No Regrets

by Ann Rule

  Ruth gave an interview to the National Enquirer for their “Scales of Justice” series, and she smiled in the photo that accompanied it, posing as she filled hummingbird feeders on the veranda of her cozy inn.

  She told the reporter with a sigh that she knew she had been convicted when she saw the jurors come back on that December night in 1985. But the verdict had been wrong. She was maintaining her innocence as she awaited the appeals court’s decision. If they upheld the verdict, she said, “I’ll go to the federal Supreme Court if I have to. But I may not live that long. I have high blood pressure and arthritis. I’m broke. I’ll have to sell my house to fight this thing through.”

  Ruth recalled better days in her life, her eyes tearing up as she spoke of Rolf. “We had a lot of good times,” she said softly. “On Mother’s Day before he disappeared, The Captain gave me a big, beautiful greeting card. I wanted to show the jury how nice he had been to me—but I never got the chance.”

  It was an odd holiday for Rolf to celebrate. They had no children together, and Ruth detested the sons Rolf fathered with Elinor. Why would he have given her a sentimental Mother’s Day card?

  Now Ruth often referred to the lost Rolf as “The Captain,” with a tone creeping into her voice as if she had idolized him.

  Ray Clever sometimes caught a glimpse of Ruth as he patrolled in San Juan County. And it was a bitter thing for him and his fellow investigators to see her out and about, free as a proverbial bird. They had all worked so hard for years to see that she would finally have to answer for what they knew she had done to Rolf. Eighteen months after she was convicted, she seemed no closer to going to prison than she had the first time Clever saw her. Indeed, she seemed smugly invincible.

  And then, something happened to change that.

  On July 10, 1987, Ruth was about to make headlines once again. It was a lovely day and visibility along the roads of Lopez Island was perfectly clear as Ruth drove her 1975 Dodge van on Mud Bay Road near Islandale.

  Ruth was considered “legally blind” as far as operating a motor vehicle; her driver’s license stipulated that she could only drive during the day, and that she had to wear glasses whenever she drove. She herself said that she had lost her eyesight when she suffered a stroke, although her medical records failed to verify that.

  The road was straight and traffic was nonexistent as Ruth drove close to the speed limit. She was not, however, driving very well as she came up behind two bicycling tourists who were also headed south.

  They pedaled close to the edge of the two-lane road, aware of a vehicle coming up behind them—but not concerned.

  Suddenly, Ruth Neslund’s van veered off the pavement and sideswiped them. Her outside rearview mirror—possibly even her right-side fenders—struck one biker and sent him crashing into the other, a young woman. Both of them were knocked violently off their bikes, cartwheeling out of control from the impact.

  Ironically, it was Deputy Greg Doss who responded to the report of a single car/bicycle accident. He found two moaning and weeping victims on the ground, bleeding copiously from their wounds. And there was Ruth Neslund, visibly upset over the collision and offering explanations. Doss’s first concern was for the injured cyclists, and he radioed for an immediate response by the Lopez Emergency Medical Unit. The EMTs did what they could at the scene, and then transported the couple to a small plane that would rush them to St. Luke’s Hospital in Bellingham.

  Once more, Greg Doss found himself involved in an investigation of an all-too-familiar suspect. Ruth Neslund was very upset, but she was cooperating.

  After all that had happened, Ruth Neslund was still there; it seemed as though she would always be there on Lopez Island. Sheriff Bill Cumming had also responded to the scene. “It was hot out there,” Cumming recalled later, “and two people were on the ground screaming. She wasn’t acting drunk... she had many medical problems and Deputy Doss was evidently concerned for her safety.”

  Ruth kept repeating, “I didn’t see them . . . I just didn’t see them.”

  Fearing that Ruth might actually have a stroke, Doss asked Richard Bangsund, a Lopez fire commissioner who had followed the aid unit, to drive her home. When he returned, he spoke quietly to Doss. Once she was inside his vehicle, Bangsund had noted a strong odor of alcohol coming from Ruth.

  The terms of Ruth’s probation specified that she would be supervised by the Washington State Corrections Department, travel only to adjacent counties, drive only on Lopez Island, have no firearms, maintain her residence on Lopez Island, and not use alcohol or have any new criminal charges.

  Doss figured that Ruth had just blown through the last two clauses. Doss obtained a telephonic search warrant that would allow him to administer a Breathalyzer test from Judge Bibb and contacted Ruth’s parole officer, Jack Zimmerman. At 3:43 P.M., some four hours after the accident, she blew a .06.

  A .10 would have indicated she was intoxicated when she hit the cyclists, but human bodies metabolize alcohol at different rates, and she might well have tested at .10 four hours earlier. Given two more tests, her blood alcohol dropped remarkably to .01.

  Ruth was mystified that any alcohol at all was present in her blood. After all, she said, she had only been driving because she was on her way to Coupeville on Whidbey Island to file a brief on one of her numerous lawsuits with Superior Court Judge Howard Patrick.

  Why, she asked, would she have been so stupid as to drink when she was on her way to see a judge?

  But then Ruth had made a number of “stupid mistakes” in her explanations about where her missing husband was.

  Finally, Ruth came up with an explanation. She must have gotten hold of some orange juice that had begun to ferment. Yes, “bad orange juice” was clearly the culprit.

  It was a ridiculous excuse, and she was cited for negligent driving.

  The accident could have been worse—even fatal—but it was bad enough. Robin Lewis, twenty-three, of Chico, California, had been admitted to St. Luke’s Hospital in critical condition, suffering from a broken pelvis, a fractured skull, and a deep four-inch cut on the back of her head. Scott Battaion, twenty-nine, also of Chico, had a broken left arm, abrasions, and contusions.

  Robin Lewis was in the intensive care unit, and she stayed there as she gradually recovered to “serious” condition, and finally to “stable” on Monday, July 20.

  On that same day, Ruth Neslund was arraigned on charges of negligent driving, a misdemeanor. When she was asked if she had been drinking at the time of the accident, she drew herself up and said “Absolutely not!”

  “Do you think you should be set free?” the judge asked, and she said: “Absolutely.”

  Ruth’s new attorney, James Lobsenz, argued in a somewhat peculiar take on the situation that Ruth should not lose her driving privileges, saying: “There is absolutely no connection between the act of murder and driving negligently.”

  Perhaps not—unless one should find that each demonstrated scant respect for the well-being of others.

  And now it was obvious that Ruth herself knew that her days at Shangri-La were very close to being over. At first she said that nothing had changed, that her crash into the bicycling couple could have happened to anyone. But then she murmured, “This seems like the end of the world.”

  All of the men who had been on the prosecuting team to find some justice for Rolf Neslund and all of the sheriff’s officers felt the time had come. “Based on a recommendation by Mr. Zimmerman,” Greg Canova, commented, “because she violated her release agreement to have no alcohol, we think it appropriate for her to start her sentence now.”

  Judge Bibb seemed to concur, as he ruled that Ruth should be held in jail until a hearing on August 7 to determine if she had, indeed, violated her appeals bond.

  For Ruth, it was, finally, the end of the world as she knew it. In that hearing held in Judge Bibb’s courtroom in Everett, she was ordered to begin serving her twenty-year sentence.

  She was furious to find Ray Clever
as her escort-guard on the private plane that flew her to the Washington State Women’s Prison in Gig Harbor, a small town on the Olympic Peninsula. Clever recalls that Ruth called him almost every unprintable name in her repertoire as they flew low over Washington State on their way to Gig Harbor.

  • • •

  Several infamous female felons would join Ruth at this prison, including Diane Downs and Mary Kay Letourneau. Although the women’s prison is close to the water, Ruth would no longer have the breathtaking view that she had enjoyed at her bed-and-breakfast.

  On February 8, 1988, the Washington State Court of Appeals handed down their decision: The appellate judges upheld all nine of the decisions made by Judge Bibb in Ruth Neslund’s 1985 trial.

  Ruth would remain in prison, a rapidly aging woman whose health was not good, whose options had finally run out.

  During the Christmas season of 1988, the home Ruth had built, the one-time “Shangri-La” of the last good years of her marriage and the battlefield where she and her husband had fought until they bled, which had become the Alec Bay Bed and Breakfast, was sold for $190,000 to a couple in California.

  In the end, Ruth received nothing for her one-time equity in the inn she had been so proud of. It had multiple encumbrances. Ruth, of course, had been made trustee of Rolf’s estate way back in early 1982, while Rolf’s sons were awarded 50 percent of the property. She had used her share of the property for the bond she had to put up. She was awarded the personal property at that time. And when she was convicted, it was her friends who had raised the bond that allowed her to remain free. She was essentially destitute.

  Now there was a long line of people with liens on the Alec Bay Bed and Breakfast. After her conviction, Ruth was naturally removed as trustee, and Seafirst National Bank was appointed. Seafirst attorneys questioned her accounting of assets and won a $64,000 judgment against her. They agreed to accept only $14,500. There were many attorneys who had not been paid, and it looked as if they probably would realize only pennies on the dollar—if that. Ruth’s share of the money was used up. But Rolf’s sons would finally receive at least some of the legacy their father wanted them to have.

  Ruth was a quiet prisoner in Gig Harbor. She occasionally tutored other prisoners, and corresponded with those members of her family with whom she was still on good terms. Alone in her cell, if she ever pondered what she had thrown away, allegedly to protect her fortune, she kept it to herself. In the end, she had nothing at all.

  On February 17, 1993, Ruth Neslund was nine days past her seventy-third birthday when she suffered a fatal stroke in prison. Seven years before she had made her prophetic remarks to Judge Bibb as she asked to go home pending her appeal: “Whether it’s twenty or thirty years, it’s not going to matter because I’m not going to last very long,” she told Bibb. “You and I both know it.”

  She was right.

  Although there were no longer any major events to make people think about the ill-fated Neslunds, there were small bursts of interest and mysterious revelations.

  Deputy Sheriff Joe Caputo was head of court security at the San Juan County Courthouse several years after Ruth Neslund passed away. Most courthouse regulars run into each other at the coffee machine on the third floor, and Caputo often talked with Fred Weedon there. One day, half in jest, he asked Fred Weedon, “Did Ruth ever tell you what happened to Rolf?”

  “Yeah, she did,” Fred answered. “You know—in that first search, you were within ten or twelve feet of Rolf—”

  “Are you going to elaborate on that?” Caputo asked, surprised.

  But Weedon was already walking away. He called back, “No—read the book!”

  But there never was a book—not written by Fred Wee-don or anyone else. Al Cummings wrote some excellent articles for the Seattle Weekly, but didn’t write an entire book.

  One of those most obsessed with the Neslund case was a man named Gordon Keith, a local, who spoke often of having been a published author for three decades. Although he had never met Ruth before her trial, Keith took out advertisements in local papers after the guilty verdict to announce that he was writing a book that would tell the “real truth” about Ruth.

  Keith had tape-recorded the entire trial, and he managed to get an interview with Ruth while she was out on bail. In it, she referred lovingly to “The Captain,” and explained her rather unusual banking methods as the only way she had left to prevent “The Captain” from frittering away all of their savings. She spoke about her brother, Robert, just as fondly—but blamed her brother, Paul, for lying about her just to get the reward the Puget Sound pilots were offering. As for Winnie Kay Stafford, Ruth said her testimony was just plain perjury.

  Gordon Keith had what he considered a scoop, but his belief in Ruth’s innocence really caught fire when he had a private reading with a psychic named Dr. Richard Ireland who had just given two lectures on Orcas Island. Gordon Keith was bedazzled by Ireland, the only person beyond Ruth herself who seemed to agree with his theories.

  Ireland had been photographed with celebrities, including Mae West and Daryl Zanuck, and had once appeared on an early Steve Allen show. When the psychic told Gordon Keith that he could not visualize Rolf Neslund as dead, and, indeed, felt he was hiding near palm trees—not in Tucson or San Diego, but in Phoenix, Arizona—another bizarre chapter of the Neslund saga opened.

  Although Richard Ireland claimed to know nothing of the case, he told Keith in 1988:

  The only compelling or shocking evidence is to reverse the whole situation by simply turning up with the man in his physical body. Then what can they say? I think this would cause a lot of red faces and, as a result, I imagine a lot of individuals will be unemployed.

  Putting the judge and the prosecuting attorney in the spotlight is going to be quite embarrassing to a lot of people, including jurors and witnesses. And the way to accomplish this is to turn up with his body. I think he can be found. I think some brilliant young detective should go looking for him now.

  That’s what I’d do. I think she’s going to get out of prison, because I feel as though Rolf Neslund is still in his body, and I think he can be found. That’s your key. He’s been seen by certain people who know he’s alive, so follow the trail.

  But, of course, the “trail” had been followed and followed and followed by a lot of brilliant young detectives.

  Galvanized, Gordon Keith sent manuscript queries to several Northwest newspapers and television stations.

  He was enraged and incredulous when he got either slight interest or no response at all. Keith then started his own newspaper, in which he could print his theories about Ruth’s innocence. He apparently had no copy editor and his articles were rife with misspelled words, and although he decried the way justice had been done—or not done— he gave no specifics to prove Ruth innocent. Keith was aghast that no one believed Ruth’s answers to his questions in his “exclusive interview” with her, but they were just versions of what she had said so often. And only he believed in Dr. Richard Ireland’s visions.

  Gordon Keith died before he ever completed a manuscript about the Neslund case and Ruth’s innocence. Dr. Richard Ireland is also dead, and cannot be reached to explain his condemnation of the state’s case against Ruth and his visions of Rolf Neslund alive and well among palm trees.

  Fred Weedon has never expanded on the remark he made to Joe Caputo at the coffee machine on the third floor of the courthouse. He might have been serious, or he might have been joking. Ray Clever had a somewhat similar exchange with Weedon in which Ruth’s one-time attorney hinted that she had confessed to Rolf Neslund’s murder.

  Captain Richard McCurdy, the current president of the Puget Sound Pilots’ Association, was living in Europe when the Chavez hit the West Seattle Bridge, but he heard that story and about Rolf’s disappearance from the older pilots like Captains Bill Henshaw and Gunnar Olsborg. He never knew Rolf Neslund personally, but McCurdy was to have a kind of connection with him.

  The Chavez had
started out life as the Pacific Carrier, and then she became the Chavez, only to be rechristened the Bahia Magdalena after her bridge damages were repaired. On the afternoon of February 17, 1993, Mc-Curdy was headed to serve as pilot for the Bahia Magdalena.

  “It was Rolf’s old ship,” McCurdy recalled. “It had a comparatively small rudder and it was a little hard to control. I was taking it up the Duwamish that night to the gypsum mill, the same route that Rolf had piloted in 1978. I heard on my car radio that Ruth Neslund had died in prison. I had a strong feeling that Rolf’s hand was on my shoulder that night.”

  Indeed, Rolf Neslund’s spirit may still visit ships at sea or coming into dicey harbors; it would seem natural for a man who spent most of his life at sea, saving many lives and shepherding ships into port. And even today, there are some who live in the San Juan Islands who believe that Rolf Neslund did not die in “Shangri-La” at all, but managed to escape from his wife to live out his days in relative peace in the homeland he loved and returned to visit so many times.

  Today, of course, if he should still be alive, he would be 106 years old. That he lived beyond the age of eighty in some Valhalla in Norway is possible, but hardly likely. Most people believe as I do that Rolf died in seconds, shot twice in the head by a woman who wanted him gone forever, so that she could have all his money and property, and that his body was, indeed, dissected into manageable pieces and burned to ashes. Ruth outlived him by thirteen years. Whether either of them occasionally returns to haunt the eight acres on Alec Bay that they once treasured is a question no one can answer.

  Their story has been consigned to the lore of the islands, seeming, somehow, to be fiction.

  But it is fact.

  Were it not for the relentless detective work of men like Ray Clever, Joe Caputo, Greg Doss, Perry Mortensen, Sheriff Ray Sheffer, and Bob Keppel, and the superior prosecutorial work of Charlie Silverman and Greg Canova, Ruth Neslund probably would never have been arrested, much less convicted. Fortunately, they never gave up.