by Ann Rule
PRAISE FOR
“AMERICA’S BEST TRUE-CRIME WRITER”
(Kirkus Reviews)
AND HER #1 NEW YORK TIMES
BESTSELLING SERIES
Ann Rule’s Crime Files
Fourteen riveting volumes of true-crime stories
drawn from her personal collection
“Chilling cases. … A frightening, fascinating rogue’s gallery of mercenary murderers.”
—Mystery Guild
“Prolific and talented Rule proves her warranted reputation as one of true crime’s leading lights. … With a novelist’s skill, Rule brings to life a rich case.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Spine-tingling … could win a place in any insomniac’s heart.”
—Barnesandnoble.com
“Fascinating, unsettling tales. … Among the very small group of top-notch true-crime writers, Rule just may be the best of the bunch.”
—Booklist
“Rule’s ability to depict both criminals and victims as believable human beings is perfectly embodied in this sad, fascinating account.”
—Library Journal
“Gripping tales. … Fans of true crime know they can rely on Ann Rule to deliver the dead-level best.”
—The Hartford Courant (CT)
MORE MUST-READ TRUE CRIME
FROM ANN RULE—DON’T MISS THESE
CELEBRATED BESTSELLERS
Ann Rule worked the late-night shift at a suicide
hotline with a handsome, whip-smart psychology
major who became her close friend. Soon the world
would know him: Ted Bundy, one of the most
savage serial killers of our time. …
THE STRANGER BESIDE ME
Now in an updated edition!
“A shattering story … carefully investigated, written with compassion but also with professional objectivity.”
—Seattle Times
“Overwhelming!”
—Houston Post
“Ann Rule has an extraordinary angle … [on] the most fascinating killer in modern American history. … As
dramatic and chilling as a bedroom window shattering at midnight.”
—The New York Times
TOO LATE TO SAY GOODBYE
“The quintessential true-crime story. … The mesmerizing tale of how law enforcement coordinated information from two deaths separated by nearly a decade to convict Bart Corbin of murder. … Prepare yourself for a few late nights of reading.”
—Bookreporter.com
GREEN RIVER, RUNNING RED
“[Rule] conveys the emotional truth of the Green River case.”
—Los Angeles Times
“Riveting. … Rule infuses her case study with a personally felt sense of urgency.” —People
HEART FULL OF LIES
“A convincing portrait of a meticulous criminal mind.”
—The Washington Post
“Fascinating. … The sheer weight of [Rule’s] investigative technique places her at the forefront of true-crime writers.” —Booklist
EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE
“Affecting, tense, and smart true crime.”
—Washington Post Book World
“Absolutely riveting … psychologically perceptive.”
—Booklist
…AND NEVER LET HER GO
“Truly creepy. … This portrait of an evil prince needs no embellishment.”
—People
“[Rule] might have created her masterpiece.”
—The Plain Dealer (Cleveland)
“Even crime buffs who followed the case closely [will] gain new insights.”
—The Orlando Sentinel (FL)
“[Rule] tell[s] the sad story with authority, flair, and pace.”
—The Washington Post
BOOKS BY ANN RULE
Too Late to Say Goodbye
Green River, Running Red
Every Breath You Take
Heart Full of Lies
… And Never Let Her Go
Bitter Harvest
Dead by Sunset
Everything She Ever Wanted
If You Really Loved Me
The Stranger Beside Me
Possession
Small Sacrifices
Ann Rule’s Crime Files
Vol. 13: Mortal Danger and Other True Cases
Vol. 12: Smoke, Mirrors, and Murder and Other
True Cases
Vol. 11: No Regrets and Other True Cases
Vol. 10: Worth More Dead and Other True Cases
Vol. 9: Kiss Me, Kill Me and Other True Cases
Vol. 8: Last Dance, Last Chance and Other True Cases
Vol. 7: Empty Promises and Other True Cases
Vol. 6: A Rage to Kill and Other True Cases
Vol. 5: The End of the Dream and Other True Cases
Vol. 4: In the Name of Love and Other True Cases
Vol. 3: A Fever in the Heart and Other True Cases
Vol. 2: You Belong to Me and Other True Cases
Vol. 1: A Rose for Her Grave and Other True Cases
Without Pity: Ann Rule’s Most Dangerous Killers
The I-5 Killer
The Want-Ad Killer
Lust Killer
ANN RULE
BUT I
TRUSTED YOU
AND OTHER TWO CASES
ANN RULE’S CRIME FILES: Vol. 14
The sale of this book without its cover is unauthorized. If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that it was reported to the publisher as “unsold and destroyed.” Neither the author nor the publisher has received payment for the sale of this “stripped book.”
Pocket Books
A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com
The names of some individuals have been changed. Such names are indicated by an asterisk (*) the first time each appears in the narrative.
Copyright © 2009 by Ann Rule
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
First Pocket Books paperback edition December 2009
POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of
Simon & Schuster, Inc.
For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-866-506-1949 or [email protected]
The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com.
Cover illustration by Tom Hallman. Hand lettering by James Wang.
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
ISBN 978-1-4165-4223-0
ISBN 978-1-4391-6054-1 (ebook)
To the late Sheriff Chris Hansen
of Montcalm County, Michigan, my grandfather.
Our grandfather inspired me and all my cousins
with his ability to talk to almost anyone,
his understanding of human nature, his skill
as an investigator, and his compassion.
Many decades ago, Robert Ripley chose
Chris Hansen for his feature “Believe It or Not”
because he never had to fire his gun during his long
career as a lawman. The Hansen descendants are
spread all over America now, and most of us chose
to be police officers, lawyers, social workers,
&
nbsp; prosecutors, parole and probation officers,
teachers, or writers.
We all owe a lot to our grandfather,
a Danish immigrant who settled in Michigan!
Acknowledgments
There are so many cases in But I Trusted You, and so many real people in each of them, that this will be a long list. I could not possibly have learned this many details without a great deal of help from detectives, prosecutors, witnesses, jurors, and victims’ families.
Thank you to Brad Pince and Jim Scharf of the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office, Eloise Schumacher and Peyton Whitely of the Seattle Times, Susan, Lieutenant Frank Chase, Ted Forrester, Rolf Grunden, Bruce Morrison, Jerry Harris, Mike Gillis, Harlan Bollinger, Len Randall, Mark Fern, and the late Sam Hicks of the King County Sheriff’s Office. Billy Baughman, Dick Reed, Ted Fonis, Wayne Dorman, “Bud” Jelberg, Bob Holter, and John Boatman from the Seattle Police Department, and to Sergeant L. E. Robinson of the Enumclaw Police Department and Park Ranger Harry De Lashmutt. Chief of detectives Bill Patterson of the Chelan County Sheriff’s Office helped me a great deal, and so did Lieutenant Walt Kezar of the Oregon State Police, the Oregon State Board of Parole, and special thanks to Rob Romig of the Eugene Register-Guard.
Thanks to Chuck Wright, Gerry Hay (my first reader, always), Ken Heide, Donna Anders, Kate Jewell, Shirley Hickman, Marni Campbell, Mike Hare, and all the Jolly Matrons from Willamette University and the University of Washington (faded but still lovely): Joan Kelly, Susie Morrison, Betty May Settecase, Shirley Coffin, Alice Govig, Sue Dreyer, Tricia Potts, Val Szukavathy, Gail Bronson, and Shirley Jacobs.
To Dawn and Gary Dunn, Matt Parker, Justin Robison, and to the ARFs (Ann Rule Fans—long may they wave!). And my gratitude to those readers who haven’t yet become certified ARFs knows no bounds. I couldn’t have even one book without you.
My thanks to my longtime literary agents—Joan and Joe Foley, my theatrical agent—Ron Bernstein of ICM, my editor—Mitchell Ivers, and to Jessica Webb, who helped me every step of the way! My attorney, Felice
Javits, checks everything I write to be sure it is absolutely factual.
I haven’t forgotten the production crew at Pocket Books, who remind me graciously about looming deadlines: Carly Sommerstein, Sally Franklin, Lisa Litwack, and Ayelet Gruenspecht.
Thank you also to Theresa Leonard, Sandy Biscaro, and Reisa Schmidt.
Contents
Foreword
But I Trusted You
Death in Paradise:
The Haunting Voyage of the Spellbound
Sharper than a Serpent’s Tooth
Monohan’s Last Date
Run as Fast as You Can
The Deadly Voyeur
Dark Forest: Deep Danger
Foreword
There are infinite variations on the motive, means, and excuses for the darkest crime of all: murder. Some are unpremeditated and leave the killer full of remorse, while other homicides sink to the cruelest depths imaginable and the murderers feel absolutely no twinge of conscience. Most of us would be capable of taking another person’s life, but only to save ourselves or someone vulnerable. Mothers—both human and animal—kill without a thought to protect their young. And that isn’t truly murder. Soldiers shoot to kill on the battlefield, and police officers sometimes have no choice but to use deadly force. Any cop will tell you that the officer who is responsible for a death in the line of duty “suffers as much or more than the criminal.”
“Conscience doth make cowards of us all,” William Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet. But he was wrong. There are human beings who have no conscience. They don’t feel remorse, or regret, or guilt about the horrible crimes they have committed. They may shed crocodile tears, and they cry when they are caught, but they weep only for themselves.
The cases in this book—ranging in time from a few years ago to more than three decades into the past—are about homicides that were both devious and complicated. The killers planned their crimes, and drew victims in to a point where they placed their confidence in someone who was both sly and deadly. In hindsight, their machinations seem blatant and easy to recognize.
But in the beginning, their “masks,” and their ability to say just the right thing at the right time, were often impenetrable.
The longest case, and the title case I explore in But I Trusted You, is about a couple whose meeting was romantic, whose marriage seemed fated, and whose final separation was unbelievable. They had it all—at least to anyone looking at them from the outside of their relationship, and even to many who knew them well. Of the two, the husband seemed the more bizarre. He often watered their lawn or picked up the morning paper in minimal clothing, but their neighbors had long since become used to it. His jubilant personality won them over.
The couple lived in a kind of fishbowl. From the living room of their charming house on a picturesque lake, visitors could peer through the glass floor and view the king-sized waterbed below.
He was a school counselor, and she operated a small resale shop—modest and respectable professions, and yet theirs is one of the strangest and most multifaceted stories I have ever come across.
“Death in Paradise” may not have been a betrayal of trust at all; perhaps what happened in the tropical waters off Papeete was only a sad series of accidents. I have to admit that we may never know the complete truth, but the ill-fated journey of the Spellbound will never be erased from my own memory—not until the hidden aspects of a case that sounds more like fiction than fact are revealed. It will undoubtedly haunt you, too, just as it haunts those who survived.
In “Sharper than a Serpent’s Tooth,” I explore another case of a disappearance that suggested a violent and deadly end. No one knew for sure if Lorraine Millroy left her comfortable home of her own volition or if she had no choice. She had many of the usual problems that divorced, middle-aged women face. Still, she wasn’t depressed, or, rather, she didn’t seem to be. Family problems cropped up occasionally, but money wasn’t an issue. On a bitter cold night, detectives searching her home for some hint of where she might be came across items of evidence that gave them a sense of foreboding. As anxious as they were to locate Lorraine, whether she was alive or dead, they hoped they hadn’t focused on the right suspect. It was someone whom Lorraine loved, counted on, held high hopes for, and, yes, trusted.
“Monohan’s Last Date” reflects the mores of a brief period in American history. The 1960s were all about the love generation, but as the decade eased into the 1970s, love gave way to an intense curiosity about sex. Cosmopolitan editor Helen Gurley Brown shocked America with her book Sex and the Single Girl in 1962. Her basically innocuous book opened up the floodgates. Masters and Johnson’s research and subsequent publications shocked the public deliciously, and The Joy of Sex came along ten years later, along with the movie Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice.
“Swinging” and “wife swapping” intrigued couples whose marriages had become mundane, but in most cases the results were disastrous, and it wasn’t long before they ended up in divorce court.
In “Monohan’s Last Date,” a highly successful business man, who had been recently divorced, became involved with a group of swingers through a magazine called The Seekers. Their leader was friendly and fast-talking, and his CB handle was “Dudley Do-Right.” Frank Monohan liked him and his lifestyle, and he saw no danger behind “Dudley’s” broad smile.
But, of course, there was. Frank Monohan placed his confidence in the wrong man.
This case began in the thick brush at the summit of
a lonely mountain pass, stumped detectives in four
jurisdictions—including the FBI—and led them on a four-year chase across the United States. But, in the end, they untangled the mystery of a peculiar liaison that led inexorably to murder.
In “Run as Fast as You Can,” a killer’s motivation can be traced directly to a horrific bloody attack he witnessed as a small child. Whether any amount of counseling might have mitigat
ed the psychological damage he suffered is a moot point. His parents were brilliant and wealthy, and they lived in an upscale neighborhood near a scenic park. His many trips to the waterfront park seemed a totally wholesome pastime. In reality, he was there to watch and to stalk, hiding in the trees and shrubs while he chose his targets.
“The Deadly Voyeur” demonstrates that we are often most in danger when we feel safe. Everyone should set an alarm bell in their subconscious minds. If they are suddenly threatened or accosted, they will then have an automatic plan to use in those precious seconds they have to escape from a potentially deadly situation. If they don’t make the right choice, they are trapped. The young couple who met a prowling monster were not prepared for such an event. Even in their worst nightmares, they couldn’t have imagined there were minds like his.
“Dark Forest: Deep Danger” is about a case I first investigated in the 1970s. In some sense, it remains almost as mystifying today as it was then. Even so, as I reinvestigated this inscrutable tragedy, I may have come upon an answer to what happened to a family of four who went into an Oregon forest to have a picnic and an outdoor adventure.
And vanished.
As time went by, they were found, but the discovery only brought about more questions. Perhaps a reader will have the answers that will finally put a horrendous mystery to rest forever. Possibly readers will agree with my theory.
BUT I TRUSTED YOU
Chapter One
The slender strawberry blonde and the school counselor whose home was three thousand miles away in Washington State met in such a seemingly romantic way that they seemed destined to be with one another: he was in New Orleans for a ten-day educational conference, and she was a concierge at a fine hotel in the Mardi Gras city. It would have been better, perhaps, if his judgment hadn’t been somewhat obscured by the romance of it all. In retrospect, she undoubtedly knew exactly what she was doing.
It was 1988 when their story began. Teresa Gaethe was twenty-seven then, and she had deep roots in Louisiana and Florida. Trying to trace those roots, however, is almost impossible. Gaethe was her first husband’s surname; her maiden name was probably Jones, but she didn’t tell Charles “Chuck” Leonard that. She said her maiden name was Goldstein before she married a stock broker named Gary Gaethe, and she subtly alluded to her family’s wealth, only the first of the many exaggerations and downright lies she would tell Chuck. Teresa’s family—two
