Sex. Murder. Mystery(98)
While many of the sources in the book were extremely helpful in reconstructing the Nelson saga, it would be remiss to omit special thanks to Blanche Wheeler, Andy Harrelson, Judy Douglas and Julie Nelson for the photographs from their personal collections. Many of their images appear in the photo insert.
Even though it goes without saying, it must be mentioned here: None of my books could have been written without the support of my family. This is no exception. Thanks to my wonderful wife, Claudia, and my daughters, Morgan and Marta, for putting up with the long hours when phone calls come and I never leave the glow of my Mac.
Since most of the events described in this book took place several years ago, I have elected not to identify certain individuals featured in this true-crime account. Therefore, some names and personal characteristics have been changed. And while it happened long ago should not be forgotten, neither should the dredging up of it impact lives today. The perpetrators’ names, however, have not been altered.
Sharon and Gary cannot run. They cannot hide. Like shadows on sticky summer afternoons, their crimes will follow them the rest of their days. Lorri Nelson Hustwaite and the others who loved the victims will see to it.
Gregg Olsen,
Olalla, Wash.
Fall 1997
* * *
IF LOVING YOU IS WRONG
Gregg Olsen
Copyright © 2013 GREGG OLSEN
Cover Art: BEAUTeBOOK
OUTSTANDING ACCLAIM FOR GREGG OLSEN
If loving you is wrong
“Gregg Olsen's IF LOVING YOU IS WRONG is a wonderfully researched book that makes the tabloid stories about Mary Kay Letourneau and her forbidden love sound like comic-book stuff. Everyone who wants to understand the back story of the child-woman and her overweening passion for a man-child must read IF LOVING YOU IS WRONG. Olsen's book is both gossipy and sympathetic, searing and brilliant. If Mary Kay is the Humbert Humbert of the female sex—and she is—this book is her Lolita. A must-read for both true-crime aficionados and students of abnormal psychology! I read until 3 A.M.!”
—Ann Rule
The confessions of an American black widow
“Here are all the ingredients of a great crime story—murder, infidelity, greed, nymphomania… A must-read! Gregg Olsen's standing as one of America's finest crime journalists will rise ever higher with THE CONFESSIONS OF AN AMERICAN BLACK WIDOW.”
—Jack Olsen, bestselling author of
Doc, Predator, and Hastened to the Grave
“Gregg Olsen introduces the reader to a character so mesmerizing, so frightening and so evil that one has to keep reminding himself that his amazing and fast-paced story is true.”
—Carlton Stowers, bestselling author of
Careless Whispers and To the Last Breath
For June Rose Wolfe
PROLOGUE
June 19, 1996
THE NIGHT WAS a pinpricked blanket over the dull sheen of Puget Sound. Errant seagulls—feathered rats, really—teetered on the edge of a Dumpster. In an instant, they slid inside looking for food before fluttering out and sending white droppings into Jackson Pollack splatters on grungy asphalt further marked by oil stains and melted bubble gum.
Music wafted from one of the boats in the guest moorage section of the marina in Des Moines, Washington, a suburb just south of the Seattle-Tacoma Airport. In its setting and size, Des Moines, Washington, held little in common with its Midwestern counterpart. The western-most Des Moines was on Puget Sound, facing west to the Olympic Mountains and Vashon and Maury islands. It was suburban, yet with the feel of a neighborhood place where people gathered in crime watches and fed each other's pets when vacations came.
Even the name wasn't pronounced the same in Washington as Iowa. The Washington Des Moines was pronounced with the s sound at the end, which gave most everybody not from there great difficulty when learning to say it so incorrectly.
That June night something very disturbing was taking place in Des Moines. And from the moment Dave Shields, 27, began his walk a very personal story started moving slowly from tragedy to the stuff of sleazy supermarket magazines and sordid tabloid television reports. In time, lawyers, writers, friends, and family of those involved would all lose sight of the one thing that had caught their concern and interest in the first place. It was a woman and a boy. A mother, a teacher, a wife. And a boy.
Dave Shields had never wanted to be anything but a cop. Not really. Though it was true that he had enlisted in the Coast Guard and had given most of his family and friends the impression that he had a career as a cop of the sea, he wanted nothing more than to be a police officer with his feet on dry ground. Both his grandmother and a close high school friend had died in accidents caused by drunken drivers. The idea that he could be part of a solution to a terrible and senseless problem led him to law enforcement. The former San Diegan came to Seattle with the Coast Guard in 1989; two years later he left in pursuit of his dream. It wasn't easy going. He worked his way up from a fire department job in Des Moines to the marina security job. By the spring of 1996, he was also a reserve police officer in Buckley, a town in the foothills of Mount Rainier, some forty-five minutes away. At the marina he worked graveyard, which he loved.