Mortal Danger

really better to stop now instead of fighting a losing battle. I will be filing for divorce in America.
    I really liked Switzerland and thought being married to a foreigner would enrich both our lives. But you beat me down in my attempt to adjust to life here. Simply trying to learn German turned out to be a major catastrophe. Police, attorneys, running away, were never a part of my life and I have really lost self-respect in facing these situations weekly.
    I think that counseling and therapy would have been our only chance but when you’re threatening me and irregular about it, I even lost faith in that.
    I hate leaving our apartment garden and good times together, but I can’t take any more horrible scenes with knives, swords, yelling, and screaming. Saying “I’m sorry” and repeating the same things doesn’t help.
    I hope you will not do anything drastic because of my leaving. Your new job sounds like a good start in the right direction.
    Please don’t hope I’m coming back. I will be starting a new life for myself in America.
    Love,
Amy
    P.S. I put some clothes in the yellow sack in the kitchen that might fit Sonia [a Swiss friend].
    It was the farewell letter of a rational woman who had taken all she could bear. A rational man might have accepted her decision. But Amy Jager was not dealing with a rational man. She realized that, but even she could not guess the lengths to which Heinz would go to keep what he considered his. She allowed herself to feel somewhat safe after she talked with officials at the American embassy in Switzerland and begged them not to give him a visa—on the slight chance he would attempt to follow her.
    They assured her they would not. Anyway, Heinz had no money; she felt he would not leave Bern. In time, she thought, he would come to accept what had to be.
    Amy Jager came home to her family. She couldn’t find a teaching job in Washington in the middle of the school year so she obtained a position as a secretary. She took back her maiden name and made preparations for filing for divorce. After a few weeks, she began to smile again. She was only twenty-seven; her life wasn’t over, and there could be better days and years ahead. Letters to friends showed that she was once more becoming the optimist she had been before her marriage.
    She had seen the love of her life turn into ashes, but she did not burden those around her with her sorrow. She was determined to go on with her life.
     
    On May 11, 1976, the doorbell rang at Amy’s family home. It had been only a month since she’d left Switzerland, and she’d assured her relatives that Heinz wouldn’t be able to get a visa to follow her.
    But he had. They were shocked to find Heinz Jager standing there. Somehow, some way, he had obtained a visa and enough money to fly to Seattle.
    He had come, he said, to convince Amelia that they should continue their marriage. They were meant to be together, and Heinz was insistent that Amelia would understand that if he just had a chance to talk with her alone.
    They feared him and the chaos he might cause, but he wouldn’t leave, and it took a call to local police to persuade him that he could not stay with Amy’s family. They found him a motel room, paid for it, and waited anxiously to see what he would do next. They didn’t want to see him on the street, and they felt compassion toward him. They also felt apprehensive.
    They were a gentle family and could not understand this man who had flown halfway around the world to seize the woman he had married and take her away again.
    Amy understood him, though, and she was very afraid.
    On May 18, Amy wrote to Senator Henry Jackson and demanded to know why Heinz had been given a visa to America. She said it would not expire until June 21, more than a month away. In the meantime, she and her family felt like hostages to a madman. She asked that he never be given a future visa.
    What Amy didn’t know was that Heinz Jager had no intention of leaving America—ever. He had disposed of all his possessions in Switzerland and arrived with the few belongings he had left, only his skis and some clothes.
    He had a knife, too, but the family didn’t know about that. The year 1976 was long before airport security teams made thorough checks for weapons in luggage.
    As they waited out what they thought would be thirty-three days, Amy’s family guarded her, shepherding her to work and protecting her in their home at night. They triedto be as gracious