With One Shot

by Dorothy Marcic

  On the second day I arrived from my hotel and actually got into Suzanne’s bedroom and we chatted. Then I started asking her questions. She was evasive about everything and kept talking to her dog, instead of me. Suzanne would sit with perfect posture on her bed, legs under the chenille bedspread, while the brown-and-white Holstein would jump on the bed and land with his head on her leg or in her lap. Suzanne would cuddle him, and Holstein would rake his tongue all over Suzanne’s face, and then she’d channel the dog’s “thoughts” to me. After a couple of hours I saw the pattern. Whenever I asked a question she didn’t want to talk about, she’d engage in a conversation with her dog, as if the dog was talking back. And I was meant to see this as cute. When she was describing the dumbness of her second husband, John Briggs (the Ph.D. insurance executive), and I asked how she coped, she said, “Holstein says Grandma’s recovered from a lot of devastations. Grandma’s so mean to us animals, but we put up with her.” A few minutes later she got back on the “Vernie is cruel” wagon and went off on a side trip about whether Suzanne, herself, was cruel. “I could have. I could maybe have tried, but it wouldn’t have worked. I can’t be cruel to Holstein. Why would I want to?” she said as she petted him gently.

  Somehow the topic of her first marriage came up. They lived with the in-laws, slept in twin beds, and Suzanne got fed up with the mother-in-law’s Christian Science beliefs and told her husband, “Either your mother is right, or I am right, and I think she needs religion more than I do.” Of course, we know she changed religions to Judaism not long after. So she divorced her first husband to “preserve my sanity,” an interesting statement for someone who used lack of sanity to get off a murder charge. Regarding the sanity, she went on, “Maybe I didn’t have it. Holstein says, ‘Who knows what lurks in the minds of men? The Shadow knows.’”

  Then she went in another direction, about how her family members had been so supportive when she went back to school and what it meant to her. And suddenly, “I think people didn’t know what I was going through. I was not a complainer. I didn’t complain about marriage or the person or what he did to me. I think they were shocked, because there hadn’t been a litany of complaints against Vernie. Holstein thinks I would have been better off if I complained,” she said, laughing. She didn’t seem to have that lack-of-complaining problem anymore.

  When I asked about her losing trust in men, she went off, talking about Ronald and how authentic he was, compared to other men who put on big fronts. Then she looked at her dog. “Holstein is helping so much right now, aren’t you? I appreciate you, and not just for your kissy face.” After which, Holstein licked all over Suzanne’s face. And then she talked about how difficult life had been for her, and noted, “Holstein says, ‘She didn’t have me then. Now she’s got a sweet dog to take care of her. And I’m going to get part of her lunch. Can’t you tell?’ ” When I asked if she had considered divorcing Vernie, she said it would have been a smarter move on her part. “I suspect I probably did think of it. But all those sessions with the counselors confused me on what was in my head. Holstein says, ‘But you had me.’ She’s licking her chops. She loves me. Just like some guys.” And I’m wondering, how in the world did the counselors confuse her? She thought of divorcing Vernie, but she got confused and shot him instead?

  At this point she made some jokes about Holstein and men liking her “protein bars,” and then on to marrying Ronald and how scared she was. “But we got brave, didn’t we, Holstein? Grandma took the plunge again,” she said. “Ronald was really good,” she continued, “except when I was mad at him,” which made me wonder if she locked him out of the house or refused him sex, as she had done with Vernie. She returned to one of her most common topics, how smart she was. “The downside of being smart is that you leave other people in the dust,” she proclaimed. “And then people think you’re conceited. Holstein says, ‘I absolutely don’t understand why when Grandma would call somebody a dumb-ass, they wouldn’t like her.’ Holstein, you made that all up. You told a tale, Holstein.”

  Because I wanted to get a professional opinion, I had a therapist read through the transcripts of my interviews with Suzanne. The counselor noted how disjointed the conversations were, jumping here and there, with lots of non sequiturs. Was it age? Perhaps, but I also remember in the police report a couple of townspeople mentioning how Suzanne’s speech could get incoherent.

  One topic I was extremely interested in exploring was the marriage between Suzanne and my uncle. Having been unable the last couple of times to get any information about her wedding, and her claiming not to know when she got married, I thought to ask her where. If someone got dates mixed up, it seemed more likely they might remember a place. Who doesn’t remember at least some approximation of where you got married? She said she didn’t remember where. It’s not like she had bad recall on her weddings.

  During another conversation with me Suzanne had offhandedly mentioned the name of the minister—John Collins, from the Christ Presbyterian Church in Madison (which I confirmed later in the marriage license)—who had officiated at wedding number two to Briggs, in 1952. And what about her marriage to my uncle? When I pressed her, she said, yes, it was probably at her friend’s house, in Madison. That was not true, I thought, because I’d been in contact with the State of Wisconsin Vital Records several times and had searched through them myself on one trip to Madison, taking the unwieldy black-covered books and looking up the index number in order to find marriage licenses in another oversized, dusty book on some high shelf in that one long room in the county office building. No way were she and my uncle married in Dane County, or anywhere in Wisconsin, for that matter.

  I asked another way. Maybe they had flown off somewhere and got married? Was it possible they went to Florida, or the Caribbean, or wherever? But she said the only time she flew anywhere for something legal was for her second divorce, when she took a plane to Mexico, a fact I was able to prove in my subsequent research through the Vital Records Department.

  The second breakthrough was when I reminded her she’d told me on the previous visit how cruel Vernie had been to her. Could she give me some examples of his cruelty? She thought, and she thought, and couldn’t think of anything. Most married people I know, happy or not, can rattle off all sorts of grievances about their spouses. Then she said, “Oh, yes, there was one thing. He used to go down in the basement and shoot off his gun, to scare me, because he wanted me to know he could come upstairs and kill me.” I wondered if this had really happened. Vernie kept guns and he surely practiced with them, but previously I had only heard about him taking David to the dump and using it as a shooting range. But still, I wondered, this was the extent of how my uncle was cruel, cruel, cruel to her?

  Speaking of guns, during the third visit, I was slightly nervous about my safety. After all, this was the house of the confessed killer and I was prying into areas some people preferred to leave undisturbed. I asked Louisa’s husband, Bobby, are there any guns in the house? “Oh, no,” he replied with complete assurance, and I never questioned his answer. They had lived for forty years in Alaska, where you’re given a gun about the same time you get your first toothbrush. None of that crossed my mind, so I believed him and was relieved. Even afterward, I never reflected on how illogical Bobby’s response was.

  When I arrived a month later for the fourth visit, Louisa mentioned there’d been some local house break-ins because of the high rates of painkiller drug addiction in the area. Bobby evidently did not remember what he had told me previously, and he announced he had two guns in the house, because everyone—and I mean everyone—in Alaska has guns, and he’s still a good Alaskan.

  I tried to push ideas of firearms out of my mind on this fourth visit; otherwise I would have been completely distracted.

  * * *

  Luckily, I did get several hours with Suzanne during my two days there. One thing I always came away with from those chats with Suzanne—during all four visits—was how pleasant, charming, and smart sh
e was. I found myself forgetting what had happened so many years ago, or making excuses because she was such a cool person. Then I’d have to remind myself that she was the confessed killer who blew off half my uncle’s head. At the very end of the fourth visit, something happened that snapped me out of my Suzanne-is-such-a-sweet-person stupor.

  During breaks Louisa kept asking me if her mother and I had talked about my writing project that centered on Suzanne. “I mentioned it,” I replied.

  Louisa told me she had started writing about her mother’s life, but hadn’t gotten very far. I felt Louisa was struggling, doing the writing primarily because her mother expected it. It wasn’t Louisa’s real passion. Louisa had previously shown me some of her poetry, and she is a gifted writer. My breath was taken away when I read her words, and her paintings were phenomenally beautiful. But between the farm duties and taking care of her mother, she told me she didn’t have the time for her art. What a waste of precious talent. And yet there was Suzanne, expecting Louisa to drop her own writing and painting to create The Saga of Suzanne, which I assumed would have had a similar tone to the article in the college newspaper, The Wheel (described on p. 163), listing all of her accomplishments, but conveniently neglecting the murder.

  As I was ready to leave, Louisa came into Suzanne’s bedroom and this was the exchange:

  LOUISA: Have you two come to some agreement?

  SUZANNE: About what?

  LOUISA: About the writing?

  SUZANNE: What’s to agree?

  LOUISA: Who’s going to write the story?

  SUZANNE: There’s nothing to discuss about it. You’re my daughter and you are the one who has the right.

  DOROTHY: She is your daughter and she is very talented.

  SUZANNE: That’s why I sent barrels of money, time after time, to Pratt in New York. They kept asking for more money and we’d send another barrel. [I remembered this was around the same time my cousin Shannon was forced to go to community college instead of university.]

  DOROTHY: And it was worth it.

  SUZANNE (to Louisa): So you are the only one who has the right to my story. You’re my daughter, whether you like it or not.

  LOUISA (putting her head down sheepishly): All right.

  Then Suzanne looked at me with the eyes of a cold-blooded killer. I’d never seen that look from her, or from anyone else, for that matter.

  I gathered up my things, as fast as I could, raced to my car, and sped down the road. As I drove to the airport, I was gulping for air, scarcely able to breathe. My stomach was tightening to the extent that it felt like steel wires being pulled taut to breaking. I could hardly stay inside my skin. I had looked into the eyes of evil and it was ugly beyond comprehension.

  When I got to the airport, I discovered there was a problem with my ticket because I had changed the flight to leave earlier. I got extremely anxious from the possibility that I might have to stay in Chattanooga another night.

  If they can’t fix the ticket, I thought, I will beg them. I will literally throw myself down on the cold tile floor. I’ll tell them I just spent the day with my uncle’s killer and just have to get out of town. Send me anywhere.

  After thirty-two minutes, which seemed like thirty-two hours, two young tech-savvy USAir guys came out to help. A half hour later, when I was getting completely desperate, they figured out what was wrong and smilingly issued me a ticket. If they weren’t so much younger than me, I might have hugged them right there.

  * * *

  One thing I was grateful for: the clarity of who Suzanne was. For the previous dozen-plus hours of my interactions with her over the past fifteen months, I had felt some sense of confusion as she answered my questions how a reasonable and thoughtful person would. Maybe I had her figured wrong. Maybe she wasn’t so bad.

  But then I’d remember that she had either killed Vernie or been somehow involved in it. And she had evidently convinced at least three psychiatrists that she was someone who regretted losing herself for a moment to a psychotic break, but that she really was a nice person and ought not to spend much time in the hospital for something she would never do again, right?

  The evil I saw in Suzanne’s eyes that night was very intense. If Suzanne were younger and had access to a gun, I think she might have shot me, too. In her savage look and in her voice for those few minutes, I saw through everything. The idea of Suzanne losing control over who told her story, of the book not being written by someone whom she had molded into the acceptable way of thinking, well, that was just too much. She let down her guard completely for about two minutes. That was enough.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Finding the Old Friends

  I knew I had to locate anyone I could who had been involved, even tangentially, with the murder and with Vernie and Suzanne and their families. It took many months to find their former friends in Oregon, Wisconsin, or even people who were around in 1970 and who knew anything about what had happened. At first, I contacted the Oregon Area Historical Society, and those people were more than cooperative. They sent out e-mails to the membership list to see if anyone remembered the Stordocks or the murder, but nothing came back.

  After I got the police reports in April 2015, I combed through them and discovered, despite generous redactions of names, that I was able to identify last names or full names of several of Vernie’s and David’s friends. No friends of Suzanne were listed, as everyone reported she kept to herself. When I sent those names to the society, I had visions of them locating some of these people for me, but no one turned up in their quests.

  One person I really wanted to talk to was Joe Roznos, Vernie’s best friend, according to the police reports. He had evidently moved to Arizona with his wife, who had died a few years ago, but none of the numbers I found worked. My next tactic, which I’d used before, was to look for their kids. Again I found nonworking numbers. Then I discovered one of his daughters had changed her name and that someone with that new name now worked as a supervisor at a car dealership in Chandler, Arizona, a business I remembered well from the multiple TV ads for their Tempe location, when I taught at Arizona State University back in the late ’70s. I called the number and asked for Cynthia. When she got on the phone and I introduced myself, saying Vernie had been my uncle, she said, “How in the world did you find me?” And then, “Every time I think of Vernie, I think of fun.” Turned out her eighty-six-year-old father lived with her, and I called a few times before I got him not resting.

  Joe was happy to talk about Vernie, who had indeed been his best friend, someone he considered honest, full of integrity, and someone you could trust with your life. He missed Vernie every day and was heartbroken when he died, he said. There were only two options to what happened that night, Joe said. Either David loaded the gun and handed it to Suzanne, or he just fired it himself, because Suzanne knew nothing about guns. David was a skilled gunman, and Joe knew this from having gone deer hunting with him and Vernie at my uncle’s cabin in northern Wisconsin. Joe thought Vernie and Suzanne got along fine, and never saw any indication of argument or conflict. Nor did he notice anything unusual in his relationship with David, as they seemed to get along as any father and teenage son would. And Vernie was always there when someone needed help.

  I talked to the nearly ninety-year-old Howard Bjorklund, who had worked with Vernie at both the Beloit Police Department and the attorney general’s office. “I give him an A-plus,” he said on the phone in his deep and thoughtful voice, “for hard work, devotion, and intelligence.” He said Vernie never, ever shirked any duties and was a joy to be around and to work with. “I credit my knowledge of the law to Vernie, because we’d ride in the patrol car in those early days and started talking and arguing about one law or another, with Vernie always bringing up complicated issues. Then we’d go to the station and look up the law and learn more. I loved being with him.”

  It took me a long time to get any working number on even one of David’s friends, and I had little luck with David’s girlfr
iend (as described in police reports), who had a last name of Lawson. Finally I managed to get phone numbers to David’s three best friends in high school, John, Kip, and Kim. When I finally got John on the phone and asked him about a Lawson girl, he asked “Sherry?” But then he said he didn’t know anything about her being David’s girlfriend. Something was wrong, because during the investigation Lawson had told the police she and David had gone steady for the past four months. Surely, his friends would have known something about it.

  John told me everyone in their circle of friends assumed David had shot his stepfather. “There’s one thing about your mom shooting her husband,” he said. “It’s traumatic, but over time you learn to deal with it. You cope. But David never grieved in a normal process. He was completely out of whack emotionally after it happened, and he only seemed to get worse. Before the shooting we did a little alcohol and no drugs. But afterward, David started drinking more, and about a year later he got into drugs, and then got involved in motorcycle gangs. None of us ever asked him who pulled the trigger, because we just wanted to be there for him, whatever had happened. But we were all of the same mind: That he pulled the trigger that night to protect his mother from some abuse.” I asked John if he had ever seen Vernie and Suzanne fight and he hadn’t. I wanted to ask him where he got the idea that Suzanne was mistreated, but I was wary of alienating him. After we hung up, I looked through the old newspaper clippings. Sure enough, several of the 1970 through 1971 newspaper articles had recounted the allegation of the cigarette burn on Suzanne’s back. One was on the front page of the Capital Times. Everyone in the Madison area must have read that account.