Empty Promises
wouldn’t work forever. Burt Treadway found a woman with whom he wanted to share his life, and he asked Sandra for a divorce. Sandra wasn’t particularly upset that Burt had fallen in love with another woman—but she was very upset that he wanted a divorce. If they split up legally, their assets would be divided and she would lose a great deal of money. She would no longer be Burt’s beneficiary and they would have to sell their jointly owned property before it reached its peak value. She certainly didn’t want to share her financial assets with some Jenny-come-lately who hadn’t worked for any of it. Burt was about to ruin everything just because he’d fallen in love.
Sandra soon had a steady boyfriend herself, a man some years younger than she. She’d met him in a bar a few months earlier. As their relationship progressed into an affair, she confided to Sam Bettel* that she didn’t love her husband. She really didn’t even like him. In fact, she said, she would like to see him dead as soon as possible.
Sam was used to hearing women say that they didn’t like their husbands; very few women who did like their husbands chose to pick up other men in bars. But none of them had ever told him that they wished their spouses dead.
“Why do you want him dead?” Sam asked, amazed.
“There’s quite a bit of life insurance money at stake,” Sandra said. “If he were dead, it would all come to me.”
Sam assumed that Sandra had simply had one too many drinks. But once she brought the subject up, she wouldn’t let it go. She asked him if he thought he could find someone who would kill Burt Treadway for her.
The conversation made Sam nervous, and he hoped he’d heard the last of it. When the bar closed at 2:00 A.M. , they walked out into the soft June night. Who could think about murder on a night like this? he wondered. He managed to change the subject, and when he left Sandra, he was sure it had just been liquor talking.
But on July 3, Sandra spoke again about having her husband killed. “Have you found anyone to do it?” she demanded.
Sam shook his head. Fooling around with a man’s wife was one thing; finding somebody to kill him was a whole other story.
Sandra Treadway, however, was obviously obsessed with the idea. There was just too much property involved, not to mention all that insurance money. She pleaded, cajoled, and wheedled. She laid out arguments, which seemed to make sense. Sandra offered Sam a large share of one of the insurance policies if he would help her. She wanted to arrange a contract hit, something Sam knew nothing about. He realized that Sandra was really set on having her husband killed and that if he didn’t help set it up, she would find someone who would. He didn’t want to get involved in this at all, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he allowed a man to be killed.
Sam talked it over with a policeman friend. “She’s determined, and I don’t know what the hell I should do,” he said. “I went along with her for a while because I thought she was just fantasizing, that she wasn’t really serious, but now I’m getting scared. If that man ends up dead and [the police] find out that she’s been seeing me, I’m likely to be number one on the suspect list.”
The officer advised Sam that he had good reason to be worried, and suggested he call the Pierce County Sheriff’s Office.
It wasn’t much of a moral struggle for Sam. He had long since lost interest in Sandra. On August 2 he called Detective Walt Stout at the sheriff’s office and outlined Sandra Treadway’s plans for her husband’s death. “I don’t want anything to do with it,” Sam said, “but somebody’s going to look at all that money she’s offering and kill the guy.”
Stout agreed that such a thing might happen, and he received a promise from Sam Bettel that he would cooperate with the sheriff’s office in heading off a murder before it ever happened.
Walt Stout, whose job it was to catch murderers, would now play the undercover role of a hired killer. “The next time she brings up hiring a killer,” he instructed Sam. “Tell her you think you may know of someone.”
“No way. I don’t know any contract men.”
“Yes, you do,” Stout corrected him. “Me. Not for real, but just to head the lady off before she actually finds someone to do it.”
Sam Bettel left the sheriff’s office a little relieved—but concerned now that he wouldn’t be able to
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