Smoke, Mirrors, and Murder and Other True Cases Read online

  But the King County personnel office told Bill he could finish his honeymoon—he didn’t have to come right back to Seattle: he could join the fall class of basic police school in September of 1979.

  He was due to graduate in December, and they would start the new decade with Bill’s ambition to be a cop realized.

  They found an apartment in Lake Hills where the rent was cheap; at least it seemed that way in the summertime. Bill and Sue moved in, but when the weather turned cold they discovered that the heating bill made the low rent seem something less than a bargain.

  Still, the young couple were both earning good salaries—Bill as a deputy with the sheriff’s office and Sue in a rather unusual job for a woman. During the summers while she was in college, she worked for Sears in the automotive department as a “tire buster.” She got thirty-five cents more per hour than regular clerks. She didn’t mind putting on new tires or installing batteries, and she made as much money as any of the male employees.

  In her early twenties, Sue Harris Jensen was a confident young woman, happy in her marriage, and solidly behind her husband’s goals.

  As the Jensens settled in, she took a job with Automotive Wholesalers as a sales representative. She knew what she was talking about as she sold their products to auto parts, hardware, variety, and grocery stores.

  “I always liked cars,” she said, “and as a commission-only sales rep it wasn’t long before I was making more money than Bill was.”

  Bill didn’t seem to mind. He had grown up without money, and he didn’t care who made the higher salary; he was glad that Sue was pitching in to build their bank account. In most things, Sue was amenable to doing things Bill’s way, although she wasn’t a subservient wife. She knew Bill admired her ability to talk to perfect strangers, and to find common interests with them.

  Bill and Sue Jensen agreed that they wanted to have children one day, but they decided to wait four or five years. They were young, and they were both happy in their jobs. Bill had reached the first steps of his ambitions as a police officer, and Sue liked her job, too. She ended up working for Automotive Wholesalers for six years. With Sue focusing most of her attention on her husband, their relationship worked. They got along well during the first five years of their marriage.

  Sue didn’t become pregnant until mid-1984. She was delighted, although their good news was somewhat bittersweet. Lorraine Harris had been diagnosed with terminal breast cancer, and her family all knew that she probably wouldn’t be around to enjoy her grandchild for long. Still, Sue’s mother was upbeat and optimistic about Sue’s pregnancy, and both Sue and Carol tried to spend as much time with their mother as they could.

  Bill too seemed pleased that they were going to have a baby. But they began to have serious arguments. In one awful fight, Bill kicked Sue in the abdomen, and she was terrified that he had hurt the baby. She didn’t report that to the police; it would have endangered his job. In time, she managed to push the memory of that violence to the back of her mind, making up excuses for him.

  When Jennifer was born in March 1985, Bill was very proud of his beautiful blond baby daughter. Sue had worked selling auto parts right up until Jenny was born, and she was happy to retire to be a stay-at-home mom.

  In the fall of 1985, Lorraine Harris’s doctors told her daughters that she probably didn’t have much longer to live, and Sue spent every moment she could with her mother, watching Lorraine with baby Jenny. She was grateful for every day her mother had to enjoy her granddaughter, as brief as their time together was.

  Working as a deputy sheriff can be a very stressful occupation, and there were times when Bill seemed tense and anxious. When he struck out at Sue, he blamed it on his job. Even so, Sue was shocked when, as her mother was dying, Bill announced that he needed a vacation. He wanted her to go to Hawaii with him. He appeared to have no perception at all that his mother-in-law was dying, and that she should come first. Instead, he was irritated that Sue thought his need for a vacation wasn’t the most important problem they had. Rather than stand by her and her sister as Lorraine slipped away, Bill went to Hawaii with a high school friend instead.

  Lorraine Harris passed away on November 18, 1985.

  Sue remembered this insensitivity of Bill’s, but they were both so happy with their new baby that, once more, she put it out of her mind. She tried to see things from her husband’s point of view and thought that he must have been under more stress than she had known. But admittedly, she was less patient with his moods and his pouting now that she had an infant to care for.

  Lorraine Harris’s will left her assets to her two daughters, and because she had managed her money wisely, both Sue and Carol inherited a surprisingly large sum: hundreds of thousands of dollars. Lorraine left the house to her girls, and Bill, Sue, and Jenny moved into the house in Newport Hills where Sue had grown up. They put the proceeds from the sale of their house into an interest-bearing account—a joint account. Uncharacteristically, Sue deposited the money from her inheritance into a separate bank account, one in her name only. She did, however, write checks to deposit into their joint account whenever Bill asked her to do so.

  Sue deferred to Bill in handling money, and he paid the bills and kept their books. She didn’t check on how or where he spent their money. She didn’t see any need to.

  Bill handled their investments, and he took some dicey gambles in buying technology and computer stocks. Through a combination of luck and clever buying, the Jensens’ fortunes rose. Bill bought Microsoft and Intel in the days when those stocks soared, making millionaires overnight. He didn’t make that much money, but his buying on the margin appeared to be heading them in that direction.

  Because Bill’s job kept him on duty for long hours, and sometimes he slept during the day, Sue did all the yard work and painted their house inside and out; as the years went by she would be the Girl Scout leader, room mother, and volunteer for the myriad parent participation projects that needed workers at Jenny’s elementary school.

  Bill took a real interest in Jenny’s involvement in sports. He was pleased when she turned out to be a natural athlete, and he coached her basketball and baseball teams. He took great pleasure in his role as a coach, and Jenny was proud that her friends liked her father so much.

  There were some parents at the ball games who found Bill Jensen too critical, too loud, and too competitive for someone who coached youngsters. They thought he took a lot of the fun out of games that were meant for small children.

  “Bill Jensen would yell and belittle other coaches and umpires,” the mother of one of the girls he coached said. “He would use his size and intimidate anyone who disagreed with him—to the point that it would embarrass and humiliate the children and the parents.”

  Bill’s size was a factor in the way he was sometimes perceived as an arrogant, almost bullying, man. Sue had liked the way he towered over her when she first met him, but by the seventh year of their marriage, it was no longer much of an attribute. Now he used his height and weight to bully her. He weighed over 250 pounds, and the scale continued to climb. He was given to temper tantrums, and although she usually tried to calm him down, Sue sometimes got mad, too. Shortly after her mother died, Bill had deliberately thrown a cherished figurine that Lorraine had given to Sue and it shattered into a dozen pieces.

  “I was so angry,” Sue confessed, “that I flung a picture frame at him. I called the King County Police. We lived in the same district where Bill had once worked, and the deputies who came out were the guys Bill had worked with.”

  Sue was the one who got a citation. Their fights were more frequent, but Sue still hesitated to call the department where Bill worked. Making a domestic violence complaint against a deputy sheriff would jeopardize his career, and being a cop was all Bill Jensen had ever wanted to do. She didn’t want to harm Bill’s dream job, and so Sue backed off. If she hadn’t been so angry that he’d deliberately broken something precious that her mother had given her, she would never have c
alled the police on him that one time.

  Unlike most police officers, who have a sense of camaraderie with their fellow cops, Bill Jensen had few friends in the King County Sheriff’s Office, and no close buddies at all. He was frequently moved from one unit to another. He had a reputation as a braggart and certainly not as a team player. Winning was his foremost goal in whatever activity he participated in. In law enforcement, it is essential for officers to use teamwork in many situations, but that was one aspect of his job where Bill Jensen failed. That was probably why he was transferred often.

  He sometimes patrolled on a motorcycle, and he really enjoyed that. He and Sue both had motorcycles.

  Jenny was three and a half years old when the Jensens’ son, Scott, was born seven weeks prematurely on September 9, 1988. Scott was very frail and doctors warned Sue and Bill that he might develop cerebral palsy or other problems. At first he seemed to be delicate because of his premature birth, but neonatal specialists tested him for other possible causes. When he was allowed to come home, Scott had to have a heart monitor and both Sue and Bill worried terribly about him, checking on him often to be sure he was still breathing. Scott was ultimately diagnosed with Noonan’s syndrome, a disorder that had only been isolated in 1963. It can compromise a number of body systems.

  No one was certain that Scott’s heart would be affected, and both his parents did their best to give their fragile baby boy the best care possible.

  Sue suffered the post-baby blues more than she had with Jenny, but that was to be expected; she was so concerned about Scott. Bill tried to tease her out of what was undoubtedly postpartum depression by threatening to call “people in little white uniforms” to come and take her away. He warned her, teasing her sadistically, that she wouldn’t be able to see her kids.

  Scott did have some cardiac problems and a few other, relatively minor side effects of Noonan’s. He was in and out of Children’s Orthopedic Hospital in Seattle, and he developed pneumonia. Sue rarely slept, and she recognized the wisdom of signing herself into Overlake Hospital for a week for help with her depression.

  “I just felt as though I couldn’t deal with another loss,” Sue remembered, “so soon after losing my mother.”

  For months, it was touch and go whether Scott would survive, but he was a fighter and he made it. He was an adorable little boy, and both his parents devoted themselves to him. Bill couldn’t have been a better father for him. If there were things Scott couldn’t do, Bill was determined to find activities he could do.

  He helped Scott with his manual dexterity with special toys, rode him around on his back, and took both his children to ride the merry-go-round at a shopping mall in Bellevue. Both Jenny and Scott adored their father, and from an early age did their best to please him. As he grew, Scott idolized his father—this tall, husky man in the police uniform.

  This was especially true when Scott watched Bill on his motorcycle, and he and Scott shared a love of the big bikes. As soon as Scott could ride, Bill got him a small motorbike, and he was thrilled. Bill loved his small son and showed him more tenderness than he demonstrated even with his daughter or his wife. Jenny was feisty like her mother, and that sometimes irritated Bill, although he was very proud of her, too, and always enjoyed her company.

  As Jenny grew, she was the very epitome of a beautiful, blond girl. And Bill Jensen bragged about his perfect daughter.

  Bill Jensen’s two children might have been the best thing that ever happened to him. They admired him, loved him without question, and clung to all the good memories they had of their early years with their father. In their eyes, he could do no wrong.

  Still, for all positive images the Jensens’ marriage exhibited, there were darker events, things that Sue tried to hide. Usually she was able to do that, fearing that if she told anyone outside the walls of their home it would be breaking her commitment to Bill.

  But on December 9, 1988, Sue called her sister, Carol, and she was crying. Embarrassed to tell anyone else, Sue confessed to Carol that Bill had pulled hard on her shoulder and twisted her arm behind her back. She had bruises on both hands where he had held on to her, and she had bald spots where he had yanked out some of her hair. Carol insisted on taking Sue to her doctor.

  While Sue was being treated, a King County Police car pulled up outside the Jensens’ Newport Hills home. Bill had reported Sue as the instigator of their fight, and insisted that she had to be committed to be treated as a mentally ill patient. When Carol explained what had actually happened, the deputies pulled back and drove away.

  The next day, Sue discovered that Bill had withdrawn $25,000 from their house-sale account. He hadn’t mentioned it to her, and she was troubled that he had taken so much money out without their agreeing to it.

  “But Bill always took care of the bills, and our investments,” Sue recalled. “If I asked about any financial move he’d made or wondered about our accounts, he told me if I didn’t like the way he was handling things, I could take over if I wanted to—and I always backed down. I knew he was better at it than I could be. That time in December 1988, Scott was only two months old, he was still on the heart monitor, and Bill and I were both nervous. And I wanted so much to have a happy family. I thought we could work it out.”

  As the nineties approached, Bill was part of a close family. Besides Sue, Jenny, and Scott, he was always welcome at Carol’s home. They all got together at Thanksgiving and Christmas. His wife loved him, his children adored him, and his sister-in-law and her fiancé were happy to see him coming.

  Sue’s main ambition in life was to be the best mother she could be, and she loved being home with Jenny and Scott. She continued to volunteer for any activity they were in where a mother was needed—from room mother to Scouts.

  Bill got Jenny started with basketball in kindergarten and coached her teams all the way to sixth grade. They began baseball when Jenny was in the second grade. Bill was the coach for both sports, and she was proud to have her dad out there coaching. Jenny would remember their winning record, and that her girlfriends really liked her father. “He was a great coach, and it was fun!”

  Sometimes, though, the Jensens’ marriage was less fun.

  In 1986, Sue and Bill had gone to counseling, a requirement after the domestic violence report when Bill had smashed the figurine. That early report said that it was “likely” that Sue was suffering from Battered Woman’s syndrome, but Bill’s stance in the few sessions he attended was that it was Sue who needed “fixing.” Their psychologist felt that she and Bill did need marriage counseling, but it was hollow advice because both of them needed to participate fully if they hoped to save an increasingly combative marriage. But no amount of coaxing from Sue could get Bill to open up in front of a marriage counselor.

  Sue and Bill continued to argue, but they always made up. Inevitably, Sue blamed herself, wishing that she hadn’t said the wrong thing and annoyed him, or that she hadn’t been so quick to argue with him. She was anything but a mousy wife; she was an active combatant. Still, there were a lot of good times between the difficult spaces. The Jensens took family vacations, camped out, and they all enjoyed the kids’ sports.

  Yet the incidents of physical abuse continued. Each time, after he’d hurt her, Bill told Sue it was her fault. She had made him angry enough to use force on her. Her perception of the world began to change; she looked at happy marriages around her and wondered what she was doing wrong. She began to blame herself for all the problems she and Bill faced.

  Being married to a cop is never easy for a wife. There is always the fear that when they leave to go out on a shift, they may not come back. Some officers share what happens on the job with their wives, but most tend to keep it to themselves, trying hard to separate their home life from those things they see out on the streets.

  Knowing that their husbands are often the objects of flirtation from other women who are attracted to the uniform, a lot of wives are either jealous or filled with anxiety. Socially, cops are tr
eated differently by “civilians,” who approach them at parties to try to get tickets fixed or complain about some injustice they feel they’ve suffered at the hands of the police. That’s the reason cops tend to stick together, socializing with one another in venues where they don’t feel as though they’re under a microscope.

  But Bill Jensen still didn’t socialize with his fellow officers. Although there is almost always solidarity in police agencies and cops officially have one another’s backs on the job, Bill didn’t have any more close friends in the sheriff’s office than he had had in college.

  There was something about him that turned other deputies off—perhaps his tendency toward braggadocio, his know-it-all attitude, or his quick temper.

  Bill continued to be transferred laterally within the department. After he graduated from the police academy in December 1979, he was assigned to the Burien Precinct near Sea-Tac Airport, where he worked a patrol car for about eight months. Next, he drove a “highway car,” where he was on call in a thirty-block area.

  “Basically, you’re in charge,” he explained later in his usual self-aggrandizing manner. “The reason they selected me for that was because I had a very calming effect in situations. I didn’t let them get out of hand. As soon as I showed up, I was able to settle things down.

  “They wanted people to calm situations down,” he said, “not to exasperate people.”

  Bill usually worked Third Watch (11 P.M.–7 A.M.) or Second Watch (3 P.M.–11 P.M.). After a year in the highway car, Bill was transferred to the Kent Precinct in the southeast portion of King County, and he worked patrol there in a one-man car for four years. In an effort to penetrate a burglary ring, Bill did some undercover detective work, which he enjoyed. Although he had once hoped to move into a detective unit, that didn’t happen, and Bill was transferred next to the North Precinct, where he once again drove a patrol car. He was on call for a number of lightly populated, unincorporated areas in King County.