Final Vows

by Karen Kingsbury

  Sometimes Carol would wonder about Dan’s troubled heart and soul and remember examples in her psychology books. She began to think about ways she might break through to the healthy person trapped inside. Carol had an abundance of love to give, no one to share it with, and the same naivete she had developed as a young girl.

  On October 3 Dan received his first letter from Carol. In contrast to the time and energy she had already put into rescuing Dan, he gave Carol’s first letter very little thought. He believed she was merely a good Samaritan out to save the world. By the time he went to sleep that night, Carol was long since forgotten.

  But the next day there was another letter; the day after that, still another. In the wake of her divorce, with plenty of time on her hands, Carol would come home from her teaching job each evening, sit down at her kitchen table, and pour out her feelings to Dan. Persistence, she told herself, was the only way a convicted felon would believe that someone on the outside really cared about him. What she wasn’t quite ready to admit was how much she was enjoying the correspondence.

  She continued writing every day for the next two months. She told Dan about her strained relationship with her father and her drawn-out breakup with Raj. If not for the love of Christ, Carol wrote, she would have long ago succumbed to self-pity and depression. She urged Dan to give Christianity a try.

  Receiving mail was a new experience for Dan and after a week of daily letters from Carol he found himself liking the attention. During the second week Dan began writing back. Then, after two months, Carol and Dan agreed to meet face-to-face. There was one problem. A prisoner was permitted to have only visitors he had known prior to incarceration. But Dan had not spent the past year impressing the prison board for nothing. His case worker appealed the rule to the board and days before Christmas, the visit took place.

  After her murder Dan wrote about his first impression of the slim, bright-eyed woman who had so faithfully written to him for eight weeks:

  One is immediately struck by beauty, and Carol certainly had that. It wasn’t just surface beauty. . . . There was an inner radiance that glowed from a spring that welled deep within her. . . . Right away you knew that she was special.

  For her part Carol, too, was struck by their first meeting. In those days Dan still had the dapper appearance of a small-town banker and Carol found him very handsome. He was several inches taller than she with dark hair and a neatly trimmed mustache. His soft, brown eyes seemed to be crying out for help and Carol decided he looked more harmless than the officer who had escorted her into the visiting room. He spoke with a soft voice and had a self-deprecating way of staring at his hands when he carried on a conversation. Carol was troubled to see that Dan seemed to have less self-esteem than anyone she had ever met. She had the immediate urge to take him in her arms and let him know that everything was going to be all right.

  Over the next few months Carol visited as often as prison rules permitted. She told herself she hoped to accomplish just one thing with her persistence—Dan’s conversion to Christianity. But there was no hiding from her feelings. She was beginning to fall in love with Dan, beginning to dream about how different their relationship might have been had they met in other circumstances.

  Dan’s thoughts were perhaps more self-centered. In Carol, Dan finally had someone outside the prison system who believed in him and wanted to help him. He had begun to look forward to her daily letters and frequent visits and had long since begun enjoying her attention. Later Garrett Trapnell—his former cellmate at Marion—would offer a more sinister motive for Dan’s friendly involvement with Carol.

  Either way, the friendship flourished and a few months later, in 1979, Dan answered an altar call during a prison presentation by members of the Chuck Colson Ministries. When he later told Carol about the spiritual experience he’d had that night, she was convinced that her prayers about Dan’s converting to Christianity were being answered. Later, when he was baptized during a church service, Carol believed that finally Dan had become a Christian.

  Dan’s conversion started another phase in his relationship with Carol. They began spending their visits reading and discussing Scripture. If Carol had wondered about her feelings for Dan, now she was certain. She had been laid off from her teaching job and had taken a sales job at the local telephone company. Although she thrived in the competitive environment, her coworkers thought her something of a loner. Now, as her relationship with Dan grew, her coworkers began to notice that Carol seemed completely happy for the first time.

  With Carol’s help Dan set up a prison workshop that offered Christianity as an alternative for kids who had been in trouble with the law. Dan would later write, “Carol and I were falling in love. She was the first thing I thought about in the morning and the last at night.”

  Eighteen months after Carol’s first letter, the couple decided to get married. But Dan still had eight years before he would be eligible for parole, and so prison officials denied his request for a wedding ceremony. Still, the couple continued their contact as they had before, both praying that God would work a miracle and Dan would be released from prison.

  In what seemed to be a miraculous answer to his prayers, Dan was allowed to speak before the parole board. As he had hoped, the board was impressed by his involvement with the prison communications program, by his conversion to Christianity, his membership in Alcoholics Anonymous, and even his relationship with Carol. Dan was granted a transfer to the federal prison camp in Terre Haute, Indiana. In contrast to the high security institutions at Leavenworth, Marion, and Oxford, the minimum security facility at Terre Haute seemed like summer camp. Here, Dan again requested to marry Carol. This time permission was granted.

  On July 14, 1980, while prison guards looked on, Dan and Carol were married in the camp’s courtyard. Dan would later say he was, “the happiest man alive.” He would write:

  God had gifted me with the sweetest lady He could find. . . . [W]ho by her unconditional love brought me out of darkness—a place of no love. She was able to strip away the hate and bitterness that was so long a part of me.

  Dan’s marriage to Carol further impressed the parole board. By then Dan no longer spent much time talking about his involvement in organized crime. In fact he seemed as mild mannered as a Sunday School teacher. The communications program had taught him how to write and speak like an educated man, the Alcoholics Anonymous program had taught him how to stay sober, and Carol had taught him how to love.

  Most likely the parole board was also under pressure to reduce the camp’s overcrowded population. Taking everything into consideration the Terre Haute parole board released Dan just three weeks after his marriage. That day Dan promised Carol and himself that he would remain clean and begin a meaningful ministry of his own.

  “One would think that with all I had going, transition (back into society) would be easy,” Dan wrote later. “But it wasn’t.”

  Before long Dan found himself longing for a drink and wondering about the nightlife in nearby bars. No matter how hard Carol prayed for him, he seemed to be drawn away from their happy home. In fact before their first anniversary Dan began dealing with his frustration by drinking and spending his evenings out on the town.

  “Carol never once came down on me, although she was disappointed,” Dan wrote. “She was never angry. She remained a patient and loving wife who got me over that hurdle.”

  In light of her painful divorce from Raj, Carol was committed to making her second marriage work. Whenever Dan disappointed her, she needed only to look into his beseeching eyes as he begged for forgiveness to know without a doubt that she could never leave this man. He just needed time to grow into the person

  Carol knew he really was inside. Following Christ’s example her forgiveness for her husband was always unconditional. Even after the humiliation Dan caused her in August 1981, when he was arrested while she sat home alone.

  The charge against him: Soliciting a prostitute.
r />   Chapter 23

  The early years of Dan and Carol’s marriage were not what their friends and few family members would term happy times. The undercover police officer in Madison, Wisconsin, who arrested Dan for soliciting a prostitute wrote this in her report: “(During the solicitation) I told him I wanted to know what kind of person he was and he told me he wasn’t kinky, but just wanted someone to make love to. He also asked me to give him head and he would (do the same) for me.”

  If Carol had read that report, it would have confirmed her fears that Dan was unhappy in their year-old marriage. But she accepted his apology and prayed for him to be stronger in the future. She probably never told anyone how Dan’s close bout with infidelity had hurt her. But she clung to her belief that she had the ability to change him.

  After his arrest Dan was placed on probation. His resulting depression sent him spiraling back into alcoholism. On October 7, 1981, less than two months after his prostitution charge, Dan was arrested for drunk driving and violating probation and ordered to serve thirty days in county jail. Even in these dark times when Carol must have doubted the wisdom of marrying a convicted felon, she never allowed her parents to share her pain. She had chosen to devote her life to loving Dan; like any good Christian wife she would see the marriage through.

  In optimistic moments, although she hated the thought of her husband sitting in jail, Carol was thankful that Dan hadn’t hurt himself or anyone else with his drunken driving. She tried to see Dan’s latest arrest as God’s way of forcing him to stop drinking. When thirty days were up and Dan returned home, he promised to change his ways. Just as before, Carol believed him.

  Throughout 1982, Dan had no run-ins with the police. He attended weekly group therapy sessions with other former criminals and, according to Dan, he developed such a “unique insight into the difficulty that a convict faces in the transition to the streets” that the counseling center hired him on staff.

  But the good life began to dissolve once again in 1983 when Dan again began drinking. Later, Dan would write, “Somehow I didn’t think that I deserved the life that was being offered to me and I turned back to the bottle.” Police caught up with him on January 22 and again on May 14 that year and he wound up with two more drunk driving arrests and a suspended license.

  Carol began to pray for a way out, a chance to give Dan a new lease on life. She had been selling directory sales ads for General Telephone in Madison and after a successful interview quickly accepted a promotion and transfer to the company’s office in Southern California.

  When Dan joined Carol in Los Angeles a few weeks later, having packed up their household, Carol prayed with all her heart that California would offer a new beginning, an opportunity for Dan to blossom into the man she believed him to be. They rented a small apartment in Eagle Rock, a small community in the hills just north of Los Angeles. The weather was bright and sunny and each day as Carol drove to work she grew more convinced that Dan’s alcoholism was finally behind them.

  Within a month after arriving in California the Montecalvos discovered Overcomers’ Faith Center Church, which seemed an appropriate enough name for the kind of shepherding Carol thought they needed. They spent several evenings meeting with Pastor Wil Strong before going in front of the congregation one Sunday and pledging their membership.

  With their marital and spiritual lives seemingly in order, Carol joined a Christian group called Women’s Aglow, which met once a month in Burbank and did weekly service projects. Dan, too, kept busy and managed to stay sober while working various part-time jobs and volunteering at a chemical dependency program for teenagers. He also became involved with the Full Gospel Businessmen’s Fellowship group. That fall Dan’s newly strengthened relationship with God had become so apparently exemplary that the group’s leaders asked Dan to speak at their November meeting.

  A year later, on December 20, 1984, two of Dan’s church friends purchased a run-down hotel in downtown Los Angeles and hired Dan to manage it for them. Carol was thrilled to learn that Dan would receive a decent salary and 10 percent of the hotel’s net profits. Finally, she thought, her prayers were being answered. Dan seemed to be a changed man who no longer desired the nightlife and drinking that had plagued his past.

  During the next year, Dan worked ten-hour days to clean up the hotel. The structure had been the site of drug and prostitution rings and was on the verge of being closed down by police because it was a nuisance to the public. Its tenants were notorious for failing to pay their rent.

  Dan grew to know the tenants personally. He told them about the love of Jesus and begged them to avoid alcohol and drugs. He also stressed the importance of abiding by the law and paying rent on time. Gradually the hotel began to make a profit. Still there were times when the only way a tenant could avoid eviction was by coming up with the rent immediately. On several such occasions Dan gave trusted tenants enough money to keep them off the streets. He told himself that Jesus would have done the same thing in his place.

  Dan was not as lenient with the lawbreakers. If a tenant chose to continue with drugs or prostitution—even after Dan told them of his experience and God’s plan for forgiveness—he would pray for the person and then turn the matter over to the police. He aided the officers in undercover operations to rid the building of its remaining narcotics and crime problems.

  By the fall of 1985, the hotel had increased its profits from $27,000 a month to an all-time high of $69,000 monthly. Once the hotel was running well, Dan helped develop two Bible studies that operated out of the building’s main office. He also voluntarily took on the responsibility of developing job-search and hot-meal programs for the tenants. Later, he started an Alcoholics Anonymous chapter at the hotel.

  On the one-year anniversary of his employment at the Strand Hotel, the owners gave Dan his 10 percent share of the profits and Dan and Carol picked out their best Christmas present of all—a new home. They had researched the area and decided they wanted to live in Burbank. With its low crime rate, Burbank was just the place for a changed man and his devoted wife to put down roots. They decided on a 1,300-square-foot three-bedroom yellow house at 315 South Myers Street. A bushy palm tree grew in the front yard and the house was only a stone’s throw from Walt Disney Studio’s back lot. On the day they purchased the home, Carol took a picture of Dan standing alongside the real-estate sign, a broad smile on his face. For the first time in his life he no longer craved the things that had always worked to destroy him. The days of robbing banks, emulating gangsters, and serving time seemed forever behind him.

  Carol, too, seemed in good spirits. Later she would write to her sister Roseanna telling her that she had never been happier. Dan was doing better than she had hoped and now they had saved up enough money to buy their own home.

  Actually, Carol was worried sick about her own job. While Dan had been working so successfully at the Strand Hotel, the phone company had hired a bossy, short-tempered woman to manage Carol’s department. For what seemed to Carol insignificant reasons, the new boss disliked Carol and began berating her in front of her colleagues. Whereas Carol’s sales for the company’s yellow pages had always been high, they began to slip in the atmosphere of strain and tension.

  Then, weeks after moving into their new home, Dan came home from the hotel to find Carol curled up on the sofa, crying.

  “Honey, what’s wrong, what happened?” Dan immediately moved to Carol’s side.

  “I’m sorry,” Carol muttered, trying to wipe away her tears. She had not told Dan of the problems brewing at the telephone company. After all, she was the rescuer in their relationship, the one who was supposed to have her life together. “It’s nothing, really.”

  Dan was not convinced. “Sweetheart, tell me what happened.”

  Carol reached down and picked up a paper toilet seat cover off the floor. “I got this at work today. It’s no big deal, really.”

  Confused, Dan wrinkled his brow and leaned closer to his wife, exa
mining the item she held in her hand. “Why would someone give you a toilet seat cover?”

  Carol tried to stop the tears that ran down her cheeks. “It’s a joke. Sort of. We had a sales contest and everyone got an award.” She held the seat cover a little higher. “This is mine.”

  Rage began building inside Dan’s heart. “Honey, I’m still a little confused, you know? What’s it for?”

  “Don’t you see, Dan? My sales were in the toilet. That’s why I got the seat cover.”

  His face grew red as he leaned over and took Carol into his arms. Years had gone by since he’d felt the intense anger and hatred he felt at that moment. “You don’t need to be treated like that, Carol. No one’s going to make my wife feel bad.”

  Carol swallowed hard, trying not to give in to the sobs that choked her. “I don’t want to go back,” she said softly. “I hate it there.”

  “Then don’t. It’s that simple.” Dan was suddenly calm and confident. “Tomorrow you can call them and tell them you won’t be back.”

  “I couldn’t do that, Dan,” Carol said, tears welling up in her eyes again. “What would I say?”

  Dan moved next to Carol and stroked her hair, his eyes still betraying his anger. “Don’t worry, honey. I’ll call them.”

  As a young woman Carol never would have allowed anyone to act on her behalf. But her rebellious behavior had long since been replaced by a biblical submissiveness toward her husband. Rather than be put off by Dan’s authoritative attitude, Carol took it as another sign of his continued progress. He was finally becoming the true leader in their home.

  The next morning Dan telephoned Carol’s manager and told her that Carol would not be returning. Ever. As Dan hung up, Carol felt a weight lifted from her shoulders and she smiled at him from across the room. For the first time in her life, Dan had taken care of her. Never, in all her life, had Carol loved a man more than she loved Dan at that moment. He walked up to her and took her into his arms.