Without Pity: Ann Rule's Most Dangerous Killers (25 page)

Brand had been gripped in a nightmarish midlife crisis blown all out of proportion. Despite all the years they had been involved with each other, Brand clearly hadn’t known Jackie at all. He didn’t know his wife well enough to trust her with his pain. And she obviously had known virtually nothing about what was going on in his head.

Something had to happen, some explosion, some end to it.

And tragically, something had.

John Hansen met another of Jackie’s friends a week after Jackie died. This friend had known Jackie, she said, since they grew up together in Minnesota. She said she had not approved when Jackie married Bill. He had been overly possessive, and rude and overbearing toward her family and friends.

“I realized I could not enjoy Jackie’s company when Bill was around. I resorted to meeting her for lunch or talking with her on the phone. But if you called and left a message for her with him, he wouldn’t pass it on.”

Jackie had called her friend at 5:00 p.m. on either the 19th or 20th of February to say that Bill was flying to Fairbanks on Thursday for business and wouldn’t be back until Sunday. Jackie had invited her friend over to the Bellevue apartment for dinner, but the woman said she had other plans. They had agreed to meet at a restaurant for lunch the following week.

Instead of having dinner with Jackie Brand in her apartment on February 22, the friend had received “The Bill and Jackie Letter” by Priority Mail and read it with growing horror.

Two of Jackie’s other friends said that they had always felt that Bill treated his wife tenderly. One friend had last seen Jackie only six days before she died. During this last meeting she had been a little surprised when Jackie commented, “I would like to have had somebody more handsome, but you know, Bill is so good to me.”

It had been almost as if Jackie was trying to convince herself that she
had
made the right choice when she committed her life to Bill Brand.

This friend received the letter on the 22nd, too. “When I read it I knew instinctively that Jackie was dead; I immediately called their house, starting at 6:25. I left messages on the tape machine, but never got an answer….”

February 21, 1985, had been Bill Brand’s cutoff day. He had told Jackie he would be flying to Fairbanks. He bought a ticket, but he never really expected to fly to Alaska that day. He had hoped against improbable hope that he would make a deal, extend a lease, do
something
so that Jackie wouldn’t know they were flat broke. If nothing happened by the 21st, they would both have to die. To Bill Brand it was that simple.

Nothing happened. All Brand’s money was gone. He couldn’t even charge a meal on a credit card. Jackie didn’t know. He had lived a lie for so long that Bill was able on this one last day to paste a serene look on his face so that she
wouldn’t
know. He mailed his hate-filled letters, a dozen or more of them.

There was no turning back now.

When Thursday morning came they both dressed. Jackie packed Bill’s bag, stubbed out her cigarette, grabbed a cup of tea for the ride to the airport, and walked down the hall ahead of Bill on her way to drive him to SeaTac Airport.

Bill raised the gun. He fired. Jackie spun around, a look of pain and shock on her face, and Bill thought for one crazy second that she might be having one of her headaches. She had terrible headaches. He fired again.

And Jackie died. She never knew that Bill had no more money. For a man who had failed at so many things, Bill Brand had managed to succeed in this one tragic effort. This one useless, senseless act of cruelty.

Bill’s note to his executor was succinct. He wrote that he had supported Jackie since November 1, 1975.

Bill had never accepted Jackie’s stepchildren. He saw them, too, as interlopers, and he wanted to be sure they got nothing. He wanted his body cremated and sent to relatives. He left Jackie’s remains to her family.

Bill Brand would have preferred that Jackie’s family received nothing more. But John Hansen made a decision to give the victim’s family the few pieces of gold jewelry that the medical examiner had removed from her body. That was all they would have left of her—that and the despicably savage letter from Bill.

It was over.

But of course, it really wasn’t. Bill Brand had had the courage to kill the woman he claimed to love beyond life itself, but he had not had the courage to commit suicide.

John Henry Browne, his defense attorney, had Bill Brand examined by a psychiatrist to see if he had been, under the law, responsible for his actions on February 21, 1985.

Brand’s diagnosis was that he was in the grip of a major clinical depression and that his responses were indicative of a narcissistic personality disorder. The former was understandable, given the circumstances; the latter had probably been a part of Bill Brand his whole life. The narcissist focuses always on himself. He is not crazy, either legally or medically; he simply cannot empathize with other human beings. He expects special favors and views those around him as extensions of himself—his to summon or to send away at will. Jackie’s main job was to admire Bill and offer him unconditional support. As all narcissists do, Bill alternately overidealized and devalued her.

Jackie made Bill whole. He owned her, and he could not let her find out that he was a failure. “Unconsciously,” his examiner wrote, “his need to kill her represented his need to protect himself from her harsh judgment. His life…was dominated by her attentions and approval, from which he sustained his major—if not his sole—emotional support.”

No one would ever say that Jackie had not done her best to make Bill Brand happy. She shut herself away from everyone but Bill. It wasn’t enough. Nothing ever could have been.

Bill Brand had a profound personality disorder, and he was depressed—but he was not crazy. His examiner, a physician from the University of Washington School of Medicine, determined that Bill Brand had indeed been aware of his actions when he shot his wife in the head, and that he had had the ability to distinguish right from wrong. He could not hope to plead innocent by reason of insanity.

Bill Brand was convicted of second-degree murder in King County Superior Court Judge Jim Bates’s courtroom in February, 1986. Sentencing was delayed as Defense Attorney John Henry Browne argued that medical tests had revealed a degree of brain damage. It was a defense that might have worked six or eight years later, when medical experts understood how devastating steroids could be to both the physical and mental health of men who took them. Bill Brand, panicked by impotence, had been taking steroids. He had also been taking Halcyon pills to sleep. The synergesic (cumulative) effect of combining those drugs—not to mention his excessive use of alcohol and other medications he was taking—might well have heightened the paranoia he felt over losing Jackie.

It would have been an interesting courtroom battle. Crimes committed while someone is under the influence of so-called recreational drugs and/or alcohol do not usually go unpunished. A “diminished capacity” defense doesn’t usually work because the defendant has
chosen
to render himself less than capable. Might an insanity plea have convinced a jury, given the new information that has come out on steroids? Perhaps. But then there was the whole quarter of a century of background of Bill Brand’s possessive hold over Jackie—a thread going back to the days when he was young and alert and vigorous.

At any rate, John Henry Browne, who is one of Seattle’s most sought-after defense attorneys, did not yet have the final decision on the negative effects of steroids to argue with in 1986.

In the late summer of 1986 Bill Brand was sentenced to thirteen years in prison. Due to his increasingly poor health and diminishing mental capacity his sentence was appealed, and he was released on October 11, 1991. He was suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, better known as emphysema.

In the summer of 1993 Bill Brand, now sixty-eight, was admitted to the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Seattle. He died there at ten minutes past eleven in the evening on July 16th. Brand’s death certificate listed him as a widower, and he was indeed that. Jackie had been dead for eight years.

Jackie had told him long before that they would ultimately be together. And they were—but for such a bitterly short time.

“Somewhere, Someday, Somehow” had come and gone.

W
hen her
life was viewed in terms of worldly goods, Ruth Logg had everything. The lovely blond widow had been well provided for by her late husband, Les. She lived alone for several years after Les’s death in her sprawling house in Auburn, Washington. The grounds were impeccably maintained and there was even a huge swimming pool. Ruth’s home was valued in the early seventies at $85,000. Today, it would be worth well over a million dollars. Les Logg’s business holdings had amounted to something over a quarter of a million dollars at the time of his death. Again, that $250,000 would be worth ten times as much in the economy of the nineties. Ruth herself had a good business head. She had moved smoothly into her new place as owner of a business.

Unlike many women who are suddenly widowed, Ruth Logg was able to manage. Her two pretty teenage daughters, Kathleen and Susan, lived with her and she loved them devotedly. But Ruth was only in her early forties, and she sometimes dreamed of finding a man to share her life. She was lonely and the years ahead often seemed to stretch out bleakly.

Ruth knew that her girls would soon be moving away to start their own lives, and that was as it should be. She accepted that. But she couldn’t bear the thought of rattling around her huge house alone once Kathleen and Susan were gone. In March of 1971, she put the house on the market. Perhaps she would buy a condominium or take an apartment where she wouldn’t have to worry about yard work. Her personal safety was on her mind too. A woman in a house alone wasn’t as safe as one who lived close to other people in a security building.

Most single women hold on to a romantic dream that a special man will come along one day and change their lives. Ruth Logg was no exception. She was far too young to give up on love, even though her prospects looked slim. She hated the idea of dating services or Parents Without Partners, or blind dates set up by well-meaning friends. She sometimes wondered why it had to be so difficult to meet someone.

And then Ruth Logg
did
meet someone in such an unexpected way. It was a blustery March afternoon when she first encountered the man who would suddenly launch her world in exciting new directions. A sleek luxury car pulled up in front of her home and a compactly muscled, impeccably dressed man emerged and knocked at her door. He had a great voice. He introduced himself as “Dr. Anthony Fernandez.”

No one would have described Dr. Fernandez as handsome, and yet he had an undeniably charismatic quality. He had wide shoulders and thickly muscled arms and wrists, and he looked at Ruth with warm dark eyes under thick brows. Ruth could sense that he was gentle. His manners were wonderful; he was almost apologetic for interrupting her schedule, but he did want to see her home. Ruth assured him that she would be delighted to show him through the house.

Dr. Fernandez explained that he was forty-eight years old and divorced. He said he had just opened a family counseling clinic in the Tacoma area and that he was hoping to buy a house within easy commuting distance to his business.

Ruth Logg was quite taken with Dr. Fernandez, who urged her to call him “Tony.” They talked as she led him through her home and he seemed impressed with the floor plan, the way she had decorated the rooms, and with the lawn and gardens. It wasn’t long before they stopped talking about the house; they discovered that they shared many interests. Dr. Anthony Fernandez asked Ruth Logg if she would join him for dinner and she accepted, a little surprised at herself for agreeing to a date with someone she really didn’t know.

Tony and Ruth had such a good time on their first evening that they both knew they would see more of each other. More dates followed and Ruth suddenly found herself caught up in a whirlwind courtship. After so many years at the edge of other people’s lives, she found it incredibly exciting to have this fascinating man pursuing her. And Tony Fernandez
was
pursuing her. At first, Ruth questioned her great good fortune, but then she accepted it. She was, after all, a good-looking woman with a lush figure and a pretty face. She had forgotten that in her years as a widow. Now, Ruth became even prettier with her newfound happiness.

It never occurred to Ruth that Tony might be interested in her because she was wealthy. In fact, she believed that what she had was chicken feed compared to what he owned; Tony had told her that he was a man with substantial assets. He spoke of timber holdings and real estate, and, of course, he had his counseling practice. He didn’t
need
her money.

Ruth didn’t know that the plush car Tony drove was rented, nor did she know much about his life before they met. None of that mattered. Ruth Logg was totally in love with Anthony Fernandez.

Ruth’s family and friends were not as enthusiastic about Tony. They wanted her to be happy, of course, because she had devoted many years to helping other people, but they were worried. They had checked into Tony’s background, and they soon heard rumors that “Dr.” Fernandez had spent time in prison for fraud. They doubted that Ruth would believe the rumors, so they pleaded with her to check into Fernandez’s background before she considered marriage.

Ruth only smiled and reassured them that she knew all about Tony. He had told her that he had had a little bit of trouble in the past. He had been honest with her, she said, and his past didn’t matter to her. Ruth’s philosophy was that everyone deserves a second chance. Why should she dredge up unhappy memories? Ruth’s sister was particularly persistent in trying to coax Ruth off her rosy cloud.

When Tony Fernandez discovered that, he told Ruth’s sister that if she didn’t like his plans with Ruth, then she could just consider herself excluded from their social circle and future family gatherings. Amazingly, Ruth went along with Tony’s decision.

No one is blinder than someone in the first stages of romance, and Ruth refused to listen to one detrimental word about Tony. By September of 1971, Ruth and Tony were engaged. She gave up all thoughts of selling her house; she and Tony would need it to live in. At his suggestion, Ruth and Tony drew up new wills. Although the will Ruth had drawn up three years earlier had left everything she owned—$250,000 plus her home—to her daughters, her new will left it all to Tony. She was confident that if anything should happen to her, Tony would provide for her girls. In turn, Tony left everything he owned to Ruth in his will.

What Anthony Fernandez actually owned was debatable. Despite his grandiose boasting to his fiancée, Tony’s assets were negligible. When he met Ruth, he had seventy-five hundred dollars in the bank, a thousand-dollar bond, and some mining claims and real property that would one day sell at a tax sale for less than four thousand dollars. Beyond that, Tony had substantial judgments filed against him. His financial statement would have been written entirely in red ink.

Despite objections and pleadings from the people who truly loved Ruth Logg, she and Dr. Tony Fernandez flew to Puerto Rico on January 5, 1972, where they were married. She had only known him ten months, but it seemed as if they were meant to be together. They toasted their new life with champagne, and Ruth was blissfully happy. Her honeymoon with her new husband was everything she had hoped. She was confident that, in time, her family would come to see Tony for the wonderful man he was.

While she had left Tony everything in her will, she didn’t plan on dying for at least four more decades. She had too much to live for now. When Tony casually mentioned that it would be easier for him to help her manage her affairs if he had her Power of Attorney, Ruth didn’t hesitate. They went at once to a notary and Ruth gave her husband the power to sell her property or do any other business in her name.

In retrospect, it is easy to see that Ruth Logg Fernandez knew pitifully little about this man who was her husband. Even her worried family had no idea.

It would not have been difficult for Ruth to have found out about Tony’s recent and remote past. Reams of newspaper copy had been published about Tony Fernandez’s checkered career. In his home territory, he had been at first famous—and later
infamous.

In the early 1950s, Tony Fernandez had been an important player in the timber industry of Washington and Oregon. When he was in his twenties, he had made a killing in the logging business. He operated mainly out of Longview, a city of twenty thousand in southwestern Washington. The Longview
Daily News
frequently carried reports of Fernandez’s new and massive timber buys. Some of his deals involved millions of dollars worth of virgin timber.

Tony Fernandez was listed as a partner in many companies, and he was considered one of the more solid citizens in Longview. He was headline material: “Fernandez Buys Timber at Dam Site in Oregon” (this was on July 19, 1954, when Tony had purchased 40 million board feet at thirty-two dollars per thousand feet); “Chinook Region Logging Planned” (this was on October 4, 1954, when he had bought eight million board feet); “Fernandez Buys Pacific Timber” (on March 9, 1956, when Tony Fernandez estimated his newest contract would eventually cost $300,000).

At the time Tony Fernandez was only thirty-one, but he was on a roll and he didn’t stop at timber. On March 22, 1955, the Longview
Daily News
told of a new mining company being incorporated in Cowlitz County, Washington. Tony Fernandez was its president. The purpose of the company would be “to mine, mill, concentrate, convert, smelt, treat and sell gold, silver, copper, lead, zinc, brass, iron and steel.” The new company also expected to obtain oil rights. Stock valued at $100,000 had been authorized.

Tony Fernandez maintained a high profile. He drove new Cadillacs. As an honorary deputy sheriff, he was allowed to install a siren in his car. He lived in a big house on the hill above Longview with his wife and four children. He was a Boy Scout leader and a Longview city councilman.

In April of 1957, Fernandez announced that he was branching out into Canada and that he had purchased a
billion
board feet of timber—an early land grant by the British Royal family—near Nelson, British Columbia for $1,500,000. He said he was considering setting up a branch office near the Canadian border.

In reality, Tony’s business empire seemed to have been built on shifting sands. Several huge timber companies brought suit against him, saying that he had logged off areas long after his contracts had expired. He was also accused of selling sections of timber by misrepresentation; he had identified the wrong sections of trees to prospective buyers. They thought they were buying acreage thick with timber when in reality Tony had simply shown them property that he didn’t own. They had signed purchase agreements without checking legal descriptions.

It wasn’t only the big corporations who were after Tony Fernandez. Several elderly landowners claimed they had been cajoled into signing their names to blank contracts, only to find to their regret that they had signed quit-claim deeds to their timberland.

Tony Fernandez couldn’t juggle his books forever. By July 1958 the IRS began to look at him with a jaundiced eye. The Internal Revenue Service filed notice of a tax lien of $95,246.31 against him for taxes that he hadn’t paid in 1951, 1952, and 1953. The IRS filed what was known as a “jeopardy assessment” against Fernandez’s assets. This amounted to a lien against all his property. It followed two Superior Court memorandums saying that the wheeler-dealer logger had to pay two logging firms over half a million dollars as the result of civil suits.

Still, Tony Fernandez drove his Cadillacs, lived in his nice house, and kept up the facade of a highly successful businessman and a pillar in Longview.

Individuals who had done business with Fernandez were nothing if not confused. An Oregon man, Bill Belcher, was foggy about a trip he had made to Nelson, British Columbia, with Fernandez in March of 1958. Tony had offered to “fly over” his timber holdings there so Belcher could have a look. But the clouds had been so thick that Belcher couldn’t tell whether he was looking at fir, pine, spruce, hemlock…or tumbleweed. When they attempted to reach the woods later by Jeep, they were forced back by deep snowdrifts.

While they pondered their predicament, Belcher stepped behind the Jeep to light a cigarette. The next conscious memory he had was of lying beside a railroad track; his head felt as though a train had run over it. He was found by railroad workers who called for medics. Belcher was hospitalized with severe head injuries for ten days.

Later, he learned that Tony Fernandez had returned to the guest cabin where the two men had been staying. He had told the managers that Belcher had decided to stay up in the woods in a miner’s cabin.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police notified Bill Belcher’s family that he had been critically injured. His wife left at once for Canada. After assuring herself that he would survive, she followed Belcher’s instructions to retrieve his briefcase in which he had carried important papers and money. She found the briefcase but Belcher could not explain a logging contract that had been tucked inside. There was also a receipt for $40,000 in payment for some land.

Bill Belcher had no memory whatsoever of what happened to him after he stepped out of Tony Fernandez’s vehicle to have a cigarette alongside a snowy road. However, he was adamant that he would never have bought timber he had not even seen, and he would not have given someone $40,000 for trees hidden in fog.

While Belcher had lain unconscious, a bank officer in Grants Pass, Oregon, where Belcher had an account, received several phone calls from a man who identified himself as Bill Belcher. The caller directed the banker to transfer $40,000 to a Gresham, Oregon, bank to the account of the “Fernandez-Belcher deal.”