Without Pity: Ann Rule's Most Dangerous Killers (28 page)

With that, Tony lost the financial ball game. But he did not lose his freedom. He had only lost a civil case.

It took another court order to get Fernandez to vacate the home in Auburn. He had lived there since July of 1974 when Ruth died. Tony was ordered not to attempt to remove furniture, appliances, or anything of value that would be part of the estate. Judge Revelle also restrained Fernandez from using credit cards drawn on the estate. Counsel for Sue and Kathy said, “Fernandez has been dissipating everything he can get his hands upon and has spent about $155,000 that was part of the estate.” Even as the trial had progressed, Tony was said to have been involved in a $200,000 land purchase.

Finally, Tony moved from the home that now belonged to Ruth’s daughters. But, in the end, there was little of the estate left for the two orphaned young women. After lawyers’ fees and Tony’s free spending, they obtained less than 10 percent of the money their parents had put aside for their futures.

On June 3, 1976, Fernandez was charged in Lane County, Oregon, with forgery and theft by sale of timber valued at nearly $75,000 and was arrested on a federal parole violation warrant. He was not inside long. Yet another woman besotted with Tony Fernandez put up his bail.

On August 12, 1977, Fernandez was charged with seven felony counts in Thurston County, Washington—second-degree theft, two counts of unlawful issuance of bank checks, and four counts of first-degree theft alleging unlawful sale of timber rights that he claimed were his to a third party. These violations were said to have occurred in Thurston County in the winter of 1976–77. Convicted on all these counts, consecutive sentences could net him fifty-five years in prison.

On September 1, 1977, the charge for which Ruth’s daughters and loved ones had waited so long was made. The King County Prosecutor’s Office charged Anthony Fernandez with first-degree murder in the death of Ruth Fernandez. His trial, scheduled for January 9, 1978—almost four years after Ruth died on the lonely mountainside—was one where the evidence was mostly circumstantial, one of the most difficult cases for a prosecutor to press. It was lengthy, and full of surprises. Tony Fernandez’s mistress, wearing her fur coat, was present at his trial every day.

Tony Fernandez was convicted of Ruth Logg Fernandez’s murder in February 1978, and sentenced to life in prison. And that was exactly what he served.

On Christmas Day 1995, Anthony Fernandez, seventy-three, enjoyed a hearty holiday meal in prison. And then he dropped dead of a massive heart attack.

Who was the real Tony Fernandez? Was he a timber baron, a doctor of psychology, an acupuncturist, a historian of Navajo culture, a master of city government? A lover—a studied con man—or a methodical killer?

It doesn’t matter anymore to Ruth Logg Fernandez. The man who promised to love her forever betrayed her. She lost her hopes for the perfect romance in the darkness on the steep mountainside along Granite Creek Road. She will never see her grandchildren and never know her daughters as mature women.

Perhaps she knows, however, that those daughters saw their quest through to the end and gave her the only gift they could: justice.

N
ancy Brooks
was a California housewife in the early 1960s. She married in an era when young wives strove to emulate the perfect television sitcom mother. Their floors were waxed, their children behaved, and they cooked healthy, nutritious meals. Their homes had orange shag carpeting, avocado-colored kitchen appliances, and daisy-print wallpaper.

Nancy and her husband, an engineer, lived in a large apartment with their son and daughter—the perfect 1960s family. One of their neighbors in the apartment house was a divorced woman, Claire Noonan,* whose son, Bennett, was in his late teens. Nancy and Claire became very good friends, and Bennett was also welcome in the Brooks home. He was a rather odd kid, lanky and gawky with stringy dark hair, who was considered a nerd by some of his contemporaries and just plain weird by others. Nancy was sympathetic when Claire confided that her former husband had been abusive to his stepson. Bennett had suffered so much physical abuse that he had problems with his self-worth and his own identity.

Nancy, a registered nurse, recognized that Bennett needed someone to listen to him, and she was kind to him. Her children adored Bennett, who was an accomplished magician. He would entertain them patiently for hours with amazing feats of magic. He had few social contacts with people his own age, however, and Nancy suspected he was lonely. He probably had a crush on Nancy Brooks who was very pretty and only about a dozen years older than he was. Claire was grateful that the Brookses were so kind to her son.

Both families were transitory residents of California, though, and they soon moved thousands of miles apart. Claire married a physician and moved to Memphis, Tennessee; Nancy Brooks’s husband, Cal, got a job in Seattle working for Boeing.

In the mid-1960s the Brookses moved to Bellevue, Washington, a burgeoning bedroom community for Seattle at that time and the best possible place for young Boeing engineers to reside. Neighborhoods with picturesque names like Lake Hills, Robinswood, Phantom Lake, and Bridle Trails sprang up almost overnight. Houses were built close together so that the developers could get the most out of every piece of forest land they had snapped up, and barbecues and kaffeeklatsches were popular social events.

Nancy Brooks had always seen herself as a person who helped others. That was why she had chosen nursing as a career, and that was why she had done her best to help Claire LeClerk Noonan with her problem son, Bennett. It wasn’t long, however, before Nancy found a new best friend in Bellevue. She met Rose Stahl* through an interest they shared: they were both animal lovers, and they entered their dogs in local shows. Nancy and Rose raised show-quality poodles, a breed that requires much grooming and care. The women were the same age, thirty-nine, and they had so much in common that they saw each other almost every day and talked on the phone several times a day.

In California, Claire had had problems with Bennett and Nancy had been a godsend to her. Now, in Washington, Nancy was a sympathetic listener as Rose confided the details of her unhappy marriage. Nancy and Cal Brooks appeared to have a solid marriage, and that made Nancy doubly sorry for Rose.

Rose and Art Stahl hadn’t been married for very long, and they both had children from previous marriages, so they had a combined family of his-and-hers children, plus they had two baby sons together. But theirs was not a happy union. They had marathon fights over how to deal with their children. Rose resented Art’s older children visiting and would not let him discipline her children. Their biggest arguments, however, were over how to spend, or
not
spend—a $780,000 trust fund that belonged to Art.

At the same time, Art had the best and worst of all possible worlds. On one hand, the fortune he had inherited from his father was enough to keep a man of modest needs comfortable for a long time. On the other, he found himself locked in a marriage that was not only destroying his peace of mind but which caused him constant anxiety. Stahl wanted it to last, if only for the children’s sake, but nothing he did seemed to please his wife.

Although the interest on his trust fund was more than enough to support his family, Art Stahl chose to work. He was a teaching assistant in the Mechanical Engineering Department of the University of Washington. He was a very intelligent man, and he loved to teach. He also enjoyed the ambience of the University of Washington campus.

At age fifty-two, Art was five feet nine and weighed a trim 150 pounds; he was a dapper man with wavy dark hair, a beard, and a mustache that was waxed at the tips. He chose to dip into his near-million-dollar trust fund only sparingly. Rather, he wanted its interest to accumulate. He and Rose had signed a prenuptial agreement stipulating that she had no access to his inheritance; the only people who could touch it were Art and an attorney in New York. Rose fretted over the luxuries they could be enjoying if Art were less stubborn about their living on his teaching salary. She found him unnecessarily stingy.

There were times, of course, when the Stahl marriage seemed to sail on an even keel. At other times—which were becoming all too frequent—Art Stahl was a beleaguered man. Rose was nothing if not relentless. The children needed money, she needed money for her dog shows, and they needed a nicer house. To preserve even a modicum of peace, Art often gave in to her demands. Whenever he could compromise to glean even a little serenity in his marriage, he tried to do so.

Art Stahl’s biggest sacrifice was to send his own teenage daughter to live in a foster home because Rose couldn’t get along with her. He regretted having to banish his daughter from his home, and he visited her as often as possible. He was torn between his loyalty and love for her and his belief that his two baby boys from his marriage to Rose needed him more.

At Art’s urging, he and Rose spent a lot of time talking to counselors about their problem marriage. He knew that Rose told even the most intimate details of their marriage to her best friend, Nancy Brooks, and got advice from Nancy. Art told
his
secrets to a journal that he had begun to keep. The more miserable he became, the more he spilled out his pain onto the pages of his journal, which was really a sheaf of loose papers filled with longhand notes.

Nancy Brooks seemed to be a sympathetic woman; Art didn’t mind that Rose confided in her. Sometimes he too talked to Nancy about the problems in his marriage. But he soon regretted it; he found out that anything he told Nancy soon got back to Rose. It was clear that if Nancy had to choose sides, she would stand firmly behind Rose. Art wondered sometimes what kind of exaggerated complaints Rose was telling Nancy.

Nancy Brooks was not an animated woman, and it was hard to tell what she was thinking. Five feet seven and slender, she carried herself rather stiffly. This was not her fault—Nancy had been in a number of car accidents, which had necessitated three surgeries to fuse vertebrae in her back and neck. She was quite pretty—or would have been if she’d smiled more. She had dark hair, cut short and curling around her cheeks, big brown eyes, and a sweet mouth. Despite her physical problems, Nancy was always on the move, doing something for her children or her husband or her friends.

Nancy Brooks, with her PTA-mother facade, seemed like the last person in the world who would ever become involved in criminal intrigue. She was a wife, mother, friend, and dog trainer. She dressed conservatively, keeping her hemlines well below her knees—no matter what fashion dictated. She wore sensible shoes with Cuban heels, and she often wore dark-rimmed glasses.

As the Stahl marriage continued to come apart at the seams, Rose Stahl’s good friend Nancy was beside her, listening to her complaints about Art and her worries about how she could support her children if Art moved out. The huge trust fund would go away if Art went away. Nancy patted her hand, poured her another cup of tea, and told her there had to be a way to work things out.

Meanwhile, Art’s journal of marital misery grew thicker. There were times now when he actually felt afraid of Rose. He decided he could no longer keep his diary in the home they shared, so he locked the thick stack of pages in his desk in his office at the university. Sometimes he felt a little foolish about saving his writings and wondered why he even bothered to keep them. But he
did
keep them. If anything ever happened to him, he would leave some kind of record behind of the shambles his married life had become.

By the middle of 1974, Art Stahl realized that there was no way he and Rose could ever live together in harmony. He wasn’t so sure he would live at all if he stayed with Rose. He was not an aggressive man, but Rose was certainly a hostile and aggressive woman. One night in September, he had the temerity to change the channel on their television set. There was a show he wanted to see, but Rose, who was working in the kitchen, was angry that he had switched away from what
she
wanted to see.

According to his diary, Art looked up to see her storming toward him with a butcher knife in her hand. She shouted, “Some night I’m going to stick a knife between your ribs, and you won’t know what night it is.”

He stared at her, horrified at her rage and convinced she meant what she said. Art Stahl was a prudent man, and he saw that he no longer had a choice. He had tried reasoning and counseling, but now he knew he had to go. On October 3, 1974, he left the family home in Bellevue and moved into an apartment.

It was wrenching to leave his little sons behind. He had always intended to provide for Rose and their children, and he had been in the process of drawing up a will that would leave the principal amount of his trust to Rose, with substantial sums to all of their children—his, hers, and theirs. As it was, if he should die, Rose would take his place in the trust management.
She
would work with the financial adviser on the East Coast to decide how the money would be spent.

Stahl, of course, provided full support for Rose and the children, even while he maintained a separate residence.

Nancy Brooks and Rose Stahl continued to be best friends and to hash over the state of Rose’s marriage—and they remained active in dog show circles.

Art Stahl was beginning to build new interests of his own. He started taking a class in an obscure medical art: reflexology. He enrolled in the evening course offered by the Experimental College Program at the University of Washington. It was held at a health center a block away from the north precinct of the Seattle Police Department, and it dealt with the healing techniques that reflexology offered, the premise being that all the ills, aches, and pains of the human body could be made well by the skilled application of foot massage.

Instead of the needles used in acupuncture, a trained hand on the right spot of the foot could allegedly cure almost everything. The once-a-week classes were to continue through November 26.

Whether Art really believed in the benefits of reflexology or not, it was an interesting concept, and he met new people. Aside from his classmates in the science of the human foot, the only others who knew he was studying reflexology were his estranged wife, Rose, and, through her, Nancy Brooks, although Art might have mentioned the classes to a few of his teaching associates at the university.

Nancy Brooks had reestablished her acquaintance with Bennett LeClerk sometime in 1972. The awkward, nerdy teenager she had known in California had meta-morphosed into an entirely different person in the decade since she had befriended him and his mother.

Bennett had called her Bellevue home and asked to speak to Nancy. At first, she had no idea who he was. He had changed his last name and was no longer using his mother’s name.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said smoothly. “You would know me as Claire Noonan’s son. I used to do magic tricks for your kids in California.”

“Of course,” Nancy said. “You’re
that
Bennett.” It had been a long time, but she invited him to come and visit at the Brookses’ home. He came over that very day and stayed for hours, reminiscing. He stayed for supper and long after.

Nancy stared at him, amazed. He had certainly changed. The skinny kid was now six feet two and weighed almost 200 pounds. He was dressed in a well-cut dark business suit. He said he lived in Everett, Washington; he had married a California girl, and they had moved up to Washington State. He told Nancy he had worked for a while as a jailer in the Snohomish County Jail and that he was studying to be a reserve officer.

Bennett had always been a little strange. Although she didn’t bring it up, Nancy recalled that he had become upset if he heard about children being physically punished or abused—because he had suffered terribly as a child. He seemed quite urbane now that he was in his late twenties, but she wondered if his early insecurities still gripped him from time to time.

In the series of events that began to unfold in Bellevue, Everett, and Seattle in the mid-1970s, it is well nigh impossible to give complete credence to any of the principal characters’ recall. The only way to tell the bizarre story is to give each person’s viewpoint, and let the reader judge who was telling the truth—or perhaps came
closest
to the truth.

Nancy Brooks recalled that Bennett LeClerk came to see her frequently, always dressed in a dark business suit. He was not one to drop in for a quick visit; he invariably lingered for hours. He hung around until she was preparing supper for her family, and she felt that she had no choice but to invite him to stay. She began to hint broadly that she had things to do and places to go, but he never took it as a cue for him to leave. His presence became, she said, “intolerable.”