Worth More Dead

extremely strong. But he was adamant that he wanted to go to trial. Shaw withdrew, and another attorney, Don Minor, agreed to represent him.
    Two years had passed since Carolyn Durall’s murder when her husband finally went on trial in Judge Deborah Fleck’s courtroom in Superior Court in Kent in June 2000. The weather in King County was much the same as it was when Carolyn left her office for the last time, saying, “Wish me luck…”
    Because the case had often been covered in the media during those two years, it wasn’t easy to pick a jury. Ten of Carolyn’s coworkers were in the courtroom for the opening statements, and at least one was present for the entire trial. It was usually her best friend, Denise Jannusch, who took careful notes so that she could share them with the staff at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter. The company granted her a sad kind of leave; they wanted only to see Carolyn finally receive justice.
    Judge Fleck ruled that both charges would be considered in this trial; she would not separate the murder charges from the conspiracy charges. However, the prosecutor’s office dropped the conspiracy charges halfway through the jury selection phase without comment. And they kept their promise not to tell the jurors that it was Bob Durall who led police and medical examiner’s deputies to Carolyn’s body deep in the lonely woods.
    Now, finally, the trial, which took almost seven weeks to slowly unwind a complicated story of suspense and deception, had begun.
    Deputy Prosecutor Jeff Baird made the opening statements for the State. They were succinct and horrifying.
    “She wanted a divorce; he wanted her dead,” Baird told the jurors. “She searched for the best way to leave; he searched for the best way to murder her…. He crushed her skull, stuffed her in a garbage bag, and dumped her in the hills.”
    While Carolyn was reading Too Good to Leave: Too Bad to Stay and trying to figure out if she had enough financial reSources to raise her children on her own, Bob was writing down those things important to him. The Renton police had found an ominous list in one of his filing cabinets, one that harkened back to the sites his fellow workers found on his computer. It read “bat, gloves, pillows.” Did he jot down those things after he read about “kill + spouse” and “suffocate…murder…poison (Sleep 2 pills (herbs), 3 Death?” He also wrote down chores he faced and forensic details: “disposal, tire tracks, footprints.”
    Bob Durall was dressed for court in a well-cut gray suit and a crisp white shirt and tie. As he sat beside Don Minor, his attorney, he looked like one himself. He showed no emotion as Baird spoke.
    The State had so many witnesses, each one verifying and validating what had been said by the others. There was a mountain of both circumstantial and physical evidence. How could any “prudent juror” not decide that the man at the defense table had indeed plotted, planned, researched, lied, and manipulated almost everyone around him before and after Carolyn Durall died at his hands in a brutal attack?
    But jurors are never predictable.
    Don Minor had said he wanted to delay his opening statement until the defense case began. Apparently, Bob Durall was now undecided about taking the stand in his own defense. Across the board, defense attorneys in major felony cases advise their clients not to testify. The moment they do, they open themselves up to cross-examination by the prosecutors. But Bob Durall himself was really all the defense had going for it.
    So far, Durall’s witnesses hadn’t had much punch. There was the woman from the minimart who was sure she sold gas to Carolyn a few days after the night she disappeared, testifying that she recognized her when she saw the Missing fliers her friends distributed.
    A physical therapist said that Bob Durall already had an arm injury before the night of his wife’s vanishing. Whether it was as serious as it proved to be when he consulted a physician a week later wasn’t clear. A torn biceps muscle can’t be fixed with physical therapy; it requires surgery to keep it from atrophying.
    Would Durall testify? On Tuesday, July 25, he was still indecisive, and even Minor wasn’t sure what he intended to do. The end of the trial was approaching, but Minor had no choice but to request a delay. Judge Fleck agreed to stop the trial in midflight so that Minor could read the computer disk that contained email messages police had seized