No Regrets

dripped, sprayed, and even vaporized from “building accidents” and domestic fights. Rod Englert had specified that the amount of blood thathad soaked into the concrete slabs was so profuse that it remained there despite being treated with chemicals and scraped with a grinder. The Portland detective said there was “a large quantity of blood, consistent with very major artery bleeding.” As the Neslunds fought, they had drawn blood by scratching each other, and left bruises, but “arterial bleeding”? No.
    Nevertheless, Weedon and Connelly began the defense by questioning witnesses who said Rolf Neslund had been a different man after the bridge accident, a man likely to commit suicide. After the Coast Guard had found him negligent in his duty as a pilot, he had changed.
    Acquaintances, men from Lopez Island, and those who had known him elsewhere or worked with him followed one another to the witness stand. They spoke of his supposed despair because he had been forced to retire from the career he loved.
    “He’d been in it all his life,” one man said. “[After the accident], the best way I can describe it is a whipped dog, a deflated ego.”
    Another said, “I think he was a lot different person after the accident. You could tell he was depressed and upset about it.”
    A fellow pilot, Captain Roy Quinn, testified that he had visited Rolf in February 1980, and Rolf told him that he was being named in a lawsuit seeking damages for the West Seattle Bridge. When Quinn warned him to be careful, and find somewhere to put his pension fund where it couldn’t be touched, Quinn said Rolf had answered, “Mama and I have taken care of that. In my own name, I don’t have a dime anymore.”
    Quinn felt that Rolf had been “disturbed” after the
Chavez
hit the West Seattle Bridge. “When we were talkingone on one, he was depressed. When there were other people around, he put up a front.” He added that Rolf had been forgetful and would sometimes “blank out.”
    “My father-in-law had similar spells, when he was in his eighties. And then he committed suicide. I told Rolf about that. He said to me, ‘I think I’d do the same thing.’”
    One defense witness bolstered Ruth’s claim that Rolf had left her of his own accord. “He told me he was going to Norway in early August,” the man testified. “He said, ‘I’ll be back before the holidays, and if I decide to stay longer, I will.’”
    On cross-examination, this witness argued continually with Greg Canova. Ignoring courtroom protocol and Judge Bibb’s repeated warnings, the witness offered his opinion without being asked a question. “I don’t want to get intimidated by lies,” he shouted at Canova. “You’re getting the cart before the horse!”
    When he complained to Fred Weedon about Canova, saying, “This sucker’s trying to nail me and he ain’t going to nail me,” Judge Bibb told Weedon if he could not control his witness, he would find him in contempt of court.
    After a sudden recess, the witness stopped offering comments, but he refused to budge on his stance that, as far as he was concerned, Rolf Neslund had gone to Norway.
    A man named John Norman who had done odd jobs for the Neslunds swore on his oath that he had seen Rolf two days after the day he was supposed to have been shot to death. Norman was convinced he had seen Rolf riding the ferry to Anacortes on August 10. He was sure of the date because he and a friend were going to McDonald’s to celebrate the friend’s birthday.
    At this point in his testimony, the witness began to cry,explaining that his friend had died since then. But he knew that date, and he saw Rolf Neslund sitting in the backseat of a car between a Lopez Island couple.
    “He said, ‘Hi Boss.’ That’s his nickname for me. He was kinda pale and he looked tired.”
    “You’re certain that it was Mr. Neslund?” Weedon asked.
    “Absolutely.”
    But Norman wasn’t so sure on cross-examination by Greg Canova, who asked him if he and his friend often went to Anacortes to eat at McDonald’s. He allowed that that was true.
    “Isn’t it true that you testified at a special inquiry hearing that the last time you saw Rolf Neslund was in 1979?”
    “I hadn’t heard that,” Norman said somewhat vaguely. He was not an ideal witness.
    Weedon called a workman who had helped Ruth build her house a few years before Rolf vanished. He recalled that he had smashed his thumb and cut his hand and dripped blood