Desperate Housewife
A lonely woman looking for love, a handsome Army sniper, and a husband murdered in cold blood
On August 24, the panel returned guilty verdicts against Diamond on all three counts. Diamond, given life in prison without parole, maintained his innocence at his sentencing. "I didn't kill anyone, and I did not conspire to do it with anyone," he told the jury. And: "Maybe someday people will find out what actually happened. I can't tell you . . . because I wasn't there that night"--a statement he recanted only four months later in an effort to obtain a reduced sentence.
Diamond's Army attorney, Capt. Katy Martin, prepared a 13-page offer of testimony that civilian prosecutors could use if they decided to prosecute Michelle. In the proffer, Martin said Diamond thought Marty Theer was abusing Michelle; that he borrowed the gun and gave it to Michelle after she asked for one for protection; that he did not know she planned to shoot Marty; that he agreed to meet her on the night of December 17 at her office, at 11 o'clock; and that when he arrived on foot after parking his car, he heard gunshots and saw "Michelle standing over [Theer] holding the gun." According to Martin, Diamond asked Michelle to give him the gun, and she did. Later, "they disposed of pieces" of the gun in dumpsters on their four-day trip to Florida, the statement said. Civilian prosecutors rejected the offer.
From brunet to blond. The prosecutors, meanwhile, began closing in on Michelle. In May 2002, a grand jury in Fayetteville indicted her on first-degree murder and conspiracy charges. But Michelle, who says she expected to be indicted, wasn't hanging around.
A few days before her indictment, she left New Orleans, where she had moved, and went underground. She moved to Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, Fla., and created several new identities. She boned up on how to lose herself in America, reading such books as Reborn in the U.S. of A., Secrets for Getting a New Identity, and How to Disappear in America. She signed her apartment lease as "Liza Pendragon" and obtained a Florida driver's license under the name "Alexandra Solomon." There were other names she would use, if needed: "Ashford Tierney," "Wilma Sherman," "Maia Branwen." She used a computer software program to prepare official-looking documents, including fake birth and baptismal certificates.
She cut her brown hair short and became a blond, and laid out nearly $15,000 for plastic surgery on her face. A surgeon straightened her nose, gave her a chin implant, and performed laser surgery for acne and other blemishes.
The police in Fayetteville turned to the U.S. marshals for help in finding her. Using phone records and some old-fashioned shoe leather, marshals tracked Michelle to New Orleans, then to Florida, and identified her new boyfriend. Their big break came when she called a New Orleans storage facility, where she had some personal effects, on July 28, two months after her indictment. On August 5, marshals tailed her boyfriend to her apartment and arrested her. Michelle was a mess. She had just returned from laser surgery on her face. "It almost looked like her face had been burnt or she had been in a fire," Walter Reilly, the marshal who arrested her, testified at her trial two years later.
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