Ashley stayed with me and we returned to Greg’s office to wait. At lunchtime there was no word from the court. After lunch, more silence. We chatted and drank coffee as the afternoon dragged on. At four o’clock, the call came. The jury had a verdict.
I sat between Ashley and Greg; each offered me a hand to hold. The foreman stood. I held my breath.
“We, the jury, find the defendant guilty of attempted first-degree murder as charged in the indictment and fix punishment at five years imprisonment.”
They had been lenient. They could have given John the maximum sentence of ten years. I didn’t know if I was happy or sad. I squeezed the hands I held. The guilty plea echoed through my mind.
Five years...guilty...
Tears puddled in my eyes.
Attempted first-degree murder.
It’s what I wanted to hear, yet at the same time it frightened me. It was fantasy and reality all mixed together. At that moment I couldn’t make sense of my emotions.
“Ashley, can you take Barbara out for a drink until about five thirty?” Greg asked. “She shouldn’t be alone right now.”
Ashley and I walked to a nearby café and sat with our cups of coffee, killing time until the detective could take me to dinner. “You know,” Ashley said, “this is the strangest case I’ve ever heard of.”
I considered her words. “You’re not the only one who’s said that.”
At work, two weeks after I returned home, I sat at my desk waiting for an important phone call from the annuity fund administrator. It would be the culmination of two months of investigative work about the missing checks. There was no way I could concentrate on work. My mind swirled dizzily from recent events, including the death of my cat Patches, who had died while I was at the trial. I was in mourning, not only for the loss of my beloved pet but also for the loss of what I thought had been a normal life.
The verdict catapulted me into another new experience I would have to find my way through. I interfaced with the probation officer and pleaded to get John the psychological help he needed. I also worked on my victim impact statement. It had to be compelling so that John would get the full five years. The judge had power to overrule the jury’s recommendation and reduce the sentence. I wished he could increase it to the maximum ten years.
When the annuity checks stopped coming to the house and John seemed indifferent, I got busy investigating. I followed a trail that led from company to company until I ended up with a fund administrator in the Midwest. Today I anxiously awaited her call. When the phone rang, I grabbed it at once.
“I found a letter from John,” she said. “He writes that you and he are moving, and you want the funds transferred to Miwok Valley Bank in San Ramon. I just faxed you a copy.” San Ramon was a town twenty miles from Concord, near where John had lived for a short time before I met him. He had kept his account at the bank after we married and we used it for our business.
I laid the phone down, rushed into the next room, and grabbed the letter as the fax machine spit it out. The words danced before my eyes. Would the deceit never end?
“He forged my name!” I cried in anguish into the phone. “He’s in jail for trying to murder me and he forges my name to illegally divert our community property.”
I looked closer. The bank account listed was one I had closed right after the murder attempt. The fund administrator agreed to redirect the checks back to me. I immediately called the Miwok Valley branch in San Ramon and was connected to a bank officer. She checked the account.
“It’s still active, Mrs. Perry. We have a notation in the account that Mr. Perry called and instructed that it stay open because his Social Security checks are automatically deposited into it.”
“He can’t do that.”
“He opened another account. Money deposited into your joint account gets immediately moved into an account with only Mr. Perry’s name on it.”
“You accept his word and never even check with me? You’re as crooked as he is,” I seethed. “This is the second time you have helped my husband defraud me.”
I slammed down the receiver and wrote in my day planner.
SF Annuity—confirmed John’s forgery. WHEN WILL IT END?
A month after John was convicted, the divorce stalled. The delay had me frantic and angry, especially when I met with my attorney, who informed me that John’s incarceration complicated matters. Intent as I was on jump-starting the divorce, all I got was legal doublespeak from Ross Grissom, and $200 more added to my ever-increasing bill. I tried to explain to the attorney how John’s latest delay tactic infuriated me and rendered me helpless when my correspondence to him was marked REFUSED AND RETURNED. How could I keep the divorce on track if John wouldn’t communicate with me?
Defiant and anxious to get rid of the stigma of John’s name, I demanded a new last name—Bentley—a fresh name to reflect the new me. John had always told me he would buy me a Bentley, and now I’d have it. I was ever the optimist; the name hyphenated well, should I choose to marry again.
I glared at Ross. “Please,” I pleaded. “Help me get divorced as soon as possible. I’m married to a madman, and as hard as I try to resist, he’s slowly driving me crazy.”
I didn’t realize at the time that my new name would sit on a shelf and gather dust for the next year and a half.
Several weeks later during a business trip to Indianapolis, I sat in my hotel room and pondered the events of the last nine years of my life.
Why has this happened to me?
I thought.
What good can come out of such tragic events?
I reviewed my therapy work on the yellow sheet of paper in front of me and it became clear. I needed to write a book. Yes, I’d write a book that exposed John’s devious toxic behavior so that others would not fall into the same trap. With that bold decision I made a mental note—I would have to learn how to write.
I didn’t realize the story was far from over.
TWENTY-THREE
The Crusade
It was two months after John was convicted, and my world continued to collapse around me. I was in danger of losing my home. John wouldn’t agree to lower the selling price, and he had diverted funds I needed to meet our high mortgage payments. It seemed hopeless, and I was running out of time. Why was John doing this? How could he continue to torment me, even from prison?
I tried to negotiate with the lenders, make them see that it would be a win-win situation if I could pay only the interest until the house sold. The second mortgage lender agreed right away; the first lender said he’d have to get back to me.
The call came after lunch. The loan officer apologized, then slammed me with the news: they were going to foreclose. I went numb. The dreaded word echoed through my mind. Embarrassment engulfed me. Damn John for getting us into this position. How could I have been stupid enough to allow our debt to progress this far? I boiled with rage, but mostly I felt overwhelmed and defeated.
My lips quivered and my head fell onto my folded arms on the table. Sobs convulsed my aching body. My tormented mind conjured up questions that filled me with the paralyzing fear of shame. What would people think? I wallowed in self-pity. I cursed John. If it weren’t for him I wouldn’t be in this misery.
Let go and let God.
I stopped crying and listened to my inner voice. I took a deep breath and absorbed the meaning of each syllable. It had become my mantra.
Let go of my troubles and let God handle it.
I raised my head, wiped my eyes, and folded my hands in prayer. Within moments, I sat taller and breathed deeper as trust released me from my fear, and I knew that I did not have to handle the foreclosure alone. Despair dissipated as strength and warmth radiated from deep inside me. I no longer shuddered at the thought of the word. “Foreclosure,” I said aloud. “It’s just a word. It no longer has any power over me.” I met my fear head on, and won.
In early September, the homicide detective called to let me know he had found Janette Perry, Admiral Perry’s widow, living in George-town. Greg said he didn’t want to be further involved; I’d have to do any follow-up myself. I thanked him profusely. When we hung up I took a deep breath, punched the Washington, D.C., toll-free information number into the telephone, and scribbled Janette Perry’s number on a piece of scrap paper.
I stared at the number for several minutes as I gathered my thoughts. What would I say to this woman, supposedly John’s stepmother, who had remained a mystery to me for ten years? I picked up the phone and dialed. Janette answered with a cheery greeting, and then silence prevailed as she assimilated who I was and what John had done. She caught her breath and apologized, with a brief explanation that it didn’t surprise her. It fit right into John’s troubled history. I wanted more. I felt a compulsion to meet her, as if that would be my proof that John had told the truth about something. Janette agreed to meet with me.
At the end of September, I sat with Janette in her apartment, opposite a gallery-size oil painting of a naval officer. I couldn’t help but gawk. John’s resemblance to Admiral Perry was uncanny.
Janette confirmed that John was indeed the son of Admiral Perry. She debunked John’s claim of four brothers, but revealed that he had had one brother, Pete, who’d died in infancy. She told me John’s mother had passed away while they were living at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center, when John was only seven, and that she had married John’s father when John was ten. Not too surprisingly, she could not confirm any relationship between John’s mother and Rear Admiral Peary of North Pole fame.
I prodded her further about John’s childhood. She said he was an ordinary child who got into the kinds of mischief one would expect for a boy. Then she mentioned an accident and how he had changed after that. I perched on the edge of my chair.
John had enlisted in the Navy against his father’s wishes. He was barely legal age, but wanted to get into the action of World War II. On his first leave after basic training, he dove into a swimming pool and was knocked unconscious. He spent the next three months in the hospital. I explained how John’s tales, in many respects, matched what she said.
“Maybe he felt he had something to prove to his father, who was career military. I always told my husband he was too demanding of his son.”
I encouraged Janette to continue.
“Well, John changed. He was discharged from the service for medical reasons, as a seaman first class. That’s when the trouble started... stealing cars and God knows what else. My John had his hands full trying to deal with him, and even had him committed to a mental institution in New Orleans when he was nineteen or twenty. It didn’t help.” I felt a pang of sadness that this decorated war hero had to put up with John’s antisocial behavior.
“John had a story about living in the French Quarter in New Orleans,” I said. “But not in a mental hospital.”
“We believe John’s misdeeds broke his father’s heart and eventually killed him. We didn’t want anything to do with John and didn’t even tell our daughter that she has a half brother, because there was such an age difference anyway. After you called me, I broke the news to her.”
The haze cleared. John always said he was the black sheep of the family and that was why he wasn’t listed in his father’s biography. I pushed Janette further about John’s family. She confirmed that John’s mother had a sister named Dorothy who had become a Catholic nun in Miami. Sister Dorothy would see John every couple of years. Once, in the early sixties, he showed up with a woman and four kids, but there was no way of knowing if they were his, and Dorothy had passed away years ago.
I related John’s stories of his various wives, and that I had been able to track only one down—ironically, one that he had never told me about. She married John, who wore a Navy captain’s uniform for the occasion, on the
Queen Mary.
A year later John was arrested by the FBI, and she had the marriage annulled. By that time he had maxed out her credit cards. It took her many years to climb out from under the debt. After sixteen years she was still reluctant to talk about it.
At the end of our meeting, Janette slipped into her bedroom and came back with a small gift bag for me. I pulled at the tissue paper and extracted a small jeweler’s box. Inside was a delicate ring, made up of three separate bands of semiprecious stones.
“Janette, you shouldn’t have,” I protested. I bit my lip and tears welled in my eyes as I slipped it on my finger. It fit perfectly. I hugged her. “It’s so beautiful. Thank you.”
“You’ve been through a lot. It’s the least I can do.”
“You’d make a wonderful mother-in-law.” I laughed. “Too bad I won’t be your daughter-in-law much longer.”
For the next three months, I worked with the jail system to get psychological help for John. By the end of the year, John was assigned to maximum security at the Powhatan Correctional Center, and he wasn’t getting any mental help. The divorce was still stalled. John threw a monkey wrench into any proposed settlement, and foreclosure lay just around the corner. My last Christmas in the Concord house was definitely not merry, and the New Year did not look bright.
After the house was foreclosed in February 1992, I moved into the spare bedroom of a longtime friend. One month later my fragile world suffered another earthquake. Debbie, the friend who’d introduced me to John, called to tell me that he was up for parole and he needed a viable parole plan before he could be released. He wanted to live with her during his integration back into society. Parole! The word plunged me into a panic. He had been in jail for only thirteen months! I had not been notified. Fear engulfed me. I was about to play the victim part again. With our divorce still far in the future, if I were murdered now, wouldn’t all our joint assets still go to him? Fortunately, Debbie had refused. He was stalled, for the moment. He would have to find another way out.