No Regrets

.38-caliber revolver in the bottom drawer of a dresser. They bagged it carefully so that it could be tested for back-spatter or other evidence that indicated it might have been used to shoot a living creature. Its barrel would also be compared to the lands and grooves on any bullet casings they might find.
    “Ruth was a hell of a shot,” one neighbor had said, and no wonder.
    Clever and Caputo found a Colt Python in a pouch, along with six rounds, and a Winchester .22 Magnum rifle with a scope, which had eleven live rounds in the chamber. There was also a Marlin with a scope and eight live rounds, an Ithaca 20-gauge shotgun, a 30-06 shotgun, and at least two dozen boxes of bullets, ranging from .22s to 30-06 for a shotgun.
    There were numerous knives of every size and a “chopper,” as well as hatchets and hacksaws, machetes, axes— not what most people kept in their homes. But this was, of course, the home of people who lived in the country and who often did their own chores, who sometimes hunted. Still, what might seem expected in ordinary circumstances now took on a macabre feel. The large ornate steamer trunk had a gray hair caught in the hasp. What did that mean? Ruth’s hair was tinted a dark auburn; Rolf’s was straight and gray.
    They found a homemade “voo-doo-type” doll with a nail driven through its chest. Odd...
    Joe Caputo searched Rolf Neslund’s bedroom, but there was little to find. “It reminded me of my own grandfather’s bedroom,” Caputo said. “Very spare—with few items in it beyond his bed and dresser. It was like a simple hotel room.”
    He took the wood-and-leather jewelry box with Rolf Neslund’s jewelry, including his favorite Viking ship cuff links, his broken wristwatch, and his “Medic Alert” tag. Rolf’s clothes still hung in the closet.
    During one of the last days of the ten-day search, Ray Clever and Joe Caputo paused in their search to rest. It had become habit for them to keep their eyes focused on what might be in such plain sight that they had missed it. Now Joe lay on the carpet and gazed up at the ceiling. As he tipped his head back to stretch his aching neck, he caught his breath.
    There was the faintest mist of something dark brown against the ceiling tiles.
    The faint dots weren’t all over the ceiling; in fact, it looked as if most of the ceiling had been resurfaced with a textured paint product. But one section had been missed. Itwas stained with what looked like high-velocity blood spatter—the fine spray resulting from a gunshot wound.
    “It was right over where Rolf’s Easy Boy chair was,” Joe recalled. “He always sat there. I can remember Ruth sitting on her bed and telling me about how Rolf had hit her, even though she never had a mark on her, and Rolf sitting in that chair with scratches and cuts all over his face.”
    The two deputies grabbed a saw and carefully cut that section out to be tested in the State Patrol lab.
    Now they looked down. There was a concrete floor slab in the shadowy area behind the couch. It was porous enough that it, too, had absorbed some darkish liquid. They discovered that another concrete slab leading to the master bedroom was also stained. Not only were both areas marked with some fluid deposited there, they tested positive for some strong chemical designed to clean concrete. The investigators located a product called “Crete-Nu” among Ruth’s cleaning products.
    It hadn’t worked as well as the label promised it would.
    They would have to take these large and unwieldy chunks of evidence away with them. “We tented off the area to keep concrete dust from floating around the living room,” Clever says, “trying to keep the rooms as clean as we could.”
    “But it was like a dust storm in there,” Caputo put in.
    Clever and Caputo took turns with a jackhammer until they were finally able to lift and remove a number of the concrete slabs for testing. Despite the Crete-Nu, the lab would be able to tell if the dark stains were blood, and, if so, if they were human blood.
    “That’s the first time I ever had to use a jackhammer in a crime scene,” Clever says. “And we couldn’t use a wet saw to cut through the concrete because it might have diluted any blood there. There was so much concrete dust.We vacuumed several times, but Ruth Neslund was still furious afterward because of the dust.”
    All of the blotches, drips, and sprays were subtle, nearly invisible to the naked eye, but they glowed when