06.Evil.Beside.Her.2008 (35 page)

It’s rare to gaze into the eyes of pure evil. It’s an impossible experience to forget, one that can haunt a lifetime.

I’d covered crime cases for nearly a decade when, in the fall of 1992, I went to the Harris County Jail to interview James Bergstrom. Linda had urged him to talk with me, to tell his story in the hope that it could help others. “I want people to understand what a serial rapist is like,” she’d said. “What goes through his mind.” Linda had already filed for a divorce, but James was intent on keeping the marriage together. He’d agreed to talk to me only to please her.

We sat in an office on the jail’s second floor. On the floors above us, men and women whiled away long hours in windowless cells, under the glow of fluorescent lights. Some awaited their trials, calling lawyers to plan strategies on the jail pay phones and urging family and friends to send money. Others, those with sentences of months rather than years, counted off the days of their confinements, envisioning walking past the guards and out the maze of doors to freedom. For inmates like James, whose sentences consisted of decades, the jail was a temporary stop before being transported to one of the prisons stretched across Texas, dismal places bordered by cyclone fences and razor wire where inmates had little to do but jockey for favors and try to outwit one another and the guards.

“I don’t know why Linda is making me talk to you,” James said, glowering at me. We sat only a few feet apart, and I could feel his tension. He was anxious and jumpy. “I don’t want my face out there. The guys inside don’t like guys like me.”

Even within prison there is a hierarchy. Rapists aren’t
popular inmates; other criminals scorn them. Those who sexually assault women are held near the lowest level of prison esteem, below murderers and slightly above pedophiles. Although he had yet to disappear behind prison walls, James already claimed he was being bullied.

Despite his misgivings, Bergstrom talked openly with me that day. As Linda had hoped, he told me about growing up, his family life, the seeds of his fascination with control and domination, the building desire he felt stirring in him even as a young man. “I watched television a lot,” he said. “And I liked those scenes, like in the old westerns, where the women were tied up and gagged. I liked the idea that I could do that to a woman and have her in my power, and do whatever I wanted to her.”

After we discussed his past, he recounted his time in the navy, those months at sea when he planned how he’d live out the urges that were quickly strengthening into obsessions. By the time his sub docked, women were at danger merely driving on the same highway as James Bergstrom, walking down the street, or passing him in a shopping mall. He admitted that his frustrations built, and he’d grown successively more dangerous. At first, he ran away if a woman fought back. In the end, Bergstrom was so bold that he raped one woman while her young child hid nearby. Of course, there were those chilling words to his final victim, the high school cheerleader he threatened to kill.

Yet remarkably, as we talked, it became clear that Bergstrom’s fantasies clouded his view of reality. In his eyes, the women wanted him as much as he wanted them. James believed he’d done nothing wrong. Although the women protested and fought back, begging him to leave, he insisted he was merely fulfilling their unspoken desires.

“I saw the way she looked at me,” he said about one victim. “She wanted me to do everything I did to her. She wanted more.”

When Bergstrom talked with me about his victims, his chest puffed out with bravado. He relished retelling his ex
ploits, his grand successes. That he damaged the lives of his victims and their families didn’t impinge on his enjoyment. The only thing James Bergstrom regretted was getting caught.

“Linda knew about my problem. I thought she understood,” he said, his face flushed with anger and his fists clenched. “She turned me in. It’s her fault that I’m here. It’s her fault that I won’t get the care that doctor at my trial said I needed for my problem.”

“My problem,” Bergstrom said, over and over.

Certainly, he had made it Linda’s problem as well. “It was personal,” she said, recounting how she feared Ashley would ultimately become one of his victims. “I wanted him put away, forever.”

As Chuck Rosenthal told the jurors, Bergstrom had also become society’s problem. Perhaps he hadn’t listened when his own witness, the expert psychologist hired by his lawyer, admitted Bergstrom’s “problem” would take many years of therapy and medication, and even then probably not be cured. James Bergstrom free to wander the streets was every woman’s nightmare.

When his demeanor wasn’t prideful, Bergstrom looked downcast, portraying himself as the victim. He’d had a difficult childhood, he lamented. In school, he hadn’t fit in, and he’d been bullied at times. In James Bergstrom’s world, everyone else was to blame. He saw only one victim, himself.

Interviews with a psychopath are tricky. At least in the beginning, the interviewer has to rein in disgust, animosity, even fear. Like a police officer hearing a confession, a journalist has to put her feelings aside, to let the murderer or rapist tell his or her tale, without reacting. The wrong expression, a too sharply pointed phrase, and the interview ends prematurely, leaving questions unanswered. Those unanswered questions prevent uncovering the truth, a necessity if one hopes to expose the monster in the shadows and destroy it.

Through my first two interviews with Bergstrom, I sat
back, hiding my disdain, while he expounded on his version of his life and his crimes. Finally, on my third visit to the jail, just a few days before he left for TDCJ, I’d heard all I needed to hear, and I couldn’t hold back any longer. I’d brought a card for James to sign, one he asked me to mail to Ashley. As he signed his name inside it, in the same precise hand I’d seen on his navy letters, he talked of Linda, saying that no matter what, she’d always be his wife. “We were married,” he said. “The church doesn’t recognize divorce.”

When I said nothing, he turned again to his victims, losing himself in the memories, so joyous to him, so horrific for his victims. Again he insisted that the women had lusted after him as he’d desired them.

His smug expression sickened me.

“James, that’s simply not true. It’s all a product of your diseased mind,” I said, the mask finally abandoned, my face revealing the contempt I held him in. “Those women hate you. They despise you. You had to threaten them with a knife or a gun before they’d submit to you. And every second with you was a nightmare they’ll be troubled by throughout their lives. What you did is absolutely evil, and you have no one to blame for being in prison but yourself.”

James stared up at me, and his eyes hardened. For the first time, I saw the man Linda lived with, the angry, fuming, bristling James, a bundle of jagged rage that could strike without notice, a man with so much hate inside him it changed his very appearance. The broad smile turned to a sinister sneer, his jaw clenched, thick veins appeared running down his forehead, and he stared at me with derision.

“This wasn’t your little problem, James,” I went on, glaring back at him. “There is a monster inside of you. It’s a monster you allowed to take over your life, to twist you into something vile.”

During our time together he’d talked of God and religion. At one point, James recounted a Bible story, comparing himself to Job, the righteous man tormented by the devil.
“You portray yourself as a martyr,” I said. “You’re not the victim; you’re the perpetrator, the assailant, the embodiment of sin. In the Bible, you are the devil.”

The loathing in James Bergstrom’s eyes grew more intense, and I saw him raise a clenched fist. The guard moved forward, and Bergstrom lowered his hand. Silently, I stood up to leave. When I turned back, just before walking away, I said, “Those women didn’t want you, they loathed you. They are the victims, not you. Until you realize that, you will never change.”

As I left, the guard shackled Bergstrom and led him off to be taken back to his cell. Despite my relief at being able to tell Bergstrom who he truly was, I departed feeling ineloquent. There were so many things I wanted to say to him, to open his eyes, to make him confront the fiend he’d become. I’d failed. In truth, I was at best naïve. Years later, I would realize there was nothing I could have said. At some point, cutting through the choppy waters of the Pacific in a nuclear submarine, James Bergstrom had convinced himself he had all the rights and the women he chose as his victims had none.

Fifteen years later, I still look back on my meetings with Bergstrom and shudder. I have never requested a follow-up interview with him. I don’t ever again want to look into his eyes and see the seething hatred bottled up inside him.

I have seen Linda again. After years of being afraid of making another commitment, chancing another mistake, she married a police officer and they’ve built a good life together. They have a home, and Ashley has grown into a bright and beautiful young woman. She’s reed thin and into ballet and dance, and doing well in school. In the near future, she’ll enter college, with the possibilities of a lifetime ahead of her.

While young, she visited James in prison with his parents. As early as Ashley could understand, Linda began explaining James to her in bits and pieces. By the time Ashley reached middle school, she understood who Bergstrom was.
“I don’t have any desire to have a relationship with him,” she said. “Ever.”

One thing hasn’t changed over the decades. Linda still worries about James. He is the darkness that stalks her life. Like me, she fears that one day the prison doors will open and he’ll walk out. Perhaps he’s spent his time in prison plotting how to get what he wants with less risk next time. “I’m afraid that if he gets out he may kill his next victims,” she said. “He won’t take the chance that they’ll testify and send him back to jail.”

The years have passed quickly. To our dismay, James became eligible for parole in March 2007. To keep him inside, Linda, Ashley, and I went on national television and started a protest letter campaign, asking men and women across the nation to write letters to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice voicing their opposition to James being granted parole. It worked, and in July 2007, James’s parole was denied. But he’ll become eligible again in July 2010, and every two to three years from that point on. The reality is that we will have to be vigilant and continue the fight.

If you’d like to help keep James Bergstrom behind bars, it’s a simple process. You don’t have to be a Texan to file a protest. All you have to do is write a letter or send an e-mail saying you believe James Bergstrom should not be set free on parole, that he continues to be a danger to society, and that he deserves to spend the rest of his life in prison.

Your protest can be submitted via e-mail to:
[email protected]

To those of you who join us in our protest, from Linda, Ashley, and me, and from all the women who would cross paths with James Bergstrom if he were ever set free: Thank you.

As with any project of this scope, there are many people to thank: my parents for raising an inquisitive child; my husband and children for their patience with my frequent absences while I was off chasing a hot story; my editors at
Ladies’ Home Journal:
Myrna Blyth, Jane Farrell, Pamela Guthrie O’Brien, and Shana Aborn for the opportunities and support they’ve given me throughout my long association with the magazine. In fact, I first sought Linda Bergstrom out for an article for the
Journal,
an article that ran in July 1993.

Then there are those directly involved in the task of shaping
Evil Beside Her.
Thanks to: Sandy Sheehy and Claire Cassidy, who critiqued, guided, and encouraged my original proposal; my agent, Philip Spitzer, who took a chance on a Houston magazine writer who wanted to write her first book; Lisa Wager, my initial editor at Avon Books, for believing in Linda’s story; Tom Colgan, who took over the project after Lisa’s departure, for his enthusiasm while steering the book through to publication; Jim Loosen at JAL Data Research Services in Olympia, Washington, and his magic computer for helping to track down sources; Shari Hall for many, many hours of transcribing taped interviews.

Special thanks are deserved by Jane Farrell and Claire Cassidy, my two dedicated readers. I know there were many times, especially weekends and evenings, when projects of their own were put on hold while they dissected my latest chapters. I am grateful for their counsel. They are truly cherished friends.

Finally, I would like to thank the many people who shared their hospitality and their stories with me, some named in
the book, others not. I am especially grateful to Linda Bergstrom and the other women victimized by James Bergstrom who agreed to be interviewed. They are members of a painful sisterhood, and I appreciate their courage, their honesty, and their friendship.

—Kathryn Casey
1994