The Babysitter Who Knew Too Much: Kimberly Cargill Capital Murder

June 18th, 2010. A woman drives down a dark Texas road with a body in her car. Five days later, that same woman will sit in court fighting to keep her kids. But the one witness who could have testified against her? She's already dead. This is the story of how a custody battle became a capital murder case, and how a bag of coffee creamers helped solve it.

Kimberly Cargill Murdered Her Son's Babysitter Days Before She Could Testify Against Her

Kimberly Cargill. Born in Mississippi, 1966. Three marriages behind her, four sons, worked as an office clerk and a Licensed Vocational Nurse. Standard American life on the surface. But by 2010, when she's 42, the whole thing is collapsing.

Child Protective Services has her two younger sons, Zach and Luke. Abuse allegations. The serious kind where the state steps in and starts taking your children. And Cargill is not handling it well. In May 2010, there's this voluntary custody agreement where her own mother, Rachel Wilson, gets temporary custody of Luke. Voluntary means Cargill agreed to it. But one day she just shows up at the daycare, takes Luke, and refuses to give him back. Refuses to return him to her own mother.

That's who we're dealing with here. Someone who agreed to something, signed off on it, and then just decided the rules don't apply to her anymore. And that behavior is accelerating as we get into June.

There were phone calls in the days leading up to June 18th. Long phone calls. Laura Gillespie, who was involved in the healthcare of one of Cargill's sons, later testified about these conversations. She said Cargill was in an angry rage over appointment scheduling and the custody situation. Not upset. Not frustrated. An angry rage. Multiple lengthy calls where Cargill is just losing it.

Cherry Walker Murder: Death Before Testimony in Texas Custody Battle

Cherry Walker was 39 years old. Mentally challenged. She had the mental capacity of maybe a nine or ten year old child. She needed a caregiver who spent half of every day with her just so she could live in her small apartment and handle basic tasks. She worked as a babysitter for one of Cargill's sons. And here's the thing about Cherry Walker. Her caregiver supervisor, a woman named Pertena Young, said Cherry was sweet and kind and completely incapable of lying. Like, fundamentally incapable. That was just who she was.

Pertena Young had told Cargill at some point that she was planning to turn her in to CPS because she didn't think it was safe to keep leaving a young child with Cherry, and it wasn't good for Cherry either. Cargill's response? She mentioned having friends at the DA's office. Young asked if that was a threat. Cargill told her to go ahead and do what she needed to do.

On June 18th, 2010, at 10:09 in the morning, Cherry Walker gets served with a subpoena. She's supposed to appear in Smith County district court on June 23rd. Five days away. She calls Cargill and tells her she has to testify.

Now, there's conflicting testimony about what was said next. Witnesses testified that Cargill told Cherry she could "hide out at her house" so she wouldn't have to show up in court. Cargill later said she told Cherry she could "hang out" at her house. Hide out. Hang out. Two very different meanings, same conversation. But either way, by the end of June 18th, Cherry Walker is dead.



Cherry Walker

The Whitehouse Texas Murder: When CPS Investigations Turn Deadly

Cargill's version of what happened goes like this. She takes Cherry out to dinner. Everything's fine. Pleasant evening. They're driving home and suddenly Cherry starts having a seizure in the passenger seat. She stops breathing right there in the car. And Cargill panics.

But here's where the panic story starts falling apart. Because what Cargill does next isn't what panic looks like. She doesn't call 911. Doesn't drive to a hospital. Doesn't pull over and try CPR. She drives to County Road 2191, this remote stretch called Oscar Burkett Road out in Whitehouse, Texas. She pulls Cherry's body out of the car. Drags it to the side of the road. Pours lighter fluid on the body and clothes. Sets everything on fire. And leaves.

She testified later that she knew how it would look. She already had this massive motive to want Cherry silenced. If she showed up at a hospital with Cherry's dead body, everyone would assume she murdered her. So she decided to burn the evidence instead. She said she set the body on fire to destroy any DNA that might connect her to the scene.

Let's sit with that for a second. Your friend dies of a seizure in your car. Your response is to burn her body on the side of a road. That's the story.

The next afternoon, June 19th, around 3:30, Bobby Lewis is driving down Oscar Burkett Road. He sees something on the side of the road. Could be trash. He stops to check. It's a body. Face down. Partially burned.

It takes four days to identify Cherry Walker because of the burn damage. But within a month, police have Kimberly Cargill in custody. And the reason they get her so fast is almost ridiculous in how ordinary it is.

Kimberly Cargill Death Row Case: Forensic Battle Over Cause of Death

Burger King coffee creamers. That's what gets her.

Investigators find this container near Cherry's body. Coffee creamers from Burger King. And they test it. Kimberly Cargill's DNA is all over it. The prosecution's theory is simple. When Cargill dragged Cherry's body out of her car, Cherry's leg caught the coffee creamers and pulled them out, scattering them at the scene. This isn't some criminal mastermind carefully staging a crime scene. This is messy. Panicked. Sloppy. And it ties Cargill directly to that exact spot where Cherry's burned body was found.

There's more. Cargill worked that day, June 18th, at East Texas Medical Center in Athens where she was an LVN. Her phone records show 70 calls and texts during her shift. She's supposed to be taking care of patients. A patient actually complained about not receiving pain medication. Her supervisor called her into the office that same day. Then that night? Her phone goes quiet. The prosecution argued she's too busy dealing with Cherry to be making calls.

And after June 18th, Cargill never calls Cherry again. Not once. Cherry is supposed to testify in five days and Cargill never tries to reach her. If your friend suddenly died of a seizure, wouldn't you be calling? Checking in with someone? Trying to figure out what happened? The silence is deafening.

Oh, and one more thing. The day after she dumps the body, Cargill goes to the Whitehouse Police Department. She's checking to see if there's a dead body investigation yet. She wants to know if anyone's found Cherry.

The medical examiner found Cherry died from asphyxiation. There were petechial hemorrhages in her eyes. Bleeding in the soft tissues over her chest near the sternum, the kind of injury you see when someone's being held down or restrained. And something unusual: the tip of Cherry's tongue was hemorrhagic and seared. Tongue injuries show up sometimes in strangulation cases.

But the medical examiner also admitted there were no ligature marks on Cherry's neck. No obvious bruising around the throat. And when pushed, she conceded that an autopsy might not reveal evidence of a natural death from a seizure. That admission became the foundation of the defense's entire strategy.

Because Cherry Walker did have a documented history of seizures going back to 2003. Medical records showed she'd been prescribed Wellbutrin, which can trigger seizures in some people. At trial, defense attorneys asked a medical expert about the possibility of sudden unexpected death in epilepsy. The doctor said it was very rare, less than 10 percent chance, but yes, it was possible. Sometimes people just die and no one knows exactly why.

So the jury had to weigh two stories. The state said Cargill strangled Cherry to silence her before she could testify. The defense said Cherry died of a seizure and Cargill panicked and made catastrophically bad decisions afterward. Which one do you believe?

Retaliation Murder in Smith County: The Cherry Walker Killing

The jury convicted her of capital murder on May 18th, 2012. Then came the sentencing phase. And this is where the full scope of who Kimberly Cargill really was came into focus.

Under Texas law, to get the death penalty, prosecutors have to prove future dangerousness. They have to show a pattern. And they had one.

Three of Cargill's four sons testified. They said she choked them. Frequently. Also kicked them, hit them. They told the jury they were often afraid for their lives. She'd changed the locks on their bedroom doors so she could lock them inside for hours at a time. Her own mother testified that Cargill would choke her whenever she got upset and angry. Think about that. Her elderly mother. Choking her.

Three ex-husbands took the stand. One of them described watching Cargill beat his young son from a previous marriage so hard she knocked the boy across the room. That's what made him finally leave. Her oldest son, David, testified she choked him when he was in second grade. Just a little kid. And she's choking him.

The pattern is what matters here. Choking shows up over and over again. It's her go-to move when she's angry, when she wants control. Her sons. Her mother. Her partners. And when confronted with these incidents during trial, Cargill would claim she was defending herself. Always the victim in her own story.

Prosecutors called it a mountain of testimony and evidence about physical abuse. Expert witnesses said Cargill displayed traits consistent with psychopathy. Her emotions were superficial, short-lived. There was basically no psychological diagnosis involving violence that she didn't check the box for. But she knew right from wrong. She wasn't legally insane. She made choices. The violence had escalated over time, from abuse to capital murder. Her sister April testified that Cargill was clever and manipulative.

On May 31st, 2012, the jury unanimously recommended death. Judge Jack Skeen made it official on June 7th. Death by lethal injection.

The Babysitter Who Knew Too Much: Kimberly Cargill Capital Murder

Cargill's attorneys filed eighteen points of error in the direct appeal. The evidence wasn't sufficient. The judge shouldn't have allowed all that testimony about her violent past. Every single claim got rejected by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in November 2014.

But then came the habeas corpus petition, and this one had teeth. Ten of the claims centered on one argument: ineffective assistance of counsel. The defense said Cargill's trial lawyers knew about this nationally renowned epilepsy specialist from the beginning and never put him on the stand. His name is Dr. Samden Lhatoo. He's the Director of the Texas Comprehensive Epilepsy Program. His whole research focus is sudden unexpected death in epilepsy, known as SUDEP.

Dr. Lhatoo reviewed Cargill's testimony about Cherry having a seizure in the car and stopping breathing. He said that story lined up exactly with SUDEP. Her version of events was scientifically supportable. The defense argued that if the jury had heard from Dr. Lhatoo, if they'd understood SUDEP was a legitimate medical possibility, maybe one juror would have had reasonable doubt. That's all you need. One juror.

In April 2017, the habeas court rejected all fifteen claims. Their reasoning? Dr. Lhatoo wasn't a forensic pathologist. His opinion about cause of death couldn't carry the same weight as the state's medical examiner. They ruled his forensic pathological conclusion was outside his area of expertise.

So even though he's a nationally recognized expert on epilepsy, even though SUDEP is a real medical phenomenon, the court said his testimony couldn't be used to contradict the state's forensic pathologist. The medical examiner admitted she couldn't be certain about the cause of death. But the legal system decided that uncertainty wasn't enough. The motive was too strong. The cover-up was too deliberate. The pattern of violence was too clear.

The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case in October 2017. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rejected another appeal in June 2020.

Burger King Evidence and Burned Bodies: The Kimberly Cargill Case

Kimberly Cargill is on death row at the Mountain View Unit in Gatesville, Texas. She's 58 years old now. No execution date has been set. She still has federal appeals available, so legally, this story isn't over.

But here's what we know for certain. Cherry Walker was a vulnerable woman with the mental capacity of a child who was doing exactly what the court asked her to do. She was subpoenaed. She was going to show up and tell the truth. Five days before that hearing, she was dead. Kimberly Cargill admitted to burning Cherry's body and dumping it on a remote road.

Whether Cherry died from a seizure or from being strangled, Cargill made a series of deliberate choices afterward. She chose to hide what happened. She chose to destroy evidence. She chose to let Cherry's family spend Father's Day weekend wondering if that burned body on the side of Oscar Burkett Road was their daughter.

The jury looked at everything. The motive to silence a witness. The DNA evidence on those coffee creamers. The decades of using choking as a weapon against her own family. The complete lack of remorse. And they decided Cherry Walker was murdered to keep her quiet.

That's retaliation. Under Texas law, that's capital murder. And that's why Kimberly Cargill is waiting to die.