Empty Promises (3 page)

Bettina continued down the predictable path of a victim of domestic violence: She got a temporary order of protection against Steve on June 2 and a permanent order two weeks later. As far as the police knew, the couple went their separate ways. But orders of protection are about as strong as the paper they're written on.
Bettina tried to stay away from him, but breaking up with a man like Steve Sherer was not easy. Even though he began to date Jami Hagel, he continued to harass and threaten Bettina. He was far from out of her life. On March 4, 1986, Steve hit her hard enough to knock
her unconscious. Bettina didn't call the police, deciding to bide her time in the hope that she could get away from Steve without angering him further. She'd called the police before, but they couldn't be there every time Steve beat her. She was running scared.
Steve had Jami now, Bettina figured, and perhaps he would let her go. Oddly, both women lived in the same apartment building; Steve had arranged that. Sometimes he was with Jami; sometimes he wanted to come back to Bettina. He hit them both when they got out of line. He was short, but he prided himself on his muscles and he honed them at health clubs so that his biceps bulged. He often appeared in police reports because he got into fights at parties with other men. He seemed unable to go more than five or six months without exploding in one way or another.
Bettina went back to Steve; she couldn't resist him when he was sweet. It appeared to the Lynnwood police who responded to a call for help on March 6, 1986, that Sherer intended to own both Bettina and Jami. Bettina told them she wondered why Jami stayed with Steve, and yet she couldn't see that her own situation was a mirror image of Jami's.
"Jami was always crying that spring," Bettina remembered, adding that Jami was fiercely loyal to Steve even though she knew he was really with Bettina. Apparently he had told Jami that it was Bettina who caused all the problems. Maybe Jami thought that
she
could make Steve happy.
Let her try,
Bettina thought wearily.
On that rainy night of March 6, Steve showed up at the apartment he shared with Bettina in Alderwood in the wee hours of the morning, only to find her packing her bags to leave him again. She couldn't share him any longer, she said, and she was sick of having him gone
all night, even when she knew he wasn't with Jami. Despite his growing interest in Jami, Steve wouldn't allow Bettina to walk away from him— not until
he
said it was over.
It was a terrible time for both young women. "There were a lot of bad memories," Bettina said, trying to sort out one single incident from a string of abuse.
But this was the night when she finally decided to leave. Steve didn't come home. Bettina was worried about how she would get to work by seven the next morning. "I had no ride and Steve had the car," she recalled. "He'd been out all night long. He kept calling and saying he was on his way home, but he never got there. When he finally walked in, I picked up my bags to leave."
She told the officers who responded to her 911 call that she was almost at the door when something slammed into the back of her head. Blood streamed down her neck from a deep gash in her scalp. Steve had thrown a heavy shot glass at her, and it had shattered on impact. She was lucky to have only a concussion.
Bettina was taken to the ER to have her wound stitched up, and then police accompanied her back to her apartment to ensure her safety. That was a prudent decision; when they searched the premises, they found Steve Sherer hiding under a blanket in the bedroom closet. When he was arrested and led past Bettina, he turned to her, shouting, "Fuck off! I'm going to kill that bitch!"
The officers noted his remark in the police report; it would come back to haunt him.
This time, Steve was convicted— but only of second-degree assault. He filed his own complaint, accusing the arresting officers of using excessive force. His charges were judged to be unfounded.
Within two days, Steve transferred his affections to Jami Hagel. Although there were a few more legal skirmishes, Bettina had finally succeeded in extricating herself from a punishing alliance. She would, however, never completely get over her fear of Steve Sherer. More than a decade later, she was still afraid of him.

2

Bettina Rauschberg was only one woman among more than a million in 1986 who had suffered injuries in what the U.S. Justice Department calls intimate partner abuse. Most of the physical attacks were, like hers, deemed simple assaults. Ten years earlier, 1,600 women and slightly fewer men had died in domestic disputes; ten years later, 1,320 women and 510 men were killed by "intimate partners." Through sheer luck or a final desperate decision to run, Bettina got away. Experts on domestic violence have a rule of thumb; it takes seven beatings before a woman or a man will find the strength and the courage to leave.
Some don't make it that far.
The man Bettina escaped from was the same man that Jami Hagel took home to meet her family. Steve had a way with women, a power that only those who fell in love with him could explain— if even they could put it into words. He wasn't that good-looking, he wasn't that affluent unless his mother helped him out,
and he had demonstrated an explosive temper. Still, he never lacked for female company.
From the beginning, Jami Hagel was mesmerized by Steve, and her parents and brothers carefully held their breath, reminding each other that they mustn't criticize him or she would be even more attracted to him. But they didn't want to give him a stamp of approval either. Perhaps it wouldn't have mattered; Jami was in love with Steve and determined to marry him. The Hagels watched in horror as they saw their feisty, bubbly, self-assured daughter and sister become more and more submissive to a stranger in their midst. They had no idea how to stop her frightening metamorphosis.
As he did with every woman in his life, Steve set out to "customize" Jami to meet his specifications. She was the right size and had a lovely face, but that wasn't good enough. Although Jami's thick brown hair was one of her best features, Steve told her he much preferred blondes. Jami lightened her hair, but it reacted oddly to the bleaching process, which left it orange-yellow.
True to the profile of the abusive male, Steve systematically distanced Jami from her family. He complained about how close she was to them and was annoyed by family get-togethers. When he did go to holiday dinners or ball games with her, Jami constantly darted glances at Steve to see what his reaction was. His mood was more important to her than anything else. She was no longer the confident young woman she had been; her whole life seemed dedicated to making Steve happy, even when his demands were excessive and selfish. She was very tentative, looking to Steve to determine what he wanted her to do and say.
Steve didn't want Jami to see her women friends, her family, or anyone else who took her attention away from
him. His was the classic posturing of the possessive male. To make the situation worse, as he had done with Bettina, Steve convinced Jami that they should move to California.
"They came to our house," Judy Hagel recalled, "and said they were going to California, supposedly for a vacation for a week. I think that was in May 1986. But I just sort of had a feeling it wasn't going to be just a week, and so I waited all week long, just waited for Sunday so she could come home. She didn't come home. The next thing I know I get a phone call from her saying they've decided to stay in California… I kept in close touch with her. She called me often, and I called while she was there."
Judy and Jerry Hagel had watched their precious daughter drive away from everyone she had always counted on as she and Steve headed off to Palm Desert, California. She was an adult; there was nothing they could do. She had yet to marry Steve and they hoped she never would. Judy Hagel had seen purple bruises and the marks of fingers on Jami's arms and legs. Jami always had an explanation about falling, banging her elbow on a doorway, or hurting herself in some other way.
Steve had good reason to want to leave the state of Washington. He had been bombarding Bettina with phone calls and letters, and she was frightened enough of him to call the police to record each violation of her order of protection.
More dangerous to him was a recent burglary in Bellevue. In the late afternoon of April 7, 1986, someone had broken into a residence and taken stereo equipment, jewelry, and a small-caliber handgun. Without a job, with his mother cutting down on loans and hand-outs, and with his prodigious appetite for drugs and gambling, Steve was hungry for money.
Bellevue detectives were able to lift latent finger
prints but AFIS (Automatic Fingerprint Identification System) was not yet in wide use. (In October 1988, AFIS matched the burglary prints to Steven Frank Sherer, but that was two years after the fact.)
In California, Steve continued his spotty work history; he had worked occasionally for his father's construction firm, but he didn't have any particular skill as a builder. Sometimes he got sales jobs, but they never lasted long. He still liked to gamble and he still liked drugs; he was more than dabbling in cocaine by this time. And he always drove like a bat out of hell.
Steve spent some time in jail on traffic warrants in San Bernadino in September 1986. While he was there, he flooded Jami with romantic cards:
I miss you, baby! When I get out, will you spend the rest of your life with me? I hope so, because your
[sic]
what I want in life. Your what I'm living for! Please wait for me. Wait and spend the rest of your life in my arms. I love you so much and it just gets stronger every day. Please have faith in our love.… Things will never be bad. Just better each and every day.… Life is only worth the love that one can share with another and I'd like to make mine worth billions with you!

Love forever,
Steven

Steve always called Jami his little rose. "To the flower of my life," he wrote. "Soon to be future wife with all the love in my heart. I care for you with my life, giving it up for you at any moment. I can't stand not having you within my sight. Forever I will love you, no matter what the future holds, you'll never
leave my heart and I'll always see you as my
ROSE!"
Jami was working, trying to keep up with their bills. She missed Steve too, and no woman could ask for more romantic mail.
But it was easy for a man in jail to feel romantic. The bruises and scratches that were always with Jami when she lived with Steve began to heal. Her faith began to blossom. Of course, when Steve came home, he lost much of his romantic veneer. His mother was trying tough love, so they had money problems. Steve couldn't live the way he wanted to.
Judy Hagel didn't know about most of Jami's problems, but Jami called her one night and she was crying. "They were down around a swimming pool somewhere and he was not being nice to her," Judy said. "I told her to leave, and she said that he had threatened to kill himself with a knife if she left him, and I told her she
had
to come home. I said, 'I will catch a flight to Los Angeles and I will get you and we'll pick up your car and we'll come home. 'And she says okay.… The next morning I call her and of course everything was okay and she wasn't coming home."
Worried, Judy and Jerry Hagel arranged to meet Jami and Steve in Las Vegas in October 1986. It was the first time they had seen Jami's shocking metamorphosis. "I walked into this casino," Judy recalled in a hushed voice. "Jami was just a very small person. She weighed probably all of ninety pounds dripping wet.… All I saw was cheekbones and big brown eyes and blond hair. She had dyed her hair blond.… She was so thin it was awful. I could not believe this was Jami, but it was. And we tried to go have a talk, but we just couldn't be left alone [by Steve] and so we left and she went back to California with Steve, and Jerry and I went home."
Judy and Jerry Hagel had no idea the kind of life Jami was living or the terror that she felt more and more often. They didn't care for Steve, but if he made Jami happy, they respected her right to choose a mate.
By November 1986, Jami and Steve were living in a double-wide mobile home on Portola Avenue in Palm Desert, California. They were secretly engaged, and Steve gave Jami an heirloom ring. It was a size four, yellow gold with three round full-cut diamonds. The center stone was perfect and over a carat in weight; the side stones were .24 carats each, and it was appraised at $13,500. Steve suggested they take out insurance on it and their other expensive possessions. The policy, which went into effect in October, was written by Farmers' Insurance for a year.
Steve called the Riverside County Sheriff's Department on November 4 to report that someone had broken into the mobile home and stolen a number of items, including Jami's ring. Their claim form listed computers, cameras, miscellaneous jewelry, silver dishes, and a Colt .357. They estimated that their total loss, allowing for depreciation, was well over $32,000. They had paid only the first quarter of the premiums due on their renter's policy, and their coverage was due to expire on January 2, 1987. The claim agent for Farmers' was uneasy about the timing, but the insurance company decided eventually to pay off Steve and Jami's claim.
They should have used the insurance money for something practical, but it didn't last long. Steve still had expensive tastes— and more expensive habits. Although he had been raised in a wealthy family, he was nowhere near the entrepreneur his father had been. Soon Steve and Jami were barely able to pay the rent on the mobile home on Portola Avenue. It was a far cry
from the posh country club home his parents had once owned in Palm Desert, the house where his father died.
Steve may have consciously or unconsciously hoped to recapture that splendor in his own life. But he was failing miserably. Finally, Jami placed an ad in a local paper seeking someone to move in and share the rent. Sally Kirwin,* a twenty-six-year-old woman from Wisconsin, found herself in a situation where she had to move in a hurry. Her landlord was an alcoholic and she was afraid of him. She answered the ad and arranged to meet Jami.
"Jami was about twenty-two then," Sally remembered. "She was very, very small." Sally liked Jami and was relieved to learn that she could move into the extra bedroom in the mobile home without putting down a deposit or paying first and last months' rent. Later she met Steve Sherer, Jami's boyfriend. He seemed pleasant enough. He had long hair, and she wasn't sure what he did for a living. It didn't really matter, though, because Sally wasn't looking for roommates with whom she had a lot in common; she just needed a place she could afford where her cat would be welcome, too. Jami and Steve said a cat would be fine with them. They occupied the master bedroom at the back of the mobile, they used one bedroom for their exercise equipment, and said Sally could have the extra one for only $300 a month.
Sally had a job as a publicist for famous and wanna-be famous people, and it kept her so busy that she wasn't home much. However, she accepted Jami and Steve's invitation to join them for Thanksgiving dinner. The three of them posed for photos around a heavily laden buffet. She didn't really know them, but she liked Jami, and Steve had a good sense of humor. Sally was planning to stay in the mobile home only long enough to build a nest egg so she could get her own apartment.
There was nothing at all to warn Sally Kirwin that she had walked into a volatile situation. She had never been exposed to domestic violence and the thought never occurred to her.
A few days before Christmas 1986, Sally was packing to head home to Wisconsin for the holidays. She was terribly afraid to fly, trying to psyche herself up for the next day. She accepted a beer Jami offered her and sat down with Jami and Steve, trying to relax and convince herself that flying was a perfectly safe mode of transportation.
As they visited, she realized how little she knew about her housemates. She'd had a drink with Jami just that once, but Jami hadn't confided in her; they had simply discussed the possibility of Sally's moving in.
Now Steve seemed to be on edge. He and Jami were arguing listlessly about something at his work, when he suddenly turned to Sally and said, "You think you're too good for us, don't you, Sally? You never bring your friends over to meet us."
She stared at him, sure that he must be kidding. She worked with a number of celebrities, but there was no reason to introduce them to Steve. She didn't socialize with them very much herself. She just worked for them.
Jami looked embarrassed and told Steve to mind his own business. As Sally watched them, stunned, the couple's comments grew louder until they were yelling at each other.
"It very, very quickly escalated into a fight— an all-out brawl," Sally recalled. "They were screaming and shouting at each other. Glass was breaking."
As small as she was, Jami stood up to Steve. "This is it!" she screamed. "This is it. It's over!"
Steve made a move toward Jami and said, breathing heavily, "Shut the fuck up! I'll kill you."
Horrified, Sally ran to grab the phone in her bedroom, but first she pushed Jami behind a table in the hallway to give her a little protection from Steve, who was trying to get to her, swinging his arms and swearing.
Sally did manage to connect with 911 and let out a cry for help, but then she rushed out of her room to see that Steve was holding a kitchen knife. He had an odd, almost vacant look on his face. "Shut the fuck up," he snarled at Jami. "I'll kill both of you." He was either drunk or crazy— and it had happened so rapidly.
Sally believed him, but she could hear sirens approaching the mobile home park. She grabbed her cat and tossed it into her room. She didn't know how she could help Jami, but she was going to try. For the moment, Steve couldn't reach Jami where she huddled behind the table.
With a sharp flick of his wrist, he turned the knife so that it pointed toward his own belly.
"Steve!" Jami cried. "Don't!"
There was no expression on Steve's face as he slid the knife into his flesh. Sally thought it must have been some sleight of hand until she saw blood burst from his belly. She was amazed that he was still on his feet, and then he disappeared. She wasn't sure just how he got out of the trailer. By that time, both she and Jami were screaming and hysterical.
Jami talked to the police. They found Steve, put him in an ambulance, and took him away.
Sally Kirwin was so shocked that all she could think of was getting away from the madness. She went to a friend's house. "I came back in the wee hours of the morning," she recalled. "No one was there."
Now she could see the damage. The bedroom door was broken, and she could see that Steve had knocked
the glass out of several windows. The desert wind blew through the mobile home, the only sound left after all the crashing and splintering of glass and wood.
Sally didn't know Steve Sherer well enough to know if he'd had some kind of psychotic break or if this was how he behaved when he was drunk or mad, or both. One minute they had been having a routine conversation and the next, he was white with rage.
Around dawn, Jami came home. She had dark circles under her swollen eyes, and she seemed very contrite. "This wouldn't have happened," she told Sally, "if Steve didn't love me so much."
Sally stared at Jami, dumbfounded. "Aren't you going to leave him?" she asked.
Jami shook her head. "He just loves me so much— we can work it out. It will never happen again."
Sally tried to reason with Jami, and she suggested places she could go where she would be safe. Sally said her friend had volunteered to take Jami in until she could get home to her family. Jami looked at her as if Sally didn't understand. She was adamant that she could never leave Steve, because he needed her. She was sure that things were going to be fine. He wasn't badly hurt, but he had shown her how devastated he would be if Jami ever left him, and she could never do that to him. People just didn't understand how sensitive he was.
Jami and Steve spent Christmas 1986 in Washington. On Christmas Eve, he was arrested by a Snohomish County sheriff's deputy for driving under the influence, driving with no valid license, and violating a protection order from his old girlfriend, Bettina.
Sally flew home to Wisconsin and spent Christmas with her family. Her friend fed her cat while she was gone. When she returned to Palm Desert a week later,
Sally saw the mobile home at 99 Portola Road for the last time. She was "too afraid of Steve" to press charges for her financial loss. By the time she got back, neither Jami nor Steve was at the mobile home. They were still in Washington when she moved her things out, and that was fine with her. She never expected to see them again.
Steve's temper tantrums over the holiday season had been expensive. Beyond the new fines he'd racked up in Washington, the mobile home on Portola was heavily damaged. He had broken four wall panels so badly they had to be replaced and other walls had to be repainted. That came to $981.40. He had shattered the bedroom and closet doors trying to get to Jami with a knife. That cost another $497.00. And then there were all the broken windows. The landlord was not happy.
Jami was the one who kept track of their expenses. She saved every estimate, receipt, bank statement, and stub from the bills she paid each month. Years later it would be easy to look at her life with Steve simply by thumbing through her meticulous records.