by Ann Rule
It was difficult for Staunton to set the time he’d been wakened, but he was sure it would have been about three to five hours after he’d taken the sleeping pill. He assumed it was about 5:00 a.m.
He’d woken up again at 7:00 a.m. to the sound of cats fighting. He figured that was probably what he’d heard earlier.
Shocked to hear that Chuck was dead, Dr. Staunton said he’d seen him only the night before at a restaurant called Buck’s in downtown Everett. Chuck was there with some friends, a couple of men and a woman he didn’t recognize. His neighbor had come over to invite him to join them, and he did—but when Chuck asked Dr. Staunton if he wanted to go to a nearby gambling casino, he’d declined, saying he was headed home to bed.
No one else along the street who might have helped Chuck Leonard had heard anything during the night or in the chill hours of the morning. Maybe it wouldn’t have made any difference, but it was sad, nevertheless.
Rigor mortis, the stiffening of a body’s joints that begins shortly after death, was well established. His body temperature was very, very low when it was taken at the medical examiner’s office.
It was ironic that a man who had spent his whole life surrounded by friends should die all alone. Had someone been familiar with his habits—where he slept, who his neighbors were, who was away in the winter or had their windows tightly closed?
It would take detectives from the Major Crimes Unit to figure that out. Detectives Brad Pince and Jim Scharf arrived, and Bottin walked them through the residence, retracing his original path exactly.
They worked the crime scene meticulously, gathering, bagging, and labeling the .45 slugs and casings, taking samples for typing from the blood that marked the lake house with splashes and pools. The water bed where Chuck Leonard had been shot was punctured by either a bullet or a fragment, and it leaked water that mixed with his life’s fluid.
The stairway down to the master bedroom ran along the left side of the living room. The fatally injured victim must have run across the living room and slipped on a few area rugs, which were now askew. When Pince looked down at one, he saw a wedge of transparent material beneath it. As he tugged it aside, he realized it was some kind of window in the floor—a window looking down toward Chuck’s room. It wasn’t directly over his water bed, but it was close enough.
The dead man had designed his house carefully so that skylights in the ceiling of the lake house were positioned to capture light, which, in turn, focused on the window in the floor, sending more light to the bedroom below. The Plexiglas cover was open now, but could obviously be closed to keep someone from falling through.
If someone had stealthily come into the house in the dark, and the moonlight was just right, he— or they—might have been able to watch Chuck and any female friend who might be staying over.
It gave the detectives pause, a shivery feeling of privacy invaded.
They received a phone call from Detective John Padilla in the Records division. He had left several messages on Teresa’s cell phone during the day, and she finally called him back. She asked about Chuck’s death. Padilla wasn’t positive how she had learned of it, but Doug Butler and other teachers and administrators at North Middle School had known for hours that Chuck was dead—murdered. Word of his shocking demise had spread rapidly through the area.
Padilla said Teresa had left the phone number and address of her best friend—Joyce Lilly—and said she would wait there for the detectives to contact her.
Pince and Scharf were very anxious to talk with Teresa Gaethe-Leonard, but it was ten thirty that evening before they had cleared the lake house. Detectives Joe Ward, Rob Palmer, and Gregg Rinta had done yeoman’s work photographing and sketching the layout of the house and the location of all physical evidence before it was bagged and labeled and put safely into the chain of evidence.
Dr. Dan Selove, associate medical examiner for Snohomish County had come to the scene, too. After Chuck Leonard’s body was photographed and then removed for autopsy, deputies remained behind to guard the property to be sure that no one crossed the crime scene tapes.
The Snohomish County investigators knew what had happened, but they didn’t know who might have shot the popular school counselor or what their motivation might have been.
Sergeant Al Zurlo of the Snohomish County Major Crimes Unit had been assigned to be the incident commander in the investigation of Chuck Leonard’s death. At 4:00 p.m. on February 20, he arrived on the scene and signed the crime scene log. He was gratified to see that procedure had been followed perfectly. The whole area was either blocked by barricades or encircled with yellow crime-scene tape.
Zurlo gave out assignments; the investigation would operate on many fronts at the same time.
DETECTIVE BRAD PINCE: lead team, coordinate tasks
DETECTIVE JOHN PADILLA: lead team, interviews and background information
DETECTIVE JIM SCHARF: witness interviews and scene processing
DETECTIVE MATT TRAFFORD: neighborhood canvass, witness interviews
DETECTIVE HALEY: crime-scene sketching, processing
DETECTIVE STICH: crime-scene sketching, processing
DETECTIVE GREGG RINTA: body site, interior crime-scene processing
DETECTIVE ROB PALMER: body site, interior crime-scene processing
DETECTIVE JOE WARD: search warrant preparation, supervise interior crime-scene processing
DEPUTY STOOPS: exterior crime-scene security, crime-scene log
North Middle School was afire with rumors, and Chuck’s friends were appalled. When Detective Brad Pince phoned his father to tell him that his son was dead—murdered—Fred Leonard’s voice was full of tears, although he and Chuck were often at odds.
“Was he shot by some jealous husband or boyfriend?” he asked. “I’ve always been afraid that might happen.”
“I don’t know,” Pince said. “We’re trying to find out.”
No one knew at this point who the shooter was.
The investigators knew that first day that Chuck’s love life was problematical. Early in the afternoon, Deputy Wynn Holdal called the North Middle School to talk to Everett police officer Dan Boardley who worked security at the school. Boardley said he’d talked to the school’s vice principal.
“He told me he spoke with Chuck last night about nine o’clock. Chuck told him he was with a ‘skinny blonde’ and they were going to Harrah’s Club,” not the one in Nevada, but a local gambling casino.
Chuck was probably joking, but he’d sounded kind of “down.” Boardley got the impression that the woman sitting with him was a casual acquaintance.
From the very beginning there were many possible suspects and motives in the death of Charles Fred Leonard. He was a convivial man who was almost always in a good mood. But he was also a man who walked by himself and lived by his own rules, incurring envy in many men, jealousy in others. He was witty and funny and great to be around. He wasn’t legally divorced from Teresa Gaethe-Leonard when he died, but they had been separated for two years.
He was said to be dating at least three attractive young women at the same time, and he had romanced more women in his lifetime than most men could dream of.
Still, if Chuck Leonard had many female friends, he also had lots of male friends who found him generous, a hard worker, a loyal friend, and a good neighbor.
He was over fifty, but he looked much closer to forty, and he had the perfect house for a bachelor or divorcé. The bottom floor of his home, which could only be entered from the outside, was where he made and stored wine. He was as knowledgeable about wine as a sommelier, and proud of his skill.
The next two floors were stacked on top of that with the living room–great room almost at street level. Whoever came and went couldn’t be easily monitored by neighbors.
Chuck loved kids, and he enjoyed his job. He had many friends and enough money to get by. His health was great. His biggest worry was that Teresa might take Morgan far away, but so far he’d been able to see
his little girl often, and he figured his background would impress a judge more than Teresa’s. He didn’t even dislike Teresa; she was more an irritant than a threat.
Everyone who mattered to Chuck liked him.
At least so it had seemed until Thursday, February 20, 1997. But someone had hated him enough to shoot him while he slept.
Teresa planned Chuck’s funeral. She told Chuck’s sister, Theresa, that she was thinking of using some lines from Goethe in the eulogy she was writing; Theresa thought that was pretentious. She doubted that Teresa had anywhere near the education she claimed she had.
Teresa wanted the service to be perfect, but when she arrived, few mourners approached her. Chuck’s friends had never cared much for her, and rather than being the star of the event, Teresa was more a wallflower. Basically, no one acknowledged her, except Chuck’s uncle. No one spoke to her. When she went into the family room at the funeral parlor, she appeared upset—and intoxicated; she reeked of alcohol. Teresa had maintained close ties with Chuck’s father and stepmother; Caroline Leonard felt sorry for her and patted the chair next to her. The elder Leonards asked Teresa to be in the reception line, but she didn’t want to do that, despite her friend Joyce Lilly telling her that she should. Teresa almost fainted, and Joyce took her back to the family room.
Then they went to the cemetery. Bonnie, who had only worked for Teresa for two months at The Consignment Shop, walked up to her and Teresa hugged her for a long time. It seemed as though it was at least ten minutes. Bonnie was surprised and somewhat embarrassed. She really didn’t know Teresa well at all. It was as if her boss wanted to show people that she did have friends after all and they cared about her.
A short time later, the funeral director approached Joyce and said, “I think Teresa needs to go.”
Teresa sat in Joyce’s car, her head down. When they reached the main street, Teresa “just looked up and said, ‘Get me the fuck out of here.’ ”
Chapter Four
Back on the night of Chuck’s murder, detectives Brad Pince and Jim Scharf weren’t sure what to expect at Joyce Lilly’s house, but they found two rather nervous woman—Joyce more so than Teresa—and a pretty little girl, who was recovering from a visit to the dentist. Her face had puffed up and bruised after her treatment the day before. The two detectives were relieved that this time they didn’t have to be the ones who broke the news to a widow. And it soon became obvious that Teresa had had very loose connections to Chuck; they were legally married, but that’s about all. Apparently, they’d led separate lives for some time. Although she had called his school asking about where he was, she hadn’t returned any calls from the Sheriff’s Office.
When Detective John Padilla had notified Michelle Conley about Chuck’s murder, he gleaned more information. “They fought like cats and dogs,” Michelle said. She explained that the Leonards’ separation was anything but friendly, and that Chuck only dealt with her because he cared so much about Morgan.
Teresa introduced the detectives to Joyce Lilly, commenting that they were “best friends.”
Only five, Morgan Leonard hadn’t been told that her father was dead. If she had known at this point, she couldn’t possibly have understood the enormity of her loss or begin to understand that the life she had known up until now had changed cataclysmically. The daddy who had loved her so much was never coming back.
There was nothing particularly overt about either Teresa’s or Joyce’s actions that made the two Snohomish County detectives suspicious. Joyce excused herself and carried Morgan upstairs so that they could talk to Teresa alone.
“We tentatively considered Teresa a suspect because of their acrimonious divorce, and we had talked to Michelle,” Scharf explains. “We always tend to look initially at the people closest to the victim. We didn’t know much about the Leonards’ history that first night.”
Teresa didn’t seem grief-stricken, but then she wasn’t a widow in the strictest sense of the word. She told the investigators that she had wanted a divorce for a long time, and that Chuck was the one who wanted to stay married. Her decision to delay a divorce was purely pragmatic. She explained that she wasn’t a wealthy woman, and she had had to think about how she and Morgan could get by.
“I’ve had open-heart surgery,” she said, “and I need—needed—Chuck’s medical insurance, as I don’t know what might happen with my health. I couldn’t afford it on my own.”
Chuck had been good about his child support payments. He paid her $350 a month regularly. “I work, too, of course,” she added. “I’ve had my consignment shop in Marysville for three years. Before that, I worked for the Bon Marché.”
Teresa’s clothing resale business, combined with Morgan’s child support money and a part-time job with a travel agency, gave them just about enough to pay rent on their small apartment on Everett Mall Way, and to buy groceries and other necessities of life.
Detective John Padilla joined his fellow investigators at Joyce Lilly’s house. The three detectives listened intently as Teresa told them what Chuck had been like.
She said that she thought her estranged husband had lots of girlfriends, and that he lived the high life.
“Do you know any of their names?” Pince asked.
She shook her head. “No, I don’t.”
She suggested that Chuck was careless about safety precautions, and that he didn’t always lock his doors at night. “He wanted his cats to be able to come in and out. He liked cats.”
When she was asked about the last time she’d been to the lake house, Teresa was emphatic. “I haven’t been there for two years—not since the day I left.”
Although Morgan spent alternate weeks with Chuck, Teresa said she never went into Chuck’s house with her. Instead, they set up meetings somewhere else to facilitate the exchange.
“What kind of father was Chuck?” Pince asked.
“He was a good father,” she said softly.
Asked about life insurance, Teresa shook her head. She didn’t believe Chuck had any. Nor did she seem to be aware that Morgan would be eligible for Chuck’s Social Security survivor benefits now.
“Are you dating anyone?” Pince asked. “Someone important in your life?
“No, there’s no one,” she said convincingly.
Teresa painted her deceased and estranged husband as a complete playboy, who had any number of “big-boy toys.”
“He has a Cessna airplane at the Arlington Airport, and he keeps his Corvette there, too,” she said. “He has a brown-and-cream-colored boat. Chuck spent his money on wine and cars.”
She also said that he was addicted to pornographic movies. She spoke quietly and seemed quite vulnerable. Except for his predilection for attractive women, her take on her estranged husband was far different from what they had heard so far from others who knew him. And yet it was difficult to ascertain what Teresa’s true emotions were. That was perhaps understandable; Chuck’s murder was too fresh.
When Brad Pince asked Teresa how she had spent the previous day—February 19, a Wednesday—she could account for almost every minute. She had taken Morgan to the dentist to have some cavities filled two days before and she was concerned that her daughter’s face was swollen and bruised; she wanted the dentist to check Morgan’s condition. Then they had run some errands and purchased some soft food that Morgan could eat.
“By the time we got home, it must have been five thirty or six in the evening. Then Joyce came over, and she stayed and visited until nine or nine thirty. I didn’t go out at all last night. I went to bed about eleven, and I got up at nine this morning.”
It was midnight on a day that seemed to go on forever when Brad Pince and Jim Scharf left Joyce Lilly’s home.
They didn’t know what to think. The murder investigation had just begun, and it sounded as though there were many people they needed to talk to. Joyce Lilly had practically quivered with anxiety during their visit to her home, while Teresa seemed to be in control. They didn’t view the two women’s b
ehavior as indicative of innocence or guilt. They had done enough felony investigations to know that people in shock and suffering loss react in all different ways.
Teresa Gaethe-Leonard was a slender, very attractive blonde. She appeared to have a core of strength in her. That was fortunate, the detectives thought. She was really on her own now; she would have to raise Morgan all alone, as best she could. It was easy to feel sorry for her, but homicide detectives always look at the nether side of human behavior; they have learned to observe with jaundiced eyes. Teresa was almost too calm in the face of searing tragedy.
Maybe the enormity of it hadn’t hit her yet.
And then again, Brad Pince and Jim Scharf didn’t know yet that Teresa was far from alone. She had lied to them when she said she had no boyfriend. She hadn’t mentioned Nick Callas, her rich lover in Lahaina, Hawaii.
Only one thing struck them as strange. Near the end of their conversation with her, it occurred to Brad Pince that Teresa hadn’t once asked how Chuck had died.
Odd.
“Do you know what happened to Chuck?” Pince asked her.
“I was told that he died,” she said faintly. “But I don’t know how or any of the details. From the questions that you’ve asked me, I can guess at some of those details.”
The next forty-eight hours passed in a blur for both the Snohomish County investigators and Chuck Leonard’s friends and family. His fatal shooting made the top of television news broadcasts and headlines in Seattle and Everett newspapers. Although it happens more often than most people would like to think, schoolteachers and counselors do become involved in scandals and violent-death investigations, just as some doctors, ministers, politicians, and people in every other demographic do.