An interview with Michelle Theer: 'Sex, manipulation, and swing clubs'
Q. In terms of the way you are portrayed, these various flings on the Internet, what's that all about?
A. Well, tell me who you are referring to?
Q. When you are on the Internet, in a chat room, a guy named Nate, various people. You signed off as sexy brunette. In the stuff that I've looked at, there are references to you dating men off the Internet, meeting men off the Internet, going back a few years, prior to Fayetteville.
A. I did have an affair with someone in Alabama that I met on the Internet, but that was the only person.
Q. You mean prior to North Carolina?
A. Yeah.
Q. Charley McLendon [a North Carolina man who met Michelle on the Internet] testified there was a relationship?
A. Yeah, he really blew our relationship way up. I only saw him maybe three or four times.
Q. What were you looking for?
A. I guess I was looking for what I had lost with Marty, companionship, affection, fun, laughter, someone I could relax with, someone I could enjoy time with.
Q. Why did you lose that with Marty?
A.Well, we all change over time. And Marty had changed. I had changed, too. But Marty had become very rigid, very serious. . . .
Q. You weren't enjoying his company?
A. No. . . .
Q. There is stuff about you going to "swing clubs" and having sex with other people–is that stuff all true?
A. Not the way it was portrayed, no.
Q. How would you portray it?
A. I wasn't meeting people on the Internet and going to swing clubs, no.
Q. How would you end up in swing clubs? What is a swing club?
A. It is a place where couples go to meet other couples to have fun, drink, dance, flirt.
Q. It involves sex, too, doesn't it?
A. Possibly, yes. . . .
Q. Did you go to swing clubs with Diamond?
A. Once.
Q. And did it involve having sex with other people? That's what the record shows--at least that's what other people say. Did you have sex with other people?
A. No, actually, we went and we were dancing, and there was a really popular song that summer called "The Thong Song," and one of the couples we had been talking to that was sitting at our table, the guy made some fairly innocuous comment about thongs to me, and I don't even remember what it was. . . and John became violently jealous, grabbed me by the arm, and dragged me out. And that was sort of it for the night. . . .
Q. You have been with other men to other swing clubs?
A. I went one other time with one other person. . . a male friend.
Q. This is the kind of stuff implied–that you used sex to get men, manipulated them. You are sitting here telling me that's not the case. Do you think you did, and you don't realize it?
A. What defense [do] I have against that other than people say I manipulated John Diamond to kill my husband? OK, what is my defense to that other than to say I didn't? But I can say, give me an example of what other man have I manipulated into doing other things?. . .
Q. So, you don't think you manipulated Dana Horton or some of these other people you had relationships with?
A. No, and I don't think Dana Horton would say I manipulated him. . . .
Q. Did you have Marty killed for the life insurance?
A. They are going to say that about anybody [who]. . . has any life insurance. . . . I mean, all I can do is say, no, that's not true.
Q. What got you into this corner. . . maintaining a relationship with Diamond after it was clear he was a suspect?
A. I wasn't in a relationship with him. . . .
Q. No, he was just staying there, at your home?
A. I had several people staying the night. . . I didn't like being alone at night.
Q. You had cut off all sexual relationship with John Diamond by this time?
A. After the weekend of December 9, I never was intimate with him again.
Q. It sure doesn't come across that way when you read the trial transcript. There was testimony from neighbors that he was always over there. How do you get around that?
A. They say he was over there the end of December when I wasn't even there. I was in Colorado.
Q. Was he coming, though, more often than you are telling me?
A. No, I think that time–I think that their perception of when he was there–is just distorted. . . .
Q. Your point is that after Marty had died, your affair with Diamond had ended, even though he drove you to Florida, but that was to see your friend and get a little down time.
A. Yes. . . .
Q. Diamond says on that trip he disposed of the gun.
A. He might have.
Q. His proffer says that Diamond and Michelle drove to Florida and stopped at exits along the way, and they disposed of pieces of the gun in dumpsters at each exit.
A. I don't know anything about that.
Q. Was this guy pathological?
A. Yeah.
Q. You are a pscyhologist, how come you didn't notice that before?
A. I thought about that many times, believe me. The only thing that I can really think of is that I didn't see him in the real world. I never saw him interacting with his friends. I never saw him at his job. I never saw him with his family. If you meet somebody and you are dating them, or, if you live next door to somebody, you kind of get to see how they act in the real world. But when I was with John, it was always sort of a secret thing, and it was always sort of a lie because–well, for one thing, he was lying to me about being married, and lying to me about, he was always lying to me about something, anyway, just our meeting together was always sort of a lie because, you know, I was lying to everybody about where I was and what I was doing. So, it was just like another lie within a lie. . . .
Q. Let's say you were writing this story, what do you want people to convey about you–that you are not this monster?
A. I don't think people will ever believe that I am not a monster. I think I would write a book and say everything there is to be said, and counter every lie that's been said or been written with what I see as the truth, and people wouldn't believe it, because people want to believe the worst because it makes a better story.
Q. In psychology, what is the term for it?
A. Catastrophizing. . . and believe me, I'm a catastrophe.
Q. In your business, what does catastrophizing mean?
A. The worst it could possibly be.
Q. Is that how you see your life? Or how you see what's happened to you? Or is the way people see you?
A. Both.
Q. You mean you are innocent you are telling me.
A. I made a lot of mistakes, and, ultimately, I may be responsible for Marty's death because, if it wasn't for me, John Diamond would never have come into our lives. But I never wanted Marty dead, I never wanted him harmed, and if I could do anything to bring him back, I would.
Q. You say that because you feel that, in some ways, you allowed Diamond to become obsessed with you and because of that he felt cornerred and had no other way out but to kill Marty.
A. I never thought that John would be capable of doing what he did. I never saw him behave in any violent way. I never saw him threaten violence to anyone or anything but himself when he said that he would kill himself.
Part 9: Life in the joint