by Dave Alfvin
Alfvin: So, how did it go at first?
Gustafson: I really liked Teri and Dave. I thought they were a lot of fun, but one day (David) wore a Rush Limbaugh t-shirt. I thought it was a joke, so I started teasing David about it (Teri and David weren’t married yet). Teri pulled me aside and told me that it wasn’t a joke—he really believed in Rush Limbaugh’s cause. Needless to say, my teasing stopped right away.
Alfvin: What else do you remember from the first night?
Gustafson: I remember that we laughed a lot, and both Teri and David were witty people, outgoing and friendly. We all liked to bowl, so I remember having a lot of fun.
Alfvin: So David Larsen had a good sense of humor?
Gustafson: Yes, I thought he had a good sense of humor—he really laughed a lot. David had allergies, so he was always sniffling; that really bothered me (Gustafson is a middle school teacher). I wondered why he didn’t take an antihistamine, because he’d be sniffling all the time.
Alfvin: Was David competitive?
Gustafson: I don’t think so, surprisingly. All of us liked to bowl, but I don’t remember him having a “mission to win” at bowling…I think he was really just there to score points with the church’s leadership and become an important member of the church.
Alfvin: So, at least in the time you were with him in social situations, you didn’t see any boiling anger that could have alerted you to anything? Nothing caught your attention?
Gustafson: Extreme anger, no. But one thing caught my attention…David worked a number of jobs, plus he had his own business making beer. I asked him why he worked so hard because I thought it was a little abnormal. He said he wanted to be rich before he turned forty, so that he could retire. I still thought it was a bit strange, how hard he worked.
Alfvin: Describe a little more of him when he was the “good David,” when he was on his best behavior. How would you characterize him? How would you describe him to other people?
Gustafson: He was very congenial, very friendly; he laughed a lot and liked horsing around. He seemed like someone I could really like at church.
Alfvin: He impressed you as someone who was very intelligent?
Gustafson: Yes, he seemed intelligent enough. I don’t really know…I never really discussed much with him because of that incident about Rush Limbaugh, because I knew that he and I were really polarized.
Alfvin: But David didn’t seem to hold any animosity toward you?
Gustafson: No. A few weeks after the Limbaugh incident, Teri told me that (David) actually respected me, and I was among the few women who could tell him off or talk back to him. But that was in hindsight.
Teri’s Support Network
Teri’s neighbors and friends formed a large part of her support system, and whenever she needed help, care, or shelter from David’s wrath, there was always someone willing to lend a hand. At the same time, however, these good Samaritans were getting a free lesson on what it was like to live with a narcissistic monster, and they quickly learned the ways in which she had to deal with David’s quirks and his twisted sense of logic. Teri soon found herself backed up by an entire network of allies, all of whom had entered the struggle out of sympathy for her plight.
Many neighbors had an open door policy for Teri—if she needed to escape from her own home, she was welcome to stay with others until she felt ready to return. One neighbor allowed her to use their garbage to dispose of anything she didn’t want her obsessively inquisitive husband to find—a broken cup, inedible food, or letters from people that he had forbidden her to speak with.
David’s violent nature was by then common knowledge on the block, though he himself believed, in his own egotistical way, that everyone still respected him no matter what he had done. In reality, David’s neighbors held no respect for him at all—only suspicion and derision after they learned what he had been doing to Teri.
Teri’s closest ally through all of this was Jan, a true friend in every sense of the word who was fully committed to helping her out of the war zone that was her marriage. Jan’s house often served as Teri’s sanctuary during David’s violent rages, and she was always willing to provide any necessary comfort and support when Teri needed it the most. It was at Jan’s house where Teri would “talk out” the majority of her domestic tribulations, sharing the stories and thoughts she was not allowed to express at home.
Jan was a dutiful listener and did her best to help Teri exorcize whatever demons were torturing her that day. If Jan never existed, there undoubtedly would have been others to come to Teri’s aid. Teri was a very social person and had many dear friends who would gladly help her through a situation such as hers. But Jan was also a special woman at an appointed time—a unique part of Teri’s life journey.
Without Jan, Teri might very well have starved to death emotionally; but fortunately, their connection helped keep the beleaguered woman on an even keel. For Jan, this also was a special period in her life. Seldom does someone like Teri arrive at your doorstep in utter disarray and in desperate need of assistance. Indeed, Jan knew she occupied a special place in Teri’s history, and willingly accepted her responsibility as a needed friend.
In an interview, Pam Gustafson describes her reaction to learning that Teri was being violently abused by David Larsen.
Alfvin: When you first learned about David’s violence toward Teri, it was kind of an odd situation where Teri was at your door at night. Can you describe that?
Gustafson: Teri came over, and it was a fall night, so it was quite cool outdoors, and she was barefoot, and I thought that was really odd. She came in and told me that David was hitting her, and that she usually went to Pastor Nelson, the woman associate pastor who lived across the street from me, but Pastor Nelson wasn’t home. So we talked for a while, and I told her I would always leave my back door unlocked for her.
Alfvin: And what was your reaction?
Gustafson: I told her what I would tell anyone who’s been abused: that no one has the right to hit you or abuse you in any way. I told her the ball was in her court, and she needed to leave.
The Divorce Circus
David was in the small office at Norway Lutheran Church when he learned that his attorney had received Teri’s divorce petition. As expected, he immediately lost control of himself. Unable to believe his ears or contain his anger, he exploded—screaming and swearing at Teri’s friend Jan. Though it was obvious that Jan’s only “misdeeds” had been to give Teri some much-needed support and shelter during the toughest periods of her marriage, David pictured Jan as a co-conspirator—a part of the problem, not the solution.
Larsen abruptly stormed out of the church to try and locate his wife, leaving behind a number of shocked and frightened churchgoers who had never seen this side of him before. Larsen’s dark side was no longer a secret.
Teri was living at a shelter in Waukesha at the time. The arrangement allowed her to live anonymously and keep plenty of distance between her and David, who had no idea where she was living. He had filed a missing persons report in a vain attempt to locate her whereabouts, but to no avail.
By this time, police were quite familiar with Larsen’s antics and knew his word wasn’t worth a dime. They were tired of repeatedly dealing with this conniving troublemaker, and they weren’t about to jump through hoops to help him get his wife back.
Teri recalls:
The police knew what was going on, and they gave Larsen no comfort. Basically, the divorce was set, and we would meet about once a month. The commissioner would ask David for certain things, like his financial details, and he would never abide by those rules. The commissioner ordered David to give me the family crib for Holly to sleep on, but David said he couldn’t give it up because, “the crib isn’t mine to give,” he explained. “It’s my parents’ crib and a family heirloom.” So, the commissioner would ask him, “Is that the crib your baby sleeps in?” “Yeah, but it’s not mine to give,” he retorted. Finally, they just ordered David to give me the crib.
David didn’t like following anyone else’s rules. Every month, we were back to court for some reason. He didn’t want to pay child support, he didn’t want to bring the girls back when he was supposed to, he didn’t like this rule or that. It was an ongoing battle. Finally, either out of the goodness of my heart or sheer stupidity, I put a 120-day hold on the divorce, just to see what would happen. David was blaming me for running away from everything and trying to make me feel guilty. So I said my piece one last time: “You need to go to anger management therapy, and you’re going to see a psychologist and we’re going to go to counseling.”
After two weeks, David had done nothing other than his normal yelling and swearing at me over the phone. I remember this so vividly. He was standing in my apartment talking to me, and I asked him, “Are you going to counseling? Are you even going to try?” He just looked at me and said, “I’m not jumping through any hoops for you!” It was such a hypocritical statement from someone who was accusing me of not trying. At that point, I knew David was never going to change, and I took the 120-day hold off the divorce after just two weeks.
David only wanted his life to go back to the way it once was, with him in control and his wife subservient. But by now, it was more than obvious that the marriage wasn’t meant to be. His overblown ego had been dealt a crippling wound, and Teri now controlled the outcome of the divorce. Trapped in a cage of legality, David could only do what he did best—make Teri’s life as difficult as possible whenever he had the chance. She may have won a battle, but the great struggle was far from over.
Nonetheless, Teri felt a massive wave of relief flow through her, having made the final decision to bury her former life with David. It was the right decision. In Teri’s mind, she had done everything possible to try and save the marriage.
She knew she had made the right decision to bury her former life with David. After jumping through so many hoops to try and save their marriage and enduring great physical and mental anguish from a man who was supposed to be her husband, Teri finally put her foot down and said, “Enough is enough.”
Teri was finished with David and his monstrous ego, with the way she was blamed for everything, with pain and shame, and with the fact that David, even after more than three years, had not learned a thing.
“At least in my heart, I knew I gave him one last chance,” she explained. “He could never tell the girls that their mother threw away the marriage for no good reason.”
The divorce proceedings took forever. David was required to produce the usual financial documents but predictably failed to do so. Teri, eager to get the long and arduous process over with, had her paperwork filled out in the first week. David was finally held in contempt of court for not producing his financial statement. He seemed to think he could get away with withholding this kind of information from judge and jury in the same way he had done with Teri. He didn’t intend on doing anything that was asked of him. In his mind, the court was out to get him and this whole ordeal was just some complex, deep-rooted conspiracy planned out by everyone who had ever wronged him in his life.
The judge quickly tired of David’s belligerent attitude and characterized him as mean-spirited and paranoid, even suggesting that he get anger management therapy. However, David was unmoved by any criticism or advice and began making wild claims in court that Teri was psychotic.
Some of David’s accusations were so entirely off the wall that those present could only shake their heads. According to Larsen, Teri was a stripper, a prostitute, and a drug addict. He told social workers that she lived in filth, she was extremely disorganized, and that she even stored dirty baby diapers in the kitchen cabinet.
Of course, after court officials spoke with several of Teri’s friends and references, they realized the true depths of David’s game. Once again, his credibility factor dropped below zero. If he ever assumed that his lies would work in a court setting, he was about to be proven wrong indeed. “David lived in a very messy place,” Teri described. “His place looked like an alcoholic’s house…piles of stuff everywhere, chainsaws in the living room, lumber in the living room, stuff that belongs in the garage in the living room. There was junk everywhere.” So much for the defamation strategy.
David’s desperate and pathetically comic attempts to ruin Teri’s reputation in the courtroom had failed miserably. It was obvious to everyone in the court that David would say anything…anything, if he thought it might help his cause. “His exaggerations were so over-the-top that no one could possibly believe him,” Teri later recalled.
But losing the ground battle was only a small part of David’s bitter humiliation in court. He was an attorney’s nightmare in the flesh. The judge publicly chided him for his behavior, and often had to advise David’s attorney to maintain control over his client. Of course, none of this affected David in the slightest. He constantly spoke out of order and insulted various officials, as he was accustomed to doing at home. At one point, he called the commissioner an idiot, and he later unadvisedly directed a harsh profanity at the judge under his breath, but loudly enough that he was heard. The judge was fed up with David’s poor acting and foul behavior and held him in contempt for his lack of control.
At one point in the proceedings, Larsen was so completely out of order and waxing “the Gospel according to David” that his attorney, who had seen and heard enough of him for the day, turned around to him and bluntly said, “Shut up!” The melodrama was worthy of Court TV’s highlight reel, but none of it was helping David’s case in any way.
The entire saga was turning into a colossal joke—an embarrassment for everyone involved. “I actually felt sorry for the poor lawyer,” Teri says. Yet there was David, sitting in his wooden court chair and gazing forward, convinced he was still in control of the situation.
Was David obsessed with winning it all, or, if he knew he couldn’t win, did he plan on losing as badly as possible? Was he intending to go down in a blaze of glory, or else down in flames? Was there actually still some good in him, and did it want the “other” David to be persecuted for his sins? Whatever the case, the ego-driven narcissist sitting in that courtroom knew exactly what he was doing, or at least he thought he knew. For him, these were just setbacks. He hadn’t lost the war yet. He could always find a solution if he wanted to, but the important thing was that he was far superior to these courtroom idiots, and he hated them for the damage they were doing to his great plans.
After what seemed like years had passed, the proceedings finally reached an ultimate determination by the judge. To the surprise of absolutely no one (except David), the divorce was confirmed without hesitation. The bond had been severed, and at long last, Teri was legally free. Teri recalls:
To this day, I remember when the judge granted the divorce, David just broke down and cried. I remember looking over at him and thinking to myself, In a way, I wish I could feel sorry for you, but I can’t. Normally, I could have some compassion for this guy because I’m a compassionate person, but I just couldn’t. I just couldn’t. I was so happy and relieved that I was finally divorced from this idiot.
I felt like I had won my freedom from slavery. He just sat there and cried. But was he crying because he lost me, or because he didn’t win? I honestly think he was crying for himself. Just like when the police told David they found me in the storage locker, he broke down and cried. I don’t think he was crying because he felt bad for me. It’s more like, “Oh shit, they found her, and she’s going to tell the police everything!”
Though she was victorious, Teri’s next days following the divorce weren’t happy. David was “wicked” and “hostile” and did everything in his power to make the moving process more difficult for her. If he had some kind of plan to woo her back, Teri never saw even the tiniest hint of it. Not once did he attempt to apologize, ask for forgiveness, or suggest they “bury the hatchet.” “No matter when it was, he was always an ass,” Teri said bluntly. “I guess there’s no better way to describe it. Nothing chang
ed in him.”
But Teri was uncovering a dark reality about her divorce with David—she still had to deal with his attitudes even if he was now an ex-husband. In time, she would also learn that divorce alone could not fully protect her from this man.
She had lived in the company of a monster for three years. Now that she’d escaped, the monster wanted her back under its authority and was more than willing to make sure she was subjugated by any means necessary.
This would be a key issue that Teri, after recovering from her abduction, would later address when she spoke to Wisconsin legislators concerning the protection of women from abusive ex-husbands.
The divorce was final, but no matter how hard Teri tried to sever ties with David for good, a heavy chain still linked them together. The weight was lighter—thanks to the divorce—but it still couldn’t remove the bitter taste of the past or the unsavory interactions with her ex that she still had to face because of Holly’s shared custody. David had become dark and bitter, and even worse, he was just a phone call away.
In the wake of the divorce, he had suffered major blows to his pride, ego, and reputation, and held Teri solely responsible for everything that happened. It didn’t matter that he’d treated her like a slave and made life hell for her and the people close to her. To him, she had broken the marriage contract, so she was the one to blame. Punishment was now a necessity, and nothing could stand between him and his perverse definition of justice.
While Teri was trying to pull her life back together and start over on her own with Holly and Amanda, David was busy obsessing over his ex-wife, biding his time, and waiting for the opportune moment to carry out his revenge.
The Aftermath
Teri couldn’t have been happier about her divorce. The prospect of a new life, liberation from David’s obsessive control, and freedom to start over again had made the entire wretched affair worth fighting for. In a way, it was as if she had just regained her U.S. citizenship after being held prisoner for decades. What had happened during the marriage could never truly be erased, but none of that mattered now. At the moment, Teri was a free woman—free once again to explore the world and to live as she chose to live.