The Witches of Garland
How a mother and daughter hired a hit man to kill their husband and father, and why they might just get away with it.
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When the neighbor gave me a look, I added, “Those women in the movie, who took off and left their husbands.”
“Yeah, well, that’s a little different than wanting to kill them or whatever,” the neighbor said.
She does have a point. Lots of women go to happy hour at Mexican restaurants to drink margaritas. During happy hour, they do spend much of their time talking about their unhappiness with men. They tend to say to one another that the world would be much better off if certain men just weren’t around. One of them might, after a couple of drinks, say something about wanting to stab her no-good husband in the heart with a butcher knife or wrapping Saran Wrap around his face and watching him choke to death. Yes, there is always a sense of feminine longing at happy hour for something better.
But had Shirley Hughes’s longing turned into something much darker years earlier? That, at least, is what Chris Willingham says. He told the Morning News that he had met the Hughes family in 1995 when Tammie was dating one of his friends. Although Willingham wasn’t exactly a hardened criminal—his only felony conviction was for driving while intoxicated—he came across as a tough, overall-wearing son of a gun who knew how to get things done.
According to Willingham’s version of events, Shirley came to him in 1999 with an unusual request. He said she asked him to “get rid” of her husband. “I blew it off as something people say,” Willingham said. “A day or two later, she called and said to forget it. ‘He’s probably going to die soon enough anyway.’”
In the online comments section to one of the newspaper’s stories about the Hughes family, one friend, who said that the Hugheses used to watch “our house and dog when we traveled,” did acknowledge that “Kenneth was very ill at one time and they didn’t think he was going to make it.”
But Kenneth did not die. Indeed, as a new century dawned, Kenneth’s heart was still ticking. And the fact that he was still alive, year after year after year, allegedly got under Shirley’s skin. At least that’s the cops’ theory. (Mind you, Shirley’s attorney Robbie McClung, who happens to be a very respected former Dallas prosecutor turned defense lawyer, says Willingham’s story is grade-A fabricated and that he has, in McClung’s judicious words, “his own personal interest in playing both sides.” )
Willingham said he put the conversation with Shirley out of his mind. He went back to his life looking honky-tonk tough, even if he couldn’t find a job as a plumber.
Then, on February 22 of this year, said Willingham, here comes Tammie with the same request about sending Kenneth to his grave. Willingham said he was absolutely stunned: apparently, Shirley had passed on to her daughter her dark longing for something better. Willingham said she kept asking her why she wanted him dead. “She said, ‘I hate him. I've always hated him,’” said Willingham. “She said, ‘We’ll take care of you.’ I said, ‘Who’s we?’ She said, ‘Me and Mom.’” Willingham said that Tammie then told him that “she was going to do it herself a couple of days before this, but her mom talked her out of it.”
Willingham said he could not fathom why the Hughes women saw him as the great All American hit man. “I’ve had a run of bad luck. I’ve lost my house, my car, my job,” Willingham said. “I think that’s why she wanted me to do this—because she knew I was down and out.”
One cannot help but wonder if the two women might have had some sort of infatuation with Willingham, who, compared to the slow-drawling, waste-dispatching Kenneth, was certainly all man. (If you haven’t already, go look at that photo of him in the Morning News standing beside his pit bull gnawing at an automobile tire hanging from the tree.)
Maybe Willingham wielded some sort of seductive power over them. For those of you who saw the movie version of The Witches of Eastwick, remember the character Daryl Van Horne (played by Jack Nicholson) who had a charismatic effect on middle-class housewives turned witches? Remember how he encouraged them to further their witch-like powers? Will Robbie McClung be claiming in court that Chris Willingham was indeed a redneck Daryl Van Horne?
After talking to Tammie, Willingham said he became convinced that Kenneth was going to be killed “with or without me,” and he felt he had no other choice but to contact police. He and the undercover officer met Tammie on February 22 at around 9 p.m. The three of them drove around for more than an hour discussing the killing while the conversation was being secretly videotaped and audiotaped.
You have to admire Willingham for doing the right thing, right? Well, kind of. Willingham asked the police if there was any reward money for betraying one of his friends and foiling the alleged murder plan. Uh, no, the cops said, there was no reward.
So, what did happen out there in Garland? Did Tammie get mad at her dad after he told her she needed to keep her room clean and work more hours at the loading dock in order to help out with the finances around the house? Did Tammie know about her mother’s alleged attempt to do away with Kenneth a decade earlier? Did Tammie go to her mom and suggest they try it again? Did Shirley go along with the idea because she still wasn’t happy in the marriage and she had gotten tired of having to serve her husband a hot dinner every night? Did they agree to split his $200,000 life insurance policy (minus the $25,000 that they would have to give Willingham), so they could live happily ever after? Is any of that possible?
Sorry, we’re going to have to wait for the trial to learn all the facts. But it does appear that Kenneth and his relatives are, for now, summarily dismissing all the claims made by the police and Willingham about Shirley having a long-time hankering to kill off her husband. They are pinning the blame squarely on Tammie. Tonya King, Tammie’s sister, said she believes Tammie came up with the idea and that her mother went along with the plot because she was “talked into doing it.”
And why did Tammie want her dad dead and buried? “She's just hard up for money,” said Tonya.
Kenneth did admit that he went down to the jail to visit Shirley. (Wow, can you imagine that scene? Kenneth: “Hey, honey.” Shirley: “Hey. You don’t look so good. Are you eating okay?”) Significantly, he did say his wife and daughter might have been “aggravated at me and came up with this.” But then he qualified exactly what the murder plot was. “[Shirley] said that they had joked around, kidding around about something like this. But as far as setting it up or anything like that, no. My wife said she never thought our daughter would go through with it.”
Here’s what is most amazing. Kenneth clearly has forgiven his wife. After a magistrate’s hearing, he told the assembled press that if Shirley “got out today, she’d be welcome to move back in. If it hadn’t been for my daughter, none of this ever would have happened.”
One of the little known facts about solicitation of murder cases is that if the would-be victim gets on the witness stand and says all is forgiven, then the would-be killer tends to get a light sentence, if any sentence at all. Jurors nod and say, “Oh, well, it was just a misunderstanding. They’ll get over it.”
It’s my bet that’s exactly what is going to happen in this case. Kenneth will testify to the jury that he wants leniency for his wife—that he’s more than happy to give her a second chance—and she’ll walk out of the courthouse a free woman. Kenneth is such a nice guy that he might end up asking the jury to give his daughter a second chance too.
Soon, they’ll once again be one big happy family. And the would-be hit man, Chris Willingham, will be happy too. No, he didn’t make any money from his adventures. But as he told one reporter, “Maybe what I did will get me a few merits with the good Lord up above.”
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