Kimberly Renee Poole (21) and Brent Poole (24) were a young married couple from the Winston-Salem area of North Carolina. They had recently worked through some marriage problems and took a family vacation to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina bringing their 2 year old daughter Katie along with them to celebrate their third wedding anniversary. While Katie was with a babysitter the couple went out for dinner and drinks the night of June 9, 1998. On the way back to their hotel they made a few stops with one stop to buy a beach towel for relations on the beach. They took a leisurely romantic walk along the beach heading north to find a more private spot to have relations. They found that spot a little ways past 82nd Ave. After relations they headed back to their hotel walking south along the beach. They noticed someone following behind them and sped up their walking pace. Between 81st and 82nd Ave they were robbed at gunpoint and Brent was shot. Paramedics took Brent to the hospital where he passed less than an hour later. The police took Kimberly back to the station and held her there until roughly 7am the next morning.

At the police station the detectives interviewed Kimberly twice. During the two interviews Kimberly told them what happened, what the assailant was wearing (dark clothing and an assault type tactical ski mask with only one large opening for the eye area), and the general direction where the assailant fled. Kimberly was forthcoming telling the detectives about their previous marriage problems and her affair with a man named John Boyd Frazier. She gave the detectives his home address in Winston-Salem. It was sometime after these two interviews that the detectives spoke by phone with Brent’s parents (the Poole family). The Poole family insisted that Kimberly had to be involved and that the assailant had to be the man with whom she had the previous affair. This phone call significantly influenced the detectives that Kimberly was a suspect.

Kimberly’s third encounter that night at the police station with the detectives happened after this phone call with the Poole family. However this was not a standard interview treating Kimberly as a victim and trying to understand what happened. They full on interrogated Kimberly as a suspect and without Miranda warnings less than 6 hours after the robbery and shooting. They told Kimberly they knew she was involved and that the assailant was John Boyd Frazier. They lied to her and told her they checked his home in Winston-Salem (240 miles away) and he was not at home. When in fact they checked and he was found to be at home apparently sleeping. They told her to save herself and applied psychological pressures. Kimberly denied their allegations she was involved in any way with what happened less than 6 hours ago. She could only not rule out that it was not John Boyd Frazier. The assailant was covered in dark clothing and had on a tactical ski mask and she couldn’t tell and wasn’t certain, that she was scared during the robbery and shooting that lasted less than a minute. The police tested her hands for any gun shot residue and the test came back negative.

The police were convinced only from what the Poole family told them about her, from her previous affair, from her part time job as an exotic dancer, that she was involved. The Poole family painted Kimberly in such a horrible light, that she was the worst young woman alive that could’ve cared less for their son and that was all the police needed. There’s always two sides and two different views to any problems in a marriage. The Poole family painted Brent the saint and Kimberly the sinner. The detectives didn’t care about her side of the problems in their marriage. By now the local media had picked up the story and vacationers were scared. They wanted to solve this case quickly and negligently put their entire resources and sights on Kimberly and John Boyd Frazier. They never seriously looked at other suspects.

The detectives would meet with Kimberly a few days later and pressure her to say that the assailant was John Boyd Frazier. The next night, at Brent’s wake and viewing, they would arrest her on Obstruction of Justice. They would interrogate her again and applied the hardest pressures, constantly lie to her, confuse her, yell at her and tell her that yes, she was involved and did it, planned it. Kimberly kept denying and would sometimes shout “NO!” back at them. They didn’t accept no. They kept on repeating she did it, that she had John Boyd Frazier murder her husband, and in the end threatened to take her daughter Katie away from her unless she cooperated. They laid out the false plot, the details, wore her down, and just waited for her to say “yeah”. She just wanted it to stop and wanted to keep her daughter.

It was a false confession known as a compliant false confession.