So far, Kelly Ryan has remained loyal to her bodybuilder husband, Craig Titus.
Police statements taken from the couple charged in the murder of their personal assistant, Melissa James, show Ryan maintained that loyalty as homicide detectives tried to get her to turn on Titus as they questioned her in Boston.
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"I don't want to see you continue to involve yourself in this and go down and have it be the end for you," Las Vegas homicide Detective Dean O'Kelley told Ryan during the Dec. 24 interview.
"I'm saying that to you as a human being. And I see it (your situation) as salvageable," O'Kelley said. "Craig made choices. Craig has done this thing."
Ryan replied, "I'm not sure where you are going with that."
"Where I'm going with it is that you can't be held responsible for what another person does unless you choose to," O'Kelley told Ryan. "And, this is your opportunity to back up, as far as you can, and make it right."
"I don't want to give a statement without anyone here ... my lawyer," Ryan said.
The exchange was documented in a 101-page statement Ryan gave to detectives after she and her husband were arrested in James' slaying. Titus and Ryan, both former fitness champions, are charged with murder, arson and conspiracy in the case. An acquaintance, Anthony Gross, is accused of helping the couple dispose of the body.
James, 28, was found Dec. 14 in the back of Ryan's burning car off state Route 160.
Defense attorneys for Titus and Ryan said the statements taken from their clients in Boston were done illegally and they expect the statements to be suppressed.
When police first questioned Titus and Ryan about the homicide, they said they didn't know how the charred body of James ended up in the trunk of Ryan's car. They suggested that perhaps James had stolen Ryan's car before the slaying.
After this explanation was given, the two suspects left Las Vegas and were apprehended in Boston. In further statements to police, Titus and Ryan said they had actually found James dead of an overdose in Ryan's car on the day of her disappearance, a needle sticking out of her arm. Instead of simply calling police, Titus and Ryan said, they panicked and disposed of the body in the desert.
In Ryan's second statement to police, she offered some background on the couple's relationship with James. She said Titus and Ryan had known James for years through bodybuilding, and James eventually came to live with the couple.
"I mean, obviously my husband and I have always trusted her, you know," Ryan said. "That's why we welcomed her into our house."
Ryan said she and Titus didn't pay James to be their personal assistant. "No no, we just took care of her," Ryan said. "We made sure that she didn't need for anything."
Over the years, Ryan said, James had a boyfriend who got her involved in methamphetamine.
"She was shootin' it," Ryan said of the drug. "We'd find needles and stuff like that."
Ryan said that in the weeks and months before James' death, she suspected James was stealing from her.
"There was activity on the (credit) card ... large sums of money, and they weren't transactions that my husband or I did," she said.
Titus, however, didn't see the issue as a big deal, Ryan said.
"She (James) asked for a laptop," Ryan said. "She wanted to be on the computer all the time. And I asked the person at the online banking, at Bank of America, and they said that the pass codes and everything had been changed from an account online. ...
"Then I got really frustrated because my card didn't work and I said, you know what, like this is it, the card's not going through," Ryan said.
"So she (James) got mad at me because she felt like I was treating her like a thief," Ryan said.
Ryan said that on the day James disappeared, James was staying at a La Quinta hotel in Las Vegas. While James was at the hotel, she said, she and Titus broke into James' room at their house.
"We found a lockbox and we broke it open," Ryan said. "It was a safe and it had all of our documents. Photocopies of his driver's license, all of our, ah, home equity line of credit, mortgage statements ... credit card statement with our numbers on them ... date of birth."
Ryan said Titus then picked up James at the hotel and drove her back to their house. "Just make sure that, you know, give her the benefit of the doubt one more time," Ryan said.
Detectives questioned why the couple didn't call the police about their suspicions that their identities were being stolen.
"She's got a lot of knowledge of how to basically ruin someone's life, and I just didn't wanna leave it ... like her angry at us," Ryan said.
Still, when James returned to the house, Ryan said, she confronted James about her suspicions of identity theft.
"I said, 'You know, you're not welcome to stay at my house,'" Ryan said.
Then, Ryan said, she gave James a ride to a convenience store, and James was expected to somehow get another ride to the airport so that she could fly that night to New Jersey to meet with her mom.
Subsequently, Ryan told police she'd noticed that all the ice cubes in her house were a strange color, and she seemed to imply that perhaps the couple were being poisoned.
"The water had been tasting funny for a little while but I thought there was nothing of it ... then, um, there was a, a, like a, almost like a, a rotten smell from the drain in my bathroom.
"There was a clear fluid in the bottom of every glass we had," Ryan said.
That night, Ryan said, she and Titus were partying at their house with two friends whom she identified as "Megan and Jeremy." The pair's last names weren't disclosed in the statement.
As the night came to an end, Ryan said, she noticed the "posing" lights were on in the garage. Upon further inspection in the garage, the group found James dead in the front seat of Ryan's car.
"Like you walk up on someone in their car and obviously they are not moving," Ryan said. "You know it's pretty, pretty scary, actually hysterical ... lifelessness.
"There was a smell coming from the car," Ryan said. "Smelled like a dirty diaper. Just a awful smell.
"She had several needles around her," Ryan said.
Ryan said she and Titus decided to dispose of the body instead of calling the police because they feared negative publicity given their celebrity status as fitness champions. They also said they were nervous about calling police because Titus is a convicted felon.
"I don't know how to explain it," Ryan said. "Like, ah, I would say probably like a slight panic probably set in because, just, never, ever, ever had to deal with anything like that before. Ever.
"Then, um, you know, Craig and I started thinking, ah, she's got drugs in the house, uh, he's a felon," Ryan said.
The two carried James' body into their house and wrapped her in a blanket.
"Ah, I remember, um, like getting blood on ... the carpet," Ryan said.
"Like, oh my God, what are, what are we gonna do, how are we gonna explain this?" Ryan said. "Like, what, what, you know, what are the cops going to say?"
The couple taped James' head and feet using duct tape and placed her in the trunk, she said.
"I think we both were like, okay, we need to get rid of the car," Ryan said. "The car smelled so bad. Like it just, it was to the point where we felt like it just was maybe unrepairable.
"The best way to get rid of the car was to try, was try to set it on fire, and let it go, and then trying to make it look like maybe she took the car or something," Ryan said.
Ryan said Titus called Gross and basically relayed they "were gonna get rid of the car." Ryan said Gross had recently borrowed $1,000 from the couple, but she did not say that the debt had anything to do with Gross' participation.
She and Titus drove to Wal-Mart with the body in the trunk, and she bought seven bottles of lighter fluid and a barbecue set with her own credit card.
"Why did you get six bottles of Kingston and one bottle of ..." O'Kelley asked.
"That's all they had," Ryan said. "That's all they had."
They met up with Gross at a gas station, and then Titus burned the car in the desert, Ryan said.
"Just like, 'Oh my God, I can't believe what we just did, and ah, we gotta think about this,'" Ryan said.
