No Regrets

powerful older woman who steadfastly denied any culpability in an alleged murder, seeming to be almost someone following a script.
    But as each new spate of long-hidden information morphed from rumor to admission, whispers became shouts. What was happening was not only real—it was moving faster than any television soap. Celebrities like Robert Goulet had been mentioned and scores of people the locals knew—their own neighbors—were achieving akind of overnight fame themselves as they testified. The nightly news on the ABC, NBC, and CBS affiliates in Washington State featured the Neslund trial at the top of the news. This was arguably the biggest media event ever to happen in San Juan County.
    Christmas Eve was two weeks away. The trial was winding up when, right on cue, local papers headlined “Surprise Witness!” In real life, most trials hardly ever have such startling turns. It is the stuff of
Perry Mason
and
Matlock.
    Some expected that it would be Robert Myers, Ruth’s alleged accomplice, who was coming to testify. But Robert was in a nursing home, long since lost to a mind full of clouds. He had been adjudged senile and unfit to be a credible witness.
    No—it was the elusive Winnie Kay Stafford who had been located, Winnie Kay who was still petrified about testifying to the dynamite information she had kept secret. In the end, prosecutors had little choice but to offer her a plea bargain that would grant her immunity from perjury charges regarding her testimony at the special inquiry hearing shortly after Rolf Neslund vanished. She accepted the offer, and now she was coming home to take the stand as a rebuttal witness for the state.
    Winnie Kay was, perhaps, the most nervous witness of all the frankly anxiety-ridden witnesses who had been heard from so far, and she had reason to be. She tried to avoid looking at her one-time best friend, averting her eyes from Ruth’s stare. In answer to Greg Canova’s questions, Winnie Kay admitted that she had gone to the Neslund home late on the night of August 8, 1980. Ruth had called and told her to come.
    “Why did she ask you to come over?”
    “I was her friend... Ruth told me she wanted me to come over. She said she needed me.”
    At the defense table, Ruth laughed derisively.
    “Winnie Stafford seemed believable to us,” juror Lisa Boyd said. “She was younger than Ruth was, kind of average-looking, and she didn’t have that ‘tough look’ that Ruth had. She looked like the woman next door.”
    As Canova questioned her, Winnie Kay’s story spilled out. She recalled being summoned to the Alec Bay home around ten o’clock on that August night. It was warm outside, and twilight was just fading to darkness as she arrived. “Ruth let me in and she said she had killed him,” Winnie Kay said, her burst of words shocking in the hushed courtroom. “She said she had shot him—shot Rolf.”
    But Winnie Stafford hadn’t mentioned any of this when she appeared before the special inquiry judge, Robert Pitt. Now her recall was very different.
    “Why did you lie?” Canova probed.
    “I felt what had been done had been done, and I was protecting Ruth.”
    Winnie Kay described a grotesque tableau where she and Ruth sat on bar stools, sipping cocktails. Robert Myers was in the house, too, and Winnie Kay said she had seen him occasionally come to the sliding door of the room that adjoined “the music room” where the women sat.
    “He smiled and looked in a few times,” she said. “She [Ruth] indicated to me that she didn’t want me to know any of the details,” Winnie Kay said, breaking into tears. “She said Bob was in the bathroom. She said Bob was cutting him—Rolf—cutting Rolf up . . .”
    Winnie Kay hadn’t particularly wanted to know the details either, but they were almost unavoidable. It tookstrong drinks to soften the electric edges of panic she felt. She knew that just down the hall, Ruth’s recently deceased husband was being disjointed prior to disposal. It was truly a psychedelic evening, a horror movie. She had told herself it could not be happening.
    Some days later she had talked to Wanda Post, discussing what Ruth and Robert had done. Wanda offered that Ruth had also told her about what had become of Rolf.
    “She [Wanda] had gotten Ruth intoxicated one night, and Ruth told her.”
    Winnie Kay testified that, sometime after August 8, Ruth had expanded upon her motivation for killing Rolf. Ruth told her she and Rolf had fought over