Smoke, Mirrors, and Murder

winnowed out from the hundreds I have researched over the years: “The Deputy’s Wife” (the book-length feature), “The Antiques Dealer’s Wife,” “The Truck Driver’s Wife,” “The Convict’s Wife,” “The Chemist’s Wife,” “The Painter’s Wife,” and, finally, “The Minister’s Wife.” Murder interrupted all their marriages.
    Each of these bizarre stories had hidden aspects that surprised me when I first encountered them, even though I sometimes think that nothing can catch me unaware after so many years of writing true-crime cases.
    But something always does. These cases did, and I hope they will keep you in suspense too. Whether in fiction or in real life, mystery intrigues us all. Every story I include in this collection explores the relationship between men and women, which in these cases proved to be an incendiary mix. In some, the male is the dangerous persona, in some the female—and there are a few in which you, the reader, will have to decide which one was the guilty party. The cases all involved deception, large and small lies that led inevitably to disaster.
    Ann Rule

The
Deputy’s Wife

When I type the last page of a book, I am always struck by the same thought: how terribly stupid the convicted felon was! This killer had so much to be thankful for, and yet this macabre murder plot is so full of evil that it makes me shiver. The gleeful killer-to-be was “tickled pink” at a scenario designed to make multiple homicides look like an accident. The greedy plotter threw a good life away to end up with nothing—less than nothing.
    This case is about a tragedy on its way to happening, and the cast of characters is as diverse and extraordinary as any I have come across. It is a recent case, its strange events playing out in the last few years.
    Tragically, this case is reminiscent of the hundreds of e-mails and letters I receive from desperate husbands and wives—mostly wives. I always wish I could do more to help, but perhaps shedding light on one family’s disintegration may encourage readers to face their own domestic problems and deal with them before it is too late.
    I don’t think anyone who looks at life through barred windows ever really expected to be behind them. And yet a prisoner’s world becomes, for a time—or for life—one of spartan cells, walls with billows of razor wire atop them, bland food heavy on carbohydrates, and the same daily routine with orders issued by corrections officers. Worst of all, prisoners lose their freedom to come and go as they please. Even though I have been only a visitor in jails and prisons, I dread the sound of a steel door clanging shut behind me—along with the smell of Pine-Sol, cigarettes (although they are now forbidden in most prisons), urine, sweat—and the contagious sense of hopelessness.
    A most unlikely prisoner is the antihero in this story, and I have no doubt at all that this individual’s ending up in that role was shocking to everyone involved. This person started life with numerous disadvantages, but eventually found love, family, children, respect, and what seemed to be the good life.
    And then this murderous plotter threw it all away.
    More than ever before, tabloids and the Internet are rife with divorce and custodial battles as America moves into the twenty-first century. Celebrities like Britney Spears and Kevin Federline, Kim Basinger and Alec Baldwin, and a dozen other famous couples seem more intent on winning than concerned about their children’s security, thus mirroring the divorce wars of everyday people. Once marital vows shatter, couples on every level of society begin to struggle over who will get the children, who will get the money, the house, the vehicles.
    Perhaps the events in this case would have happened even without divorce and property division struggles, but with the enmity that surfaced in what was anything but a simple divorce, an icy hatred began to grow, making the end of a marriage a horror story.
    Could one half of a once-loving partnership be insatiable enough when it came to wealth that the lives of those who got in the way meant less than zero?
    I think so.
    Looking back with the clarity of hindsight, it is easy to spot signs of danger. They were as brief as a jagged sword of lightning stabbing down to a dark beach or a flicker of fire before a woods is engulfed in flames. But the signs were there, just as they are for many trusting partners. A flash of insight, buried