Smoke, Mirrors, and Murder

either “I don’t know,” “I don’t recall,” or “No”—except when he was asked to describe the incident when he was injured. He remembered that and the aftermath precisely.
    Bill Jensen said he had lived with his oldest sister in Bremerton for a while, and in scores of hotels and motels in the Seattle area and in Las Vegas over the five months since he’d moved out of the Newport Hills home. When pressed, he recalled that he had vacationed in the Bahamas in September. He insisted he didn’t know how much rent he paid on apartments or exactly where he had stayed. He did remember that he was in Las Vegas on September 11 when the World Trade Center was destroyed.
    It was apparent where some of the marital assets had gone: Janet Brooks finally managed to drag out the information that Bill had spent around $100 a night for lodging over the prior 150 days.
    “Insolent” would be the word to describe Bill Jensen’s attitude toward Sue Jensen’s attorney. He admitted reluctantly to many visits to the top Las Vegas hotels, where gambling was the main attraction, but offered that he wasn’t “allowed to gamble” there any longer. There was a good reason for that, and Janet Brooks would get to that later.
    Bill hadn’t been alone on some of his trips. He admitted that he had met a woman in her twenties at the Aladdin Hotel and taken her to the Bahamas, California, and back to Seattle with him. He knew her first name: Kristi. He said he didn’t know her last name. “She had several names.”
    He denied paying Kristi for her company, but allowed that he probably had given her some money. He said he had also met people in the Aladdin and accompanied them to Ketchikan, Alaska, to a lodge for a fishing trip.
    Bill smirked and laughed on occasion as he answered Janet Brooks’s questions. His transfers of money and checks were almost incomprehensible. He had obtained power of attorney over his adoptive father’s bank account, and had written himself several checks on that account—approximately $63,000 worth. He had paid “bills” from the joint account he’d had with Susan. Those totaled over $200,000 and were dated on the weekend after he vacated their home. He had gambling winnings of $27,000, and he’d sold Intel stock for $265,000, and he had borrowed $37,000 from his father. He had his $154,000 retirement fund. He had removed $202,000 from a Schwab stock investment account he shared with his wife.
    The total money he had spent in less than six months was astronomical.
    And Bill Jensen never admitted that he had taken the Sequoia van that had gone to Sue in an early settlement. He did say he’d been furious when she was given that vehicle because it was purchased for him when he was injured. He didn’t mention another reason; they had bought it to replace a van that was totaled in an accident—and they needed something big enough to accommodate a 170-pound Great Dane.
    Bill said it was his, and he had sold it. To assure that Sue wouldn’t get it back, he explained, he had sold it to a woman he knew only as “Dee,” whom he’d met in Las Vegas.
    “What did you sell it for?” Sue’s lawyer asked.
    “Nothing,” he said. “I sold it to her for nothing. She was going to come up to Seattle and drive it back.”
    He had been surprised that Sue found it at the airport, and angry that she was still driving it. Sue had tormented him, he said, and taken advantage of him. Bill Jensen insisted that he was the victim in all of the financial matters.
    “Thanks to my wife, my credit is ruined,” he said. “She has sent all of this court paperwork to all the credit card companies that I have. And every time I get a card opened back up, she sends another one and they close it. And I keep going back and forth—and back and forth.”
    Bill’s ploy in selling the van didn’t work; at a court hearing, the judge told him to get “Dee” on the phone and cancel the sale. Once again, Sue was awarded the Sequoia, but it would continue to rankle Bill.
    Janet Brooks and the court reporter who was taking down the dialogue of this November 2001 meeting felt a chill as they glanced up and saw Bill Jensen face Sue and make a slashing motion with his finger as he drew it across his neck. It was a gesture that symbolized a throat being cut. At that moment, he looked at Sue and mouthed, “You’re dead…”
    None of the three women doubted that he meant it.
    Sue’s attorney remarked that she was noting his