Desperate Housewife
A lonely woman looking for love, a handsome Army sniper, and a husband murdered in cold blood
By the time Marty was 4, he and Linda were living in Denver. Those early days were tough. A registered nurse, Linda worked the 3-to-11 p.m. shift at a local medical center and scraped enough money together to buy a three-bedroom ranch-style house. Marty was a go-getter. He got up at 4 a.m., made breakfast, and took care of the dogs--Kiki, a German shepherd mix, and Rascal, a Labrador mix. At age 12, Marty started his own lawn-mowing business, and he later went to work at a McDonald's. He and his grandfather on his mother's side, Al Dunbar, were close. They fished and climbed mountains together, built doghouses, and even drew up designs for space stations. Dunbar, distraught after Marty's murder, died of bladder cancer three years ago.
Marty wanted to be an astronaut. His mother recalls: "When he was a boy, he said in 25 years he saw himself on a satellite beyond Pluto, studying the stars with a telescope." Marty was an athlete, lettering in track, and a straight-A student at Abraham Lincoln High School. "Marty had the kindest heart in the world," says Army Maj. Lonnie Carlson, his closest boyhood friend. "He was the proverbial good guy."
Michelle Forcier grew up in nearby Aurora, Colo. An Air Force brat, she was born on Dec. 9, 1970, while her father, Tom Forcier, was stationed at Dyess Air Force Base in Abilene, Texas. The family lived in England for a few years, then moved to Charleston, S.C., before relocating to Colorado, in 1980.
Michelle was an adventurous kid. Her mother, Ann Hoefler, remembers, "Michelle was always very outgoing; she has a wonderful sense of humor, liked to play jokes, a real extrovert. She loved to make people laugh." But Michelle, in the prison interview, recalled the "dark" days of her early life. Her parents often argued, she said, and her father moved in and out of the house. In her first year at Aurora Central High School, "I was a cheerleader, and I was on the volleyball team, and I was in the choir," Michelle said. But soon, her parents' marriage collapsed into divorce, and "I had to drop out of all of that because I had to come home after school to watch my brother and sister. I had to cook dinner and fold the laundry. It was like I was a housewife, which I just hated."
In her junior year, a friend introduced Michelle to Marty. She was 16. He was 17. It was, she said, love at first sight. "He was just a genuinely nice guy," Michelle recalled. "He didn't act like he had to be something special. We did click right away, and I mean right away. I know that I wanted to see him again." The two soon became inseparable.
Marty graduated, and after fielding offers from the three service academies, he decided on the Air Force Academy. After that, it was pretty much a long-distance romance over the next four years. Michelle joined the Air Force Reserves and attended the University of Northern Colorado, in Greeley. In January 1991, her unit was activated for the Persian Gulf War. She was sent to an Air Force base in Texas to work in a command nerve center.
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