Don’t Look Behind You

face of what might lie ahead. The Washington State insurance commissioner, Mike Kriedler, sent her a form letter telling her that her insurance agent’s license had been revoked.
    “This order is based on the following: You have been found guilty of Murder in the First Degree, a Class A. Felony, on April 1, 2009. Revocation is therefore appropriate under RCW 48.17.530 (1)(g).”
    It may have been a “whatever” moment for Renee. Where she was going, she wouldn’t be able to sell insurance anyway.

Epilogue
    When Nick Notaro appeared for sentencing on April 4, he was sentenced to life imprisonment. The future he had pictured in Arkansas no longer existed for him. Maybe it never had; he had a warrant waiting for him on sex charges there.
    On April 24, Judge Kitty-Ann van Doorninck’s courtroom was packed with spectators and media who waited to observe Renee Curtiss’s sentencing. Sergeant Ben Benson got there too late to find a seat, and he stood in the back of the room with Denny Wood and his lieutenant, Brent Bomkamp.
    Judge van Doorninck is admired for her grasp of the law and for her honesty, but she can also be crisp. She speaks her mind. As she sentenced Renee Curtiss to life in prison, she told the convicted woman that she was “appalled” that Renee had never showed one iota of remorse throughout her entire trial.
    Detectives often go above and beyond their basic duties to their departments and the victims as they work unpaid overtime and sleepless nights. They cannot help but be involved in the lives of survivors and of the victimsthemselves. Still, standing at the back of the crowded courtroom, Ben Benson was surprised when Judge van Doorninck singled him out. She said that the case just ended had finally come to a successful conclusion “thanks to Detective Sergeant Ben Benson.”
    It was exceedingly rare for a judge to do that, and it was something Benson would never forget.
    Joe Tarricone’s remains had lain in the morgue for a very long time, and now they were released to his family for burial. There was no question that his seven children wanted his last resting place to be in Albuquerque, where they’d had happier days.
    “My dad was buried three times,” Gypsy Tarricone remembers wryly. “First—where his murderers put him, and second because of a mix-up in Albuquerque. My mom wanted to be buried at the Sunset cemetery, but that is such a boring place. I know it sounds strange to say it but the ‘hip’ cemetery is Mount Calvary. It’s full of life and there’s always something happening there. Families come for holidays, or just to visit. You see people you know.
    “On Christmas Eve, there are luminarias, hundreds, maybe thousands of them. They’re little paper bags with sand in the bottom and a candle in each. They light up the whole cemetery, and the paths are full of people. We knew my father would want to be at Mount Calvary.”
    And she was right. After thirty years in a hidden grave, Joe Tarricone, who always loved a party, belonged at Mount Calvary.
    “Rose, Claire, Aldo, Joey, me, Gina, Rosemary, and Dean were all there at 10 a.m. on May 2, 2009, for my dad’s graveside military services, all of us carrying flags,” Gypsy says.
    “And then we realized that they had put our father in the wrong grave. I had some choice sailor’s words to say about that, but my sister Claire said, ‘Let’s just go ahead with it. They can move him later.’”
    And so they did. At last, Joe Tarricone rests easy at Mount Calvary Cemetery where his family visits often.
    Henry Lewis passed away fifteen days after Renee was sentenced to life in prison. He died without leaving a will. For the first time, Renee Curtiss was, technically, a wealthy widow—something she might have been striving for since she was in her twenties. None of the older men she’d lived with had married her. And now she fought to inherit Henry’s estate. She wouldn’t be able to use much money at the time, since she was in prison, and prisoners’ accounts had limits, but both she and Nick planned to appeal their verdicts and sentences to the Washington State Court of Appeals and she would need money for attorneys.
    Gypsy Tarricone supported Henry’s grown children in their efforts to receive the estate their father had worked for his whole life. In the end, they prevailed. As it turned out, the Lewis family was granted everything. “We were all happy with that decision,” Gypsy says.
    Renee Curtiss’s appeals