Don suddenly came to and spit it out. “Hold his mouth and hold his nose,” Vonlee claimed Billie Jean told her at that moment. “No,” Vonlee said. “I am extremely inebriated by this point myself and I’m thinking, ‘Okay . . . she must do this all the time.’ He responded, after all—he spit out that shot. I thought this was how she woke him up when he was really out of it.” Billie Jean handed Vonlee the bottle and said, “You pour a shot in his mouth.” Vonlee took it and did what she was told, thinking that following her suggestions would help wake Don up and out of his stupor. Nothing happened. Billie Jean went back to trying to get Vonlee to hold her hand over Don’s mouth. Her aunt had pinched his nostrils together so he couldn’t breathe out of his nose. “Do it,” she said. “Put your hand over his mouth.” This would cut off Don’s oxygen supply, Billie Jean explained, and Don would begin to choke for air and subsequently wake up. The way Vonlee saw it, Billie Jean had done this routinely and it had worked.
