No Regrets

she said.

Thirteen
    The lay public of Lopez Island could not see a motive for a sweet, “kind-hearted” old woman to kill her husband. And the San Juan County sheriff’s investigators and the AG’s Office had to bite their tongues and continue with their probe. They weren’t in a popularity contest; they were looking for the truth and if it turned out to be what they believed it was, they knew the day would come when they could charge Ruth Neslund with murder.
    Ruth’s banking records validated what they already suspected. Rolf Neslund had left money matters up to his wife and she had quite probably robbed him blind. He’d always said, “I trust her and she’s better at it than I am.”
    In those last few days before he disappeared, Rolf had finally begun to see the first indication of the enormity of his wife’s betrayal He knew that his bank account was almost empty—with too little in it to cash his seventy-five-dollar check. When he talked to Kay Scheffler, he learned that she had paid off her mortgage five years earlier. It was the same with the Ronnings. Ruth had lied to him for at least that long. She had kept the Ronning and Scheffler payoff money without telling him.
    Had he remained in the picture, Rolf would have discovered much more. Ruth’s bank statements showed that, silently and secretly, she had been taking money out oftheir joint accounts for a long time and putting it into individual accounts in her own name—accounts that Rolf could not access.
    She had done this quite subtly, taking out relatively small amounts at first, or simply depositing money paid to both of them to her own account. When he didn’t notice these transactions, Ruth grew bolder. For example, on May 1, 1979, she transferred Rolf’s entire pilot’s retirement fund of $78,049.50 into two joint accounts— $50,000 in a certificate of deposit that earned high interest, and $28,049.50 into a savings account.
    She waited about seven weeks for Rolf to say something, but of course he didn’t. On June 25, Ruth removed nearly $80,000 from the two accounts and put it into an account in her name only.
    By December 1979, she had transferred virtually all their money that had been deposited in their joint account at People’s Bank in Seattle to an account in her name only in the San Juan County Bank.
    Rolf knew he was getting his eighteen-hundred-dollar pension every month because Ruth kept putting his spending money in the dresser drawer, and he wasn’t concerned about the rest. He counted on their savings to see them through their last years.
    In August 1980, when Rolf tried to cash the check at People’s Bank, he had access to only one joint account there. Its balance: $9.12.
    With all their money available to her alone, Ruth had been cashing checks as she liked. She loaned money to some people on mortgages, but when they made payments, again at high interest, those went into Ruth’s private accounts. She shared her largesse with her family, probably assuring herself that they would always take her side.
    Moreover, between December 1979 and February 1981, Ruth collected Rolf’s pilot’s pension checks for eighteen hundred dollars every month, and endorsed them in his name, and then put them in her account. He never noticed. She did the same with his Social Security checks. She would continue to cash both until the Puget Sound Pilots’Association froze them. And then she sued them, too, furious that anyone would interrupt her money sources.
    By the time Rolf vanished, the only account in the San Juan Islands where he could cash a check was at the San Juan Bank, where the balance was just forty dollars.
    For years, smugly believing she could fool Rolf forever, Ruth easily kept him from discovering that she controlled all their money. It was only when Rolf became so miserable in his marriage that he considered going to Norway forever that he learned he had no money.
    The motives for Ruth to want to get rid of her aging husband were quite clear, and as old as time. Money for one, and seething, mindless jealousy for another. With Ruth, the two combined into an even more powerful, conjoined motive. She had hated Elinor Ekenes for twenty years. Although she was misinformed, Ruth probably had convinced herself that Rolf loved Elinor—and not her— and that he was giving Elinor money. Indeed, he was giving her money, but it was for his sons. He wanted to leave something behind for the boys who were his flesh and