A Warrant to Kill: A True Story of Obsession, Lies and a Killer Cop Read Online Free PDF

newlyweds to walk under, and then Ron left to finish his round.
    “Ron looked surprised,” remembers Sandra, the maid of honor and the only family member to attend. “But he went along with it. I guess he was happy about it. With Ron you never could tell.”
    Two months later, in early June, Ron and Susan drewup a postnuptial agreement in which Susan conceded she had no claim to his property, principally his retirement and employee stock accounts, certificates of deposit, and money markets. The document included future earnings and stipulated that in the event of one of their deaths, their separate possessions would be passed on to their individual children. Of course, the agreement also protected Susan’s property, but then, she had little to speak of.
    Still, Susan appeared happy, and, their friends say, so did Ron. Unencumbered by children or other demands, with Ron’s money to foot the bills, they partied with friends and played golf at the country club. Susan became a not-uncommon sight in her bikini at the club pool, where she tanned her body a deep chestnut and gossiped with young mothers who brought their children to swim. At night, she and Ron frequented the restaurants up and down FM 1960, occasionally stopping in to listen to the music and eat dinner at Resa’s, the piano bar attached to Del Frisco’s. They rarely mingled with the high-rolling crowd of aging baby boomers who frequented the restaurant. “When Susan was with Ron, they basically kept to themselves,” remembers one friend. “They didn’t need anyone else.”
    Then something happened that changed everything, something neither Susan nor Ron could have anticipated—L.J. sent twelve-year-old Jason to Houston to live with his mother.
    “Nancy and I couldn’t handle Jason anymore, not that I didn’t want him,” L.J. insists. “He was always in trouble, at school and at home. He was uncontrollable. We’d done all we could, counselors, everything. Jason said he wanted to live with his momma and Susan said, ‘Give me Jason.’ One day I just said, ‘Fine, if that’s what y’all want, go ahead.’”
    Susan couldn’t believe her good fortune. She’d tried unsuccessfully for five years to have custody of her son,and suddenly L.J. handed the boy to her. She crowed to her friends and family about her happiness. Things couldn’t have worked out better, as far as Susan was concerned.
    The apartment suddenly too small, the newlyweds bought a tan brick, two-story house on Valley Bend in Oak Creek Village, a quiet, twenty-five-year-old subdivision, and she enrolled Jason at the neighborhood middle school.
    To Susan, her son seemed perfect. He was small for his age, slightly built, with a thick shock of medium brown hair, finely shaped, handsome features, and a warm olive complexion that resembled his father’s.
    “I just can’t believe my luck,” she told one friend. “My beautiful baby has come home to me.”
    Oak Creek Village, the subdivision where the Whites settled, was white-collar and conservative. Most families voted Republican, attended church on Sundays, and assumed their children would go to college. Neighbors knew each other well enough to nod to as they took their evening walks, but only a smattering formed close friendships, instead abiding by Robert Frost’s “Good fences make good neighbors.”
    As in much of middle America, lives were orderly. Husbands and wives kissed each other good-bye in the morning before driving off in their late-model cars, mainly Japanese and American-made sedans, to their respective offices. Children waited at the corner for the yellow school bus marked Spring Independent School District. In late afternoon, the same bus brought them home. Status equaled the bottom line on one’s bank accounts, the size of one’s house, the stickers on one’s cars, and the talents of one’s children, whether realized on the soccer field or in the classroom.
    In this world, Susan White was as miscast as Dolly