayette County Pennsylvania.

He was there for some type of misdemeanor public disturbance or something like that. We were able to get Winston extradited from Pennsylvania back to Fort Bend County, Texas. Winston has been convicted of brutally murdering a married couple and their three children in 2008 here in Sugar Land.

Both Frank and I worked day and night to close this case making sure we dotted all of the I’s and crossed all of the T’s from 2004 to 2008 to get Winston in prison. Winston who looked about 31 years

old lived in a small house and was the caregiver of his elderly grandmother. He worked for the Minute Maid Company in Sugar Land as a janitor making minimum wage and used his money and his grandmother’s social security checks just to get them by. As we went along with the case, no one was against Winston, but we were surprised when evidence started pointing towards him. The only one who had bad mouth about Winston was his 30 year old ex girlfriend Coralee Brandon. Coralee had him arrested for domestic threats which he did to her but she always took him back. She was not the sharpest tool in the shed and had a bad temper. The looks did not matter when it came to growing up in a poverty stricken environment with uncaring parents. The one thing she’s got going is her looks. She was gorgeous and she knew it. Unfortunately Coralee was the only witness. Her testimony against Winston was the biggest part of getting a guilty verdict so we had to work with her for weeks to get her ready to testify. She was up and down about turning on him. After all is said and done, in 2008 Winston was given a life plus 100 years with no chance for parole.

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Most people who were involved in the case including the family members left behind felt Paul Winston should have been given the death penalty. None of that mattered now, the case was over and Paul Winston would be gone for good or so we thought.  The reason we were sitting there is that Frank had gotten a call from the District Attorney. The District Attorney informed Frank that Paul Winston’s lawyer had filed an appeal and that the judge who presided over the trial wanted to see all the lawyers and officers involved in the case. That was never good when a high profile case ends up back in a courtroom and we knew nothing good was going to happen. I heard the entrance door to the courtroom slam shut and District Attorney Bill Wells walked in. I noticed he was not the happy go-lucky looking man he usually was. Wells had a look of anger on his face and walked at a fast pace. Once he got to the prosecution table he slammed his briefcase onto the table and pulled out the documents. He poured water into his glass and sat nervously chewing on his pen frantically going

over the papers he had taken out. I tapped Frank on the shoulder and told him it was not going to be a good outcome, something was up and Bill Wells did not like it.

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The one and only Attorney Edwin Palace walked in whistling away, he was the happiest lawyer in the world. Edwin Palace wasn’t liked much in the district attorney’s office in any county of Texas, actually in most states. He was known around the courts as a sleazy lawyer who got guilty men and women out of trouble for awful things they had done including murder. He reminded me of Michael Douglas’ character Gordon Gekko from the film Wall Street, he loved money more than what he did for a living. He was referred to as Saul Goodman from the television show Breaking Bad. Unlike Saul, Palace wore $3,000 Gucci suits $200.00 silk ties $1,000 imported black leather shoes and nobody knew how he paid for them. To get in the media he would take some cases on a probono basis or charged a very low fee. All the people that worked in the attorney field of Texas knew, that he was excellent at what he did, sleazy or not. His main office was based in Manhattan, NY and was a partner with Goldsmith, Lexington, Oxford, and Palace. The famous firm was one of the bigger, best and most expensive law firms in Manhattan. My best guess would be that he did these types of cases to higher his status in the law business which he was able to do several times throughout his career. The Paul Winston murder case was one of them.

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My partner and I sat there waiting for Winston to come in with the prison guards and group of police that accompanied him wherever he went. The side door opened and Paul Winston, with the group of officers, marched his way through to his lawyers table. The first thing that caught my eye was how much he had aged in only 5 years. When he went to prison he had shoulder length brown hair and a mustache. Now he had short almost gray combed hair and no mustache. Oddly enough he did not look like the depressed and nervous man when I last saw

him. This time he did not look depressed or nervous, he looked confident and not too far from happy. Winston shook hands with his lawyer sat down and leaned back in his chair with his arms behind his head. Frank nodded to the back of the courtroom hoping to see his ex-girlfriend but she was not there. Winston turned to look to the back of the courtroom and saw Frank and me sitting there so he yelled out to us. Tony, Frank, good to see ya, back for round two? We both kept quiet and held our tension in. I could see Frank was doing everything he could to keep calm. After all the problems Paul Winston and Coralee Brandon had, it was not a shock to me that Coralee Brandon was not around.

The court clerk stood up and made his announcement. Judge Albert Lipton. Case A3421 Fort Bend County State of Texas versus Winston please rise. I have known Judge Lipton for 10 years and he was a Texas gentleman. When it came to work he was not the same guy as he was on the golf course or afternoon lunch. He did not look amused either he looked flustered and upset. After looking at the papers he had on his bench, picked up his gavel and hit it down very hard as if he were hammering a heavy nail. I am going to do this fast, I have a long afternoon and a full day of cases. Attorney’ please come to the bench. The three of them talked to each other and has the conversation went on District Attorney Wells kept raising his hand and shaking his head.

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The two lawyers went back to their tables and stood there waiting for whatever the judge was going to say. "Mr. Winston please Stand up. Upon speaking with your lawyer and district attorney Wells it seems an error was made during your trial. Your lawyer brought an appeal to the courts saying that DNA taken in the investigation was tampered with or some type of mistakes were made during the testing and it  has been confirmed by the Bexar County Criminal Investigation Laboratory . Due to this I will have to call a mistrial and release you at this time until the district attorney decides what he intends to do. Mr. Winston you are free to go but you are not allowed to leave Fort Bend County.    

If you try I will put you in contempt of court and lock you up until your trial is set again. Bill Wells then made it aware that he was going to do all he could to get Winston back on trial. Judge I am going to get this man back in this courtroom as soon as possible, I will file when I return to my office." With that Wells quickly put all his papers in his briefcase and slammed it shut.

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I was in shock and slipped down the bench I was on. Frank did not say anything he got up walked right out of the courtroom without saying anything to me. Truthfully I was glad, I knew his temper and how hard he worked to get Winston into a prison for the rest of Winston’s’ empty life. I was more prepared for what was going to happen because I knew; being called back into a court, 5 years after the trial was not going to be in our favor. Bill Wells quickly stormed out of the room once the judge left the courtroom. Winston turned back to look at me and yelled out It’s a knock out Tony, you almost had me down, I am innocent anyway and always have been. My blood pressure must have risen quickly because I felt lightheaded. There was nothing for me to say and if I did say something I would have been put in a holding cell. I put my suit jacket back on and walked out of the courtroom before my anger took over and I went after Paul Winston.

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My name is Detective Anthony Cicero and I work for the Sugar Land Police Department of Investigation, mostly homicide cases. I have been involved in police investigation for 25 years. My career has spanned from Brooklyn New York to Patterson, New Jersey, and here in Sugar Land, Texas. Detective Frank Conway and I have been partners for the last 10 years and have caught every criminal we have looked for. All of the criminals we have put in prison are either still there or have served their sentence until the release of Paul Winston. But this would not be our last day dealing with Winston. He might have been let go for now but the case was far from over.

CHAPTER 2

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THE CLARK FAMILY

2004

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She quietly sat on fine black leather couch in the family living room looking through the photo albums she looked for and found inside of a cherry wood cabinet. It was a very hot day in Sugar Land Texas and just getting hotter. Luckily the Pepsi her boyfriend-Paul Winston gave her was nice and cold to cool down her throat. He had just dropped her off at the top of the block an hour ago and knew nothing about what she intended to do to his life or what she would do to the people she was about to see. Because of the hot weather she spent more time in the air conditioned living room than she had planned and noticed the clock was ticking by fast. It was 2:00 pm and as she looked through the photos in the picture album of the past years she glanced up at the television seeing how easy life was on an episode of The Brady Bunch. It was the one where Marsha is hit in the nose with a football. She had put it on to drown the noise she had been making before while upstairs.

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As she turned the pages of the album she saw how the 3 children in the album had grown through year to year. The trips to Disney Land, Disney World, Hershey Park, Six Flags Fiesta, United Artists Theme Park, Pocono and Switzerland ski resorts. The pictures shows that they were all quite happy and having great fun. The next album she looked at was a wedding album from 1995 from the day the couple were married. They looked so young and joyful. Dancing, laughing, cutting cake, and all the wonderful things people do at weddings. The honeymoon pictures made her sick, all the kissing on the endless sandy beach and the sparkling blue waters. Other pictures of them holding drinks to each other’s lips. The worst one was an 11 by 14 picture of just the bride. Her lightning big bright smile in her $4,000 gown, her stunning blonde hair all dressed up like a princess. The woman in the picture was one fake woman and should not have been wearing white, she looked like a used up whore hidden behind red and pink roses.

The next album was pink and blue and said in big pink and blue letters MY ANGELS. The album showed three children growing up starting with the 17 year old girl. There were pictures all the way from when she held a rattle to holding her boyfriends hand posing for the prom. The last was a picture of the 17 year old in front of her new college. Jealousy burned through her veins as she thought of the past she had as a young girl. Her own prom night consisted of her grandmother, friend Naomi and her neighbors’ hyperactive 8 year old son sitting at McDonald’s. The 17 year old beautiful blonde cheerleader was wearing a $500.00 plus pink prom dress with a real diamond necklace and ear rings. Her own prom night clothes were a used pair of girls’ $25.00 Levis jeans she was given as a graduation gift from her elderly grandmother. She could see in the picture the girls’ brilliant white straight teeth and remembered how she had a cracked front tooth through high school because her parents could not afford any dentist and were to proud to get any type of government assistance. So Coralee dealt with the constant torment from the preppy rich students. She worked extra hours as a waitress and a second job as a stripper just to save enough money to pay for her own dentist trip and a cap to fix her looks. Of course the stripper job was nothing her parents would approve of so that was kept quiet. She was 17 but her body looked 25. Children in Lyndon B. Johnson Elementary School were relentless about her chipped tooth and teenagers at the high school were worse.

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Turning the pages made her more and more angry and more and more nauseous but she could not stop. All this happiness and family fun almost made her vomit. The twin boys on the next few pages were side by side in most of the pictures wearing the same outfits’ not cheap clothes like she had to. Her clothes were bought at Salvation Army, flea markets family hand-me downs, and garage sales. The pictures of the Clark family showed these people shoving food and drinks in their mouth and probably tossing out leftovers, while her family went without food many times. It simply pissed her off to no

end. This family had too much and gave out nothing. The husband and father who stood in all the pictures was a deceiving cheating bum who wore one face to his family and another to the business world. He made his money by tricking his clients by having them buy junk stocks which would go nowhere his specialty happened to be elderly couples. He also cheated in real estate, quietly defrauded banks; he had his greedy hands in everything that made him earn money, may it be clean or dirty.

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She tried to calm down a bit but the exciting yet nagging voice in her head kept screaming louder and louder, TURN THE PAGE! KEEP LOOKING AT THE LIFE YOU NEVER HAD! She got up and held her head screaming out to the air and with blazing hot anger she threw the heavy glass ashtray at the television hard enough to crack the thin flat screen in half. Gathering all the pictures she had taken out of the albums she began to cut them up a few at a time, she kept the ones of the family at the amusement parks, those sickened her the most. After she was done she brought all the pictures to the kitchen sink and put some lighter fluid on them which she had brought along. The pile of pictures turned into black ash almost instantly, erasing all the memories for ever.

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As she went up the stairs she tightened the rubber bands around the yellow latex gloves she had brought with her and headed to the second floor where she had relied hellfire before coming downstairs. It was a good thing to make sure what she had done upstairs was done correctly and no mistakes were made. She would continue her rage if the feeling moved her or the evil voice demanded it. On the way towards the stairs she saw a ball of white fur and pink eyes peaking out at her. It was hidden under a fancy couch wondering who the visitor was she quietly purred staring right at the visitor. Coralee despised cats, all cats since she was 4 years old, She felt that they were creepy and did nothing fun. She sat on the bottom stair of the staircase having a stare off match with the curious white cat. At first the cat was hesitant to walk over to Coralee but soon got the nerve to slowly crawl

over. The cat got to her and she made nice gentle calls to the cat to come over to her. The cat let down it’s’ guard and rubbed up against the leg of the intruder. For a few minutes Coralee petted her and showed some fake affection. In one quick move she pulled the cat up by its neck. Just like she had when she was 6 years with the neighbor’s cat, she took the cats body under her arm and the head stuck between her arm and chest. In one swift move she bent the cat’s neck no far that the neck cracked. The cat lay dead as Coralee held her gently staring at the dead body. She petted the cat one more time and threw the cat back where it came from. It bounced off the couch leg, Coralee laughed loudly when it bounced. Time was running down and it was time to finish the job.

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The first room she entered was the room with the beautiful prom queen on the floor. The queen’s body was covered in blood turning the blue and white high school cheerleader uniform she had been wearing into one big red mess. The queen had no more front teeth. Her eyes were shut in black and blue bruises and cuts. She cut some of the queens gorgeous blonde hair off, smelled it, tied the hair with a small string and carefully placed it in a white bracelet box she brought with her that held the diamond necklace worn to the queen’s prom. Any other diamond or gold jewelry went into the back pack she brought along. In an instant she fell to the ground and stabbed the eyes of the queen until they were empty holes. Finally pulling out her quiet pistol and shooting her in the head. As she walked down the hall she stopped to look at the empty rooms she passed. The voice in her head yelled again. "REMEMBER THAT SHACK YOU LIVED AT IN THE WORST PART OF TOWN! YOU HAD TO

SLEEP ON YOUR SISTERS FLOOR FOR CHRISTS SAKE!!" By now the psychopathic voice had completely taken over her thoughts and behaviors and the rage grew higher.

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Entering the twin boy’s room she saw them dead on the floor wearing the same goofy looking

outfits. Even though they were only 10 she believed they deserved the same fate all the others did. Walking over to the two dead boys she placed them right next to each other. The two reminded her of the creepy twin girls from The Shining movie. Maybe we could chop them up and place them in their closet. That was too long and to grouse to do. She took her foot with the oversized work boot she had stolen from Paul Winston and slammed it into each boys face over and over. By the time she was done she had smashed them so hard there were footprints on the faces and chests. Finally shooting the two boys in the head just as she did with the 17 year old girl her last act was to stab them in the eyes which she threw to the door.

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The next room she went into was the happy go lucky couple she saw in the wedding album, Rodger and Lesley Clark. They were on the bed right next to each other Rodger on the left, Lesley on the right. The perpetrator worked very hard to get Rodger Clark up the stairs not paying attention to the blood she left behind. Both of them had bullet holes right in the middle of their heads from the execution style shots she had given them downstairs. She jumped on the bed as if it was a trampoline kicking each face until her legs were tired and the faces were unrecognizable. They also had their eyes stabbed out. Before leaving the room she took every picture of the couple, ripped some of them up and flushed them down the toilet only keeping the second set of wedding pictures kept in a folder on top of the closet shelf. In the husbands top drawer was a leather business folder case with documents. As she looked through them the bank paper made her angrier. It was a deposit slip which showed a total of

$892,000,000 had been deposited three days ago to some Swiss account; throwing the documents back in the drawer she left the room. Once in the hall she quickly turned around and went back in the couple’s huge master bedroom, she had forgotten to cut the female victims’ blonde hair. Carefully she did the same as she had done with the queen’s hair. She would savor these hairs as trophies. This could very well be her masterpiece. Taking one more look at the woman she felt the dead woman’s breast, she laughed. Fake boobs. Coralee spit on the woman’s dead mangled body and left the room. She walked over to the male victim’s side of the bed and whispered in his dead ear. You deserved all of this Mr. Clark, bad things comeback to bite you in the ass. And you just got a bit. She walked out and slammed the heavy wooden door behind her.

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Once back in the living room she turned the Brady Bunch show off, took the other Pepsi her boyfriend had touched which she smartly switched it with hers. Even though she had worn latex gloves through this whole rampage of murders she went back into each of the places she had been making sure she wiped down anything she had touched. She decided she would take the dead cat and drop it into the closest sewer. Once the detectives looked through the scene they would only find evidence leading to Paul Winston. This would be revenge for all the beatings he had given her since they were together, besides she was breaking up with him anyway. The police would find the can sooner and work-boot prints on her victims faces. They would learn the DNA on items in the house not hers. She had been very careful making sure her prints never actually touched the can by using paper towel looking around