Don’t Look Behind You

Duncan Bonjorni.
    If any attorney could have helped Joann, it was Bonjorni.A former justice of the peace and police judge, Bonjorni was both brilliant and fearless. He had paid his way through law school by working forty-eight hours a week, much of the time as a Capitol policeman in Olympia.
    He studied Joann Hansen.
    “I knew her husband,” the now-retired Bonjorni recalls. “He was a mean son of a bitch. There’s no other way to put it. He appeared before me once when I was a judge—he got into a shouting match with another driver at a place in Renton we called ‘suicide corner.’ I remember that he cut the other guy off, and they argued. When the other driver pulled away, Bob followed him, caught up with him, and took out a crowbar or tire jack and started hitting his car, breaking the windshield and denting the vehicle, and he was threatening the guy.”
    Police were called and Bonjorni sentenced Hansen to twenty-four hours in jail, knowing he’d made an enemy. “I was too dumb to be afraid of him, I guess. But I still wouldn’t have wanted to meet him in a dark alley. His hands were as big as hams.”
    Now, in late April 1962, Duncan Bonjorni asked Joann Hansen: “Are there any marks on you?”
    Without saying a word, Joann stood up, removed her sleeveless blouse, and lowered her pedal pushers.
    Bonjorni had seen cases of spousal abuse before—but nothing like this. “She was covered with bruises. She had one huge bruise—as big as a saucer—on her left side. Her husband had hit her mostly on that side—her ribs, her breasts, her thigh,” Bonjorni remembers. “She didn’t have a mark on her face—or anywhere that showed.”
    Knowing how big Bob Hansen was, the attorney realized that Joann would have “looked like a small child” next to him.
    “She was tremendously afraid of her husband,” Bonjorni recalls. “But she had a lot of spirit. Even though she was frightened, she didn’t come across as downtrodden or intimidated.”
    Duncan Bonjorni agreed to represent Joann in a divorce proceeding. They would talk about money later.
    Now in his mideighties, Bonjorni’s memory is impeccable.
    Asked if Joann Hansen was attractive, he nodded. “Any man who still had a heartbeat would take a second look at her.”
    “Were you interested in her romantically?” I asked him bluntly.
    He shook his head. “No. But she needed someone to help her get away from Bob Hansen.”
    With Bonjorni’s help, Joann filed preliminary papers seeking a divorce. She said she’d been married to Bob for more than five years, and gave her wedding date as April 1956. She might have fudged a year or it could have been only a typo in the document; Nick was born in November 1957.
    Joann had signed a sort of prenuptial agreement back in the midfifties. The early agreement specified that, if they ever divorced, Bob would retain ownership of the four houses he’d bought before their union.
    By 1962, there were more than fifteen properties, and his wealth had grown considerably. Joann hoped he wouldlet her have a house where she and their children could live, and that he would pay child support. She could get a part-time job if she had to.
    Anything would be better than constantly living in fear, and worrying about how Bob’s rages were affecting Nick, Kandy Kay, and Ty.
    On May 2, Bonjorni filed Joann’s divorce complaint. The first sections listed known facts—date of marriage, names and birthdates of children, and their assets, which mainly consisted of the rental houses that Bob had purchased over the years. She had the Chevrolet Biscayne, and he had two trucks and $2,500 worth of tools and equipment. Their furniture was estimated at only $500.
    Their property, however, was noted to be worth over $300,000—a very large amount in 1962. They had no debt except for mortgage payments, which were covered by rental payments.
    Joann didn’t hold back when her reasons for seeking a divorce were presented to the court.
    “[That] Defendant Robert M. Hansen has treated Plaintiff Joann E. Hansen with extreme cruelty, rendering her life burdensome, and making the continuance of this marriage no longer possible. That, in particular, Defendant has kicked, beat, and struck Plaintiff and threatened her life in the presence of witnesses. That Defendant regularly beats Plaintiff severely, and does so in front of the minor children of the parties hereto. That said beatings are without reason and provocation, and are severe enough