By Suevon Lee
Staff writer
Published: Sunday, March 14, 2010 at 6:01 a.m.
OCALA - With a year having passed since Heather Strong was killed in gruesome fashion, previously unknown details about the case have emerged and shed new light on the relationships between and among the victim and her accused killers.
Strong's estranged husband, Joshua Fulgham, and his girlfriend, Emilia Carr, are charged with kidnapping and first-degree murder. They have pleaded not guilty; the state is seeking the death penalty.
Authorities knew Strong and Fulgham, who already had two children together, had married in December 2008. But it turns out that, a month earlier, Fulgham had proposed to Carr.
What prompted Fulgham's sudden change of heart is unclear. So is the effect it had on Carr.
"She just couldn't believe it. She was hurt," Carr's mother said in a deposition. "Here he proposed to her, bought the ring for her, and in December, he came and took it and married Heather."
The victim's cousin is less charitable. She said the marriage was a ruse, all part of a plot to deceive Heather Strong so Carr and Fulgham could kill her.
"Why else would Emilia let him marry her?" Misty Strong asked.
Also coming to light are details of a prior incident when authorities say Carr attacked Heather Strong.
In January 2009, just one month before the murder, Carr allegedly held a knife to Strong's throat, demanding she sign a letter that would lead to a dropped criminal charge against Fulgham and secure his release from jail.
That detail comes from one of the many reports that law officers prepared after the body was found. There is no indication that Strong ever reported the assault to law enforcement.
As the state continues its vigorous prosecution of both defendants, another interesting development has emerged: This marks the first time Marion County prosecutors have sought the death penalty against a woman since Aileen Wuornos in the early 1990s.
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About a year ago, Strong's body was unearthed from a makeshift grave beside an abandoned storage trailer off a property in Boardman, about two miles north of McIntosh.
Through fingerprints, authorities were able to identify the body. Strong, 26, had disappeared a month earlier.
Unlike some homicides, this wouldn't be a cold case. Authorities already had one of their prime suspects - Fulgham - in custody. On March 19, 2009, he led deputies to the spot where the body was buried.
The question is what would drive someone to suffocate the mother of two.
Fulgham, now 28, had been arrested and accused of fraudulent use of Strong's debit card during the time she was missing. Both he and Carr, now 25, provided statements to detectives implicating themselves and each other, providing details of how they lured Strong to the trailer, attempted to break her neck and, when that didn't work, suffocated her with a bag placed over her head.
The gruesome crime is made more unusual by the fact that Carr was eight months' pregnant at the time. She gave birth two months after she was taken into custody. The child is believed to be Fulgham's.
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Fulgham, a native of Mississippi, had a history of domestic violence toward Strong, and his possessive behavior had long been observed by others.
Strong's mother, Carolyn Spence, still remembers the time three years ago when he called her in Mississippi, telling her he had tied Heather up, taped her mouth, and stuffed her into the trunk of his car so the "alligators would eat her alive."
Ben McCollum, a mechanic in McIntosh whom Strong had been dating until her death, relayed to authorities that Fulgham once called his house and shop, threatening to kill both him and Heather.
"It was all about control. That's all what it boiled down to," said Misty Strong, a cousin of Heather's who first reported her disappearance on Feb. 24, 2009.
Fulgham and Heather Strong had two children together, now ages 3 and 9. Despite the tempestuous relationship, they married in December 2008, just two months before Strong was killed.
Strong sought at least two domestic violence injunctions against Fulgham - once in September 2008 and again in January 2009, the same month Fulgham was arrested for aggravated assault with a firearm for threatening Strong with a shotgun. He served some jail time, but the charge was later removed at Strong's request.
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What prompted that request is unknown. But after Strong's death, detectives learned that, about that time, Carr had held a knife to Strong's throat and demanded that she drop the charge.
Jamie Acome - one of Carr's ex-boyfriends and father of one of her children - told detectives that Carr wanted Strong "out of the way," because she knew Fulgham would "eventually go back to Heather regardless of what him and Emilia was going through."
While she doesn't recall her cousin ever talking about Carr at length, Misty Strong believes the couple wanted Strong out of the picture, perhaps to rid of Fulgham's burden of child support payments.
"The only thing that makes sense is money," she said.
In depositions, both Carr's mother and sister said Carr didn't have any obviously strained relationship with Heather Strong. She would even baby sit her children from time to time.
The only things that mattered to Strong, according to her family, were her two children.
"Those kids went everywhere she went," said her mother, Carolyn Spence. The two children, she added, are now in foster care.
Contact Suevon Lee at 867-4065 or suevon.lee@starbanner.com.
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