06.Evil.Beside.Her.2008 (20 page)

Linda snapped this photo of James as he got ready to leave the apartment for what he told her was a jog. Later she discovered his intentions were far more sinister.
Courtesy of Linda Bergstrom

As Ashley grew, Linda worried for her daughter’s safety, especially when she left the toddler alone with James.
Courtesy of Linda Bergstrom

Frank Fidelibus, a detective for the Friendswood Police Department at the time, remembers: “I looked at the knots and thought,
This guy’s been in the navy.”

For nearly two years, a dangerous sexual predator hunted women in Houston’s southern suburbs. An apartment complex security guard described the man to a forensic artist who drew this sketch.
Harris County Sheriff’s Office photo

Chuck Rosenthal, the prosecutor, argued that the only cure for a serial rapist was a long prison sentence.
Photograph by Kathryn Casey

The naval hospital where doctors described James as “dangerous” and recommended he be discharged from the service.
Photograph by Kathryn Casey

Charles Dunn worked for the Houston P.D. as a detective at the time Linda Bergstrom’s accusations were relayed to him. Later, Dunn earned a law degree and a lieutenant’s badge.
Photograph by Kathryn Casey

Sergeant Rusty Gallier later retired from the sex crimes division of the Houston Police Department, but he never forgot the Bergstrom case.
Photograph by Lain Clements

Sergeant Robert Tonry, pictured here, along with then-Detective Charles Dunn, moved in on their suspect.

James Bergstrom in 2006.

Linda, here in 2007, remembers too clearly the horror of her years married to a dangerous psychopath.
Photograph by Manuel Fernandez

Linda and James Bergstrom’s twenty-four-hundred-mile drive back to Houston from Seattle in July 1989 was like a funeral procession. James drove the lead, headlights on, in the Grand Prix, and she followed behind in her blue Precis. For Linda it was as if there had been a death in the family. Her marriage was, for all practical purposes, over, her dreams shattered. “Nothing was there for James,” she said later. “Everything I had felt for him was dead.”

She knew James had different plans: to return to Houston and to move in with his parents until they found a place of their own. Pragmatic as ever, Linda wasn’t arguing with him. She had a baby coming and she needed to be practical. Besides, she was now more afraid than ever that if she left, he might carry out his threat—hunt her and the baby down and kill them both. Who could protect her? There’d been enough stories in the newspapers and on television about women who went to the police for protection from an abusive spouse and ended up dead. Afterward all the editorials asked, How could it happen? Linda knew. It happened.

The best thing, she reasoned, would be to go along until she had everything in place, and then make the split. To move into the Bergstroms’ just long enough to find a way out.

That almost didn’t happen. When James called home before they left Seattle, Irene Bergstrom was not happy to hear
her oldest son was returning. To Linda the older woman said, “I don’t want to see James. I don’t want him calling me. I don’t want him here.”

Although Linda hadn’t talked with her in-laws since James’s arrest, Chris had said he’d kept them informed. She thought she understood her mother-in-law’s hostility, but there was no escaping it—James was coming home.

Of course, James’s mother undoubtedly had problems of her own to consider. At least on the surface, things in the Bergstrom household hadn’t improved since James and Linda left three years earlier. The previous Thanksgiving, Irene had called Pearland police at 4:09 in the morning to complain that her husband and a crony were drunk and unruly. A squad car was dispatched to the Bergstroms’ quiet suburban neighborhood, and officers mediated the quarrel, convincing James C. it was time for bed. Then, just that past April, James C. was charged with driving while intoxicated. In July he pleaded no contest and was sentenced to a year’s probation and a four-hundred-dollar fine.

On the phone that afternoon, James nudged Linda as she spoke, urging her to smooth things over. Finally Linda told her mother-in-law, “I’m pregnant. James and I just found out we’re having a baby.”

“That’s great, really great,” Irene Bergstrom said sarcastically. “All right,” she sighed. “You can come home and stay here until you find a place.”

The trip took four days. In her car, alone, Linda had time to think. She was confused and frightened, but at the same time fascinated with what James had done and why. “I began wondering what it was that made someone like James tick, made a man a rapist, and if he could be changed,” she said. “I had been raped, and I didn’t understand how one person could do that to another. And I felt guilty, as if somehow it was my fault. That I hadn’t been a good wife.”

Each night in a different motel room, she was forced to confront James in the flesh. At first he was timid, gentle to the point of patronizing. When he tried to touch her and she pulled away, he deferred. “I know you’ve been through a lot,” he said. “I can wait.”

But on the last night of the trip, Linda sensed his patience had worn thin. He was fidgety and tense, and grumbled when she closed the bathroom door behind her when she dressed, angry that she didn’t want him watching her.

“Can I tie you up?” he demanded that night.

“No,” she shouted at him. “Never.”

“Linda,” he said, “I have needs. I understand you’ve been through a lot, so I’m not going to force you. But I’m asking you again, can I tie you up?”

“No,” Linda said again. “I want you to leave me the hell alone.”

Rebuffed, James was furious, and immediately rushed toward her, hurling her against the wall and then onto the bed.

“You’re hurting me and you’re hurting the baby,” she screamed at him. “Haven’t you done enough?”

“I could just kill you both,” James said as he had so often before, this time grabbing her by the neck.

“Just leave me alone,” she screamed. “Can’t you understand what you’ve done?”

“All right, but no closing doors,” he demanded, reluctantly backing away. “You’re my wife.”

Her hands trembling, Linda went in the bathroom and slammed the door. James said nothing.

In the car the next day, she daydreamed about what might happen, how she could get away and start a new life without James. Whenever the reality of her situation crept in, it all seemed hopeless. How would she ever escape him?

Actually these days Linda’s thoughts were rarely on herself. The life growing within her was more important to her than anything had ever been. “I was determined that things
would be better for my baby,” she said later. “I wasn’t going to let my child have a life like I’d had. My life may have been a mess, but I was going to protect my baby.”

She had no way of knowing that still ahead were even more revelations about the man she had married. Facts waited for her in Houston that, once discovered, would bind her to James Bergstrom. Knowledge that would make it impossible to leave him and lead her to believe the only way she and her baby would be safe was if James Bergstrom was locked away in prison for a very long time.

When they arrived at the Bergstrom house that Saturday, James’s mother had been called out of town to a relative’s funeral, but James C., Maria, and Adelaide were all there waiting. The house seemed strange to Linda. Adelaide, then just seventeen, and Maria, twenty-two, were dressed as punk rockers all in black, their heads shaved. Even Adelaide’s room was painted black and decorated with garbage bags and bizarre sculptures of heads.

Although Linda was certain Chris had kept them informed, no one in James’s family spoke of what had happened in Washington, neither his admission to being a voyeur or suspicions that he was a rapist. Instead they asked warmly about his time in the navy. James bragged about the patrols he’d been on, the nuclear sub and the high-powered arsenal it carried. Linda listened in disgust as he entertained them with stories. “James made it sound like he loved the navy,” she’d say later. “Like it was the best thing that had ever happened to him.”

The following day, Linda went to visit her family. Her mother, brothers, and sisters congregated at the family home to greet her. A few neighbors even made their way over to the Martinez house to welcome her home to Houston. Some teased her about the new physique she’d engineered in the gym.

“You’re skinny,” Gino laughed when he saw her. “Mom’ll have to put a little weight on you.”

No one asked Linda why she and James had come home from Washington months early, and she was relieved not to have to explain. When the others finally left, Linda sat in the kitchen with Santos. The house looked much the same, but her mother had aged while she was gone.

“Tell me what happened,” Santos said finally. “What happened with James.”

Relieved to be able to share it all with someone, Linda talked on, leaving nothing out. When she was finished, she looked at her mother and thought she sensed Santos was having a difficult time believing all she had just heard.

“And guess what,” Linda said, tears clouding her eyes. “I’m pregnant.”

“No,” Santos said.

“Yes. I am.”

“Well, maybe you and James can work it out,” Santos said, softly. “For the baby’s sake, maybe he can go to a doctor and get better.”

“I don’t know, Mama,” Linda answered.

That night, when she returned to the Bergstroms’, she found James again regaling his family with stories from the nuclear front. After all she’d been through, listening to James brag about his exploits to his attentive family, a scene that would have seemed normal under other circumstances, struck her as nearly surreal. It was more than Linda could bear. She went to bed.

She slept fitfully, and at about one the following morning awoke and realized her husband wasn’t lying beside her. Some sixth sense told her something was wrong. The house seemed too determinedly silent. Linda eased out and walked toward the kitchen. James wasn’t there. Nor in the living room. She checked the bathroom. It, too, was empty. She crept back to his bedroom, the one they shared, and waited. Moments later, James shuffled cautiously down the hall toward her, from the direction of his sisters’ bedroom.

“What were you doing in your sisters’ room?” she demanded.

“I was in the bathroom,” he insisted.

“No you weren’t,” she concluded. “There’s something going on here and you’re not leveling with me.”

“Okay, I was looking at some of their stuff,” he said nervously. “They’ve got a statue in there of a head.”

“What?”

“I was just looking, that’s all,” he answered angrily, before cutting off the argument.

The next morning, James left for Devoe & Raynolds. The company had initially balked at hiring him back, but with his honorable discharge papers in hand, they were required to under union rules. As soon as he’d left, Linda went to find James C. He was in his bedroom, sitting at the computer.

“I’m going to get my stuff and stay at my mother’s,” she said, crying. “I know James is doing things again and no one is talking. I don’t know what to do anymore, but I can’t stay here.”

“Did he do something here, in this neighborhood?” James C. asked with alarm. “In this house?”

“I don’t know,” Linda confessed. “I just know he’s doing it again. Maybe this is all my fault. Maybe I haven’t been a good wife.”

“You’re not at fault. You’ve had a hard time, Linda, and there’s something you should know,” James C. said before calling out to his daughter. “Adelaide, come here.”

When she appeared at the door, he ordered, “You need to have a talk with Linda.”

“What happened in Washington?” was the first thing Adelaide asked. They were sitting under a tree in a park not far from the Bergstroms’ house.

Linda took the newspaper clips from the
Bremerton Sun
out of her purse and handed them to her. “Parkwood rapes suspect arrested,” screamed one headline. “Evidence to charge man with rape lacking,” read another.

“My brother is a rapist,” Adelaide said excitedly.

“He tied the woman up and raped her. He had a gun,”
Linda said sternly, trying to make her understand the seriousness of what James had done. “He has this thing, he was always doing it to me, too. During sex, he always wanted to tie me up and gag me.”

Then Adelaide confided that her brother had a long history of such conduct. That for many years he had sexually molested a young girl.

“So this went on before we were married?” Linda asked, stunned.

“Yes,” Adelaide assured her. “I used to hear him.”

“So this wasn’t my fault,” Linda sighed with relief.

Linda collected her things and left the Bergstrom house that afternoon and moved in with her mother. She called James at the plant later that day and said only, “I know everything. I know about you. Adelaide told me.”

“Let’s talk,” he said.

“We have nothing to talk about,” she answered. “It’s over.”

“Let me explain,” James said.

Linda agreed to meet at a Whataburger, a fast-food hamburger chain known for its orange and white A-frame roofs. It was Linda’s idea, because it was public and safe. They sat at a table and Linda looked over at her husband. James was restless.

“Yeah, I used to tie her up,” he admitted, fidgeting in his seat. “But I didn’t go all the way. I just touched her.” Linda listened in amazement as James maintained that while what he had done was wrong, he hadn’t really hurt the girl. That she was a child, merely eight at the time it began, didn’t appear to enter anywhere into his analysis of what he had done.

“She was just a little kid,” Linda protested. “Did your parents know?”

“They found out one night when we had an argument,” he admitted. “The night me and you went to that motel together when we were dating.”

“The night you said you’d argued about me?” Linda asked. “So that’s why they were in such a hurry to get you into the navy and out of the house.”

“I’ve got a problem, Linda,” he said with a shrug. “I know that. I’m willing to get help and work hard to get better. I’ll go to a doctor, get therapy.”

He looked at her, pleading, “I don’t want to lose you and the baby. I want to be a family. Stay with me and we can work this out. I can get better.”

Linda didn’t know what to think. Certainly the Bergstroms hadn’t done anything to stop James. Or the navy. If she left him, what would he do? Go out and rape again, most likely. Like that sheriff in Washington had said he would.
Is it possible to change someone?
she wondered.
Can I stop him?

That night she talked it over again with Santos. “He needs help,” Linda’s mother told her. “He needs to see doctors to get better. Why didn’t his parents send him?”

“They didn’t and neither did the navy.” Linda shrugged. “The truth is, nobody cares.”

“If he agrees to go for help, Linda, maybe you should try,” Santos said, sadly.

It was true that Linda no longer loved James, not the man he had become. But she had begun thinking of him as two different men, and she still remembered the old James, funny and gentle. The one who stood outside her house that night in the street and yelled, “I love you, Linda,” until her neighbors came to investigate. The man who had looked at her as they drove down the highway and predicted, “Someday I’m going to marry you.”

What was she giving up if she waited six months to see if they could work it out? Days passed and Linda examined and reexamined her quandary. She turned it around, looking at it from all sides. No matter how she posed the problem, it continued to look dark. It was like she was a child again, reasoning her way out of her family’s cycle of violence. Finally Linda concluded she had only one choice. As she saw
it, she could stay with James long enough to see that he got help. Then she could leave knowing she, at least, had attempted to stop him. Linda called James and told him that if he was committed to going to therapy and getting better, she was willing to give it a try.