For weeks, months, I could not figure out what to say to Louisa, that poor soul who was caught in a vortex beyond her control. Thoughts went through my mind of pulling the book. I knew the information in the book would be difficult for Louisa and her family, but then I thought of what my family has been through the past forty years. I remembered my uncle Vernie’s brain tissue splattered all over the walls, the bed, and the floor in the Oregon mansion. And the legal injustices that followed. I realized I had to tell this story.
Louisa, I am sorry for what this book will do to you. If there were a way to spare you the pain, I would do it. I did change your name in hopes of mitigating the sorrow you’ll feel. My biggest regret with this project is that it will add to your suffering. Maybe someday you can understand my motivations to somehow right the wrongs that were perpetrated so many years ago, to vindicate my uncle, to answer questions lingering on the hearts of all my family members for forty-plus years.
I agree, Louisa, that it was tragic. Unbelievably sad. But for me to keep the truth hidden would not bring my uncle back, nor would it unbreak my grandmother’s heart, nor heal Shannon’s soul, and it would not give me back the man who had been my surrogate father.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Thoughts on Complicity and Redemption
After I excitedly explained some of the recently uncovered details to a friend who had followed this case with me, he looked at me and said, “But that’s just your version. So much is one person’s interpretation of the truth over another.” I stared back and replied, “The truth is, someone blew off half my uncle’s head.”
And yet . . . he had a point. Objective truth is still subjective. As I’ve spent hundreds of hours picking through minute details in police, psychiatric, and coroner reports, I realize many of the details that seem important to me were either ignored or disregarded completely by officials. Was there just too much scattered information for the district attorneys to go through? But isn’t that their job? If someone confesses, does that preclude any further studying of evidence, especially when that evidence contradicts the confession?
Having just watched the documentary Happy Valley about Jerry Sandusky, Joe Paterno, and the aftermath in State College, Pennsylvania, I was struck by how the attorney for nine victims talked about the complicity of the community, of everyone’s willingness to not dig deeper and to look the other way. What does that say about my uncle’s murder?
Shannon sent me an e-mail not long after Making a Murderer appeared on Netflix, captivating the entire nation. She asked, “Was this a Wisconsin thing?” And she wondered, “Is the justice system in Wisconsin, small-town Wisconsin, so flawed? Has it been going on for years?”
I had, in fact, been wondering the same thing and responded to her: Maybe we just all assumed everyone was more-or-less honest, that no one looked beneath the surface of clean appearances and polite, even deferential behaviors.
The gradual realization that Wisconsin had its fair share of corruption created a kind of identity crisis in me. When I used to tell people where I was from, the images in their minds and mine were cheese, cows, and happy farmers, who maybe drank a little too much beer on weekends. But now people say, “Oh, Wisconsin,” and start talking about the hypocritical officers of the law who have corrupted the judicial system. I now know the truth lies somewhere in between.
And there we were decades back, living in what became our own familial hell after the murder. How was it that I saw Vernie and Suzanne argue, that Louisa reported it being worse the last couple of months, and not one—I mean not one—of the friends and neighbors who were interviewed by the police ever offered even the slightest indication of any trouble between Vernie and Suzanne?
Vernie certainly had friends, even if people reported that Suzanne did not. They went out every week to the bowling alley and the other bar, and Vernie took guys on hunting trips. David had a circle of close friends. Did they really not see any indications of problems? Were they like the people in State College, who just didn’t want to see it? Oregon, Wisconsin, is a small, quiet, friendly town, and maybe having a volatile couple just didn’t fit the profile. I’ve seen studies where they ask people to listen to someone talking about a topic and then test them on what they heard. People did not even hear things that disagreed with their worldview.
After Vernie’s murder case was turned over to ADA Mussallem, he had the detectives go back six months after the incident and interview the very same people, who said the very same things. Why didn’t he interview family members, on either side, who knew more intimately about the problems between the two? Suzanne’s mother and father had been interviewed during the first round, where she was the only person to talk about Suzanne’s chaotic, jealous, and violent side. But the DA interviewed the mother not on his own volition, but because of something she initiated.
Ten days after the murder she and her husband (Suzanne’s father) drove thirty miles to the office of the DA in Grant County, where they lived, in southwestern Wisconsin. They reported that Suzanne had threatened to shoot her husband, which had precipitated a visit by a detective to the parents.
And detectives also interviewed Suzanne’s brother Bob, but not her other brother, Franklin, nor any of us from Vernie’s family. And not David. Why would you go back—again—to the various townspeople who had already told you they barely saw Vernie and Suzanne and didn’t really know much about them? Was it busywork, to pretend you were actually doing something?
So I ask myself: Were people in my family complicit somehow? We all knew they were fighting, and it was getting worse. We knew Vernie wanted to go back to Jenylle, that Suzanne had an explosive and jealous personality, and we knew there were guns in the house. Shouldn’t one of us have pulled Vernie aside and told him to get out of there fast, and take his guns with him? Or maybe staged what we now call an “intervention” with Vernie? No one would have believed back then, nor do I now, that talking to Suzanne would have helped. On the contrary it could have only made things worse, though I can’t tell you how. Maybe she would have done it one of the weekends I was visiting them. I don’t know.
But just like the people in State College, we never considered the possibility that such a horrific crime would be committed. It was too unthinkable.
And yet, my uncle was murdered, and everyone in my family has lived (or died) in the shadow of that horrific act so long ago. I didn’t even realize the heaviness of the homicidal vapor we were encased in all these years until I started doing my research and began talking deeply with everyone in my family. And why was the pain of Vernie’s death so deep for me, his niece? I understand why his daughter, Shannon, has overwhelming grief, but what was it for me? Then I understood how Vernie had been a father figure to me, had taken care of me, watched over me until he was brutally eliminated. Spending years reading through all the court transcripts, forensic and coroner’s reports, interviewing more than sixty people related to the case, helped me work through the pain, and I can now see through to the other side.
And when I was close to finishing the book, I started worrying that the story here would only add to what has become a conspiracy-theory obsession in our culture. But how could I deny what happened and all the facts I’ve uncovered that suggest something was not right in how the case was handled in court? I feel compelled to tell the story.
When I started this project, I had hoped to find answers. One thing I’ve learned, though, is I will never know exactly what happened that night, nor will I ever know exactly why Suzanne had so many mysterious deaths around her. And I have considered the possibility that the murder was a mob hit, that my uncle had uncovered some inconvenient truths, and maybe Suzanne was paid off, and maybe the call she made to the sheriff was to let him know that the problem was “taken care of.” Perhaps it had been orchestrated by some doctor who lost his license, one Vernie had investigated, or some other angry target of Vernie’s skilled police work. All of this is speculative. But what I do know, unequivocally, is that wha
t transpired the night of my uncle’s murder was not the story Suzanne told, and it was not how it got played out in the court hearings.
Just because the perpetrator and her lawyers—and even an ADA—said something happened one way, it ain’t necessarily so. As a researcher I know the discipline required to discern the truth and know you cannot make a chocolate cake if you start out with beef, potatoes, and carrots. The culmination for me, then, after considering all the information in the police and coroner’s reports, was when I realized no matter how I arranged my thinking, I would not end up with the conclusion that Suzanne had a psychotic breakdown and pulled the trigger, killing my uncle. I believe in science and the scientific method, and, in this case, the forensics spoke loud and clear.
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MOVIES
Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry (2012). Weiwei Ai, Dan Ai, Lao Ai. Dir. Alison Klayman.
All Good Things (2010). Ryan Gosling, Kirsten Dunst, Frank Langella. Dir. Andrew Jarecki.
Basic Instinct (1992). Michael Douglas, Sharon Stone. Dir. Paul Verhoeven.
Bliss (1997). Craig Sheffer, Terence Stamp, Sheryl Lee. Dir. Lance Young.
Body Heat (1981). William Hurt, Kathleen Turner. Dir. Lawrence Kasdan.
Cake (2005). Heather Graham, David Sutcliffe, Taye Diggs. Dir. Nisha Ganatra.
Chinatown (1974). Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, John Huston. Dir. Roman Polanski.
The City That Never Sleeps (1924). Louise Dresser, Ricardo Cortez, Kathlyn Williams. Dir. James Cruze.
The Conversation (1974). Gene Hackman, John Cazale, Allen Garfield. Dir. Francis Ford Coppola.
Criss Cross (1949). Burt Lancaster, Yvonne De Carlo, Dan Duryea. Dir. Robert Siodmak.
D.O.A. (1950). Edmond O’Brien, Pamela Britton, Luther Adler. Dir. Rudolph Maté.
Dear Murderer (1947). Eric Portman, Greta Gynt, Dennis Price. Dir. Arthur Crabtree.
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