Everything She Ever Wanted

Everything She Ever Wanted

by: Ann Rule

Synopsis:

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Ann Rule, a true story of

obsessive love, murder, and betrayal.
 
A series of brilliantly

manipulated crimes brings two families to ruin, and at the center of it

all is a sociopath whose evil hides behind her soft words and gentle

manners.
 
To be the subject of a two-hour ABC-TV miniseries.

This portrait of Pat Allanson, a seemingly proper Southern belle,

reveals a sociopath with a history of misguided love, denial, and guilt

who destroyed those closest to her.

Pocket Books

ISBN: 067169071X

Copyright 1993

Zebulon, the seat of
Pike
County
, fifty miles south of
Atlanta
, is

little more than a town square, the four streets surrounding it, and

some houses radiating beyond.
 
Like scores of other small towns in this

part of
Georgia
, it is sheltered by a green blur of trees-pine,

dogwood, magnolia, and oak.
 
On a hot summer's day, their branches form

a leafy dome that traps the sodden heat, and everything beneath grows

as if in a hothouse.
 
Shade gives only an illusive promise of surcease

from the sweltering summer temperatures.
 
Cosseted in a perfect

environment, the kudzu vine creeps along the orange earth, smothering

each thing it covers, an innocuous-looking blanket of pointed leaves,

an emerald parasite.

The courthouse in Zebulon is red brick, with white gingerbread trim and

an alabaster bell tower gleaming against the sky.
 
Magnolias, oaks, and

maple trees dot the broad lawn, and each of the courthouse's four

entrances is flanked by blood red geraniums in stone urns.
 
A tilted,

graying stone memorial sits in one corner of the courthouse grounds,

its purpose to honor seventeen white Zebulon boys who died in World War

I, including two Marshalls, two Pressleys, and a Pike.
 
Only one name

is listed under the chiseled COLORED in the lower right corner.

E. R. Parks remains segregated even on a heroes' memorial.

The businesses across from the courthouse hide behind contiguousbut

totally different-stone facades with squared-off rooflines of varying

heights: a clothing outlet store, some antique shops, a furniture

store, a hardware store.
 
The Reporter, Zebulon's weekly newspaper, has

its offices at the end of the block.
 
There are Coca-Cola and Dr.

Pepper machines every seventy-five feet or so along the sidewalks.

Vehicles-mostly pickup trucks-park diagonally along the street.
 
A

earless yellow dog, in no danger, ambles casually across the road.

When
Hollywood
producers were looking for a typical southern town as a

filming site for Murder in
Coweta
County
starring Andy Griffith and

Johnn Cash, they chose Zebulon.
 
Pat Taylor and Tom Allanson also chose

Zebulon to live out a fantasy of their own.

It was 1973 when they came to town, first living as lovers, then as man

and wife.
 
She was a slender woman with emerald green eyes and a pile

of bouffant curls.
 
He was a tall, tanned man.
 
She was beautiful, he

was handsome, and together they seemed to have the kind of love that

could survive any adversity.
 
Pat described her feelings in a note she

wrote to Tom on the back of their wedding picture: We are joined

together as one for life-what greater thing is there for 2 human souls

than to be twined together for life, to strengthen each other in all

our labor, to lean on each other in time of need, to rest on each other

in time of sorrow, to minister to each other in time of pain, to be

with each other always with our memories and our ONENESS LOVE to

sustain us....

I feel that in loving My Tom I am nearest to heaven.... When I came to

you, Tom, I put me within your hand-my body, heart, and soul.
 
You are

my love, and you make me wholly yours in all the ways there are; this

sweet bondage is more enduing than locks or bars.
 
I will never leave

your breast to dream of other things for I have found in My Tom the

"end-of-my-quest.
 
My body blooms all over from every vien [sic]

because I'm Tom's Pat.
 
Behold, I left the old me far behind and shed

my old life leaf by leaf...

And so she had.

Pat and Tom set out to create from their perfect love a perfect

world.

And yet, within that paradise lurked the possibility of jealousy and

rage, of adultery, fornication, incest, rape, and even murder, grim and

violent intrusions from the real world.

Each of them had family ties far too strong to let loving commitment

grow unstunted.
 
Back and back and back, old slights magnified rather

than diminished.
 
Pride, like the kudzu covering the dry earth, only

scabbed over deep and painful wounds that had never healed.
 
Untangling

the story of their lives is akin to following the verdant convolutions

of that parasitic vine that eventually kills every living thing that

sustains it.

They had come to each other from the cold ashes of failed marriages.

At thirty, Tom was younger than Pat by six years; he had two short, bad

marriages behind him and she had one long one in which she had felt

trapped and smothered.
 
Both of them had sought perfect love most of

their lives.
 
Despite the odds, they truly seemed to have found it in

each other, although -at least on the surface-they had nothing more in

common than potent sexual passion.

Tom was strong as an ox, and Pat was tiny boned and fragile, often

ill.

He was a blacksmith; she loved doing dainty handwork, embroidery and

painting.
 
He had a college education, and she had married first when

she was in the tenth grade and dropped out of school.
 
He was calm and

soothing, and she sometimes seemed anxious and frightened.

It didn't matter.
 
All he had to do was open up his huge arms, and she

would crawl up on his lap and hide in the safety of his strength.
 
Tom

always told Pat, "Remember, Shug, 'First things first'-and the first,

most important thing is that I love you more than anything in this

world."

And she would answer in the soft little girl's voice that belled her

thirty-six years, "I love you, Sugar.
 
I love you, Shug."

Pat Taylor had known Tom for years before she really saw him.

Her whole family-her parents, retired army Colonel Clifford Radcliffe

and his wife, Margureitte; her children, Susan, Deborah, and Ronnie; as

well as Pat herself-was deeply involved in the horse show world of

Atlanta
.
 
The Radcliffes' stables boasted some of the area's finest

horses.
 
Pat, who was living with her parents, taught riding to an

exclusive clientele, and both her daughters were champion

equestriennes.

Tom Allanson had worked with their horses and sold them feed when he

was employed by Ralston Purina.
 
The son of an attorney, he had set out

to be a veterinarian, although he had not quite reached that goal.
 
Tom

had been a friend to Pat's family, nothing more, but any woman who

watched him at work, naked to the waist, his muscular torso glistening

with sweat, would have noticed him.

Shoeing the Radcliffes' prize Morgan horses, he lifted their hooves in

his hand as easily as if they were lambs' feet.

And then, a series of events in the fall of 1973 brought Tom and Pat

together.
 
Pat was free of romantic commitments, and Tom, who was

seeking a divorce from his second wife, needed a temporary place to

live.
 
The Radcliffes had plenty of room at their horse farm on Tell

Road in
East Point
south of
Atlanta
, and they invited him to stay.
 
He

could sleep on the sofa in their den, and they could use his help with

their horses.

To a pragmatist, their coming together was expedient; to a romantic, it

was fate.
 
Whichever, Tom Allanson and Pat Taylor soon spent every

waking moment together.
 
He loved everything about her, and she

continually surprised him.
 
He knew almost nothing of her life before

he met her and didn't care to.
 
She, however, was insatiably

curious-about his family and the women whom Tom had loved before he

loved her.

In spite of the fact that Tom was still married, they had a wonderfully

romantic courtship.
 
Tom could not believe his good fortune at having

found Pat, and he was awed that she loved him back.
 
His biggest fear

was that her health would completely break down and he would lose

her.

When she was taken with one of her fainting spells and hospitalized, he

was desolate, standing helplessly beside her bed with her pale hand in

his huge work-gnarled fist.
 
He lay single roses on her pillow and

gazed at her with tears in his eyes.

Pat tried to send him away, warning Tom she wouldn't be good for him,

that he deserved a "whole woman."
 
She begged him to face the truth.

"You don't want me, Tom," she'sobbed.
 
"I can never give you

children-I've had a hysterectomy.
 
I'm just an old woman with a scar

down my stomach.
 
Nobody would want me.

It only made him love her more.
 
He didn't need more children; he and

Pat would raise his two children and, of course, her boy, Ronnie, was

still only in his teens.

Pat and her family became everything to Tom.
 
They had given him