Let’s remember when Ruth Neslund murdered her 83 year old husband, on this day in 1980 (August 8)
This story is amazing to me. A nice, older couple rocks a small community with… murder.
HistoryLink has all the details:
On August 8, 1980, Ruth Neslund (1920–1993) shoots her 83-year-old husband, Rolf Neslund (1897–1980), twice in the head after a violent argument over his purloined retirement fund. With the assistance of her older brother, she disposes of the body by chopping it up with a butcher knife and an ax, incinerating the pieces in a burn-barrel and dumping the ashes in a pile of manure in back of their Lopez Island home. After colleagues report Rolf Neslund missing, the San Juan County Sheriff’s Department opens a missing-persons investigation, eventually charging Ruth, in March 1983, with murdering her husband. In October 1985, Ruth Neslund will finally stand trial in San Juan County Superior Court and, after a month of testimony, be found guilty of premeditated murder. The judge sentences Ruth to life in prison, where she will die of natural causes in February 1993.
Seattle Met says this:
It was a story beyond the most lurid film noir, set on sunny Lopez Island. By August 1980, when Ruth Neslund claimed her husband Rolf had left to return to his native Norway, whatever love there might once have been had long gone from their marriage. At 79 (or 83 — he’d lied about his age to go to sea) Rolf was still dashing, and still close to an old Norwegian flame by whom he had two adult sons. Ruth was just 60, but fat, frumpy, and alcoholic. So long as Rolf was an elite Puget Sound pilot, off guiding big ships to berth, the money poured in and they stayed out of each other’s hair.
All of this is amazing, and I didn’t even mention the West Seattle Bridge stuff:
