Worth More Dead

clemency. “I just think this process is so sick,” he said. “I thought it was a joke. I said, ‘It’s impossible. He got life without parole.’ ”
    Her brother remembered seeing Debra as she lay in her coffin with scarves carefully draped around her neck and her hair styled so that it clung to her cheeks. “It was to hide the knife marks on her beautiful face because she was literally sliced to pieces….”
    Phil Sturholm recalled that the Medical Examiner’s Office had strongly advised him not to view his brother’s body. He did not feel that seven and a half years per victim even approached justice. “Neither mercy nor clemency was uttered by Mr. Pawlyk [when he was stabbing his victims three hundred times].” Sturholm continued, “His crime was savage and cruel.”
    And indeed it was. Governor Locke, who was quite aware of the horror in Issaquah fifteen years earlier, chose not to override the recommendation of the clemency board. Pawlyk would remain in prison. He has said that he feels an obligation to do good. And, in prison, he has done that. He will almost certainly continue to teach and perform acts of kindness inside prison walls and fulfill his obligation there. But not even a forensic psychiatrist can predict how he would react if he were free and might once again be consumed with jealousy and a terrible blow to his pride.
    The mass of men and women experience broken relationships, jealousy, wounded pride, and despair over lost love. It is never easy for any of us.
    Only a tiny percentage of humans react with unbelievable violence.
    In Larry Sturholm’s own words, William Pawlyk did it “all for nothing.”
     
    Over the years, the stress of living through the murders of Debra Sweiger and Larry Sturholm took a toll on those who had cared deeply for them: Mark Breakey, who tried so hard to get Debra the emergency treatment she so desperately needed, died at a young age, still haunted by the images of that July night. King County Detective Joe Purcell, who headed the investigation team and was of immense help to the prosecution, retired early. He was never able to forget the shock of seeing a “dead man” rise up from a tub of bloody water like something in a horror movie. Judy Sturholm, Larry’s wife, died at the age of 57 in 2001. Phil Sturholm, Larry’s brother, stayed active in his television career, still believing that the news should be truthful, no matter whom it impacts. A faithful member of his church, he has tried to find forgiveness toward his brother’s killer. It has not been easy.
    Phil reportedly did finally have a conversation with Pawlyk about Larry’s last moments, although what was said is an intensely private matter and will remain private.
    I wish that I could find the answer to why Bill Pawlyk reacted to romantic rejection with such stunning violence, but I never have been able to. Men have been destroying women who try to leave them for centuries, and every day I hear from a few women who live in fear of reprisal from men who will not let them go free. Of course, some men do let go.
    And some do not.
    In prison, Bill Pawlyk helps many people. He plans to appeal his sentence in a few years. Freed from the restraints he lives under, would he ever again fall so passionately and possessively in love that he might once more be dangerous if he were thwarted?
    I honestly don’t know.

A Desperate Housewife

There is a bleak kind of irony in this case. The water-shed point in this remarkably unhappy marriage came about several years ago, and I began to write it long before the blockbuster ABC Sunday night show Desperate Housewives took America by storm. To almost everyone’s surprise, the new show captivated a major share of viewers almost from its debut. The lives of five gorgeous, totally fictional housewives living on Wisteria Lane in their perfect houses with their not-so-perfect husbands are full of romance, affairs, suicides, murders, drug addiction, nosy neighbors, money problems, and keeping up appearances. The plotlines are clearly designed to end each week’s episode with a mysterious cliff-hanger and everyone has a secret—or two—or even three. Despite the constant threat of sudden violent death in the television series, the show is humorous. It’s written in strokes that are much too broad to be taken seriously.
    In the true-crime genre I write, there are too many stories of real desperate housewives who find themselves trapped in relationships they