Sex. Murder. Mystery. (36 page)

But there had been money involved, though Sharon insisted that Gary took their love to the extreme and killed Glen so the two of them could be together. Killing Glen, she said, was never about money.

But it had not been for love, after all. As Andy Harrelson figured it, Glen's murder would have resulted in a bloody windfall for Sharon and Gary. She would have picked up half of the house, with equity of more than $100,000; life insurance of $30,000; balloon payments due from the businesses Glen had sold that would have been tens of thousands in proceeds; his house on Columbine Court; and his pension—which would have paid her $1,200 a month for the rest of her life.

Not to mention any life insurance policies that she might have taken out herself. Unless the brass-balled widow made a death benefit claim, such policies would likely never surface.

Grandma Nelson's neck had never healed properly after a nasty fall. It left the elderly woman with a stooped appearance, causing her to tilt her head upward to see straight ahead. Doctors told family members Perry's mother should have recovered more fully from the fall, but for the stress and devastation of losing her son. A broken heart, the doctor explained, can affect the body's ability to heal.

Yet every morning, as she had done for her whole life, the nearly eighty-year-old woman would wake before dawn to kneel by her bedside and pray. Her hands were weathered and the veins rose to the surface as they often do in older people. After her son disappeared, Mrs. Nelson prayed he would be found safe and sound. After his body was discovered in Clear Creek, she prayed her boy had not suffered long.

It was after Sharon confessed to murder that Mrs. Nelson pressed her shaking hands together and prayed for answers.

“Why, Lord, why did You take our son away? Why did You let this happen?”

One time, as clear as a whisper in her ear, Mrs. Nelson received an answer. It came to her as if spoken by the Almighty.

“It was the only way I could save him,” the voice told her. “It was the only way.”

EPILOGUE

HAVING CONFESSED TO THE MURDERS OF PERRY Nelson and Glen Harrelson, Sharon Nelson and Gary Adams are now behind bars in “his and her” prisons in Canon City, Colorado. There had been no trial, no public stoning of a woman who stopped at nothing to get what she wanted. Sharon pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree murder, telling the world she had forfeited her right to a pair of murder trials to spare her children, Others speculated that she feared the death penalty. Gary Adams held out longer than his lover, insisting through his attorney that he was not guilty of anything.

But in the end, he also pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree murder when it was confirmed love-of-his-life Sharon would testify against him. He also made one last mistake concerning the whereabouts of the gun used to kill Glen Harrelson. Gary told a jailhouse snitch where he had hidden it. Authorities returned to the Dude Ranch and found the firearm under the porch steps. Ballistics proved an exact match.

Both Sharon and Gary took the easy way out: plea-bargains spared the state the expense of lengthy trials and ensured the love struck pair would never face the executioner.

And yet it wasn’t over. The obsession that led the two to kill for passion and money still lingers.

Sharon continues to wonder if Gary had ever loved her enough to divorce Nancy. It is a question she still asks, a decade after her arrest. She now says her confession was a big mistake, a manipulation by the authorities. She is a battered woman who had feared for her life. She is a victim.

Gary says he still loves Sharon and remains surprisingly blunt about his involvement in the crimes. While Gary concedes that he killed Glen Harrelson, he remains less forthcoming about his exact role in the murder of Perry Nelson. Yes, the ice blue-eyed killer admits, he tried to drown Perry that night in Clear Creek. Yes, he smashed his head with a rock.

“But he was alive, when I saw him last. He was alive,” he said.

Neither Gary nor Sharon will be eligible for parole until they are in their mid-eighties.

And while the pair were picked up and put in jail within hours of Sharon's Pizza Hut confession, the road to justice for others was a slow one. The surviving Nelson children—including Misty and Danny—filed a claim against the insurance companies that paid off Sharon, the killer of their father. As more information came to light, it appeared that insurance investigators were quite suspicious of Sharon Nelson. They held their cards to their chests, however. They never informed the police about what they had uncovered: that Perry had not left Trinidad alone the night he disappeared; that Sharon had purchased five of six policies within six weeks of the murder; that Gary moved in within days after Perry's disappearance; that she immediately sold off many of her husband's belongings and assets. If the insurance companies had been more forthcoming with the authorities, Sharon and Gary might have been prosecuted years before and Glen Harrelson’ s life might have been saved.

“This isn’t a case of twenty-twenty hindsight, piecing a murder together six years later,” said the Denver attorney representing Perry Nelson's children. “These facts are so obvious and transparent it would have been like pulling on a loose end of a ball of yam. The only people who knew all these facts and these patterns were the insurance companies.”

The fight for the insurance benefits that should have never found their way into the killer's hands was drawn out for almost a decade. There were several reversals, culminating with the original verdict finally being upheld in the summer of 1996.

The payout, plus interest, was divided equally among Perry Nelson's five children. For Lorri, of course, it was never about money. No mountain of dollars could replace her father. No cash could compensate her son and daughter for the absence of their grandfather.

No money could ease her broken heart.

And yet life goes on down in Trinidad and the surrounding Colorado communities touched by Sharon Lynn's selfish kind of evil. Her children, her neighbors, her friends… and her men… none can forget her.

Though they try. God, they try.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS & NOTES

IT IS IMPORTANT TO SAY HERE THAT THIS BOOK would not have been possible without Rod Colvin. Rod, a fine author and skilled journalist, had a passion for this story for many years. I am so grateful he entrusted his voluminous research material to me, much of which is the basis for this book. Rod, many thanks for your incredible research and the support you gave along the way. You are a great writer and an even better friend.

Others to whom I am indebted for their support of this project: literary agent Susan Raihofer of Black, Inc., New York; Charles Spicer, editor at St. Martin's Press, New York; Lucy Stille, film agent at Paradigm, Los Angeles. Also, thanks to readers and friends Paula Bates, Tina Marie Brewer, James Glenn Schwichtenberg, June Wolfe, Daniel Leonetti, Cliff Cernick and Patti Soloveichik.

While many of the sources in the book were extremely helpful in reconstructing the Nelson saga, it would be remiss to omit special thanks to Blanche Wheeler, Andy Harrelson, Judy Douglas and Julie Nelson for the photographs from their personal collections. Many of their images appear in the photo insert.

Even though it goes without saying, it must be mentioned here: None of my books could have been written without the support of my family. This is no exception. Thanks to my wonderful wife, Claudia, and my daughters, Morgan and Marta, for putting up with the long hours when phone calls come and I never leave the glow of my Mac.

Since most of the events described in this book took place several years ago, I have elected not to identify certain individuals featured in this true-crime account. Therefore, some names and personal characteristics have been changed. And while it happened long ago should not be forgotten, neither should the dredging up of it impact lives today. The perpetrators’ names, however, have not been altered.

Sharon and Gary cannot run. They cannot hide. Like shadows on sticky summer afternoons, their crimes will follow them the rest of their days. Lorri Nelson Hustwaite and the others who loved the victims will see to it.

Gregg Olsen,
Olalla, Wash.
Fall 1997

IF LOVING YOU IS WRONG

Gregg Olsen

Copyright © 2013
GREGG OLSEN
Cover Art:
BEAUTeBOOK

OUTSTANDING ACCLAIM FOR GREGG OLSEN

If loving you is wrong

“Gregg Olsen's IF LOVING YOU IS WRONG is a wonderfully researched book that makes the tabloid stories about Mary Kay Letourneau and her forbidden love sound like comic-book stuff. Everyone who wants to understand the back story of the child-woman and her overweening passion for a man-child must read IF LOVING YOU IS WRONG. Olsen's book is both gossipy and sympathetic, searing and brilliant. If Mary Kay is the Humbert Humbert of the female sex—and she is—this book is her
Lolita
. A must-read for both true-crime aficionados and students of abnormal psychology! I read until 3 A.M.!”

—Ann Rule

The confessions of an American black widow

“Here are all the ingredients of a great crime story—murder, infidelity, greed, nymphomania… A must-read! Gregg Olsen's standing as one of America's finest crime journalists will rise ever higher with THE CONFESSIONS OF AN AMERICAN BLACK WIDOW.”

—Jack Olsen, bestselling author of
Doc, Predator
, and
Hastened to the Grave

“Gregg Olsen introduces the reader to a character so mesmerizing, so frightening and so evil that one has to keep reminding himself that his amazing and fast-paced story is true.”

—Carlton Stowers, bestselling author of
Careless Whispers
and
To the Last Breath

For June Rose Wolfe

PROLOGUE

June 19, 1996

THE NIGHT WAS a pinpricked blanket over the dull sheen of Puget Sound. Errant seagulls—feathered rats, really—teetered on the edge of a Dumpster. In an instant, they slid inside looking for food before fluttering out and sending white droppings into Jackson Pollack splatters on grungy asphalt further marked by oil stains and melted bubble gum.

Music wafted from one of the boats in the guest moorage section of the marina in Des Moines, Washington, a suburb just south of the Seattle-Tacoma Airport. In its setting and size, Des Moines, Washington, held little in common with its Midwestern counterpart. The western-most Des Moines was on Puget Sound, facing west to the Olympic Mountains and Vashon and Maury islands. It was suburban, yet with the feel of a neighborhood place where people gathered in crime watches and fed each other's pets when vacations came.

Even the name wasn't pronounced the same in Washington as Iowa. The Washington Des Moines was pronounced with the
s
sound at the end, which gave most everybody not from there great difficulty when learning to say it so incorrectly.

That June night something very disturbing was taking place in Des Moines. And from the moment Dave Shields, 27, began his walk a very personal story started moving slowly from tragedy to the stuff of sleazy supermarket magazines and sordid tabloid television reports. In time, lawyers, writers, friends, and family of those involved would all lose sight of the one thing that had caught their concern and interest in the first place. It was a woman and a boy.
A mother, a teacher, a wife. And a boy
.

Dave Shields had never wanted to be anything but a cop. Not really. Though it was true that he had enlisted in the Coast Guard and had given most of his family and friends the impression that he had a career as a cop of the sea, he wanted nothing more than to be a police officer with his feet on dry ground. Both his grandmother and a close high school friend had died in accidents caused by drunken drivers. The idea that he could be part of a solution to a terrible and senseless problem led him to law enforcement. The former San Diegan came to Seattle with the Coast Guard in 1989; two years later he left in pursuit of his dream. It wasn't easy going. He worked his way up from a fire department job in Des Moines to the marina security job. By the spring of 1996, he was also a reserve police officer in Buckley, a town in the foothills of Mount Rainier, some forty-five minutes away. At the marina he worked graveyard, which he loved.

Even if the evening is dead, it is almost always resuscitated around one in the morning. Shields and other cops of the night knew that. The last hour before the bars shut down the exodus of the drunk begins. The hardy party folks make their woozy attempts at demonstrating sobriety—direct steps to their car, the key ready, the door pulled open without a false move. All police officers, from the parking-lot rent-a-cop to the seasoned veteran called back into late-night patrol, know that although it may be the dead of the night, things happen after one in the morning.

At the Des Moines marina, Shields was used to the after-midnight revelers who leave the bars and are drawn to the waterfront to continue the night. Sex and drugs are the usual reason. Kids come down to the water to maraud, smoke, and screw while their parents drift off to sleep in front of the soft blue glow of television sets that never seem to find a respite from use. Sticky, spent latex condoms sometimes pockmark the parking lot like the remnants of a water-balloon fight.