"mommy dearest" Kimberly Cargill

One of the first women sentenced to death in Smith County texas. Kim Cargill was anything but a perfect mother. Her pending CPS case made her despirate enough to commit MURDER~

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References :
KYTV - Court Transcripts 
Evil Lives Here

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Transcript

When I was in college my brother gave me this case. It was one that his boss was working on and I did an interview with him for a paper I was doing on nurture vs nature in sociopaths. I had no inkling about whether or not Kim was a sociopath but after hearing the case I was convinced that she was. She’s a prime example of growing up in a good family and still turning out bad. But to conclude my paper I decided that it was a little bit of both that makes a Killer. I got a C on that paper by the way. I was so pissed off I marched right up to my professor and said what the hell is this. This paper was gold. She told me using my brother who is a homicide detective isn’t a credible source. I was like what are you fucking kidding me? He had the inside scoop. He’s part of the same police department. He was working during that time. And your going to tell me that he’s not a credible source? I even found court transcripts online through KYTV. But that wasn’t good enough for her. I argued so hard she changed my grade to a B but im still pissed about that. 

This is the story about Kimberly Cargill, aka mommy dearest… because idk if you ever saw that movie, but its about Joan Crawford and her adoptive daughter. She was like TRIPOLAR and had this personality that was like a light switch. She would go from this really caring fantastic woman in front of other people to this demonic psychopath behind closed doors. It came out in 1978 and was an insane true story of the abuse that Christina Crawford endured while she was with her adoptive mother. She depicted her as an alcoholic abusive freak who beat her with anything she could grab and treated her like her own personal punching bag for her mental illness. 

So with that little diddy, we are going to talk about Kim’s life….

Kimberly Cargill was born in Mississippi on November 30th 1966. She grew up in Richardson, which is only 15 miles from Dallas Texas, with her step father and mother. She was a beautiful and vivacious teenager who was extremely popular. She was a cheerleader and every thing seemed like it would work out for this outgoing young teen. When she graduated from high school she decided not to go to college and had instead, gotten married to Michael West and had a baby. 

Kim was described as a “ my way or the highway kinda person”. This seemingly loving and nurturing woman who loved children was also like a warden. She had no qualms about punishing everyone around her for small indiscretions that would lead to full on temper tantrums. Michael said her temper was explosive an extreme. That when they came, they would go away so fast its like it never happened. Michael said he played a part in the failing marriage but that she would grab anything she could during an argument. Glasses, knives, or anything she could find in her reach and throw them at him. During an argument she even drove their car into the garage on purpose. When Michael had enough, he let his son live with Kim until the divorce was finalized. 

Kim started abusing her first son, David, around first grade. At least that’s all he can remember. He said she choked him and beat him with a hairbrush on school picture day. She also wrapped her hands around his throat and choked him almost to unconsciousness. She would lock him in his room and David decided to make a key to get out when she wasn’t around. 

Eventually visitations with her son had to be supervised because he would show up for school pictures with bruises on his face, neck and chin. It was vague as to why supervised visits started but CPS told Michael that if he didn’t protect his son from Kim that they would take his son away. Michael claimed when his son would come home from his visits with his mother he would become extremely aggressive and it lasted for days. Her son didn’t want to see Kim anymore and all visitation stopped. 

But one incident left David with some serious trauma. Michael met a new woman, Sonja, who had a daughter. One day Kim came to take David and his step-sister and things turned violent. The two children were fighting to get away from Kim and Sonja just happened to be pulling into the driveway. She ripped her daughter away from Kim and Kim smashed sonja’s arm against a brick wall. She then grabbed David and sped off in her car. 

Even Michael’s new wife Sonja was done with the drama that kim inflicted on her new family. Sonja, the nanny, David and her daughter, Leigh-ann were all home hanging out waiting for Kim to pick up her son David.  Michael called Sonja to tell him he was picking up Leigh-ann to take her to her fathers house. Kim arrived out front of the house around the same time Michael did. She was waiting to get David and became impatient. Sonja and her daughter were saying their goodbyes so she could be on her way to her fathers house. Kim grabbed Leighann and picked her up by the arm and ripping her out of the car. Sonja went after Kim because her daughter was screaming and crying in pain. This is when Kim snapped on Sonja and physically attacked her. Shoving her up against a brick wal and kicked her in her stomach. Then she ran after her son, David, and picked up up while he was screaming and threw him through the passenger side window and sped off. 

This left Kimberly a single mother, and by this time she was in her mid twenties. She found a job as a secretary at a medical equipment company to keep up with the on going custody battle that was becoming a drain on her finances. No matter how much money she shelled out to win the ugly custody battle going on between her and Michael, He was awarded sole custody of his child. The damage was all ready done, however, because Michael’s son had to see a psychiatrist from ages 4 to 14 because of what his mother inflicted on him. Kim Cargill should have been aborted because the trauma she inflicts on all of the people she supposedly loved would ruin so many lives to come. 

She wasted no time, however, and a mutual friend decided to introduce Brian Cargill to Kimberly via blind date style. Brian didn’t see the red flags in the beginning, even though their first date was a movie that was out at the time “ So I Married an AXE murderer.” I think that should have been enough because if there was ever a sign from the universe it was that one. Should have run for the hills buddy! 

But aside from the GIANT red flag the universe was waving in Brian’s face, he saw a kind side to Kim. She was caring and loving. She liked the fact that he had a child and he liked that she was into that. At that point, he felt smitten with this beautiful angel of disaster. 

The first sign of kimberly’s temper, that brian saw, was when she invited him to a divorce support group at the local church. Brian had gotten there before kim and was standing out front for a little bit but then decided to go in. When he sat down he saw her walk in and sit across from him. She was sneering at him, extremely agitated, and when the group was over he confronted kim. She flew off of the handle arguing with him about not waiting outside for her. She said that when shes running late that is what he is to do. He was confused because she invited him there and seemed like she didn’t really want him to be there in the first place. So he apologized to her and then all of a sudden she snapped out of it and was extremely calm and apologetic about the incident. After that they just kinda moved on. 

On another occasion, Brian had his gall bladder removed and was laid up on the couch all perked up trying to recover. She comes storming in, yelling about a bunch of dirty diapers in a pale and losing her mind. After she was finished acting like a fucking maniac he started noticing strange things happening. He said on the show “evil lives here” that he had a prescription for opiods for the surgery in the cabinet. When he took one there would be 4 or 5. But then when he would go to get another one later, there would be one single pill. He thought he was losing it at first but then noticed it happening a second time. That’s when he realized she was punishing him and trying to make him suffer. 

Brian tried to break it off with Kim a bunch of times but she would always guilt him into getting back with her. The last time he tried to break it off she told him she was pregnant. This was three months into their relationship. The funny thing is though, she said she had a medical condition that prevented her from becoming pregnant so they weren’t all that careful with birth control and that’s when he had enough. He told kim he was going to leave and that he would be in the child’s life but he didn’t want to be with her anymore. He was so pissed she lied to him that he was done with her. 

But good ol’ manipulative Kim would have it her way, yet again. She threatened that if Brian abandoned her then he was NOT to be in her child’s life at all and that she would make sure of it. That the only way to resolve the matter was to get married. Brian thought about it long and hard before marrying Kim, but didn’t want to have a custody battle and he was hopeful that things would change once they had gotten married. She gave birth to their son Jamie. 

Brian’s hope didn’t last long because Kim kept her shit up and one night it had gotten a little out of control. Brian came home late from work one night and she was up waiting for him. Kim kept bringing up every single problem they had with the marriage. Any detail, small, large, didn’t matter, she was throwing all of it in his face. She was relentless, just bitching and moaning and screaming about everything. Just completely losing control of herself. At this point kim was having a full blown screaming match with herself  and brian tried to get up and walk away. Kim pulled a hammer out, Brian had no idea where she had gotten the hammer, but nonetheless she wung it at his head and it barely missed him. She threw it so hard it had gotten stuck in the dry wall. Brian left the hammer there for days and they went on about their business and she never removed the hammer. She just left it there as a reminder of that night. No doubt a symbol for brian to look at every night. But good ol brian knew to cover his ass, so he took a picture of it sticking out of the wall… you know, just incase. 

When he first had gotten custody of Jamie, Brian said that whenever Jamie would come back to his house from his mother’s that he would be agitated and argumentative. One night they had gotten into an argument when Jamie came back from Kimberly’s place. Brian wanted to watch a show and Jamie wanted to watch what he wanted and blocked the tv so his dad couldn’t see it. Brian asked Jamie to get out of the way and asked him what the big deal was. But Jamie was being extremely stubborn and started arguing with his dad. Brian walked up to Jamie and tried to push him out of the way of the tv and Jamie started scuffling with his dad. They were kinda wrestling around the table over the tv and Jamie fell and banged his head on the corner of the coffee table. 

When he had gone back to his mother’s house she made Jamie write every single thing down on a piece of paper that had happened that night. She even fabricated details that never happened to make Brian look bad. She made Jamie write those down too. He complied because he was young and she had a knack for manipulation. Unfortunately when this was presented in a custody hearing, Brian lost custody of Jamie and Kimberly regained sole custody of her son. 

Jamie described his relationship with his mother as weird. She would be really loving and caring and attentive one moment and then, if he would get a stain on his shirt, she would flip a switch and start screaming at him. He told her one night he hated her and wanted to live with his dad so She locked him outside in a tee shirt and wouldn't let him back in. Jamie stood out there in the freezing cold shivering for hours. He called his dad to come get him but his dad told him no because he didn’t want to go against the custody agreement. If he did he would lose Jamie for good. But to be fair Jamie didn’t tell his dad what was really going on in the household. Brian didn’t know the severity of what was going on and if he did he would have stepped in anyway. 

She lost her mind when she found out he called Brian to come get him. Kim started screaming at him and told him if he ever told anyone what she did, she would kill him.  Kim would regularly punch Jamie in the ribs as hard as she could when she would fly into a rage, so no one would see the bruises. She would slam him into walls and strangle him from time to time. Jamie would make excuses to people about the bruises like a battered wife would. “oh I fell and hit my arm” “ I got it from playing sports” etc. 

Kim started locking Jamie in his room after she saw that Jamie didn’t fold the clothes like she wanted them folded. She ripped all the clothes out of his drawers and threw them all over the floor and unscrewed his bedroom door handle. She turned it around so the lock was facing the outside and would leave him in there for hours on end. Not even allowing him to take bathroom breaks. 

Kim found a new boyfriend and had gotten pregnant again but her and her boyfriend soon had broken up because of her explosive personality. She decided to move to Tyler, Texas to get her nursing degree at Tyler Junior College. After she graduated Kimberly had gotten a job as a nurse at a prestigious hospital and had bought a nice home. By all accounts people thought she was living the American dream. 

The neighbors and her friends didn’t know that side of Kimberly. Her master manipulator type personality fooled people by all accounts and no one knew there was a terror next door. 

Jamie used to play the xbox to keep out of his mother’s way. He knew her hair trigger temper could happen at any moment so he found solace in his video games. One night she came in and stood in front of the tv screaming at Jamie about doing nothing all day. She kept going on and on and this really frustrated Jamie. He had gotten so angry he took the xbox and threw it out of the window. Kim flew into a full blown rage and took the xbox chord, wrapping it around jamies neck from behind and started strangling her son. When he was losing vision and everything was going black, she suddenly stopped. Jamie called police and they came to the home. Kim confronted the police and started crying saying that Jamie was out of control and that he was causing trouble. She manipulated the police into thinking he was the problem and they were going to give Jamie assault charges for hitting his mother. His little brother even lied for her saying that it was all Jamie and that he had done this before. 

Jamie thought there was no help, the police cant help him, his father cant help him so he just accepted this as how things were going to be from now on. Jamie started running away from home everytime he would get into trouble at school. One time he went to a grocery store and hid in the back room. Hoping the store would close with him inside. That way he wouldn’t have to face his mother. A manager found him and he told the manager everything that was happening to him. He called the police on Jamie and the police threatened to put Jamie in Juvy if he ran away again. 

The last straw was when Jamie was playing in his mothers room one day. She found him in there and and lost her temper on him. Kimberly started strangling Jamie until he almost lost consciousness. At that point he thought “ my mom is killing me”. He thought he was going to die for real this time. When she stopped he ran outside and called his father and told him everything. Brian came and picked Jamie up and took pictures of the abuse. Then he reported her to the police. It was in 2006 that Brian regained full custody of Jamie. Jamie wouldn’t even talk to his mother on the phone anymore. He wanted nothing to do with her. Sometimes he would visit his brother though to see if he was ok.

Jamie explained how he felt about Kim later when he said “She starts out as your mother and you'd think you'd love your mother no matter what. I love the idea of having a mother but I don't love her as my mother. And when I see her I can't help but feel hatred and rage.”  

Kimberly married her third husband around this time and gave birth to another child. This bitch doesn’t need to have kids anymore. Really, but it seems she cant keep a man with that insane personality that she has so I guess holding kids over their heads is all she has at this point. Unfortunately for her, again, a child couldn’t hold husband number three and they ended in divorce. Its now that both of her baby fathers are trying to gain custody of her two children that are left in her care. 

With her schedule as a nurse, Kimberly had no one to watch her smallest son Luke. That’s when she hired Cherry Walker. She found cherry through word of mouth being that she baby sat from time to time for the neighborhood parents. At the time Luke was 4 and she hand picked Cherry because she was easily manipulatable. 

Cherry Walker was described as a caring loving person. She had a mental disability and had a caregiver named paula who would check in on her multiple times a day because she couldn’t remember when to take her pills and to remind her to do certain things. Cherry’s parents were devout Christian’s and her father was a minister. Cherry was on Social security disability and worked at good will. So its safe to say she was in poverty. So she would baby sit on occasion to make extra money. Cherry loved kim’s son’s and would do anything for them. 

Kim took advantage of cherry’s good nature and wouldn’t pay her any money for babysitting. But cherry being mentally disabled was afraid to ask kim for money so most of the time she babysat for free. Once in a while kim would throw her 20 dollars and would use the money she made from Kim to buy food for the boys. Kim never had food in the house and Cherry would even use her own personal foodstamps to pay for kim’s children to eat. Remember, kim’s a nurse, she makes plenty of money at the prestigious fucking hospital she works at. What a piece of shit. 

Kim’s on-going cps case over the custody of her 4 year old son caused a huge rift once Cherry gotten a Subpoena in the mail. It stated that Cherry was to appear in court to give testimony about Kim and the children. Cherry had gotten extremely nervous when she saw this. She didn’t really know what it was all about and her comprehension of the matter was null. On June 18th 2010, Cherry phoned Kim to tell her about the Subpeona and kim started panicking. She told Cherry not to go to the courthouse and that she would take her somewhere for the day so she didn’t have to talk to authorities. Paula, Cherry’s caregiver, overheard them talking on the phone so she took the phone from Cherry and asked Kim what this was all about. Kim told Paula that she couldn’t let Cherry testify, that it would ruin the CPS case for her and that she wanted to keep her from going to the courthouse. Paula was agitated with Kim and ended the call. She told Cherry not to listen to Kim and to just do what the letter said. 

Cherry told Paula she didn’t want to go out with kim that day but also didn’t want to go to the courthouse. Unfortunately, because of Cherry’s nervous nature and inability to understand what was actually happening she had trouble saying no to Kim. Kim called cherry, harassing her all day. She called her over 70 times about going to lunch. Eventually Cherry agreed and went with Kim to talk. 

A pizza delivery driver had gotten lost en route to a delivery when he spotted a lump on the side of the road. He went to make a U-turn and saw what he thought was a body. He called authorities and they had shown up to this desolate area in Tyler to check it out. That’s when they confirmed it was a body of a woman, badly burned and deceased. They couldn’t make out the face because it had been so badly burned that she was unrecognizable. She had no identification so police knew the only way to tell who this woman was, was to take dental records. Under her body they found a burger king creamer container and that was it. No other evidence. 

When the police took this to the news station they received a phone call from Cherry’s father. He said she hadn’t shown up for church. Which was odd because she was very dependable. Also her father was the minister at the church and it was father’s day. That’s when the police checked the dental records against Cherry and found out it was in fact Cherry Walker. 

During the Autopsy there was no visible way to tell HOW Cherry walker was murdered. According to the pathologist, she had died before she was set on fire because there was no smoke inhalation in her lungs. Also, there were no visible signs of asphyxiation or lacerations, but the blood vessels in her eyes were visible as if she had been strangled. That also can be explained away though because her body was upside down when she was found which could cause blood vessels to break behind the eyes also. 

So without any clues to how she was killed, no witnesses and nothing else to go on they started looking into who she had contact with recently. Which led them to a man that was friendly with Cherry, named Joseph. Joseph met Cherry when they were both working at Goodwill and were friendly in church. They would go get Mexican food on occasion and see a movie now and then. They casually dated and sometimes she would come see Joseph sing at a bar called Corettas and Cancun. Joseph said his grandmother didn’t like Cherry and him hanging out because Cherry was black. During police questioning Joseph gave the green light for the police to search his vehicle and phone records. Which took about a week to complete. In the end, though, Joseph had an alibi and was released. His alibi checked out. 

When they called Paula to ask her a few questions she told them to look into Kimberly Cargill because she was supposed to meet her for lunch the day she went missing. That’s when police found out about the pending CPS case involving Kim’s 4 year old child and when they learned that Cherry Walker had been Subpoenaed to appear in court to testify against Kimberly. Which gave her motif. 

Smith County Police obtained a search warrant for Kim’s home and Vehicle. Everything was clean. Too clean. People Kim knew told police that her car was extremely dirty all of the time. It had wrappers and take out containers all over the floor but when police searched the vehicle it was spotless. They knew she had cleaned the car to get rid of evidence. With no actual evidence they placed Kim under arrest for injury of a child. While she was in police custody they took her DNA and a friend of Kim’s came forward when she found out she was being looked at as a suspect. 

The friend said that Kim called her and told her, her babysitter was found burned. The problem was, at the time, that the police hadn’t released that information to the public. So only a person who was with Cherry could have known that. When the police checked kim’s cell phone records they saw the 70 calls to Cherry but suddenly they stopped around the time she may have picked cherry up. The police tested Kim’s dna against the Coffee creamer cup found at the scene and it came back a MATCH. Which now put Kim at the scene of the murder. 

She was arrested and charged with capital murder. When questioned about the murder, Kim said that Cherry had a seizure, which was common for Cherry being that she was epileptic. Kim said she had expired in the car and she panicked. So she took Cherry to a desolate area and dumped her body on the side of the road. She then poured lighter fluid onto Cherry’s body and lit it on fire. 

Police weren’t buying the story but with the evidence they had they had to prove her motif to commit the crime. So now it was up to the prosecutor to argue that Cherry had in fact been murdered to stop her from testifying in the case against her in court. 

During the trial 3 of Kim’s ex-husbands testified to the abuse that they suffered at the hands of her insanity. One of them claimed that Kim set his car on fire once and that she would make up stories to the police about physical abuse. Three of the 4 son’s she had testified to the abuse they suffered, saying she choked, kicked and punched them and locked them in their bedrooms without food or water. 

Kim was desperate when she was trying to win the custody battle with her son. They called a witness named Suzanne Davis to the stand, who testified that Kim found her on classmates.com and wanted to schedule a reunion with her. Kims powers of manipulation however were no match for Suzanne. She said her and kim met in Richardson when they were in 8th grade together but eventually grew apart from one another. So it was a shock to hear from kim all these years later. Kim asked Suzanne to lie on the upcoming CPS case for her. She wanted Suzanne to be a character witness to sway the verdict. Suzanne agreed to lie on the stand but the case never made it that far. 

One of her sons teachers testified that during a parent teacher conference her three year old was running around and kim jerked him so hard that she almost dislocated his arm.  Also that her son would show up to school with bruises on his arms and would often wear long sleeves so you couldn’t see them. That he would shy away and went into himself. She also said that the conversations she would have with Kim were very intense and intimidating because she was so aggressive. She noticed a change in her student when he went to live with his father. She said he came to school very relaxed and calm after he gained custody. 

One of Kim’s ex boyfriends Grandmother, Barbara, testified that Kim physically assaulted her when she was dating her grandson in 1999. She said she found some wet photos laying in the yard so she brought them into dry. When kim saw Barbara with the photos she flew into a rage. She attacked Barbara and twisted her arm. Barbara kicked Kim to get her off of her and she landed on the table. Kim said “ whats the matter with you? Don’t you know im pregnant?” Barbara responded “ you may not be anymore” FUCKING BADASS. Shes a frail little woman in her late 70’s and shes a fuckig badass. You tell kim, Barbara. Barbara pressed charges on kim but it was reduced to a class C misdemeanor and kim only paid a fine. The case never went to court. 

Walker's step-mother Rueon Walker spoke to kim directly. She said, "Mrs. Cargill, this is what I want you to know. Cherry loved you. She did not deserve the terrible thing you did to her."

Rueon also said she and Cherry's father, Gethry, did not hate Cargill, but did hate what she did.

Smith County District Attorney Matt Bingham says kim is one of two Smith County women convicted of capital murder in about the last 15 years. He says the other woman pled guilty, and he believes kim may be the only Smith County woman to receive the death penalty.

June of 2012 she was sentenced to death. Prison records indicate that she remains on death row at the Mountain View Unit in Gatesville, Texas. The us Supreme court turned down her appeal in 2017.

Unfortunately this case focused more on Kim’s wild violent streak and less on Cherry walker. we have to remember that Cherry was the focus of the whole trial. Kim Cargill is a monster but lets remember Cherry walker and Kim’s children who were the real victims here. Cherry had moved into a studio apartment which her step mother and father thought would be a great start for her. She had gone through two surgeries and stayed with her parents and recooperated. She was independent and washed her own clothes. She was very excited about being independent. She loved the Dairy queen on front street. She would walk up there to get her blizzard when she wanted a treat. Cherry loved to clean and loved her air fresheners so she would go on a day out to the dollar store to get her products. It was the little things with cherry. She was such a happy go lucky person who just had a zest for life. Her parents called Community assets to give her a caregiver and that’s when she met Paula. Paula helped her with the things her parents couldn’t on the day to day. Paula helped her with math and counting money. She helped her learn to cook and be more self sufficient. Cherry became very adapt at cooking some amazing fried chicken and could eventually whip up pretty much anything in the kitchen. Cherry loved to help other people. She would help her neighbor clean her apartment and would give as much as she could to help everyone around her. She loved the children she cared for, she loved jesus and loved the church. Cherry was an amazing soul and its sad that her life was cut short. Her parents speak very fondly of her and she will be missed by those that loved her. 

May kim Cargill rot in prison and since this story has a big Christian theme going.. I hope when they give her the lethal injection that she is raped by infinite demons in the firey pits of hell.