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

  First, she cried. “I fell apart,” Sue admitted. “But I had my sister and four good girlfriends who were there for me. My sister took me by the shoulders and there was no nonsense about her. She told me, ‘This is exactly what Bill wants. He expects you to cave in. You have two kids. You’ve got to pull yourself together.’ And I did.”

  And then, with Janet Brooks’s help, she began to close out joint credit cards and freeze any other accounts that had been opened in both her name and Bill’s.

  Sue didn’t know where Bill lived; he had disappeared, along with their Sequoia SUV. She had even become her own private detective, determined to find the missing Sequoia. In her old Mustang or Jenny’s Impala she drove through parking lots looking for it. And then she deduced that wherever Bill was, he had probably flown there; he’d complained often enough that driving bothered his back and his knee. One day she went to the parking garage of the Sea-Tac Airport and drove up the winding ramps that led to each of the many levels there, looking especially in the handicapped spaces. And there it was. Bill had probably assumed it was safely hidden among the hundreds of vehicles left by travelers.

  Sue used the key she had, backed the Sequoia out, and left the Impala that Chuck Jensen had given to Jenny—with no key. They could come back to get that later. She had to pay $300 in parking charges to leave the airport garage, but she had her SUV back.

  She knew Bill would be very angry that she had found it. It was an expensive vehicle; they’d paid $48,000 for it the year before. To forestall Bill’s taking it again, Sue hid the SUV in a friend’s garage.

  In the first court hearing after Bill was served with divorce papers in July, the judge had awarded the Sequoia to Sue. She would be the one driving their children to school, sports events, doctors, and dentists, and taking the pets to the veterinarians. That didn’t sit well with Bill.

  Sue chose to believe that Bill hadn’t held Scott hostage on the day he moved out. Scott loved and trusted the father who had vowed the little boy would live, despite all odds, the father who sheltered him against the problems of the world. Even though Sue and Bill could no longer pretend that their marriage wasn’t over, that didn’t mean that Bill’s participation in his children’s lives would end.

  And yet beginning in the summer of 2001, Bill rarely attempted to see his children. He clearly wasn’t in the Seattle area. If his children heard from him once a month, they considered themselves fortunate. Once the divorce was final, surely they would be able to spend time with their father on a regular basis.

  Even so, no one could have had any idea of the tortuous and precarious road the Jensens would take as they headed for divorce—or the shocking ending that lay ahead.

  The breakup of any marriage that once began with high hopes is sad. That is hard enough; total, paralyzing terror is more than either the husband or wife should have to endure.

  Sue expected that Bill would make her life difficult, but she still wasn’t afraid of him.

  At first, Sue Jensen and her children felt mostly relief that they no longer had to live with Bill Jensen’s mercurial moods and his glowering presence. The no-contact/protection order was in place, but he made no effort to see Sue and contacted his children only sporadically. Those meetings and calls usually ended in tears.

  Sue’s attorney attempted to contact Bill’s lawyer to ask that they cooperate on putting together an inventory of the couple’s holdings. Once that was done, Sue could locate those assets and determine what had been used up or displaced, and negotiate repayment to the Jensens’ community property.

  Sue wasn’t greedy, but she wanted a fair accounting. Most of all, she wanted to be sure that there would be adequate provision for any medical care Scott might need in the future. He was doing very well, but Noonan’s syndrome made him vulnerable to a number of physical ailments, and Sue wanted to be sure he had the best care. Although Bill was supposed to continue their medical insurance, Sue was worried he would allow it to lapse—and he did. She kept up their medical insurance payments—even for Bill, because he reported all kinds of illnesses, from heart attacks to cancer.

  Jenny would soon be going to the University of Washington, and her mother wanted to be sure there was enough money to pay for her tuition, books, and lodging.

  Sue had never worried about taking care of their two children before; she had been secure in the knowledge that money had been set aside for them. But she was finding out that Bill had spent great chunks of that money. She had never been acquisitive or curious about the family budget, but now she vowed to find out where hundreds of thousands of dollars had gone, and to see that Bill paid back their community property.

  That would not be easy. The entire summer of 2001 passed and they were no closer to arranging a meeting where she and Bill and their attorneys could discuss a financial settlement in the Jensens’ divorce so they could move ahead to their decree.

  At some point over the long summer of 2001, Sue Jensen had started to fight back and take over the reins of her life.

  It was November 13 when the Jensens finally sat down in Janet Brooks’s office in an awkward and tense meeting. Sue sat diagonally across from Bill as Janet Brooks began a deposition from him by asking him innocuous questions about his date of birth, his education, his current address. He gave an address in Bellevue, saying he had moved in only four days earlier.

  He had no objection as she asked him about medications he currently took, listing almost a dozen mood elevators, heavy-duty pain pills, and over-the-counter pain medications. He acknowledged that he took those meds. Again and again, Bill Jensen referred to his chronic, intractable pain. He also explained that he had had a heart attack sometime in the prior five months, although he couldn’t recall just when that was, the results of any tests he had had, or a diagnosis. He said he wasn’t taking any prescription medication for his heart attack.

  As Janet Brooks bore in on questions, Jensen’s answers were either “I don’t know,” “I don’t recall,” or “No”—except when he was asked to describe the incident when he was injured. He remembered that and the aftermath precisely.

  Bill Jensen said he had lived with his oldest sister in Bremerton for a while, and in scores of hotels and motels in the Seattle area and in Las Vegas over the five months since he’d moved out of the Newport Hills home. When pressed, he recalled that he had vacationed in the Bahamas in September. He insisted he didn’t know how much rent he paid on apartments or exactly where he had stayed. He did remember that he was in Las Vegas on September 11 when the World Trade Center was destroyed.

  It was apparent where some of the marital assets had gone: Janet Brooks finally managed to drag out the information that Bill had spent around $100 a night for lodging over the prior 150 days.

  “Insolent” would be the word to describe Bill Jensen’s attitude toward Sue Jensen’s attorney. He admitted reluctantly to many visits to the top Las Vegas hotels, where gambling was the main attraction, but offered that he wasn’t “allowed to gamble” there any longer. There was a good reason for that, and Janet Brooks would get to that later.

  Bill hadn’t been alone on some of his trips. He admitted that he had met a woman in her twenties at the Aladdin Hotel and taken her to the Bahamas, California, and back to Seattle with him. He knew her first name: Kristi. He said he didn’t know her last name. “She had several names.”

  He denied paying Kristi for her company, but allowed that he probably had given her some money. He said he had also met people in the Aladdin and accompanied them to Ketchikan, Alaska, to a lodge for a fishing trip.

  Bill smirked and laughed on occasion as he answered Janet Brooks’s questions. His transfers of money and checks were almost incomprehensible. He had obtained power of attorney over his adoptive father’s bank account, and had written himself several checks on that account—approximately $63,000 worth. He had paid “bills” from the joint account he’d had with Susan. Those totaled over $200,000 and were dated on the weekend after he vacated their home.
He had gambling winnings of $27,000, and he’d sold Intel stock for $265,000, and he had borrowed $37,000 from his father. He had his $154,000 retirement fund. He had removed $202,000 from a Schwab stock investment account he shared with his wife.

  The total money he had spent in less than six months was astronomical.

  And Bill Jensen never admitted that he had taken the Sequoia van that had gone to Sue in an early settlement. He did say he’d been furious when she was given that vehicle because it was purchased for him when he was injured. He didn’t mention another reason; they had bought it to replace a van that was totaled in an accident—and they needed something big enough to accommodate a 170-pound Great Dane.

  Bill said it was his, and he had sold it. To assure that Sue wouldn’t get it back, he explained, he had sold it to a woman he knew only as “Dee,” whom he’d met in Las Vegas.

  “What did you sell it for?” Sue’s lawyer asked.

  “Nothing,” he said. “I sold it to her for nothing. She was going to come up to Seattle and drive it back.”

  He had been surprised that Sue found it at the airport, and angry that she was still driving it. Sue had tormented him, he said, and taken advantage of him. Bill Jensen insisted that he was the victim in all of the financial matters.

  “Thanks to my wife, my credit is ruined,” he said. “She has sent all of this court paperwork to all the credit card companies that I have. And every time I get a card opened back up, she sends another one and they close it. And I keep going back and forth—and back and forth.”

  Bill’s ploy in selling the van didn’t work; at a court hearing, the judge told him to get “Dee” on the phone and cancel the sale. Once again, Sue was awarded the Sequoia, but it would continue to rankle Bill.

  Janet Brooks and the court reporter who was taking down the dialogue of this November 2001 meeting felt a chill as they glanced up and saw Bill Jensen face Sue and make a slashing motion with his finger as he drew it across his neck. It was a gesture that symbolized a throat being cut. At that moment, he looked at Sue and mouthed, “You’re dead…”

  None of the three women doubted that he meant it.

  Sue’s attorney remarked that she was noting his gesture in the record.

  “You’re a liar,” Jensen growled.

  The reporter marked the tape at the spot where the threat was made and they continued on. But later, Bill Jensen drew himself up to his full height and leaned across the table, staring at Janet Brooks.

  “He looked at me, and told me to be very careful, and watch out for myself and what I was doing…”

  Bill Jensen was a master at intimidation. Two months later, Sue’s attorney withdrew from representing her in her divorce. Maybe he’d only been acting, but his threat had been too ominous for her to continue. She was frank with Sue as she said, “I’m sorry you have to deal with this kind of harassment, Sue, but I don’t, and I’m withdrawing from your case. I’ve had enough. I’m done.”

  Sue couldn’t really blame her. Bill could be very scary.

  “Janet was a strong, tough woman,” Sue said. “But she didn’t want to deal with Bill.”

  Both Janet Brooks and Sue Jensen had called the police to report Bill’s threats. The responding detective asked Sue if she thought Bill was going to act on his threat, and she replied that she really didn’t know. He had always been full of bluster and threats. He had been physically abusive at times, but more often she was the victim of emotional abuse. She was still embarrassed to admit that Bill had hurt her physically two or three times a year in the two decades they’d been married. She’d never told anyone about that, only her sister.

  At this point Sue was far more worried about Bill’s driving her attorney away than she was that he might hurt her. He had threatened her so many times; she thought it was probably just more of his intimidation.

  But she admitted that sometimes she was very frightened of Bill, afraid of his “exploding.”

  Bill had numerous problems that might well push him to the point of losing control. Beyond the credit card charges that Bill Jensen had run up for motels and hotels, restaurants, plane tickets, and the other things he had purchased since June 2001, his gambling debts were huge. While he had been a savvy gambler in playing the stock market during his marriage, he appeared to have no talent at all at the various gaming tables in Las Vegas.

  In the same month that he derided and threatened Sue Jensen and her attorney, he was charged criminally by the District Attorney’s Office in Las Vegas. It was not at all unusual for the prosecutor in a city where gambling was the top industry, to send out bad-check notices to those who had wagered more than they could afford. The office had a standard form printed just for that. But Bill hadn’t responded to the “Notice of Bad Checks” letters, and DA Stewart L. Bell followed up with several “Warning of Criminal Charges” letters.

  On July 13, 2001, Jensen had written an NSF check to the Paris/Bally’s Hotel & Casino for $20,000, which brought with it $2,065 in penalties. Between July 12 and July 28, 2001, the Aladdin Resort and Casino took more bad checks, which, with penalties, totaled $26,545. After negotiations, Jensen agreed to repay the $48,610 in monthly payments of $200 for six months, and a final lump sum payoff on November 15, 2002.

  Initially, Bill had been welcomed to a number of hotels in Las Vegas and given club cards offered to high rollers. But he was an abysmally inept gambler. Estimated accountings sent out to club members to use when they paid the IRS indicated Bill’s losses.

  These losses alone from five casinos—more than $157,000—would have wiped out Bill Jensen’s retirement benefits from the sheriff’s office. Some accountings showed only his losses; others indicated the amount he had put into slot machines.

  Bill seemed to be teetering on the edge of self-destruction. Although he had ignored Sue’s attempts to make their marriage better, he was now absolutely crazed because she had had the nerve to leave him and ask for a fair division of their property. He appeared to be determined to spend every cent he could get his hands on, on hedonistic ventures and other women. Sue was kept busy trying to plug holes in the dike that had once been her stable financial assets. She was able to retrieve some of the assets Bill had either spent or stolen.

  The following year, 2002, Bill was living in an apartment only a few miles from Newport Hills, and his children visited him a few times. But he wasn’t living alone, and Jenny’s and Scott’s visits were nightmarish. They both still hoped there could be a way that he could come home, and that they could go back to the early days with a father who had seemed to care about them, but Bill appeared to have no conception of the pain they were in. He told Jenny on one visit, in February 2002, that her mother and aunt “deserved to die” for what they had done to him. When she asked him about the girl he was living with, he said he did have a new girlfriend, but that it was none of her business. And then he called his teenage daughter a “selfish piece of shit” before he pushed her out the door of his apartment.

  Jenny was devastated.

  Bill warned Scott, still only twelve, that he should be prepared for both his parents to die because it was likely that they would.

  Sue did her best to bind up the emotional wounds Bill continually inflicted on their children.

  As 2002 began, she had a new attorney. John Compatore was an ex-cop himself, a kind but tough man who was not easily intimidated. Compatore had the order of protection against Bill Jensen reinstated on July 26, 2002, but the Jensens’ divorce was no closer to being finalized in 2002 than it had been a year earlier.

  Sue counted on her sister, Carol, and her friends to find some sort of peace in her life—but as 2002 drifted toward autumn, she found herself moving from frustration to fear. She knew Bill, and she knew that he always got even with anyone he thought had wronged him.

  And now, she was the enemy.

  I have a large file drawer full of e-mails and letters from scores of desperate exes who have long since given up on love; they hope only to live th
eir lives without having to look over their shoulders to catch someone following them, not waking in the dead of night at the slightest sound and lying in the dark, scarcely breathing, wondering if someone has crept into their homes.

  Sue Jensen had become one of those people.

  In September, Sue walked out to get her morning paper and realized that there was a big vacant spot in her driveway. She saw that the Sequoia SUV was gone again. She knew who had taken it. That SUV was a major bone of contention with Bill. He had wanted it from the very beginning. They were still together, of course, when they’d bought it, but Sue had discovered that Bill had deleted her name from the title. Now she understood why. He had apparently bided his time until she felt safe enough to park it in her own driveway, and then taken it back.

  “You’ll never find it now,” a friend told her. “It’s gone for good.”

  Because she had been given the Sequoia in their first divorce hearing, Sue—who made the insurance payments on it and all their other possessions—should have been in line for the insurance payment on a stolen vehicle. It could have been stolen by someone other than her estranged husband, but Sue doubted that.

  She got on the Internet and began a search for someone who might be trying to sell a Sequoia. She found nothing in the state of Washington. She kept trying, and at the end of October 2002, Sue located a Sequoia SUV that had been sold to a dealership in Beaverton, Oregon. The color, model, and description were right. When she checked on the VIN (vehicle identification number), she knew she had found the SUV stolen from her.

  Told that she probably couldn’t get it back because her name wasn’t on the title, and that she would likely be forfeiting the insurance payment, too, she shook her head impatiently. “I don’t care—it’s the right thing to do.”

  She never saw the Sequoia again, but she eventually was recompensed by her insurance company.