Murdered Florida couple's 26-year-old daughter will take care of their 9 adopted children

From Pensacola News Journal:

Last week was a long week for Ashley Markham.

The 26-year-old woman is preparing to move into her parents' home and care for nine of their children.

At the same time, she is vigorously defending her mom and dad against a withering wave of national news media attention and speculation into why they were killed.

And above all, Ashley is tired.

Her eyes were heavy Saturday morning, one day after the funeral for her parents, Byrd and Melanie Billings, who were shot multiple times in their Beulah home.

But even as she grieves, she looks ahead to the daunting task of caring for the nine disabled children her parents had adopted.

"It hasn't had a chance to sink in yet," said Ashley, the couple's oldest daughter. "I feel like I haven't stopped all week. I just keep moving."

In a case that Escambia Sheriff David Morgan called a "humdinger," seven men from Pensacola, Gulf Breeze and Fort Walton Beach are accused of converging at the Billingses' sprawling home about 7 p.m. on July 9 and hauling out a safe. Investigators say little of value was in the safe, but they have not ruled out the existence of a second safe in the home.

Nine of the couple's children were in the home during the attack.

The seven suspected attackers, who were captured on a sophisticated surveillance system at the couple's house, include a self-defense expert, an Air Force sergeant and a 16-year-old, who have been charged with open counts of murder in connection with the case.

A Gulf Breeze woman also has been arrested and charged as an accessory after the fact, accused of hiding the safe in her backyard and transporting guns.

Ashley held the interview for this story Saturday in the downtown office of her attorney, Crystal Spencer. Outside the office during the interview was a TV satellite truck, a singular symbol of what the crime has become - a full-blown national story, with unanswered questions, speculation about both the accused and the victims, bloggers posting their own theories and beliefs. At one point, one national network drew an unsourced tie between the accused and a Mexican gang.

At many of his news conferences last week, Escambia Sheriff David Morgan seemed to spend much of the time emphatically batting away suggestions and rumors that had no basis in fact.

Bruce Swain, a journalism professor at the University of West Florida, said a relatively new element of information-getting, blogging and social networking, could contribute to the spreading of rumors.

"If you share the notion that the media has some sort of conspiracy not to report something, then you praise the end-run that blogging is able to accomplish,'' Swain said.

Even inside the office Saturday, the hum of a TV truck parked beside West Chase Street could be heard through closed windows. On the street, a reporter rehearsed his lines.

"It's enough to go through a parent's death," Ashley said. "When you have to go through it twice, plus deal with a criminal investigation, plus deal with the media, it's very overwhelming."

To some, the business background of Byrd Billings added fuel to the speculation fire. He was a used car dealer and owned a finance company. He bankrolled nightclubs and was a partner in at least one adult entertainment club in Pensacola, the Back Seat, which has long been closed.

He and a former girlfriend faced criminal charges when they tried to adopt a baby illegally and ended up sentenced to probation. However, that event was 20 years ago, and Byrd and Melanie Billings later legally adopted that baby, who now is 20 years old.

And several years ago, Billings attempted a bizarre legal scheme that included demands for millions of dollars in silver coins from the Florida Department of Children and Families.

Born in North Mississippi, Billings moved several times - to Tennessee, Missouri and Illinois - and finally settled in Greenville, Miss., as a used car dealer.

Billings' longtime friend and business partner, Vince Gardinia, laughed last week as he remembered his first business deal with Billings in the 1970s in Greenville.

Billings came by Gardinia's automotive detail shop and made him an offer.

"He said he heard I was the best in town, and he offered me $10 more than my regular rate," Gardinia said.

A couple of weeks later, when Gardinia heard Billings was demanding detailed cars pass a "white glove test," he sped across town to give him a piece of his mind.

"I balled up those bills and threw them into his chest and said, 'I don't need your business. ... Don't you come by there again,' " Gardinia said.

From those rocky beginnings grew a lifelong friendship, and a few years later when Billings moved to Pensacola, Gardinia came down, too.

In Pensacola, Billings developed interests in a variety of businesses. Over the years, he staked claims in numerous bars, night clubs and used car dealerships - places that dealt heavily in cash.

He later expanded into the three prongs of the used car trade - finance, sale and repossession, and later opened Worldco Financial Services, which offered loans to people and businesses who otherwise couldn't get credit.

"My dad is a very smart businessman," Ashley said. "He learned that the way to do a car dealership, is the buy-here-pay-here, do-your-own-financing approach.

"Everything has always been family run," she said. "That helped, when you keep it in the family."

Several years ago, Billings retired, leaving his businesses in the care of Ashley and her husband, Blue. The couple continued the family tradition by hiring Billings as a consultant, which sometimes meant a good lunch and a long chat with her dad.

Being in both the financing and repossession businesses has drawn suspicious eyes from some critics, but Ashley said the business always was above the board.

"We are a registered financial company," Ashley said. "The loans were all documented. We've been in business for 12 years. We had an audit done a few years ago, and every thing was fine."

She said her father had an old-school approach to finance.

"He started before there were computers," she said. "He thought he could sit down and talk with a person and figure out if they were going to pay.

"His thing was, if they are in the area, they are not going to leave, and they have a job, then they can get financing," she said. "He felt everyone deserved a second chance."

Ashley said there were no nefarious intentions in her father's business dealings and he built a comfortable life for the family through a lifetime of hard work and planning.

"My dad worked from 6 in the morning to 8 at night Monday through Saturday," Ashley said. "He wasn't a spender. My dad would drive a 1980 truck off the (dealership's) parking lot and wouldn't think twice about it."

One unexplained blemish on Billings' past involves a bizarre scheme he started early this decade that aimed to make millions by apparently copyrighting his children's names.

About 2003, he began filing dozens of confusing documents that attempted to copyright his children's names, then demanded millions of dollars for copyright infringements when government agencies used those names.

The documents, obtained from the Escambia County Clerk of Court and the Florida Department of Children and Families, reference "genocide acts," maritime law and "corporate fictions.'' He signed one purported affidavit "Byrd Billings, Agent, Attorney in Fact, With the Autograph, Non-Domestic."

DCF attorney Katie George said every time the agency addressed a letter to Billings that included his children's names, he would reply with an invoice demanding millions of dollars in copyright infringement.

Generally, he demanded silver coins or federal reserve notes of equal value. After nearly two years, Billings began addressing invoices to DCF employees at their homes, and a DCF lawyer sent Billings a sharply worded letter warning him that legal action against him was a possibility.

"At no time in any of your correspondence have you made a plain demand for damages under a clear and cognizable theory of liability," Assistant District Legal Council Richard Cserep wrote in a Dec. 9, 2005, letter.

After that letter, Billings stopped sending invoices.

When asked if she was aware of Byrd Billings' copyright claims, Ashley said he had mentioned copyrighting the children's names to her but said the goal was to protect their privacy.

Ashley said that since the shooting, the children have been split up in the care of friends and family, but they hope to move the children back into he parents' home as soon as possible.

"With children that are autistic, they don't do well with change," Ashley said. "Where else are you going to find a house that is so well equipped?"

She smiled as she described the systems her mother had worked out to manage caring for so many children. Among them were downstairs cubbies where she kept the children's clothes.

Children's clothes, she said, were one of her mother's favorite things.

"My mom definitely had a weakness for shopping for children's clothes," she laughed.

As they sorted through the home after the shootings, they found countless unused sets in drawers around the home, she said.

Byrd Billings, 66, when he died, had two biological children - Michael, who lives in South Florida, and Melisssa, who lives in Arizona - and an older adopted son who is believed to have committed suicide.

Melanie, 43, his third wife, also had two children - Ashley and Nikki, who died last year of complications from cerebral palsy.

Together, the couple adopted 13 more children, many of them with Down syndrome, autism or other developmental disabilities. One child with Down syndrome died.

The latest child was adopted within the last year.

Ashley said her parents received about $1,000 a month in government aid to care for the children.

Ashley said she and her husband plan to move into her parents' home and raise the children as their own.

"That was (Melanie's) wish, for the kids to stay home and for me to take care of them, and that's what I'm going to do," Ashley said.

Crystal Spencer, the family's attorney, said it has taken a significant effort to repair the home to livable condition.

"That house was a crime scene, and this community has really come together and cleaned it up," Spencer said.

"There were 20 family friends out there cleaning," Ashley said. "They've repainted it. They've put in new carpet, new doors. They've changed the locks, and there's a security gate going in this weekend."

Saturday afternoon, the children were taken back to the house for the first time since the night of the attack.

"They're all anxious to get out there and get their toys," Ashley said before making the drive. "They're ready to go swimming."

Ashley hopes the memory of her mother and father will not be tainted by the sensational way their lives came to an end and by the rumors and speculation surrounding the case.

"My main concern is that in 10 years, when these children do understand, them looking back and researching it. I don't want them to see that (some) media outlet accused them of having $1 million of cocaine in a safe," Ashley said.

As the daughter of a couple who cared intensely about her adopted siblings, Ashley said she will step up and pull the family together to weather the criticism they face.

"We'll get through it. There's nothing that anybody could say that's the truth that could harm us," Ashley said.

As the new matriarch of the family, she's been going nonstop to keep up with the sudden demands, and she said she really hasn't had a chance to mourn the loss of her mom and dad.

"I keep going and going and going and don't stop," she said. "But I have my moments, and I'm sure in the next few weeks it will be rough for me once things settle down. "

Her cell phone rang on the table in front of her, and she instinctively picked it up and glanced at the caller ID.

"Kids," she says, after smiling for a moment.

Putting down the phone, she stared out an office window for a moment. Somewhere out there was her new home. New responsibilities. Her new life. And her parents no longer were among them.

"Last night, as people started leaving, it started to sink in. For the last week all these people have been here, and now they're leaving," she said, her lip quivering slightly.

"And it's just going to be us."