Worth More Dead

release some of the Larry at Large film, and his last time on the screen, heading into the sunset, was ubiquitous on the news over the next week. They would not, however, give permission to use it on the tabloid television shows whose producers seemed likely to pounce on the most salacious versions of the double murders.
     
    I wasn’t eager to write the story, either. Judy Sturholm came to my house a few months after she became a widow, and we talked for hours. She told me that she had had no idea that Debra Sweiger had a place in her husband’s life until they were killed. When the couple’s credit card bill came in the month after Larry was murdered, there was a charge from a florist for flowers that were delivered to an address Judy didn’t recognize. Still trying to understand what had happened, Judith called the florist and asked who the recipient had been. It was Debra Sweiger.
    Judy was far more sad than angry, and she was frustrated because she could no longer discuss what had happened with her husband. I suspect that in the long run the aborted trip to the Cayman Islands would have been only a blip in an otherwise solid marriage.
    Judy decided that it wasn’t time yet to write a book, and I promised to set it aside. As it happened, I waited sixteen years. Like Larry Sturholm’s coworkers and friends, I struggled with my own ethics. Should I tell this remarkable story or let it go? Abiding by Judy Sturholm’s wishes, I let it go—until I learned that William Pawlyk was trying to have his sentence commuted and until I met a woman to whom he confessed.
     
    Cindy Versdahl, who was in her early thirties, had never been to a trial before, but she had been one of Larry Sturholm’s devoted viewers, and she was saddened to learn that he had been murdered. “I was stunned,” she said. “And then I was curious about why anyone would do that.” When she learned that William Pawlyk was going to trial on two charges of aggravated murder, she decided to watch the legal system at work.
    “I took the bus down to the courthouse in Seattle. It was standing room only, and they wouldn’t let me in, but finally someone left and I found a seat.”
    Cindy went to Pawlyk’s trial twice, fascinated by the testimony she heard. But she was disappointed when a defense attorney objected to a witness, and the judge cancelled the afternoon sessions on the second day so they could debate the problem. After taking a day off work, the long bus ride, and waiting to get into the trial, she had the whole long afternoon free.
    “I was mad,” she admits, “and so I decided to go over to the jail and talk to Pawlyk.”
    She wasn’t intimidated by the fact that she knew nothing about procedures for jail visitors. She handed a note to the bailiff in the courtroom, asking what to do. She was told she could go over to the King County Jail and ask to see Pawlyk. It would be up to him and his jailers whether to grant her a visit. And that was what she did, taking the elevator to the floor indicated. Cindy waited for several hours then was led into a visitor’s area. Bill Pawlyk came out to take a seat on the prisoner’s side. He wasn’t wearing the business suit he wore in court; he wore a bright orange jumpsuit, the kind reserved for “high-risk” prisoners locked up for major crimes. He was curious, too, about this stranger who had come to visit him.
     
    “Who are you?” he asked her.
    She explained that she wasn’t a reporter or anyone special, just someone who wanted to understand him.
    He didn’t have many visitors, he told her, and he’d decided to see what she wanted. He spoke with what seemed to her to be a “New York accent.”
    “I understand who the victims were,” she began, “but I wanted to know why did you kill Larry Sturholm? How could you do that?”
    “I wasn’t expecting to see him,” Pawlyk said, as if that were a clear enough answer.
    Pawlyk told Cindy Versdahl that he had traveled every weekend to see Debra. And she had betrayed him. His marriages had failed, and his children didn’t communicate with him. He had known what he had to do. He said that even though his lawyers were basing his defense on insanity, that wasn’t true.
    “I’m not insane,” he said firmly. “It was premeditated. I planned the whole thing. I did it consciously.”
    She stared at him, temporarily speechless.
    “It’s over and done with now,” he said easily. “No use talking about it.”
    He wanted to talk