Mortal Danger

natural for them: They were both sincerely interested in nutritional supplements and the way diet could affect life and health. Kate, however, wasn’t that impressed with Mannatech. A few years earlier, she had attended one of their functions. She’d been impressed with their products, but she felt that they were overpriced.
    John was so forceful in his arguments, pointing out the positive side of their joining a rising star corporation, that she finally capitulated.
    They agreed to sign up after attending Mannatech functions, although they hadn’t been pressured to join the sales force. The company believed in first defining to future sales staff how their products worked, so the first contact most future salespeople and instructors had with Mannatech was to learn about its products, purchase, and evaluate them. Only later were likely candidates wooed to join Mannatech. John and Kate were hired as “consultants”—not salespeople. It was important that the many products Mannatech sold were adequately explained, and John and Kate had the background to do that.
    The upper-echelon Mannatech staff in Texas was verytaken with John and Kate. John seemed so enthusiastic and was clearly well versed in all aspects of nutrition. As always, he made a terrific first impression. He explained that he could not see himself as a salesman or even just a consultant for Mannatech; he was, after all, a doctor and felt he should be accorded a different—and higher—position in the company.
    They agreed.
    Kate had come to realize that John looked down upon flight attendants in general. He often remarked that they had a “flight-attendant mentality” that didn’t demand much brainpower. He could be tactless, explaining that while she was quite capable of doing the “grunt work” in their enterprises, he owned the “intellectual content” of all the work they did together. John always had multiple endeavors in the air, juggling them like plates on sticks. He pressed Kate to finish a project, yet by the time she had, he was already pursuing the next goal. The finished project was then filed with others that had never sold because John was continually moving on to the next idea and the one after that.
    Mannatech was only one arm of his ambitious plans. Even though he was sometimes unkind in his zeal, Kate tried to believe that they were a team, working together. “During one of our ‘brainstorming’ sessions,” Kate said, “where we were discussing how to present a particular Mannatech product, I figured out the scientific connection that would work before John did. I couldn’t understand why he seemed angry at me, rather than happy that we had the answer we were looking for.”
    A long time later, she smiled sadly at how naïve she was then.
    John hated Kate’s airline job, and he coined crude terms for what she did. He told her that men were looking at her crotch when she sat on the jump seat for takeoff and landing. “You’re just a flying cunt-hole,” he said.
    When he was in his mindlessly jealous mode, he accused Kate of sleeping with every pilot she flew with—even with every gay male flight attendant! In August 1998, when he was once again intoxicated, he grabbed a gun from his collection and ordered her to put on her flight-attendant’s uniform, and then he forced her to have sex with him. It was a humiliating experience, and she promised him that if he ever threatened her with a gun or his fist again, she would call the police and have him charged with assault.
    He didn’t seem to believe her, but she was resolute.
    Their perfect, symbiotic relationship was shredding rapidly. Emotionally, John kept Kate continually off balance. It was becoming difficult for her to differentiate between the “good John” and the “cruel John.”
    “He could be so adoring—almost worshipful, so kind,” she said, “but the other John sometimes seemed so angry that I was afraid he might be capable of killing me.”
    And then she shook her head at the very thought. Of course he wouldn’t kill her; he loved her more than any man ever had. No man would kill someone he truly loved.
     
    “John kept coming up with the ideas, and then I did 90 percent of the work, writing up the educational material,” Kate said. “That became a pattern for us. We made anaudiotape for Mannatech called ‘Let’s Give Them Something to Talk About,’ drawing on the Bonnie Raitt song that Mannatech had permission to use. That got us