by Ann Rule
Carolyn turned out to be another woman who had felt sorry for Teresa, and stayed a friend to her despite the murder charges against her. She admitted to detectives that she was storing several large furniture pieces—including a bed and a futon—because Teresa could no longer pay her apartment rent. She had even offered her pick-up truck to move the furniture.
Did she know where her driver’s license, credit cards, and other pieces of ID were? When the investigators asked her that, she went to her bedroom and came back with the purse she kept them in. As she rifled through her purse and then dumped the contents on a table, she looked up, surprised.
“They’re not here?” she said, surprised. “My ID is gone.”
“All of it?” Detective Joe Ward asked.
“No—but my Washington State ID card is gone, and some of my kids’ medical cards are missing.”
“Did your state ID card have your photograph on it?” Brad Pince asked, already knowing the answer.
“Yes.”
Carolyn Fabray bore a resemblance to Teresa Gaethe-Leonard: same age, same body type, and her features were similar. Without knowing it, she had provided Teresa with a way to pass airport security. It was 1997—four years before 9/11, and few who staffed the airline ticket counters and gates took more than a cursory look at ID.
A federal warrant for Teresa Gaethe-Leonard’s arrest on charges of fleeing to avoid prosecution was issued on December 11, 1997, nine days after she vanished. The FBI and the Fugitive Task Force in Puerto Rico were notified of the general location of the calls emanating from there.
Teresa was probably somewhere in San Juan, but they didn’t know exactly where. And there was a good chance that she might be moving on to other countries, using Puerto Rico only as a jumping-off location. Nick Callas suggested that she might sign on to be a crew member on a boat.
But she hadn’t.
Five days later, Teresa was arrested in yet another hospital room. She had been taken there after a suicide attempt, this one far more serious than the one in August. Had she meant to come so close to dying? Possibly not, but what could be more lonely than being far from home and the daughter she cherished as Christmas approached—not to mention being faced with murder charges in an upcoming trial? There was no cold weather, or snow, or evergreen trees in San Juan. There were poinsettias, but they were trees reaching rooftops, not plants wrapped in red-and-gold foil. The language she heard was Spanish.
Teresa was adrift and alone.
Probably Teresa loved Morgan as much as she was capable of loving anyone. The little girl was part of her, closer to her than the sisters and brother she had grown up with. Morgan was the one person in the world who had believed in her completely, and taken her every word as gospel. As one of Teresa’s employees said once, “Teresa and Morgan were like two peas in a pod.”
One has to wonder if Teresa pondered on what a stupid and cruel thing she had done when she shot Chuck. Perhaps she didn’t care for anyone else—even Morgan. She had taken another human being’s life, and that had ruined her own future. What did she have to look forward to as she sat alone in a hotel room, watching neon lights create flashing multicolored images on the shadowy walls of her room and hearing the constant rhythm of steel drums and the thrum of salsa, bomba, and reggae music instead of Christmas carols?
Even though she may not have been aware of it, those who hunted Teresa were closing in on her, and Nick, the man she’d counted on completely for years, was no longer in her corner. She had burned too many bridges behind her.
John Henry Browne explained to reporters how Teresa had been located in San Juan, Puerto Rico. He had received a call from her sister Lois with disturbing news about Teresa’s condition and he had moved immediately to talk to the hospital where she’d reportedly been taken.
She’d been living in the Embassy Suites Hotel in San Juan under the name Sally Lopez. She might have been out of money or going back to her first apartment over a laundromat. She might have been planning to catch another plane, headed far away.
Or she may have finally decided to check out of her life.
Teresa’s time at the Embassy Suites had run out, and she was due to leave the hotel on December 15—but by 1:00 p.m., she failed to turn in her key and receive a copy of her bill.
The main desk gave her a few more hours, and then a staff member checked her room to see if she was still there. The door was bolted from the inside and they had to break in. When they did, they saw that she had wedged a chair against the door, too.
Teresa was inside, unconscious and cold to the touch. The hotel called an ambulance, and she was rushed to the Catalina Regional Hospital. She was placed under the care of Dr. Gootsman, who said that she had overdosed on prescription drugs and probably alcohol. Her condition was “serious but stable.” She was admitted to the San Juan hospital as Sally Lopez. She also went by the name Sally Fabray in Puerto Rico.
Pince called the FBI office in San Juan and let Special Agent Louis Vega know that Teresa Gaethe-Leonard had been located. Even though it was almost midnight in Puerto Rico, Vega said he would contact another agent and they would go at once to the Catalina Hospital and see what they could find out.
Vega called Brad Pince back at 3:30 a.m. San Juan time with a report on Teresa. “She’s in custody,” Vega said. “She’s been turned over to the San Juan Police Department, but she’s not in any condition to leave the hospital. She’s being guarded by the police until she’s well enough to be released to jail.”
Pince checked with hospital personnel, and they said Teresa would probably be able to leave in a day or two. That turned out to be an underestimate of her condition: She got worse before she got better and spent Christmas in a hospital bed.
It was probably better than being in jail.
Louis Vega checked her hotel suite on December 16. There were no suitcases in her room, but he took possession of some of Teresa’s jewelry pieces. There was a box of brown hair dye, a long-distance telephone card, two airline luggage tags, and a pocket calendar. The hotel’s security department had found $325 in cash, and had put it in their safe.
Where were her clothes? Had she thrown them away, given them away, or sent them on ahead to her next destination? If she had done that, her destination had changed, and she had become so morose that she drank and took pills until she became comatose. She seemed to have been serious—serious enough that she’d blocked the door to keep everyone out.
Until it didn’t matter anymore.
Teresa’s defense attorney and the Snohomish County detectives located Teresa at almost the same time.
“The major thing was that we wanted her alive,” Browne said. “So obviously the best thing to do is keep her in custody and keep her alive.”
It certainly seemed the wise choice. Teresa had imbibed so much alcohol and sleeping pills that she barely survived. Another hour or so, and she probably would have been dead.
Teresa had called Nick Callas from Puerto Rico and the Snohomish County investigators were only hours behind her when she was found comatose in the Embassy Suites. She remained hospitalized for two weeks, and when her condition was stable, and doctors thought she would survive, barring any unforeseen complications, she was moved to a women’s prison north of San Juan.
Pale and thin, Teresa immediately made friends with the warden’s wife, who felt sorry for her. Teresa wasn’t like the other women at Vega Alta. She was genteel and had lovely manners. When she saw that Teresa couldn’t stomach the food most prisoners ate, the warden’s wife cooked special dishes for her and carried them into the prison, urging Teresa to eat because she was much too delgada.
As she always had, Teresa evoked sympathy in both men and women, and the warden’s wife in Puerto Rico doubted that the charges against her back in Washington State could be as serious as the FBI said. She visited with Teresa and tried to keep her from being homesick. Teresa spoke of her little girl and of how much she missed her.
It was all very sad.
Deputy Prosecutor Michael Downes hoped that Teresa would waive extradition and return to Snohomish County without a morass of legal paperwork. John Henry Browne said he was sure that would not be a problem, and even if Teresa did initially refuse to come home, he would urge her to waive extradition.
“You can delay things for months,” he said, “but my guess is that Teresa won’t want to spend a lot of time in a Puerto Rican jail.”
Some reporters wrote that John Henry Browne was no longer representing Teresa Gaethe-Leonard, in light of her escape. His office neither verified nor denied that.
Although it seems exotic, Puerto Rico is not a foreign country but a U.S. commonwealth. Extraditing Teresa to the continental United States would be almost automatic anyway. However, Snohomish County authorities had to prove that the person being held in the women’s prison in Vega Alta north of San Juan really was Teresa Gaethe-Leonard. There was a good chance she might look entirely different than her picture on the Wanted bulletins, but it was unlikely that she had managed to change her fingerprints. A few years later, the advances in DNA matching would have simplified everything, but in 1998, it was not yet commonly used or accepted as irrefutable evidence.
Actually, Teresa was quite comfortable in her Puerto Rican prison, but she was thousands of miles away from Morgan. She put on some of the weight she’d lost, and she enjoyed visiting with the warden’s wife. But Browne had said he believed she would come back to Snohomish County without a struggle. Those who knew how adept she was at escaping were apprehensive, especially when they heard how close she had grown to the warden’s wife.
She might run again if she got the chance.
Michael Downes kept hearing conflicting information. Teresa was to have an extradition hearing at Hato Rey Superior Court near San Juan, but that didn’t happen.
There was one good reason for Teresa to waive extradition—loyalty to Nick Callas. If she agreed to return to Washington State by February 4, 1998, which would be exactly sixty days since she hadn’t shown up for her court hearing, and almost a year since Chuck Leonard died, there was a good chance that Nick could get most of his half-million-dollar bail money returned. The county would deduct the expenses it had in searching for Teresa, and for bringing her back, but that was surely better for Callas than losing the whole $500,000.
Even so, it would be expensive, and it might take a very long time for Callas’s money to come back to him. The cost of tracking the bail jumper would probably be between $75,000 and $100,000.
Teresa’s lover had cooperated with the Snohomish County authorities and helped them locate Teresa. How he felt about her was a moot question. Their relationship had lasted eleven years, even after she married Chuck. She had to have some kind of emotional hold over him.
Callas and his wife had finally separated. Any wife would have been displeased—if not furious—to have her husband pay a huge bail amount for his mistress, an accused murderess. And Grace Callas couldn’t forgive Nick for his years of deception and for “giving away” half a million dollars of their money.
It was time for Teresa to come home. Brad Pince, and Detectives Sally Heth and Susie Johnson boarded an American Airlines flight at 7:30 a.m. on January 20, 1998, headed for Puerto Rico to pick up Teresa Gaethe-Leonard. The next morning, they talked to the owners of several small apartments located above a laundromat in San Juan—the last place Teresa had reportedly lived before she checked into the Embassy Suites.
They gave the detectives copies of a rental agreement signed by a woman named Carol. Pince showed them a booking photo of Teresa Gaethe-Leonard, and the landlords said that was the woman they knew as “Carol.” The mystery of where her clothes and other belongings were was solved; her suitcases, some shoes, and some purses had been left at her first small apartment in San Juan. Her landlords had boxed up all of her personal possessions with the help of a local attorney who presented them with an official document giving him the right to take possession of her things. What part he played in Teresa’s life was hard to determine. When she got back to the continental United States, Teresa would tell a cell mate that there was a man in Puerto Rico who was very interested in helping her.
That could very well have been true, except that he spoke only Spanish—at least in front of laundromat/apartment owners. Otherwise, he fit the pattern of the older men who doted on her.
Finding some of Teresa’s clothes solved one problem; they didn’t know what she was going to wear on the plane to Seattle. She’d left the hospital in one of their gowns and had worn prison garb ever since.
The Snohomish County detectives then drove to the San Juan police station, where Teresa had been moved from the prison in Vega Alta. They planned to pick her up and leave as soon as possible to return to Everett. When they finally saw her in person, she did look different. Her plastic surgery was subtle, but her forehead was smoother, and her nose and chin appeared to have been altered. She insisted that she hadn’t been trying to disguise herself, but had wanted only to look more attractive.
If that was her real reason, it hadn’t worked; she looked much plainer than she did in most of her earlier photos. She had gained weight with the warden’s wife’s cooking, and her face showed the stress of her circumstances. But it was more than that. There was no question that she’d had work done on her face by a skilled surgeon.
Detective Susie Johnson took five photos of Teresa, three of them showing healed-over bedsores on her head and spine. It was clear she had been unconscious longer than any doctor had predicted.
“That happened when I lay in one position in the hospital for fourteen days,” Teresa explained. “I got pneumonia, too.”
After Teresa was thoroughly searched and the paperwork completed, an unmarked San Juan police car drove them to the airport where they waited to board a United Airlines flight back to Washington State. The Snohomish County detectives bought Teresa a sandwich and a soft drink from a vendor at the San Juan Airport.
On the plane, Susie Johnson and Sally Heth sat on either side of her, and Brad Pince sat across the aisle.
“She was very chatty in the airport and on the plane,” Heth said, “both to me and Susie Johnson.”
Teresa seemed familiar with the island of Puerto Rico, and said that Ponce was a much more pleasant city to visit than San Juan. Although it was “very corrupt,” Teresa said that anyone with lots of money could get anything they wanted—and faster—in Ponce. “You can get your car fixed first,” she said, “even if it was last in the line.”
Teresa described Puerto Rico as “the trampoline between South America and North America for drug runners.”
Sally Heth wondered if Teresa had been intending to bounce on that trampoline into some hiding place in South America.
Teresa was friendly enough on the long flight home. She helped her female captors as they worked over crossword puzzles to pass the time. She offered correct suggestions for words that fit into spaces. They could tell that she was an intelligent woman with a large vocabulary and excellent social skills. She seemed to accept her capture, although she was embarrassed to have to board the planes in handcuffs, and she tried to avoid the stares of other passengers.
After a few hours in flight, Heth escorted Teresa to the plane’s bathroom. While they were there, Teresa confided that her brother was a detective somewhere in the Midwest. (It was unclear if she was talking about Frank Jones or Lois Jones’s husband, although it was probably her brother-in-law.)
Heth hesitated for a moment, and then said, “May I ask you a personal question?”
“Sure.”
“What does your brother think about your situation?”
Teresa answered somewhat obliquely, “They have it all wrong.”
“Who are they?”
“The newspapers.” Teresa was implying that her brother had read about her case in the newspapers. “They think that I wanted to run away and live with my boyfriend in Hawaii, and that is not true at all.”
The t
wo women—detective and prisoner—agreed that the media rarely report the news accurately. Heth didn’t have to lie to Teresa to say that. The press can sometimes be the bane of police investigators’ existence.
“I thought it was more of a domestic situation—” Heth said carefully, referring to what had happened between Teresa and Chuck.
“Yeah, John Henry’s taking care of things,” Teresa said, referring to her attorney, and then caught herself. “He would probably kill me if he knew I was talking to you—it’s not like you’re on my side.”
The conversation then ended abruptly. When they returned to their seats, Teresa turned her back on Heth and begin to talk to Detective Johnson on subjects less fraught with pitfalls.
When they landed in Seattle, Pince drove them all to the Snohomish County Jail sixty miles north, where they booked Teresa.
They had journeyed to Puerto Rico and back in less than forty-eight hours.
There would be no reunion between Teresa and Morgan, who had turned six on December 30, 1997, just before the New Year. Morgan was now living with Chuck’s sister, her aunt Theresa, and her two older cousins in Oregon. She had spent her first Christmas without her father or her mother. There was a strong possibility that she would be a witness in her mother’s trial, and that made meetings between them doubtful.
If he could avoid it, John Henry Browne—who was still representing Teresa—didn’t want to call Morgan to the witness stand. She had already been through enough.
Detectives had taken to calling Theresa Leonard the “good Theresa” and their prisoner the “bad Teresa.” Chuck’s sister loved Morgan dearly and was prepared to do anything she could to see that the child had a safe and happy life. Morgan and Theresa’s daughter soon became closer than just cousins; despite the gap between their ages, they eventually thought of each other as sisters.