Poor Billy Boy's
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June 4, 1996

Bill Berardy returned home to his small lake front cabin in the town of Wilson Point, a secluded community on Grand Lake, eight miles southeast of Wyandotte, Oklahoma. It was around 4:30 p.m. on June 4, 1996. He had just finished a hard days work installing and repairing air-conditioning units. Little did he know, but it would be the last time his world would make sense for a very long time.

Upon arrival, Bill had a few beers and took a shower with his girlfriend, Kim Davis. A while later, they were invited up to his friend Gary Saker's trailer to "party". Bill and Kim went, furnishing the beer. Also at the party was a woman named Sally Helm and her boyfriend Kenny. Terry Ray Ross, Bill's fishing buddy, also lived there. He told Bill that he had been drinking all day. Everyone sat around having a good time, drinking beer and talking.

At times during the evening, Sally was caught making eyes at Bill. Finally, Kim told Sally: "Bill is taken and you should pay more attention to your own date."

Bill had noticed that "Terry was ticked off because his parents wouldn't give him his kids that night." Terry's parents refused because he was so intoxicated. Bill told Terry that "he should take Kim with him and try again because she hadn't been drinking and was capable of watching the children." Terry agreed it was worth trying so he and Kim left. Bill decided to return home to his cabin.

Bill saw that his roommate, Al Chaffin, was in his room sleeping. About 5 or 10 minutes later, Kim and Terry arrived without the children. Kim explained that she had decided that she didn't want to walk all the distance around the cove to the Miller cabin with Ross and suggested that they walk down to Bill's cabin and get a ride. Apparently forgetting the children, Terry asked Bill where Al was and went in and woke him up, saying that Al should have a beer with them.

The group of friends sat around drinking beer and channel surfed, checking out the programming, as earlier that day, the new satellite dish had been installed.

While the friends sat there, Kim told Bill she was mad at him because "Sally was flirting with him and he was flirting back." A little while later, Kim had an argument with Bill because he didn't tell Sally to back off at the party. Bill told Kim she was rude for saying anything to her. At one point, Kim went into her bedroom to go to bed but Terry came in and asked her to come back and join the party. He kissed her. Kim told him not to do that again; that she loved Bill. Terry said: "I didn't mean anything by it." She said she wouldn't tell Bill, then she went back into the living room but later returned to her bedroom once again. Then Bill came in and asked her what was wrong.

A brief time passed. Terry "wondered if Bill was hitting on Kim because Terry Ray don't put up with no one hitting on women." Al replied that Bill "never has and never would hit Kim." Terry persisted, saying "I think he's hitting on her." Al replied "No, he is not hitting on her."

The two continued watching t.v. and then Terry got up, telling Al he was going home. There was a knock at Bill's bedroom door and "Billy said that we'll be out in a minute and Terry came into the bedroom uninvited. Terry starts going off on Billy, saying he was being mean to me," said Kim Davis.

To Al's astonishment, the noise in the bedroom escalated. Kim ran out telling Al that Terry was in the bedroom attacking Bill and she needed his help to get him off. Al ran in and found Terry sitting on Bill's chest, choking him and hitting him repeatedly. Bill was trying to free himself from under Terry's choking grip but could not. Kim was kicking and hitting Terry. He was like a wild man. Even Al, who considerably outweighed Terry, could not manage to get Terry to let go.

In desperation, Al ran around the cabin looking for his big flashlight to hit Terry with. Not finding it, he spotted his .22 rifle hanging on the wall and grabbed that. He ran back into the bedroom but changed his mind, fearing that it might kill Terry to hit him in the head with the butt of the rifle. So he ran out to the kitchen and put the gun in a corner. By the time he went back in the bedroom, Terry had finally released Bill.

Then Terry turned on Al, saying "you pulled a gun on me." Bill jumped between the two trying to protect Al because he has a hernia which, if hit correctly, might cause him death. Bill tried to settle the situation and they managed to get Terry outside in the carport. Bill told him that they'd talk about it tomorrow.

As Bill turned around to go back inside his cabin, Terry jumped him and started beating him again. Bill tried to free himself again, but it was useless to try as Terry is 6'2", 200 lbs. to Bill's 5'9", 140 lbs. So once again, Bill just laid there, taking another beating and trying to act like he was unconscious, thinking that maybe Terry would quit hitting him. Kim ran toward the lake to yell for Terry's mother to come and help her son to leave.

Finally the terror ended and he slowly managed to get up and dust himself off. Bill and Al both told Terry to go home and they'd talk about it in the morning. Then Bill, Kim and Al went inside the house. Al told Bill to shut and lock the back door while he went to shut and lock the front door. Al proceeded to the living room to do just that and then returned to the kitchen to make sure that Bill had done the same at his end.

Al said he was tired and was going to bed so he turned and started to leave the kitchen. He was a little beyond the doorway when he heard a loud noise followed by someone saying "I'm gonna kill you, you son of a bitch". He turned around in time to see Terry coming through the door, rushing at Bill again.

Suddenly Bill saw the gun Al had left in the corner of the kitchen and, out of instinct, grabbed it and started firing. He didn't stop until the gun was empty, pulling the trigger as fast as he could as he was scared for his life. Ten bullets struck Terry Ray Ross with one of them being fatal.

Terry fell backwards, out the back door, landing in the carport. Kim had been in her and Bill's bedroom sitting on the end of the bed and watched the entire episode as if she was in some kind of nightmare.

Al said when he turned around, he saw Bill pick up the rifle and yelled "No", but it was too late.

After the shooting, Bill freaked out. He had just killed his fishing buddy. He was afraid of what would happen to him because of Terry Ray's family, so he ran out back and threw the gun up on the roof. Then, figuring that wasn't a smart thing to do, he ran to get a ladder to get it down but the only ladder available had a broken leg. He threw it down in disgust.

Kim attempted mouth to mouth on Terry because she thought she heard him trying to breathe. She told Bill that he better run but Bill said "I'm a man. I can take my medicine."

About this time, Terry's mother arrived at the cabin as she had heard the gunfire from their cabin which is around a cove in the lake. When she saw what had happened, instead of trying to help her son who lay dying, Terry's mother lunged at Bill in his kitchen. Bill managed to get away from her grasp and couldn't believe what was happening. He knew she was upset but couldn't understand why she wasn't outside helping Terry.

Bill had a beer and tried to calm down but his head was spinning. Nothing seemed real.

They placed Terry's body in the back of Bill's El Camino in the carport as they were going to try to take him to the hospital. Terry's mother had left to call 911 so they sat in the front room to wait for the police. Al stood out by the road waiting also. The police arrived about 10 - 15 minutes later.

The police officer in charge told Bill to put his beer down several times before it finally registered in Bill's head. He was totally drunk and so had Terry been. Finally he was able to collect his thoughts enough to answer a few of their questions.

Bill wanted to help the police as that is the was he was brought up. He thought he had done nothing wrong. After all, he had just gotten severely beaten twice and Terry had kicked his door in saying he was going to kill him. According to state law, you are allowed to use deadly force to protect your home from an intruder so Bill figured that the law would protect him.  Instead, he found that this was the beginning of a lifelong nightmare from which he thought he would never awake.

When the first officer arrived on the scene, Bill was in a very agitated state. He had just killed someone. His years in the Navy aside, he wasn't prepared for the real thing.

Bill remembers being in a "zone, kind of a fuzzy feeling." He doesn't really remember what happened once the door was kicked in. The officers questioned my brother and he cooperated fully. When he was taken into custody, he requested medical attention but his request went unfulfilled.

They took Bill into custody and interviewed him immediately. They read him his Miranda rights and then asked Billy to sign a waiver of those rights, even though Bill asked "how do I get a lawyer". That question was totally ignored. See, Bill was totally drunk which the arresting officer suspiciously omitted from the interview.

They asked Bill if he was sober yet they didn't give him a Blood Alcohol Test. If you've ever been drunk before and stopped by an officer of the law, you know that you're going to tell the officer that you're sober. Also, if Billy was drunk during the interview, which took place at 2:00 am after everything that went on that night, nothing would be admissible in court. Therefore, Billy had to be sober in the police officer's view to make his job easier.

The deceased's body was cremated without drug or alcohol tests being done on it even though several people stated that Terry Ray had taken drugs and was extremely intoxicated.

Bill was not charged with a crime for 7 days. That is against his rights. He was finally appointed a public defender after giving the officers two interviews, which he was coerced into giving. The public defender never contacted my brother until 53 days later, when he was fired and replaced with a private Attorney by my grandmother. Fifty three days. Bill had to represent himself at all the preliminary hearings with no legal counsel, facing a charge of First Degree Murder.

First Degree Murder, for protecting himself from a person who was on Parole for Assault and Battery. Whose parents grew 2000 marijuana plants which the police could not find, even though they were located at the trailer that the party took place at that fateful night, slightly across the road from my brother's cabin. Maybe it's because the owner of that trailer just happened to be the General Contractor for the town's new jail? Hmmmm?

The District Attorney, Ben Loring,  tried to make this unfortunate circumstance into some twisted love triangle.  Kim went fishing with Terry on one occasion and the D.A., upon advice from Terry's parents, and used their hearsay evidence that "Terry said he slept with Kim". This was allowed at the trial.

Kim denies ever having sex with Terry because she loves Bill. She said Bill is not the jealous type and anytime Kim had tried to threaten him that she'd leave, he'd say "go ahead". He definitely wouldn't kill his friend over any girl. Just a week before the incident, Terry Ross, my brother Bill and Kim were driving. Terry was drunk yet he was driving the vehicle. They came to a sobriety checkpoint and Bill didn't want Terry arrested for drunk driving because he would go back to jail on a parole violation. So Bill changed seats with Terry and got a ticket for driving with an "open container". Does this sound like my brother was planning to kill Terry? If he wanted him out of the way, all he had to do was not exchange seats in the vehicle with him.

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