Mortal Danger

Most readers have no idea how many people it takes to make a book! There are numerous levels before I finally receive my first copy, which thrills me as much as it did twenty-nine books ago. As always, I feel lucky to have the wisdom, talent, skills, memories, and support from the many who have contributed to
Mortal Danger
. From detectives who worked hard to solve these cases to the families of victims who shared what I realize is very painful to survivors, my gratitude knows no bounds.

And from my editors to my production team to my literary and theatrical agents, I could not possibly have completed this book without you!

My appreciation goes to: Kate Jewell, Susan Hoskinson, David Gardiner, Gold Beach Police Department; Karen Slater, Dr. Randall Nozawa, Lieutenant Brent Bomkamp, Sergeant Ben Benson, Ed Troyer, Pierce County Sheriff’s Office.

To the late Dave Hart, Port of Seattle Police Department; Mike Ciesynski, Mike Tando, Hank Gruber, and Bob Holter, Seattle Police Department; and Bruce Whit
man and Dick Taylor, Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office; and Jarl Gunderson, Marysville Police Department.

I thank my publisher, Louise Burke, for trusting my judgment in selecting cases, and my editor, Mitchell Ivers, who—with his sharp eye, literary skill, and deft pen—makes criticism almost fun. His assistant, Jessica Webb, makes things happen on time, and she helped tremendously in organizing the photo sections. The production staff—Carly Sommerstein, Sally Franklin, and Lisa Litwack—whipped all the parts of this book into one cohesive package and sent it off to the printer.

Joan and Joe Foley in New York City have been my literary agents and cheering section for more than three decades. I was lucky when they took a chance on me! Ron Bernstein, my theatrical agent at International Creative Management (ICM) in Los Angeles, is responsible for transforming many of my books into movies and miniseries, and we have more to come soon.

Gerry Hay is still my first reader, and my daughter, Leslie Rule, is a proofreader who catches almost all the mistakes I’ve missed! My special thanks to Marie Heaney, Donna Anders, Blanche Beanblossom, Marnie Campbell, Brian Heil, Dawn Dunn, Grace Kingman, and Diane Benson, to the “Jolly Matrons of Willamette University and the University of Washington,” the “Ladies Who Lunch/Union Meeting Extraordinaire,” and to the “Loyal Order of ARFs [Ann Rule Fans],” who never fail to brighten my days.

Foreword

Mortal Danger

Written in Blood

If
I
Can’t Have You…

Thirty Years Later

Not Safe at Home

Photographic Insert

The format of my True Crime Files series changes constantly. Sometimes, there may be eight or ten short cases. Occasionally, as in this book, there are several long cases and only a few short cases. When I was in college, my professors in writing classes taught me to tell a story until it was told. The trick was to know when that was! It shouldn’t be a sentence shorter or a paragraph longer.

In 2007, as it happened, I came across three cases that demanded well over a hundred pages apiece to unveil the many tunnels, dead ends, corners, intersections, and amazing revelations that startled even experienced detectives. And I took all the pages I needed.

There are also two shorter cases in
Mortal Danger.
Readers often tell me that they read my crime files on the bus or a plane. This collection should fit, then, for short or long trips.

Next year, I may choose an entirely different format as I write both new cases and mysteries going back decades. With the evolution of cold case squads in almost all large police agencies, I am learning the answers to many unsolved homicides that I covered at the beginning of my
career, and it feels good to be able to write these endings long after we all believed the cases would lie dormant forever.

As I explore each case, I try my best to research the motivation of the killer, going back as far as I can in his (or her) life. I also try to allow readers to come to know the victims as if they were still with us. I look for the moment their two paths cross and tragedy blooms. Sometimes they are strangers who meet only once; sometimes it takes years before the
true
personality of the killer emerges.

As often as I can, I go to the cities and states where the crimes I write about occurred so that I—and then my readers—can know what it is like to live there. What is the weather like? What grows there? How does the air feel? How do people make a living? And even what local culinary treats abound there? In my head, I’m picturing us walking through a heretofore unknown place and, together, observing what happened there.

Many people have the mistaken idea that I write only about the Northwest, but I have spent weeks and months in New York, Georgia, Florida, Texas, Kansas, Missouri, Delaware, California, Idaho, and many other locales where crimes occurred. I have probably attended more than a hundred trials. This book happens to have cases that occurred in the Northwest, where I have lived for many years—yet there are links to the East Coast, too.

Frightening my readers is never my goal, but I do want to warn you of possible danger. I want you to be conscious of what’s happening around you and be ready to question odd comments, requests, pleas, life stories, and the people who tell them to you.

You are your first line of defense. Always remember that.

Sometimes I shudder to think of how many stories I have told about cases involving possessive, controlling men and hapless, hopeless women. Although they are all true, and involve scores of couples who don’t know one another—and never will—the three-act “play” of each relationship might well have been written by the same author. The first act is all about romance and trust; it moves along so gently that the woman who will soon be captive never senses danger. The second act is a slow progression—he cuts her off from her friends, her family, her job, and her self-respect, until she finds herself dancing to whatever tune her formerly perfect lover chooses to play.

The third act can end one of three ways: (1) the emotionally imprisoned woman gives up and remains with the man who forbids her to leave him; (2) she escapes from him but is left with a constant sense of someone silently stalking her; or (3) their “love story” turns tragic, and she dies at his hand. In the possessive lover’s mind, she always
belongs
to him. He finds this perfectly reasonable, and since the trapped woman had the audacity and cruelty to run from him, she deserves to die.

With every case of domestic violence I write, I am hoping and praying that I will warn other women who are on the verge of turning their lives over to a man who has shown them only a mask—a façade. I want to shake them enough to make them back away in time. I also hope that I may give women already captive the strength to leave. But
when a woman is entrenched in a sick relationship, it’s difficult to escape. She may have no income of her own. She may be very afraid. She has to find someplace to live, some way to support herself, some way to find secure child care. She may also have to locate shelter for beloved pets.

This first case—Mortal Danger—is perhaps one of the strangest and most mysterious tales of obsessive love I have ever encountered. When I began to follow this twisted and interlaced story, I found that each door I opened led to another door.

Did I ever get to the final door? I’m not entirely sure. It may be that there are readers who hold the answers to puzzles that came about because of a man called “Mr. Williams.” Maybe someone out there knew him by one of his many names. Maybe the end of the story will come from you.

Time and again, John Williams stated that his true goal in life was to help people—to help bring them health, wealth, and happiness. His full legal name was John William Branden, but he often found it more convenient to use one of any number of pseudonyms. The women he attracted had the same goals: a desire to serve others. He appeared to be a companion who would join with them so that, together, they would be more effective in doing good.

It was only natural that love and respect also came along with Mr. Williams. Or Dr. Branden. Or Jack Hennings. He used all those names—and more. In the beginning, no woman could have asked for a kinder lover.

I make no bones about it—this is a terrifying, cautionary tale. If it saves some lives with its warning, the women
who moved through it, caught between life and death, will be forever grateful and know that
some
good came out of telling it. If you recognize yourself in it,
run
! It doesn’t matter if a woman who is targeted by an obsessive, possessive lover is a high-school dropout or highly educated, or if she is naïve or brilliant, homely or beautiful, poor or wealthy. The brainwashing that certain men employ can trap any woman until the invisible, silken strands of their webs render her virtually helpless, cut off from those who might help her, her self-esteem squashed, her mind confused.

Ironically, it is quite often the weakest of men who stalk and capture. An insightful friend of mine calls this “the tyranny of the weak.”

Strong, confident, men have no need to control. Only those who are empty inside have to—or they cannot survive themselves.