Needle Work

A Michigan couple’s affair leads to two grisly murders by heroin injection in this true crime account from the acclaimed author of Lobster Boy.

When Carol Giles’s friend Nancy Billiter was found dead—she had been bound, sexually violated, and injected with a lethal dose of battery acid and heroin—detectives in Michigan traced Billiter’s death back to Giles and her boyfriend, Tim Collier. Police also learned that the diabolical duo shared another secret: They had murdered Giles’s husband, Jessie.

Jessie, who had died months before Billiter, was disinterred, and an autopsy proved he’d been given a lethal shot of heroin instead of his prescribed insulin. Homebound and diabetic, Jessie was a heroin dealer. Police determined that Giles—who was fed up with taking care of her husband and children—along with her lover, Collier, had stolen the fatal dose from Jessie’s own drug supply. The cops surmised that Billiter’s death might have been due to her knowledge of the couple’s plot. In their dramatic trial, Giles and Collier turned against each other, but both were eventually convicted of murder.