No Regrets (12 page)

The state of Winnie Kay’s mind may have only been one man’s opinion, but Ruth had a much stronger personality than she did. As one of Ruth’s “dearest friends,” she went along with Ruth and neither of them would tell Paul where the promised car was.

Stranded without a car on an island where he didn’t know anyone, Paul went to a local restaurant and lounge where he proceeded to get drunk. He met a man there, Marty Beekman,* who agreed to give Paul a ride out to Ruth’s house, where he planned to plead once more for the car she had promised him. But when he got there, it was all locked up, and no one responded to Paul’s frustrated pounding on the doors. Muttering, Paul turned to Beekman and said, “I’ve got a mind to talk to the FBI or someone about what Ruth got me into! She killed him and Bob cut him up...”

Beekman didn’t pay much attention because it sounded
like an angry drunk talking. However, he later mentioned it to some of the regulars at the lounge and that information soon became yet another juicy bit of gossip to spread around Lopez. Greg Doss eventually heard about it, and he arranged for Marty Beekman to talk to the San Juan County criminal prosecutor, Charlie Silverman.

It was just one more instance of the alleged facts of a brutal murder being passed around, and the backward case was now becoming circular. As Ruth Neslund continued to reclaim her life and planned happily for her next business endeavor, the investigators were as disheartened as a Californian would be by the clammy fog that sometimes envelops Lopez Island, blotting out the vistas of the sea and pastures.

There seemed no way through to any clarity or truth in their search for Rolf Neslund.

Had Ruth Neslund killed her husband and masterminded a gruesome plan to scatter his body?

Or was she only the innocent victim of a whisper campaign to destroy her reputation?

Ray Clever
would not give up on solving the case and indicting the killer. He kept making lists, checking out his theories, and trying to find physical evidence that would validate the scuttlebutt. Sheriff Sheffer backed him, saying, “Go for it, Ray. I don’t think you’re gonna solve it—but go as far as you can.”

While Ruth seemed unfazed by the gossip, the San Juan County Sheriff’s Office, and the inquiries of the county’s criminal prosecutor, Ray Clever was determined to find her brother Paul. He figured that Ruth’s angry and disappointed brother might just be the witness who would tell Clever the truth, and he set out to find him. This proved to be a complex endeavor. Even today, Clever won’t go into detail about those who helped him locate Ruth’s brother—a policeman’s prerogative—but he did manage to locate Paul.

It sounded as though Paul Myers might be the weakest link in the chain of family members who surrounded Ruth. Paul was something of a nomad. He and Ruth were definitely reported to be at odds, according to her friends and neighbors. Ruth kept shutting doors in Paul’s face, counting on his continued loyalty to her, no matter how she outfoxed him in business deals.

By 1982, Ruth was trying to put the tiresome investigation into Rolf’s disappearance behind her as she prepared
to launch a very high-end bed-and-breakfast lodging for tourists visiting Lopez Island. As she pointed out, she was all alone now in her big house with extra bedrooms and wonderful views of the water. She was a good cook, specializing in baked goods and her homemade sausage, and she had always enjoyed entertaining. She would call her home The Alec Bay Inn, stressing the beautiful vistas. There would be virtually no start-up costs, and she looked forward to meeting new people and having some company. She calculated that she could clear $150 to $200 a night for each room.

Paul heard about her plans and figured Ruth owed him a share of her future business income. He didn’t have a steady job or a house or any money in the bank. Since she had burned him on the car deal, he planned to convince Ruth that she needed a man around the place to help with chores and for protection. He would go into partnership with her on the bed-and-breakfast. Their brother Robert wasn’t in very good health, and Paul argued that he himself was the obvious choice. Ruth shook her head. She didn’t need a partner.

Turned down for that, Paul asked her for a loan. It was the least she could do, but she was even less enthusiastic. And she didn’t want Paul to think he could stay at her house; she needed all her space for her guests.

Without Ruth’s help, Paul Myers was reduced to driving a “junker” from spot to spot on Lopez, sleeping in the old truck. Sometimes, Ruth allowed him to come visit, but he knew he took a distant second place to Robert. Paul felt that Robert literally “worshipped” Ruth, did whatever she asked, and was a quiet man who caused her no trouble. He was also quite deaf. That was the kind of man Ruth preferred to have around.

She had no patience with anyone who rejected her plans or who failed to do what she told them to. Within a week or so, Paul Myers was no longer seen around Lopez.

Paul Myers was still among the living, however.

It took awhile, but Ray Clever finally located Paul living in Scappoose, Oregon, a small town near the Columbia River in the far northwestern chunk of the state. A Scappoose police patrolman knew Paul and said he was living on the property of one of their reserve officers.

Clever talked to Paul’s friend, who said he had met Paul a year earlier on the beach at Garibaldi on Tillamook Bay some sixty-five miles from Scappoose. “We became friends,” the police reserve officer said, “and I told him he could put his trailer up on my property.”

After returning from Lopez Island in February 1982, Paul had appeared jumpy and nervous, his friend said. “He seemed to have some idea that he might be an accessory to murder. He kept saying his sister had ‘sucked him in.’”

That certainly sounded promising for the investigation. At 6:30
A.M
., Clever approached the front door of the house where Paul was reportedly staying. He quickly spotted Myers. He could hardly miss him. He was a male version of his sister, short and round all over, just like Ruth.

Clever showed Paul his identification, and said he wanted to ask him some questions.

Paul Myers looked at Clever a little apprehensively and then blurted, “Uh, oh—I know who you are and why you’re here . . .”

“Let’s talk,” Clever answered.

Surprisingly, Paul Myers seemed relieved to talk about his sister. He related how Ruth had tricked him out of his
money and a car. He was mad and disappointed when she refused to let him share her bed-and-breakfast venture.

But that was the least of it. “I’m scared to death of her,” Paul admitted. “I really think she planned to kill me.”

Paul said he owned some property down in Garibaldi and that Ruth kept insisting that he meet her and one of her women friends—Wanda Post—down there. He’d been very reluctant to do that.

Garibaldi was a popular spot for both Oregonians and tourists, as it was situated right on the Pacific Ocean near the famous Twin Rocks, a towering natural rock formation that was a familiar image on postcards. There were only a thousand people living in Garabaldi, and there were miles of rugged coastline where Pacific Ocean waves crashed endlessly onto the rocky beach. Their roar would easily drown out a voice calling for help—or a shot ringing out.

“She wanted me down there on a trip along the Oregon coast,” he said, “and I never thought I was going to come back alive, so I didn’t go.”

What Paul Myers told Ray Clever that early morning in Scappoose, Oregon, would become the basis of an affidavit filed to request another search warrant for the red house on Alec Bay Road. Paul’s was, indeed, a harrowing story, but one that had to stay under wraps for some time. After Paul gave Clever a statement, Clever arranged to fly him back to Friday Harbor where he could give testimony to the court of inquiry looking into Rolf Neslund’s disappearance. Superior Court Judge Richard Pitt listened to what he had to say and read the affidavit that Ray Clever and Charlie Silverman presented, asking for a second, more massive, search of the Neslunds’ property.

Judge Pitt granted the investigators another search warrant. To the disappointment of the press and public, it was sealed and whatever juicy details might be included would be kept secret. Sheffer explained that it “has to be confidential because it involves so many people.”

And indeed it did.

The first search warrant had listed a restricted number of items the detectives could look for; this one was far more sweeping.

On March 2, 1982, Senior Deputy Joe Caputo, Ray Clever, Greg Doss, Perry Mortensen, and Criminalist Don Phillips knocked on Ruth Neslund’s door. They had been authorized to search her five-thousand-square-foot house and the almost eight acres of land around it, and they were going to look for anything they might find that would give even a hint about where Rolf was.

Winnie Kay Stafford and Ruth were present when the second search began at 11:02
A.M
. The disgruntled women left two and a half hours later, but Ruth came back the next day to pick up her blood-pressure cuff and a hot water bottle, complaining to everyone within earshot that it was terrible that an ill woman should be treated so badly, forced out of her own home while cops pawed through her belongings.

She snarled at Ray Clever, “There are about fifty people who would like to come in here and squeeze your head!”

A few minutes later, she phoned the searchers and demanded that they turn off the outside lights, even though it was she who had absentmindedly left them on in the daytime.

Ruth’s attorneys called the search “preposterous.” Neither they nor their client had seen the affidavit listing what the searchers were looking for. “We think there’s no basis
for it. We have no problem with them taking a look at what’s there, because maybe that will shut them up once and for all.”

Still, her lawyers were scornful about how the investigators were carrying out their search. “They’re just going along on their merry way.”

Ruth, he said, was taking the search “very hard. It not only creates a physical hardship by her being displaced from her home—but serious emotional trauma as well.”

Furthermore, even though she had no formal charges levied against her, Mitch Cogdill said Ruth was being tried by “innuendo” and hinted darkly that there might be a civil suit against the Sheriff’s Office forthcoming because the deputies and criminalists had “appropriated her property, damaged her property, and made obvious charges against her.”

The baffling case was gaining more publicity all the time, and now residents of Seattle and the rest of the state were watching the search on the evening news. KOMO-TV sent a helicopter to fly over the house on Alec Bay Road, and photographers filmed the bare earth that appeared here and there in the pastureland where a backhoe had scraped the ground looking for, perhaps, a grave.

KOMO news anchors also revealed the matter of the meat-grinder. Ruth had owned one, but she sold it in mid-1981 to a couple who owned a meat-packing plant on Lopez. Jean Plummer, a Lopez butcher who lived on Port Stanley Road, turned over the items she bought from Ruth: (1) meat-grinder, (1) grinding auger, and (4) grinding and cutting attachments.

Fortunately, the Plummers had never used the meat-grinder, possibly deterred by the rumors. Joe Caputo picked it up from them, but when the Washington State
Patrol Crime Lab ran tests on it, no speck or stain of human blood was present in the mechanism.

Even so, the meat-grinder version was the most steadfast of all the rumors circulating about the fate of Rolf Neslund.

Those who had enjoyed Ruth’s sausages in the past lost their appetites.

During the ten days of the 1982 search, life went on on Lopez Island, and Ruth was sometimes relegated to the back pages of the local paper. As the search continued at her house, the
Journal
ran another story with seemingly more interesting local news: The girls’ basketball team from Lopez High School was welcomed home by a huge crowd after being the first team from Lopez Island to have participated in the Washington State final play-offs. Even though they didn’t win, the teenagers had a police and fire department escort with sirens wide open.

There was also a long feature on a crackdown on Lopez Island dogs—warning their owners to keep a closer eye on them. There wasn’t a leash law yet, but there could be if the canines kept chasing livestock.

All the while—and for almost two weeks—investigators swarmed over the Neslund home while Ruth complained that she had to depend on the kindness of friends or stay at motels.

The April 1981 search of the Neslunds’ home and acreage had netted only that single bullet. Fortunately for the investigators the current search a year later was much more successful in terms of physical evidence. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the second processing of the property finally opened doors for further investigation.

The law enforcement officers moving in and out of Ruth’s house kept scrupulous logs, noting the time each one entered and left, and every scintilla of possible evidence that they had bagged and marked. As the detectives and criminalists moved through the house, it was silent except for their own breathing and subdued voices. Was Rolf Neslund’s ghost here? If something awful had happened in these rooms, any overt residue of violence had clearly been hidden—wiped up, cleaned up, covered over. To the casual eye, Ruth’s house was now in immaculate condition, spick and span enough to attract guests to a bed-and-breakfast.

The searchers had to keep reminding themselves to look beyond the obvious, to stare at the slightest stain on a wall, or a baseboard, or even on the ceiling. Did any furniture or wall or floor covering look newer than the rest of the house, new enough to have been purchased since August 1980?

Ruth Neslund apparently kept all manner of receipts, records, and contracts. Now, despite her indignation, those fell within the scope of the search warrant. Her life and her habits and interests were all there. Few people were as meticulous as she was.

Ray Clever filled numerous notebooks in his remarkably small, careful printing, listing what he had found, and made out receipts that would be given to Ruth Neslund to indicate possible evidence the deputies had removed. (In the end, there would be more than seven hundred items!)