No Regrets (46 page)

Rolf and Ruth Neslund sit by the fireplace in their Lopez Island home. Some who knew them said theirs was a love match. Others weren’t so sure.

Rolf and Ruth Neslund’s dream house. They called it “Shangri-La,” but Ruth later called the sprawling rambler overlooking the sea the “Alec Bay Inn,” and ran a successful bed-and-breakfast there.
(Seattle Times)

Rolf Neslund in 1979, shortly after he retired as a ship’s pilot. He is sitting on a couch that his wife later replaced. He was a robust man, even as he approached his eightieth birthday.

Rolf Neslund a year before he vanished. He was in great shape for a man of seventy-nine. But his marriage wasn’t doing as well.

Rolf Neslund on his last Christmas. A year later, only a handful of people knew where he was.

Robert Myers, who played a horrifying role in the disappearance of his brother-in-law, Rolf. His sister gave him a boat, and rewarded him in many ways.

Physical evidence gathered by the search team from the San Juan County Sheriff’s Office and the Washington State Attorney General’s Office. It was a large part of the state’s case against Ruth Neslund. Plaintiff’s evidence: shell casings, voodoo doll, jewelry box with Rolf’s favorite cuff links, knives and sheaths, Crete-Nu container, scrapings of dried blood. The Neslund case has become the “Lizzie Borden” mystery of the mystic Northwest. (
San Juan Historical Museum)

Evidence, bagged and tagged by San Juan County deputies after many days’ search of Ruth Neslund’s Lopez Island home. Much of it was shocking to island residents who crowded the courtroom at Ruth’s murder trial.
(San Juan Historical Museum)

Ruth Neslund’s favorite voodoo doll.
(San Juan Historical Museum)

Ruth Neslund seemed remarkably cheerful at one of her court appearances as she is supported on the arm of a deputy. She rather enjoyed her notoriety as the “talk of the San Juan Islands.”
(Seattle Times)

Robert Keppel, a chief investigator for the Washington State Attorney General’s Criminal Division, worked with Ray Clever to find Rolf Neslund’s blood type in the days before DNA. They were finally able to isolate it from a tissue sample retained after surgery Rolf had. Keppel also helped the sheriff’s department investigators in other aspects of the strange disappearance of a man so well-known in his island community. He now teaches an extremely popular course on homicide at Seattle University.