Deadly Seduction
Authors: Wensley Clarkson
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Contents
St. Martin’s Paperbacks titles by Wensley Clarkson
Dear Reader:
The book you are about to read is the latest bestseller from St. Martin’s True Crime Library, the imprint
The New York Times
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The Milwaukee Murders
delves into the twisted world of Jeffrey Dahmer, one of the most savage serial killers of our time;
Lethal Lolita
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Whoever Fights Monsters
takes you inside the special FBI team that tracks serial killers;
Garden of Graves
reveals how police uncovered the bloody human harvest of mass murderer Joel Rifkin;
Unanswered Cries
is the story of a detective who tracked a killer for a year, only to discover it was someone he knew and trusted;
Bad Blood
is the story of the notorious Menendez brothers and their sensational trials;
Sins of the Mother
details the sad account of Susan Smith and her two drowned children;
Fallen Hero
details the riveting tragedy of O. J. Simpson and the case that stunned a nation.
St. Martin’s True Crime Library gives you the stories
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Charles E. Spicer, Jr.
Senior Editor, St. Martin’s True Crime Library
To Toby, Polly, Rosie, and Fergus
Notes of Gratitude
The idea of using a leaden, dispassionate word like “acknowledgments” for this section cannot begin to express the depth of my feelings for the many individuals who have made this book possible. I owe them my deepest and most heartfelt gratitude.
First to my agent Peter Miller and my editor Charles Spicer. Without them this book would never have happened. Their support and guidance has been very much appreciated. Also, many, many thanks to Frank Abatemarco, whose investigative skills proved invaluable.
Then there are the townsfolk of Peru, Indiana, who welcomed me with such enthusiasm and hospitality. They include: James A. Grund, Connie Grund, Gary Nichols, Wil Siders, Bob Brinson, Mary Heltzel, Charlie Scruggs, Don Fern, Darlene Worden, Nellie Sanders, Jane Allen, Tony Hare, Mary Sue Frietag, Jack and Linda Rich, Anne Hubbard, Nancy Newman, Aimi Bell, Shirley Day, and the staff of the Rosewood Mansion Bed and Breakfast.
In Oklahoma City there was: J. M. Einhorn, Don Deason, Lester Suenram, Paddy Harkey, Vivian Susil.
But one of my biggest debts of gratitude must go to Andy Pierce at the
Peru Daily Tribune.
Lastly, a special word of thanks to Joe Paolella, whose expertise proved invaluable, and Mark Sandelson for providing all the usual facilities.
Author’s Note
The central figure in this story, Susan Grund, changed her name frequently through her propensity for marriage. In an effort to avoid confusion, throughout the book she is referred to by whichever name she was using at the time.
Some of the dialogue represented in this book was constructed from available documents, some was drawn from courtroom testimony, and some was reconstituted from the memory of participants.
Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way
—
Leo Tolstoy
Prologue
The cold, steel nozzle of the semiautomatic pressed hard against Jimmy Grund’s eyelid, then the killer squeezed the trigger. Grund did not even have time to awaken from his slumber. If he had, he would have looked up and recognized the face above him immediately. There was no struggle. The bullet entered the left corner of Grund’s eye, traveled through his brain, exited the right side of the back of the head, and embedded itself in the base of the couch’s armrest. His life was snuffed out in a split second.
* * *
Susan Grund entered the bedroom of her vast mansion and saw the corpse of her husband, Jimmy. He looked so relaxed. His legs were crossed and he was sitting at his favorite angle on the sofa in the bedroom he shared with her. His left arm lay across his chest. He was still dressed in his favorite green golf shirt and in his right hand he clutched a Kleenex tissue. He looked very peaceful. There was no sign of a struggle. Then she saw the gunshot wound to his left eye and a drop of blood on his mouth.
On the floor was a personal check made out for two hundred and ninety-five dollars. Handwritten notes were sprawled across the coffee table in front of him. They looked like the outline for a speech he was planning to make.
A TV remote sat on the sofa next to Jimmy Grund. His eyeglasses sat on the coffee table. It all had the ring of comfort to it. No struggle. No pain. No anguish.
Susan Grund leaned down to touch him. There was no response. She then called out to him, “Jim? Jim?” Nothing.
* * *
“It’s my husband, we just got here, and there’s blood on him,” Susan Grund explained breathlessly after dialing 911.
She went on to inform the Dukes Memorial Hospital Emergency Room that she had found her husband shot in the bedroom of their house. They had to come quickly.
The hospital immediately contacted the Peru, Indiana, Police Department, which got in touch with the Miami County Sheriff’s Department because the Grund house was outside of the city limits.
Downstairs in the basement of the house, Susan’s seven-year-old daughter Tanelle, and her cousin Andrea had been awoken from their sleepover by the sound of Susan crying and talking on the telephone. They walked up the stairs bleary eyed and asked her what was happening.
At the hospital, the dispatcher heard Susan Grund tell one of the children. “Daddy’s not well right now.” Then she spoke softly into the receiver, “Oh God, please hurry.…”
Susan stayed on the line to the dispatcher, opened the front door, and turned on the outside lights to the house and waited in the warm summer night air for the ambulance to appear. The mobile phone was still glued to her ear as the white paramedics vehicle slid to a halt on the gravel-covered drive a few minutes later, at 11:58
P.M.
Dukes Memorial Hospital emergency medical technician Carolyn Shaffer immediately went to the bedroom. As she walked in the room, the first thing she noticed were suitcases sprawled across the bed, then she turned and saw the corpse of Jimmy Grund. She did not need to check his pulse to know he had already gone. But Shaffer went through the motions for the sake of the widow standing next to her. She walked over to the body, checked his dilated pupils and lack of pulse.
Susan Grund stood behind the technician, muttering, “Do something, do something.”
“Your husband is gone, ma’am,” replied Shaffer.
“No, no, give him some oxygen and some blood.”
A few minutes later, Miami County Sheriff’s Department Deputy Jan Kendall arrived on the scene. He immediately recognized the victim as Jimmy Grund. Kendall had known him for seventeen years.
It was just past midnight on August 4, 1992.
Meanwhile, Susan was still desperately living in hope of a miracle. “He needs blood, he needs blood, they won’t help him, he needs blood.”
Susan kept weeping and wringing her hands with a damp cloth.
Then she picked up the mobile phone and called her sister, Darlene. “Something is the matter with Jim, there’s blood everywhere,” Susan Grund said over the phone to Darlene.
“I’ll be right over.”
Darlene and her husband George rapidly covered the three-mile drive over to her sister’s vast home at number seven, Summit Drive, in Peru, Indiana. More police officers had already shown up on the scene.
By this time, Susan seemed numbed by what had happened. She picked up the cordless phone and called her husband’s good friend Dr. John Crawshaw and tried to get him to take her husband to the hospital. When he did not answer, she grabbed a telephone directory and tried to raise Indianapolis attorney Jim Boyles, but he wasn’t home, either.
E.M.T. Carolyn Shaffer then asked Susan how this tragedy had occurred and her response seemed rather puzzling.
“This place is a mess. I don’t know what happened,” she snapped back at the technician. Susan Grund sounded more irritated by the upturned furniture left by the intruder than by the apparent murder of her husband.
* * *
On arrival at the scene, Sgt. Bob Land of the Miami County Sheriff’s Department immediately contacted the Peru post of the Indiana State Police and asked them to tell investigator Robert Brinson that an apparent homicide had occurred and the victim appeared to be wealthy local attorney and former county prosecutor Jimmy Grund.
At that precise moment, Bob Brinson was working another case of a man who had been trying to kill his wife in nearby Wabash County. He was actually at a judge’s house attempting to get an arrest warrant when the call about Jimmy Grund came through. Like most folk in Peru, Brinson knew the Grunds.
The state trooper immediately told the officer accompanying him to take the warrant and go serve it, because he knew this new homicide was obviously going to take priority.
Brinson’s antenna went up the moment he heard the news about Jimmy Grund because he had been called out to investigate a number of incidents at their large, imposing house in the past.
At 1:07
A.M.
, Jim Grund’s law practice partner Don Fern got a call from Susan. “Something terrible has happened to Jimmy,” she told him.
Don Fern was puzzled that Susan continually referred to her husband as “Jimmy.” She had never called him that throughout their entire marriage. It was always “James,” or, just occasionally, “Jim.”
Don Fern spluttered out, “What?”
Then Susan’s sister Darlene came on the phone and explained what had happened.
At 1:10
A.M.
, Indiana State Police Investigator Brinson drove into the circular drive of the property on Summit Drive in his blue Ford Taurus. Bob Brinson was troubled by other thoughts at that moment; he recalled visiting the house a couple of years back after a particularly baffling break-in. Could these two incidents be connected? He pulled up at the garage area where a number of spectators had gathered, walked through the garage, into the kitchen, and on through to the living room area where he found Susan Grund. She was sitting alongside her sister, Darlene.
