J.R. Elias - Pushed: State of Oklahoma vs. Amber Hilberling: The Inside Story of the Murder Case That Riveted the Bible Belt

PUSHED

PUSHED

State of Oklahoma vs. Amber Hilberling: The Inside Story of the Murder Case That Riveted the Bible Belt

J.R. Elias

Arabelle Publishing

Arabelle Publishing

174 Watercolor Way

Santa Rosa Beach, 32459

First published in the United States of America, 2016

Copyright 2016 by J.R. Elias

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Arabelle Publishing, all rights reserved

ISBN: 153900015X

ISBN 9781539000150

Cover photo and author photo by Tommy Parker

This is a work of non-fiction. It also contains first-hand observations and opinions of the author.

dedicated to

Kimberly

forever kind, courageous, honest

Contents

I will spend the rest of my life paying for this .
Amber Michelle Hilberling, June 7, 2011

Prologue

O n the afternoon of June 7, 2011, Joshua Blaine Hilberling, 23, fell to his death from a 25th-floor apartment window in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Within two hours, Tulsa police charged his 19-year-old wife Amber, who was seven months pregnant at the time, with his murder.

The case dominated local media coverage for years and has continued to garner intense national and international attention. Joshs death led to other court cases, heated family conflicts, and untold rumors and speculation about what really happened between the young couple.

Very little of the actual story has ever been reported, until now.

I was one of Amber Hilberlings attorneys. Her family reached out to me the morning after she was arrested, and I agreed to help for one reason: I believed in her. I stood by Amber and her family, helping them try to navigate a treacherous storm of unwanted troubles. I never anticipated the challenges that would await.

Since the morning I met Amber, Ive read and heard many false things about her, her marriage to Josh, her family, Joshs family, the murder trial, her legal defense, the other cases that arose from Joshs death, and, of course, what happened that tragic afternoon.

Amber and I agreed: its time for the truth to come out.

This is the true and tragic story of Amber and Josh Hilberling. Of the turbulence that led up to the events of June 7, 2011. Of what exactly happened that fateful day. And of what happened after: the dramatic murder trial, the legal strategies and infighting, the prosecutions troubling tactics, family turmoil, lies, betrayals, greed, defamation, and the toll the grueling case took on the lives of those involved.

Every word of what follows is true.

Part One:

Josh and Amber

JUNE 7, 2011

S he pushed him.

He fell backward, stumbling and hitting the hanging vertical blinds that covered a large elevated window near the corner of their 25th-floor apartment living room.

His upper body broke through the glass.

Shards of the collapsing window glass dropped on and around him. He looked at her in panic as he began to fall into the air.

She lunged forward, desperately trying to grab him. She caught his right leg, her hands gripping his tennis shoe.

But only for a moment.

Joshua Blaine Hilberling was six-foot-four, 225 pounds, a former linebacker and Air Force airman, still muscular and athletic and young. There was no way she could hold on. His shoe came off in her hands. She held it for a split second as her husband disappeared.

She bent forward through the window opening, dropping the shoe into the sky. She clutched the metal frame, oblivious to the jagged pieces of glass piercing her skin, and watched her husband fall.

JOSH!!! she screamed.

She watched him twist and turn in the air, screaming loudly as he descended, his arms flailing, spending the last moments of his life trying to brace for impact.

He had no chance. He landed loudly on the concrete parking lot below.

He was 23 years old.

At the window high above, his wife stood and screamed in horror into the Tulsa sky.

Amber Michelle Hilberling was 19 years, 8 months, and 6 days old the day she killed her husband. She was seven months pregnant with their first child.

A son named Levi.

JUNE 7, 2011

A mber pulled away from the window and stumbled backward, bracing herself against the living room wall. Blood from her hands smeared the white paint.

She rushed out of the apartment and ran down the hallway to the nearby elevator bay, dripping blood onto the tiled floor. She pressed the buttons frantically, screaming, crying, trying to stay on her feet.

More drops of blood stained her white tank top, maroon jogging pants, and white tennis shoes. Her thick brown hair was unbrushed, pulled back in a careless ponytail.

A repairman named Armando Rosales hurried out of the Hilberlings apartment after her, having heard her screams. He joined her at the elevator. In a surreal coincidence, Rosales was in the Hilberlings bedroom at the same moment Josh went through the living-room window repairing a small window Josh had just shattered in a fit of rage.

The two realities that had brought Rosales to Apartment 2509 Joshs aggression, and the dangerously-thin windows of the University Club Tower building would loom over the court battles that soon arose.

She cried to him, sobbing: My husband fell out the window!

The elevator doors opened and she lunged inside, pressing 1 and holding herself up against the wall. She was, Rosales described, all hysterical.

Is he dead?! she cried. Is he dead?! Is he dead?!

As the elevator descended, the door kept opening on other floors to faces immediately stunned by the sight inside: a pregnant young woman bleeding, frantic, shouting desperately about her dead husband.

My husband fell from the 25th floor! she yelled to strangers. Is he dead?!

Call 911! Rosales shouted to some.

The door finally opened on the first floor. Amber rushed out through the lobby, then out the front door to find her husband. She turned right and ran, still bleeding from her hands and wrists, fresh fingernail scratches and imprints still on her upper back. She ran through the curved front driveway of the apartment building, toward nearby green grass and parked cars, screaming for her husband.

Josh! Josh!

Maybe he was alive , she thought. Maybe the ambulance is on its way. Maybe they can fix him.

He wasnt there.

She stopped, confused, then looked up at the west side of the building, the sun shining brightly above her. The cylindrical University Club Tower rose 377 feet in the air, an iconic though visibly aging building just southwest of downtown Tulsa.

Far above her, white blinds fluttered out through the shattered window of Apartment 2509.

She looked up and down the building, then put it together.

He must have landed on the parking garage. The garage protruded from the round building, wrapping around its first eight floors.

She looked at the top of the garage. There, lying against the black railing at the edge of its top level, was Josh.

She could see him.

Josh!

She ran back inside, back to the elevator, screaming again for her husband. A crowd had started to gather. Witnesses had heard her yells, seen the bloody, pregnant, woman running out of and now back into the building. Word was spreading about the fall.