No Regrets

should be held in jail until a hearing on August 7 to determine if she had, indeed, violated her appeals bond.
    For Ruth, it was, finally, the end of the world as she knew it. In that hearing held in Judge Bibb’s courtroom in Everett, she was ordered to begin serving her twenty-year sentence.
    She was furious to find Ray Clever as her escort-guard on the private plane that flew her to the Washington State Women’s Prison in Gig Harbor, a small town on the Olympic Peninsula. Clever recalls that Ruth called him almost every unprintable name in her repertoire as they flew low over Washington State on their way to Gig Harbor.
    •  •  •
    Several infamous female felons would join Ruth at this prison, including Diane Downs and Mary Kay Letourneau. Although the women’s prison is close to the water, Ruth would no longer have the breathtaking view that she had enjoyed at her bed-and-breakfast.
    On February 8, 1988, the Washington State Court of Appeals handed down their decision: The appellate judges upheld all nine of the decisions made by Judge Bibb in Ruth Neslund’s 1985 trial.
    Ruth would remain in prison, a rapidly aging woman whose health was not good, whose options had finally run out.
    During the Christmas season of 1988, the home Ruth had built, the one-time “Shangri-La” of the last good years of her marriage and the battlefield where she and her husband had fought until they bled, which had become the Alec Bay Bed and Breakfast, was sold for $190,000 to a couple in California.
    In the end, Ruth received nothing for her one-time equity in the inn she had been so proud of. It had multiple encumbrances. Ruth, of course, had been made trustee of Rolf’s estate way back in early 1982, while Rolf’s sons were awarded 50 percent of the property. She had used her share of the property for the bond she had to put up. She was awarded the personal property at that time. And when she was convicted, it was her friends who had raised the bond that allowed her to remain free. She was essentially destitute.
    Now there was a long line of people with liens on the Alec Bay Bed and Breakfast. After her conviction, Ruthwas naturally removed as trustee, and Seafirst National Bank was appointed. Seafirst attorneys questioned her accounting of assets and won a $64,000 judgment against her. They agreed to accept only $14,500. There were many attorneys who had not been paid, and it looked as if they probably would realize only pennies on the dollar—if that. Ruth’s share of the money was used up. But Rolf’s sons would finally receive at least some of the legacy their father wanted them to have.
    Ruth was a quiet prisoner in Gig Harbor. She occasionally tutored other prisoners, and corresponded with those members of her family with whom she was still on good terms. Alone in her cell, if she ever pondered what she had thrown away, allegedly to protect her fortune, she kept it to herself. In the end, she had nothing at all.
    On February 17, 1993, Ruth Neslund was nine days past her seventy-third birthday when she suffered a fatal stroke in prison. Seven years before she had made her prophetic remarks to Judge Bibb as she asked to go home pending her appeal: “Whether it’s twenty or thirty years, it’s not going to matter because I’m not going to last very long,” she told Bibb. “You and I both know it.”
    She was right.
    Although there were no longer any major events to make people think about the ill-fated Neslunds, there were small bursts of interest and mysterious revelations.
    Deputy Sheriff Joe Caputo was head of court security at the San Juan County Courthouse several years after Ruth Neslund passed away. Most courthouse regulars run into each other at the coffee machine on the third floor, and Caputo often talked with Fred Weedon there. One day,half in jest, he asked Fred Weedon, “Did Ruth ever tell you what happened to Rolf?”
    “Yeah, she did,” Fred answered. “You know—in that first search, you were within ten or twelve feet of Rolf—”
    “Are you going to elaborate on that?” Caputo asked, surprised.
    But Weedon was already walking away. He called back, “No—read the book!”
    But there never was a book—not written by Fred Wee-don or anyone else. Al Cummings wrote some excellent articles for the
Seattle Weekly,
but didn’t write an entire book.
    One of those most obsessed with the Neslund case was a man named Gordon Keith, a local, who spoke often of having been a published