Worth More Dead

happy family gatherings. Carolyn had always loved the baking and decorating of Christmas, and one wonders if her husband ever thought about what he had taken away from his children and, even, from himself.
    Instead of reminiscing, he planned what he would do next. He had, according to Clarence Burns, come up with a diabolical scenario that would not only bring about the ultimate revenge for Carolyn’s alleged affair but also lead to his own freedom. Bob Durall knew the name of the man Carolyn was attracted to and seethed to think that he was locked up while Dirk Lansing* walked around free. As far as Durall was concerned, Lansing was the one responsible for breaking up his family; his own infidelity and lies were entirely different matters.
    Clarence Burns was due to be released in the spring of 1999. Durall had plans for him. Before he broached the subject, he groomed Burns to believe that they were good friends. Burns had no money to buy food, personal-care products, or anything else from the jail commissary, so Durall generously shared his purchases with him. He also arranged for money to be put into Burns’s jail account. Durall said they would go on being friends on the outside once they were both free. If Burns did what he asked, Durall would not only pay him thousands of dollars, he guaranteed that the onetime street person would become much more than a friend; he would be a member of the family. “My kids will call you Uncle Clarence,” Durall said. “You’ll be visiting in our house often.”
    Burns had some dangerous assignments to fulfill before he would qualify as a beloved uncle. Once he was let out of jail, he was to track down Dirk Lansing and somehow overcome him, tie him up, and do whatever was necessary to hold him prisoner. Durall wanted Lansing dead and Burns was to eventually kill him, but first he had to force Carolyn’s alleged ex-lover to write a letter admitting that he was the one who murdered her.
    After the letter was written in Dirk Lansing’s handwriting, Clarence Burns was supposed to kill him. His body and car had to be hidden where no one would ever find them. When that was accomplished, Burns was to make copies of the letter in which the now dead man admitted killing Carolyn and mail them to television stations, newspapers, the King County prosecutors, and to Bob Durall himself.
    Since Lansing would never be found, Durall was sure the police would conclude that he had fled, perhaps to another country, to hide. They would believe that Dirk Lansing had felt guilty enough to admit to killing Carolyn, and to send his confession letters all over Seattle. That would lead to Bob’s being let out of jail.
    Instead of being a reviled murder suspect, Bob would be seen as a wronged man, a widower left with his motherless children. He would get his children back, his job back, his house back, his whole life back—except, of course, for Carolyn.
    The two men had many discussions on how not to leave fingerprints on the letters or the car—should it ever be found—and how Burns could track Lansing down. The method he used to murder his prisoner didn’t much matter to Bob Durall, just so long as it worked.
    Clarence Burns had a checkered past, but he had never killed anyone, and he became afraid of his jail buddy as he listened to the cold-blooded plan. It had seemed to be only a fantasy at first; soon he realized that Durall was completely serious. Burns agreed that he would do what Durall wanted, partly because he didn’t want to anger him and partly because he didn’t want to give up the treats from the commissary.
    In February 1999, Burns was written up for breaking one of the jail rules and moved to another cell block. There, he was no longer afraid of reprisals from Durall. He asked his jailers to tell the Renton police he wanted to talk with them.
    Clarence Burns said that his jailmate had told him that he had killed his wife because she was going to leave him.
    Now Durall faced not only charges of premeditated first-degree murder, but on July 9, 1999, the deputy prosecutor, Patricia Eakes, filed to amend the complaint against him to add a charge of solicitation to commit first-degree murder. Already facing up to twenty-six years in prison if found guilty of killing Carolyn, he now faced many more years.
    His fourth attorney, Michelle Shaw, had done her best to convince Durall to plead guilty, as his earlier attorneys had, telling him that the State’s case against him was