Empty Promises
“There was no indication he was having any kind of problems. There are people in our organization who have known him since he was twelve years old. He was a pretty popular guy and everybody seemed to like him. We never even knew he had a temper.”
If John Stickney had been able to show a temper, if he had not kept his pain and frustration bottled up inside, his story might have had a happier ending. But no one knew he needed help.
Perhaps someone should have paid attention when John Stickney blew up things “for the hell of it.” When his world crashed around him, he turned to the one method he had of showing anger.
In the wake of the Washington State bombing, the Bellevue Police Department reopened its investigation into a mysterious explosion that had occurred near the Mercer Island Slough two months before the fatal bombing in Pullman. In the predawn hours of a Sunday morning, someone had tried to blow up a section of the I-90 freeway. One of the concrete piers under the freeway structure that runs over the slough was damaged by a blast of tremendous proportions. It may have been only a coincidence that this bridge pier—within a few miles of John Stickney’s home—was bombed. Or it might have been a test run to see how much dynamite it might take to blast through concrete and iron rebars.
Ironically, when it was far too late for John Stickney, a UPI feature story appeared in newspapers all across America: “Love Affairs on Campus Can Produce Signs of Stress.” The text of the article noted that the top stressors, in order of importance, were “ending the hometown relationship,” “staying free,” and “breaking up.”
Love and Insurance
I was amazed at this case when I first encountered it, and with a second look, I am still astonished that a man who had so many options for a successful future should choose the path he did. He promised his lover a great deal, while all the time he was coldly planning one of the cruelest crimes I’ve ever written about. There were so many other choices; why did he choose murder?
L arry Dwayne Duerksen and Gareth Stuart Leifbach* had a lot in common. They were both in their twenties, both products of the Midwest. Larry grew up in Nebraska, while Gareth was from Michigan. Each of them had spent time in the armed forces, although they had not met each other there. They were homosexual men who had kept their sexual orientation secret in an era long before “don’t ask, don’t tell.” The bizarre circumstance of their meeting was equaled, even excelled, by the shocking manner in which they parted forever.
As he neared his twenty-ninth birthday, Larry Duerksen’s life underwent a tremendous upheaval. Larry was handsome, with clean-cut aquiline features and a neatly trimmed beard. He was very intelligent, though he had never quite managed to finish all the requirements to get his B.A. degree. Maybe that was because he was always traveling, seeking some kind of geographical resolution to the war between his upbringing and his desires. He had long since strayed from the old-fashioned morality of small-town Nebraska where being gay was neither understood nor condoned. Hiding and running away had become a way of life for him. He had hidden his sexual preference from his parents, his sister, and his many aunts and uncles for a long time. He was far away from Nebraska, working as a nurse’s aide in the Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital when he decided to come out of the closet. He made a trip back home to explain to his family the real reason he had never wanted to marry any of the nice girls they had introduced to him.
Larry Duerksen’s revelation shocked his parents, but they tried to deal with it. His family still loved him, they said, even though they couldn’t understand his choice. Sometimes they tried to tell each other that this was just one of Larry’s “exaggerations.”
And he did tend to exaggerate. The air force veteran’s behavior had puzzled his family before. Larry tended to be overly dramatic, and he seemed to crave attention more than most, and he told wild stories that guaranteed he would get it. He once came home and announced that he was suffering from terminal cancer. His family and friends rallied around and were impressed by his bravery in the face of such an awful diagnosis. Hoping that there might yet be a cure for him, his parents insisted that he go through a series of tests. Surprisingly, the results of all the lab work indicated
Weitere Kostenlose Bücher