No Regrets

knew that Ruth was sending checks to Mamie.
    There were still, thankfully, two very credible witnesses: Joy Stroup and Donna Smith, Mamie’s daughters. Joy was as concerned as Donna was about the phone calls they had both received from “Aunt Nettie Ruth” on August 8, 1980.
    Joy told Ray Clever that she was at work that day, estimating that it was noon in Ohio (3:00 P.M . in Washington State) when her aunt called her. They had a very brief conversation, not more than three minutes.
    This was the most shocking recollection of all. This was the dread secret that had been hinted at when Joy’s letter came to the San Juan County detectives through the Pilots’ Association. This was the information that Joy andDonna had given in the secret meeting in Seattle, long sealed now until the Attorney General’s Office team and the San Juan County Sheriff’s Department and Prosecutor Silverman were ready to move.
    According to Joy, her aunt Ruth had contacted her in the summer of 1980 and told her that she had shot Rolf and burned his body.
    If this shocking news was from anyone else, it surely would have been reported immediately, but Ruth was known for making outrageous phone calls when she was in her cups. Nobody paid much attention to them. Over the previous years, many of her calls had to do with her anger at Rolf, or some fight they had had. She was somewhat like the boy who cried “Wolf!” and it was hard to take her drunken phone calls seriously.
    Besides, Ruth’s letters to her family were so typically those of a beloved—if slightly dotty—old aunt. She sent checks to her nieces, her sisters and brothers, and was always there for them.
    They had all wanted to believe that basically Aunt Ruth had a good heart.
    But her calls in August 1980 had been too explicit to dismiss. Joy Stroup told the investigators what Ruth had said to her. There was little question that Ruth had spoken of killing her husband. “I was very busy at work and I just told her I would call her later,” Joy said. “I didn’t want to believe what she was saying. I thought she had been drinking again.”
    Two days went by before Ruth called Joy again, and over those forty-eight hours, Joy felt her first impression was right. Her aunt had been drunk and spouting nonsense as she often did. But then, on August 10, Ruth called again.
    “She told me the same thing she did before.”
    “Did she ever tell you that was all a big story—say it wasn’t true?” Clever asked.
    “No.”
    After the San Juan County Sheriff’s Department’s first search of the Neslund property in April 1981, Joy said Ruth had called her. “She wanted to know if I’d given a statement to the police,” Joy said, “and she said ‘Keep the confidences I have given you.’”
    Joy and Donna had been concerned enough that their aunt might not be making her grisly story up that they set out to find Rolf Neslund and make sure he was safe. But they could not locate him. Ruth easily explained why. “She convinced us that he had gone to Norway and that she and Rolf were getting a divorce.”
    The young women had wanted to believe Ruth, and she was very convincing when she told them there was absolutely nothing to worry about. Rolf was safe and well— but her marriage was over. Ruth had appeared to be very well off financially, and she was very kind and generous. She wasn’t grieving over the upcoming divorce, and seemed happy enough.
    Still, as time passed, it struck Joy as strange that Rolf hadn’t taken his clothes with him when he left. “She offered to send his clothes to me for my husband,” Joy said. “They were about the same size.”
    Later, when Joy mentioned to her aunt that her daughter was having trouble with a boyfriend who was “too persistent,” and Joy talked of her own plan to discourage him from bothering the teenager, Ruth said inscrutably, “I know a better way to get rid of him.”
    After that phone call, Ruth’s words came back to worry Joy. What had she been trying to say? Joy hated to speculateon the meaning intended. Donna Smith knew that her uncle was alive on August 7 because he called her house. She wasn’t home but he had a brief conversation with her babysitter, who was sixteen.
    Joy told Donna about the two phone calls she had received from their aunt on August 8 and August 10, so Donna called Ruth on the eleventh. They exchanged pleasantries, and then Donna asked to talk to Rolf, explaining she was returning his