THREE

Major Brodie & Daddy Johansen

Clark’s violent death and the gruesome scene at the house were fiercely traumatic, and McCurdy was badly shaken when he returned to Tenneco and reported the tragedy to company administrators.

The somber group of executives agreed among themselves that someone had to notify Jill. Since McCurdy was one of Clark’s closest friends and had a pretty good idea of where to find her in New Orleans, he drew the unenviable task of passing along the message about the shooting to the widow.

A year or two earlier when McCurdy flew into New Orleans International on business, he had driven the few miles from the airport to visit Jill’s parents in Metairie, and he still had their address and telephone number.

He figured the home on Yetta Avenue was a good place to begin looking for her. When he dialed the number Jill was there.

She sounded a bit surprised, but was friendly and responded with a standard greeting:

“Hi, Mac. How are you?”

Speaking softly and struggling to suppress the lump in his throat, he replied he had bad news. “Clark has been killed.”

“What? How?” Jill demanded.

“He was shot!”

Jill hesitated for a moment or so, before gasping, “Who would want to do that to Clark? Oh, Clark…”

It was a good question, one that would still be unanswered twenty years later, except for rumors and suspicions that somehow were never quite pinned down. But McCurdy wasn’t an interrogator; he was a messenger with bad news, and he listened patiently and sympathetically while Jill apparently began to lose her composure.

She was reacting with the expressions of shock and agony that could be expected of any normal person in her position, considering the circumstances.

A couple of days later, McCurdy took a telephone call at his office from a man in New Orleans who identified himself as Louis A. DiRosa. He was Jill’s lawyer, and he wanted to know about company death benefits and any other proceeds that might be coming to his client. McCurdy had not only been Clark’s chum, but he was also Tenneco’s manager of employee benefits for all the pipelines. He handled all the paperwork involved with the death or disabilities of pipeline employees and mailed out the checks to survivors. He was the right man to call.

Clark was killed twenty days after Jill cross-filed for divorce, and she was still his wife and next of kin. Tenneco had a generous package of death benefits and other extras for its employees. Clark had a hefty retirement policy and a company insurance policy with a double-indemnity clause for accidental death. Death by gunshot, if the victim wasn’t shooting back at someone, was covered by the special provision.

Jill eventually wound up with roughly $156,369.41, solely from her husband’s company benefits. The package included funds from a retirement plan, life insurance, and a company savings program in which he had 689 shares of Tenneco stock. At the time it was worth $24 per share, but the value doubled over the next decade. A portion of the estate of Clark’s parents also eventually fell into her hands through $150,000 trust funds set up for each of the boys. The total estate was also shared with the other grandchildren.

The young widow collected a small fortune after everything was totalled. In 1972 when fast-track engineers like Clark were earning between $25,000 and $30,000 annually, she had come into a tremendous amount of money.

McCurdy wound up mailing most of the checks from the retirement policy to Jill at the Tower Advertising Company, which she had formed and operated in New Orleans. Jill’s company offices were next door to those of her lawyer in the Pere Marquette Building. But Clark’s old friend also turned over some checks and documentation directly to DiRosa in Houston. The high-powered New Orleans lawyer was in town within a couple of days or so of Clark’s death, looking after his client’s welfare and affairs.

DiRosa was an experienced attorney who was a member of a politically powerful New Orleans family. His older brother, Joseph V. DiRosa, was a longtime member of the seven-member city council, who held one of two at-large seats voted on in all precincts of the city. For awhile Joseph was council president and mayor pro tem.

The younger DiRosa was a shrewd and resourceful legal technician who understood politics and the subtle intricacies of the law. He was a skilled professional who knew how to get everything for his sexy client that was coming to her from her late husband’s estate.

One of the first things DiRosa did when he got to the Bayou City, was sweep into the Houston Police Department homicide headquarters and begin going over records of their investigation into the murder. He also talked with B. B. about the company’s survivor benefits. One time DiRosa drove around the block until B. B. rode the elevator down from his office and walked out to the curb to hand over benefits documents to the lawyer in his car.

DiRosa’s client was safely back in New Orleans, where she checked herself into a psychiatric hospital for treatment of acute hysteria after slashing her wrists. She was desperately worried about how she would raise three little boys without her husband, she claimed. But she was convinced at the hospital that she had to put those feelings behind her and go on with her life for the sake of the children.

While she was in the hospital, she was conveniently removed from the direct attentions of homicide investigators in Houston. Under the circumstances, as a patient hospitalized for hysteria and emotional distress, the fragile state of her mental health and her wellbeing were too important to risk by submitting her to questioning by inquisitive lawmen.

“We wanted to talk to her but she hid behind attorneys,” Houston Detective Sgt. Jim Binford told the National Enquirer twenty years later. Binford was also quoted as saying Jill was the only suspect.

While DiRosa was collecting information and familiarizing himself with his client’s tangled affairs and Jill was coping with her grief in the hospital, Charles Coit was tending to funeral arrangements for his only brother.

Charles had been home alone at five o’clock Wednesday afternoon when he answered the telephone. A man on the other end of the line identified himself as an officer with the Houston Police Department. The policeman asked if he was the brother of William Clark Coit. A sick feeling of apprehension was already sweeping over Charles when he replied affirmatively.

“Well, he’s been shot,” the officer said.

Charles dreaded the question he had to ask, but it couldn’t be avoided.

“Is he dead?”

“Yes,” the policeman confirmed.

Charles was standing up with the telephone in his hand, and his legs suddenly felt like strings of cooked spaghetti. He sat down on the floor. He asked the officer if his parents had been notified and was told they weren’t.

“Well, don’t tell them then,” he said. “I will.”

He was still sitting in a half-daze on the floor a minute or two later after hanging up the telephone, when his wife returned home from work. Alma Coit was filled in on the heartbreaking news. Then the couple began making arrangements to leave for Gates Mills to carry out one of the saddest tasks of their lives.

They had just broken the dreadful news to Charles’s parents when the telephone rang and his father, William Coit, picked up the receiver. He was still shaken from the disclosure of Clark’s violent death, and his face blanched. Charles asked who was on the line. It was Jill.

Charles picked up another phone and told his father to hang up, then took over the conversation. Jill said she just telephoned to tell them Clark was dead.

A few minutes later, the brief conversation ended. Then Charles and Alma began the long, mournful 150-mile drive back to their home in Findlay. Distraught and shaken, Charles notified his bishop at the diocese headquarters in Cleveland about Clark’s murder. It was Holy Week, the most solemn and one of the busiest times of the year for the church, but Charles found it impossible to concentrate on his pastoral duties. He also had a funeral coming up for one of his parishioners, and the next day he telephoned his bishop again and said he needed help. He simply wasn’t functioning as he should be.

A half-hour later a substitute pastor for the church was knocking at his door. The substitute handled the funeral. On Maundy Thursday, the two priests filed into Charles’s church, Trinity Episcopal, in Fostoria, where he informed the congregation of his personal tragedy. Then his fellow priest conducted the services.

On Good Friday, Charles boarded an airliner and flew to Houston. His wife stayed in Findlay to care for their children. His parents also remained behind. The elder Coits simply weren’t up to the trip. A Tenneco vice president arranged for Charles to be met at the airport and driven to a house where he spent the night. The next morning he talked with a company lawyer, who advised him that he was being made executor of his brother’s estate.

No one had been able to find a will, and since Clark was estranged from his wife and she was in New Orleans, Charles was the obvious choice for the role. His brother’s body had been transferred from the coroner’s office to the George H. Lewis & Sons Funeral Home, and Charles arranged to have his brother cremated. He directed the morticians to ship the ashes back to Ohio.

The bishop in Cleveland had arranged through a counterpart in Texas to have an Episcopal priest from Houston conduct the funeral service. Charles sat in the front row at the church, flanked by close friends and colleagues of his brother during the somber ceremony. Jill didn’t attend the funeral.

As they walked out of the church following the service, Charles told his companions that he needed a drink. But they had one more stop to make first. The company executive took Charles to the funeral home, where the mortician asked if he wanted to see his brother one last time.

“He’s in the box isn’t he?” Charles asked, nodding toward the closed coffin.

The mortician assured him that was the case. “Well, then I don’t want to see the body,” Charles responded. He preferred to remember his baby brother as he had been in life, and had no desire to inspect the results of the mortician’s skilled efforts to smooth over the terrible damage to Clark’s shattered face and ruined jaw.

Charles had his drink at the home of one of his brother’s friends, where his friends and colleagues from the company gathered for an old-fashioned wake. They swapped stories about the easy-going, fun-loving engineer, and they mourned. The next day, Charles attended Easter services at a Presbyterian church with friends of his brother.

After returning to Ohio, he scattered Clark’s ashes over the Chagrin River, a few miles from the home in Gates Mills where they spent their boyhood together. A few months later, in October, Anna Dix-Coit’s ashes were sprinkled over the same river. About a year after that, the ashes of William Clark Coit Sr. were also consigned to the tranquil waters.

A few days after Charles left Houston, Clark’s will was found in a safety-deposit box at a local bank. Clark had made out the will and signed it on March 14, 1967, when William Andrew was still an infant and about a year before the birth of his namesake, William Clark Coit III. He left everything to his wife. She was also named executrix in the document.

He stipulated that he was leaving nothing to either Seth, who was then twenty-three months old and hadn’t yet been adopted, or to William Andrew, or to any future children of his. He did so because he was “… conscious of the fact that the well-being, upbringing, and the education of my said children is the primary concern of my beloved wife, Jill Lonita Coit, to whom I leave all of my estate as above stated.”

In the event that he and Jill died together in an accident, or she failed to survive him by thirty days, his estate was to be used for the care and education of his children and the remainder should be equally divided among them at the time the youngest of them reached the age of thirty. Another Houston friend of Clark’s was named to oversee the trust account that would be set up for them. Jill’s mother, who at that time was living in Harvey, was named as the alternate trustee and as guardian for the children in the event his wife didn’t survive him.

The will did not specifically mention Clark’s considerable company-related benefits, except for $756.36 remaining in his Tenneco Credit Union account and $2,525 in wages and vacation pay due to him at the time of his death. But it included the house on Sharp-crest, which had a cancellation policy that paid off the mortgage in the event of the death of the primary wage earner. With his death, the house in the Sharpstown County Club Terrace became free and clear for the widow. It was worth roughly $30,000.

Also listed in the will were a $6,000 cashier check from the Houston National Bank payable to W. C. Coit Jr.; $1,081 in a checking account at the Houston National Bank; fifty shares of the Philadelphia Life Insurance Company worth a total of $928 at that time; and one share of Midwestern Gas Transmission Company stock worth $121.

Personal property included furniture and personal effects worth $1,260; escrow refunded on a repaid loan at the First Mortgage Company of Texas of $556; a federal income tax refund of $205; the 1966 Ford station wagon valued at $350; a 1967 Ford two-door valued at $200; a 1970 Mercury two-door valued at $2,250; and a 1967 Ford two-door valued at $200. Clark did not have a 1967 Ford two-door, but he had the 1957 T-Bird which, considering the excellent condition it was in, would have been worth at that time about $8,000 to $10,000.

When a Houston lawyer had the will probated for the executrix on January 26, Jill’s address was given as 9809 Joel Street in Harahan, Louisiana. DiRosa signed as notary public on a statement she signed in New Orleans appointing attorney William M. Schultz to represent her in the proceedings in Houston. It was also noted that all the debts against the estate had been paid, including several doctor bills, $1,250 to Foley’s, and $1,632.79 to the mortuary for Clark’s funeral. B. B. swore out a deposition in probate court confirming Clark’s death, former residence in Harris county, and the fact that to his knowledge the will was never revoked.

With his role as executor cut short, Charles returned to Houston to sign more legal papers. He remained there long enough to be interviewed by homicide detectives, then returned again to Ohio. More than twenty years after he made the sad journey, the grieving brother still hadn’t heard another word from the Houston Police Department about the investigation into his brother’s murder. And he talked directly only once more with his brother’s widow. Jill telephoned him in Fostoria and asked where he had interred the ashes.

Charles told her he scattered them over the river, where the brothers had played as boys.

“You mean there’s no place where we can go and put a stone?” she asked.

“No,” Charles replied. “Because this is what Clark wanted.”

They didn’t talk again. Jill eventually paid for Clark’s name and the dates of his birth and death to be inscribed in a niche on a memorial at a cemetery in New Orleans. A few years later one of Clark’s friends visited the memorial, and was shocked at the dismal condition it was in. When a complaint was lodged with a cemetery employee the response was laconically blunt.

“Well, don’t worry about it,” the employee said. “There’s nothing in there, anyway.” Charles thought creation of the memorial was an odd thing to do. But people who knew Jill had learned to expect unorthodox behavior. It was in perfect character for her.

Houston police probably didn’t contact Charles after their interview because they had nothing positive to report about the investigation. Efforts to solve the mystery began bogging down before the victim was even put to his final rest.

The Post’s “Public Protector” program reward offer of $4,000 for information helping to solve the slaying was never claimed.

In the meantime, DiRosa obtained affidavits stipulating that Jill was attending a birthday party in New Orleans on the night her husband was murdered. Seth had just turned seven years old. One of the statements was from a guest at the party who claimed to have seen her at 7:30 PM. Another was from a guest who stated he saw her there around midnight.

The affidavits were impressive, but they still left a four-and-a-half-hour gap in her whereabouts that was unexplained. Homicide detectives checked out flights between Houston and New Orleans on the night of Clark’s death, but if they learned anything suspicious they kept a tight lip about it with the public.

Jill made good use of the telephone while she was in the hospital, frequently talking with B. B. in Houston. She asked her old friend if he knew where Clark’s T-Bird was. It was still in the garage at the house.

“Now, Mac, I want you to have that car,” she said. B. B. conceded that he loved the car and would like to buy it because it had belonged to his friend. He insisted he wouldn’t take it as a gift, and would only accept it if he could pay her the fair market price. Jill was equally insistent. She wanted to give it to him. The ultimate fate of the car remained a standoff, and neither of the two shifted their position when they discussed it during subsequent calls.

DiRosa also talked to McCurdy about his client’s determination to sign over the title to the Thunderbird to him, according to the Texan. As soon as the estate was settled, the lawyer reportedly said, the Thunderbird would be signed over to him. Several times DiRosa telephoned him to discuss Jill’s company benefits or other matters, and invited him to come by New Orleans for a visit. The lawyer said he would pick up some tickets for the Saints’ games and McCurdy could watch some professional football as a guest of his and Jill’s. The Tenneco executive was just as stubborn and determined as she was. There was no way he would accept the car as a gift. After one of his telephone talks with Jill at the hospital, he was more convinced than ever that he had made the right decision.

She might need a friend in Houston sometime who would be willing to talk about what a good person she was, he says she told him. But nobody was going to buy a glowing character reference from the engineer, by giving him Clark’s Thunderbird—no matter how much he wanted it.

“Jill, I want the car and I’ll buy it,” he told her. “As far as anything I could tell about you, I don’t know anything for a fact.” He pointed out that although she had bragged to him a few times, he couldn’t tell anyone he thought she was evil. The time would come however, when he would revise that opinion and became convinced she was about as bad as could be.

Three years after McCurdy started looking after the car, he finally had enough and dropped it off at a local auto storage which specialized in T-Birds. Then he wrote registered letters and mailed them to DiRosa at his office, to Jill at the Tower Advertising Agency, and a third copy to her at her parents’ address in Metairie. He advised them where the car was and said he was washing his hands of the matter.

DiRosa telephoned him about two weeks later and asked what was going on. “Well, the letter explains it. You’re a lawyer,” McCurdy pointed out. He said he was sick and tired of the game-playing and the car was no longer his responsibility. DiRosa wanted to know what the storage fees were.

“I don’t know, and I don’t care,” the crusty engineer replied. “I don’t have to pay it.”

DiRosa sent a young man to pick up the car from the garage and drive it back to New Orleans. Coincidentally, the driver’s uncle was a vice president with Tenneco, and the youth mentioned meeting a beautiful woman in New Orleans whose late husband was with the company. He said her name was Jill Coit. The executive told his nephew to stay as far away from the woman as he could.

Soon after the Thunderbird was delivered to Jill in New Orleans, she obtained a personalized license plate for it with the slogan, “Q. T. BIRD.”

Long before the matter of the Thunderbird was settled, it appears authorities in Houston never got anywhere in bringing the Tenneco engineer’s killer or killers to justice, and the investigation died on the vine. The McCurdys still mourned their friend, but they had accepted his death and their loss. Ginny never failed to remember Clark on the anniversary of his death, however, and she always had a memory or observation to dredge up and share with her husband. Charles Coit also telephoned every year about that time to chat with the McCurdys and reminisce about his brother and their friend.

Jill finally walked out the doors of the hospital, presumably cured of her suicidal depression. She was refreshed and primed for new adventure. She had enough of New Orleans and Houston for awhile, so she collected her sons and headed west to seek her fortune in California.

The boys were told that their father had died of a heart attack. The thought of their father dying a quiet, natural death was less traumatic than forcing their young minds to cope with the idea of murder.

About the time Jill arrived on the West Coast and was settling down in the Los Angeles area, back in Houston the divorce suits she and her late husband had filed against each other were dismissed by the Harris County Court of Domestic Relations. With Clark’s death, the matter of the divorce and the promise of bitter legal wrangling over the couple’s property and the boys had become a moot point.

By that time two new men had emerged in Jill’s life.

Edwin Bruce Johansen was a wealthy, older retired businessman who lived on Barrows Drive in Los Angeles. There are two versions of how the lives of this odd couple crossed. Jill claims they met when Johansen sold her a warehouse, that she was sorry for the old man and helped care for him for two or three years. Other sources indicate Johansen was a longtime acquaintance of her and her family when they crossed paths again in California.

Whatever may have sparked the relationship, Johansen was apparently as enchanted with Jill as so many younger men were. The frail eighty-nine-year-old man traveled to New Orleans, and on July 20, 1973, signed a document signifying his wish and intention to adopt Jill.

DiRosa handled the legal procedures and paperwork for the adoption. Jill loved to drive, and after moving to California she frequently made the trip by car back to New Orleans to visit with her family and follow up on her various interests there. She stayed in close touch with her lawyer there. He was the man she went to when she needed legal advice.

According to the act of adoption subsequently filed with the clerk of the court in Jefferson Parish, which lies due south of the western end of New Orleans, Johansen had not remarried after the death in 1969 of his wife, the former Mary Taney, and he had no surviving close relatives. The adoption was being carried out in Louisiana because Jill’s residence at that time was in Jefferson Parish, according to the legal document.

The would-be adopted daughter added her consent to the procedure and both she and her prospective new parent declared that it was their wish that her name be legally changed at the same time from Jill Billiot-Coit to Jill Coit-Johansen. Jill, Johansen, and two witnesses signed the document. DiRosa added his signature and stamp as a notary public in the Parish of Orleans, state of Louisiana. Jill had observed her thirtieth birthday five weeks earlier.

But she wasn’t the only woman who was showing intimate concern for the lonely, sometimes cantankerous old widower. Ann H. Schwartz, the wife of his longtime accountant, Morris Schwartz, was also demonstrating a strong personal interest in helping him wind up his financial affairs during his final days. On October 10, less than three months after he adopted Jill, Johansen made out a will leaving his total estate to his accountant’s wife. She was also designated as the executrix.

Johansen was a devoted Mason, and he specified that in the event of Mrs. Schwartz’s death, his entire estate would go to the Masonic Lodge #381 F&AM, in Oceanside, California.

His newly-adopted daughter wasn’t even mentioned by name in the will, but it was carefully worded to specifically disinherit anyone claiming to be his “heir-at-law.”

“If any person whether or not related to me in any way shall either directly or indirectly attempt to oppose or set aside the probate of this will or to impair or invalidate any of the provisions hereof and such person shall establish a right to any part of my estate, I give and bequeath to such person the sum of $1 only and no further interest whatsoever in my estate,” the document stated. There seemed to be no question about it; Jill was cut out of any inheritance from her adoptive father. But the tug-of-war was just beginning.

On November 29, the old man again picked up a pen, and in his shaky handwriting, signed a new will leaving his entire estate after funeral and burial expenses to Jill. She was also named executrix. Similar to a stipulation in the earlier will, the new document carried a declaration that anyone challenging the provisions would be left with $1 and no further interest in the estate.

The will was witnessed by Louis A. DiRosa and an Oceanside, California, man, Noel L. Mares. In both wills, Johansen stipulated his wishes to be cremated and for his remains to be placed next to those of his wife in Santa Monica’s Woodlawn Cemetery.

That was apparently the last of the wills, but the struggle over the disposition of his estate hadn’t even gotten really started yet. Johansen died a peaceful, apparently-natural death on August 1, 1974, shortly after observing his ninetieth birthday. According to his wishes, he was given a Masonic funeral, cremated, and interred next to his wife. Then the fireworks began exploding in a three-way money squabble that would spark accusations that were incredibly bizarre even for California. Their echoes could still be heard around the court almost twenty years later.

Ann Schwartz filed for probate of the will naming her as heir and executrix a month after Johansen’s death. On November 25, Jill filed a petition in the Los Angeles County Superior Court seeking revocation of the action. Identifying herself as Johansen’s adopted daughter, she said the document admitted to probate was not his final will. She produced a copy of the will naming her as heir and executrix. Although Jill was represented by a different attorney, she listed the Pere Marquette Building in New Orleans where DiRosa had his law offices, as her address.

By early the following year, relatives of the old couple had surfaced. Led by a niece of Mrs. Johansen, they were also becoming embroiled in the fray. In her own petition for revocation of the probated will, Frances Young Getze, of Newport Beach, accused the Schwartzs of taking grossly unfair advantage of a senile old man who was paranoid, belligerant, confused, and suffered from loss of memory. He was in such awful condition he didn’t know what he was doing when he signed the purported will leaving his estate to Mrs. Schwartz, the niece contended.

The couple took advantage of Morris Schwartz’s confidential relationship with Johansen and the old man’s deteriorated mental health to ingratiate themselves with him and persuade him he was obligated to reward them, she said in the petition.

They allegedly convinced him he and Mrs. Schwartz were reincarnated souls who knew each other in a prior life. She was a queen and he was her slave, whom she had treated with kindness and consideration. Consequently, he owed her a debt for that kindness.

As 1975 neared its end, several additional distant relatives, including first and second cousins, had joined in the dispute to challenge both wills. Neither of them were valid because of Johansen’s alleged senility and other mental problems at the time they were made out, they claimed. They also charged that Jill was not in fact his adopted daughter. And if he indeed made out a will naming her as his heir, he executed the document shortly before his death while he was “obviously sick in mind with a progressively deteriorating condition and … was easily influenced and controlled by anyone seeking to take advantage of him…”

When Jill filed her version of Johansen’s will for probate in 1977, it was challenged by Mrs. Getze, just as the documents held by Mrs. Schwartz were.

The full story of the titanic struggle and its conclusion is still hidden in the awesome maze of the Los Angeles County Court system archives. But as recently as January 1990, a declaration for final discharge and order was filed releasing Ann Schwartz as executor of the estate. The document indicated she was the “sole distributee.” Another document filed in superior court the previous year awarded a balance remaining in the estate of approximately $7,000 to Mrs. Schwartz after payment of a small amount of attorney and court fees.

So what happened to the rest of the estate? Despite later published denials by Jill that she didn’t profit financially, according to her youngest son, she wound up with a considerable inheritance that included about $60,000 in cash, three or four houses, and some other property.

Jill didn’t simply cool her heels while resolution of the dispute over Johansen’s estate was being slowly played out in the courts. She had never been a woman known for letting grass grow under her feet, and she obviously would not be happy living the single life for long.

She had already changed her name again a few weeks before Johansen was bundled off to New Orleans to sign her adoption papers. On November 3, 1973, she tied the knot with a rugged thirty-three-year-old major in the US Marine Corps. Her married name wasn’t really “Coit” when she was adopted. She was Mrs. Donald Charles Brodie.

The ceremony was conducted by a Lutheran clergyman, the Reverend Donald J. Fisher, in the city of Orange, a far suburb at the southwest edge of Los Angeles. Gerald and Mary Ellen Soma of Santa Ana stood up for the couple.

Jill indicated on her marriage license that she had been married only once before, and that her previous husband had died. She signed her name on the marriage certificate as Jill Lonita Coit and listed her date of birth as June 11, 1946, either two or three years after her true birth date. According to the information in the marriage certificate, she was twenty-seven years old, more than five years younger than the groom. Brodie had been married once previously, and was divorced in August 1969. He listed his occupation as the “USMC” and the kind of industry or business he was in as the “US Government.” Jill gave her occupation as “model,” and her industry or business as “advertising agency.”

Both the bride and groom indicated they had sixteen years of formal education and listed the same address on South Ditmar Street in Oceanside, San Diego County. The picturesque coastal city of approximately 77,000 people is roughly midway between Los Angeles and San Diego at the southern edge of the sprawling Camp Pendleton US Marine Corps Base.

A native Hoosier and military career man, Major Brodie may have been as susceptible to his bride’s sexual allure and mesmerizing charms as his predecessors. But he was no pushover when it came to handling the couple’s finances and personal property. He was a strong man, and his reputed refusal to go along with his wife’s demands was a surefire formula for serious trouble in the marriage.

Jill wasn’t a woman who could live with her wings clipped and a crimp put on her high-flying ways. That wasn’t her style, and any effort to restrict her freedom wasn’t something she would put up with for long. It amounted to a declaration of war. She had her own business and other interests, and many other personal affairs were still centered half a continent away in New Orleans and even more exotic locales.

Back home in California, the honey in Jill’s relationship with the marine officer rapidly turned to acid, corroding feelings, sensibilities, and emotions. Unhappy with the role of military wife, and blocked from getting her way, Jill packed up her sons and cleared out of Southern California.

Jill and the boys returned to New Orleans, the city of voracious mosquitoes, persistent mildew, distinctive colors, aromas, and tastes—and just enough of the hint of madness, brash dreams and opportunity about it to be irresistible. It was her childhood home, and it was perfect for her. She settled with her boys into a temporary domicile in the 9800 block of Joel Street in Harahan. A separate town of about 11,000 people in Jefferson Parish, Harahan is just below Metairie and it bulges snugly into one of the loops of the north bank of the Mississippi. It is a working-class town where rusty tugboats and fishing skiffs are tied to the piers and docks.

The new address would merely prove to be a stopping-off place where she parked the boys for awhile. A handy baby-sitter was nearby: their grandmother. And Jill’s lawyer friend was no longer a half-continent away. The law offices of DiRosa & DiRosa, at 812 Pere Marquette Building, were a fast twenty-minute drive from Harahan. The sturdy old brick structure, only one block off Canal Street, New Orleans’ main shopping thoroughfare, was about fifteen floors high, and in those days before the construction boom of the 1980s and 1990s it was one of a handful of buildings that dominated the skyline. It was a modern landmark.