No Regrets (2 page)

To the only literary agents I’ve ever had. All on a handshake, we began a completely symbiotic relationship.
I appreciate them more with every book: Joan and Joe Foley.

I’ve been very lucky to have the support of my children throughout the writing years: Laura, Leslie, Andy, Mike, and Bruce. The younger generation is growing. Beyond Rebecca, Matthew, Olivia, and Tyra, we have two new additions: Logan and Miya Dawn.

While I have been hunched over my computer, my garden and house have been saved from falling apart by Kevin Wagner, Matt Parker, Justin Robison, and Perry Wilson. And, last, I must acknowledge a whole new support group, which appeared almost magically on the guestbook of my website pages at www.annrules.com. The ARFs (who came up with their own name for “Ann Rule Fans”) are an extremely lively group who welcome newcomers. They are also Ann Rule
Friends!
Please come and visit.

Preface

The Sea Captain

It (Ain’t) Hard Out There for the Pimps

The Runaway and the Soldier

The Tragic Ending of a Bank Robber’s Fantasy

A Very Bad Christmas

To Save Their Souls

. . . Or We’ll Kill You

Photographic Insert

Most of us have made decisions that we wish we could go back and change. Sometimes it is for something we have done and then again, we may regret something we should have done and didn’t. “Conscience doth make cowards of us all,” Shakespeare once wrote, and like scores of the Bard’s quotes that have stood the test of time, this is as true today as it was hundreds of years ago. Even if we are the only ones who know our secrets, that little voice inside reminds us. That nagging voice brings back memories that are painful to people who have empathy for others’ feelings and who do have consciences. But not everyone does. For some, yesterday is gone and entirely forgettable, the slate is wiped clean, and they never look back. Some of the most horrifying crimes I have ever chronicled were committed by people for whom another’s life is no more important than that of a flea or a crushed rose.

In
No Regrets,
I write about a number of murderers who didn’t feel at all sorry for what they did to further their own purposes, but I also tell some heart-wrenching stories of people who had profound regret. They could technically be called killers, although I believe they suffered more than their “victims.” There are even a few cases here where one might say the so-called victims reaped grim rewards they deserved. Over the many years I have written about actual criminal cases, I have learned that there is nothing about
any homicide that can be taken for granted. Just as human behavior is unpredictable, so are the many views of each murder. Like snowflakes, no two cases are just alike, and some are shockingly unique.

I have written more than a thousand articles and twenty-six books about murder. I have never forgotten any of them, although I must admit that sometimes names escape me. This is Volume 11 of my Crime Files series. Only those stories that have stood the test of time make the cut when I’m selecting cases.

That is true for “The Sea Captain,” the book-length case that comes first, and for all the shorter cases that follow:

“It (Ain’t) Hard Out There for the Pimps,” “The Runaway and the Soldier,” “The Tragic Ending of a Bank Robber’s Fantasy,” “A Very Bad Christmas,” “To Save Their Souls,” and “. . . Or We’ll Kill You.”

A few of these cases reduced me to tears, and, frankly, some frightened me. Even though a number of years have passed since I first heard their details played out in courtrooms, it hasn’t been easy to live through them again. My own emotional reactions came tumbling back as I visited them once more, surprising me with their intensity. There are other cases here that I knew of, but had never before researched or written. And one came to me through an email after I had already started writing this book.

In the end, there were myriad motivations that sparked murder: greed, lust, jealousy, naked masochism, fulfillment of fantasy, insanity, and—strangely—even love.

Sometimes it takes a hundred years or more for a true story to be told and retold so often that it is eventually tinged with enough rumors and unsubstantiated “facts” to make it barely distinguishable from fiction. Long-ago murder cases have been transformed into ghost stories, and real homicides become folk tales, both categories so often repeated that it’s hard to know what to believe. A very few move rapidly into the folklore category. The case that follows is one of those. It isn’t that old in years, but the bizarre circumstances of the case made it prime material for half-truth/half-fiction: the identities of the victim and the purported killer, the isolated location of the crime, the modus operandi, and the lingering mystery that continues to this day.

Although there is nothing vaguely humorous about the disappearance of eighty-year-old ship’s marine pilot Captain Rolf Neslund, his vanishing into the mists of Washington State’s Lopez Island in the Strait of Juan de Fuca is the stuff of urban legend. Some people found this story comical, while others were sickened by the rumors of what might have happened.

Rolf Neslund made headlines several times in his long life, and he had more close friends than most men. He appeared to be utterly indestructible: a man who would go on
forever—the kind of guy who would surely appear one day in his local newspaper blowing out a hundred candles on a birthday cake. But if Captain Rolf is blowing out enough candles to start a fire, he isn’t doing it on Lopez Island.

For all of his life, Rolf Neslund had been extraordinarily lucky, escaping death or serious injury any number of times. It would seem that he had paid his dues in life and certainly deserved the quiet pastoral life he enjoyed in his eighth decade.

No one knows for sure where Rolf is, although a court of law has ruled that he is, indeed, dead. And well he may be, possibly from homicidal violence.

Even his actual birthdate
has a sense of mystery about it. However, most people agree that Rolf Neslund was born at the turn of the twentieth century on November 3, 1900, in Konigsborg, Norway, far away from Lopez Island. His family’s business was in shipping, and Rolf was one of three sons: Harald, Erling, and Rolf. There was a single sister—Eugenie. Any formal schooling for him was abbreviated, taking a backseat to his craving for adventure. Rolf, a strong, handsome kid who appeared older than he was, ran away to sea at the age of fourteen.

He soon found a job on a brigantine trader named
Staatsraad Ericksen.
He stayed for six months—until the ocean began to feel more like work than a place for excitement. The young teen ran away again, leaving the
Staatraad Ericksen
behind. Although he was devoted to his family, he felt that he should go to America if he was ever to make his fortune. He had an aunt living on Long Island, and figured he could live with her until he saved enough to support himself.

Rolf stowed away on a passenger ship full of Norwegian immigrants and managed to lose himself in the crowd. But immigration authorities on Ellis Island spotted the boy with no papers, and sent him right back to Norway on the next boat.

Rolf was far from giving up, and he had learned a lot from his ill-fated first trip to the United States. The next time, he was able to hide his presence more effectively. His second journey was on the Scandinavian America Line: the
Frederick VIII.
He was old enough and clever enough to convince the immigration officers that he would be a benefit to America and dependent on no one. And he was right: Rolf applied for a job so dangerous that there weren’t a lot of applicants. He was hired as a painter to work on the steel beams of a skyscraper being built on Forty-second Street and Madison Avenue in New York City, a looming edifice that still stands today. Young Neslund walked the beams hundreds of feet above the bustling streets, balancing with ease and unafraid of falling. The fair Norwegian teenager was one of a very few Scandinavians who worked up there in the clouds beside the more traditional steelworkers, who were mostly Italian immigrants and Native Americans.

The money was good, and few could argue that the job wasn’t exciting, but still Rolf wasn’t content. Having had a taste of life on the ocean, he longed to smell the salt spray once more and ride the pitching deck in a storm where the giant waves tossed ships like toys. Rolf was still very young—only seventeen. With World War I looming in Europe since 1913, going to sea wasn’t the safest option, but Rolf had never put safety first. He took the advice of a Swedish sea captain who told him to register with the Norwegian Consulate in New York and to take that opportunity to add a few years to his age. He did that, and gave his birthdate as July 7, 1897. Overnight he was twenty years old, old enough to go to sea. He went down to the docks of New York City, willing to sail on any ship that had a job he could fill. He was soon hired on as a mess boy for the
British merchant ship
Ganges.
In June 1917, he found the shipping line where he would remain for the next twenty-six years: the Luckenbach Steamship Company.

Rolf’s miraculous luck began to reveal itself a year later as he worked as a quartermaster/helmsman on the
Harry Luckenbach.
Although his ship was torpedoed by a silent, deadly German submarine, and at least eight of his shipmates perished, Rolf survived and somehow made his way to France.

By the time he was really in his early twenties he was exceptionally strong. Soon, he was working on another ship in the Luckenbach line. He continued his steady progress up the ladder, through all the on-deck ranks and, by 1926, to his first command. Rolf Neslund became master of the
Robin Goodfellow.

One of the diciest jobs on ships is that of pilot. It requires great skill and natural instinct to guide mammoth vessels from the oceans through narrow waterways leading to city ports where they are loaded and unloaded. Being a ship’s pilot is one of the most prestigious jobs in the shipping industry. After commanding a number of Luckenbach ships on intercoastal routes for ten years, Rolf became a pilot. He was in particular demand to direct vessels in and out of the intricate harbors of Puget Sound.

In 1935, the Puget Sound Pilots’Association was established, a brotherhood of skilled seamen who shared a special camaraderie. Most of them were, like Rolf Neslund, once captains of their own ships. Rolf was one of their earliest members. The association exists today, licensed by the State of Washington and the U.S. Coast Guard with very strict codes of training, experience, skill, and conduct to protect both citizens and natural resources.

Although he was a good-looking man, a fine example
of his Norwegian background, it isn’t surprising that Rolf married later in life than most men. He had dropped into many ports and been consumed with his duties, and that left him far too busy to think of marriage, but not too busy to think of women.

He was thirty-four when he married his first wife, Margot,
*
in 1934. With that marriage, Rolf Neslund began a most complicated round-robin of romantic entanglements. Margot was also a native of Norway, the country where Rolf felt most at home. In 1935, he met her baby sister, Elinor, who was only eleven years old at the time. He scarcely noticed her, but Elinor found him very handsome, a hero larger than life, and she never forgot him. Rolf, of course, was old enough to be her father.

Elinor didn’t see Rolf again for twenty-one years. When they met once more, it was in Seattle in 1956. She was thirty-two, a single mother of two young girls, and he was nearing his middle fifties.

Rolf had had many adventures during the two decades since he’d last seen Elinor. If possible, he was even more heroic and attractive to her.

But he was married to her sister.

Margot and Rolf had never had children. That wasn’t surprising. Initially, he was scarcely around often enough to impregnate his wife. After three years as an independent pilot, Rolf Neslund had again decided that he missed the open sea. The 1940s was not an era in which most men would have chosen to be at sea. There was, of course, a new world war going on, and submarines prowled, silent
as sharks, beneath the ocean’s surface. Rolf wasn’t worried; he had been on a ship sunk by a submarine before and emerged safely.

In 1943 he walked up the gangplank as master of the
Walter A. Luckenbach.
Later that year, Rolf commanded a huge freighter—the
Andrea F. Luckenbach
—as it traversed the Atlantic Ocean headed out of New York City and bound for Liverpool, England. Upon its arrival in the city that would one day be most famous as the home of the Beatles, Rolf’s ship was called into service as part of the Merchant Marine fleet. The
Andrea Luckenbach
was ordered to rendezvous with other vessels during the invasion of North Africa.

But that was not to be. The massive ship never made the invasion. Rolf Neslund would have the dubious record for most times torpedoed. The
Andrea F. Luckenbach
took a hit from a submarine and sank, taking twenty-one of his men to their deaths far below. Although many people were unaware of it, those serving in the Merchant Marine had a higher mortality rate than those in any of the armed forces, losing one out of every twenty men to enemy attacks. But not Rolf Neslund. Once again, he survived unscathed.

Undeterred, Rolf moved to another Luckenbach ship and commanded it and others anywhere he was needed. On one trip from South Africa to Brazil, he and his men saved the entire crew of a company boat that was sunk seventy miles off the Cape of Good Hope.

By the time the war ended in 1945, Rolf was in his mid-forties, still a long way from retirement. He had finally had enough of life on the ocean, however, and became a Puget Sound pilot again. When he finally retired from the Puget Sound Pilots’ Association thirty-four years later he
would do so as the oldest—and, arguably, most beloved— member in their history.