Sex. Murder. Mystery. (6 page)

One night after friends arrived at the Fullers’ tidy duplex to watch television, a tired Sharon curled up and drifted asleep on the couch. Around 1 A.M. she woke up to overhear her husband telling their friend that he did not love her. Never had. The words bit like a taunted scorpion, leaving a welting sting that time would never erase. As long as Sharon would live, she knew the truth would haunt her. From both sides, the marriage had been a terrible mistake.

“I’ve never loved her. She’s like a millstone around my neck.”

No one paid much attention to the woman near the concrete steps leading down to the smelly beach that traced the edges of Lake Erie. She was in the last stage of pregnancy, her body gravid beyond belief. So much so doctors had agreed to set a date to induce labor. Even so, the woman had neither the radiant glow nor the Madonna smile most associate with the blessed state. Arched by perfectly plucked brows, her eyes were cold, flat. She made her way quickly and purposefully to the chilly, black water. One step, then another. In no time, she was breast deep.

The woman was Sharon Fuller. She would never forget that moment, and over the years, she would tell others of her despair.

“I was just going to do away with me and the kid. That was the only time in my life I have been that ready to just end it. I remember standing in the water, the feel of it. I remember seeing the sunset. If it [the water] had been warmer, I might have kept on walking, but it was cold. It was really cold.”

Her desperation turned to anger.

“I wouldn’t let Mike do this to me,” she recalled many years later. “I wouldn’t let Mike put me to a point where I was ready to end it.”

Sharon turned around and went back up the steps, the lights of the city of Cleveland looming before her, a trail of water following her. Her clothes clung to swelling thighs and a stomach stretched so tight her belly button had all but vanished. The modified flip that was her hairdo was limp. Her shoes sloshed with each step.

Mixed with the lake water were tears.

Sharon would never forget the night she first wanted to tell Mike about her affair and how the baby she was carrying was not his, but a secret lover’s. Two nights after she had considered suicide in the waters of Lake Erie, Sharon and Mike sat on the front steps of their duplex. It was the end of May, 1969. The night air was warm and scented with the heady smell of lilacs. Sharon once again stated she was not happy, that she never could be happy as a minister’s wife… his wife. She had been living a lie.

“I want you to find me an apartment,” she finally said. “I want out.”

Mike refused. He insisted whatever problems they had could be resolved.

“You can’t leave me. It will destroy our lives. We’ll find a way to work it out.”

Sharon, she would later assert, knew better.

At 12:30 A.M., June 1, 1969, Rochelle Fuller was born. A day later, Sharon and her beautiful dark-haired baby were settled at home alone—Mike was off at a Seventh-Day Adventist camp pitching tents for a revival. Stranded without a car,

Sharon called her lover to come over to hold his baby. She was playing by her own rules.

By mid-August, heat and the stress of new motherhood had stretched Sharon’s emotions to the snapping point once more. The fact that Rochelle was colicky only exacerbated the tensions in the household. There was no nursery in the duplex, so the baby’s bassinet was kept in Mike’s study. Though there was no other place for his daughter’s little bed, Mike was annoyed by the inconvenience. He complained whenever his wife set stacks of clean diapers on the corner of his oak-and-Formica desk. He had sermons to write, church business to conduct. She was not helping matters.

Sharon’s blood began to boil and she started to rant.

“You don’t want me. You don’t want the baby! All you want is somebody that can be a minister’s wife. I wanted you to get me an apartment. I wanted out!”

Her husband sat calmly. His unflagging composure inflamed the situation.

So Sharon stabbed him with words. It was all she could do.

“You don’t have to worry,” she yelled. “I’m going to find a way to get out of your life! Rochelle is not yours anyway!”

Mike was outraged as any man would be. Even so, he betrayed little emotion. He sat on the edge of the bed. He just wanted the facts. He told Sharon, that the only way they’d be able to salvage their marriage was for her to come completely clean.

“You have an hour to tell me who this is or I’ll throw you out of the house and you’ll never see your baby again.” His words were flat, cold. “She doesn’t need a slut for a mother.”

As the clock ticked away the hour of the ultimatum, Sharon finally gave up her lover’s name.

“Where does he live?” Mike asked, his voice still calm.

“All you said I had to do was give you a name! You find out where he lives!”

The preacher made a beeline for the telephone book to retrieve the man’s address. Inside of two minutes, he was gone on his way to do battle with the man his wife claimed was the father of his firstborn daughter.

Sharon frantically dialed the number of a mutual friend and begged the man to stop her husband from instigating a dangerous confrontation. A fight would cause a scandal that would taint the ministry. Mike might do something foolish; something dangerous. The friend, a man from the church who knew her secret, agreed. When he arrived at Sharon’s lover’s address, he talked the irate pastor into leaving without incident.

For the good of everyone involved.

As if her bitterness had not been lessened by the years, Sharon seethed with defiance in her recollection of that terrible night in Ohio. She was trying to liberate herself from the oppression of a husband and a religion. Moreover, she was attempting to free herself from her own guilt. Her own lies. Mike Fuller was a perfect target.

“It was basically… like all right, I’ve had enough of you. You have given me enough digs. You have put me down long enough. This is going to be the ultimate blow, buddy. She’s not even yours.”

Chapter 3

ONE LOOK AND IT WAS SELF-EVIDENT. SHARON Lynn Fuller was more a bouquet of long-stemmed roses than a shrinking violet. She was one of those women who left an unforgettable impression wherever she turned up. At the grocery, the filling station and especially at the church office, she was a lady who could not easily be ignored. Certainly none of the Coloradans who met her could say she wasn’t friendly. None could say she was introverted or too shy for the role of minister’s wife. Far from it. She was helpful and polite, warm and eager to please. Nonetheless she didn’t quite fit in. Most figured her sense of style was some kind of a big-city look from back east. And while they tried not to judge her for how she looked, it wasn’t always easy.

Sharon’s dresses were often skintight. Her figure was striking and every bit of it showed. Her tops were fitted in such a way that the shape and size of her breasts were not left to anyone’s imagination. Often the movement beneath the fabric and the pencil poke points of her nipples revealed the absence of a bra. In a religion that did not condone adornment, makeup, jewelry or overt sexuality, Sharon managed to push her wardrobe to the very edge of propriety. This particular minister’s wife broke the mold with a sledgehammer.

During the heat of the afternoon, Sharon donned short-shorts and paraded about town like a woman who knew she had something to show. And so she did. Ever so slightly, but always close enough to assert the need for a double take, the round globes of each cheek of her butt peeked from below the crisp hem of her shorts. Make no mistake, for La Junta, Rocky Ford and even five-times-larger Trinidad, Sharon Lynn Fuller was an eye-popper.

Dentist’s wife Blanche Wheeler had her own perspective on Sharon’s choice of attire. As the daughter of a Seventh-Day Adventist minister herself, Blanche knew that whatever Sharon wore was something she’d never be caught dead in. No decent woman would. Blanche winced at some of the get-ups the new minister’s wife sprayed onto her shapely thighs each morning. Given the conservative nature of her faith and her own personal background, Blanche tried to set it aside. Maybe she was too harsh in her assessment? Times had changed. Sharon was younger. When Blanche grew up, pants were considered inappropriate for women.

“Unless you were out working in the field, you didn’t put slacks on,” she later said.

Sharon Fuller, evidently, didn’t see it that way.

Jovial Bob Goodhead thought the world of Perry Nelson. They shared a common history, having been close since optometry school back in Memphis. For many, keeping a friendship viable and strong over two decades is not always possible. People change. Circumstances shift. But Bob and Perry remained close. The two even toyed with the idea of opening a joint practice in Oklahoma City where Bob, his wife Donna, and their growing family made their home. Over the years, the Nelsons and the Goodheads included stops at each other’s homes whenever travel brought them within reasonable driving distance.

During one of the Goodheads’ visits to Rocky Ford, Perry asked if they’d like to attend church with his family. Bob wanted to go. He wasn’t interested in converting to the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, but he was curious. Donna, on the other hand, didn’t want to go at all. But what could she say?

Entering the church, Donna noticed a woman in a white dress sitting with two little girls. The pretty young mother seemed to monitor Perry Nelson’s every move. She even winked at him. Her behavior seemed inappropriate, even as it related to her own children. She was loudly playing with the little girls while the minister delivered his sermon from the pulpit.

Not one of my six kids would carry on like that, like she’s letting them!
Donna thought.

After the service, Perry ushered Bob and Donna aside. Julie Nelson was out of earshot.

“What did you think of Sharon Fuller?”

“Who’s that?” Dr. Goodhead asked.

Perry pointed out the lady in white who had carried on with her two daughters during the service.

An annoyed Donna acknowledged the woman.

Perry smiled broadly. “She’s the preacher’s wife. Isn’t she great?”

“For a preacher’s wife, her kids were sure misbehaving,” Donna said, ending the conversation.

It was a secretary with the slight Slavic accent of her parents who was among the first with an inkling something was going on with the eye doctor for whom she worked and the new minister’s wife.

A feisty woman with a pinned-up hairdo resembling a lightly golden cinnamon bun, Barbara Ruscetti was a woman who never had it easy. She worked hard for everything she had. Tragically widowed at only thirty-four when her coal-miner husband contracted an unidentified virus that killed almost a dozen, Barb wasn’t the type to scramble for a new meal ticket. She didn’t set her sights on a new man, though she could have found one easily enough. She was smart, attractive and, as anyone who sat at her dinner table could vouch with unflagging enthusiasm, a great cook.

When her children were young, the mother of four got by on $305 a month—the combined income from Social Security and what passed for a veteran’s pension. She supplemented the money by knitting sweaters, baby booties and afghans. She never went on welfare. She never sought a handout. When her youngest was eleven and the financial pressure of college tuition for her older children loomed, she went looking for a job.

On November 11, 1965, Mrs. Ruscetti started employment with a Trinidad optometrist she would come to adore, a man who treated her children with the warmth of a favorite uncle. That man, of course, was Perry Nelson. Over the course of their years together, the two forged a close and enduring friendship. She always called him “Doctor” unless she was angry at him; only then would she use his first name.

Tuesdays and Thursdays were Trinidad office days for Perry Nelson, with the remainder of the work week spent at the office in Rocky Ford. When he was away from Trinidad, Barb Ruscetti ran the office, booking appointments, ordering lenses and repairing eyeglass frames. In time, Nelson’s business doubled, tripled and doubled again. At its peak, the Trinidad practice alone was raking in more than $150,000 annually.

Despite his success, outside of his part-ownership in a private airplane, Dr. Nelson was not one to flaunt his wealth. To look at him was to see a fellow who dressed neat and clean, ran two nice offices and went about his business without the gold-chained, diamond-dripping accouterments so many small town docs consider de rigueur. Mercedes? Forget it. BMW? Out of the question. Dr. Nelson had several old cars he was always tinkering with on his days off. In time, one of his favorites would be an old, black VW bug.

No one in Rocky Ford could deny that Perry Nelson didn’t dote on his three daughters and that none of them went without. It was true that he cried “poor” whenever Julie took the girls shopping for clothes, but after a fashion show, he’d give in. Dr. Nelson also took his family on trips, often tied to optical conventions. Los Angeles, St. Louis and Las Vegas were but a few of the cities they visited.

Not long before Mike and Sharon Fuller arrived on the scene, the Nelsons purchased a Champion motor home, which made their weekend camping trips as comfortable as staying in a motel.

At various times, Perry also took the family flying in one of three airplanes he owned or co-owned over the years.

When late summer 1976 came, it brought hot days and cool nights. The crisp morning air hinted at fall. Hillsides blazed with the yellow fire of turning aspen. Huckleberry leaves morphed from green to crimson almost overnight. Trinidad had seen another summer tourist season come to a close; another season that had not met the expectations of a town desperate to turn from a mining center to tourism magnet. Maybe when ski season arrived?

There was always the hope.

Dr. Nelson gave Barb Ruscetti a day’s warning that he was bringing a “new girl” to Trinidad for office training. He informed Barb it would be up to her to break in the gal for a part-time office assistant position that was opening in Rocky Ford. The new girl was Sharon Fuller.