“I know,” the young man answered in hushed tones. His expression revealed that he was clearly shaken by the comment.
Jeremy’s friend turned his attention back toward the podium and listened as Kathy Seidel remembered her sister author. The attractive woman with the wavy brown hair explained that the value of romance is love, and hailed Nancy for showing her love through her social goodness and volunteerism.
After Kathy, several other people stood at the pulpit to remember Nancy and Jeremy before Finny’s high school roommate stepped up to the microphone. His voice wavered as he spoke with admiration for his friend’s dad, and then recalled a comment that Jeremy had made at one of his school football games: “When life hits you hard, hit back harder.” The young man’s pronouncement troubled several of Nancy’s friends.
Finny’s friend’s recollection was followed by a few words from Nancy’s father, Roderick Richards. The elderly man identified himself only as the children’s grandfather. His slender frame draped in a conservative suit and tie, his hands clasping the podium, he told the roomful of friends and family that “every day is a blank slate.” Addressing his grandchildren, he then said that it was important to “forgive, forget, and love each other.”
At the end of the service, mourners were invited to join the family in a small reception area where cake and coffee were being served.
After the service, Zeb and Isabelle returned to their home on Reservoir Road with their Uncle T to pack their things for their journey to Alabama. Once inside the home, the children were unable to control their tears. As they struggled to gather their belongings, their bursts of emotion grew uncontrollable. Not wanting to cause them any further trauma, T and Carolyn opted to forgo the packing, leaving many of their possessions behind. Even the menagerie of animals and birds that Bill Ranger had watched and fed when the family went out-of-town was placed with a local animal adoption agency.
When they arrived at the Akerses’ cozy home in Alabama, Zeb and Isabelle were given their own rooms. The children were immediately enrolled in counseling, and regularly joined their aunt and uncle at church services, which they attended every Wednesday and Sunday.
Finny joined his siblings in Alabama, renting a small flat just a few blocks away from his uncle’s home. He enrolled at the University of Northern Alabama, the college his father had attended for his freshman and sophomore years, and then transferred to the University of Virginia, another of his father’s alma maters, in the fall of 2000.
Bill Ranger continued to work to honor his friend’s dying request that he be buried in Arlington National Cemetery. When he first began lobbying that Jeremy be laid to rest there, his request was met with resistance from the public. Angry letters were published in The Washington Post from readers who felt that Jeremy had dishonored himself when he killed his wife. Bill Ranger believed that his friend had been out of his mind when he shot Nancy that evening. He was convinced that Jeremy had not really thought out the consequences of his actions, and was certain that if he had, he never would have gone down the path that he did. Not only did he leave the children he so loved without a mother or father, but his crime of passion had also precluded him from being laid to rest in the burial place of his fellow war heroes.
For all of his efforts, Bill could not convince members of the United States Marine Corps to honor Jeremy Akers’ dying wish. To them, Jeremy had broken the faith with the Marines by killing his wife.
Finally, Bill, with the help of a friend, Captain Bruce Dyer, USN (Ret) and his wife, LTC Connie Dyer, USAR, and Veteran’s Affairs Chair, Florida State Council, arranged to have his friend’s body shipped to Sheffield. There, eight members of the Vietnam Veterans of America, gave him a military-style burial that pleased Gladys and William Akers.
Being able to lay her father to rest helped Isabelle to come to terms with what had happened. But the little girl continued to fret over the fact that she had not been able to say goodbye to her mother in the same fashion. The ten-year-old continued to question why her grandmother, Susan Richards, was insisting on keeping Nancy’s cremated ashes in an urn in her home, and not burying them in a proper service that she and her brothers could attend. To date, the situation remains unchanged. Susan continued to send cards and money to the children, and hosted a family get-together for the family at her home in Savannah, Georgia, two years after her daughter’s death.
By all accounts, Zeb and Isabelle are said to be doing well, attending school and maintaining good grades. They even visited Washington, DC in the summer of 2000 to reconnect with friends there.
Three months after Sergeant Farish was called to the scene of the disturbing murder on Reservoir Road, he received a telephone call from a woman who expressed concern about Jim Lemke. Days after Nancy’s murder, the young man told one reporter that “Nancy was a wonderful person.” But, shortly after her memorial service, he dropped out of sight.
In the weeks that followed, Jim’s mother revealed that her son was so distraught that he took weeks off from work, and went on a drinking binge that lasted for fourteen days. She also revealed that Jim had admitted to feeling responsible for Nancy’s death, saying that he was disappointed at his inability to protect her. As the months passed, he continued to take her murder to heart, ultimately quitting his job and not answering his telephone.
When the call came in to the Metropolitan Police’s Second District office, Sergeant Farish was working the midnight shift. Seated at his desk in his second-floor office he listened as a woman from Chicago, Illinois, who identified herself as a “concerned friend” of Jim’s, explained that the twenty-six-year-old trucker had not been responding to her phone calls or emails. She said that she was worried that something might be wrong, and asked if police could go by to make sure that everything was all right.
It was the first time that Farish would meet the “poet king,” who was all right, but continued to be distraught over Nancy’s murder.
Shortly after Farish’s visit, Jim Lemke left town, telling his mother that he was unable to remain in a city filled with the haunting memories of his love and his loss. Packing up Nancy’s computer, which Mrs. Richards had promised to Finny, he headed West. Despite his mother’s pleas that he come home to Chicago, Jim remained on the road, phoning in from time to time to say that he was okay.
In the months that followed, the couple’s friends struggled to make sense of the tragedy. Newspaper accounts pointed to Nancy’s novels for clues.
But Nancy’s friend Kathy Seidel said that readers would probably not find any easy answers. The bestselling author, who had gone on to write eleven romance novels under the name Kathleen Gilles Seidel explained: “There is, in many romance novels, something called the alpha male, who is distant and mysterious and a very conventional character type, and he is ultimately tamed by the heroine. I assume Nancy may have used that character type … I think if—and this is a big if—if she uses the alpha male character, tall, dark, handsome, mysterious man who looks like he is smoldering and has a quick temper, and you read the book and say, ‘Ohmigod, this must be her husband,’ you are wrong. This is seventy-five percent of what historical romances are like.”
Kathy went on to say that she believed it would be impossible to find parallels between Nancy’s real life and the characters she created.
“In romances, love solves the problem,” Kathy explained. “It is never violence. Violence is never the answer. Love is always the answer, and so it’s hard to look at whatever drove Jeremy Akers to do this.”
Yet, as one skims Nancy’s last novel, it is difficult to disregard passages such as these:
“Ye’re my wife and my place is with ye,” Malcolm bent one knee on the bed, leaned forward, and with his arms on either side of Isobel, moved close enough to look her hard in the eye. “And ye best stop defying me…”
ST. MARTIN’S PAPERBACKS TRUE CRIME LIBRARY TITLES BY LISA PULITZER
A Woman Scorned
Fatal Romance
The ring of
the telephone shattered the stillness of the night. Bill Ranger sat up abruptly in bed, and took a moment to get his bearings. It wasn’t that late, just about 11:30, but he had turned in unusually early—especially for a Saturday night.
It wasn’t Bill’s habit to answer the phone, so as usual he let the machine pick up. Too many times the caller turned out to be an old girlfriend making one last attempt at reining in the confirmed bachelor. The fifty-two-year-old Navy reservist sat in the dark and listened for a while, not really wanting to get out of bed and still hazy from the deep sleep that had enveloped him. But the familiar baritone at the other end of the line startled him into full alertness, especially when he heard the words, “I want to be buried at Arlington Cemetery.”
Throwing off the covers, he sprang out of bed and picked up the receiver. By the time he crossed the room, the machine had recorded a solid minute of the frantic diatribe.
“Akers!” Ranger barked into the phone. “What are you talking about?”
“I shot Nancy…”
FATAL ROMANCE
Copyright © 2001 by Lisa Pulitzer.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
ISBN: 0-312-97580-5
St. Martin’s Paperbacks edition / July 2001
eISBN 9781466829817
First eBook edition: October 2012
* “Danny” is a pseudonym for the neighbor, who wished to remain anonymous.
Fatal Romance: A True Story of Obsession and Murder Page 23
