Practice to Deceive

emotion when she heard she was a widow.
    “We haven’t ruled her out as a suspect at this time,” he said. “But we can’t really include her in, either.”
    John Blaine met with Brenna and it was an emotional interview. He felt that she was holding some information back, although he wasn’t sure what it might be. She wept often. When he mentioned that she and Russel had been on the verge of a divorce, she was vehement in denying that—insisting that they were not considering that when her husband was shot.
    “We were working things out,” she insisted. “While we were apart, Russ was writing a novel for me.”
    “Would you agree to take a polygraph exam?” Blaine asked.
    “No,” she answered. “I don’t want to take one.”
    With Blaine’s help, Birchfield learned that Russel had had somewhere between four hundred thousand dollars and seven hundred thousand dollars in life insurance when he died. The last policies he bought in 2002 insured both himself and Brenna. Whether he knew that his wife went back soon after and lowered the amount on her life is moot.
    The insurance underwriters involved continued their probes to see if there were any reasons that the policies should not be honored.
    If this was a scenario for a film noir in the forties where Barbara Stanwyck or Bette Davis plotted to do away with her movie husband for an insurance payoff, a real-life Double Indemnity, the murder of Russ Douglas probably would have been solved.
    But it wasn’t. One has to consider how a young mother who had lived through months of marital discord and indecision, with two children to raise, might react to the news that her estranged husband had been murdered. Brenna’s flat response and inappropriate attitude could very well have been a result of shock. How humans react to profoundly bad news isn’t predictable.
    The question was: was Russ’s death really profoundly bad news for Brenna Douglas?
    Brenna couldn’t handle money; Russ had said that often enough, and she had counted on him to do the books at their beauty salon. His mother—Gail O’Neal—verified that.
    “Russ was going to do their income tax,” O’Neal said. “But she hadn’t kept any records, bank statements, and other supportive information on the beauty salon’s profit and loss. And he found they owed a lot of back taxes.”
    Brenna Douglas didn’t have much money; she didn’t even own her house. She might have filed a claim for insurance so rapidly because she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to support her children and herself.
    Insurance adjusters for AIG were leery about payoffs to a beneficiary who was a probable suspect in the murder of the insured, and Brenna was in that category. They were more willing to set up trust funds for Jack and Hannah than to write a check for four hundred thousand dollars to Brenna.
    She would have none of that. She wrote out her statement. “The proceeds are rightfully mine, and while I intend to invest the money and it will ultimately go to benefit my children, it is inappropriate to hold the money or award it to my children on the unsupported allegation of the prosecutor.
    “Again, I categorically state that I was not involved in the death of my husband in any way!”
    Joan McPherson, an attorney appointed to represent Jack and Hannah, said she didn’t think that Brenna had any part in Russ’s homicide, but she still recommended that insurance money should be withheld until there was no question at all of Brenna’s innocence.
    Brenna was in debt; she hadn’t waited for the insurance money. By the late spring of 2004, she had bought a house, a Suburban, and an RV. In August of that year, she lost the house because she wasn’t making payments.
    In December 2005, Island County Superior Court Judge Vickie Churchill ordered that since there was no solid proof that Brenna was a part of any plot against her late husband, AIG should give her the proceeds of the first policy. It was believed to be around four hundred thousand dollars, with twelve hundred dollars in interest added.
    A year later, she sued Farmers New World Life Insurance for three hundred thousand dollars on December 26, the third anniversary of Russ’s murder.
    Brenna Douglas didn’t win this claim. Although she asked for a waiver of Russel’s medical information, the company refused. Russ had lied on his application and failed to mention some slight irregularities with his heart and his treatment for depression.

C HAPTER E