Deadly Seduction (12 page)

But when Brinson tried to persuade Susan Grund to take a polygraph she was outraged and refused point-blank to even consider it.

On May 2, Paul’s friend with a criminal record was also polygraph tested. The results were “inconclusive” but Brinson and his investigators concluded that the man was afraid of the police because of previous encounters and this could have caused his apparent failure. Polygraph examiner Sergeant James even assured Bob Brinson that in his opinion the suspect was being truthful. That was enough for Brinson. He concluded in his eventual report that “this unit has no additional leads to follow and therefore will suspend the investigation at this time.”

Bob Brinson had his own suspicions about who was probably responsible for the break-in, but he wasn’t about to risk his career by making his feelings known in public.

He duly noted that a hefty insurance claim was made on the damaged and missing items, and Susan Grund got her bedroom beautifully redecorated at no cost to herself. Brinson actually thought that maybe Susan had staged the break-in to make her husband feel sorry for her. There has to be an easier way to keep a marriage intact, thought Brinson.

Seven

Susan’s biggest problem was sex. Although gossip later focused heavily on her admittedly active bedtime activities, those who knew her painted a picture of a much more complex personality, a woman with widely divergent mood swings and contradictory behavior patterns.

When she wanted to, it seemed, or when it suited her purposes, she could be sweet, loving, and thoughtful. When, in 1990, her parents divorced after more than forty years of marriage, she was the first one to go rushing to her mother’s side offering every type of support. The divorce was a complete bolt out of the blue, but the entire family soon accepted it as a fact of life.

Jim’s law practice partner Don Fern represented Susan’s mother Nellie in the divorce after a special deal was agreed upon so that it cost Nellie virtually nothing in legal fees. Fern had always felt a little hesitant about his partner’s wife, but dealing with her during her mother’s divorce simply confirmed his dislike of her. He found that Susan was forever telling him how to do his job.

Susan’s mother Nellie wasn’t particularly upset by the breakup of her marriage. She just decided it was time to end an unhappy relationship. They had nothing in common and now the children had all left home what else was there for them?

Susan’s father William was heartbroken, though. He suddenly found himself cut off from his family. With no one to turn to, he headed off west for Texas and then Arizona, drifting from town to town, surviving on a disability allowance.

A few months later he committed suicide. No one really knows why, but most of the family believe he was distraught about the end of the marriage. Whether or not he ever abused any of his children or caused them any other real suffering would never be accurately established.

But one thing is known for certain—Jimmy Grund paid for his father-in-law’s funeral expenses.

*   *   *

Meanwhile, Jimmy Grund was working hard as ever as a busy attorney. Often he would come home at night and pour out all the details of his most interesting cases to a riveted Susan. She was fascinated. She had now been on both sides of the law and she felt she had a good handle on what an ass it could be at times.

Sometimes, Susan would surprise Jim by making some very salient points about the legal ramifications of a particular case. She was especially fond of hearing all the gory details of gruesome murder trials.

“But you don’t wanna hear all that grisly stuff, do you?” Jim would ask.

“I do, honey,” replied Susan in her finest, softest Southern drawl. “I really do.”

One time, Jim told his wife all about a truly horrendous case of a man who kept a body in a sleeping bag and had sex with the corpse everywhere. The man had been living at home with his parents and was considered something of a daddy’s boy. Susan was captivated by the case and pleaded with her husband to tell her all the details.

Susan was actually storing all these cases neatly in a fragment of her brain where she could reimagine them at any later stage she wanted. She needed to know all the tricks of the trade. She was desperate to understand the best way to commit the perfect murder.

*   *   *

Around this time, Susan had yet more dealings with Bob Brinson of the Indiana State Police when she asked for an officer to come to the house on Summit whilst Jimmy was away on one of his regular fishing jaunts to Canada. Brinson appeared at the house on Summit Drive to find Susan wearing a very low-cut dress and complaining about a flat tire. Brinson did not stay long enough to find out exactly what her intentions were.

In October 1990, further evidence of the Grund’s crumbling marriage came from a most unlikely source—a fifth birthday party for Jim’s sister Jane’s son, Brad.

In an extraordinarily candid moment, Fred Allen—Jane’s husband—pointed his home videocamera directly at the couple as they were arguing about Susan’s favorite subject, cars.

The camera caught Jim and Susan deep in conversation. She asked him dryly, “What happened to my car?”

“Buy junk, you live with it, I guess,” came Jim’s stoic reply.

But then Susan barked back,
“Oh, I’m used to living with junk.”

*   *   *

A few miles and half a world away, while the impeccably clad, politically conscious members of Peru’s legal community sipped white wine or vodka and nibbled daintily from each other’s smorgasboards, Susan’s sister Rita—still firmly entrenched on the wrong side of the tracks—was listening with astonishment to her sister on the phone.

“I’m having an affair with David.”

Susan’s words to her sister Rita were so laid back that it was as if she was talking about the weather. Rita was not that surprised, though. She had always been well aware of her sister’s obsession with men and had even provided Susan with a love nest at her apartment in Kokomo where she would frequently bring her men friends. But all the same, to hear that she had started a relationship with her husband’s son seemed a little excessive.

Susan claimed the first time she made love to David was when the two younger children spent the night over at friends’ houses. David and she had been out for dinner together while Jim Grund was away. When they returned to the empty, isolated house on Summit Drive the couple had gone to the bedroom to watch television because there wasn’t a set in the living room area. Within minutes of entering the bedroom they were making love, insisted Susan.

Another friend who allegedly was aware of the affair was Shirley Day. She actually lodged for a while with Susan’s family at their house on 3rd Street. And she found herself regularly getting into late-night conversations with the rest of the Sanders family over the topic of Susan’s affair with her stepson David. There was a general impression that this time Susan had gone too far. The family wanted her to stop the relationship, but Susan had told them in no uncertain terms to mind their own business.

A few weeks later, Shirley claims she saw Susan out in the street with her stepson. They stopped by a store window and then snatched a brief kiss on the lips. She had no doubt that Susan had embarked on a very passionate relationship.

By the following summer of 1991, this highly illicit affair had become, claimed Susan, a very regular sexual liaison. David was getting close to the end of his college year and he would spend Fridays with his stepmother during which they would enjoy passionate sex sessions, if what Susan has said is to be believed.

More often than not the love-making would, Susan later alleged, take place at the house on Summit Drive. But sometimes she would go to his home in Peru when his then girlfriend Monica Weaver was not around. When David dropped Monica for attractive Suzanne Plunkett it made no difference to his affair with Susan. They just carried on.

In late June of 1991, Susan made sure the grand house on Summit was empty all day, so that she could give her illicit lover a very special birthday present; they stayed in bed virtually the entire day.

Susan made sure her sister Darlene and her mother were also well aware of the alleged relationship with David, because she had gone to great lengths to ensure they knew all the details. Susan’s mother Nellie was bemused by the entire episode, but she had long since stopped being surprised by anything her wayward daughter ever did.

Meanwhile, other Peru residents seemed aware that something was going on between Susan and David. It was becoming a topic of conversation amongst a number of her housewifely acquaintances.

*   *   *

On the Peru social scene, Susan was delighted when she found her photograph spread across page two of the
Peru Daily Tribune
on August 12, 1991. This time she was pictured presenting a second place divisional award for the Frances Slocum Bank’s Circus City Festival parade float. Susan positively glowed in the picture and managed to dominate the shot much more than pretty young 1991 Miss Miami County, Cami Lowrance.

Another aspect of her minicelebrity in town was that it opened doors to high places for Susan. She was becoming increasingly supportive to that local senator she had befriended, although she did tend to drop a few clangers in conversation with him. One classic example was when the senator asked her what she did for a living.

“My full-time job is to set Jim up so well that if he ever leaves me, he’ll leave with nothing.”

The senator made a note not to ever cross this particular lady.

*   *   *

In April 1991, Susan filed a complaint with the Indiana Bell Telephone security department about a number of threatening calls that had been made to the house on Summit Drive. A trap was installed by the phone company, but Susan never actually filed a log of any more obscene calls as she had been instructed to do and the entire incident just fizzled out.

But then two months later she started making fresh allegations about threatening calls and Indiana Bell mailed a complaint form to her house, but it was never returned and the police were not contacted. It appeared to just fade out.

Jim was so concerned he called his friend police Sgt. Gary Nichols—an expert wiretapper—and arranged for his phone to be monitored with a tape recorder to try and find out who was making all the calls. Jim Grund was convinced that it had to be someone they knew, or at least that’s what he told Gary Nichols.

Nichols wired up the phone on Jim Grund’s say-so. He never knew if Susan was even aware of the tap. After a few days, Grund called Nichols and asked him to bring the tape recording of all the calls to the house over that period to him.

Nichols did not even play back the tape himself because he felt it was something personal for Jim Grund and none of his business, so he dropped off the recordings at Grund’s law office on Main Street. He never again talked to Jim Grund about the contents of that tape, but Grund’s relationship with Susan deteriorated shortly afterwards which clearly implies he heard something highly incriminating on the tape.

Without doubt there were conversations between Susan and some of her male admirers on those tapes. But Jim never revealed if he heard anything that referred to Susan and David. If he ever did play the tapes to any of his friends or colleagues, none of them have ever disclosed that fact. But word of Susan’s extramarital activities certainly spread even faster through Peru following the handing over of those tapes to Jim Grund.

*   *   *

In November 1991, relations between Susan and Jimmy Grund were becoming increasingly strained. Not only was he fed up with the way she often flouted herself in public by wearing outrageously suggestive clothes but, she was by now carrying out a number of secret liaisons with other men. He told her he was particularly concerned about the well-being of the two young children.

To make matters worse, Jacob’s real father, Gary Campbell, had come back on the scene, albeit temporarily. Campbell—obviously wracked with guilt about how he allowed the Grunds to get Jacob back—had been making all sorts of promises to Jacob in a series of phone calls and then not bothering to deliver. The result was that the boy was in a highly emotional state most of the time. He was not doing well at school and he was becoming increasingly aggressive at home. Jim had been around long enough to know that the child was being torn apart by his real father’s involvement. He didn’t want to completely ban Campbell, but would do so if he continued to twist up the little boy’s mind.

One day, Jim Grund became so upset by Campbell’s attitude that he called and warned him to stay away from Jacob and not to call the boy ever again. Clearly, Jim Grund’s only priority was the happiness of Jacob, whom he had long considered to be his own child. Jim could not bear to see the child being pulled backward and forward between parents and genuinely believed that the only way to give Jacob a real chance in life was to keep people like Campbell away from him forever. Jacob adored Jimmy Grund and actually only behaved properly when his stepfather was around, further fueling Susan’s built-in resentment toward her fourth husband. In her mind, it seemed they were ganging up on her and there was no way she could allow that to happen.

The spin-off from all this family tension was that Jim was so upset by the wrangling over Jacob that he decided not to attend one of Susan’s other sister’s weddings. Jimmy Grund was becoming increasingly concerned about his wife’s family. He had forgiven her so many things including the near murder of her stepson, but he was beginning to wonder if his marriage to her would prove the most costly mistake of his life.

For her part, Susan was feeling increasingly isolated by Jim’s big-buck friends who had grown very dismissive of this pushy woman whom they suspected was not the classy lady she made herself out to be. She had made a niche for herself in the upper echelons of Peru society, but now none of Jim’s friends would give her the time of day.

Grund’s longtime friend Don Bakehorn, who was co-owner with Jimmy of their favorite bar in town, Shanty Malone’s, never forgot going to an Indiana University basketball game with Susan and Jim, who got into an argument over their wills. It seemed that Susan did not like the fact that Jim’s law practice partner Don Fern was the administrator of their estates. She was particularly aggrieved about the idea of having to go to Fern to ask for money.