Empty Promises

Carole Hargis was invited to sheriff’s headquarters to give a statement to Balmer and Cellucci, she gave them a different version.
    After listening to Teri’s confession about all the murderous schemes they had tried, Carole burst into tears.
    “I didn’t do it,” she sobbed, burying her face in her hands. “It was Teri’s idea. She made me do it. I had to—or she would have killed my children!”
    Carole insisted that she didn’t even know Teri was planning to bash David’s head in with the sash weight. She was horrified, she said, when she saw Teri emerge from the bedroom carrying the bloody sash weight and laughing. “She said, ‘I just killed your goddam husband for you, you bitch.’ ”
    Carole insisted she’d tried to call the police but that she was too afraid of what Teri might do to her and her boys if she told the truth.
    The crime lab specialists had turned up enough evidence in the Hargis house for three or four trials. There was a bloodstained nightie in the hamper, blood flecks on the ruffled bedroom curtains, and the mattress had been sprinkled with bleach to erase the blood there. They even found odd bleach marks on the cement outside the house. They determined the women had used toilet bowl cleaner to get David’s blood out of the cement.
    Two deputies searched the stretch of Highway 67 where Teri said she’d thrown the sash weight used to crush David’s skull. And they found it! They waded through the thick weeds in the median and somehow spotted the weight. Criminalists found David Hargis’s blood, hair follicles and tiny patches of his scalp still clinging to the weight.
    Teri Depew went to trial first—in November 1977—in Superior Court Judge William T. Low’s courtroom. She wore a leather jacket that hid her tattoos, but her hair was shorter than most men’s. Her testimony matched the taped confession she had given to Joe Cellucci and Fred Balmer. In a low monotone, she confessed to killing David Hargis. “But if it hadn’t been for Carole, I would never have touched the man…. I couldn’t bring myself to hurt him. He looked so peaceful, lying there sleeping. I walked out of the bedroom and Carole said, ‘It’s got to be done tonight.’ I took some pills and drank some beer to relax. I entered the room. I said, ‘I’m sorry,’ and, without realizing it, I hit him. I kept on hitting him.”
    Teri said David had called out for his wife after she left the bedroom. But Carole hadn’t gone to him. “I rested my head on Carole’s shoulder and I was crying,” Teri testified. “But Carole said, ‘Don’t worry. Everything’s going to work out okay.’ I went back and hit him again….”
    Teri told the jury the terrible details of the “bloody mess” and of how awful the drive through the night to dispose of David’s body had been. When Teri decided to plead guilty, Judge Low discharged the jury.
    Low asked Teri if her words on the confession tape were true. “Is that how it happened?”
    “Yes, it is,” she said almost in a whisper. And then Teri Depew pleaded guilty to murder. She would go to prison, but she would not face the death penalty.

    Carole Hargis went to trial in December 1977. Her makeup was perfect and her hair was soft and feminine. She wore a flower-patterned blouse and pastel slacks as she sat demurely next to her attorney.
    Carole’s defense was that Teri was a psychopathic liar and a lesbian who wanted her only for sex. “My client is innocent,” her lawyer said. “She is innocent of this murder because Teri Depew controlled her mind.”
    Carole said she was afraid of Teri because of her sheer physical strength. Her attorney said that he had located a number of lesbians who were so afraid of Teri that they refused to testify in Carole’s defense—for fear she would hurt them, even though she was in prison. But Carole had a kind heart. She felt sorry for Teri, he said, and had tried to befriend her.
    “Teri came out of the bedroom, laughing,” Carole said, tears in her voice, testifying about the immediate aftermath of her husband’s murder. “I grabbed the telephone to call the police, I guess. I was dazed…. Teri waved that thing [the sash weight] at me to remind me that I had kids in the bedroom. I took it to mean my sons would be next if I called the police. I was scared.”
    Carole said she had cleaned the blood up “because I didn’t know what I was doing.”
    Deputy District Attorney Lou Boyle didn’t buy Carole’s