when anna was around, but was friendly when she wasn t around. he asked me what the problem was with his wife. i said so what i do, i just ignore her. and he said, that s probably the best thing, because she has a hair trigger. but the creamers did seem to get along, said howes, except for that one time when he overheard all that yelling. when you don t know a couple really well or you re not inside their home with them all the time, it s hard to explain. but i had come home from work and was standing out front getting the mail out of the mailbox, and anna pulled in. i happened to notice, i heard the car pull in next door. and she was, just, i guess coming home too. got out and went into the house and she no more than got in there and there was some yelling. and not screaming, just yelling back and forth. i could tell it was her and ken. then after, i don t know, a few seconds of yelling or whatever, something broke. it sounded like something hit the wall. you see these movies
nobody is perfect. no marriage ideal. sometimes with a little distance you see things. we weren t friends. we were neighbors. that s how i look to put it. right next door to the creamers, no more than a couple of track house walls and a strip of grass apart, lived a man who saw the creamers through a less rosy lens. this is randall howes, retired naval officer, and it was something about the chemistry with anna wasn t good. especially an altercation about his dogs. she said the dogs barked, barked. she really got mad. i said, okay, anna we re not having this conversation right now. i turned and walked away. and that really made her mad. after that, i never spoke to her. so there was tension across that strip of grass. and then howes got the idea that maybe ken had some trouble with anna s temper too, since ken gave howes the cold shoulder
remarks who so confused katz was a woman, anna. the shooter, her husband, the location of this unfortunate mishap, the two-car garage at the front of the creamer s comfortable suburban home. she said it was an accident and he was trying to load it or something and the thing went off and it graced her evidently. she said, it s nothing. i ll put a band-aid on it. don t worry about it, it s fine. the whole business was little more than embarrassing. anna said she didn t want to go to the hospital. it was kenny who apparently panicked, called 911, there was a rush to the emergency room to treat a nick on the side of her breast, a few stitches. but, of course, on that 911 call, authorities heard the word crossbow. so down here at the hospital, kenny found himself in the company of virginia beach s finest. then he got arrested. and then she wouldn t press charges. it was ridiculous. she said, he didn t try to shoot
as the arrow came from back to front, it went through the aorta, completely severing it. just cut it right in half. no doubt about the conclusion, she said. i determined that the manner of death in this case was homicide. the x right here is where mr. creamer said he was standing. the detective who interrogated creamer right after the shooting testified when he asked creamer why the crossbow was loaded and with a hunting arrow, the answer that his wife must have loaded it didn t seem believable. last time i touched it, it was in october. remember, this was the second time anna was shot. so now the prosecutor looked back to that first incident. was creamer s story about that time consistent or believable? here s what creamer s brother-in-law, anna s sister s husband, remembers him saying back then. he told me that he called his wife into the garage, anna, and
crossbow went off inside a bag. maybe that made it an accident after all. we had the bag and we had the weapon, and we were trying to figure out desperately how could this weapon be in the bag and have done what it did. and none of the positions this bag was in made any sense whatsoever, with the weapon inside of it. it didn t make sense. we couldn t figure it out. we couldn t find a good exit hole. there was no rip in it. there was no hole for the arrow. it didn t make sense. so if it couldn t have been an accident the second time, what about the first? this sounds like that to me already he s already planning something. so now jury members realize they had formed strong opinions about mr. creamer. i just don t put any stock in anything he says. you know, i don t trust the guy. and once they decided that about ken creamer, members of the jury began to look at the marriage with anna in a whole new way.