Don’t Look Behind You

challenged the admission of her taped confession, comments on her right to remainsilent, and the alleged admission of improper opinion testimony. She also claimed she had been the victim of prosecutorial misconduct and an ineffective defense attorney, and insisted that the evidence introduced hadn’t been sufficient to cause her to be found guilty and also accused the State of “crowd manipulation” to influence the jury.
    On May 6, 2011, the Washington State Court of Appeals denied all of her claims and affirmed her conviction.
    Nick Notaro, who had a substantial rap sheet going into his trial, fared no better. On that same day in May, the court of appeals also denied his request for a new trial. Nick may be handling being behind bars better than his sister; he had done quite well settling into prison life easily in his earlier incarcerations.
    Renee, however, who is used to the finer things in life, has had to face a major adjustment.
    The Tarricone family does not feel sorry for her. They still miss their dad. But they have some serenity in knowing that he is, finally, in Mount Calvary Cemetery, with its glowing luminarias and the laughter of happy family celebrations—while his killers face the rest of their lives behind bars.
    Once again, Ben Benson has proven—as so many dedicated law enforcement officers have all over America—that getting away with murder isn’t nearly as simple as it may look. With old-fashioned, dogged detective work and space-age forensic technology, scores of murderers have found they aren’t as smart as they thought they were.

TOO LATE FOR THE FAIR

Readers often ask me, “Where do you get the cases you write about?” I hear about intriguing cases from many sources, including detectives, relatives of homicide victims, the rare victim who has managed to stay alive, my readers, the Internet, email, snail mail, newspapers, radio, and television news. Out of the some four thousand suggestions I receive each year, I can choose only five to seven cases at the most. I have some books that feature only one case. Books like this one—my Crime Files—give me an opportunity to write about several felony cases. Still, there is no way one woman could write all the mysteries that occur in America.
    My criteria in selecting cases are quite simple: if I am fascinated by what happened and I want to know more, I assume my readers will, too. Every once in a while, homicide cases choose me—not just by tugging on my sleeve, but by figuratively blocking my path so effectively that I have to write them! The story of Joann Ellen Cooper Morrison Hansen is one of those. Each time I looked at it and turned away to write something that seemed easier,I was contacted, reminded, and persuaded to return to it, by a number of people who didn’t even know one another at the time. It happened only a five-minute walk from my home in the little town of Des Moines, Washington, where I lived off and on for about twenty years.
    And yet I was unaware of this tragic mystery.
    In 2010, I heard from two people whose feelings about this case had become obsessions. My first email came from a man who had gone to school with my older son. Only weeks later, it was another email that cemented what I had to do. Kathleen Huget’s message sounded a lot like many I receive from strangers who write that they have unearthed an amazing story that should be a book—but they are wary about telling me the details through the Internet or over the phone.
    Frankly, sometimes my response to these people I don’t know ends up with my getting trapped by delusional personalities, or those who
think
they have discovered “a sure bestseller and a movie, too.” There are usually a dozen reasons why they are wrong. Kathleen Huget was extremely cautious about approaching me until she knew she could trust me to be discreet, and I was just as cautious about meeting her in person. Considering the genre in which I write, that isn’t unusual. I fear that if I met every stranger who contacts me, I would be opening a Pandora’s box of problems. And I’ve guessed wrong a number of times.
    But somehow I felt a kinship with Kathleen Huget, and this time I was right. Rather than opening Pandora’s box I was opening a “hope chest” for many people who have sought to unveil fifty years of lies and bring some kind of peace to a beautiful young woman named Joann.

Chapter One
    Kathleen Huget and her husband, Jeff, live in a gated community on a