Luggage By Kroger: A True Crime Memoir Read Online Free

waiting to welcome the rest
of the team. Carried away by the recollection, she said she had
secured an affidavit from the soccer player. She described the
scene for everyone at the deposition, including Robert.

    "It was wonderful," she said. "You
have got to hear this one affidavit, it is the best. The guy was
quite a rider. The noises were unmistakable, and I turned around.
She forced this guy. I mean, you know."

    Robert needed a recess to compose
himself as a member of her audience, so they took a break. Then she
tried to soothe everyone's nerves with a disclaimer: "Oh, come on.
We are just having a little fun."

    Asked how the tryst with a soccer
player could relate to the Tedesco estate case, Catherine mumbled
something about 'legal strategy.' Then she said she couldn't quite
remember. One of the Tedesco family lawyers asked her to notify him
if she ever recalled, and she responded with sarcasm: "You will be
the first one to know. I will call you."

    Obviously frustrated, he replied,
"Will you, as soon as you have that? All right. Will you make me
the first to know? Please don't call me. Call your attorney, and I
will talk to him."

    Unable to resist a jibe, his
associate jumped in and instructed Catherine to "call him at
home."

    "Don't hold your breath," she
replied. "Just wait until trial time."

    Of course, none of this would ever surface in
a courtroom without some relation to the Tedesco case, and
Catherine kept trying to tie it in. She said she suspected Robert
of killing Tedesco because the anesthesiologist had seduced his
wife in front of him. She said Robert aimed to take advantage of
the doctor, and had grown to hate him because of the
affair.

    "It wasn't a general feeling," she
said of her charge he wanted to take advantage of Tedesco. "When
you stand in a room, and you watch a man have anal intercourse with
your wife while she kneels on the floor on all fours laughing and
screaming, I would say that is advantage."

    She added with dramatic flare: "I
begged Robert to stop them. I begged him to stop them, and he said
it is just good, clean fun. He had this really silly look on his
face."

    I wish I'd have been a fly on the
wall for that deposition. While reading it years later, I wondered
what kind of silly look Robert had on his face while Catherine was
recounting the alleged scene. And they were only just warming up.
Next they moved forward with more serious questions about the
burglary of Tedesco's townhouse, the reason for their split, and
the events surrounding his brutal demise.

    FOUR
    July 17, 1979

    Surprise pregnancies seemed to
occur frequently in Catherine's relationships. At least, that's
what investigators would tell me later, warning me to beware if she
started warning how she'd missed a period. They would charge she
had used the threat of pregnancies in the past to extort money or
other concessions from discarded lovers. And the Tedesco estate
case files included not just one, but two examples of the pregnancy
wedge. Not only was an alleged pregnancy central to her break-up
with Tedesco, but Tedesco lawyers located another old boyfriend who
received similar news.

    That old boyfriend was a six-year
veteran of the sheriff's department who admitted to a recent
extramarital affair with Catherine. He became material to the
estate case in 1979 when attorneys learned he had fenced an antique
sword removed from Tedesco's collection at Catherine's request,
netting $175. Besides locating a missing item for their probate
inventory, Tedesco's attorneys received an added bonus from the
deputy's pre-trial deposition. He had testified she later demanded
three hundred dollars to finance an abortion with the threat:
"Remember George? Remember what happened to him? Remember your son
and wife."

    He rejected her pregnancy claim and
denied her the money. But Catherine told me later she had the last
laugh by snitching him out to his wife, who responded with divorce
papers. Catherine cackled as she told his story,