Desperate Housewife
A lonely woman looking for love, a handsome Army sniper, and a husband murdered in cold blood
Despite all her efforts to hide, Michelle says she wasn't running from the law but wanted only to try to make a new start: "I was running away from the terror. . . . I was not running from the police."
She could have struck a deal with prosecutors but declined a plea offer. The three-month trial in Fayetteville last year was a circus. The chief prosecutor, Margaret "Buntie" Russ, charged that money and lust drove Michelle; she cited the half-million dollars that Michelle stood to collect from her husband's life insurance policy. Her promiscuous lifestyle was laid out in stark detail. Her former employer, Thomas Harbin, testified that she once had jokingly referred to herself as a "black widow," a woman who kills her husband for money. Diamond's sister, Deborah Dvorak, testified that Michelle practiced black magic and witchcraft. "She told me she could put spells on people," Dvorak said. Throughout the proceedings, Michelle kept a Bible at her side. She didn't testify, but her attorneys argued that she was shattered by Marty's murder. It took the jury less than six hours to convict her on December 3 last year, six days before her 34th birthday. Today, she is serving a life sentence without parole.
During the interview with U.S. News , in a small conference room in the women's prison in Raleigh, wearing her prison blue shirt and jeans, her hair (she's a brunet once again) pulled back, Michelle came across as cool and articulate--even when she was asked if she was a cold-blooded killer: "I don't think people will ever believe that I am not a monster." Later: "I guess everyone thinks . . . I didn't love him and obviously killed him, that's what they think."
For the families involved, the pain may never end. Ann Hoefler sat through her daughter's trial and says Michelle was convicted because of her swinging lifestyle. "She was unhappy. What does that prove?" Hoefler asks. "She really lost her way, but does that mean somebody killed somebody?"
John Diamond's parents are convinced that he is guilty--but only of poor taste in women. His father, Bobby, is driving heavy rigs in Iraq for a civilian contractor to finance the work of an appellate lawyer, Donald Rehkopf. In his appeal, filed with the Army Court of Criminal Appeals, Rehkopf charged that the police work was sloppy, that Diamond's civilian lawyers performed miserably at his court-martial, and that only Michelle had a motive to kill her husband.
For Linda Gettler, there is only the painful knowledge that she will never again speak to Marty, her only son. "For me," she said at Diamond's court-martial, "it's the fact that every time the phone rings, I know when I pick it up, I'm not going to hear, 'Hi, Mom.' I'm never going to hear, 'I love you, Mom.' "
An edited transcript of the interview with Michelle Theer, along with an appeal brief filed by John Diamond with an Army court, can be read at www.usnews.com/murder. Theer was transferred to the Southern Correctional Institution in Troy, N.C., last September.
With Jennifer Jack
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