Then No One Can Have Her Page 36

  When Ken heard the theories that Jim was killed because he was part of a drug ring that came after him and killed Carol, or that perhaps Jim had killed Carol himself, Ken couldn’t believe any of it. He knew Jim was taking prescription drugs for his medical issues, “but to say the ‘prescription drug ring,’ I mean, c’mon.”

  “He got passionate, whatever he was into,” Ken said. “He was like all of us, searching. I know what he was, I know the truth. Whatever happened to him, it’s just really sad. My wife and I, we just said, ‘Poor Jim.’”

  For Carol’s friend Debbie Wren Hill, it was obvious that her murder was a crime of passion, as if the killer was saying, “I’m mad about this, and take this! I don’t want to give you six thousand dollars, and I didn’t want you to leave!”

  “It all added up,” she said, citing the cuts on Steve’s legs and the long hours that he admitted to biking near Carol’s house while his phone was off. “It didn’t take rocket science to convict this man.”

  Sometime after the sentencing, Ruth Kennedy asked Debbie if she thought Steve had convinced himself that he didn’t murder Carol. “Do you think that’s how he keeps this up?” she asked.

  Debbie didn’t know how to answer that question. “Clinically, it’s possible that he’s deluded, that he really has convinced himself that he didn’t do this,” she said. “More likely is that he knows he did it and just doesn’t want to come clean.”

  When Debbie asked how this whole tragedy hadn’t destroyed Ruth, Carol’s mother replied that she would forgive Steve if he asked her; she couldn’t live out the rest of her life if she didn’t.

  “I have prayed for him this whole time and it’s helped me a lot more than it’s helped him,” she said.

  “You are an incredible inspiration for me because I don’t know if I could do this, as her mother,” Debbie told her.

  “I felt kind of sorry for him,” Ruth said.

  In the end, Debbie said, “I deemed this as such a tragedy for everyone, including Steve. I mean, Steve, where was your impulse control when you did that? What I think is that he just flipped out and went into a rage and lost the ability to consider what the ramifications of his actions were going to be.”

  While I was researching this book, I learned from Katherine Morris and Joanne Frerking that Carol had told them about Steve coming to the house a couple of nights before she was killed, trying to get her to reconcile with him. When I told Ruth about this, she said the tone she heard in Carol’s last two words, “Oh, no,” matched that scenario.

  Katherine said she was positive about the timing of his visit. She said she never mentioned it to investigators because they never asked; she just answered the questions they posed, and this never came up. But even if she and Joanne were confused, Steve had shown up at the house recently, unannounced, to drop off the artwork the day that Jim stopped him from coming inside. Carol had also told friends that Steve had come into the house unexpectedly with Thai food, and that she thought he’d been entering when she wasn’t home and hacking into her e-mail.

  Ruth said this scenario made it “even more logical that Carol said, ‘Oh, no,’” as in, “Oh, no, you’re not showing up inside my house again” or “Oh, no, you’re not coming here again to try to get me to get back together with you.”

  Sturgis Robinson said he believes Steve carried out the murder wearing a full rain suit, which he discarded somewhere in the hills afterward.

  For him, Steve’s motivation grew out of a confluence of factors. First, he was completely stunned that Carol actually went through with the divorce, then refused to reconcile. “It was the one constant that he could always count on in his life, that he could have Carol under his thumb,” Sturgis said.

  Second, the divorce carried severe financial ramifications for him, which were worsened by the stock market crash and his growing debt. This, coupled with Barb’s simultaneous move to break free of his control, financially and personally, was just too much for him to bear.

  “I’m sorry that there’s not more direct evidence that it was him, but I cannot imagine any other scenarios where it wasn’t him,” he said. “Nothing was stolen and [Carol] wasn’t raped.”

  Looking back, Sturgis said he now believes that the entire community of Prescott was complicit in what amounted to Steve’s domestic abuse of Carol by letting him get away with his “deviant behavior” and womanizing for so many years.

  “Steve wasn’t ostracized” and no one rose up in indignation when he slept with the midwife, he said. “We failed Carol in a domestic-dispute situation. We should have recognized it as being abusive.”

  Sturgis started writing a book about this case, but gave up after putting several chapters together and facing the harsh reality that his friendship with Steve was never what he’d thought it was.

  My friendship with Steve began over a woman, Sturgis wrote. Over the next twenty years we would share others. We would revel in our narcissism, our physicality and our good fortune. What handsome boys we were. How badly we behaved. I would share my deepest feelings with him. I would find employment for him. I would stick up for him when he mistreated others and I allowed him to tryst with his lovers in my house. I lied to Carol for him.

  Like a lover, I never questioned my passion. I called it loyalty and friendship. I loved him right up to the moment he [took] . . . millions of dollars [in client accounts from me] and then coldly denied it in the face of incontrovertible evidence. By the time he emerged as the primary suspect in the murder of Carol Kennedy a few years after our estrangement, I had come to believe, to fervently wish, that the man I had chosen as my best friend was not merely a shallow narcissist and a damaged man-child like myself, but a sociopath, a changeling, beautiful, beguiling and monstrous. That would explain all of it and I would not be such a heart-broken fool.

  Charlotte DeMocker graduated from Arizona State University with a finance degree in May 2014, with neither parent there to watch her accept her diploma.

  Carol’s friend Katherine Morris came as their proxy, while Ruth Kennedy sat at home in Nashville, sad to be missing her granddaughter’s important rite of passage.

  “I’m eighty-nine, and that trip for the closing arguments just about did me in. It was pretty grueling,” Ruth said. “I don’t know, the older you get the harder it is to do something like that. But I do have the lines of communication open. We do talk, sporadically, not as much as I’d like. I did talk to Charlotte the day she graduated. Katie called me on Mother’s Day.”

  Two days after Charlotte’s graduation ceremony, the DeMocker family had its first contact visit with Steve in five years at the state prison in Florence, Arizona, where, unless he wins his appeal, he will be spending the rest of his days.

  In the beginning Katherine couldn’t believe that Steve had killed Carol. Sure, she thought, he was having affairs, but he wasn’t a premeditated killer.

  But now that she’s come to believe that Steve was responsible, she “mindfully chooses” to think of him the way he was when they first met.

  “At his core authentic self, he’s good people. He really was a good father and a good provider, and illness and addiction took over. His addiction is what contributed to her death. They say in the big book for AA that sex and love addicts end up in jail or dead. He used and abused women to fill himself up, and when he couldn’t have her anymore, he killed her.”

  Although she stays in close touch with Katie and Charlotte, she said they purposely steer away from this painful topic.

  “Katie and Charlotte are strong, strong, strong women,” she said. “They’re becoming more clear as they are getting older, in setting boundaries” for themselves.

  In some of the taped calls from prison, those boundaries came across in their tone of voice, as the young women told their father that they hadn’t answered his previous calls because they were trying to study, pass tests and get jobs. They needed to focus on themselves.

  “They are obviously very dear to me, and we don’t talk
about [the case]. Plain and simple,” Katherine said. “They know my stance. They know what I think. They know what I feel. They’ve known that from the beginning.”

  Katherine was initially hesitant to do an on-camera interview with Dateline for its two-hour episode. But after discussing this with others close to Carol, they decided that someone needed to represent her, so Katherine agreed.

  When the episode aired, it included a segment from a video taken on Whidbey Island, featuring a recent interview with Carol about Touch Drawing and the work she did during these meditative sessions. I obtained the full video from Deborah Koff-Chapin, and as I watched it, I almost felt as if Carol were speaking presciently to this case.

  As her curly hair blew softly in the breeze, Carol sat smiling, exuding earnestness and calm as she looked into the camera. I could see why people saw her as a guru. Asked what message she wanted to deliver to whoever might be watching, she spoke as if she had a spiritual wisdom and knowingness about her.

  Carol said she hoped that people could appreciate the “sense of wonder” and “mystery” that live in the “quiet stillness” of their hearts, where they could “drop down in and tell the truth. At any moment any one of us can make a choice, but it’s a choice that has to be made, that I’m going to stop doing this other thing that I’ve been doing, and I’m going to choose to tell the truth now,” she said.

  I was so struck by that last sentence that I posted it on my website.

  Carol went on to suggest that some folks may tell “malicious falsehoods to get ahead,” but even when they try to live right and authentically, they can still “betray” something deeper in themselves.

  Some might say these were apt messages for Steve, the man she called her soul mate, to get in touch with his “authentic” self, the one she’d fallen in love with so many years before. To finally stop with all the stories, such as the voice-in-the-vent tale and the anonymous e-mail, all the manipulation and all the lies. To tell the truth about what happened.

  Katherine believes that if Carol could weigh in on this situation today, she would do so in the same manner in which she lived her whole life: with kindness and absolution.

  “Whoever did this she would have had a great compassion for. She absolutely would have. I know that sounds absolutely insane to most people, but that’s who she was, and I don’t feel it’s my place or anybody else’s to judge that. Carol would forgive him. That sounds crazy, but I felt that from the start.”

  AUTHOR’S NOTE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  With all its legal twists and turns, this case was one of the most complex stories I’ve ever encountered as an author. Sometimes I felt like it was a bear I had to wrestle to the ground. But this story really got to me on a personal level as well, not just because of the facts of the case, but because it brought up some ghosts from my own past. As a result, researching and writing this story was at times an emotionally gut-wrenching and intellectually challenging journey.

  At the outset I wondered how someone could murder such a peaceful, loving and spiritual being like Carol and in such a horribly violent way. I wondered how and why, as someone who had counseled battered women and women in recovery, she stayed with Steve for so long. I could almost feel the “self-torture” she described, the pain of loving someone who had hurt and manipulated her for so many years, and I empathized with her when Charlotte sided with Steve in the divorce battle.

  By the same token I was also amazed at how Steve could keep so many women on the line, even his own family members, thinking he was such a good, sensitive guy, and yet treat Carol the way he did. I wondered how he could spend and borrow so much money and cheat with so many women, and yet not be willing or able to rein himself in. Was it compulsiveness, narcissism, entitlement, greed or addiction?

  I did not judge. I just dug in and searched for the answers to these psychological questions so I could illustrate and explain the dynamics of Steve and Carol’s very textured and complicated lives. Along the way I felt I got to know Carol Kennedy better than most murder victims I’ve written about, and wanted to pay her and her story the utmost respect.

  When I learned that Carol had told the newspaper reporter in New York that she wanted to write a book about domestic violence someday, I felt I had her blessing. When Katherine told me about a dream in which she described me to Carol, who then said, “She sounds wonderful,” I felt happy, as if I were really on the right track. And then, when I listened to the video and heard Carol express that prescient gem of a quote with which I ended the last chapter, I almost felt like she was talking to me from wherever her spirit had gone.

  I was also drawn in by the crisp beauty and dark corners of Prescott, a small town that still seems to hold on to remnants of the Wild West and allowed Steve to womanize without consequences for so long. I was intrigued by the messiness of this ever-evolving criminal investigation, the scattershot methods used, and also the detectives’ dedication to pin down leads in the end. The endless court filings and legal hyperbole. The kooky medical examiner who transported Carol’s body in his truck and sent investigators on such a wild-goose chase to find Mr. 603. The ethical allegations flying in every direction, the anonymous e-mail, the voice in the vent, and the insurance money transfers. The judge with the brain tumor and the judge from the “sweat lodge” case. The Docugate scandal and the bombshell e-mail that got thrown out on this roller-coaster ride to justice. Suffice it to say, I came to empathize with the attorneys in this case, because there was so much information it became a challenge to decide what to include and what to leave out.

  Because the second defense team made Jim Knapp such a major part of its case, I went more into his background, his role in this case and his death than I would have otherwise. I tried repeatedly to reach his brother, Bobby, through Jim’s friends, but he didn’t want to talk to me. Understanding his desire for privacy, I drew much of the information I used to craft those chapters from trial transcripts, court exhibits, witness interviews by law enforcement and my own.

  Having had an alcoholic husband who committed suicide—and acted very strangely when he took narcotic painkillers and even more so when he mixed them with alcohol—I think I can safely say that Jim Knapp did the same. Yes, his life and the condo where his body was found were full of oddities, but that’s what happens when addicts relapse amid depression, fear and addled thinking. To them, their lives seem hopeless and helpless, and they see no other way out. Jim’s friends said he was a prankster, and they believed, as did police, that he might have staged the scene at the condo to look like something more nefarious happened, perhaps not as a joke in this case, but to protect his two young sons from the harsh truth that their father had taken his own life.

  My late husband was found with a bag of crushed lightbulbs in his hotel room in Mexico, which I was told he might have been planning to eat if he wasn’t successful in killing himself there by his chosen method. I can’t even imagine what it must be like to be in such a depressed, inebriated haze to think that way. But in the end, suicidal people typically are not acting or thinking rationally.

  One of the unusual aspects of telling this story was that I had to rely more than I typically do on document research and court transcripts than my own interviews with human beings. That’s because neither the sheriff ’s office nor the county attorney’s office would agree to talk, citing “legal and ethical rules” and the pending appeal. That said, Jeff Paupore spoke to me briefly and the prosecution was very cooperative with releasing as public records the trial exhibits, crime scene photos and thousands of pages of investigative reports, witness interviews, and audiotapes and transcripts of Steve’s many recorded jailhouse calls. I also had access to five years of court filings and transcripts from both trials. Any minor editing of testimony or witness interviews was done for storytelling purposes, mostly by deletion or for clarity or ease of reading. Any errors are unintentional.

  As I mentioned, I tried to get interviews with Steve’s daughters, but my attempts to d
o so were unanswered or rebuffed, so I respected the girls’ obvious wish to be left alone. I tried to tell their side of the story through their own words when I could, or through those close to Carol who knew them well.

  As I also mentioned, my efforts to speak with Steve DeMocker, his parents and siblings were rebuffed as well. Defense investigator Rich Robertson told me that because they believe he was wrongly convicted, they saw no reason to talk to me for this book. That said, I think Steve’s and his family’s comments at the sentencing, as well as the emotions they expressed in the postverdict jail calls, are indicative of what they likely would have said to me. Luckily, I found others who were more than willing to talk about him and what makes him tick.

  When I asked for interviews with John Sears and Craig Williams, the lead attorneys from Steve’s two defense teams, neither one agreed. Nor would they provide me with any “released” defense exhibits or investigative reports that I couldn’t get through the courts.

  When the county attorney’s office wouldn’t let me publish the evidence photos it had released to me as public records, Robertson kindly gave me permission to publish his, and I thank him for that. He was also the only person from the defense team who was willing to answer my questions and help me fact-check, which proved invaluable. Although I’m not required to give a “balanced” version of a case in a book, as news outlets are supposed to do, I also don’t like to write one-sided stories quoting only those people who think the convicted killer was a bad person and did the deed. I’m grateful that Robertson made himself available to me so there was least one voice representing Steve’s and the defense’s perspective. I just wanted to state for the record that it wasn’t for lack of trying on my part.

  I don’t believe that anyone—even a convicted killer—is all bad, any more than I think crime victims or their family members are all good. People are human and flawed. In this case Carol and Steve were victims of love, obsession and addiction, as well as a desire to make their relationship work and last, despite numerous red flags along the way telling them to stop. This is a tragedy all around, especially for their daughters, who have now effectively lost both parents.