No Regrets

spread the paper about the floor, and then connected them into a huge diagram which could be folded. I thought it was a good technique that was done in addition to the photographs.”
    The trunk, which Rolf had reportedly tumbled over when he was shot, still bearing hardened blood and gray hair caught in the metal corner, was brought into the courtroom.
    For the first time, the community heard what had really gone on during the long search of 1982. Now, at last, they could understand why the case against Ruth Neslund had moved forward so slowly, and yet no one in the courtroom could possibly realize how many hundreds of hours of detective work had gone into linking Rolf’s disappearance with that final horrific day in 1980.
    When the sheriff’s investigators finished their testimony, the mass of physical evidence became part of the court record. Some of it was minute; some were the large chunks of concrete, carpet, and the padding beneath it— still bloodstained.
    As the investigation’s results spun out, Ruth sat at the defense table, her demeanor seemingly calm. She scribbled notes on a yellow legal pad and whispered often to the man beside her. Fred Weedon had devoted many years to absolving her of any guilt. Ruth had used those years to create a “new Ruth Neslund,” with her lovely inn, and her life without Rolf. Jurors who glanced at her were struck by her air of confidence; a few found her demeanor almost arrogant.
    Still, they wondered what she was thinking as shewatched members of her own family take the witness stand to testify against her.
    On November 19, the trial was in its third week when Donna Smith, the niece who had been “like a daughter” to Ruth, took the witness chair. It was obvious that she was torn by memories of better days. Since she had come to Seattle from Ohio in 1968—seventeen years earlier—she had been welcomed into the Neslunds’ home by both Ruth and Rolf. Rolf had encouraged Ruth to invite her extended family to reunions on Lopez Island, and Donna recalled happy times. But she spoke then of the disintegration of her aunt and uncle’s marriage. In answer to Greg Canova’s questions, she described the fights that began in earnest about 1979.
    “My aunt called me to tell me she was in ‘the bunk-house,’ because they were fighting. She said, ‘If he comes back here, I’ll shoot him.’ I was scared for both of them.”
    Donna Smith said a family reunion in July 1980 had been ruined because her aunt and uncle were arguing. At that time, her aunt had said to her, “I’m not going to have to put up with him much longer.”
    The witness said that she had become very concerned in the first week of August when her babysitter left a scribbled message on her chalkboard. Rolf had been watching a preseason football game and, according to her sitter, he was excited when he called Donna. “Great touchdown! Did you see it?” he had dictated. “Tell Donna Rolf called and to call him back!”
    That was on Thursday, August 7. And Rolf had apparently been in a good mood. “I tried to call him all weekend,” Donna testified, “but there was no answer.”
    And when her sister, Joy Stroup, had phoned her on August 23 from Ohio with her concerns about what might have happened to Rolf on August 8, Donna testified thatshe had called the Neslunds again, hoping that Rolf would answer and she could put both of their worries to rest. But that was the call during which her aunt Ruth answered and gave her three or four different versions of where he might be.
    Donna Smith said she had seen Ruth and her uncle Bob at a family party on September 5, but Rolf wasn’t with them. “My aunt said they had decided to divorce and that he [Rolf] was gone to Norway.”
    But by April 1981, Donna had still neither heard from nor seen Rolf. And his sister and brothers in Norway contacted her to say that Rolf wasn’t there, and they didn’t know where he was.
    At that point, Donna—with her sister Joy’s approval— had gone to the authorities.
    “My aunt phoned me ranting and raving because I had betrayed her.”
    Later, of course, Ruth had sent Donna the thirty dimes, calling her a Judas.
    Joy Stroup took the stand. She recalled that she had been working at her restaurant job during the noon hour of August 8, 1980, when her “Aunt Nettie” called. Joy said she was used to Nettie Ruth’s muttering about her frustration with her step-uncle—that she had often talked of “wasting” him, and