Free The Bad Nurse by Sheila Johnson Page B

her own defense. O’Dell stressed that Karri “loved to talk” and eventually had provided his investigators with all the information that they needed to complete their case against her successfully.

CHAPTER 31
    B ruce Gardner, Karri’s defense attorney, grudgingly acknowledged that there was no doubt that Karri had taken drugs from her workplace at the Chattanooga Surgery Center, and there was also no doubt that she had then carried the drugs to Billy Shaw’s residence. He himself had no doubt of Karri’s explanation of what had happened on the day Shaw died, he claimed. However, Gardner also admitted that he could understand how her version of the events that led to Shaw’s death could possibly have looked suspicious to the authorities.
    The defense was prepared to present the jury with a different scenario as to how Billy Shaw had died, Gardner said, and it would have been based on the opinion of the defense’s expert witness about what the actual cause of Shaw’s death had been. Gardner pointed out that Shaw had been embalmed and buried for a year before the autopsy had taken place, which he claimed had changed many things.
    â€œWe would have said that they couldn’t claim that the acute propofol intoxication was the sole cause of his death,” Gardner said. He said the defense was prepared to present evidence, through their expert witness, that the cause of death could be disputed because of the postmortem pseudoephedrine redistribution throughout Shaw’s body.
    Gardner also claimed that he was prepared to show that in spite of the serious money conflicts taking place within the family, Karri’s parents had remained on good terms with her, leaving her in place on the board of directors of the saddlery even after they had begun to realize she was taking large amounts of money. However, he admitted that there was probably some strain in their relationships because of the financial problems, and acknowledged that “there was a time when Mr. Shaw got fed up with it.”
    Gardner said that it would be “pointless to deny there was friction there,” but he said that it was nothing that would have ended the relationship between Karri and her stepfather. He said there were people who could have testified for the defense that Karri and Billy Shaw were still on good terms with one another at the time of Shaw’s death.
    Unfortunately for Karri’s defense team, their hard work on her behalf had come to nothing when their client stood in court apologizing to her shocked followers before admitting to the judge that she was guilty of murder. Once the guilty plea had been entered, all the claims of a cordial relationship between the victim and the confessed murderer were for naught.

CHAPTER 32
    W hen Karri Willoughby left the DeKalb County Jail on her way to Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women in Wetumpka, Alabama, she left like a departing celebrity. She exited, smiling, waving, signing autographs, and presenting some of the jail staff with signed photos of herself. It is likely she did not realize what a different world she was en route to, on her way to a place acknowledged as being one of the worst prisons in the country, notorious for its conditions and repeatedly investigated by several federal entities.
    When the U. S. Department of Justice (DOJ) investigated conditions at the Alabama prison, their findings were reported in January 2014 to Governor Robert Bentley in a shocking thirty-six-page letter stating that the prisoners at Tutwiler “universally fear for their safety,” and saying that the facility had a “history” of “unabated staff-on-prisoner sexual abuses and harassment.”
    The report stated that the prisoners lived in a sexualized environment and were subjected to repeated and open sexual behavior, with sexual abuse taking place between prisoners and prison staff, a New Year’s strip show that had been assisted by