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Her first, Isaac "Bo" Carter, had two restraining orders against her after she repeatedly threatened to shoot him and his family, according to court documents.
Her fourth husband, John Johnson, whom she met while both worked at the Georgia State Prison, said Cheryl once encouraged him to kill himself before pointing a gun at him, he said in interviews. She emptied his bank accounts before marrying Sonny, he said.
Cheryl, who couldn't be reached for this story, is still on speaking terms with her third husband, George Watkins, because they share custody of their 10-year-old son, according to a statement he gave to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
Her second husband, Terry Cottle, the then 33-year-old Charleston man whose donated heart saved Sonny's life, died in 1995 in an apparent suicide.
Terry and Cheryl had been married for less than five years when they separated in the winter of 1995. They attempted to reconcile in early March of that year, documents say, but agreed the reconciliation happened too soon. Just before dawn on March 16, Terry told his wife he wanted to leave her.
Later that morning, he went into the bathroom of the home they shared, put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger, reports said.
In police reports taken that day, Cheryl provided two different accounts of how the morning unfolded.
She told the Berkeley County Sheriff's Department -- the first officials on the scene -- that her then 10-year-old son Chris began yelling that Terry had a gun while she was sitting in the bedroom. Before she could get to the bathroom, she heard a gunshot, the report said. She opened the door and saw Terry lying on the ground.
In a report taken later by the Berkeley County coroner, Cheryl said she was eating oatmeal when Terry went into the bathroom. She said she thought he was going to shower.
Her son, Chris, shouted, "Mom, dad has a gun!" according to the report.
The report said that Cheryl "ran to the bathroom and saw Terry standing up and looking at her... He had a small handgun in his right hand, which was raised up to his head level... She pushed on the door to try to get into the bathroom and at the same time she heard a shot."
Chris also was interviewed by the Berkeley County Sheriff's Department the morning Terry died.
He said his step-father told him to get out of the bathroom, according to a hand-written statement he gave investigators that morning.
"I heard the shot. I ran back in the bathroom and seen him on the floor," Chris wrote. "She (Cheryl) took the gun. Daddy was moving his hand around and she took the gun and threw it."
Terry's death was ruled a suicide.
