A Dance With the Devil: A True Story of Marriage to a Psychopath

by Barbara Bentley

  The previous morning had been an eye-opener. After breakfast I insisted we go to the Dade County recorder’s office and look up the deed on John’s Ingraham Highway property. He resisted, but I did not give up. John finally relented, and I drove to the center of Miami. We were shocked when we pulled the records on his house and saw that John was not listed as the legal owner. To make matters worse, he didn’t recognize the name on the microfiche. His face reddened, and then he blew up. “I don’t believe it! They found a way to take my property away from me.”

  “Let’s look up Grandfather Dannigan’s will,” I said, “so we know what we’re up against.” We went to the Hall of Records and ordered the will, but were told it would take four weeks to get it. We needed a shrewd lawyer.

  “You’re right,” John said. “Something shady is going on, but I’ve been away from the area so long I don’t know a good lawyer.”

  He grabbed the phone book from the end table drawer and flipped to the Yellow Pages. “I’ll call Randolf Harrington, the vice president of the Coconut Grove Bank, and ask him for a recommendation. He and his father have handled the family’s accounts for years. In fact, his father is the one who put everything in the trust for my grandpa. He’ll stand by me, I’m sure.”

  Harrington wasn’t available, but his assistant recommended a Miami lawyer known for getting results—Gene Janofsky. John made the next call. “We have an appointment at nine a.m. tomorrow,” John said as he hung up the phone.

  “Good. I can wear one of my new expensive suits. Obviously your grandmother isn’t going to see it.”

  “Now don’t be catty.”

  “Why not? I won’t get reimbursed by your grandmother, like you said.”

  John immediately changed the subject. I never noticed that this was a recurring tactic in his war for my mind. “Let’s go play,” he said. “We’ll catch the tourist trolley outside and see the Miami sights.”

  “We shouldn’t. We splurged yesterday with the spa treatments here at the hotel.”

  John stretched over to the pile of brochures on the coffee table, retrieved one, and thrust it into my hand. “See for yourself... it’s not that expensive. It even stops at Vizcaya, the fancy Italian villa.”

  I flipped through it. I did need the distraction. The gardens of Vizcaya and the grandeur of this unique home intrigued me. Still, I hesitated. So John pulled another enticement out of his arsenal. He knew I was curious about anything to do with his family, even if that person was now deceased, so he added a family tidbit. “After our tour, we can go to Miami Beach. I’ll show you the hospital my grandfather bought for my Aunt Dorothy when she became the Mother Superior of her religious order.”

  I was hooked. The outing would give me more photographs to add to my bulging albums and pacify me until next morning and our meeting with Janofsky. Finally we would get what was rightfully John’s, and we would do it by invoking the law.

  The next month passed with no improvement in John’s family situation or our financial crisis. We slipped back into our daily routines. I went to work each morning and John . . . well, I don’t know what John did while I was out of the house. Some days he just disappeared. He no longer had consulting jobs, or any prospects, and it was putting a strain on our relationship.

  I was caught in a quagmire. No matter how much I cajoled, explained, budgeted, or planned, John refused to rein in his spending behavior or get a job. Mentally, dealing with John was like being trapped in a Chinese finger puzzle—the more I struggled to be released from our debt, the tighter the pressure held me. I was enmeshed in a financial mess with a husband who would not cooperate, and I could not find a permanent solution; not much different, I imagined, than living with an alcoholic or a compulsive gambler. I couldn’t walk away with an immense debt hanging over my head. Where would I go? How would I survive? How could I erase it without John coming through with some of his family money? I clung to this illogical prospect in order to save my life. I didn’t recognize at the time that my flawed thinking was the result of years of emotional and financial abuse from a psychopath. I would have had a mental meltdown except for the balance of a job I enjoyed, our socializing with family and friends, and John’s way of being helpful with chores around the house.

  One hot mid-July afternoon I came home from work to an empty house. I thought nothing of it because John sometimes took the dogs for a ride or to the park for a run. I laid my purse on the kitchen counter and grabbed a Diet Coke out of the refrigerator. The cold can felt good in my hand, and I placed it on my throbbing neck.

  As usual, a feeling of dread had descended on me during my ride home and remained to torment me. I popped the tab and took a long swig. It burned going down. I wished I could be brave enough to expel my demons, instead of constantly trying to fix them.

  I glanced at the top of the microwave, looking for the mail. There wasn’t any. John must’ve left before it was delivered, I guessed, so I went to the mailbox and retrieved it. Back inside, I sat down on the living room sofa and began sorting the envelopes....junk mail.... bill. . . . junk mail. About halfway through, I paused. There was a legal-size envelope from the Miami lawyer.

  The meeting with Janofsky had not turned out as well as I hoped. It had started off great. John and Gene bantered names back and forth of people they seemed to know in common, then got down to business. John scribbled out a list of his property and sketched his family tree, all the while explaining their significance. Gene listened intently and finally said he thought he could help us. I almost jumped up and clapped my hands in delight. Good thing I didn’t. “I’ll get right to work on it,” he said. “All I need is a seventy-five-hundred-dollar retainer.”

  I deflated. He might as well have said a million dollars. We didn’t have it. Try as hard as I could, over the past month I still had not figured out a way to get it. As I held the envelope from Janofsky, I allowed myself to hope it meant he had waived the fee. He seemed to get on with John so well and was appalled by the treatment John was getting. I ripped open the envelope.

  Despair engulfed me. It was a bill for $450, and that was after a $100 discount for professional courtesy. Apparently our first meeting was not free, as John had sworn it was. I felt dizzy when I saw the bold red letters stamped across the bill: PAST DUE—SECOND BILLING. Why hadn’t John told me? Instead he’d led me on with the story that he was still working with Janofsky to take the case without the retainer.

  I set my jaw, stomped upstairs to John’s office, and pushed at a pile of papers to make room for me to pen a note to the lawyer. Then I saw my corporate American Express statement. When had that arrived? I was well organized when it came to bills. I knew each one and when it was due, so my internal alarm had gone off when the company credit card statement didn’t show up. I had told John it was missing. He must have inadvertently brought it up here. I grabbed it and slipped my finger under the flap.

  I scanned the statement and almost stopped breathing. Surprise turned to disbelief, then to rage. There was a charge for $1,162.54 for the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables. He had somehow managed to charge the Biltmore Hotel on my company credit card.

  No, it couldn’t be. Our trip to Florida was for personal, not company, business. I had deliberately left my company credit card at home. My head pounded and I swallowed hard. Then I heard the garage door and the dog tags jingling as doggie paws padded across the parquet floor in the hall. “I’m home,” John sang out.

  I grabbed the two incriminating pieces of mail and stormed downstairs, just in time to see him disappear into the kitchen and set down two bags of groceries. “What the hell are these?” I cried, thrusting the bills at him. He snatched them from my hand.

  “Whoa. Just a minute. Give a guy a break.”

  He limped into the breakfast room, sat down in one of the rattan chairs, flipped open the American Express statement, and smirked.

  “How did you do it, John? It’s my company card... in my name!” I grabbed my now-warm Coke and sat in the chair oppo
site him at the glass-topped table.

  “You got your new card in the mail and threw the old one in the trash, but it hadn’t expired yet, so I retrieved it and stuck it in my wallet, in case of an emergency. Good thing, too. Otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to pay the Biltmore. Hey, it’s no big deal.”

  “It is a big deal,” I seethed. “I could lose my job. The company card can never be used for personal business. It’s grounds for dismissal.”

  John got up, sauntered back into the kitchen, and started unbagging the groceries, seemingly oblivious to my exasperation. “You’ll figure something out,” he finally said. “You’re good at that.”

  My mind whirled, trying to come up with some resolution. Finding a way out of our financial maze had become my forte. Damage control. Yes, the first step was to do damage control. I grabbed the bill John had left behind and perused it once more.

  “I guess I can get in touch with American Express and explain that we mistakenly used the card, and that I’ll repay them with three monthly installments.”

  “Fine. Do what you must.”

  I reached over, picked up the letter from the lawyer, and shook it in the air. “What about this bill from Janofsky?”

  “What about it?”

  “You said the first visit was free.”

  “That’s what Gene told me. The office girl must have made a mistake. I’ll call him in the morning and get it straightened out.”

  Once again John calmly explained away damaging circumstances, with no remorse for his actions or his lies. He never got upset when he was found out, and he refused to accept responsibility. He just moved on. It was driving me crazy. Years later I would find that this behavior is typical for a psychopath and that my reaction was the expected result.

  John poured himself a glass of orange juice and sat back down.

  “Got some good news, if you’re up to hearing it,” he said.

  All I could do was stare at him. It was too risky to open my mouth; I couldn’t trust what I might say. He said he had talked with Randolf Harrington at the Coconut Grove Bank, and the bank was funding a $15,000 second mortgage for him. The check would come in a week or two.

  This should have been good news. It was exactly the amount we needed to get ourselves back to minimum-payment status on the mortgage, the utilities, and the credit card bills. But I cringed. How many other times had a check been “in the mail” and never shown up? I’ll believe it when I see it, I thought. I didn’t question how Randolf would be able to fund the loan, because the house was not in John’s name. Desperation clouds rational thinking.

  “Also, he’s going to start a refinance on my house,” John continued, “just like you suggested. He’ll move it out of the trust. Wants us to come down next month, finalize the deal, and pick up the check.”

  “We can’t afford the airline tickets, or a hotel, or a car.”

  John didn’t miss a beat. He had a plan. “No sweat. We’ll use airline mileage, and I can get a good weekend rate for a hotel in Fort Lauderdale, about half an hour from the bank. Anyway, what’s to afford? We’ll be picking up a check for sixty thousand dollars.”

  Could this really be the end of our financial nightmare, after nine long years of scraping, second mortgages, late checks, broken promises, and unfulfilled dreams? John, who had held the key for all these years, now dangled it in front of me, saying he would use his property to unlock the financial chains that bound us. Relief had been so long in coming. I desperately wanted it to be true—so not to spoil the mood, this time I changed the subject.

  “Where were you today? I tried to call earlier.”

  “I went to see your dad. He enjoys my visits. Then I got some groceries. That’s all.”

  I reached across the table and caressed John’s right hand. “You’ve been very good to my dad and the rest of my family. Thank you.”

  For all the financial stress John had put me through, I still loved him, especially for how well he treated my family. When my father had a massive stroke after two shunt surgeries, John canceled a business trip and returned from the airport to sit with my mother and me during the five-hour operation. Now, whenever we traveled with my parents, John pushed Dad in his wheelchair—around Disneyland, through the Huntington Gardens, and on picnics.

  John was also kind and gentle with my brother, who had schizophrenia, saying that his thesis had prepared him to respect the mentally ill when he ran his now-defunct school. And there was my young nephew, Julie’s son. We were present on the day he was born, and he soon filled in as the grandchild John never had. John spoiled him with books, toys, and clothes, and many times would stop by to read him a story.

  “I love your family,” John said. “It’s the family I never had. Being the black sheep of my family has been very lonely.” He got up again, grimaced in pain, limped over to the kitchen counter, and fumbled through the groceries.

  “Here, I got something for you,” he said. He handed me an envelope. It was addressed to “Little Bit.” I tore at the envelope and extracted a card. On the front were four Care Bears in pastel colors, playing on a seesaw. Whimsically written in green letters was the sentiment, “Thanks for being the special kind of person who always lifts me up when I’m down.” Then, in John’s printed script, “At my age I should know what’s best for me! Love ya, me, too.”

  My heart fluttered. How could I stay mad at John when he was always buying special love cards, or flowers, or perfume? He knew how to touch me. I stared at the card and noticed a strong significance. I, too, was on a seesaw, just like the bears, up and down, happy and sad. At that moment, John made me happy once more.

  My instinct for survival pushed me forward. I had to make my second marriage work. I couldn’t be a failure. I knew that if I could put us on a strong financial footing, I could keep us from bankruptcy, and we could live happily ever after. My life had become a crazymaking jigsaw puzzle with the pieces laid out in front of me, but no picture on the box to follow. Events lay scattered, disjointed, making no sense. I couldn’t find the corners or straight edges to start the frame.

  My crazy year continued. On a sunny Monday morning in the middle of August 1990, I maneuvered our rental car south along Interstate 95, crawling along, stop and go, through the clogged Miami commuter traffic.

  We had just come off a fun weekend in Fort Lauderdale, visiting friends, walking along the beach, and watching the idle rich play on their large luxury yachts and sleek racing boats. This morning, however, my mood was serious. We had an important meeting in Coconut Grove, and it wouldn’t do to be late. “The traffic’s impossible,” I muttered. “I hope we make it on time.”

  “Relax, you’re doing fine,” John said.

  “It will look bad if we’re late. Especially since Harrington finally came through for us with the check for fifteen thousand dollars.”

  I said finally because each day for a month John told me the $15,000 check would come. It hadn’t, causing me great confusion and many sleepless nights. Nothing was stress free anymore. Then, when I was due to leave on a business trip, John told me he had heard from Harrington; the money would definitely come while I was away. Thank goodness! I wrote postdated checks. John said he would mail them when the funds arrived. I trusted him that he would do so and left, feeling relieved.

  When I returned home, John acted agitated and remorseful. There had been a glitch, and our money was tied up at the main branch of Wells Fargo Bank in San Francisco. Stupidly, he had already mailed the payments, but saved the day by negotiating with a bank officer to hold the checks and honor them as soon as the funding cleared. I found out the hard way that something had gone wrong. My phone started ringing at work with creditors who said no payments had arrived. It was time for damage control, once more. “They must have gotten lost in the mail,” I’d say. “It does happen. Or maybe our mailbox got robbed, because all of our checks have gone missing.”

  Then, within a week, a $15,400 deposit appeared in our joint checking account. I had
never seen the check. I promptly paid the overdue house payments and the credit card minimum balances, but my hard-won relief was short-lived. The large balances hemmed me in. Until they were removed, I would feel half dead.

  Luckily, the bank approved a $60,000 mortgage on John’s Florida home, and we were about to collect it. We passed through the interchange for the Palmetto Expressway and continued south on I-95.

  “My wife Cindy died not far from here, on the Palmetto Expressway,” John said, “while I was in Nam.” He related once more the tragic story of her car accident. He always did when we were in Miami and near the expressway. I could feel his anguish.

  “We’re getting closer,” I said, trying to divert him. “There’s the sign for the MacArthur Causeway.”

  “I . . . I’m not feeling well,” John complained.

  “You just need to think some happy thoughts.”

  “No, I mean it. I didn’t sleep last night, between the nightmares and the pain in my leg. I even took extra meds, but it didn’t help.” John grunted. He slipped a little lower in his seat and laid his head back. I glanced over at his tortured body and wished there was something I could do to help. His eyes were closed.

  “Maybe it’s the stress of going around your family,” I said. “With the check you get today, we’ll be able to hire Janofsky and get the show on the road. That’s a good thing, a positive thing. It’s one more step toward being solvent.”

  By now the interstate had turned into U.S. 1 and we were on the divided four-lane South Dixie Highway. The area looked familiar. I had driven around it a couple of months ago when we stayed at the Biltmore. Once I’ve driven somewhere, I file it in my internal direction finder, and it’s a good thing, too, because I was about to call on that skill.

  “You always cheer me up,” John said. “That’s why...Oh! Oh!” John clutched his chest.

  “The pain. My...my...heart. Hos...pi...tal. Mer...cy Hospi . . . tal.” He collapsed into the middle of the seat.