Worth More Dead

checked her background, he included a reference to her arrest ten years before for having used a credit card not her own and piling up charges before the owner realized what she was doing. Silverman submitted that her stalking Rosen was a case of Abuse of the Elderly. The letter had a chastising tone that angered Teresa, and it carried a warning: “Mr. Rosen is nearly eighty years old and your days of bothering him are now over.”
    He was wrong.
     
    The letter from Justyn’s attorney was a slap in the face to a woman who was unable to understand that her own actions had caused it. Teresa was in so much pain and anxiety that she lost what little ability she had to empathize with anyone else. When she was cornered, she had always been able to ferret out her opponent’s weakness and would play on it. She knew that the man who had forsaken her was extremely committed to his religion. Being Jewish was important to Rosen. She now made fun of his religion, denigrating it, telling him that he was supposed to suffer as all Jewish people were because they were “bad.”
    When she told Bob Costello that she didn’t understand why that upset Justyn so much, he tried to explain to her that she had gone too far; that having been born after World War II, she obviously didn’t understand what Hitler’s regime had done to the Jews.
    “She asked me if I would have left her over that,” Costello recalled, “and I told her yes.”
    Teresa’s world revolved around herself; it always had. She was narcissistic and antisocial, so stunted emotionally from her childhood of abandonment that she constantly saw herself as a victim.
    As always, Teresa called the people who had been there for her, even when she was exasperating. She talked to her foster mother in Ohio, sobbing over the phone that Justyn didn’t want her anymore. Patricia agreed to call him and ask him why he was leaving Teresa. When she did, he explained that Teresa had become too controlling. He told the Ohio woman not to call him again. It was over.
    Still, Teresa followed Justyn. She was even more beautiful than when he first met her, and most men would have been pleased to have such a statuesque woman walking just behind them, if they were unaware of her obsessive tenacity. But she was unhinged. Costello had suggested that if she felt she must confront Rosen, she should hire an attorney and confront him that way. She said she might consider that; she could sue him for palimony.
    On October 2, Justyn Rosen, through his lawyer, Craig Silverman, filed a sworn affidavit asking for a restraining order that would stipulate that Teresa Perez must keep at least a hundred yards away from Rosen at all times. It was not unlike the requests that thousands of females who are victims of domestic violence ask for. Even if they obtain these orders, they are basically only pieces of paper that have proven to have little impact on jealous or deranged stalkers. But it would at least provide a reason for the police to arrest Teresa if she violated the restraining order.
    It was probably humiliating for the old man who had a good reputation in Denver to admit that he was being emotionally blackmailed, and he must have worried that it would cause gossip, but he had few options.
    “While I initially welcomed Ms. Perez’s company,” the statement read, “I have many times recently sought to end my relationship with her. In response, Ms. Perez has consistently demanded money from me to support herself and she is unwilling to let me terminate our relationship.”
    Although he did not describe the details of his relationship with Teresa, he noted that she had sent a letter to his wife. “She has recently made clear to me her willingness to deliver similar packages of information to my children and other people I care about.
    “I made the mistake of giving her money in the past, and now she feels she is entitled to more money. She is not.”
    He was an old man who was receiving treatment for cancer, still wealthy but not the powerhouse he had once been. His hands were gnarled, and he wore a classic Burberry cap to cover his bald pate. It was easy to feel sorry for him and for his wife, who was also 78 or 79. Even so, his chickens had come home to roost, and he had chosen the wrong woman for his last hurrah as a man with a beautiful young mistress.
    His statement revealed that he was afraid. He had come to dread Teresa’s messages on his voice mail and the constant glimpses of her in