LOS ANGELES _ The private investigator told Debra Newell how to make herself a difficult target. Change hotels every few nights. Study the crowd before she entered a room. Ditch her stylish clothes for bland ones. Get a wig to cover her conspicuous blond hair. Blend in.
She dreaded that she would meet the fate of her older sister, Cindi, dead 31 years earlier at the hands of her own husband. The deepest trauma in her family history seemed to be replaying, as if in a nightmare loop, and she feared her mother would have to bury a second daughter.
She had more than 300 pages of documents she'd taken from her husband's home office, and during late winter and early spring of 2015 she pored over them, trying to determine the scope of his criminal past.
John kept texting her, pleading with her to visit him in the hospital. She wanted to look him in the eye and ask why he had lied to her. Also, she felt guilty about just abandoning him. "For better or for worse," she had pledged. So she went.
