No Regrets

myriad motivations that sparked murder: greed, lust, jealousy, naked masochism, fulfillment of fantasy, insanity, and—strangely—even love.

The Sea Captain
    Sometimes it takes a hundred years or more for a true story to be told and retold so often that it is eventually tinged with enough rumors and unsubstantiated “facts” to make it barely distinguishable from fiction. Long-ago murder cases have been transformed into ghost stories, and real homicides become folk tales, both categories so often repeated that it’s hard to know what to believe. A very few move rapidly into the folklore category. The case that follows is one of those. It isn’t that old in years, but the bizarre circumstances of the case made it prime material for half-truth/half-fiction: the identities of the victim and the purported killer, the isolated location of the crime, the modus operandi, and the lingering mystery that continues to this day.
    Although there is nothing vaguely humorous about the disappearance of eighty-year-old ship’s marine pilot Captain Rolf Neslund, his vanishing into the mists of Washington State’s Lopez Island in the Strait of Juan de Fuca is the stuff of urban legend. Some people found this story comical, while others were sickened by the rumors of what might have happened.
    Rolf Neslund made headlines several times in his long life, and he had more close friends than most men. He appeared to be utterly indestructible: a man who would go onforever—the kind of guy who would surely appear one day in his local newspaper blowing out a hundred candles on a birthday cake. But if Captain Rolf is blowing out enough candles to start a fire, he isn’t doing it on Lopez Island.
    For all of his life, Rolf Neslund had been extraordinarily lucky, escaping death or serious injury any number of times. It would seem that he had paid his dues in life and certainly deserved the quiet pastoral life he enjoyed in his eighth decade.
    No one knows for sure where Rolf is, although a court of law has ruled that he is, indeed, dead. And well he may be, possibly from homicidal violence.

One
    Even his actual birthdate has a sense of mystery about it. However, most people agree that Rolf Neslund was born at the turn of the twentieth century on November 3, 1900, in Konigsborg, Norway, far away from Lopez Island. His family’s business was in shipping, and Rolf was one of three sons: Harald, Erling, and Rolf. There was a single sister—Eugenie. Any formal schooling for him was abbreviated, taking a backseat to his craving for adventure. Rolf, a strong, handsome kid who appeared older than he was, ran away to sea at the age of fourteen.
    He soon found a job on a brigantine trader named
Staatsraad Ericksen.
He stayed for six months—until the ocean began to feel more like work than a place for excitement. The young teen ran away again, leaving the
Staatraad Ericksen
behind. Although he was devoted to his family, he felt that he should go to America if he was ever to make his fortune. He had an aunt living on Long Island, and figured he could live with her until he saved enough to support himself.
    Rolf stowed away on a passenger ship full of Norwegian immigrants and managed to lose himself in the crowd. But immigration authorities on Ellis Island spotted the boy with no papers, and sent him right back to Norway on the next boat.
    Rolf was far from giving up, and he had learned a lot from his ill-fated first trip to the United States. The next time, he was able to hide his presence more effectively. His second journey was on the Scandinavian America Line: the
Frederick VIII.
He was old enough and clever enough to convince the immigration officers that he would be a benefit to America and dependent on no one. And he was right: Rolf applied for a job so dangerous that there weren’t a lot of applicants. He was hired as a painter to work on the steel beams of a skyscraper being built on Forty-second Street and Madison Avenue in New York City, a looming edifice that still stands today. Young Neslund walked the beams hundreds of feet above the bustling streets, balancing with ease and unafraid of falling. The fair Norwegian teenager was one of a very few Scandinavians who worked up there in the clouds beside the more traditional steelworkers, who were mostly Italian immigrants and Native Americans.
    The money was good, and few could argue that the job wasn’t exciting, but still Rolf wasn’t content. Having had a taste of life on the