Smoke, Mirrors, and Murder

threatening John Compatore, but once again, no one could find Bill. He wasn’t living in his apartment. He was supposed to appear in court on May 22, but he didn’t show up. His father had put up his house for Bill’s bail in his earlier arrest, and risked losing it now.
    It was more frightening, somehow, not to know where Bill was. On her lawyer’s advice, Sue left town for the weekend. If Bill should have to go to jail, he would be so angry. He was making more threats to any number of people, many of them perfect strangers. When a hospital pharmacist refused to refill one of Bill’s pain medications, even he became the target for a veiled warning.
    Sue froze as she saw a stranger lurking across the street from her house. “I was sure it was a hit man,” she said. “And I knew that I couldn’t make it into my house as he started toward me. My legs wouldn’t move. I was actually relieved when he held out his hand, and it was only an order of protection that Bill had filed against me.”
    Sue waited for the other, probably fatal, shoe to drop.
    Jenny was going to graduate from high school on June 18, 2003, and the ceremonies would be held in the Hec Edmondson Pavilion at the University of Washington. All the girls who had been on the teams Bill had coached since Jenny was five would be graduating too. They had become the focus of some of Bill’s rage. Sue knew Bill felt betrayed by both the parents and the team members—none of whom were friendly to him any longer when he occasionally showed up at games.
    It was true that Bill’s bizarre behavior had stamped him as a pariah in his old neighborhood, and he had often complained how bitter he was about their lack of gratitude for all he had done for his teams. He had volunteered his time coaching them, but nobody appreciated him or gave him credit for all he had done, and he resented them mightily.
    Jenny’s approaching graduation ceremony frightened Sue more than anything. She knew that Bill planned to attend, and it seemed like a venue where he might, indeed, “go postal.”
    Something was going to happen, but Sue didn’t know when or what it would be.

Three
A Deadly Conspiracy
    With the help of Assistant District Attorney Kathryn Kim in the King County prosecutor’s Domestic Violence Unit, Sue pursued her attempts to have Bill go to trial for felony harassment and for his violations of the no-contact order. Yet no one involved felt that charges against Bill would stick. Despite her police record, the young woman who lived with him was considered a credible witness. If Bill went to jail, as an ex-police officer he would be in great danger, another reason he might not be prosecuted as vigorously as an ordinary person on the street. Despite what had happened in the Brame case, Bill Jensen tended to come across as no more than an irritating, mean-spirited, and petulant man who was trying to make his wife miserable, which is not, technically, a crime.
    The woods—and the divorce courts—were full of men like that. Even with all of the guns he had, he himself didn’t seem capable of real violence. Except for the 2001 arbitration meeting with Sue and her attorney, Bill hadn’t come near Sue. He had manipulated bank accounts, stocks, and vehicles, and had misused credit cards, but he hadn’t hurt her physically since she’d asked him to leave.
    Bill Jensen now weighed over four hundred pounds, and—according to him—he had a bad knee, a bad back, diabetes, chronic fatigue syndrome, depression, hypertension, cardiac problems, festering skin infections, and cancer. He was broke and had no means of support other than his disability payments. He cried to anyone who would listen that his wife was very wealthy.
    On May 1, 2003, Jensen described his predicament. “She has used her wealth and ��strength’ to put me out on the street and nearly caused me to become a ‘street person.’ Mrs. Jensen clearly decided she no longer wanted to live with a disabled man suffering from leukemia,” he wrote in an attempt to have John Compatore censured by the Washington State Bar for unprofessional conduct.
    “So she threw me out on the street in June 2001…. Ms. Jensen has so flagrantly lied, put on a charade and air[ed]—to everyone…her attorneys, judges, prosecutors, family, friends, and our children that I am some sort of drug addicted and violent man. This I am not .”
    How dangerous could he actually be? And where was he?
    The general feeling was