Turning A Husband Into Flowers

Rolf Neslund was born in Kongsberg, Norway, on 7 July 1897, though the episode notes the date may have been 1900. His father was a barber, and from the age of four Rolf stood on a wooden box lathering customers' faces. At twelve he ran away, stowed away on a Danish passenger ship to the United States, was caught trying to skip the three-cent ferry fare across the Hudson, spent seven days in an immigrant holding pen and was deported. He ran away again a year later, reached his aunt on Long Island, and shipped out as a mess boy on the British freighter Ganges. During the First World War he survived the torpedoing of a ship in an eight-ship convoy, in which eight men died. He rose to second mate, took his first command, the Robin Goodfellow, in 1926, became an American citizen in 1928 and in 1934 married Alfhild Margrethe, a Norwegian woman the hosts call Margo. In 1935 he met Margo's younger sister Eleanor, then eleven years old.

In March 1943, as master of the company flagship Andrea Luckenbach, he was carrying 6,000 tons of ammunition towards the North African invasion when the U-boat U-221 torpedoed the ship. Twenty-one crewmen died and sixty-three survived; Rolf swam through fuel oil to a lifeboat. In 1945 he was one of the first members of the Puget Sound Pilots Association, guiding ships through the strait.

Margo became chronically ill, and in 1956 Eleanor, by then 32 and a single mother of two, moved into the family home north of Seattle to care for her. Rolf and Eleanor began an affair, and Eleanor became pregnant. Margo divorced him. Eleanor and Rolf went through a wedding ceremony in Finland in 1958, but it was not valid because his divorce was not final; their son Rolf Jr was born that year and Eric two years later. details of the account remain covered until revealed Ruth pursued him, moved into the Vancouver house as a supposed housekeeper, and on 24 April 1961 Rolf used a Canadian marriage licence intended for Eleanor to marry Ruth instead. Eleanor learned of it and raised the two boys; a Vancouver paternity suit forced Rolf to support them.

Ruth controlled the money. Rolf's mother left him about $9,000, he earned well at sea, and Ruth invested it. They bought a ten-acre compound at Alec Bay on Lopez Island and called it Shangri-La. Their marriage was violent and soaked in drink: shouting, scratching, biting, black eyes and visits from the sheriff. In 1978, at the age of 80, Rolf was still piloting ships. On 11 June 1978 he was guiding the freighter Antonio Chavez when it struck the West Spokane Street Bridge in Seattle, leaving the bridge stuck open; the Coast Guard found him negligent and he retired. A flattering newspaper piece followed on 1 April 1979.

That year Ruth moved the couple's money into accounts in her own name. On 1 May 1979 his $78,049.50 retirement fund was placed in a $50,000 joint money-market certificate and a savings account; on 25 June she redeemed the certificate and moved the $50,000 and the $50,157.95 savings balance into accounts bearing only her name. She also controlled his $1,800 monthly pension. In July 1980 Rolf went to his old friend Kay Scheffler in Seattle for a $30 loan because a cheque had bounced, and learnt that a mortgage Kay had supposedly still owed them had in fact been paid off in 1975.

Rolf disappeared in August 1980. The last record of him using money is 8 August. That day Ruth telephoned her nieces Joy Stroop and Donna Smith and said she had shot Rolf and burned his body; she repeated it on 10 August. On 14 August, the day she later said he left, she placed a classified advertisement in the Friday Harbor Journal selling a commercial meat grinder for $550, his 1965 Mustang, a Ford Fairlane and other belongings. On 16 August she bought eight square yards of carpet and seam tape. On 10 September she told friends he had drawn $25,000 and gone to Europe, and in October she told the sheriff's department she had flown to Norway looking for him. In February 1981 two deputies visited her; she said he was not missing, just gone, and gave conflicting dates. She claimed he had left with Eleanor. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now

Her brother Paul moved into the house that winter. In January 1982 he wrote an angry letter about money and a car, and in February, after Ruth told him the car was sold, he told the police what he had heard. details of the account remain covered until revealed Ruth, he said, remarked that it was the first time the old bastard had ever smelled sweet.

A second, invasive search found blood under a patch of newer carpet, high-velocity blood mist on a ceiling tile above Rolf's chair, blood on the concrete slabs, on the bathroom walls, on a trunk behind the couch and on a .38 revolver. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it

this part of the story is covered for now details of the account remain covered until revealed the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it Ruth testified, denied everything and shouted, "I did not kill my husband." this part of the story is covered for now details of the account remain covered until revealed the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it

In January 1987 she settled a civil-rights suit against the sheriff's department for $6,000. this part of the story is covered for now details of the account remain covered until revealed She was diagnosed with lung cancer in the autumn of 1992 and died at Purdy Correctional Facility on 17 February 1993, a blood clot in the lung, shortly before a clemency hearing. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it In June 2023 islanders raised money to restore a wooden statue of Rolf that termites had toppled.