Smoke, Mirrors, and Murder

when the apparitions of what he had almost certainly done appeared in his dreams. Nobody had heard from him.
    And then, on September 29, 1960, Detective Gail Leonard received a two-page letter that had been mailed to the Winklers. It was dated way back in March, and was signed by someone named Major John Riley.
    Riley waxed enthusiastic as he described Raoul Guy Rockwell as a “great man” and he listed various outstanding honors he had received in the past, and spoke of a distinguished background. A handwriting expert examined the letter, whose postmark was blurred and unreadable, and declared that the signature purported to be Major Riley’s was actually that of the man known as Raoul Guy Rockwell. Maybe Rockwell was planning to return to his disillusioned bride. But he didn’t show up in Seattle.
    Additions to the murder investigation case continued to pile up in October and November, but they were mostly affirmations of earlier statements. Yes, Manzanita and Dolores had both worn the distinctive wide brown-and-white cowhide belt, Manzanita’s toes were very strange, and she had told several people she had type O blood. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police tested Bill Mearns and his surviving daughters for blood type, and they all had type O. Manzanita had been dyeing her hair auburn for about eight years.
    Some would argue that there was more than enough evidence to convince a reasonable potential juror that the missing Raoul Guy Rockwell was responsible for the deaths of his wife and his stepdaughter, and that he had employed extraordinary means to cover up his crimes.
    Charles O. Carroll did not agree with that point of view.
     
    Herb Swindler, Gail Leonard, Bill Panton, John Leitch, and the rest of the Seattle Police Homicide detectives were not really surprised at the information they got when a California woman contacted them. She explained that she knew Raoul Guy Rockwell well, although Rockwell was not his real name. “His name is Muldavin,” she said. “I’m married to his older brother, Michael.”
    The family name had always been Muldavin, and Raoul Guy had been born Guy Muldavin on May 8, 1925. Sometimes he gave his birthday as October 27, 1923, but that was a lie. He wasn’t in his mid-forties; he was only thirty-five. He hadn’t been born in Saint-Tropez, France, either, but in Brooklyn, New York. Michael Muldavin was three years older and was currently living with the female informant in San Diego, California.
    The matriarch of the family was Sylvia Muldavin, who spoiled her younger son, Guy, outrageously, doting on him and taking him on trips and cruises. She found the boy charming and brilliant. In 1936, Sylvia and Guy had taken a cruise to Cuba on the S.S. Iroquois, returning to the Port of New York via Miami on April 21. The ship’s manifest listed their address as 2865 West Twentieth Street in Brooklyn.
    Rockwell’s sister-in-law said that Guy had never been in the army because he had an ear condition that made him 4F. Nor had he gone to the University of California. He had gone to boarding school and attended a few months of drama school during the Second World War. At that time, he had changed his name from Muldavin to Rockwell, and added “Raoul” because he planned to have a career on the Broadway stage and it sounded better. He didn’t have even the equivalent of a high school degree, much less a college degree.
    “Guy was married once before Manzanita,” his chagrined sister-in-law said. “They had a son, but when they divorced, his first wife got custody of the boy.”
    The Michael Muldavins had received a phone call from Guy from San Francisco on either April 6 or 7. That would have been two days after he abandoned Blake Rossler in the Golden Gate city.
    “He promised he was coming for a visit,” the woman said, “but he never showed up. He also told us he was going to Ribera, New Mexico, where his mother lives, and he was going to travel with her to New York to visit relatives. But Sylvia says he didn’t meet her as he promised. You really can’t count on Guy—he lies.”
    That much the detectives already knew.
    They had checked on Rockwell’s Fulbright scholarship and found that it never existed. The Fulbright Foundation had never heard of Rockwell or his amazing collection of Ashanti counterweights.
    His sister-in-law promised to notify the Seattle investigators if she heard from Guy Muldavin Rockwell.
    But when the elusive antiques dealer surfaced, he was way