When Cheryl's second husband died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, his heart was donated to a man who, nine years later, would become Cheryl's fifth husband.
When that husband also died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, was it a coincidence or did Cheryl's demands for the finer things in life drive two husbands to suicide?
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First Marriage - Bo Carter
In 1988, Cheryl Sweat had been married for three years to her first husband Isaac “Bo” Carter, living happily in an apartment building in South Carolina with their two small children. Cheryl’s father, Archie Sweat, owned several apartment complexes and Cheryl and her husband were managers for all of them.
Cheryl learned in April 1988, shortly after the birth of her second child Timmy, that her husband was still married to someone else. She was so distraught, she threatened to blow her brains out with a .38 pistol. Bo Carter stopped her, they fought, she kicked him out, and he moved to another apartment. They agreed to split the management of the buildings while each lived in their own apartment.
Cheryl’s mother, Doris, babysat their children a few times a week. Around the same time Cheryl was dealing with her duplicitous husband, her babysitting arrangement with her mother was about to blow up as well.
Cheryl’s father was not a hands-on property owner. He had his own troubles with alcoholism and with his wife, Doris Busbee Sweat and her multiple DUI arrests. For years, Doris got by without spending a single night in jail, but in December 1986, a judge gave her a choice: turn in her driver’s license, pay a $1000 fine or go to jail. But then the judge had a change of heart. He sentenced her to one year in jail, then suspended it to 15 days of public service, $400 in fines, and probation for three years. Cheryl’s father paid the fines and set out to find Doris more busy work. (Source: The Press and Standard )
Cheryl thought her problems with her husband were solved when their marriage was annulled on February 4, 1987. She retained custody of the children and Bo Carter paid child support and visited often. Two months later in April of 1987, Cheryl began an affair with a married man named Terry Cottle.
Doris’s troubles only got worse. Another arrest in July of 1987 involved an accident while driving under the influence. It should have violated her probabtion, but again luck and someone’s wallet was on her side so it only cost Doris her driver’s license for 30 days.
Second Marriage - Terry Cottle
Cheryl's new beau, Terry Cottle was living with his wife and two young daughters in an apartment in one of the buildings that Cheryl managed. He worked full time as an exterminator, was on call nights and weekends so his “emergency” calls accounted for his many absences from home.
Cheryl and Terry thought their affair was a well-kept secret, but they didn’t count on actions by Cheryl's former husband. In September of 1987, Terry’s wife kicked him out after she got a phone call from Cheryl’s ex-husband who said "I just want you to know that that your husband is seeing my wife."
Two years later, Terry’s divorce was final on May 4, 1989, and nine days later, he married Cheryl Sweat on May 13, 1989.
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| Terry and Cheryl Cottle, 1989 |
Cheryl continued splitting the management of the apartment complexes with Bo Carter, but the newlyweds decided they didn’t want to live there so they bought a single-wide trailer close by. In 1990, shortly after Cheryl gave birth to baby Teri Jessica, Bo Carter stopped visiting his sons and stopped paying child support.
In October 1992, Terry filed papers to adopt Christopher and Timmy. Around that same time, Cheryl decided to go to nursing school and she enrolled in a full time two year practical nursing program. She was not able to work while going to school so she gave up the management of the apartment complexes. Terry continued working for the exterminating company while he also went to school to get his real estate license. Cheryl's mother was still their babysitter.
Cheryl Cottle graduated with her LPN license in the spring of 1994. She was hired immediately after graduation and relied on her mother for babysitting more now than ever. Even though Cheryl was earning a good salary as a nurse, she always let it be known that she was still not happy with her homelife or her finances. They had some loss of income when Bo stopped paying child support and from Terry's child support paid for his two children by his first wife, plus they both had loans for school tuitions, a mortgage and all the expenses that come with owning a house, causing Cheryl and Terry to fight constantly.
After months of hectic schedules of work and school, Cheryl and Terry were not getting along at home. Between her mother having more DUI arrests and Cheryl overhearing Terry venting to his ex-wife on the phone, Cheryl demanded that he stop talking to her. But Terry shared two daughters with his ex-wife and still needed to talk to her so he told her to only call on his exterminating business phone so he could keep the peace with Cheryl.
Things got better when Terry started making some money selling real estate but after a few months, he wasn’t making sales. The state of their finances brought out the hostilities which always resulted in Cheryl nagging Terry about money, that she wanted more than what they had - a real house with better furniture, nice clothes, and most of all, she wanted a new car.
Terry said he would take on another job. He enrolled in an accelerated course for Emergency Medical Technician, became certified and was hired as a full time EMT while still working full time for the exterminating company. Around Christmas, Cheryl told Terry it still was not enough; he told her that he couldn’t do any more than he was already doing.
Cheryl's father, Archie Sweat died suddenly on March 1, 1993 at the age of 68. Shortly before Christmas in 1993, Doris Busbee Sweat, had another brush with the law, lost her license for good and was ordered to pay fines or do the time. Cheryl paid her fines and Doris came to live with them full time. In 1994, Cheryl and Terry moved their family to a double-wide trailer in Moncks Corner, South Carolina.
The police were called to their home often. Cheryl blamed Terry for everything that was wrong in her life but mostly she blamed him for not making enough money to give them a better life.
At Christmas in 1994 after a terrible fight, Cheryl took off her wedding ring and, according to her son Timmy, she pitched it over the back fence. She kicked Terry out of the trailer and he went to live with his sister, Tammy Erickson, who was expecting a baby very soon. She let him use the room she was decorating for the baby.
In February 1995, Cheryl had a sudden change of heart and decided she wanted Terry back, so she started showing up at Tammy’s house to cook dinner for him and often stayed overnight. After a a week of this, his sister Tammy grew frustrated because she needed the bedroom for the baby. She told Terry if he wanted to make his marriage work, he had to go home and live with his wife.
Terry went home but three weeks later, they got into a terrible fight that brought the police to their home again. Their domestic disturbance calls were numerous but the advice from police was always the same, either work it out or separate.
On March 16, 1995, Terry agreed to leave. After packing his belongings and leaving them at the door to load them in his pickup truck, Terry went into the bathroom with his 22-caliber gun, placed it behind his right ear and he shot himself. There was no exit wound.
At the hospital, doctors offered little hope and put Terry on life support. After four days, Terry's father urged Cheryl to turn off the machines and to donate his organs to people who were waiting on the transplant list.
Terry Cottle officially died on March 20, 1995. Cheryl signed the papers to donate his organs and then began planning his funeral.
The transplant team sent pages to all the beepers of those who would be transplant recipients of Terry Cottle's organs so they would call in their estimated arrival times at the hospital.
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The Heart Recipient - Sonny Graham
At five o’clock that evening, the beepers worn by Sonny and Elaine Graham sounded while they were in a department store shopping for clothes for their son’s wedding which was three days away. They immediately called the transplant center and learned the good news, that a heart had become available and it was a near perfect match.
Because there was a very limited window of time to get to the hospital, a close friend broke speed records and drove them from Hilton Head Island to the Medical University of South Carolina.
Fast forward six months after his heart transplant, Sonny returned to most of his regular activities. He even went on a fishing trip to Alaska with one of his best friends, Bill Carson. While grateful for his new heart, he told Bill about some strange things he was experiencing. He said he had the sex drive of a 30 year old and cravings for beer, hot dogs and other foods he never ate before the transplant. He said he read somewhere that organ recipients sometimes experienced certain cravings for their donor’s favorite foods or they picked up some of their donor’s habits, both good and bad. By November 1996, Sonny was more curious than ever about his donor and the family and mentioned he wanted to send a letter of thanks.
Per protocol, organ recipients are not told the circumstances of death or the name of the donor, and likewise, the donor’s family doesn't know who received their loved one’s organs. Sonny said he was okay with the rule, but that didn't keep him from wondering about the man whose life ended on March 20, 1995 so he could have his heart. His friends and family warned not to try to find the donor’s family because it could breach the integrity of the program.
The Letter That Started It All
Initially Sonny did not personally contact the family but he worked around the rules by sending a letter to the organ donation agency in November 1996. He asked them to forward it to his donor’s family. The letter thanked his donor's wife for the gift that saved his life and he asked some questions.
Cheryl Cottle answered the questions and in her reply, she included several photographs. They kept writing letters back and forth, and in one letter, Sonny gave Cheryl his phone number. In January 1997, they agreed to meet at a restaurant in Charleston. When Sonny and his wife Elaine met his donor's 30-year old widow. Sonny said he fell in love with her at first sight.
Third Marriage - George Watkins
Sonny and Cheryl met regularly after the first meeting, sometimes with and sometimes without Elaine. Cheryl told Sonny about her life up until Terry died and her life since Terry died. She told him about her father’s death and how her mother came to live with her. At each meeting, Sonny found himself very attracted to Cheryl but he soon learned that it wasn't mutual because when they met in March, she said she was getting married in one month to George Watkins, her third husband.
Sonny and Elaine attended the wedding; Sonny stepped in to give away the bride. He met some of Terry's family and mentioned that he had developed strange cravings for beer and hot dogs, foods that he never liked before the transplant. They turned out to be Terry's favorite foods.
In January 1999, Cheryl welcomed her fourth child, Kyle. A few months after Kyle was born, Cheryl learned that George Watkins was still married, that he knew it, and married Cheryl anyway. This smacked familiar of her first marriage to Isaac “Bo” Carter.
Cheryl kicked him out of the mobile home, the same one she and Terry Cottle bought in 1994, and she filed for an annullment.
The Affair
Sonny started showering Cheryl with gifts for her and the chidren. She wanted a car, so he bought her a car. He told her he owned some acreage in Vidalia, Georgia and put a mobile home on it for temporary use while he contracted with a builder to construct another home on the land per her specifications. He lived there part of the time, until 2001 when his wife found out that he bought Cheryl a house. She threw Sonny out and filed for divorce. Sonny gave Cheryl a diamond engagement ring.
George Watkins tied Cheryl up in court with litigation regarding the division of property because Cheryl still owned the mobile home she and Terry Cottle bought.
After Sonny's Divorce
In October 2001, Sonny received his divorce papers, dissolving his 38 year marriage. He wanted to marry Cheryl right away but she still didn’t have her annullment from George Watkins.
Their relationship started changing; each made accusations against the other. Sonny accused her of not paying back some loans and said he wanted his ring back. In May of 2002, Cheryl left Sonny in his mobile home and returned to her own home. Sonny sued her for refusing to return his diamond ring. Cheryl countered that he was threatening her and being too possessive.
Fourth Marriage - John Johnson Jr.
After Cheryl updated her nursing license so she could work in the state of Georgia, she signed a contract to work in the infirmary of Georgia State Prison, a maximum security facility in Reidsville. While going through the orientation classes, she met John Johnson Jr., who lived in Baxley, not far from her home in Vidalia. Johnson had been employed by the Department of Corrections for more than 20 years.
Two days after Cheryl got her final annullment papers, John Johnson Jr. became husband number four on July 18, 2002. The couple appeared to be happy but within a year, that marriage also began to crumble. When Sonny started coming around more often, Johnson asked about it and Cheryl admitted that she was “seeing Sonny Graham but he was more like a sugar daddy.” She said that Sonny owed her a debt “because of the heart thing.”
In November 2003, police were called to the Johnson home because the couple accused each other of domestic abuse and filed police reports. In a newspaper article published in 2008, John Johnson told a reporter from the Hilton Head Island Packet that the turning point came in December 2003: “We were just lying in bed one night, and she said she thought about reuniting either with George Watkins or with Sonny Graham. She’s married to me and she’s talking about that. A minute later she said she often thought of killing herself and asked me if I had similar thoughts. No, I hadn’t. Then she got up to go to the bathroom, and as she closed the door, I remembered she kept her .22 pistol on a shelf in the bathroom. I panicked, jumped out of bed, ran into the bathroom just as she was pulling the gun out of its case. After a struggle, I got the gun away from her and took it to my parents home down the street from us.” John Johnson filed a police report the day that Cheryl tried to shoot herself with the revolver she kept in the house.
They separated in February 2004. When their divorce was final in August 2004, Johnson said he noticed that Sonny moved into the house and she was wearing Sonny’s ring.
Fifth Marriage - Sonny Graham
On December 8, 2004, Sonny Graham became Cheryl’s fifth husband. They lived in his mobile home in Vidalia while the other house was being built. When he turned 65, he officially retired from Hargray Communications and gained access to his retirement funds.
Just before their second anniversary, Cheryl and Sonny went to Hilton Head Island to attend an event that honored families of organ donors. Sonny was interviewed for the Hilton Head Island Packet newspaper and told the reporter: "I felt like I had known Cheryl for years.”
He talked of some of his experiences, certain changes in his food preferences, having a libido of much younger man, and he wanted nothing more than to please his wife. Their love story ran in newspapers all over the world.
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| Heart transplant recipient Sonny Graham and his wife, Cheryl, Dec. 1, 2006, at Hilton Head Regional Medical Center. |
Sonny was enjoying his life, being able to do activities again, and often went fishing and golfing with friends. He used much of his retirement funds to buy things for his new wife and family, and in 2007, he started a home-based business, C & S Landscaping. He built a shed in the backyard for his equipment and to store his guns.
During the last week of February 2008, when Sonny’s nephew Larry Lockley went fishing with him, Sonny asked him if he would be an alternate executor of his will. Larry worried Sonny had a terminal illness and was going to die soon. But Sonny assured Larry that nothing was wrong, he was just doing what folks his age do to plan for his family.
April 1, 2008 was April Fools Day but for Sonny, it was a normal spring morning. A golf tournament was on his calendar as well as his landscaping schedule for the next few weeks. He finished his coffee, told his 9-year-old stepson to get ready for his dentist appointment. He then went out to the backyard shed, picked up a 12-gauge Remington shotgun, pointed the muzzle at the right side of his throat and pulled the trigger.
He killed himself the same way as his heart donor did in 1995. The other commonality was they had married the same woman who wanted much more than they could give her.
The Investigation
The official report signed by Greg Harvey, special agent with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) said that "Sonny Graham was found dead inside a utility building in his backyard. He shot himself through the throat with a 12-gauge Remington shotgun that he used for dove hunting."
Although the coroner ruled Graham’s death a suicide, his family and friends don’t believe it. They have asked the authorities not to close this case, to keep on investigating it as a murder, not a suicide. They insist that someone else loaded the shotgun with birdshot because Sonny knew guns and he would never have used birdshot in a 12-gauge shotgun if he intended to kill himself.
As an aside, some friends and family members noticed on March 26, six days before Sonny’s death, that Cheryl put up a man’s photo with a flitratious message on her MySpace Page identifying him as her “new boyfriend.” The GBI contacted the man and after listening to what they had to say, the man told the Island Packet newspaper that he no longer sees Cheryl.
Family members think Sonny saw the post and coupled with his exhausted finances, believe it contributed to his despair.
While friends and family believed Cheryl had a lot to do with the suicides of Terry and Sonny, mostly regarding finances, the GBI said there was no evidence that could be used to prosecute her.
The Will
Sonny's will was read at the end of April 2008 and Cheryl got the shock of her life. She expected to get money from the retirement funds and bank accounts but Sonny died broke. While they were married, Cheryl never questioned where the money came from to pay for the houses and other gifts that Sonny bought her and the children. She told friends she couldn’t understand why her husband died in debt and didn’t leave her a dime.
Sonny's friend Tommy Hilton said: ‘The truth is Sonny had blown through his retirement funds and ran up large debts trying, as he once put it, “to keep Cheryl in the style she wants to live."
Husband number four, John Johnson said, "so far, Cheryl Graham has been married five times, and she drove all of her husbands to despair. She’s a tyrant. One day she hates you, and one day she loves you, and the next day she hates you again. I guess I’m lucky to be alive.”
Today in 2023
Today Cheryl still lives in Vidalia, Georgia. Her children are all adults now. She changed her name to Watkins, sold her 1994 mobile home and the 2001 house she lived in with Sonny. She bought another house a few streets away and the Vidalia property website shows the owner names on her present home are Cheryl Watkins and her mother Doris Busbee Sweat.
Note: Cheryl Sweat Carter Cottle Watkins Johnson Graham was not contacted regarding this blog post. All events and quotes in this post are public information.
Share your thoughts about transplant organ recipients
Do you believe transplant organ recipients can experience or exhibit some of the habits of their donor and, if not, do you have another explanation to offer?
Your comments are welcomed.
Sources:
Cheryl’s first marriage to Isaac "Bo" Carter on December 23, 1983
Terry Cottle’s notice of adoption of Cheryl’s two sons
Birth announcement for baby Teri Jessica born February 8, 1990.
Death Notice for Cheryl's father, Archie Sweat
Reunion of Transplant Recipients and Donor Families - April 2006
Terry Cottle’s gravesite
Archie Sweat’s gravesite, Cheryl’s father
Sonny Graham’s gravesite
Details of Sonny Graham’s Death April 1, 2008, in two clips
Part 1
Part 2