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

by Barbara Bentley

  “I’ve answered a lot of homicide calls,” Smith continued. “Each time I see a victim, I ask myself what I could have done to help them. That’s why I think I can help now.”

  “But I’m not dead!”

  “I know, but I believe you could have been. John brutally attacked you.”

  “John never hit me before. He’s under medication. He overdosed. He needs to get to the hospital.”

  “This is serious. I believe if we let you go with him tonight, we’ll find your body in the morning.”

  “No! John loves me. He rubs my feet. He cooks for me. He buys me nice things.”

  “Mrs. Perry, please listen. I also believe if we let you go back to California with John after a three-day psychiatric hold, someone is going to find your dead body out there.”

  Dear God, I prayed, please help me. Why is he saying these horrible things? Help me get out of here so I can get John to a hospital. But the detective did not let up and kept insisting that, based on John’s actions, he wanted to arrest him for attempted murder. I just about lost my mind.

  “Attempted murder?” I whispered. “He has no reason to kill me.” Detective Smith explained that people kill for a lot of reasons. He asked more questions, looking for a plausible one in my case. We ruled out jealousy right away. When he asked about problems, I searched my soul and had to admit that we had been under financial strains, which was why the job offer for Egypt had been so critical.

  “Would John benefit from your death?” Smith asked.

  I hesitated, searching my life for answers, and thought especially hard about the past year. Yes, there was some life insurance from my work. John was the executor of my will and primary beneficiary. We had just redone the wills earlier in the month, but I didn’t think there was enough money there for him to want to kill me.

  “Has John ever hurt you, say, in the last year?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did you have any accidents or strange happenings?”

  I replayed events from the previous year in my mind. It seemed so long ago. After the attack this morning, a lot of things seemed like a long time ago. Slowly, I found some of the crazymaking puzzle pieces that might shed light on the situation, if I would only believe their message. I explained the car accident in Hot Springs, the sleeping pills, and the telephone pole. Recalling the accident confused me. Could it have been a murder attempt? Why would he have wanted to murder me then? No, it was just an unfortunate accident, nothing more.

  Detective Smith prompted me again. He was relentless. I tried to think of something else out of the ordinary.

  “Well, there was this incident with the gun,” I said, and went on to explain the Florida trip, John’s heart attack, and the foil-wrapped gun in his briefcase. It didn’t seem like a murder attempt, just carelessness on John’s part—although it was strange that the banker didn’t know John, and the attorney gave me an ominous warning.

  “Was there anything else where you were hurt?” Smith asked.

  The fall down the stairs came to mind almost immediately. I explained the circumstances, and that I had yet to prove that John was teaching at the University of California. Enlightening as some of these events could have been, my focus was still on getting John to Bethesda Naval Hospital.

  “I’m sorry,” Smith said. “I don’t think that’s possible at this time, but you can help John right now. I agree with you that he is sick.”

  Detective Smith said John could get psychiatric assistance in prison; a staff psychologist would evaluate him before trial, and the evaluation would be used to determine whether John should serve his time in the state’s criminal mental facility. I perked up. All I had ever wanted to do was get John medical attention. This might work.

  “How can I help?”

  “Let me arrest John for attempted murder.”

  “What will I have to do after that?”

  “Help us in our investigation. I suspect that a lot of evidence is back in California. And you’ll have to testify against him at the trial.”

  I mulled it over. On the one hand, Detective Smith had brought up some interesting theories about the past year. I had been plagued with suspicions and troubled by missing family and mysterious loans. Maybe this was the way to help me shed light on them and help John at the same time. On the other hand, an arrest . . . and a trial? I wrestled with reality and faced the new chapter of my life that was about to unfold. The prospect frightened me. Reluctantly, I lowered my denial defense and agreed to let Homicide Detective Smith arrest John.

  “Good decision,” Smith said. “Now all we have to do is get some photographs of your face for evidence at the trial.”

  He went to the door and asked Officer Cobb to retrieve her Polaroid camera from the trunk of her patrol car. While we waited, I placed a bargaining chip on the table. “I’ll let you arrest John on one condition,” I said. “I want to see him before you take him away.”

  Detective Smith grimaced and shook his head. “It’s not a good idea. You may change your mind if you see him this soon after the crime. Statistics prove that battered women are prone to recant and not follow through with prosecution of their perpetrator.”

  “I promise I won’t change my mind. I don’t break promises.”

  My inner resolve began to shine through as I started down a new path.

  The door opened and Officer Cobb came in. “Brrrrr, it’s cold out there,” she said with a shiver. “I think it’s going to snow tonight.”

  She handed the camera to Detective Smith, who tried to take several pictures of me, but the near-freezing temperature in the trunk of the patrol car had affected the film. The photos turned milky. All would have been lost, except for me. I pulled out my 35-mm Minolta and showed him how to use it. Snap. Snap. I removed the exposed film cartridge and handed it to Detective Smith. “The county will reimburse you,” he said. I wasn’t worried about that. It was simply another one of my life events. Providence intervened.

  I gathered my belongings and followed Detective Smith to the room where John was being held. His hands were still cuffed behind his back and he had slumped over in the chair; his tousled toupee made him look unkempt, like a vagrant. How did our relationship get to this? I asked myself. I swallowed hard, took a deep breath, and walked around to where he could see me.

  “Tell them I never touched you before,” John pleaded.

  “I did, but something serious has happened.”

  “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I’ll be okay now.”

  “I told you once that if you ever laid a hand on me, that was it. Remember?”

  “I won’t do it again. I promise.”

  “You need help, John. I want you to know I’m letting them arrest you because this is one way you can get it.”

  Detective Smith walked over and stood between us. He grabbed something from the desk next to John. “Time to go,” he said, escorting me out to the hall. “I’ll keep in touch with you.” He handed me the folder with the airline tickets. “We found them in John’s inside coat pocket. I think you’ll need these to get home.”

  Lana was waiting, ready to take me back to the Marriott. She expressed concern for my being alone that evening. I told her I had called my friends the Baxters in McLean, and they were coming to take me to dinner.

  “You will break down sometime. It’s inevitable,” she said as we pulled under the hotel portico. I grabbed the car door handle. “All the staff wants you to know how proud we are of you,” she added.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You saved your life today. Most women would not have been able to extricate themselves like you did. You are truly an amazing and strong woman.”

  I didn’t feel very strong when I walked into the lobby of the hotel. I felt disoriented. How could I face the room where I almost died? Fortunately, I didn’t have to. “We took the liberty of moving your bags while you were away,” the manager said. “We’ve put you in another wing, on the fifth floor.”

&nbs
p; Safely inside my room, I leaned against the door, exhausted and alone in deafening silence. But I knew I could not linger. My friends were due any moment. I dragged myself into the bathroom, splashed water on my face, and ran my fingers through my hair. This will have to do, I thought. My friends will have to take me as I am. The phone rang. Dear God, please let me make it through this evening without disintegrating.

  At dinner I pushed my food around on my plate and ate very little. My friends said they understood. Thankfully they didn’t grill me on the day’s events as I continually dabbed the corners of my eyes and held on to some modicum of composure.

  Later, when I returned to my hotel room, it was a different story. My purse and coat slipped to the floor. My feet shuffled to the bed and I lay down, fully clothed. But I couldn’t relax. Through blurry eyes I stared at the six pieces of luggage lined up against the wall. My dreams of a happy marriage were packed in that luggage, as well as my hopes for being debt free. Now they both were gone, destroyed by my husband’s ultimate betrayal.

  My head pounded. My body ached. I longed for a hot bath to refresh my body and cleanse my soul. But in the bathroom, no matter which way I pulled or pushed the faucet, the water remained cold. I crumbled to the tile floor and broke into hysterical sobs, crying out loud to the empty room, “Why me?” There was no answer.

  I stumbled to the bed and the telephone on the nightstand. While I waited for hotel maintenance to respond to my call, I replayed the unthinkable events of the day, my unpredictable emotional state, and my unhealthy plan to stay in town for three more days. Survival mode kicked in. I decided that for my sanity I had to go home as soon as possible, back to my familiar surroundings, to my family and to my dogs. The knock on the door startled me out of my reverie.

  Maintenance politely explained how to use the faucet and left. But the hot bath would have to wait. A more urgent need pressed me. I retrieved the airline tickets from my purse and worked through choked sobs with a considerate agent who arranged a seat for me to fly home the next afternoon. Later, the hot bath failed to revive me, and sleep didn’t bring much-needed rest. I had my first nightmare of John trying to murder me.

  The next day I exited the elevator on the fifth floor of the Arlington County jail and went to a confined room about eight feet by eight feet, painted a hideous shade of green. Two women stood at a counter with forms and pencils on it, their backs toward me. The sign above the counter directed, TO VISIT A PRISONER. . . .I shuddered. I had never been in a jail.

  I moved toward the counter and gagged. One of the women smelled as if she had not bathed in weeks. The other woman’s clothes were tattered and filthy; the two young children huddled at her feet wiped their hands across their runny noses.

  I felt like turning back, but couldn’t. I had to talk to John before I went home, to make sure he was okay and to bring him his medication, underwear, and $25 for his bank. He may have tried to murder me, but he was still my admiral and I couldn’t totally abandon him. I worried about his health; he took so many pills. I worried that he wouldn’t be able to survive the dynamics of jail. I wasn’t sure I could, even for this short visit. The incessant din of the prisoners jawing and posturing behind the walls was deafening.

  I pulled myself together. My plane was leaving in a couple of hours and I had to be on it. I realized that last night, when I broke down in my room and sobbed uncontrollably because the bathwater didn’t get hot quickly enough. It was now or never.

  I held my breath, grabbed one of the forms and a pencil, and went back to the wall nearest the elevator. A guard behind the barred window with the small pass-through processed my request and pushed a dated pass back at me. “Sixth floor,” he said gruffly. “Present it to the guard.”

  The two women were still working on their original paperwork when I pushed the up button. The elevator doors opened on the sixth floor into an even smaller room painted with the same horrid green. Four orange plastic chairs, scarred by years of abuse, sat along one wall. At the far end, two women sat hunched into partitions similar to telephone areas. I presented my pass to the guard behind the glass and sat down. Soon it was my turn.

  I settled into a beat-up chair and surveyed my surroundings. A small shelf lay underneath the thick glass on both sides, and gray phone receivers hung on the wall, just like in the movies. I wished this was a movie. Sadly, it was not.

  I watched as John, wearing a navy blue jumpsuit, was led to the chair on the other side of the thick glass. He looked old and worn, downright pathetic without his toupee. He sat down, picked up his receiver, and started talking. I just sat there. I couldn’t hear what he was saying. He motioned me to pick up my receiver. “You look tired,” he said.

  “I had a meltdown last night. Now I can’t stop crying.”

  “Tell them I never beat you,” John begged. “Tell them, and I can go home with you.”

  “I can’t, John. You need help.”

  “I’ll get help. I’ll go to Kaiser as soon as we get home.”

  “No, you need help now.”

  “I won’t get it here.”

  “The homicide detective said you would.”

  “Yeah, well, don’t believe everything you’re told,” he snapped. Then he held his head downcast, with a shamed-puppy look. It was a posture I had seen many times before, and one that usually broke my heart. This time it didn’t work.

  “I’ve taken steps to prevent bail,” I said. John raised his head and glared at me as I continued. “I canceled the credit cards and moved money into inaccessible accounts.”

  “What about a lawyer?” John whined.

  I couldn’t believe his nerve. He had just tried to murder me, and now he wanted me to get him a lawyer. I laughed. “We don’t have the money, John. We’re so far in debt I doubt I’ll ever get out.”

  “What should I do?” he whimpered.

  “Get a public defender.”

  John stood up, yelled “Bitch!” into his receiver, and slammed it back on the hook. He turned and motioned for the guard.

  In the recent past I would have begged John to stay. I would have said we could work it out. I was a different person now. I made no sign to keep him from leaving. I had grown in the past day and was on the road to gaining my strength. John was losing control over me. I replaced my receiver on the wall, got up, and left.

  That afternoon, as I sat in the airplane waiting for it to taxi down the runway, I was a sniffling, emotional mess. I was mourning the death of my dream, knowing that my life would never be the same again. Before I boarded, the concerned gate agent asked if I would be okay to travel. I convinced her I was, and that my friends, the Passinis, would be at the gate in San Francisco.

  As the plane accelerated and the wheels left the ground, I looked below, scouting for familiar landmarks. There they were: the Smithsonian, the Washington Monument, the Reflecting Pool, the Lincoln Memorial. Brief thoughts of happy times forced a quick smile as the plane banked to the left over the Potomac River and headed west. When I saw the Key Bridge Marriott, tears flooded my face. It was my third major breakdown of the day.

  I felt I was trapped in the middle of an impressionistic painting. All I could see were globs of different-colored paint dabbed here and there, surrounding me. None of it made any sense at all. A professional would be needed to help me step back until I could decipher the subject and understand the painting.

  The Capitol area retreated below me, and I swore I would be a different person when I returned for the trial. The painting would be in focus. I had been raised to disregard mental health professionals, which would have meant sharing and exposing the family’s private business to a stranger. As the plane headed over the Virginia countryside, I made the courageous decision to get mental help. Nothing in my life had offered me the emotional resources I would need to deal with and recover from such a brutal attack. I had to reclaim my sanity. I had to reinforce this decision that became the emotional turning point in my life.

  PART THREE

&n
bsp; Persistence

  TWENTY-ONE

  The Investigator

  The plane landed in San Francisco. My fourth emotional meltdown of the day occurred when I fell into the Passinis’ waiting arms. Their shocked faces reflected a woman spiritually broken and physically damaged with bruises, scrapes, broken fingernails, and chemical burns.

  “I’m not the same person who left four days ago,” I sobbed.

  Unknown challenges lay ahead. The first was to get home safely. The Passinis insisted I spend the first night with them. The next morning, a Sunday, I headed home. First I stopped at my section manager’s home. “Take as much time as you need,” he said, “and mark it as personal time, not vacation.” I appreciated his concern.

  At my second stop I picked up my mother to stay with me for a couple of weeks. I needed someone with me to feel safe. John was incarcerated, but there were too many unknowns. Did he have an accomplice? If so, was it a woman or a man? Was I still in danger? When we walked into the guest room to get Mom settled, I blew a fuse. The Westinghouse billings covered the bed and dresser. “I told John I couldn’t handle these.”

  “I can sleep in the twin bed downstairs,” Mom offered.

  “The file boxes are right here. It won’t take that long to put them back where they belong. Give me a minute.” I learned later that there was information I needed in those piles. I was too traumatized to look for it now.

  Over breakfast the next morning I started a list, jotting down some chores for today, some for tomorrow. The locksmith rekeyed the house and I ticked off that chore. I double-checked my financial accounts and confirmed that my damage-control tactics in Virginia had been successful. John did not have access to funds for bail. I braced myself for the next task: the investigation of John’s office.

  Mom followed me into the paneled room at the top of the stairs. Stacks of papers covered the large wooden desk, the two chairs, the filing cabinets in the closet, the redwood bookshelves along the west wall, and most of the brown pile carpet. “How could he work in such a mess?” I groaned. It was anathema to my organized self and made me angry, especially because he was supposed to have been gone for six months. I knew I’d have to be carefully analytical to provide the homicide detective the evidence he’d need for motive. I embraced the challenge, sensing that this activity would also be crucial to my recovery.