Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Love unravels a mystery

Two years ago a woman was murdered in her St. Petersburg home. This is the story of how a tender moment helped convict her killer.

By CHRIS TISCH
Published November 20, 2005

	[Times photo: William Dunkley]
	Erin Aitken, far left, friend Michele Twitty, niece Judy Cameron and Mike Twitty, far right, Michele's husband, embrace after the Charles Halm was found guilty of the 2003 murder of Bernadette Myers, Twitty's aunt.
	[Times photo: William Dunkley]
	On the day before she was murdered in 2003, Bernadette Myers wears a the watch that was to become a key piece of evidence.

LARGO - On a Sunday afternoon two years ago, Bernadette Myers sat on a sofa with family members around her.

Myers' 5-year-old grandnephew and her grandniece, a baby at the time, were on the couch next to her. Myers reached out to the boy to grab his cheeks, give him a kiss and say "give me some love."

At that very moment, another relative snapped a photo of Myers and the kids. Clearly visible on Myers' left wrist is a slim, silver watch.

The day after that family gathering, Myers was murdered in her St. Petersburg home.

An intruder beat Myers, then strangled her with cable ties. The killer left behind no DNA or fingerprints. No one could finger a suspect. The case was a true whodunit.

But months later, the case would lead a detective to the photograph taken that Sunday afternoon.

The detective would look closely at the watch on Myers' left wrist, captured in the photo as she reached out to give and receive some love.

The Friday before her murder, Myers drove to Ocala, where her mother and sister lived. Other relatives arrived. They stayed the night.

The family built a bonfire. They told jokes and stories. Myers' stories made relatives laugh so hard their stomachs burned. On Saturday night, she helped paint her son's fingernails and toenails pink after he fell asleep watching a movie.

Myers, 53, drove back home Sunday. She likely went to bed around 8 p.m., as was her routine, and was up around 5 a.m. on Monday, March 3, 2003.

Myers went to work around 6:30 a.m. at Honeywell International in Clearwater, where she worked for 23 years as an inspector of parts used on the space shuttle.

Myers always tried to get home from work to watch the Dr. Phil show, which came on that day at 5 p.m. She ran some errands, then got to her home, which is on 58th Avenue N less than a block off U.S. 19, about the time the show was to start.

She likely died before she could watch it.

The next day, co-workers worried about Myers. It was unlike her to miss work. They drove to her home, peeked through a window and saw what looked like blood. They called sheriff's deputies, who went inside and found Myers dead.

Her killer had struck her on the head in the kitchen, bound her wrists with duct tape, wrapped two plastic cable ties around her neck and pulled them tight. The killer dragged her into the bedroom. The cable ties cut off the blood to Myers' brain.

Myers' beige Honda Civic was found a few days later in a parking lot three blocks away. Blood was found in the car, but it was matched to Myers.

The killer left no trace of evidence.

Hundreds of people attended Myers' funeral. The crowd spilled into the parking lot. Myers' niece, Michele Twitty, told mourners that they had to laugh that day. Her Aunt Bernadette would want it that way.

Myers was born in Ohio but moved to St. Petersburg when she was a child. She was a short kid, and funny. She wound up in detention often for antics that cracked up her class. She married young, had a son and divorced. She had a large network of friends, many from childhood.

Her friends thought she should have been a standup comic. She cracked jokes at funerals.

"She was a firecracker," said friend Judy Cameron. "If anybody met her, they never forgot her."

Though she was feisty, Myers also had a tender side. Just a few months before her death, she and Twitty talked about dying. Both agreed that when their time came, they wanted to love and be loved.

Both said they already had accomplished that.

A few days after the murder, lead detective Larry Nalven led Twitty and Myers' son, Christopher, through the house. They noticed a jewelry box was missing from her bedroom dresser.

Myers had liked to wear jewelry and her son remembered the missing items well enough to draw pictures of them for Nalven.

One of the missing pieces was Myers' Anne Klein watch. Twitty described it to a tee. Her aunt showed it off and boasted of getting it for the bargain price of $19.99 at Burdines.

Nalven also asked for any family photographs that would show Myers wearing her jewelry. Relatives leafed through stacks of photos with magnifying glasses, looking for rings, bracelets, earrings.

They gave some photos, including the one shot the day before she was killed, to Nalven.

A week after the murder, detectives found a woman who reported seeing a van parked for a long time at a gas station about a block from Myers' house on the afternoon of the murder. The van had a painting business logo on it.

Nalven soon realized the same company had put a coat of paint on Myers' home two years earlier. He learned the painter was Charles Halm, a Pinellas Park man with a criminal history of burglary and robbery.

Nalven found Halm (rhymes with palm), who admitted he parked at the gas station that day to meet a friend who wanted to borrow a tool. Nalven asked for the name of the friend. Halm said he couldn't remember.

Nalven's suspicion was up. A background check on Halm showed he had pawned a bracelet for $14 just after noon the day following Myers' murder. Two hours later, he pawned women's earings, a bracelet and a ring for $47.

In each of these transactions, Halm left his signature and thumbprint on the pawn receipt. Nalven went to the pawn shops and photographed the jewelry.

Friends and relatives said Myers owned the jewelry, including a gold and coral ring she got in Hawaii and a bracelet she received from a friend, Judy Cameron.

A tissue analysis found on the coral ring was matched to Myers' DNA, confirming it was hers.

Nalven also subpoenaed Halm's cell phone records, which showed he had called a friend named Gary Starns six times around the time of the murder.

Nalven visited Starns, who said Halm recently gave him jewelry to pay off a debt. Starns said his wife was wearing some of it. Nalven went to talk to her.

He looked at her wrist and felt a surge: There was the watch.

"I immediately recognized it as the watch the victim was wearing," Nalven said. "The photo flashed in my head."

Halm, a heroin addict, by this time had been arrested on an unrelated grand theft auto charge and was in the Pinellas County Jail. He wasn't talking anymore.

Nalven persuaded Starns to visit Halm in the jail and talk to him about the jewelry. The conversation was recorded.

Halm told Starns he found the jewelry while painting a vacant building in Tampa. He told Starns not to tell Nalven about it.

"Just don't say nothing about it," Halm told him. "They've got nothing on me."

On Aug. 8, 2003 - five months after Myers' murder - Halm was charged with first-degree murder.

His trial began last week.

His attorney, Joseph McDermott, told jurors the case was entirely circumstantial. No physical evidence tied Halm to the murder. No one saw him commit the murder. He had not confessed.

But prosecutors Bill Loughery and Holly Osgood had the jewelry.

"He was selling those items before her body was found," Loughery told jurors.

The jury took less than three hours to convict Halm of first-degree murder. Jurors will decide Monday whether Halm should be executed or go to prison for life.

Judge Dee Anna Farnell must give their recommendation great weight before deciding Halm's fate.

Myers' friends and family believe she has triumphed over her attacker from beyond the grave. The evidence she left behind - the photo of her watch - was an important part of the case.

"Somebody as powerful as Bernadette, she's not going to rest," said friend Betsy Schott. "She's doing her work on the other side."

Michele Twitty, whose son is the boy in the photograph, said it comforts her that the photo was taken as her aunt was with family, and that she was reaching for her great nephew to steal a kiss.

Twitty said it means she died loving and being loved.

[Last modified November 20, 2005, 00:53:07]