Twisted Triangle Page 26

  Paul noticed that Gene never actually apologized directly to Margo. Paul didn’t expect that he ever would, especially if he thought he could win his freedom on appeal.

  Judge Potter followed up with a few comments of his own, describing this as a “rather unusual case in many ways.” He said that as he read the sentencing memo written by Gene’s attorneys, he was struck by the similarity between the crimes Gene had investigated as an undercover agent and the offenses of which he’d been recently convicted.

  He described Gene’s actions as “bizarre,” but also “meticulously planned and extremely dangerous.” After reviewing the various sentencing guidelines, he said, he had decided to exceed the state’s because of the jury’s recommendation, but also because he wanted to deter Gene and others like him from committing similar crimes.

  However, he told Gene that he was also suspending a “portion” of the sentence “to allow you the opportunity to rehabilitate yourself with the use of supervised probation.”

  The word “portion” proved to be quite an understatement. As Judge Potter went through each of the nine charges, he proceeded to lop large chunks of time off the corresponding sentences the jury had recommended, suspending some of them entirely.

  With each reduction, Margo felt herself becoming increasingly nauseated.

  “It was like new math,” Margo later said. “I didn’t know how he was coming up with his numbers.”

  By the time the judge had finished, he had suspended thirty-eight years, leaving Gene with a sentence of only twenty-three years—a huge disparity from the jury’s recommended total of sixty-one. He also gave Gene ten years of probation.

  Margo couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She was so upset, she’d lost track of the tally partway through, only this time it was her anger and disbelief that were distracting her. She’d felt a weight lifted from her shoulders during the reading of the verdict, but now it was bearing down once again.

  How dare you say that all of this that we went through is worth twenty-three years, she thought as she stared at Judge Potter. What happens when he gets out?

  Gene would be eligible for parole in 2016, after serving 85 percent of his sentence, which would otherwise go into 2019. He would be only sixty-one when he got out, and Margo knew that after lifting weights and working out in prison as most inmates did, he would still be young and fit enough to finish the job he’d started—killing her.

  The harsh reality was that she was not, in fact, done dealing with Gene Bennett.

  Reid told the Washington Post that he was “disappointed and saddened” by the judge’s decision, but not surprised. He planned to file an appeal on Gene’s behalf.

  Recently, the judge explained his reasoning. “Retribution is important to a sentence, but so is rehabilitation,” he said. He added that he thought his sentence was fair “given other verdicts” for murder, and described the work by the defense attorneys as “probably the best attempt to prove insanity in a case that I’ve seen.”

  The media immediately assembled on the courthouse walkway for another press conference. By the time Margo got outside, the anger was boiling up inside her.

  She had written a letter to the judge before the sentencing, explaining that she and her children had consistently been in therapy and that if Gene were released sooner than the sixty-one years the jury had recommended, she would live in constant fear that he was going to kill her. Yet the only thing the judge had asked her during the hearing was whether she had any expenses that needed to be reimbursed as part of Gene’s restitution fee.

  She vowed to write Judge Potter again just before Gene’s release date, saying, “Watch the obituaries. If I’m dead, then it’s on you.”

  Paul and Jim were shocked by what the judge had done; Ron McClelland was angry too. Ron told Margo that he’d been worried when Judge Potter got the case. Other judges, he said, would have accepted the jury’s entire sentencing recommendation without question.

  It was a sunny day, a little breezy, but the sky was clear. There were fewer reporters than after the verdict, but the drill was the same.

  “What’s your reaction to the sentence?” one of them asked Margo.

  Shaken and pale, she did not try to hide her disappointment or fear. “Continuing to live is my biggest concern,” she said. “Twenty-three years is a substantial amount of time for me to recover and get on with my life, but what do I do when that twenty-three years is over?”

  As for Gene’s speech, she said, “I heard the words he said, but I still have to go home and deal with two children who know their father tried to kill their mother.”

  “What do you plan to do when he gets out?” another reporter asked. “Will you move to another country?”

  “There’s no place where I can hide,” Margo said flatly.

  Looking back recently, Paul agreed. “If I had to bet on it, I’d say the chances are she’s probably a likely candidate [to be a victim of] some future criminal act. I don’t know, this guy could change, I guess. . . . He sat in a jail for a year, seething. . . . This was his effort to retaliate against her. . . . I thought the judge let him off pretty easy.”

  Later that month, former FBI agent Bob Ressler called Margo, looking for information about how Patsy had come up with the plot for All That Remains. He said he was helping a family that had filed a lawsuit against the author, accusing her of using private information from a family member’s autopsy file.

  Margo wouldn’t have helped Bob even if she’d had any information, because she had no reason to want to hurt Patsy. “Sorry, Bob,” she told him. “I have nothing that can help you.”

  The following month, Dianna called with another message from Patsy, that she wanted to talk to Margo.

  “It’s got something to do with the statute of limitations and this lawsuit. I don’t know,” Dianna said.

  In light of Bob Ressler’s query, things began to make sense. Margo wanted to let sleeping dogs lie with Patsy, but she returned the call as asked, feeling a little nervous as she dialed Patsy’s number. It had been a long time since they’d talked, and much had happened in between.

  They talked for about fifteen minutes, chatting a bit before getting down to business.

  “You’ve been through a lot,” Patsy said. “How have you been?”

  “The girls are doing good,” Margo said. “I’m doing fine. It’s been tough, but we’re doing okay.”

  Patsy wanted to know if Margo could remember the date of the early release party at the Globe & Laurel for All That Remains. Patsy and her attorney wanted to argue that it was too late for anyone to file a lawsuit because the statute of limitations clock had started that night, when she’d signed the first copies of her book.

  Margo pulled out her copy and read Patsy the date of the inscription. She also mentioned Bob Ressler’s call.

  Before they hung up, Patsy told Margo that if she ever wanted to write a book about her story, she would help if she could.

  This was the last time she and Patsy ever spoke.

  Margo, John Hess, and I each tried independently to get Patsy to do an interview for this book, but her agent’s assistants said Patsy wasn’t interested.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Damage and Recovery

  Now that the trial was over and the publicity had abated somewhat, Margo shifted again into healing mode, focusing on her daughters, her job, and her church activities.

  In spring 1997, after going five years without a relationship while she worked through the confusion and denial about her sexuality, Margo found herself involved with a woman she’d met at a Christian weekend retreat.

  “It was a convenient romance,” she later said. “It was a good chance to see if I was ready to have a relationship of this type.”

  But it didn’t last long. Margo was still short on time and emotional energy after everything she’d been through, and she didn’t want to spread herself too thin. Her relationship with Joanne* lasted only a couple of months, but it threw a
few challenges her way.

  One day, Allison walked in on Margo and Joanne kissing. Even though Margo had discussed her sexuality with Allison soon after the church incident, it didn’t really hit home until Allison saw it with her own eyes. She ran upstairs to her room, crying, and shut the door.

  Margo knocked and asked if she could come in. She lay down on the bed next to Allison, who was facing the wall, away from her mother.

  “You promised you would quit,” Allison said, referring to a conversation they’d had almost a year ago. Margo remembered their talk, but she’d never said any such thing.

  “Allison, I can’t help but be who I am,” she said, pausing. “Do you still love me?”

  “Yes, of course I still love you.”

  With that, Margo went downstairs and told Joanne she needed to leave. Joanne was irked that Margo didn’t want to show affection in front of the kids, but Margo said she had to put them first. When a similar incident occurred some weeks later, Margo ended the relationship.

  At the time, Margo thought Lindsey was too young to understand so she waited another year to explain that she was gay. Her younger daughter was very supportive.

  “I just want you to be happy,” Lindsey said.

  Later that summer, Margo started dating Susan*, a divorced woman who worked at her daughters’ school and had two children of her own. Margo thought Susan would better understand her and her kids’ needs.

  Margo, her daughters, and her sister Letta moved into Susan’s house within a few months, which, Margo realized later, was far too soon. But her lease on the townhouse was up, and she was having a tough time financially. She thought that cutting her household expenses in half would be a good thing.

  “I just couldn’t make ends meet,” Margo said later. “Then I found that although I could make ends meet, I wasn’t here for the kids, and Allison started making bad choices.”

  Life with Gene as a father had caused damage to her children, but Margo had no idea at the time how it would manifest itself. The bigger fallout was still to come.

  On top of being teased about what had been written about her family in the papers, Allison was also given the nickname “Jolly Green Giant” for being the tallest, skinniest kid in school.

  “Your mom’s a lesbian and your dad makes bombs,” the kids would say.

  When she couldn’t take it anymore, she got into a fight with a boy whose taunting was relentless.

  “If you say it one more time, I’m going to hit you,” Allison told him.

  “Your mom is a lesbian,” he said, which got him a punch in the face.

  The year after Margo and the girls moved in with Susan, Allison progressed to middle school, so she didn’t have to deal with as much teasing. Luckily, Lindsey, who was a far more emotionally sensitive child, never seemed to have that particular problem.

  Around this same time, Allison started making cuts on the inside of her forearm with a razor blade. Her sixth-grade teacher had asked her to write an autobiography, and it had triggered some disturbing memories about her father’s drinking and abusive behavior.

  Allison said cutting herself provided a distraction and a release for her overwhelming frustration, “if I was real, real, real upset and didn’t know what else to do.”

  She did it about ten times over a six-month period, until she scared herself with how much bleeding she’d caused. She finally broke down and confided in a teenage neighbor, crying as she poured out her woes. About a year later, she cut herself again when the stress got to be too much. Overall, however, she didn’t seem to feel the need to do it anymore.

  In fall 2000, Allison’s school called Margo, asking if her absence that day was excused. Margo rattled off the names of Allison’s friends, learning that they too were absent. So Margo, dressed in her campus police uniform, went looking and quickly found them at one of the girls’ townhouses. She took them all back to class.

  The summer after the trial, Margo had to take a second job at IKEA to make some extra cash. Although she’d been promoted from lieutenant to captain and was put in charge of all five NOVA campuses, the raise she received wasn’t big enough. She was enjoying having the kids full-time, but that joy came with expenses.

  The relationship with Susan went well until Susan and Allison began to argue. Margo also didn’t like the way Susan tried to discipline Allison and Lindsey as if they were her own children. Letta, who was living in the basement apartment, tried to step in, but that only made things worse.

  So in spring 1999, Letta returned to Alabama, and within a couple of months, Margo and the girls moved into a house she’d just bought.

  In fall 1997, Margo was invited to guest lecture on stalking at Marymount College in Arlington and George Washington University in DC. As she discussed the different types of stalkers, she wove in her own story about Gene.

  After each talk, students came up to express their appreciation. Some said they’d known stalking victims, but had not understood what their friends had gone through until they heard Margo’s lecture.

  “This experience gave me the opportunity to be some kind of motivation or inspiration for others,” she later said. “Granted, we all live in our own little worlds, and I haven’t had a chance to reach out and touch people beyond my little world, but the touching I’ve done has been worthwhile. And there’s more that I can do.”

  It helped her feel as though her experiences had had a purpose, especially when someone would tell her, “I’m going through a tough time, and I’ve looked at you and thought, ‘If she can do it, I can do it.’ ”

  In late 1997, Allison was going through her mother’s closet when she came across a shoe box containing the photos Margo and her attorneys had taken to document the injuries Gene had inflicted during the kidnapping.

  “Mom, did Dad do this to you?” Allison asked.

  “Yeah, you don’t need to be looking at that,” Margo said, trying to protect her daughter’s memory of her father, or whatever was left of it.

  It was only after Allison read about the kidnapping in a narrative written by Margo’s friend John Hess, describing her troubled life with Gene, that Allison learned exactly how those injuries came about.

  “Is there anything else you want to know?” Margo asked, after Allison had read John’s account.

  Allison said no. “I was pretty mad,” she later said, but “there wasn’t a whole lot I could do. . . . My opinion of him couldn’t get much lower.”

  Lindsey never wanted to hear the details of the kidnapping or, for that matter, of the church incident either.

  “I’m very happy not knowing that much,” she said recently.

  The entertainment industry tapped into Margo’s story almost immediately after the trial. In 1997, Margo saw an episode of Law and Order that seemed to be loosely based on her love triangle with Patsy and Gene.

  In 1999, Margo got a call from Jack Nasser, a TV and film producer, inquiring whether she would be interested in selling the rights to tell her story in a movie or TV series. She asked for $100,000, thinking no one would pay that much, and about a year later, they agreed on $65,000. Margo figured she’d use the money to pay for the girls’ college education and maybe save some for a trip to Disney World.

  In early 2001, a movie called The Hostage Negotiator aired on one of the cable networks, saying it was “inspired by a true story.” However, the story line bore little resemblance to Margo’s life. For one thing, the person with whom her FBI agent character was supposedly having an affair—or at least that’s what her unstable, corrupt FBI agent husband suspected—was a man.

  In May 2002, the Discovery Channel aired a fifty-minute documentary titled The Prosecutors: A Question of Sanity, which reenacted the church incident and included a segment from Gene’s 911 tape, with him speaking as Ed. Because Margo had already sold the lifelong rights to her story to Nasser, who wouldn’t allow her to be interviewed or have her name used without compensation, the producers had to use a pseudonym and an actress to play
the victim’s role.

  Allison was flipping through the channels with a friend when they came across the documentary. It was creepy hearing her father’s voice on TV like that, switching “personalities” on the 911 tape.

  “I was like, if anybody can’t see through that, then Jesus Christ,” she later said. “He was crazy enough to think he could get away with all that, but at the same time he realized he could make himself look crazy to get away with it. There’s a lot of stuff about him that doesn’t add up, which I guess he was counting on.”

  Gene sent a steady stream of letters to Allison and Lindsey from prison, always speaking to them as if they were still the same young age as when he saw them last.

  Typically the letters followed the same format. They reminisced about the girls’ childhoods or his own. They described his exercise regimen, how dull his days were, how he was dealing with the diabetes he’d developed in prison, and how much he missed and loved them. He often offered parental advice, bolstered by an article he’d cut out of a magazine and enclosed, or referring to a program he’d seen on television. He asked questions about what they were doing in school and asked them to write back. He told them his love for them was unconditional and would never stop.

  Allison eventually grew tired of reading Gene’s letters because they so frequently listed numbered questions, but she still cashed the $25 money orders he sent for birthdays and Christmas.

  In June 2001, Allison was fourteen when she decided she wanted to visit him. Margo couldn’t bear to take her, so she asked a friend, a lieutenant who worked for her at NOVA, to accompany Allison.