Smoke, Mirrors, and Murder

presentation that allegedly showed how Bill and his family’s lives had changed since his injury. Images of Bill coaching Jenny’s sports teams and carrying his children on his back as he crawled on their carpet, and of him laughing with them, appeared on the screen.
    Scott and Jenny spoke to the camera, explaining how much fun their father had been, but was no longer. The video showed Jenny mowing the lawn, although Bill had only rarely mowed the lawn even when he was able-bodied. At Bill’s urging, Sue spoke of how his injuries had robbed her of his companionship as a loving husband. Bill’s physicians described how his accident had left him incapacitated.
    Much of what was said about Bill’s knee and back pain was an exaggeration. It was certainly true that he was in pain, and early on he had worked hard with a physical therapist to alleviate some of that pain, but he no longer believed it would help. He was eating far more calories than he needed, and piling on pounds that put more stress on his knee and back.
    Oddly, when Bill spoke to the camera about his childhood, he described it as if it had been right out of Leave It to Beaver . He characterized his early years as happy and normal, recalling that the Lone Ranger was one of his heroes. He told the camera that he’d liked cowboys and Indians and that he’d been an average kid, who grew up to be a loving husband and father and a brave police officer. He failed to mention his years in foster homes or the childhood abuse he had endured. He presented a life—but it wasn’t his life at all.
    When Sue looked at the final product to be used in Bill’s lawsuit against the insurance company, it was almost heartbreaking. She was viewing her marriage and her family through the looking glass—the way she always hoped it would be, and never was.
    Years later, when the suit was finally settled, Bill Jensen was disappointed. He didn’t get the $1.7 million he had sought; he received $80,000, Sue was awarded $20,000, and Jenny and Scott each received $10,000.
    Sue wasn’t concerned; they had adequate savings and investments. They had bought out her sister’s share of their home, remodeled it with money from Sue’s inheritance account, and had a manageable mortgage. Bill would have his retirement money and his disability insurance payments, and he wasn’t totally disabled. He could work at another career, and if need be she could get a job, too.
    Sue still didn’t consider leaving him, despite his grouchy demeanor. But she didn’t know the secrets that her husband had kept from her.
    One of the things Sue didn’t know was that Bill had already applied to vest his police pension. Under the Washington State Law Enforcement Retirement Plan—LEOFF II—Bill had $154,746 coming to him. He chose to cash it out entirely. As his spouse, Sue was legally required to sign the application along with Bill, so that he could receive this money. She found out later that Bill had either forged her name or found some way around this requirement. He accepted the sheriff’s pension money and put it in his own private bank account without telling her. Most of it went to buy collectible currency.
    But hope for their future was looking up a little. When he realized that he had no choice but to resign from the sheriff’s office on disability, Bill grudgingly agreed to be retrained for a new career. It seemed the perfect alternative for a man who was physically compromised. Bill had always been fascinated by computers, buying himself the very best and most advanced computer technology available. The Jensens lived in the shadow of the sprawling Microsoft campus, and Bill Gates himself, while not exactly a neighbor, lived only a few miles away. It was the computer industry boom, and Bill had the knowledge and the skills to take advantage of it.
    He attended Bellevue Community College, where he became remarkably proficient in all things Microsoft. Bill Jensen was brilliant with computers, perhaps more suited to this career than to a deputy’s. In March 1999, when he completed his courses, he was hired by City University at a salary of $100 an hour. He taught between ten and twenty hours a week. And that meant he was grossing $1,000 to $2,000 each week. Even though he complained that his knee bothered him tremendously, he was capable of bringing home between $52,000 and $104,000 a year for a part-time job.
    With his retirement fund, the insurance settlement, the equities and