‘I told her to get out of there'
San Jacinto County victim had called family before the shooting, saying something was wrong
By CINDY HORSWELL
HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Shara Torres thought she had been given a new lease on life. Diagnosed with uterine cancer, she'd had a hysterectomy and her doctor informed her just last month she was cancer-free.
“I'm the happiest that I've ever been in my life,” she told her family, who knew she had been through rough times with an ex-husband who is currently in prison.
While her life was still in disarray, the 27-year-old had earlier let her three oldest children be adopted since she was unable to provide for them. But now she was looking forward to devoting herself to her bright-eyed little girl — 4-year-old Sarah.
The mother and daughter were living in a modest wooden house in San Jacinto County, north of Houston, with Oliver “Bubba” Bills, who had helped raise the youngster since she was a few days old. Bills provided for them by toiling as a carpenter so she could remain home with her daughter. He took medicine for a bipolar disorder but had never threatened them with any harm — until last weekend.
Bills, who had been hallucinating and hearing voices after going off his medication, fatally shot them both and his 71-year-old adoptive mother with a shotgun before lying down on his bed and dying from a self-inflicted wound, authorities said.
The tragedy has provoked intense reaction in San Jacinto County after news spread that seven hours passed before deputies responded to repeated pleas for help from family members worried about Bills' behavior. San Jacinto County Sheriff James Walters last week promised a full inquiry into the delay.
Torres' sister Rachael Clark, of Dallas, heard it all happen over the telephone.
Torres kept whispering on that Saturday, her sister said, as if fearful that Bills, who had recently given her a diamond promise ring, might be listening.
“She told me that she had been waiting all day for sheriff's deputies to come get him,” said Clark, because Bills, 42, needed to be forcibly taken to a mental hospital, as had happened twice before.
A clinician from a mental health facility, a longtime family friend and relatives had been repeatedly calling for assistance for more than seven hours. Dispatchers had said the manpower was not available, with authorities believing a medic rather than a deputy was needed. But this time, Torres said a deputy was on his way.
Clark could hear the fear in her sister's voice but didn't want to provoke any problems so she agreed to call back.
But Clark said that before she could hang up the phone, she heard a shot, then a loud boom and a haunting scream as Torres cried, “No, not my baby! Not my baby!”
Torres had left the phone dangling and would be found dead with Sarah in her arms.
Clark will never forget dialing 911 and the frantic drive from Dallas to find out what had happened to her sister.
Torres' mother, Sharon Clark of Cleveland, had also spoken to her daughter that last day. Torres told of waking up at 2 a.m. to find Bills standing over her and her daughter, placing his hands on their foreheads.
“She was scared by the way he looked at her with that kind of strange, faraway look, and then he would say things like ‘You're talking about me!'” her mother said. “I told her to get out of there.”
But Torres adored Bills and didn't want to anger him by leaving, while believing he would never harm them, her family said.
Torres was a ninth-grade dropout who had gotten pregnant by the time she was 16, so Bills had been providing her more security than she had known for a while, said her cousin Andria Tidwell, who lives in Denton.
“She'd lived in poverty most of her adult life,” said Tidwell, who recalled times during her childhood when her own family had to sleep under a bridge. “I just wonder if things would have been different if Shara had lived in a $100,000 home. ... Maybe authorities think people like her and Bubba are disposable.”
Walters, the county sheriff, bristled at that suggestion.
“My God, that's an insult to me,” he said. “Someone would have been out there if it became clear there was a true emergency.”
Problems with drugs
Bills' behavior had grown more bizarre as the day progressed, as he had been unable to sleep or eat for several days, his family said.
He started picking up dirt and growling at it, refusing to look his mother in the eye because “she'd seen the devil.” He said he worried that things were being implanted in his brain and that police officers and mechanical rabbits were hiding in the woods to kill him.
Family members don't know what exactly triggered the chemical imbalance in Bills' brain that was first noticed about five years ago. Some wonder if his past dabbling in drugs was to blame.
While he still enjoyed drinking beer, he had overcome a past problem with speed, said his longtime friend, Mark Campbell, a home contractor.
Campbell and his other friends describe Bills as happy, fun-loving, generous and giving. A neighbor, Johnny Wienecke, tells how Bills would come to his house daily and carry him outside to get some sunshine after he contracted cancer.
Bills' mother, Gloria, who was one of 10 children, was never able to have children herself. She took great delight in Bubba, whom she adopted when he was just a few days old, her family said.
“She loved her son with all her heart,” said Erica Benzing, the eldest of Bills' four daughters from two prior marriages. “Even though he killed her, she would have forgiven him at that moment.”
She never knew a stranger and could talk to anyone for hours, her family said.
Known as ‘Avon Lady'
A widow whose husband died three years ago, she is also remembered around town as the “Avon Lady.” She won several awards for being such a persuasive saleswoman that she could even get men to buy her products.
And Sarah was just as outgoing. Her maternal great-grandparents, Earline and Jack Murry, remember the last time they saw her dressed as a beautiful fairy princess.
“I told her how special she was,” Earline Murry said.
Now, relatives of the four victims are waiting for answers, believing that this could all have been avoided if deputies had arrived sooner.
“I'm mad. Nothing can be done to bring them back,” said Torres' mother, Sharon Clark, her voice filled with emotion, “but it sure feels wrong.”
cindy.horswell@chron.com
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
By Andrea Lucia
SAN JACINTO CO. (KTRK) -- On Saturday night, San Jacinto Sheriff Deputies were called to a home where they found four people dead from an apparent murder suicide. Now friends of those killed say deputies had plenty of time to prevent it from happening, but ignored their calls for help.
Neighbors describe the man as one of the nicer people you could ever meet. Few even seemed to realize that Oliver "Bubba" Bills struggled with a mental illness. But his friends say it was that mental illness that pushed him to shoot and kill those he loved most in this world. They don't blame Bills for what he did Saturday as much as they do the sheriff's department for failing to stop him.
Inside the home of Bills, friends saw the signs on Saturday morning.
"I knew something was very wrong," Mark Campbell said.
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Campbell says he and Bills' 71-year-old mother, Gloria, called the San Jacinto Sheriff's Office repeatedly that afternoon.
"We told them he's off his medication. He's not acting right. He has a history of mental illness. He has guns in the house. The girlfriend is terrified to death to be out there," said Campbell.
But he says it wasn't until much later, some eight hours after their first call for help, that deputies finally showed up. When they did, it was too late to do anything.
"The officer came upon the bodies in the house," said Captain Carl Jones of the San Jacinto Sheriff's Office.
Capt. Jones said that day Bills shot and killed his mother, his girlfriend and her four-year-old daughter, then turned the gun on himself.
When we asked him if he felt like there was a delay in deputies getting out there, Capt. Jones replied, "No, ma'am."
The captain would not tell us how many calls the department received that day or what time they came in, but he says there was no reason to think Bills was dangerous, only sick, and so deputies did not prioritize those calls.
The sheriff's office is now investigating their response, but so far don't seem to see any evidence of wrongdoing. Campbell, of course, sees things differently.
"They didn't do their job," said Campbell.
And the results, he says, are tragic.
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