Worth More Dead

were flying off to a romantic spot with a woman as glamorous as Debra Sweiger was. And it’s quite possible that Sturholm had envisioned the trip that lay ahead as more than just a business trip for him and Debra.
    At any rate, Larry had not told Judith about his friendship with Debra Sweiger nor that she was going along on the trip to the Cayman Islands. After he said good-bye to his wife, Sturholm rented a car and drove away from the airport, headed for the Issaquah area. He planned to pick Debra up when she got home and take her back to the airport with him.
    He didn’t know that the house wasn’t empty. Debra had given him a key to her house so he could come in and wait for her, but he didn’t need it: he found the door unlocked. As he stepped in, he was confronted by Bill Pawlyk. But it wasn’t the same Pawlyk that his family and friends had known for decades; instead, he was a man on a deadly mission.
    On Sunday, the day before, Pawlyk had purchased two razor-sharp hunting knives. He’d taped them to his socks where they would be hidden by his trousers. He knew exactly what he was going to do as he made the long drive west from the Tri-Cities area.
    He didn’t know that Debra was almost home free or that Larry Sturholm was planning to wait for her in her house. Had Pawlyk delayed only one more day or even a few more hours, they would have been on a plane headed toward an island paradise and their lives would have played out in entirely different ways.
    According to Pawlyk, Sturholm was as surprised to see him standing there in the foyer of Debra’s house as he was to see Sturholm.
    There is no way to validate what happened next because only one eyewitness remains, and he had reason to fabricate. Bill Pawlyk said later that the two of them had a friendly enough conversation at first. But Sturholm had soon realized to his horror why Pawlyk was there. He tried to reason with a man possessed who had no intention of letting Debra go.
    It was like reasoning with a mad dog. The thin veneer of civility and polite conversation fell away, and it all went sour. Larry Sturholm was a great talker, a man whose decades of interviewing people had taught him to understand the frailties and bitter disappointments of other men, but he was not a fighter. He had no reason to be armed, and he must have been totally shocked when Bill Pawlyk reached to his ankles and produced the knives he’d bought to kill Debra.
    In a blind rage, Pawlyk struck out at Sturholm. Victims who have survived stabbings say that they never felt the cuts; instead, they recall only the sensation of someone hitting them with what felt like a closed fist. Hopefully, that is true. Trapped and unprepared, Larry Sturholm died rapidly from more than a hundred fatal thrusts and the exsanguination that followed.
    Pawlyk left Sturholm’s body where it could not easily be seen by someone entering through the front door. Then he took time to shower and shave while he waited for Debra.
    When she arrived home, she found to her surprise that Bill Pawlyk was there to meet her. He was committed now and perhaps angrier than he had been before. He had proof that Sturholm had a key to Debra’s house. In his mind, that was also proof of her infidelity.
    According to Pawlyk, Debra also tried to reason with him. Since he had cleaned himself up, his clothing wasn’t blood-stained. She probably didn’t know that Larry Sturholm had been attacked and was dead and that her ex-lover had waited for hours in her quiet house for her return.
    Again, no one can know for sure what happened next. Pawlyk said he allowed Debra to make a phone call to her partner, knowing that no one could possibly arrive in time to stop him from what he planned to do. Joyce quickly picked up on Debra’s coded words, realized that she was in trouble, and sent her husband, Mark, racing to Debra’s nearby house.
    Already wounded but still conscious, Debra asked Pawlyk if she could write a good-bye note to her daughter. He permitted her to do that. It was a short note, stained with her blood: “Jenny, I love you. Mom.”
    And then Bill Pawlyk carried out his original plan. No matter how many years have passed since that terrible night, writing about it is very difficult. It always will be. Pawlyk cut Debra Sweiger’s throat in a final cruel act of revenge and jealousy after he had already stabbed her dozens of times. Believing that she was dead or fatally wounded, he left her in a welter of her