Smoke, Mirrors, and Murder

greed and hatred and fear of losing things and wealth to your wife are the real factors that clouded your judgment to the point of having four people executed in order to accomplish your goals.
    “Greed has been defined as an excessive desire to acquire or possess more than one needs or deserves, especially with respect to material wealth. Mr. Jensen, when you boil it down to the pure essence of what you did, you placed money over family, you placed hatred over compassion, and malice over common sense. That is a dangerous and deadly combination, and that was your downfall.
    “Mr. Jensen, you told me there were two Bill Jensens. But the reality is there really is just one Bill Jensen. And that one Bill Jensen and the actions of that Bill Jensen will cause you to spend the rest of your life in prison, and your family spending the balance of their lives wondering what they had done to deserve you in their life, a husband and father who had no concept of the value of family.”
    And with that, Judge Jones sentenced Bill Jensen to 180 months on Count I, which would run consecutive to 180 months on Count II, which would run consecutive to 180 months on Count III, which would run consecutive to 180 months on Count IV.
    Sixty years in prison. Bill Jensen would be credited with 501 days for time served.
    He would have no contact with the four potential victims he had sought to have killed.
     
    Christmas was two weeks away, but the family who had once loved Bill Jensen would celebrate without him. Forever.
    Sue Jensen was finally awarded a divorce in 2005, and she now uses her maiden name. She works to advise and support other women who are caught in terrifying domestic violence situations, particularly the wives or girlfriends of law enforcement officers or firefighters. She has been there, and she understands.
    Scott and Jenny Jensen have blossomed and lead successful lives. Each has surpassed everything their mother had hoped for them.
    There are still nightmares for Sue, Jenny, and Scott, bad dreams that creep up without warning. The shadows are still there, and it may take a lifetime for them to realize that they deserve to walk free and in the sunshine. Anyone who has lived under siege understands how difficult it is to trust again.
    Sue Harris is grateful to an unlikely ally: Yancy Carrothers.
    “I don’t care what he may have done in the past, or what kind of life he leads,” she told a friend. “He saved my life. He saved all of our lives. If he hadn’t come forward and told the police what Bill was planning, I wouldn’t be here talking to you now. So I thank Mr. Carrothers, and I always will.”
    Bill Jensen is currently incarcerated in an isolation unit at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla, Washington. As a former cop and a would-be family killer, his life would be in danger in the prison’s general population. He has filed an appeal and he visits the prison library to study law books there every Thursday.
    Whether Bill Jensen listened to Judge Richard Jones’s remarks about how precious a loving family is, no one knows. History suggests that he rarely listened to advice from anyone.
    He had it all. He threw it all away.
     
    Although Sue Harris and her children are safe, there are thousands of women and children who are not. They are somewhere along the inexorable progression from the promise of love to disappointment to isolation to emotional abuse to physical abuse to fear to loss of hope, and finally to either divorce or death.
    It shouldn’t be that way. People like Detectives Cloyd Steiger and Sharon Stevens, prosecutors Marilyn Brenneman and Cheryl Snow, and survivors like Sue Harris Jensen are trying to make life happier and safer for those who are still afraid of someone who should love and care for them.
    Every domestic violence support group in America needs our donations of money, clothing, furniture, toys, vehicles, shelter, and time. Go to www.domesticviolence.com to contact the groups near you.

The
Antiques
Dealer’s Wife

Literature is rife with stories of men who draw women to themselves the way some flowers attract butterflies. They are the Svengalis and the Bluebeards of fiction. They range from Rudolph Valentino to Frank Sinatra to Elvis Presley to the most current heartthrob on television. At cocktail parties or college lecture halls, these men are always surrounded by attractive women who ooh and ahh and nod their heads with exaggerated agreement about whatever