by Ann Rule
There was one very embarrassing incident at the reception. One of Chuck’s neighbors, an old friend named Jan, brought an uninvited date. She was one of Chuck’s many former girlfriends. Everybody else who showed up was welcome. It wasn’t as if Teresa’s security guard was checking off names at the front door, and it had been a long time since Jan’s date had dated Chuck. They hadn’t even gone out for long. Even so, Teresa was livid, wild with jealousy. She asked her bouncer to throw Jan and the woman out. Incredulous and humiliated, they left, along with several of the other guests, who moved the party down the street to Jan’s house.
Chuck was mortified by the whole episode.
The next day, Jan came by to talk with Chuck. “You’ve made a big mistake,” he told Chuck.
Rather than being angry, Chuck answered sadly, “I know.”
And suddenly, Chuck disappeared for two or three days to decide what to do about his fledgling marriage and Teresa’s bizarre behavior.
“He was gregarious and had lots of friends,” his sister recalled. “But he was a private person, and incredibly introspective.”
It would have been impossible for Chuck not to discover some of Teresa’s lies. She had brought her car with her when she moved from New Orleans to Washington State, and then it disappeared. She told everyone that it had been stolen.
“That wasn’t the case,” one neighbor said. “It was repossessed.”
Chuck had never thought to check out Teresa’s background; he’d always taken her at her word, even when her past seemed tilted and full of missing pieces. So far, none of the half-truths had hurt their relationship severely enough to drive them apart. He pondered his choices and realized he still loved her
Chuck came back from his solitary trip. After much thought, he had decided to stay with Teresa, but he had glimpsed a side of her he hadn’t really recognized before. She resented not only his former girlfriends but also his male friends. He realized that if she had her way, he would cut them all completely out of his life. He wasn’t about to do that.
According to his sister and many of his close friends, Chuck Leonard was “bigger than life.” He got along with everyone.
“That was what drew people to him,” Theresa said. “He always had a laugh, a broad smile, and a complex inner life.”
“But Teresa was nasty to everyone,” the same neighbor said. “And sarcastic. She ignored Chuck’s friends. The men didn’t like her, and she made their wives cry. She would say things like ‘Oh, are we having a nice day?’ but it didn’t sound like she cared—it was sarcastic and derisive.”
Teresa was much harder to read than Chuck. It was difficult to know just what she was feeling. Sometimes it was impossible for her sister-in-law to make eye contact with her. Teresa’s expression was a mask—a façade, blocking anyone from getting close to her.
Now that she and Chuck were married, it seemed that Teresa set out to deliberately alienate his friends’ wives and fiancées even more. The men naturally opted out of the Leonards’ social circle when the women in their lives weren’t welcome or came away hurt or insulted by the way Teresa had treated them.
Chuck and his sister Theresa had grown up in the navy base town of Bremerton, Washington, and he was “extremely loyal” to his friends. Even though the paths of their lives had diverged, once someone was Chuck Leonard’s friend, he remained so. Some of them went back to his childhood and he cherished them. One of his closest friends had been a best pal back in Bremerton when they were fourteen.
But as Teresa insulted more and more people, Chuck’s world became smaller. He didn’t always know what she had done or said to hurt people, but she was adept at making others feel unwelcome.
Her pattern was much like that of men who “own” the women in their lives. Teresa succeeded in isolating Chuck from a large number of the people who mattered to him. Still, once committed, he was determined to make their marriage work. He made excuses for her behavior—if only to himself. She had had a difficult life, full of illness and sadness before he had “rescued” her, and he kept believing she would change if only she felt safe enough with him.
Chuck continued counseling teenagers—first at Cascade High School, and then at North Middle School.
Left behind in his desk at the former school was a love letter from some woman in his life. Teresa didn’t know about that, and it probably wasn’t important to him. If it had been, he would have taken it with him.
But Teresa was suspicious of Chuck’s contact with any female over sixteen. She told people that Chuck had been seen behaving inappropriately with one of his female students. This wasn’t true.
In some ways, Teresa appeared to be a good sport. When she had realized that she would have to work to help pay their bills, she’d found a full-time position as a Liz Claiborne specialist at the Bon Marché (now Macy’s) in a nearby shopping mall. She was an excellent saleswoman, bonding with a loyal clientele, and she did well with her salary and commissions. She was always impeccably dressed with perfect hair and makeup.
Teresa Jones-Goldstein-Gaethe-Leonard was a woman of many names, many faces, and many moods. She may well have had more surnames than even Chuck knew about. One of Chuck’s friends said a long time later that she had seen a suitcase belonging to Teresa that was full of papers and cards for different identities.
She was a seductress of both men and women—if not physically, then psychologically. Teresa had an innate ability to recognize what people wanted from her, and could use that to get back what she sought from them.
A number of women who knew Teresa described her as “sweet.” She was popular with most of her female coworkers and friends, especially those who were younger and far less experienced than she was. She became a role model for them. They thought her life sounded so exciting and listened avidly as she related fascinating anecdotes. They believed her without questioning.
Basically, Teresa was a “man’s woman,” and didn’t care all that much for women, unless they were in a position to better her life.
With her female friends, her mien was either that of a naive, vulnerable woman—a role in which she was also believable—or she was a living, walking soap opera for female friends whose own lives weren’t nearly as interesting as hers.
One of Teresa’s customers at the Bon Marché became a very close friend. Joyce Lilly* dropped by regularly to buy Liz Claiborne products, and they often had lunch together. Eventually, Joyce, too, got a job at the Bon Marché, and their friendship became even closer.
Teresa hinted to a few intimate friends that she had suffered at the hands of men. She was attracted to men, but deep down she didn’t trust them. It gave her a common ground of experience with a lot of women she met, and those who had bad experiences with men were drawn to her.
Still, she couldn’t see a way to have the kind of life she wanted without letting down her guard with certain men. For the moment, Teresa felt Chuck was the man who could help her the most. Like almost all the other men in her life, he was considerably older that she was. She appealed to older men, and may have sought them out—looking for a father figure to cherish her… or to punish.
Chuck Leonard was undecided about having children; he was past forty and he had never particularly wanted children of his own. When he was much younger, he had fathered his daughter, who was placed for adoption. He wasn’t mature enough to be a parent then. Chuck cared a lot about the teenagers he counseled and showed affection and concern for them. It was a moot point anyway, because Teresa had confided to him she could not have children.
That wasn’t the truth, however; Teresa had never been told she was barren. And she had confided to someone she worked with that she hoped to have a child or children.
“Children open doors for you,” she said. The other woman had no idea what Teresa meant.
Teresa’s relationship with her sister-in-law remained abrasive and dismissive. Neither trusted the other very much, and Chuck’s sister worried about her brother’s happiness. Maybe
the two women—Teresa and Theresa—were just too different. Like Chuck, his sister was highly educated, a no-nonsense woman who was independent and capable.
She also tried to make excuses for Teresa. It might be possible that Chuck’s new wife was trying too hard to establish her position with him and as part of the family. Perhaps she was shy and awkward in social relationships, although that seemed unlikely. Theresa backed off, always hoping that one day they might become friends.
“Teresa liked to give people advice,” Theresa Leonard, who has a master’s degree in psychology, said. “So I made a point of asking her opinion on decorating and clothes, and things like that, hoping it might give us something in common. But it didn’t.”
It came to a point where Chuck’s sister no longer saw him and his wife very often.
Theresa’s efforts to bond somehow with Chuck’s wife became even more important when Teresa and Chuck announced nineteen months after their wedding that they were expecting a baby.
Theresa became “Aunt Theresa.” At least it helped to spell out which one of them was Chuck’s sister and which one was his wife.
And so it turned out that Teresa was not infertile after all. (What had become of her son Taylor—if, indeed, he had ever existed—no one knew. Probably Chuck never even heard of this son Teresa told her sister about.)
Chuck was taken completely off guard by her pregnancy. She had flat-out lied to him about her ability to bear a child, and she’d made many visits to a fertility expert without telling Chuck.
At this point, he was quite willing to accept a baby into his life, realizing this might be his last chance to actually raise a child. He wasn’t sure how Teresa felt about being pregnant.
Even though she had visited doctors so that she could bear a child, now that she was pregnant, Teresa acted as if she was ambivalent about the prospect.
Chuck told Teresa, “It’s up to you if you want to keep it or not. I’ll go along with whatever you decide.”
She considered having an abortion, but finally decided to have the baby.
Teresa’s labor was induced on December 30, 1991. Teresa was annoyed at what she considered Chuck’s insensitivity when he dashed out to get fast food and brought it back to the labor room to eat when she was in pain. She later said her labor progress stalled and her obstetrician decided her pelvic canal was too narrow to deliver her baby, necessitating a caesarean section. Again, she lied; she delivered normally.
She gave birth to a daughter, whom they named Morgan. Her father and mother both adored her. Chuck, especially, was thrilled with his beautiful baby girl and spent hours gazing at her.
“He was over the top in love with her,” his sister said. “He’d never realized it would be that way.”
As Morgan grew bigger, he took her to the lake in warm weather and watched as she paddled around; he took her to fairs, where she rode on the merry-go-round, and to his school to show her off to his fellow teachers. It was clear that Chuck Leonard loved every minute of being a father, much to his own surprise.
Teresa had experienced labor once (possibly twice), and she didn’t want to go through it again. During a routine checkup after Morgan’s birth, her gynecologist found that she had a small fibroid tumor. Many women develop fibroids in their thirties and forties, but they are almost never cancerous and invariably shrink after menopause. Teresa didn’t have heavy bleeding with her periods or any of the other indications that the fibroids were large enough to necessitate removing her uterus. Even so, she demanded a hysterectomy, and she was resolute about her decision.
Once more, Chuck acceded to her decision and she got her way, but she asked about having her eggs saved and frozen, just in case she wanted to use them in the future. Teresa had a partial hysterectomy in July 1993. At her request, her surgeon left one ovary and one fallopian tube. She would still have plenty of female hormones, and would produce viable eggs—which could be implanted into another woman’s uterus by an in vitro process. She could never carry a child herself, but through modern technology, she would be able to be the biological mother of a child.
To the casual observer, the Leonards appeared to be a happy couple. Teresa didn’t want to work full-time away from home now that she had Morgan, so with Chuck’s blessing, she rented some space in a shedlike building in the nearby small town of Marysville, Washington, and opened a store called The Consignment Shop.
She painted it pink and decorated the windows and the building itself with cartoon drawings of fashionably dressed women. Teresa told a lot of people she owned a “boutique,” but that was stretching the meaning considerably.
Many hamlets in Snohomish County had become meccas for shoppers seeking out antiques, vintage jewelry, and gently used high-end clothing lines. The stores flourished when shoppers from Seattle, Bellingham, and even British Columbia discovered them and told their friends.
Teresa brought in a number of her wealthy customers from the Bon Marché; she’d kept her customer list. She was clever at deciding what would sell in her tiny store, and she kept careful records of items people had left for her to sell on contingency. Some of her Bon Marché customers placed expensive clothing and other treasures with her. When something sold, she kept a small percentage of the price and gave the rest to the seller. She enjoyed her small business, and while she wasn’t making a munificent living, she did well enough to buy things for Morgan and clothes for herself, and eventually to hire employees.
Teresa’s shop worked well for her because she had a real knack for putting together outfits for would-be customers. Teresa could take a plain dress, add a scarf or some jewelry and a coordinating purse—all secondhand—and make it look like a thousand-dollar outfit. She’d always done that with her own clothes, and now she used her talent in her consignment store. She was extremely professional, even waxing the clothes racks so that garments slid easily, and she kept meticulous books so that she could pay her bills and her consignors promptly.
Most important to Teresa, she could take Morgan to work with her; her two clerks or friends who dropped by were there to share the babysitting duties. She seemed to be a good mother, almost idolizing Morgan. Her friends believed that Teresa’s whole life revolved around Morgan.
And so did Chuck’s. Morgan always seemed delighted when her father came to pick her up. “She was maybe a little bit spoiled, though,” one woman said. “If she was playing with her toys, she wouldn’t go with either one of them.”
There was no question that both Chuck and Teresa loved their small daughter, but as the years passed, the bloom was fading fast from their love for each other. Of course all marriages settle in as the years pass, and the emotional highs and lows tend to smooth out, but with the Leonards, it was more than familiarity or boredom. Chuck had always been the man in charge, someone with an expansive personality, who did pretty much what he wanted to. But now, his friends and family noted that Teresa controlled him, chose which of his friends she liked, pouted when she didn’t get her way, or, worse, flared into anger. Chuck tried hard to please her and keep a semblance of a happy home—mostly for Morgan’s sake.
Chuck was willing to do anything to be able to stay with Morgan.
Teresa began to think a lot about Nick Callas, wondering if she should have let her Hawaiian love go. To test the waters, she sent him a Christmas card. Nick contacted her and they renewed their friendship. From then on, Teresa and Nick stayed connected, but he remained with his wife. Although Grace had helped Nick get a foothold in business, it was his skill and charisma that had built his company to the top levels it now reached. By 1995, he owned prize property all over the islands.
There was no question that Nick Callas was rich enough to give Teresa all the luxuries in life that she longed for, along with credit cards and a healthy stock portfolio. They began an intense correspondence and talked about meeting once again. He promised to send her a first-class ticket if she decided to come to Hawaii to visit him. She was sorely tempted.
Callas’s wife,
Grace, often went to southern California with their adopted son, who was two months older than Morgan. Grace was a nervous woman who complained of chronic health problems and stayed with her sister while she sought the best possible medical treatments.
Nick had dated many willing females when he was single, but it didn’t take long for Teresa to rise to the top of his list as a lover. He’d never forgotten her, but he had chosen Grace, and her family’s money had helped him in his mortgage and real estate business.
Like Chuck, Nick was easily distracted by pretty women.
Not surprisingly, Teresa’s marriage to Chuck Leonard had foundered, growing worse each year. He hadn’t been the answer to her search for happiness after all.
Was it even possible for Teresa to find happiness? She wanted so much, and it didn’t appear to matter to her what happened to people who got in her way. Now, the wants and needs of Chuck Leonard or even her own daughter came after her thirst for wealth and love. She felt her husband had never given her what she had needed and expected from him.
Chuck was Chuck, and it amazed some of his friends that he had married at all: they knew him as a guy who dated many women. He was an individual, a little bizarre at times. He was a free spirit. When he got home from work, he started tossing his clothes on furniture and on the floor as he walked through his house. He probably would have been happier in a tropical climate. His neighbors had long since grown used to seeing him out in his yard, gardening or watering his precious grass patch next to the lake, often nearly nude in a bikini bathing suit and flip-flops. It had never really bothered anyone.
He was a good-natured guy and a good neighbor. Chuck was far handsomer than he had any right to be for a man of his age, and women often came on to him. In the first years of his marriage, he began a physical relationship with a female coworker whom he’d known for seven or eight years. Her name was Michelle Conley,* and she was an attractive teaching intern, a few years older than Teresa. Michelle responded to him in a way his wife hadn’t for a long time.