The last time Sue’s close Amarillo friend Dee Ann saw Sue and Rick was in August 2002. Dee Ann did not think Rick was coping well—his conversations no longer made any sense and, for some odd reason, he’d shaved his head. When Dee Ann made a comment about Rick’s bald pate, she expected Sue’s usual response of joking that she had four boys instead of three, when Dee Ann pointed out something unusual about Rick. Instead Sue’s tone turned derisive. “It’s his new look,” she said.
Picking up on Sue’s attitude, Dee Ann mentioned that she had not heard Sue talk about the possibility of divorce since her mother was ill. She asked Sue what was happening.
“There is too much going on for me to try to file for a divorce right now,” Sue told her.
Despite what Sue told her friend, circumstances arranged themselves in a manner that would make divorce more possible than ever before. Her inheritance from her mother gave her the money she needed to pay for one. And she no longer needed to face her mother’s disapproval if she did go through with it. All she needed now was the gumption to take action.
Dee Ann and George were concerned about their friend because her self-confidence seemed to be at an all-time low. Sue had always been in control of herself and her family. Now she appeared to be at a crisis point and not as sure of herself as she was before.
In September, Sue drove up to St. Louis with a friend from work in a small rental truck. At her mother’s house she met Pete, who drove up in his pickup from Kansas City. To Pete, loading up his truck and Sue’s rental van was a chore, but he noticed that, for Sue, it was a grand adventure filled with excitement.
After the work was done, Pete didn’t dawdle—he wanted to get back home before dark. As he drove off, he thought about how much he admired his younger sister. He knew how difficult it was to raise three children and maintain a professional career at the same time. But Sue did it and always with such a positive attitude. No matter what she did, Sue had fun doing it—and made sure that everyone around her was having a good time, too.
Later that month, Sue hosted a Southern Living party at her house for Julie Speer. A few days later, Rick and Sue went over to Julie’s house to select the place settings they wanted to buy. Sue pointed to a green bowl she liked.
A strange look crossed Rick’s face. “You never liked green before,” he said. “What else has changed since we got married?”
15
More had changed than Rick had yet imagined. In early October, Sue called Julie and told her that she inherited some home furnishings and would like Julie’s help in organizing and decorating the house. Julie asked about Rick’s involvement, since he seemed to resent any decisions made without his input.
“Rick will not overrule decisions this time,” Sue said. She went on to explain that she wanted shelves built by the fireplace to display special treasures. Julie made arrangements with a carpenter to do the work.
It was around this time that Rick began to exhibit an unusual interest in the sleeping arrangements in the Schooling household. “Which is your bedroom window, Charlene?” “Where does Susan sleep? In the guest house? Or in the main house?”
When Rick got only vague responses from Charlene, he asked Susan the same questions. For days, he questioned them about their domestic set-up every time an opportunity arose.
Charlene and Susan were both uneasy with the interrogation, but neither one of them could figure out what was going on in the convoluted thought processes of their neighbor. Later, they were certain of his motivation. They believed that Rick wanted to know exactly where each person would be so he could stage the murder of his wife without being observed.
Sue chronicled her life in her journal again.
A group of boys in the neighborhood were getting kicks out of playing ring and run—ringing the doorbell then running and hiding. It had gotten past the funny point. Rick’s grand plan was to load the boys in the car with water guns, chase the kids down and shoot water at them. I threw a fit. Rick relented and just ran after them and told them to quit.
One afternoon, the ringing and running started again. Rick hid behind the door waiting for their return. When they did, he pelted the kid with his shoe. When I got home, he bragged about it. I was upset. I knew the kid could have gone home and made up a story telling his mother that he was attacked by Rick without provocation.
“You are ridiculous,” Rick said. “Call the mom yourself if it is such a big deal. With all the SBC [Southwestern Bell Corporation] smoothing over language you use, I’m sure you can handle the problem.”
“If I call, Rick, it will just look like I am cleaning up your mess.”
He made the call but to the wrong parent. Apparently, he did not know which kid he hit with his shoe.
Later that month, Sue contacted Charles Parker, a private investigator. She complained that someone was sending emails to her husband accusing her of committing adultery. Whoever sent them, she told him, named hotels and restaurants she had visited on business trips. She suspected that the sender might be someone from her church. Sue denied the infidelity allegation and said that her husband believed her. She wanted to know who was sending the emails.
Parker said he would try to set up a meeting with that person. The emails came from several addresses, but all of them led back to [email protected]. On October 17, Parker emailed that address, telling the recipient, “I am looking for you. Will you contact me?”
Parker received no reply from the email, but he knew it must have arrived because it did not bounce back. He assumed the emails had stopped, since he never heard from Susan McFarland again.
16
One evening, Rick rushed over to the Schoolings’ with an urgent request. As usual, he knocked on the far side window to get their attention. He was too intimidated by the dogs to make a direct approach to the front door whether the dogs were in or out.
Rick pleaded with the two women to come over to the house for a dinner party. He expressed distress because he did not know the guests and because some of them were Hispanic. “Could you and Susan come over and help us keep the conversation going?”
On the assumption that Sue had sent Rick over to offer this invitation, the two Schooling women cleaned up, dressed up and headed next door in record time. In fifteen minutes, they knocked on the front door. Through the sidelight, they saw that everyone was already seated for dinner.
Rick opened the door and said, “Yeah?”
“Well, we’re here now, Rick,” Charlene said.
“We’re having dinner right now.”
Turned around from her seat at the table, Sue looked toward the door, a puzzled frown on her face. Charlene realized Sue was clueless. To Rick, she said, “I thought you wanted us to come over.”
“Oh, I thought I told you we didn’t need you,” Rick said.
Charlene and Susan returned home confused—as usual—by Rick’s inexplicable behavior.
Sue amassed new friends in San Antonio quicker than a stray dog gathered fleas. Because of this expanded social network, the McFarlands and the Cromacks were not as close as they had been in St. Louis. Nonetheless, the Cromacks knew Rick and Sue’s relationship was worsening before Sue told Margot that she “did not know the person she was living with anymore.”
They thought that Rick was decompensating all over the board since the move to Texas. The change was so subtle and gradual that they did not notice it at first. When they did, the intense drama of the transformation he underwent over the past two years hit them like a thunderclap on a quiet summer night.
His speech pattern had changed—his speaking becoming so halting that it was difficult to follow a sentence to its end. He demonstrated a deterioration in his judgment. And he seemed oblivious to it all.
They urged him to get medical help—they hoped the problem was physical and easily resolved. Doug and Margot were medical professionals, but their experience was in intensive care units and emergency rooms. They felt lost in the face of Rick’s degrading mental health. They
tried to interact with him to uncover the underlying problem, but since they’d known him, Rick always had a knack for pulling others out without offering any forthright revelations about his own thoughts or feelings.
In October, the McFarlands drove up to San Marcos to join Pete Smith’s former wife Debbie and her family for a Southwest Texas State University football game. Afterwards, they all went to a frat house for a pizza feast. Sue and Debbie made plans to spend Thanksgiving together in San Antonio for the third year in a row.
Blanca Hernandez and Sue McFarland had been friends for four years. They called each other almost every day at work and sometimes met for lunch. To be honest, though, Sue would rather shop than eat. Many lunch hours, she hopped from shop to shop and returned to work laden with bags and packages.
She was even known to combine the two with impeccable timing. Friends recalled occasions when she sat down to lunch, ordered her meal, made a quick dash to a shop, returned with her purchase and sat back down at the table just as her order was served.
On Saturday, November 2, Blanca went to the Target store near Route 281 and Jones Maltsberger Road. She knew Sue was working in her office at Southwestern Bell that day.
As she entered the store, she saw Timmy exiting the door. She scooped him up in her arms and asked, “Who are you here with, Timmy?”
“I’m with my dad.”
“Where is your dad?”
“I don’t know.”
Blanca took Timmy inside, but did not spot Rick right away. She got a man in the store to check out the men’s room. Then she saw Rick in line at the checkout. She walked over to him and said, “Rick, Timmy was all by himself and trying to go outside.”
Rick shrugged it off and changed the subject to that night’s dinner plans.
After Sue finished up at work, she ran some errands and returned home at 3 P.M. When she arrived, Rick left, promising he would be back with the hardware for his project with the armoire and would have it all finished by the time the baby-sitter arrived at 5:30.
He did not get back, however, until 6:30. Rick and Sue then went to Josephine Street for dinner at the Liberty Bar with Blanca and Gil Hernandez and Molly and Bill Matthews. Rick never said a word to Sue about the odd occurrences that day. He did, however, speak to Gil and Bill about his run-in with the manager at Eckerd after he returned Halloween costumes to the store.
The next morning, Sue left the house at 7 to take William to Houston for a Tomatis session. Tomatis is a behavior modification program designed to help children and adults by teaching sensory integration—the ability to tune out distractions and develop listening skills. Rick stayed home and watched James and Timmy. As Susan related in her journal:
I called Rick from Houston and asked what they had done and if he had picked up milk.
“You don’t need to constantly check up on me,” he snapped. “We decided not to go to church so you’ll have to pick up milk on your way home.”
When William and I were nearing the house, William said, “Dad isn’t ever allowed in the store again where he was returning things yesterday. The manager told him to get out and never come back or he is calling the police.”
“Where is this store, William?” I asked him.
“Next to Baskin Robbins. Me and James and Timmy think the manager should have let him take the stuff back.”
When I finally got home in the pouring rain at 9:30 that night, the house was a mess. Rick and the kids had done nothing but watch TV and go shopping at Target.
On Monday, my friend Blanca called. “Do you know why Rick got thrown out of Eckerd’s?”
“Where did you hear that?” I asked her.
“Saturday night at dinner, Rick told Gil and Bill about it. He asked them if the manager had the right to prohibit him from ever entering the store again.
I was blown away that he would actually discuss being such a jerk with our friends. But that was not all Blanca had to tell me about the weekend. On Saturday, she said, she caught Timmy running out of Target and was afraid he’d get hit by a car. She took him into the store to Rick who acted like it was no big deal.
Rick and I have talked and talked about this—he knew he wasn’t supposed to let the kids roam around stores without supervision. One time, he let little Timmy go to the bathroom all by himself. And he lost him in Wal-Mart. Wal Mart closed down the whole store to find Timmy. That didn’t seem to make any impact on Rick.
Blanca said she thinks Rick is mentally ill. She said he has such poor judgment that I should not let him take care of the kids.
That night, I asked Rick, “What happened at Eckerd?”
Instead of answering the question, Rick expressed his shock that our friends would tell me about that. I didn’t dare let him know that William was the one who let the cat out of the bag.
“It’s humiliating for me when you get thrown out of where I shop on a regular basis,” I told him.
Did he apologize? No. He got annoyed with me for thinking it was a big deal.
“And,” I continued. “It is totally inappropriate for the kids to be a party to you badgering the manager. I don’t want you to take the kids with you to the store anymore.”
I am afraid for the kids’ safety. Rick does not insist that they stay with him when he is shopping. I’m scared someone will harm or kidnap one of my boys.
William was scheduled for another class in Houston on Saturday, November 9, at 9 A.M. I planned on taking him myself. But on Thursday, Rick called me at work again and again insisting that he take William. I told him that I thought his sleeping habits made it unsafe for him to get up at 5:30 in the morning and drive to Houston.
He called back later and offered a compromise—he would drive down on Friday after school and spend the night with a good high school friend. That sounded reasonable so I told him he could take William.
“I’ll leave as soon as school is out,” he said.
“What are you going to do with our five- and nine-year-olds?”
“I’m sure we could figure something out,” he said.
We? Right. That meant me. I made arrangements with my friend Molly to look after them until I got off of work.
On Friday, November 8, over her lunch hour, Sue made her first visit to her new divorce attorney, Christine Tharp. “My husband is mentally unstable and irrational. He overreacts to some situations while not taking appropriate safety precautions with our children.”
She added that Rick was becoming more secretive and was prone to freaking out and going off on her. He was out every night and neighbors reported that he was driving aimlessly up and down their streets.
Tharp came to the conclusion that it would turn into a real battle once Rick found out about the divorce. Fights about separate property, community property and the custody of the children loomed on the horizon. Tharp encouraged Sue to feel free to leave if she needed some time away.
As she left the attorney’s office, Sue called her supervisor Gary Long and apologized that she was running late. It was unusual for Sue not to be on time unless she made arrangements to alter her schedule beforehand. After arriving back in the office, she explained to Gary that she had been seeing an attorney about a divorce. The papers, she said, would be served in a couple of weeks, but she did not want Rick to know about her plans until then. Gary noticed Sue’s emotional distress, but did not press her for her reasons.
For the next couple of weeks, Sue and her attorney had frequent phone calls and meetings. Sue’s anxiety was building day by day as Rick’s behavior became more and more irrational. “Life with him was so unbearable, I asked him to leave,” she told her attorney.
On the same day of her first visit, Sue’s arrangements for the care of the two younger boys required Rick to drop them off at 4 P.M. Molly planned to take them with her to her daughter’s soccer game. At 4:45—still no Rick—Molly had to leave for the game. She called her cousin, who came to the house to wait for Rick.
In addition to planning for the care of th
e boys, Sue also orchestrated a special treat for William after his class in Houston. Friends at the Witte Museum in San Antonio set it up for William and Rick to join a private tour group to view the Titanic exhibit.
At 9 P.M. on Saturday, November 9, I was concerned that Rick and William were not home from Houston. I called and asked how close they were to San Antonio.
“I haven’t left Houston yet,” Rick told me. “I got caught up shopping at Ikea.”
“Don’t spend any more money, Rick. Our house is overflowing with stuff now.”
He said he wouldn’t buy anything—he was just shopping—so I moved on to my bigger concern, “I don’t think it is safe for you to be driving back so late.”
“No big deal,” he said. “I slept five hours this afternoon and feel well-rested.”
“You didn’t take William to the Titanic exhibit?”
“William had fun with his friends so he really didn’t miss anything.”
I expressed my disappointment at his irresponsibility and my embarrassment that my friends had gone out of their way to make special arrangements and he just didn’t bother to go.
“You’re making a big deal out of nothing,” he told me.
Again, I pleaded with him to stay over in Houston and drive back in the morning. This time, he agreed. I awoke at 2 A.M., Rick was asleep in my bed. I went outside and looked in the car. It was full of shopping bags from Ikea.
On Tuesday morning before I left for work, I volunteered to pick up William from swimming at 5:30. Rick was pleased and said he would count on it.
I left work at 5:15 so that William would not have to wait. As I approached the high school, I saw Rick driving south on Broadway. I called his cell. “Did you just pick up William?” I asked.
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