Deadly Seduction (9 page)

The next bit of good news came when Campbell fell in love with a local girl. Naturally, Susan suggested the happy couple should get married. It was taken for granted that Jim Grund would pay for the wedding expenses and reception. And guess who was the pro-tem judge on duty that day—attorney Jim Grund!

The service and reception were held in the Grund’s family house. Campbell’s bride even wore the dress Susan had used when she married Jim Grund in Florida a year earlier.

Afterwards, Jim Grund gave Gary Campbell a $1500 cash gift that he called “a loan for tax purposes.” The next day, Gary and his new bride rented a U-Haul trailer and moved back to Oklahoma City.

Shortly after this, the adoption order was removed and Jim Grund was able to legally adopt Susan’s son Jacob. When the judge handling the case inquired as to the whereabouts of the real father, he was told Campbell had “disappeared.” A legal notice was published in the local paper, but no one came forward.

Susan had manipulated the situation brilliantly. She had wooed and won over Gary Campbell because she wanted to buy back the love of her son Jacob. There was even talk that Susan had slept with Gary on a few occasions while she was “negotiating” the return of her son. Campbell always denied it happened, but a few of the Grunds’ friends and family think otherwise.

Interestingly, Campbell did later admit he had sex with Susan during her earlier marriage to Tom Whited, but then she had been trying to get Campbell to allow her and her then husband to adopt Jacob as well, so her motivation, as usual, was loud and clear.

On that earlier occasion, Susan had insisted to Campbell that Whited came from a wealthy family and that Jacob would not be able to inherit anything unless he was adopted by Whited. But Gary refused to allow the adoption to go ahead. However, by the time Susan caught up with Gary Campbell following her marriage to Jim Grund it was a whole different ball game.

Jimmy Grund was also happy about the outcome over the custody of Jacob. He wanted a young family again to see if he could manage to bring up children without making the same mistakes he had made the first time around. His other priority was to make Susan happy. He had forgiven her for those appalling child battery accusations.

Not long afterwards, in a remarkable example of legal wheeler-dealing, Susan even got Jim to force the father of Tanelle—third husband Thomas Whited—to release all legal responsibilities for the little girl in exchange for a $25,000 payout. The money was to go into a trust fund for Tanelle to have when she grew up.

The most remarkable aspect of this is that Whited had witnessed first-hand the heartbreaking results of those beatings inflicted on his son Tommy, but still he played along with his ex-wife and her new, powerful lawyer husband.

At no stage during the negotiations did it enter Jim Grund’s mind that Susan might be in any way using him. His main priority was the well-being of both of the children, whom he adored and treated as if they were his own.

Not long after this extraordinary deal with Whited was finalized, Jimmy Grund accepted paternity of Tanelle and then set up the trust fund for the child at the Peru Trust bank.

*   *   *

Susan’s dream conversion toward social acceptability took another important turn when she persuaded Jim to buy a plot of land on Summit Drive, one of the most exclusive stretches of real estate in Peru.

At first, Jim had been reluctant to get involved in such a major construction project, but he realized that Susan needed something to do. She would get into a lot of trouble if he just left her at home, bored and frustrated. The house to be built on Summit Drive was the short-term answer, at least.

Susan for her part, was planning out her new career as a social butterfly with alarming precision. She knew it was important to keep Jim happy and satisfied and she enjoyed playing the attentive wife prepared to dress to perfection for even the most casual of dinner dates.

In bed, she made sure that Jimmy got all the satisfaction he could possibly require. Susan liked nothing more than to splash out hundreds of dollars at Victoria’s Secret on skin-tight silky teddies and basques complete with sheer stockings and garter belts.

In the left-hand drawer of her closet chest of drawers she kept a sensual collection of black stockings, sheer lycra ones with a lace-effect top, denier stockings with a lace top that provided the perfect smooth, sheer, matte appearance. Susan also had black French lace suspender belts with matching high-cut panties, as well as other colored French lace suspender belts, also with matching high-cut panties.

All these items had been purchased by Susan throughout her many marriages and whenever she felt the urge for that kind of sexual healing response, she would make sure she wore them. All that silk underwear became a tool for Susan whenever the fancy took her. She had learned over the years that she could get pretty much whatever she wanted if she was prepared to seduce it out of her partner.

Essentially, she bought all this lingerie with the finest of intentions. It all began when one of her first lovers suggested she wear stockings and suspenders in bed one time. Susan soon learnt that there was only one kind of man: the man who loves stockings. She realized it was a universal impulse on their part. Sooner or later all her lovers and husbands would expect her to “wear the stockings.” Usually it was around the same time they wanted to know how many previous lovers she had had. It was inevitable.

After that first time, Susan felt that stockings were a very useful prop when it came to getting what she wanted. Soon she did not have to be asked by her partner because she would start the day by slipping into a skin-tight silky basque and stockings. It started to make her feel good and she grew especially fond of providing men with a glimpse of basque or stocking top, aware that it would make them feel immensely excited.

Sometimes, Susan would cook Jim Grund a candlelit dinner and allow her tight pencil skirt to ride just high enough up her thigh to reveal her stocking top, just to make sure she got exactly what she wanted from her husband.

And to ensure that Susan was never far from Jimmy, even when he went off on his regular all-male fishing jaunts to places like Mexico and Canada, Susan had some startlingly sexy photos taken of herself in some of that Victoria’s Secret underwear. She insisted he take one of the sexiest shots with him on every overnight trip he ever made.

*   *   *

Back at the construction site up on Summit Drive, Susan briefed the builders of the house constantly. She droned on about painting the inside of the property “New York white,” but the puzzled construction workers just could not fathom what the difference was between that and normal white.

Compared to the other houses in the area, this one was its plain sister, even though it was probably the biggest property. While others were artfully landscaped, the Grund residence had only a few scraggly shrubs surrounding it. A number of immature trees flopped awkwardly across the front yard. The dwelling, while obviously expensively constructed, had no character or personality, more closely resembling an apartment block than the home of one of the most prominent members of Peru’s upper class.

Looking at the house itself—which was built between January and May 1986—it appeared to be a two-storey structure. But there was a level below, which included a laundry room and a playroom for children. The house ended up a carefully designed mansion that was most notable for its complete lack of atmosphere. Susan’s obsession with neatness meant that any friendly or familiar possessions were banned from shelves, which then lay permanently bare. But that was the way Susan wanted it. She hated clutter because clutter reminded her of her childhood. That house represented a major achievement for Susan. It was a long way from her neighborhood and every time she summoned forth a mental image of her own family home and compared it to the vast dwelling where she now lived, it brought a wry smile to her face. Up here, she said to herself, things
are
different. The paint looks fresher, the lawns thicker, the shade cooler, the foliage more lush. I have truly arrived, thought Susan, reflecting on how she had brilliantly put all that poverty and misery behind her. The past now seemed all a blur, inconsequential compared to the mental and physical ordeal she was going to continue in order to kick all those old embarrassing habits and friends.

The house, with its superb views and hand designed amenities lacked something else that Susan considered the ultimate social symbol—a decent-sized swimming pool. Jim Grund had insisted they could only afford a hot tub and to make matters even more shaming for Susan, he had bought one cheap from a friend. But then that was typical of Jim.

While Susan liked to hand pick the perfect car, Jim drove the same Delta 88, with its slit in the old, bubbling vinyl roof, for years. As far as he was concerned, it worked fine, so what was the point in changing it?

Soon after the main construction of the house was completed, Susan and Jim had a blazing row that resulted in her moving all her belongings out of the marital bedroom.

It all started when Jim refused to build a separate walk-in closet for Susan to put her clothes in. They had enjoyed a similar arrangement at their previous home and it had proved very irritating to Susan, who took great pride in looking after her clothes very carefully and objected to sharing hanging facilities with a sloppy man like Jim, whose only interest in clothes were that they be functional.

When builders came to carry out some finishing touches on the new house, Jim insisted on him and Susan just having one, extra-long closet between them. On the day they were scheduled to move in all their clothes, Susan had gone shopping and returned to fill her half of the closet with her clothes. She moved Jim’s clothes down a little and managed to take up a lot more space than him.

When Jim arrived home that evening, he got really angry at Susan’s invasion of his space and shouted at her, “I told you, you can’t have any more of my closet.”

She snapped back, “Well, I told you before that I didn’t want to build this closet and I wanted it bigger and so, if I can’t have my closet, then I’ll just take all my clothes out and put ’em in the guest bedroom.”

And that’s exactly what she did. Susan picked all her clothes up and marched them into the guest bedroom. Susan and Jim slept in separate bedrooms that night. Down the hallway, little Jacob heard them arguing and it reminded him of those awful, terror-filled days back on Rushing Road, Oklahoma City, when his stepbrother got beaten so severely.

After Jacob heard his mother shouting in a fit of temper, he started sobbing quietly into his pillow because he had been through that sort of heartache too many times already.

*   *   *

The house on Summit Drive cost a total of $175,000 by the time it was finished to Susan’s very unimaginative specifications. Almost every room other than the kitchen was covered in thick, plush white carpet that showed every stain or crumb. Susan would always be barking at the children to take off their shoes the moment they walked in the house and she often used to shout similar orders at grown-ups, too.

Most of the walls were uncovered apart from the occasional picture of Susan herself. The centerpiece of the entire house was Susan and Jim’s double bedroom, complete with a vast, specially commissioned portrait of herself in the nude. That picture cost Jim Grund more than $3,000. The bedroom also became the prime setting for the countless Polaroid snaps Susan continued to take of herself in the nude or scantily clad. At first, they were given to Jim as a reminder of how sexy she was, but gradually they became more like manipulative tools provided specifically by Susan to taunt her husband when he was feeling particularly insecure about her friendships with other men.

Susan even insisted her new husband have a photo of her, scantily clad, in his office. It was a running joke amongst his colleagues, but he kept it there all the same because he knew that Susan was liable to pop round unannounced at the office and then completely freak out if the photo was not prominently displayed.

Six

Jim Grund’s gawky teenage son David moved into the house on Summit soon after it was completed. But he did not get on with either his father or stepmother at the time and by the summer of 1986 they kicked him out and told him to go back to Jim’s ex-wife, Jane.

There had been constant rows with David about money and Susan seemed to be forever finding herself stuck in the middle whenever Jim and his son argued. She was infuriated by David’s complete lack of interest in keeping his room tidy. Sometimes she felt like hitting him, just as she had done with poor little Tommy three years earlier. But even she realized that David was a little too large to inflict punishment on without risking a beating in return.

Once Susan acknowledged this, she tried to turn around her role in the family, and David started to look on Susan as the family pacifier. For every row he had with his father, she seemed to be the problem solver. Frequently, she cooled down difficult situations when Jim Grund and his son would almost come to blows.

But then, in David’s eyes, it was easy for his stepmother to play that role since she seemed to have a never-ending source of money from Jim Grund. While his father appeared tightfisted about splashing out cash on his son, Jim Grund seemed like putty in Susan’s hands whenever she wanted a new dress, or whatever. That underlying tension sparked many rows between David and his father and the boy found it even more irritating that Susan played up her role as the considerate stepmom when she was actually the cause of most of the problems. It was a constantly changing set of emotions. One minute, David was angry at his stepmother, the next he was grateful that at least she had the courage to step between him and his father. Rest assured, Susan knew exactly what she was doing throughout this period.

It had been inevitable that Susan and Jim would decide David had to go back to his mother’s home. The tension in the house had become far too much of a strain for any of them to cope with. There was a genuine fear that some physical harm might come to one of them if they continued trying to coexist in that vast house on Summit Drive, which David saw as the ultimate evidence of his father’s over generosity toward Susan. But the true extent of David’s love-hate relationship with his glamorous stepmother had not yet fully developed.