Don’t Look Behind You

you. And, after I tell you this, I want you to tell me the truth. Number one, a Smith and Wesson thirty-eight will not go off when you drop it. Number two, your wife died and she had
two
bullets in her. Both thirty-eights. One in the head and one in the back. How do you explain that? Did the gun fall twice?”
    Nick was silent. He couldn’t explain that.
    “Why did you kill your wife?” McCoy asked, his voice louder.
    “It was an accident.”
    “Accident, my butt. The gun doesn’t go off by dropping it. And you didn’t drop the gun. It doesn’t bounce two times and hit her once in the back and once in the head. And it was about two feet away from her head. It doesn’t happen, Nick,” McCoy said firmly. “You aimed the gun at her, and you pulled the trigger. Did you get in an argument with her? Over Richard? You told me she told you that Thursday night, the twenty-first. And it angered you?”
    “I don’t think it was anger as much as hurt.”
    “Of losing her?”
    “Right.”
    “You lived with a woman for four and a half years, and you loved her. And she finds another boyfriend. And tells you, ‘Nick, my darling, I’m leaving you forever.’ That would hurt you?”
    Nick nodded.
    “Am I correct in saying, If I cannot have you, no one will have you? Is that what you thought?”
    “Yes.”
    “You went to the gravel pit. She starts running. You shoot toward her. Did you know you shot her in the back?”
    “No.”
    “But she fell down, didn’t she?”
    “Yes.”
    “And then you walked up to her and you shot her in the head. Is that right? You’re shaking your head yes?”
    “Yes—more or less. I really didn’t mean to. I was trying to scare her. And she started running and the gun went off. I didn’t know I hit her. I just thought she went down on the ground to get out of the way. I walked up to her to lift her up, and I had the gun in my hand. And it went off. Approximately, like you said, probably within two feet …”
    Once the door was open for him to confess to his wife’s murder, Nick Notaro added numerous details.
    He said he had flown to Seattle within a day to stay with his mother and sister. He denied having told them anything about Vickie’s murder.
    None of the investigators in Alaska ever located the man named Richard who Nick said was going to take Vickie to Rome. Nor did they find
anyone
who believed Vickie was cheating on Nick. When she wasn’t cleaning hotel rooms, she was busy doing laundry for pipeline workers to make enough money for herself and Nick to get by. If he really found other men’s clothing in their hotel room, it was laundry Vickie had done.
    The state police detectives placed Nick under arrest. Initially charged with first-degree murder, he agreed to plead guilty to Vickie’s murder. He was subsequently convicted of his first wife’s shooting death. He began his sentence in the federal prison on McNeil Island, Washington, in June 1978. He stayed there a little more than a month and then was moved to another federal correctional facility in Englewood, Colorado, a low-security prison for male offenders with an adjacent satellite prison camp for minimum security convicts.
    Nick obeyed the rules and built up “good time.” He stayed in the Colorado prison until the spring of 1983. Then he was transferred to a federal prison in Oxford, Wisconsin, where he remained until he was paroled in January 1986.

Chapter Thirteen
    During the week Ben Benson spent in Alaska, he located the assistant prosecutor who had handled Nick’s case. Benson was curious why Nick had received only a short prison sentence for the cold-blooded killing of his wife.
    The prosecutor said he barely remembered the Notaro case, explaining they had so many homicides to prosecute back then. “We’d make a deal with anyone willing to make a deal,” he ended lamely.
    Nick had been allowed to plead guilty to manslaughter, and that meant less than eight years in prison.
    As Lila May Notaro, Nick’s second wife, had told Ben Benson, Nick had lived in Marshfield, Wisconsin—working as a chef—until he moved back to Washington State in March 1989. He’d moved into an apartment with a fellow inmate with whom he’d shared time. They planned to open a janitorial service but it didn’t work out.
    When Ben Benson flew to Baltimore, Maryland, to interview Nick’s former cellmate, the man talked to him willingly enough. He said he knew about Vickie Notaro’sdeath, but he insisted Nick had