Athletic, popular and handsome, Billy graduated in 1989 from a Lutheran high school in Phoenix, where he'd been a soccer star and student-body president. After high school, he joined the Marines, where he was a star in boot camp.
That's just the way Billy was--a team player and a winner. Not a murderer. Not a monster who could snap his stepmother's neck and then lead police to her desert grave without a tear, as though he were leading the cops instead to a broken water main.
What people remember most about Billy is that he rarely gave anyone any trouble. He went out of his way to help people. He was cheerful. And he never seemed to show signs that the stresses and pulls of his parents' acrimonious relationship got to him.
Sometimes he lived with his mother, Carolyn, a former Texas beauty queen who used to be a Scottsdale socialite. Other times he lived with his father, a wealthy rancher named Bill Clark, and stepmother Anita in their home in the suburban community of Ahwatukee. In fact, he was living with Bill and Anita Clark when Anita disappeared on the day after Mother's Day last May.
In the end, it was the fact that Billy secretly sold Anita's silver Mercedes Benz in San Diego that made police suspicious.
Billy was arrested 11 days after the murder, and he confessed to snapping Anita's neck with his bare hands. And then he led Phoenix police detectives to a small round grave in the desert near Toltec, about 45 miles southeast of Phoenix off Interstate 10. When detectives dug up the grave, they discovered Anita Clark's remains. The body had been incinerated, but detectives found her wedding rings in the grave.
That night, Billy told police about how Anita had stolen his father from his mother. Anita was a religious fanatic, he said, and was donating thousands of dollars of Bill Clark's money to a Christian television station in Phoenix.
Billy said he killed Anita in self-defense--that he and Anita had been arguing over religion and that Anita screamed and tore at Billy with her fingernails. He said he instinctively reached for her head and twisted it until she was dead. Then he panicked, he said, and that's why he burned and buried the body in the desert.
The police didn't believe Billy's pleas of self-defense. He was charged with first-degree murder, to which he's pleaded not guilty.
The story of Billy takes on the quality of a soap opera. Billy's sister, Margaret, recognizes this. She calls her father, Bill Clark, the "J.R. Ewing of Phoenix." To 22-year-old Margaret and 20-year-old Billy, their father is a larger-than-life patriarch who could rescue them from anything in the world.
Both Billy and Margaret want to be rescued. Not only does Billy face a murder charge, but his sister recently pleaded not guilty to a charge of hindering prosecution. She's accused of lying to police about Anita's whereabouts on the night of the murder.
Bill Clark, according to police reports, suspects that Margaret was involved in the murder. Clark "said he has felt Margaret is more likely to have taken Anita's life," detective Mike Chambers wrote in a June report.
Police reports say that during a drinking party before Anita's body was found, Margaret described details of the murder.
Faced with the upcoming trials of two of his children in connection with the murder of his wife, Bill Clark refuses to do the rescuing.
What happened to Billy the all-American boy, the good kid, the soccer star, the model Marine?
For one thing, that image isn't entirely correct. Billy has testified that he never had been in trouble with the law. Court records show otherwise. In 1989, right after he graduated from high school, Billy pleaded guilty to felony theft in Navajo County. He had broken into a car and stolen a camera and some tapes.
He told the court at the time, "I feel I am still a good kid because I just don't go out and do these things. . . . Nothing like this will ever happen again."
These days, Billy is hoping to undo the damage of his murder confession by trying to keep it out of the courtroom, but in any case Billy has refused requests for interviews, citing his upcoming trial as the reason. He does, however, apparently believe that even he doesn't know all the answers. A few months ago, in a letter explaining his reason for declining an interview, Billy wrote to New Times: "I know there are many answers I am still searching for."
So are other people. Those who know Billy say they can't figure out what happened. They ask the same questions over and over:
Was Billy pushed over the edge by his half-brother Jay's suicide in January 1991?
Was he deeply depressed about quitting the Marines at the request of his mother, Carolyn?
Could he no longer endure the mental tug of war between his parents Bill and Carolyn?
How deep was his hatred of his stepmother, Anita, whom he blamed for the breakup of his family?
Was Billy simply a cold-blooded killer who plotted to murder Anita because she was spending what he saw as his inheritance on a Christian television station?
And did someone else help him plan the murder?
In this family, like others, what's seen as truth depends entirely upon who's doing the looking. Of course, not every family dispute ends in murder.
WHEN ANITA MARRIED Bill Clark a decade ago, the wealthy Arizona citrus grower and rancher had two very different ex-wives and two very different sets of children. Bill Clark always seemed grateful to Anita for the way she welcomed his children from different wives into her fold.
Bill Clark had three children by his first marriage to May Clark, who remains his friend and business partner. Billy and Margaret were the children of Bill Clark's second marriage, to Carolyn.
Anita often invited her stepchildren, together with her grown daughters, to family outings at Bill Clark's ranch in Winslow, the cabin in Pinetop or the Ahwatukee house.
But there was a major rift in the extended family, and it revolved around Carolyn. Practically since their marriage began, Bill Clark and Carolyn had a hateful relationship. When she finally sued Bill Clark for divorce in the late Seventies, he and Anita were already living together. In her divorce suit, Carolyn accused Bill and Anita of hiding Bill's considerable assets from her. (That allegation was never proven.)
Friends say Carolyn constantly felt victimized by Bill Clark, and it was no secret that her children, Margaret and Billy, often blamed Anita for stealing away their father and causing their mother's problems.
During their marriage, Carolyn and Bill lived on Exeter Boulevard in the upscale Arcadia district south of Camelback Mountain. Carolyn aspired to live The Good Life of tony shops and private schools.
Anita, on the other hand, shopped at secondhand stores, brunched at Piccadilly's and liked to holler and whoop at a charismatic Christian church. Susan Stricklin, daughter of Bill and May Clark (Bill's first wife), says Anita was the kind of woman Bill Clark thoroughly enjoyed.
"I viewed her as the best thing for my Dad," says Susan.
Sometimes, Anita pushed her born-again Christian views too hard. "But she never let it go to the point that it got in the way of having fun," Susan says.
That's not the way Margaret and Billy viewed Anita.
"I tried to tell Margaret and Billy about Anita's good sides," Susan says, "but they said they could never love a woman who took their Dad away."
This amused Susan because she felt Carolyn stole Bill away from her mother. "Now wait a minute," Susan recalls telling Margaret and Billy, "that's exactly what your mom did to my mom, and I don't bear any ill feelings." Susan says she also pointed out that Bill Clark had other girlfriends before Anita came along.
Margaret and Billy weren't the only ones who felt Anita was getting in the way of their relationship with their father. Susan says her brother, Jay, also felt that way.
Jay, a chronically depressed young man, sometimes told Susan that Anita prevented him from being close to his dad. Jay had been in and out of jail and mental hospitals for alcoholism and manic depression. He'd attempted suicide several times.
"Jay had very confused feelings about everyone," says Susan. "He was manic depressive and had a horrible complex about living up to his dad's standards."
In January 1991, Jay, then 27 and living with Anita and Bill Clark, put a shotgun in his mouth and killed himself. It was Billy, who also was living in the Ahwatukee house, who discovered Jay's body.
Jay's death appeared to have a big impact on Billy. He had been unusually quiet after resigning from the Marines. After Jay's death, Billy grew even quieter, says Susan. He couldn't stick with anything. He dropped out of real estate school. He didn't have a steady job. He seemed flat, emotionless.
"I've got my life laid out," he'd say when the family got after him for not going to school or getting a steady job.
It was Billy's lack of focus that was one reason Billy and Margaret got into a fight with Anita the week before Mother's Day, Susan figures. Anita was insisting the kids pay rent, do chores and get jobs if they weren't going to go to school. "She's right," Susan remembers saying of her stepmother's demands.
"They kicked me under the table and rolled their eyes at me," says Susan. She recalls that Margaret leaned over and said to her, "Why don't you stay the hell out of this? This has nothing to do with you."
Susan recalls: "I said, `I'm sorry. I just love you guys and want you to grow up.'
"They were jealous of any relationship my dad had other than their mother," says Susan. "Their mom fed this animosity. Unfortunately, I thought it was all just talk."
ONE OF THE remarkable things about Billy was that he rarely showed signs that the fighting between his parents ever got to him. The fact that most of his childhood was spent locked in his parents' poisonous relationship never seemed to affect his ability to win awards or make friends. When his mother still had money, he lived with her and Margaret in the nice house on Exeter Boulevard.
He often visited Bill and Anita, and as he grew older, he seemed to get more exasperated with Anita.
Margaret says he complained to her about Anita's fundamentalist Christian dogma. He would say he hated it when Anita would turn off a TV show he was watching and switch the channel to Christian broadcasting.
In late 1990, Carolyn was injured in a car accident and she persuaded Billy to resign from the Marines so he could take care of her. Once again, Billy was caught in the middle of his parents' acrimonious relationship. Bill Clark contends that Carolyn pressured Billy to resign from the Marines because she "faked some back injury." Bill Clark admits he went to Billy's commander and begged him not to dismiss Billy. "She doesn't need Billy," he said of his ex-wife. But the commander gave Billy a discharge because of hardship. Billy's resignation disappointed his father, who blamed Carolyn. "His mother took it all away from him," Bill Clark laments.
The boy had excelled in the Marines, winning a medal for being the most physically fit in his outfit. His father, who also was a Marine, was proud. "They used to walk 'em with packs until they dropped, and Billy was the last to drop," says Bill Clark. "His drill sergeant told me he worried Billy was going to kill himself. He was tough."
Billy wound up leaving the Marines at the most exciting time: just before the invasion of Iraq. "His buddies would send him pictures of themselves on camels," says Susan, and it became clear that Billy felt that he was missing out.
But it turned out that Billy had a bigger battle to fight in Ahwatukee. His chronically depressed half-brother, Jay, committed suicide in January 1991. The tragedy seemed to draw Billy closer to Bill Clark and Anita.
But the never-ending squabble between Bill Clark and Carolyn was starting to show its effects on Billy.
The week before Mother's Day, Carolyn called Billy at the Ahwatukee house, and when Billy hung up he had tears in his eyes. It was the first time in years that Bill Clark had seen his son show raw emotion. "Don't let her put a damn guilt trip on you," Bill Clark remembers telling his son. When Mother's Day rolled around, Billy appeared to have regained his composure, and he and Margaret spent the morning with their father and stepmother--despite Carolyn's protestations.
Everyone seemed glad that Billy appeared to be his usual calm and cool self. That's because there was another family crisis: The day after Mother's Day, Anita disappeared.
While Anita was missing, a very strange thing happened. One night, as Bill Clark slumped in his living room wondering what on Earth could have happened to his wife, Margaret and Carolyn came over. They cooked and served dinner in Anita's kitchen, celebrating, they said, the 50th wedding anniversary of Carolyn's parents. With Anita gone, and Billy, Margaret, Carolyn and Bill Clark eating dinner under one roof, it almost seemed as if the family were back together again.
Susan Stricklin remembers being so numb over Anita's disappearance that she didn't even question the fact that Carolyn, Margaret and Billy were having a dinner party in Anita's house at the very time Anita was missing. She wonders now why she didn't think to say the dinner party was inappropriate.
Looking back at the dinner, Bill Clark now says, he had the strange impression that Margaret felt she and Billy had done him some sort of a favor.
It was only a few days later that Billy was arrested for the murder.
Since then, he's been held without bail in Madison Street Jail. Trial is scheduled for late December.
To pass the time, Billy reads the Bible and draws. Sometimes, when he writes letters, he illustrates the envelopes with troubling images. In one, an eagle's talons hover menacingly in midair, as though ready to pounce on unsuspecting prey. In another, a military-type airplane whizzes close to the desert floor, as if it is on a deadly mission.
"I LOVE BILLY more than any other human being on this Earth. You will never find anyone to say anything bad about him. He never had an enemy in his life. He is a total sweetie," says Margaret Clark one evening as she sits on the back porch of her grandparents' small home in south Scottsdale. As she talks, she pets Billy's docile German shepherd Shea, whom Billy whistles to over the telephone when he calls from jail.
Margaret doesn't hide her contempt for her dead stepmother. "I hated Anita," she says. "And the only reason is that she took my Dad away from us."
Margaret and Carolyn moved into Carolyn's parents' house a few weeks ago, after Carolyn was threatened with eviction from a rental home. Both have clerical jobs, but they can't make ends meet. "Margaret and Carolyn can't take care of themselves," a friend explains. The two had always been rich, until the kids grew up and child-support payments stopped coming in, and the proceeds from the sale of the fancy house on Exeter Boulevard dried up.
On the walls of Margaret's grandparents' house hang framed pictures of Billy. Billy as a Marine. Billy at the prom. But the most unusual picture of all is attached to the refrigerator with a magnet. It is a snapshot of Billy standing by Anita's silver Mercedes--the car he used to transport her corpse to the desert.
"That is the Mercedes," Margaret tells a visitor.
Margaret seems genuinely hurt that her dad has refused to see her and Billy until their court cases are over and that he's also refused to come to their rescue by paying for attorneys to defend Billy.
"I want my dad back, Billy wants his Dad back. We love him. We love him more than anything, he's all we've got," is all Margaret will say. She says her father is still paying her truck payments and her insurance, but she'd gladly have the truck repossessed if she could just see her father again.
What she won't talk about is her case. She has pleaded not guilty to charges of hindering prosecution. She allegedly told police that she had seen Anita on what turned out to be the night of the murder. This, the cops later found out, was not true. Margaret had spent the night drinking with a friend named Nancy Ammons.
The police also say that Margaret told Ammons on the night of the murder that Billy was out "digging a grave" at that very moment. Ammons later told police that Margaret said she and Billy had often talked about killing Anita but that Margaret never thought Billy would do it. Ammons told police she figured Margaret, whom she called "materialistic" and a "partyer" played a part in Anita's murder. Margaret says she is still friends with Ammons, who just got the conversation wrong.
The police also say that on the night after the murder, Margaret told another companion at a bar that Anita was to blame for all of her mother's problems, that she took Bill Clark away and he left their mother with nothing. That same drinking companion told police that Carolyn Clark came to the bar the night after the murder and argued with Margaret.
Margaret allegedly explained to her companion that Carolyn Clark wanted to know if Billy had anything to do with Anita's disappearance and if so, what should they tell police? Margaret was much more direct about what happened when she was talking to friends during a party she and Billy held at the Ahwatukee house a few days later, according to police. Investigators interviewed one of the friends and present the following scenario: After a few drinks, Margaret Clark told her friends--in front of Billy--that Billy had killed Anita by hitting her on the head, had stuffed the body in the trunk of Anita's Mercedes and had driven it to the desert. Anita was wearing her wedding rings when Billy burned her body and buried it, Margaret added.
Margaret also pointed out "a spot in the hallway" where she said the murder occurred. She then told the friends that Billy drove the Mercedes to San Diego and sold it. She and Billy were waiting for a check for $15,500, she added.
Police say that while Margaret explained to her friends what happened, Billy just sat there. "At no time did [Billy] deny the statements being made by his sister," detectives wrote.
The police allegations, Margaret says, are "totally ridiculous."
One thing Margaret will talk about is her childhood in the house on Exeter Boulevard, a period that she describes in mostly idyllic terms. She recalls fancy birthday parties with clowns, a pony named Ed, a candy-green lawn and huge citrus trees in a backyard that faced Camelback Mountain. Margaret also recalls a fancy condo in San Clemente, where the family spent vacations just two doors down from Julie Nixon Eisenhower.
Margaret says her childhood soured after her father moved out for good in the mid-Seventies. She missed him terribly, she says, because she was "daddy's girl" while Billy clearly was Carolyn's favorite.
Margaret and her mother say they get along now. But friends say that Margaret often was angry at Carolyn in those days and showed it by commenting cruelly on her mother's obesity--as if that was the cause of her parents' breakup.
Margaret doesn't recall it that way. "I never blamed my mother for the divorce," she says adamantly.
The children often were pulled between their parents. One day, Margaret recalls, Bill Clark came to the Exeter house to pick up her and Billy. Billy drew back, as though he were hesitating about going with his father. Carolyn grabbed Billy. Bill Clark lunged at his wife and beat her up. Margaret ran screaming to the neighbors. "My mother still has the pictures of her bruises," she says. This is a story Bill Clark adamantly denies, although he admits he once "slapped Carolyn in the face" to shut her up.
The way Margaret sees things, all this rancor wouldn't have happened if it weren't for Anita stealing her father away.
She even blames Anita for Jay's suicide in January 1991. After one of his failed attempts, says Margaret, "Jay told me he was going to do it right the next time." Margaret says she warned her father, who was planning a trip to Hawaii with Anita, not to leave Jay alone with Billy in the Ahwatukee house. "You won't have a son if you come back," Margaret recalls telling her father. But she says her father opted for the vacation because "Anita made him go."
Jay put a shotgun into his mouth on the day his father and Anita were due back from Hawaii. Billy told police he was outside washing the car when he heard the shot, rushed into the room and found his half-brother's partially decapitated remains.
"Billy didn't want to tell me what the room looked like," says Margaret. "But I made him tell me. That was my room. They repainted it, but I could still find spots of blood."
Margaret hated life in Ahwatukee anyway. She says she didn't like going to Living Word Bible Church with her father and Anita, because the charismatic style of worship made her father look silly. "She would take my Dad there and he would throw up his arms and dance in the aisles," she says. What is Anita doing to Dad, she asked herself.
The only time Margaret felt she could have her Daddy back, she says, was at the Winslow ranch. He'd go riding with her there, or sometimes the two would drink beer and play poker. She's quick to say that if Anita were with them at the ranch, she would often try to "cut into our quality time."
To get back at Anita, Margaret told police, she and Billy once taught a parrot to say, "Anita is a bitch." They also spiked her coffee with a laxative, according to police reports.
Sometimes the fact that Margaret's beloved Billy is in jail, combined with her banishment from her father's life, get to her so much she jumps in her truck and heads toward Sky Harbor International Airport. She says she drives past the runways and screams while the airplanes roar overhead.
"MY SON IS NOT a murderer," says Carolyn Clark. She firmly says Anita's death "was an accident."
Carolyn says there was nothing about her relationship with Bill Clark that would have pushed Billy over the edge, causing him to kill Anita. Carolyn maintains that her problems with Bill Clark had no effect on her children. In fact, she says, Billy didn't even remember his parents' fighting.
"My son was a model child," she says. "I raised him a good Christian boy in the church. He was a very normal boy. He was never in trouble in his life." (In an interview with New Times, Carolyn didn't mention Billy's theft rap in Navajo County in 1989.)
Back in 1978, Carolyn testified that Billy (then only 7) had emotional problems after Bill Clark left the family.
Carolyn wouldn't let her children stay overnight with their father. Why? At the time, he was living with Anita. Carolyn, in court papers, called Anita "a hooker."
"All of my children's life I've taken them to church and Sunday school," Carolyn testified during the divorce proceedings. "I have taught them the Ten Commandments since they were 3 years old and now they know what every one of them means. If I allow them to go and spend the night in a home where their father is sleeping with a woman he is not married to, while he is still married to me, then I'm falling down on what I've led them to believe."
Susan Stricklin does not remember Carolyn as such a saintly character. She says that when she was 13, she lived for a while with Bill Clark and Carolyn at the house on Exeter. "Everything was real `name-dropper' with her," Susan says. "Everything was Going to the Right Stores, Driving the Right Car, Meeting the Right People." This sort of lifestyle grated on Bill Clark's nerves, Susan says, describing him as an "original old Arizona John Wayne type."
Carolyn saw--still sees--Bill Clark as a larger-than-life figure. He was the man who rescued her from poverty. She had met him in 1966, when she was a slender beauty with thick dark hair and a charming Southern accent. She worked for him as assistant bookkeeper. A year later she divorced her husband and married Bill Clark in Las Vegas. She resents any hint that she was the reason Bill Clark divorced his then-wife May. "They were separated," she says.
It didn't take long for Carolyn's Cinderella-like life to come crashing down. She and Bill Clark were married for about a decade, but the marriage was stormy and they often separated. During and after their protracted divorce fight, Carolyn constantly pleaded poverty, claiming in court that Bill Clark bought expensive gifts for several girlfriends and his ex-wife May but ignored Billy and Margaret.
She resented the fact that Bill Clark gave money to Susan and Jackie, his married daughters. "I would like for my children to be considered, also," she testified.
Court records show how the children were caught in the middle. Bill Clark accused Carolyn of keeping the children away from him. Carolyn was once held in contempt of court for refusing to allow Billy and Margaret to go with their father on designated visiting days.
But Carolyn insists she never refused the children access to their father. "I never kept him away and he knows it." She says Bill Clark often told her to "go get a young man, I'm too old to have children. The less they see of me the better." She says she often "begged" Bill Clark over the telephone to come see the children. (Bill Clark denies her accusations.)
In the end, after all the fighting, Carolyn got the San Clemente condo, the Exeter house, $60,000 and substantial child support and spousal maintenance. Once, however, she had to haul Bill Clark back to court for failing to make the child-support payments.
For a few years, Carolyn and the children lived well. There were ballet, tap and piano lessons. Soccer shoes. Gucci purses. The private school. But the money was slipping away, and Carolyn had no job. She claimed her nerves and heart were too fragile for her to work. So she sold the Exeter house and the condo and moved to a smaller home. When she could no longer afford that, she moved to yet a smaller rental house, from which she was threatened with eviction last month. Now she lives with her parents.
When Billy came home from the Marines--at his mother's request--he seemed to resent his mother, says a former girlfriend of Billy's who asked not to be identified. "I had a feeling he loved her but didn't like her very much," the ex-girlfriend says. "She blamed all her problems on his dad, and he didn't like that."
Even though Billy was back in town, Carolyn felt left out--especially in the aftermath of Jay's suicide.
After the tragedy, Anita and Bill Clark joined May and her children, as well as Billy and Margaret, for sessions of grieving and mutual support.
Carolyn, who had raised Jay for a time, telephoned Susan Stricklin to say she felt excluded. Susan recalls Carolyn saying she was so upset by Jay's death she had to take tranquilizers. Carolyn went on to complain, according to Susan, that Billy and Margaret were wrapped up in their own grief and were ignoring her.
Carolyn also asked Susan why May was welcomed into the grieving circle while Carolyn was excluded. The answer was obvious to Susan. Beyond the fact that May and Bill Clark had remained close friends, Jay was their son.
These days, Carolyn Clark spends much of her time visiting Billy in jail. She says she is convinced of her son's innocence and is frustrated she can't afford a lawyer for him. She seems to be disappointed that Bill Clark hasn't come forward to rescue their son.
"I get the feeling," says one of Carolyn's longtime friends, who asked not to be identified, "that Carolyn still expects Bill to come up to her door and say, `I want to marry you again.'"
ON NOVEMBER 8, a tall, elderly man dressed in old Levi's, beat-up riding boots, a western shirt walked into Superior Court Judge Frank Galati's courtroom in Phoenix. Clutching a straw cowboy hat in his big thick hands, Bill Clark nodded slightly at his pale, manacled son in prison blues. His son met his gaze briefly, then looked away.
Bill Clark sat stoically right behind his son during the long hearing to decide whether Billy's confession would be allowed at his upcoming murder trial. Bill Clark listened to police testify graphically about the murder of Anita and the discovery of her incinerated remains. The cops also talked about how Billy sold Anita's Mercedes in San Diego after the murder, signing his father's name on the transfer papers.
Then Billy took the stand. Looking mostly at Judge Galati and never at his father, Billy tried to explain why he had confessed to Phoenix police detective Mike Chambers.
He said he trusted Chambers and felt he could talk to the detective about almost anything. He told him about how Anita had thrown away a favorite physics book, Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time, because it wasn't Christian.
Billy said it "felt good" to talk to Chambers about Jay's suicide and the Clark family problems. "I hadn't verbalized any of these feelings," Billy said, adding that it was a relief to get things off his chest.
Billy told the judge he hadn't understood what the police meant when they read him his Miranda rights. He said he asked for a lawyer before he confessed, but didn't get one. The police say that's not true.
The judge pointed out that it seemed strange that Billy was intelligent enough to enjoy A Brief History of Time and yet not understand his Miranda rights. Galati said he would issue a ruling at a future date. And then the hearing was over. Billy did not look at his father as he shuffled off to his jail cell.
IT IS SEVEN O'CLOCK in the morning. Bill Clark, 66, sits in a Smitty's restaurant in Tempe, his big hands wrapped around a cup of coffee.
He says he hopes he won't be called to testify against his son for murdering his wife. "What would I say?" he asks. "I just want to stay out of all this. Let the court decide."
Bill Clark runs four miles a day training for the Senior Olympics. He says exercise is one method he uses to try to forget the things that have happened to his family.
He remembers the police telling him that Billy claimed he killed Anita in self-defense. To Bill Clark, the idea that Anita would lunge at anyone during a fight about religion was ludicrous. That's just not the way Anita was. Everyone in the family had argued with Anita about her religion from time to time, and she never got violent. And even if she had, the 60-year-old woman couldn't have threatened the young Marine's life.
"Are you sure Billy did this?" he recalls asking the cops. "This is so out of character for Billy." Bill Clark had always thought of his son as an "all-American kid."
Bill Clark remembers saying that Margaret would be more likely to kill Anita than Billy. Margaret hated Anita, especially after she rummaged through Anita's computerized financial records and discovered that Anita gave about $70,000 a year to charity, mostly Christian causes like the church and the television station. Margaret also discovered from the computer that Anita appeared to be making a house payment for one of her own daughters.
Bill Clark told police he knew about the donations to Christian causes. What's more, he said, bristling, Anita's daughter actually wrote a check to her mother each month to cover the house payment that Anita appeared to be paying. "Who the hell's business is it?" Bill Clark asks.
The old rancher says it strikes him as creepy that Billy and Margaret had rummaged through his private records behind his back.
Now more than ever before, Bill Clark seems to be bitter about Carolyn. "I should never have married her," says Bill. "I knew after a few weeks it was a mistake, but it dragged on for nine years." He takes a sip of his coffee and then adds: "I bet she told you I didn't give her any money. Do you know how much money she got? Nearly $1 million. And she went through it fast."
Bill Clark refuses contact with his two youngest children. Then he says, "I still love Billy and Margaret. I keep asking `Lord, why us?' These kids were brought up in Christian schools. I tried to raise 'em as Christians. I know I wasn't a great example, but I'm not perfect. There was only one perfect man who walked this Earth, and he lived 2,000 years ago."
These days, Bill Clark spends most of his days at his Pinetop cabin or at his ranch in Winslow. He says he tries to push what happened out of his mind, but he can't. He wonders what he did wrong. Did he pressure his children too much? Was the divorce the problem? Did he not spend enough time with them?
"I feel guilty," he says. "I'm sure I wasn't a good father." He looks down at his hands and says, "I lost one son and feel I'm about to lose another."
In the end it was the fact that Billy secretly sold Anita's silver Mercedes Benz in San Diego that made police suspicious.
To Margaret and Billy, their father is a larger-than-life patriarch who could rescue them from anything in the world.
Anita shopped at secondhand stores, brunched at Piccadilly's and liked to holler and whoop at a charismatic Christian church.
"I've got my life laid out," Billy would say when the family got after him for not going to school or getting a steady job.
"I hated Anita," Margaret says. "And the only reason is that she took my Dad away from us."
The most unusual picture is a snapshot of Billy standing by Anita's silver Mercedes--the car he used to transport her corpse to the desert.
Margaret says she drives past the runways and screams while the airplanes roar overhead.
"Everything was real `name-dropper' with her," Susan says of Carolyn.
Even though Billy was back in town, Carolyn felt left out--especially in the aftermath of Jay's suicide.
"I get the feeling that Carolyn still expects Bill to come up to her door and say, `I want to marry you again.'"
To Bill Clark, the idea that Anita would lunge at anyone during a fight about religion was ludicrous.
