Empty Promises

was one week almost to the minute after the murder when Seattle police and University of Washington investigators knocked on the door of Larry’s apartment. Leifbach answered the door and invited them in.
    “Remember us?” a detective asked. Leifbach nodded apprehensively. “We’re placing you under arrest for the murder of Larry Duerksen.”
    After listening to his Miranda rights, Leifbach stated only that he wanted his attorney. He was no longer bragging about his celebrity or giving his theories about “the real killer.”
    Police divers searched the Lake Washington Ship Canal for three days, but found nothing they could link to the murder case. The water was too murky and far too deep to locate one Beretta semiautomatic.
    Gareth Leifbach spoke intensely to a reporter, his expansive charm regained. He said he had refused to take a polygraph test on the advice of his lawyer. “I hired one of the best lawyers in town because this is a serious offense,” he said. “I told my lawyer that I know I didn’t do it, and if I end up going to jail for something I didn’t do, then I want the gas chamber because I couldn’t live in jail knowing I was there for something I didn’t do. I’ve been framed. The evidence is against me. The government is framing me in an attempt to stop my lawsuit against the army. I’m mystified that there is no cab record showing when I went to the Aurora Bridge early in the afternoon of the fourteenth to throw the gun away. I only went to the Red Robin to buy a couple of cheeseburgers for Larry and me, but when I saw the long line, I decided not to wait. I’m not ashamed to say that Larry and I were just roommates and very good friends.” If Gareth Leifbach hoped for a groundswell of support from the gay community, he was disappointed. Larry Duerksen had led a homosexual lifestyle, too, and the evidence against Leifbach was so strong that the community’s sympathy went to Duerksen, not Leifbach.
    On January 2, 1980, Gareth Leifbach pleaded not guilty to the charge of first-degree murder. In February, he was found guilty of first-degree murder in Judge James Dore’s courtroom.
    After serving twenty years in prison, Leifbach was due for his first parole hearing in the summer of 2000. He has served his time as a loner, with no family visiting or writing. His reputation faded away years ago, and few remember the man who claimed to have an honorable reason to challenge the army and who said over and over that he only wanted justice for himself and for others who wanted the right to be good soldiers, despite their sexual orientation. During his two decades in prison, his cause was taken up by others far more trustworthy than he.
    Ironically, Larry Duerksen always wanted to be the center of attention. And he wanted to find true love with a man he admired and cared for. It was the answer to Larry’s fondest dream when Gareth Liefbach allowed him into his life. But it was all a setup. Duerksen was murdered by the man he loved and trusted the most. Larry Duerksen did make headlines, but in the most heartbreaking way.

The Gentler Sex
    “Divortium (Latin): separation, divorce, a fork in the road.” By its very definition, divorce is not a particularly amicable transaction, but it was never designed to be deadly. As they come to a fork in the road, the wife goes her way, the husband goes his way, and the community property gets split in a relatively equitable fashion down the middle. Alas, there are those husbands who provided for their wives in happier days by taking out large life insurance policies, and when these marriages break down, friendly divorce is not a part of some wives’ plans. The thought of all that money just lying fallow is more than an embittered wife can bear. No one will ever know how many ex-husbands die accidentally, leaving distraught widows to collect on insurance policies that let them grieve in comfort.
    Throughout the annals of crime, there have been women bright enough and devious enough not only to get away with murder but also to collect on double- and triple-indemnity policies. And then there are other widows who are so unbelievably klutzy in their attempts to commit murder for profit that they might as well have the word “Murderess” tattooed on their foreheads.
    Of course it’s not just wives who look to murder as a way to avoid divorce; there are faithless husbands who are more interested in financial gain than in honeymooning. We are more