Desperate Housewife
A lonely woman looking for love, a handsome Army sniper, and a husband murdered in cold blood
Diamond was hooked. He had trouble letting people know how he felt about things, but not Michelle--"I'm not worried about letting you in close to me," he wrote her, adding that he wanted her to "be my confidant, my best friend, lover, and, yes, wife."
As the year progressed, however, life became more stressful. When Marty got back from Little Rock, he and Michelle went to a psychologist for help, but the counseling didn't last long. Marty wanted kids; Michelle didn't. He wanted things kept neat; she thought he was obsessive-compulsive. He liked to stay home; she liked to party and tool around town in her canary-yellow Corvette. The psychologist, summarizing the relationship, wrote that the couple "seem to be stuck in a critical and angry pattern with each other." During that summer, Michelle lived with Diamond for a time in an off-base apartment, but she moved back with Marty in early October. Michelle and Diamond continued seeing each other, however. Later that month, the lovers took a trip to Saba, in the Netherlands Antilles, and explored the idea of living there. In a job application with the Saba University School of Medicine, she wrote that she would be available for the job on Jan. 1, 2001. She listed Diamond as her fiance.
"Leap of faith." Professionally, Michelle was doing well. She had joined the office of Thomas Harbin, a prominent psychologist, and was counseling patients on a variety of issues, including marriage. Her patients liked her. She and Harbin became close friends, confiding their problems to each other. Looking back, Harbin says it is obvious that Michelle manipulated Diamond. She knew "how to hook men," he says, ". . . how to get men to do things for her."
Michelle loved Diamond, she says, but she realized their relationship was at a dead end. She tried several times to break up with Diamond, she says, but he was relentless in pursuing her. His E-mails got more intense. Oct. 27, 2000: "I just don't want to lose you. I've never loved anyone or anything for that matter as much as I love you . . . Please don't shut me out . . . I miss you when I can't be with you for a few days. I don't eat. I can't sleep."
In November, she E-mailed Diamond, "I have loved you from the moment I set eyes on you," but "if things don't work out, or it is all an illusion, then I am left with everything I have ever feared most in my life: alone, without a home, rejected, unloved." She scolded him for lying to her: "This lack of honesty and truthfulness has created a tear in our relationship that I cannot ignore. It prevents me from taking that leap of faith into eternity with you. . . . I am giving up on us because it is torture to me to think about paradise glimpsed and not believe it can really happen." Diamond replied that she had "destroyed my faith in love and destiny." They got back together, then split again. But on Saturday, December 9, they drove to Raleigh to celebrate her birthday at a nightclub. They stayed overnight at a Holiday Inn.
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