Don't Look Behind You and Other True Cases (45 page)

Nick Notaro’s first wife, Vickie (left) and her daughter (right). Nick lied about Vickie’s sudden disappearance in Alaska. The last time she was seen was when she went to bring Nick home from the hospital after an emergency appendectomy. 

Renee Curtiss, looking stunned, after she was arrested in Henry’s Bail Bonds in the Skid Row district of Seattle. Pierce County sheriff’s sergeant Denny Wood is on her right, and Sergeant Ben Benson is on her left. She expected to bail out of jail within hours.

Renee Curtiss was living in this condo in Seattle with her husband, Henry Lewis, at the time she was arrested. She had a lovely home, and Henry was quite wealthy. At last, she seemed to have everything she wanted.

Benson in Baltimore, Maryland, with a Baltimore detective and that city’s helicopter. Ben was trying to find one of Nick Notaro’s former cellmates.

The author and Detective Sergeant Ben Benson at a party to celebrate the finished manuscript of
Don’t Look Behind You.

Detective Sergeant Denny Wood, usually Ben Benson’s partner, was on active duty with the reserves when the Tarricone case broke. He returned to the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department in time to join Benson in interviewing two homicide suspects.

Dawn Farina, the Pierce County prosecutor who faced two defendants charged with murder in the courtroom. Gypsy Tarricone called Dawn “the little spitfire,” and it fit her when she was cross-examining Renee Curtiss.

Gypsy Tarricone at her father’s grave in Mount Calvary Cemetery. Joe’s seven children chose this cemetery in Albuquerque because it is always “full of life,” with families visiting, luminarias to light the pathways, and the laughter of children and old friends.

TOO LATE FOR THE FAIR

Robert Milton Hansen (left) and his older brother, Kenneth, pose for a Eugene, Oregon, photographer in 1926. The two brothers grew up to be total opposites.

Bob Hansen in Ledo, India, assigned to the Burma Road project. He hated his long chin, hid it when he could, and later had plastic surgery.

Lester and Helen Hansen pose with their sons in front of the Danish Home in February 1929. Robert is sitting on his mother’s lap, and Kenneth sits between their parents. During the Great Depression, the couple separated—but only in order to survive. Robert went with his father to the “Stump Farm” in Kent, Washington, and Kenneth with his mother and sisters to Seattle.

Bob Hansen in the army in 1945 in Ledo, India, working under the command of General “Vinegar Joe” Stilwell on the Burma Road.