Mortal Danger

remodeled into a nice apartment where John could live—while he rented out the entire cabin. The owner was so far away that he didn’t know what was going on. Turi’s financing of thegarage remodel actually enhanced his property, but she and the absent owner were conned.
    The very fact that Turi was trying to help John be more self-sufficient financially indicates that she knew he wasn’t wealthy. It didn’t matter to her; they were going to bond together to help people, which was far more important to her.
    As always, John could be charming, and he was never more charming than during his courtship of Turi. And of her family.
    “He was odd—but nice enough,” David Bentley, Turi’s son, affirmed. David’s children were entranced with John, especially when he showed them how to carve their initials in a tree trunk. Their real grandfather, Lorne, had been too busy most of the time to do things like that.
    David Bentley, who lived most of the time in the Virgin Islands, where he had his own business, only met John Williams five or six times. He never met John’s daughters, who lived in California, although John spoke highly of them. He understood that his mother’s fiancé was “some kind of doctor,” but he assumed he was retired, as he didn’t work. He found John to be a nervous man, who admitted that he was “scared of germs and flying.”
    John Branden had never before evinced any fear of flying. But he was a wanted man, and after 9/11, airport security had become much tighter than before. He probably didn’t want to try passing through airport security with one of his phony IDs, and he could avoid that simply by pretending to be terrified of flying.
    Beyond his phobias, John had good reason to be nervous. In December 2001, the FBI put John William Branden’s Wanted poster on their website, noting that a federal judge had issued an Unlawful Flight to Avoid Prosecution arrest warrant for him. He was described as being five feet ten inches tall, weighing 180 pounds, with gray hair and blue eyes. One of his early publicity photos from Mannatech appeared on the poster, and his careers as a holistic healer, clinical nutritionist, and naturopathic doctor, along with his many aliases, were noted.
    Special agents visited some of the places he had once lived, talked to his friends from the past, and came away empty-handed.
    “He should be considered potentially dangerous,” the online poster warned.
     
    Turi Bentley would have been shocked beyond words to know that the man she loved was wanted for a number of violent crimes. Or that he might have the potential to cause her harm. She considered John a wonderfully kind man who loved her, and who was prepared to work beside her to help those in ill health and who were troubled.
    John proposed to Turi over the Christmas holidays in 2001, but it wasn’t an actual marriage proposal. He told her they didn’t need to deal with “all the paperwork” that a legal marriage would bring, since Turi had so many assets in her name. It made him seem even more genuine to her; he obviously wasn’t after her money. His real reason for wanting a fake wedding was probably that he didn’t want to show up on any public records or have to prove his identity to obtain a marriage license. He had been in hiding formost of the past fifteen years, and he wasn’t about to risk his anonymity and his current complete absence from public records.
    “We’ll know we’re married in our hearts,” John assured Turi. “That’s what matters. We don’t need to bother with all the other stuff.”
    Turi agreed with him. On January 18, 2002, they had a church “wedding” with all the frills. John rented a tuxedo, Turi wore a lovely dress, and the pastor presided as they said their vows. Turi’s daughter Susan sang. As far as anyone else knew, they were married. It was the only time in her life that Turi had evaded the truth, and John had talked her into it.
    David Bentley was somewhat concerned about the marriage, as his mother was worth quite a lot and her new husband had no visible assets at all. But he had no need to be concerned. Their marriage wasn’t legal; at most, it was a lavish dress rehearsal.
     
    After a few months had passed, Turi’s daughters, Susan and Sonja, who both lived in Washington, were even more worried about Turi, especially when the gregarious and friendly side of John Williams vanished. It was like night and day, and the dark side of him wasn’t very