Worth More Dead

Danny and Joey Perez. Each of them lived the shootings over and over in the waking hours and in their dreams, regretting that they had had no choice but to do what they did that night.
    “When Justyn Rosen turned his vehicle into the Denver Police Gang Bureau’s driveway in search of help,” Ritter wrote, “Teresa Perez’s actions set in motion a chain of events that led to their deaths and to her shooting and wounding Officer Randy Yoder in the process.
    “The three Denver officers who fired their service pistols in this deadly confrontation were clearly justified in doing so in an effort to stop Teresa Perez from continuing to fire. This conclusion is not altered by the fact that two of the bullets that hit Justyn Rosen were apparently fired by Officer Daniel Perez…. Seeing Teresa Perez standing over Justyn Rosen and repeatedly shooting him from point-blank range, the three officers, from varying positions, were attempting to shoot Teresa Perez to end her murderous attack. The actions of these officers were reasonable, appropriate and necessary…. Officer Joey Perez’s decision not to fire…demonstrated sound judgment and weapon control on his part.
    “Without an instant of hesitation, these four officers responded to this life-threatening confrontation…. Their willingness to put their lives at great risk to help another is deeply appreciated and is in the highest tradition of protecting and serving our community.”
    Randy Yoder, Joey Perez, Danny Perez, and Captain Joe Padilla received Denver’s Medal of Honor for their bravery on October 3, 2003.
    They are all grateful to be alive, but they wish that it had never happened. Randy Yoder carries two deep scars from Teresa’s bullet. They all bear the emotional scars that come from being involved in the violent deaths of others.

All for Nothing

The following case is one of the strangest, saddest, and most brutal multiple murders I have ever encountered. The human beings involved are the last people that anyone—including me—could picture being caught in such a violent situation. They were all winners, intelligent, attractive, successful, high-functioning, admired. They were relatively young, with the whole world in front of them.
    This was not a case where one could trace their lives back to their childhoods and predict what lay ahead. Their deaths shocked not only their families and their friends but an entire city.
    In the end, what happened can be blamed on jealousy, mindless, raging, uncontrolled jealousy. When the green-eyed monster grips someone, the most mild-mannered and organized individual becomes unrecognizable.
    In a way, that simple truth explains the end of the story; in another way, nothing can ever explain it. I suspect that not even the killer can say why he did what he did.
    I don’t think I can, either.

Sometimes true-crime cases hit much too close to home. This one involves someone whose life touched mine a few times, if only tangentially. Early in my career, I did some work for him, but we never actually met in person. Like most television viewers in Seattle, I often watched Larry Sturholm’s segment on KIRO-TV’s nightly news. He and his older brother, Phil, both worked for the CBS affiliate. Phil, a gentle, quiet, and very intelligent man, was a cameraman and later the executive editor of the news at KIRO.
    In his part of the news, “Larry at Large,” Sturholm was both hilarious and sensitive. He did the lighter side of the news and always managed to come up with intriguing offbeat subjects. One of his funniest shows was about a Canada goose that decided a certain suburban driveway and garage door would be his territory, and he literally flew in the face of anyone who dared come close, including Larry Sturholm.
    Anyone who was innovative or adventurous or any well-known eccentric living in the Greater Seattle area eventually found himself spotlighted on “Larry at Large”: A family that was building an igloo; an elderly mother and her grown son who regularly crashed high-society parties, filling purse and pockets with buffet items and souvenirs; bizarre would-be politicians who jousted with city fathers; attention-seekers who dyed their hair purple or pink; they were all ideal subjects who could count on getting a call from Larry Sturholm. He never seemed to run out of feature stories, and no matter how grim the hard news was, you could count on Sturholm to end the broadcasts with something that made you