Empty Promises (28 page)

Teri Depew went to trial first— in November 1977— in Superior Court Judge William T. Low's courtroom. She wore a leather jacket that hid her tattoos, but her hair was shorter than most men's. Her testimony matched the taped confession she had given to Joe Cellucci and Fred Balmer. In a low monotone, she confessed to killing David Hargis. "But if it hadn't been for Carole, I would never have touched the man.… I couldn't bring myself to hurt him. He looked so peaceful, lying there sleeping. I walked out of the bedroom and Carole said, 'It's got to be done tonight.' I took some pills and drank some beer to relax. I entered the room. I said, 'I'm sorry,' and, without realizing it, I hit him. I kept on hitting him."
Teri said David had called out for his wife after she left the bedroom. But Carole hadn't gone to him. "I rested my head on Carole's shoulder and I was crying,"
Teri testified. "But Carole said, 'Don't worry. Everything's going to work out okay.' I went back and hit him again.…"
Teri told the jury the terrible details of the "bloody mess" and of how awful the drive through the night to dispose of David's body had been. When Teri decided to plead guilty, Judge Low discharged the jury.
Low asked Teri if her words on the confession tape were true. "Is that how it happened?"
"Yes, it is," she said almost in a whisper. And then Teri Depew pleaded guilty to murder. She would go to prison, but she would not face the death penalty.

* * *

Carole Hargis went to trial in December 1977. Her makeup was perfect and her hair was soft and feminine. She wore a flower-patterned blouse and pastel slacks as she sat demurely next to her attorney.
Carole's defense was that Teri was a psychopathic liar and a lesbian who wanted her only for sex. "My client is innocent," her lawyer said. "She is innocent of this murder because Teri Depew controlled her mind."
Carole said she was afraid of Teri because of her sheer physical strength. Her attorney said that he had located a number of lesbians who were so afraid of Teri that they refused to testify in Carole's defense— for fear she would hurt them, even though she was in prison. But Carole had a kind heart. She felt sorry for Teri, he said, and had tried to befriend her.
"Teri came out of the bedroom, laughing," Carole said, tears in her voice, testifying about the immediate aftermath of her husband's murder. "I grabbed the telephone to call the police, I guess. I was dazed.… Teri aved that thing [the sash weight] at me to remind me
that I had kids in the bedroom. I took it to mean my sons would be next if I called the police. I was scared."
Carole said she had cleaned the blood up "because I didn't know what I was doing."
Deputy District Attorney Lou Boyle didn't buy Carole's helpless act. He asked her why she didn't call the police after she knew Teri was in custody and no longer a threat to her. Carole answered that she was afraid they wouldn't believe her— she was still very frightened, not only of Teri but of the police, too.
"Why did Teri Depew attack your husband?" Boyle asked.
"I don't know why."
"Was sex the answer, perhaps?"
"I don't know. Teri just made the remark that she liked my body. It was just off and on, so I ignored it."
"You didn't encourage her?" Boyle asked skeptically.
"No."
In court, Carole was the epitome of a weak and fragile woman, frequently bursting into tears. But then Boyle introduced a fascinating tape into evidence. Carole had called the police on July 21, all right, and she had indeed sobbed as she reported her husband missing. But she hadn't realized that she was still being recorded while the 911 dispatcher kept her on hold. During those moments, Carole had a perfectly calm conversation with Teri. From the expression in her voice, she might have been ordering something from a department store or gossiping cheerfully over the back fence. At one point she said to Teri, "Where
are
those idiots? Are we still on hold?"
When the operator came back on the line, Carole started to sob again, sounding like an anxious wife.
"It's clear she's an actress," Boyle told the jury. "Sobs, then a normal conversation, then sobs again."
That tape fascinated the jurors, but not as much as a surprise witness the San Diego County prosecutor called. Carole had often hired a seventeen-year-old baby-sitter to stay with her boys. The girl said that she looked upon Carole Hargis as almost a mother, and it was apparent that she hated having to testify against her.
But testify she did. Teri and Carole were so accustomed to having the baby-sitter in the house that they had freely discussed their plans to kill David in front of her. "Carole said she could get a lot of money from David if he died," the girl testified in a tremulous voice. "She said she ought to put the spider in his bed and say the boys accidentally left the cover off the terrarium."
The girl had overheard the two women discuss a number of deadly plans that would rid them of Carole's husband so they could be rich.
On rebuttal, Carole Hargis told the jurors that her baby-sitter was an inveterate liar. "She lies all the time.… She was a habitual liar."
The jurors deliberated only a little over two hours, and they decided who the liar was. On December 19, 1977, Carole Hargis was convicted of murder in the first degree and sentenced to life in prison for the murder of her husband.
Because of The Slayer's Act, which prohibits convicted killers from benefiting financially as a result of their victim's death, she did not collect a penny on David's insurance policy.

* * *

In that same July of 1977 when David Hargis died, another restless wife was hatching a similar plan for instant wealth. Some 1,300 miles north of San Diego,
Sandra Treadway* was no longer happy with her marriage. Unlike Carole Hargis, however, she didn't have a willing girlfriend who was ready to help, and she didn't think she could physically pull off a murder by herself.
Sandra Treadway lived in Tacoma, Washington. She was forty-eight years old and still quite good-looking. When she did a good job with her makeup and put on heels and hose, she was often asked to dance at the local watering holes, where dim lights and a couple of martinis made her irresistible to the lonely men at the bar. Sandra longed for romance. She and fifty-two-year-old Burt Treadway had been married for many years, but for the last several it had been a marriage of convenience. Working together, they had amassed a considerable inventory of mortgage-insured real estate. Burt had taken out $150,000 in life insurance with a double-indemnity clause in case of his accidental or violent death. He named Sandra as the beneficiary of all the policies.
Burt and Sandra Treadway agreed that their marriage was more of a business arrangement than a love match. Some years earlier, they had chosen open marriage as a way to handle their boredom. Burt was allowed to see his women friends and Sandra could have her men friends, and they would share the community property. They had children— his, hers, theirs— and there seemed to be no reason to end their marriage.
It was probably inevitable that the arrangement wouldn't work forever. Burt Treadway found a woman with whom he wanted to share his life, and he asked Sandra for a divorce. Sandra wasn't particularly upset that Burt had fallen in love with another woman— but she was very upset that he wanted a divorce. If they split up legally, their assets would be divided and she would lose a great deal of money. She would no longer
be Burt's beneficiary and they would have to sell their jointly owned property before it reached its peak value. She certainly didn't want to share her financial assets with some Jenny-come-lately who hadn't worked for any of it. Burt was about to ruin everything just because he'd fallen in love.
Sandra soon had a steady boyfriend herself, a man some years younger than she. She'd met him in a bar a few months earlier. As their relationship progressed into an affair, she confided to Sam Bettel* that she didn't love her husband. She really didn't even like him. In fact, she said, she would like to see him dead as soon as possible.
Sam was used to hearing women say that they didn't like their husbands; very few women who did like their husbands chose to pick up other men in bars. But none of them had ever told him that they wished their spouses dead.
"Why do you want him dead?" Sam asked, amazed.
"There's quite a bit of life insurance money at stake," Sandra said. "If he were dead, it would all come to me."
Sam assumed that Sandra had simply had one too many drinks. But once she brought the subject up, she wouldn't let it go. She asked him if he thought he could find someone who would kill Burt Treadway for her.
The conversation made Sam nervous, and he hoped he'd heard the last of it. When the bar closed at 2:00 A.M., they walked out into the soft June night. Who could think about murder on a night like this? he wondered. He managed to change the subject, and when he left Sandra, he was sure it had just been liquor talking.
But on July 3, Sandra spoke again about having her husband killed. "Have you found anyone to do it?" she demanded.
Sam shook his head. Fooling around with a man's
wife was one thing; finding somebody to kill him was a whole other story.
Sandra Treadway, however, was obviously obsessed with the idea. There was just too much property involved, not to mention all that insurance money. She pleaded, cajoled, and wheedled. She laid out arguments, which seemed to make sense. Sandra offered Sam a large share of one of the insurance policies if he would help her. She wanted to arrange a contract hit, something Sam knew nothing about. He realized that Sandra was really set on having her husband killed and that if he didn't help set it up, she would find someone who would. He didn't want to get involved in this at all, but he knew he wouldn't be able to live with himself if he allowed a man to be killed.
Sam talked it over with a policeman friend. "She's determined, and I don't know what the hell I should do," he said. "I went along with her for a while because I thought she was just fantasizing, that she wasn't really serious, but now I'm getting scared. If that man ends up dead and [the police] find out that she's been seeing me, I'm likely to be number one on the suspect list."
The officer advised Sam that he had good reason to be worried, and suggested he call the Pierce County Sheriff's Office.
It wasn't much of a moral struggle for Sam. He had long since lost interest in Sandra. On August 2 he called Detective Walt Stout at the sheriff's office and outlined Sandra Treadway's plans for her husband's death. "I don't want anything to do with it," Sam said, "but somebody's going to look at all that money she's offering and kill the guy."
Stout agreed that such a thing might happen, and he received a promise from Sam Bettel that he would co
operate with the sheriff's office in heading off a murder before it ever happened.
Walt Stout, whose job it was to catch murderers, would now play the undercover role of a hired killer. "The next time she brings up hiring a killer," he instructed Sam. "Tell her you think you may know of someone."
"No way. I don't know any contract men."
"Yes, you do," Stout corrected him.
"Me.
Not for real, but just to head the lady off before she actually finds someone to do it."
Sam Bettel left the sheriff's office a little relieved— but concerned now that he wouldn't be able to pull off the ruse. Sandra had an uncanny knack for reading people, and he was afraid she would see it in his face when he lied to her. But he was going to give it a try.
It was only a day or two before Sandra Treadway called him to ask if he'd found someone to kill her husband. This time, Sam said that he had located someone who might possibly do the job, but only if the price was right.
"Great!" she said. "I want to meet with him tonight."
Sam said he would try to arrange a meeting, but warned Sandra that it might take a few days. He hung up and called Walt Stout. Stout would be walking a narrow legal ledge. He could not suggest anything to Sandra because that would be construed as entrapment; he could only follow her lead in a death-plot conversation.
At 9:00 p.m. on August 5, Stout met Sam Bettel at his office and Sam phoned Sandra. "I've got him to agree to talk with you," Sam said. "I'm with him now."
"I want to meet him right away," Sandra said. "But it's got to be in the right place— I don't want to be seen talking to him in public."
"You say the place."
"Behind the Yorktown," she said, mentioning a restaurant they both knew well. "Out back in the parking lot. What's he look like?"
Sam's eyes raked over Walt Stout, as he tried to figure a way to describe him. "Oh, in his forties, six feet, 185 pounds, brown hair. Big old mustache. Tough-looking— you'd figure that." Stout grinned.
"Okay," she said. "I'll meet him behind the Yorktown, say, in fifteen minutes."
Walt Stout wore casual clothes and drove a five-year-old white Chevrolet convertible. He hoped devoutly that he didn't look like a cop as he followed Sam's car. He pulled into the parking lot behind the Yorktown Restaurant. A Ford station wagon was parked in a corner, away from the other patrons' cars.
Sam got out of his car and walked over to the station wagon. Stout could see a woman sitting behind the wheel and he saw her talking with Sam Bettel, but he couldn't hear what they were saying. At length, Sam raised his arm and pointed toward Stout's car. Then he walked toward the detective.
"She still wants to go through with it. She wants to talk to you. I told her your name was Doug."
The parking lights on the Ford wagon went off, and the woman known to Stout as Sandra Treadway slid out of the driver's seat and headed toward him. She had thick ash-blond hair, cut in layers and swept back from her face. She would have been pretty, except for the deep lines around her mouth and the hard look on her face. She peered into Stout's car, and then climbed in beside him.
"This is Doug," Sam said. "I'll let the two of you talk." Sam hurried to his car and drove away. He had done his part.
Sandra told "Doug" that they couldn't talk where they were because her husband and his lady friend often frequented the Yorktown. He suggested they drive a few blocks to a Safeway supermarket parking lot.
"I understand you have a job you want done," Stout began when they reached the Safeway lot. That was as much as he dared say.
But Sandra, who was no blabbermouth, cautiously answered, "Yes."
"Just what is this job?"
"I think you know."
"Your friend says you want someone taken care of."
"That's right."
"Well, what do you mean by 'taken care of'?" Stout pressed, pretending to be unaware of what she really wanted of him, although the phrase "taken care of" wasn't that difficult to decipher.
Exasperated, Sandra blurted, "I think you know perfectly well what I mean!"
"You mean you want someone killed?" Stout exhaled as if he was shocked at the thought, but she was nodding her head.
"Yes… my husband."
For almost an hour, Sandra talked to the man she believed to be a hired killer. She wanted him to know that she wasn't a jealous woman. She wasn't at all upset about the other woman in her husband's life. He could have all the women he wanted; she just didn't feel that a divorce would be financially feasible for her. "He's got a triple-indemnity insurance policy— if he dies accidentally, that is— and all the money goes to me, his legal wife."
Stout listened quietly, appearing to consider the job. He sighed and shook his head. "A job like that wouldn't
come cheap— it's risky. That would cost you in the neighborhood of five thousand dollars."
Sandra didn't flinch.
"It would have to be twenty-five hundred up front," Stout said, explaining that no hired gun in his right mind would pop someone for nothing. What assurance would he have that she wouldn't run and spend her insurance payoff in some foreign country?
Sandra nodded.
"And it would have to be twenty-dollar bills."
From what she'd read in books and seen on television, this was the way it was done, and she nodded eagerly. After all, if her husband was killed, she would have the insurance, and two homes. She could easily afford the $5,000. It was a bargain. "But it will take me a week or so to get twenty-five hundred together," she explained, "and I don't know if I can get it all in twenties, but I'll try."
Now that she felt the financial terms were set, Sandra began to set her ground rules. As for the murder itself, she didn't want her husband killed in their home. "I have children at home," she said, "and Burt's hardly ever home alone. I wouldn't want them to see it."
She had a plan, however. Her mother had died recently and left Sandra and Burt a home in the Oakbrook section of Tacoma. The house was full of valuable antiques. It was a sitting duck for burglars, so the family made sure someone was there all the time. Sandra's daughter, Claudette, had lived there for a while but had recently moved out. To protect the antiques, Sandra and Burt had been taking turns sleeping there until they could find a trustworthy tenant.
"I'll see that it isn't rented again until Burt is killed," she promised Walt Stout. That would make it very convenient for Burt to be taken care of on one of the nights
when he was sleeping at the Oakbrook house. "We can drive by there now," she said, "so you'll know where it is, and you can get familiar with the floor plan."
Walt Stout, who knew every inch of Pierce County by heart from his days on patrol, pretended to need Sandra's directions to find the Oakbrook neighborhood. It must have been Sandra's night to sleep there because the house was empty. She led him through the rooms that were indeed packed full of armoires, fragile-looking chairs, tables, paintings, china, and figurines. Stout wasn't an expert on antiques, but the stuff looked valuable. He wondered to himself if she was going to warn him not to accidentally put a bullet hole in any of these treasures when he shot Burt.
Even though Walt Stout had been in law enforcement for many years, it felt almost surreal for him to be in this house, which still had the sense of the old woman who had lived here and who had obviously cherished it. Listening to Sandra Treadway outline her plans, he found it hard to believe that she could be plotting her husband's violent death so casually and coldly.
There was no doubt in Stout's mind that Sandra Treadway intended to have her husband killed. She told him she would have the money by August 15, and they agreed to meet again at the Villa Bowl in the Villa Plaza. She promised to bring along a picture of Burt Treadway and detailed information about him so "Doug" could begin his plans to murder him.
Walt Stout breathed a sigh of relief. For the time being, at least, Burt Treadway was safe. Until the fifteenth, anyway. Sandra believed she had hired a real killer.
Their next meeting was set for 10:00 P.M. on the fif
teenth. Early that evening, Stout met with Chief Criminal Deputy Henry Suprunowski, whom his men called Ski, and Detective Terry Murphy, at the Pierce County West Precinct. They would coordinate their movements so there would be three witnesses to Sandra Treadway's plan to kill her husband.
Stout would drive the Chevy convertible, the same car he'd used during his first meeting with Sandra. There was a relatively thin barrier between the trunk compartment and the backseat. Detective Terry Murphy would hide in the trunk where he would be able to hear every word of the conversation between Stout and Sandra Treadway.
Suprunowski would park a short distance away where he could observe the car. On Stout's signal— a light touch on his brake lights— Suprunowski would be alerted to the fact that the money for the hit had actually been exchanged, and Ski would then move in for the arrest.
At a quarter to ten, Stout and Murphy pulled up behind a hardware store near the Villa Bowl, and Murphy crawled into the car's trunk. Then Stout drove to the meeting place where Sandra Treadway would be waiting— if she hadn't changed her mind.
At 10:00 P.M. Sandra drove up in a Ford LTD and parked facing Stout's convertible, their front bumpers almost touching. Stout saw her set a thick envelope on the dashboard of the car. Then she picked it up and walked over to sit in the passenger seat of Stout's car.