by Ann Rule
* * *
IT WASN’T OVER. PEGGY SUE Thomas’s trial for first-degree murder lay ahead, set for November 2012. One could only hope that some of the mysterious questions in Russ Douglas’s strange and lonely death might be answered then.
Peggy Sue seemed to be preparing to look her best for her trial—or for whatever prison sentence she might receive. Undoubtedly, she was shocked by the exceptional eighty-year sentence Jim had received. Since he was almost sixty, that was well over a life sentence for him.
Could she expect the same punishment if a jury found her guilty, too? Surely she considered that.
Peggy’s “Thanksgiving trial” was postponed until January 29, 2013.
When she visited her father and stepmother in Idaho over Christmas, her relatives detected a subtle difference in the way she looked—but they couldn’t put their finger on what it was.
Nor could Greg Banks or Mark Plumberg. Her sister Rhonda knew; Peggy Sue had had some further plastic surgery, and it was done well. She had had a filler injected into her lips, which made them more cushiony and fuller.
Further, Peggy had some permanent tattooing, particularly around her eyes, lining them exotically, and now had perfect eyebrows, thanks to tattoos. Her lip liner tattoo would last forever, and there was also a soft reddish color there. If she did go to prison and was unable, for whatever reason, to have access to makeup, it wouldn’t matter; her makeup was now a part of her.
If she should be acquitted, the fillers and tattoos wouldn’t be nearly as important, but they would be convenient. The lip filler, of course, would not last forever and the opportunity for a woman convicted of murder to receive plumping injections was nil.
There was another tattoo, one that Peggy Thomas shared with her two daughters. They weren’t little girls now, and whatever else had happened in her life, Peggy’s girls had always been there for her. One was in medical school and the other was doing well in college, but they agonized over the thought of their mother going to prison. They loved and trusted Peggy Sue.
So Peggy Sue, Mariah, and Taylor got identical tattoos on their backs: a Bible quote from Proverbs 31 about the virtues of a perfect woman. Thus far, the exact words remain a secret among Peggy and her daughters.
* * *
ON FRIDAY, JANUARY 18, 2013, Peggy Sue Thomas and Jim Huden met in person for the first time in nine years. Would this reunion be the culmination of a great love? Many thought that Jim had given up any chance of freedom to protect Peggy. Would he maintain his huge sacrifice for her?
Island County Prosecutor Greg Banks arranged to have Jim Huden brought from prison under heavy guard to the courtroom where Peggy Sue and her attorney, Craig Platt, would also be present. Die-hard romantics expected some longing glances, or perhaps a whispered private word or two.
One of the issues to be discussed at this January hearing a short time before Peggy’s trial for first-degree murder was whether Jim Huden would testify against his former lover in her murder trial. If he should refuse to do so—citing the Fifth Amendment on the grounds that his testimony could be self-incriminating—the hearsay rule would not then prevent Bill Hill and Jim’s wife, Jean Huden, from testifying.
Hill continued to say that Jim Huden had confessed murder to him, and so did Jean Huden. They also believed that Peggy Sue Thomas was an integral part of the plot to shoot Russ Douglas.
A lot was at stake. But romance in the courtroom was not part of the drama. Jim and Peggy avoided each other’s eyes. At the most, they might have been casual acquaintances who had known each other briefly many years before.
A meeting earlier that Friday morning had included Huden, Montoya, and Craig Platt. There, Jim Huden insisted that he had never implicated Peggy Thomas in any guilty way in Douglas’s death. She hadn’t lured the victim to Wahl Road with the promise of a Christmas gift for his wife, Brenna Douglas.
Jim did, however, make a number of disparaging comments about Bill Hill’s character flaws as he met with Montoya and Platt.
No one could force Huden to testify against Peggy.
When he took the stand, Jim Huden invoked the Fifth Amendment many times, refusing to answer any questions about Peggy. As he repeated the same phrase, Peggy stared at him with hard eyes from across the courtroom. If she was anxious or frightened by what he might say, she didn’t show it.
Would he or wouldn’t he testify against her in her actual trial?
Not likely.
Greg Banks won a single victory during that hearing. He asked Judge Allen Hancock to add a second charge against Peggy—that she be charged with “conspiracy to commit first-degree murder.”
The conspiracy charge would be much more likely for Banks to prove than the first-degree murder case.
The one person who could bring Peggy Sue down—the one person who would undoubtedly convince a jury of her guilt—was Jim Huden. And he had dug his heels in.
Jim Huden had filed an appeal, but he seemed adamant that he would continue to leave the woman he once loved—or perhaps still loved—out of any appeal.
Mark Plumberg had focused on Huden as he answered questions on the witness stand. Huden wore a bright orange prison-issue jumpsuit. Plumberg had detected no acknowledgment on Jim’s part that Peggy Sue was even in the room.
“But as he stepped down,” Plumberg said, “I saw him wink at Peggy. I don’t know if anyone else in the room saw it.”
What did it mean? That Jim and Peggy Sue were still partners—silent partners? Was it Jim’s way of reassuring her that her dark secrets were safe with him? Or was it a sardonic wink meant to tell her he knew she had betrayed him?
* * *
WITH A TRIAL DATE set for January 29, it seemed as though Peggy Sue Thomas was finally going to face a jury of her peers. Embarrassed to make and possibly have to cancel a reservation for the fourth time with a motel in Island County, I contacted another hotel. Still, it looked as if this time the trial was a solid go.
And then, three days before Peggy’s trial was to begin, I got a phone call from Prosecutor Greg Banks. He and his staff had been very considerate over the prior two years about letting interested parties know when circumstances and trial dates changed suddenly.
This time, the news was truly shocking, and I must admit, disappointing.
“Peggy Sue Thomas is not going to trial,” Banks said. “She is going to plead guilty to the lesser charge—first-degree criminal assistance involving first-degree murder.”
How could this be?
She had been facing a forty-five-year prison sentence if she was convicted on the murder charge, and she was forty-seven. If she didn’t die in prison, Peggy would be ninety-two when she was released. She would be far from “Drop-Dead Gorgeous” by then, her auburn mane gray, her smooth face a mass of wrinkles. And her beloved daughters would probably be grandmothers themselves.
Peggy and her attorney were well aware of Jim’s eighty-year sentence. That was twice as much as he had expected in the worst possible scenario. She could not imagine being locked behind bars for the rest of her life.
Was Peggy so afraid of getting as long a sentence as Jim had that she chose to plead guilty? It seemed so.
Shocked, I asked Greg Banks what sentence she might be facing now—with her guilty plea.
“Four years.”
“You mean that’s the shortest amount?” I asked with a slight sense of confidence. “Surely she will get at least twenty years?”
“No, that’s the most she can get under Washington State statutes.”
“Four years? And with an automatic deadly weapon charge adding on five more years?” I persisted.
“No. Just four years.”
Banks and Peggy Sue’s attorney, Craig Platt, had been in intense meetings. A trial was risky, and would not have had a foregone conclusion—for either the state or the defense.
Jim Huden had been convicted, yes, but there was solid physical evidence that linked Jim to the deadly ambush murder—the gun, casings, bullets,
his fingerprints on many pages of the gun manual. Indeed, he himself had confessed to his wife and his best friend, Bill Hill.
But Peggy was another story. There were no “damned spots” soiling her pretty hands. There was that single fingerprint on the .380 Bersa manual. A good attorney—and Platt was a very skilled lawyer—could certainly raise doubts that she had only touched the manual casually as she stacked magazines or dusted her coffee table.
According to Keith Ogden, the former cop who had turned in Jim’s gun, Peggy knew about the gun. She was present when Jim brought the Bersa over to Keith, seeking instructions. But she’d shown no interest in it. Learning how to shoot it was Jim’s thing.
Had Jim had anything to gain from Russ Douglas’s death? No. Had Peggy had a potential motive? Yes. She and Jim had been living high on the hog, and despite her salary and tips from her limousine driving in Las Vegas, they were close to broke and had maxed out her credit cards.
In 2003, Peggy wanted to sell her house to Brenna Douglas—but Brenna had no money to buy it. If Russ was dead, Brenna expected seven hundred thousand dollars in insurance payoffs.
With part of that, she could buy Peggy’s house, and Peggy wouldn’t be constantly living over a financial abyss.
If he could present only circumstantial evidence, albeit masses of it, Greg Banks realized that Peggy might possibly win in court. She was facing a murder charge that might not be easily provable, a case that was at some points as fragile and flyaway as dandelion fluff in the wind.
Peggy Thomas was very attractive, most convincing when she wanted to be, charming enough to impress gullible jurors. And she could walk away free and clear, never to be tried again because double jeopardy would attach.
And Banks had lost his most powerful witnesses. Brenda was dead, and Bill Hill was in critical condition in a Florida hospital. There was no way that he could survive a trip across the country and the stress of testifying once more against his best friend. Indeed, he might never be able to take the stand again.
Jean Huden was on the state’s witness list, but it would be easy for Craig Platt to convince jurors that she was not a reliable and believable witness. Jean had a long, long criminal background—mostly having to do with illicit drugs. Platt could deconstruct her image with very few questions. As a backup to Bill Hill’s testimony, Jean would be valuable to the prosecution. Alone, any power she had as a truth teller would be decimated.
Ironically, both Greg Banks and Craig Platt were eager to see Peggy Sue go on trial. Hers would be a landmark legal event, and it would be a challenge for both of them. Jousting in court at its best.
And still. Banks was well aware of the hundreds, thousands, of hours his office and the Island County Sheriff’s crew had put into finding out who really spearheaded the plot to destroy Russel Douglas. He and Mark Plumberg both believed that Jim Huden was the shooter. But neither of them felt the cowardly murder had been Jim’s idea.
They had long considered that Brenna Douglas had guilty knowledge in the case. And they both believed that the Peggy Sue Thomas they had come to know well was the most likely suspect to set the murder plan in motion.
She had approached several people in sticky situations and offered Jim up as an assassin who would take care of their “problems.” It was almost as if she had her own “bucket list,” and setting up and getting away with murder was high on that list. That may have been one of her motivations; the other was money.
Peggy had sought big-time money for as long as anyone could remember.
If the state’s case against the lovely redhead should fall short, no one in the prosecutor’s or sheriff’s office could deal with watching her walk away with no punishment at all. Banks had discussed the plea bargain with Russ Douglas’s family, and they had agreed, somewhat grudgingly, to the only way they could be certain that Peggy Thomas served prison time.
Craig Platt, on the other hand, had seen the massive coverage and speculation in the media and among the residents of Island County. Peggy Thomas had few supporters, other than her mother and father, her half sister Sue Mahoney, her two daughters, and her ex-husband, Kelvin. She wasn’t a famous beauty queen any longer; she was infamous and notorious as an accused murderer.
Depending on how she impressed a jury—or not—she could be facing a very long prison term.
And so, for their own reasons, Banks and Platt agreed to a plea bargain from Peggy. With her personality, she wouldn’t be getting off easy. A woman who had become bored married to a billionaire after only a few months would not be happy locked in a cell with a thin mattress and no privacy, eating bland prison food, and wearing a drab uniform while she scrubbed floors and did dishes or some other onerous prison assignment.
Most of all, she would hate having someone control everything she did for forty-eight months.
And so there was no trial for Peggy Sue Thomas. There was only a sentencing, set ironically for the day after Valentine’s Day 2013.
* * *
FEBRUARY 15 IN COUPEVILLE, WASHINGTON, was one of those late winter days in the Northwest where the day dawns inexplicably with azure blue, cloudless skies, and sunshine beams down on every street, every budding crocus. It was a perfect day and the historic houses built in the 1800s looked brand-new again.
Courtroom number 2 in the Island County Justice Center opened early that morning so video cameras could be placed to focus on Peggy Sue Thomas. Reporters and still photographers—not jurors—now found spots in the jury box.
There had been a few court days during all the trials and hearings concerning Peggy Sue Thomas and Jim Huden when the courtroom in Coupeville had many empty seats—but not now. While the long benches on the left side of the courtroom filled up quickly, and those on the right were reserved for Peggy Sue’s family and friends, court house employees stood against the back wall.
I wondered if Peggy Thomas had looked out the windows of the vehicle bringing her here and realized that she was about to be separated from the world she knew, shut off from true fresh air for sixteen seasons to come.
She had been free on bail until she got to court. When she walked in with her daughters, Peggy looked great, with her thick hair falling below her shoulders, and bangs swept to one side of her forehead. Her makeup, of course, was tattooed on.
She wore a beige unconstructed jacket with large buttons over a gray top and dark slacks.
Peggy Sue took her place at the defense table next to her attorney, Craig Platt. Kelvin Thomas and her daughters, Taylor and Mariah, sat in the row behind her. Doris Matz wasn’t there. Whether she was ill or simply could not bear hearing her precious daughter sentenced to prison, no one knew.
Kelvin had Peggy Sue’s back—as he always had. He would be the sole parent to their two daughters over the next four years. That wasn’t unusual; Kelvin had always shared raising the girls. That was one thing she wouldn’t have to worry about while she was in prison. If they needed someone to turn to, they had their dad.
* * *
THIS WAS ONE OF the strangest sentencing events I’ve ever observed. Greg Banks told the court that Peggy Thomas was prepared to plead guilty to rendering criminal assistance in the first degree, explaining that this was the same terminology that was used in other jurisdictions as a defendant “knowingly being an accessory after the fact of a crime.”
Platt gave Judge Allen Hancock about twenty letters written in support of Peggy’s character.
Everyone involved, in whatever way, in the long-unsolved murder of Russ Douglas was in this courtroom. Everyone—except for Russ, of course, and Peggy Sue’s mother, Doris—and Jim Huden and Brenna Douglas.
During a break, I found myself standing in the central aisle next to Mark Plumberg, who was standing within inches of Peggy Sue and her daughters. She didn’t acknowledge Plumberg—or me—as she seemed to clasp every minute with her girls she could get. So much would change in the next four years, but Peggy would be on the inside looking out as Mariah and Taylor became mature women.
I wondered if she was finally accepting the truth about what she threw away because of Russ Douglas’s murder.
Russel Douglas’s family appeared to feel more enmity toward Peggy than they had toward Jim Huden. Jim Douglas was once again in the courtroom via Skype and he said he was speaking for both himself and his son Matt.
“This was a cold and premeditated act,” he said. “I hope she won’t hurt anyone else. Her short sentence is a travesty. She lured Russ to his murder, and Jim Huden is also a victim. This isn’t justice, but it does bring finality. You used your feminine wiles with utter callousness. You’re not a victim [of anything]. You are a predator.”
Bob O’Neal, Russ’s stepfather, stood about eight feet away from Peggy. “You took my son, a part of my life. I don’t believe your apologies. You played them as you’ve played people all your life. You sullied my son’s reputation.”
As she faced the rage and bitterness of her victim’s family, Peggy Sue looked at them without expression. The pupils in her eyes seemed huge; it was quite possible that she had taken tranquilizers before her sentencing.
Peggy Sue, at last, was scared.
Gail O’Neal was next. She demanded that Peggy look at her as she spoke. Peggy looked up from time to time, but mostly focused on the floor.
“Russ and Brenna had a tragic mess of a marriage,” Gail said. “They both played mind games with each other. The kids were pawns. Russ wasn’t perfect—but you have the key to all the answers. I beg you to tell what happened. You have nothing left to lose. If you ever get the guts to tell, please call me.”
And then, oddly, Craig Platt rose and began a PowerPoint presentation designed to show Peggy Sue’s innocence!
Perhaps he felt compelled to give what should have been his final arguments in a trial that never happened. Those used to the ground rules of a trial were baffled as the slide show continued.
Didn’t Platt understand that that train had left the station? There was no trial, and the sentencing was no place for argument now. Still, Peggy’s attorney continued to extol her as a great mother, with no criminal record. “She is a credit to her community and she’s not a headline grabber. Three times she was released to travel. Three times, she came back.”