Don't Look Behind You and Other True Cases by Ann Rule

Author:Ann Rule [Ann Rule]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781617934322
Amazon: 1617934321
Publisher: Pocket Books
Published: 2011-04-30T04:00:00+00:00

There were so many times when Bob humiliated Joann.

On a rare occasion, Pat and her husband, Louie, who was a police officer in Auburn, Washington, joined a group of people that included Bob and Joann for a night of dancing.

The Spanish Castle, a dance hall that dated back to the twenties, stood on the corner of Pacific Highway South—“Old 99”—and the busy Kent Des Moines Road. The dusty yellow stucco structure was long past its glory days when big name bands played there, but it still featured local bands that drew crowds. It was only three miles or so from the brown house where Joann and Bob lived.

The group was having a good time on that Saturday night until Joann apparently said or did something that made Bob mad.

“He knocked her right out of her chair, onto the floor,” Pat says. “She was hurt and very embarrassed. People stared for a couple of minutes, and then they went back to drinking and dancing.”

Nobody reported it to the police.

Fifty years later, it’s hard to imagine that women were considered chattel by some men then—that they could be savagely abused in front of witnesses and no one interfered. But the term “battered woman” had yet to be coined. Women were humiliated and—more often than not—afraid to come forward; the majority of wives didn’t work and were dependent on their husbands financially.

Certainly, there are legions of abused women today but at least there are safe places and support groups where they can run if they have the courage to leave.

Joann Hansen had few options.

She was an immaculate housekeeper and a good cook who kept within the budget Bob allowed for groceries. But their house on the road to Saltwater State Park in Des Moines wasn’t homey. The wood floors were dark; Bob liked the brown furniture, his trophies of dead animals mounted on the walls, and his cabinets filled with guns.

Both Bob and Joann lived behind masks, trying to keep their secrets from prying eyes. He wanted his friends and other people to view him as a good family man. Like his own parents’ scrapbook, where he and his brother Ken smiled for the camera, the younger Hansens’ album is full of photos of them and their children. Bob and Joann’s “wedding” photo depicts a willowy bride with an orchid corsage feeding cake to her handsome groom. There are the birth announcements, the babies’ nursery identification cards, baby pictures, family reunions, snapshots of Bob and the kids on one outing or another, all looking joyful.

They could easily have been chosen for the cover of the Saturday Evening Post.

No one who hadn’t seen her cuts and bruises could have guessed that the beautiful Joann, who still made an entrance when she and Bob had their infrequent dates, was so afraid behind her carefully constructed facade.

Bob was very successful in real estate investments and in construction. He worked hard and he was shrewd when it came to buying property. Although he wouldn’t allow Joann to buy anything without his permission, his family always had food and shelter.

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