CHAPTER 21
The Myrtle Beach Homicide Division team was gathering momentum and obtaining a lot of incriminating information that pointed toward John Frazier as Brent Poole's killer. All their bells and whistles had been put in place. Rather than casting a wide net to see what they could haul in, the detectives were focusing on their most likely suspectâwho had motive, means and opportunityâand working to eliminate him first. This made sense, of course, since it was the most time-efficient way of solving a murder.
Detective Altman had continued his steady pressure on Renee Poole and she was beginning to bend. In several phone calls from her home, she confessed Brent was not only insured for $100,000 but would receive a generous employee benefit package upon his death. She also had begun to soften on the idea that John Frazier had been the killer.
To help solve the case, Captain Hendrick had requested additional assistance from the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigations (SBI). Special Agents James R. Bowman and H. G. Pendergrass had interviewed Frazier at his home in Winston-Salem. He admitted he had borrowed his friend's gray 1990 Acura the week the Pooles had been at the beach. He also acknowledged ownership of a Glock, model 19, 9mm handgun, and that he had previously owned an Italian-made TZ-75 9mm pistol. He had forgotten who had purchased the TZ-75.
John Boyd Frazier's dilemma was beginning to look dimmer by the moment. Thomas Pedersen, one of his best friends in Winston-Salem, told him the MBPD had been calling his house and were talking with his girlfriend about John. Cynthia knew all about John and Renee's affair and had spoken with them about it.
Thomas urged John to phone Detective Altman and try and straighten out the mess he had gotten himself into. John called the MBPD and spoke with Lieutenant Bill Frontz, who informed him that Brent Poole had been murdered and he was a suspect. John was not laughing when he called Thomas back to say his name was being mentioned in connection with Brent's murder. He had been Renee's most recent lover and came unglued after the police told him they were looking at him as a suspect.
When Thomas got home from work that night around six o'clock, John was waiting on him. He looked like death warmed over. Cynthia told her boyfriend John had only stayed awake for twenty minutes, then fell asleep on the couch. When he woke up, he looked kind of pale and sounded really roughâkind of like he was drunk. Said John wasn't clear and logical about everything that was going on, but she figured he probably had a lot to think about. Thomas didn't waste any time in asking him if he had anything to do with Brent's murder.
“Man, I swear I wasn't in Myrtle Beach,” John assured his friend. He not only proclaimed his innocence, but insisted he had been sick and was at home in bed the entire time. “I was taking NyQuil all night just to get by.”
“Well, did you talk to anybody?” Thomas asked in a panic. “Anybody that could verify you were at home?”
“No, nobody's seen me,” John said in a low voice. “I worked that past weekend, so I was beat. Sick and pretty much asleep the whole time.”
Even though John had been off from work the same three days the Pooles had vacationed at the beach, he still told Thomas he had been too sick to go anywhere. Nobody had called him and nobody had come over to see him.
Thomas had been John's friend for almost a year and one of the things he appreciated about him was his not getting wild and into crazy stuff. He had never known John to do a lot of drinking or drugsânothing like thatâand he was very close to his family. Thomas's own gut feeling told him that John didn't have anything to do with Brent's death, but his lack of an alibi definitely caused him to question whether John was telling him the truth or not.
Thomas told the police all he ever knew about John and Renee's relationship was that they were sleeping together. Renee had planned on leaving her husbandâand John had even gotten his lawyer to talk with her about itâbut John never said he loved Renee and she was the girl that he really wanted to be with. Besides, John always had had a thing for strippers, taking them into his home like stray cats. Thomas admitted John was somewhat upset at first, wanting to know why Renee had moved in with him, then had moved back in with Brent. Said he was hurt and believed she had used him just to get back at her husband, but it wasn't like the biggest thing in his life.
Thomas said he didn't know Renee well, but she had been over to their house to visit Cynthia at least four or five times. In all those times, he had heard her talk about her husband only once.
“The first night I met her,” he explained, “she and Cynthia were going out to play pool and I was going to watch her kid for her. It was kind of odd that I was sitting on the couch and she kind of up and said, âCynthia is really lucky to have a guy like you. It's been a month or more since I've had sex with my husband.' ”
In those first five minutes of conversation, Thomas said he learned that Renee and Brent were having serious trouble in their marriage. Cynthia told him afterward that Renee said Brent had forced himself on her, they were having money problems and their relationship was rotten, and that she wanted to leave him but didn't know how to do it.
According to Thomas, John was scared and had already spoken with an attorney who had advised him to remove anything and everything in his house that had to do with Renee Poole and put it in a safe place. When Thomas asked John where he had put Renee's things, he wouldn't tell him. One of the items he specifically asked John about was his 9mm Glock. “John, why don't you take your gun down to the police department and let them check it out, so at least they could clarify it wasn't the gun that killed Brent.” John said his gun had never been fired and that wouldn't be a problem, but when he talked to his lawyer, he had advised against it. The gun had been removed from John's house, but he wouldn't tell Thomas where it was hidden.
Cynthia told police Renee was acting as strange as John. She had called her the day she arrived home from the beach to break the news about Brent's murder. In their conversation, Cynthia had asked Renee if she thought John had murdered Brent. Renee told her the killer was bigger than John and his voice was deeper. Afterward, Cynthia called John and left him a message not to worry about the police, that Renee had said it wasn't him. John then telephoned her and asked if she would phone Renee to see if it was okay for him to call her.
“No, I'd rather not talk with him right now, “Renee said harshly. “I'd rather not see him. I'm with my family now and I have a friend of the family coming over. I really need to get off the phone.”
Renee's snub had rubbed Cynthia the wrong way. Knowing that she and John were having an affair and were supposedly in love, it was strange for her not to want to see him. After all she had said about how much she loved him and then had left her husband for him, it just didn't sound like Renee.
“I haven't eaten and I haven't slept,” Renee reminded her. “The only thing you can do for me is pray.”
Cynthia couldn't believe her ears.
Pray? Has Renee forgotten who she is?
Before she could respond, Renee asked her if she would retrieve a ring she had left at John's house. Cynthia promised she would.
Renee's next-door neighbors Jim and Renee Bollow told the police Renee had called them the day after Brent had been killed. Renee Bollow called her husband at work and Jim rushed home. He and Brent had not only been neighbors, but were good friends. The first words out of Jim's mouth were “Oh, my God, she did it. And she's going to try and get away with it.”
The Bollows had also recognized some of Renee's inappropriate behavior the Wednesday she stopped by to pick up some things from her house. They had been the Pooles' neighbors on Blue Bonnet Court in Mocksville for 2½ years and were very much aware of their marital problems. They recalled for police many examples of the Pooles' troubled marriage and detailed the time Renee had moved out to live with John, then came back home to Brent.
While the Pooles had been on vacation in Myrtle Beach, the Bollows had volunteered to retrieve their mail. The first thing Renee had asked them on Wednesday was “Can I get the mail? There's supposed to be a check in there for Brent and I need it.”
Renee Bollow gave Renee her mail, and she and her husband watched as she stood there and opened it. Jim could see in one envelope there was a check made out to Brent, but he couldn't see the amount. There was a little note with it thanking Brent for his work on a diesel engine.
Renee closed the letter and shoved it and the check back in the envelope. “Okay, this is what I needed, thank you,” she said in a rush. Jim walked her back over to her house, where he saw two men waiting.
“There were two young guys sitting there on the front porch,” Jim told his wife after Renee had left. “They looked like guard dogs.”
Renee Bollow informed her husband that they were friends of Brent's and were there to make sure something didn't happen to Renee.
“Wow, they're really misdirected if they think that they are going to be protecting her,” he said sarcastically. “Wait until they find out that she could have possibly been responsible for killing their friend. They'll think twice about protecting her then.”
The next day, Renee came back over to her house with Vincent and Tony to get some pictures of Brent. She asked Renee Bollow if they could park in her driveway because they didn't want the press to see her.
Bollow would later tell the police that for about nine months she had seen a red car over at Renee's every night. The driver obviously knew Brent's working hours because he would wait around the corner, at the end of the neighborhood, until Brent left and would always leave a half hour before he returned. Frazier's Black Blazer had started showing up about three months ago. It was the same routine as the first one: Renee's lover inside the house with no lights on, then leaving just before Brent arrives.
Renee had told her neighbors quite a lot about her new boyfriend, John. Said she was still in love with him and had only moved back in with Brent because of the security. The Thursday before the Pooles left to go to the beach, Renee Bollow had overheard her saying to John, “I wish you'd come over, please, please come over. I love you, I don't really know what you want to know.” A few days later, Poole had been talking on her cordless phone to John again, talking real low and telling him how much she loved and missed him. “And then she got her daughter, Katie, to tell him she loved him,” Bollow added, saying that had really upset her and her husband.
Renee had boasted to Bollow that she liked John a lot because he babied her. He would paint her toenails, wash her hair and watch Katie while she took a nap. One evening, she said, they had made sure Katie was asleep, then videotaped themselves having sex.
“I'm no goddess of marriage or anything,” Bollow had tried to tell Poole, “but things like that don't usually last. It's just good little nothings.”
The Bollows had never seen Brent get physically abusive. But they had seen him get angry and then trash his house when he learned Renee had been having an affair with John. After she moved back in, he had caught her talking to John over the Internet and pulled the phone cord out, then threw it against the wall.
Jim Bollow said he had talked with Renee several times after she returned home to Brent in May. Among other things, she told him she was still in love with John and that they had gone out and gotten their genitalia pierced. “Renee said it was really uncomfortable and she had wanted to take hers out, but John had kept his in for her. She said it was some kind of bond thing they had for each other.”
After hearing about Renee's undying love for Frazier, Jim honestly asked why she had come back home.
“I don't know,” she answered. “I guess it was the money. Brent can afford me.”
Jim shook his head in disgust.
“Don't tell Brent, but I've talked with an attorney,” Renee whispered, “but he told me that I could lose my daughter in custody because I just up and left one night. And that I had to get Brent to let me back in the house, and if he did that, then it means legally he accepts me and he can't sue. Now I'm back in, so here I am.”
Jim had to turn away from her before he said something he would regret later. He started to walk away, but she grabbed him by the arm.
“Well, you know we're fighting again. He wants me to get a regular job and I told him there's no way.”
“Why?” Jim asked. “What do you want to do?”
Renee informed him she had been working at the Silver Fox for about ten months. She was good at what she did, but a full-nudity bar had just opened in Winston-Salem that was going to compete with the Silver Fox and other gentleman's clubs for business. It would take some of their customers away.
“I want to work at that full strip joint,” she said with a straight face. “I've been talking to the girls there and they've been making as much money in one night as what I make in a week.”
“How does Brent feel about that?”
“He wants me to get a secretarial job or drive a truck, a courier for a junkyard delivering parts.”
“Well, you ought to think about that,” Jim advised earnestly.
“There is no way in hell I'm going to do that,” Renee shot back.
Bollow also recalled for the police an incident Renee had shared with him about Brent and John getting into a fight at the Silver Fox. It had started the weekend before they went to the beach. John was at their house in his black Blazer when Brent suddenly popped into the driveway, looking real mad. Renee and Brent had gotten into a very big fight about John being there. Finally they decided they needed to chill out and rode over to the Silver Fox for a few drinks. John came in later and he and Brent wound up having words in the parking lot. Renee told him that John had threatened to kill Brent.