Throughout the process of researching and writing this book, I was haunted by questions. How could this happen? How could a professional, competent, take-charge woman be manipulated to her death in her own home? How could someone so well-loved by her family, friends, neighbors and co-workers be killed by the person closest to her?
These questions all framed Susan McFarland as a victim—a tragedy in the making—nothing more. Then, after months of hearing stories from those who cared about Susan, a real person took shape in my mind—a complex woman with simple dreams and an unquenchable lust for life.
One morning, while driving up Interstate Highway 35 to Austin, Susan McFarland became so real to me that I thought about how much more I would enjoy the ride if she were sitting beside me sharing stories and passing the time together. Then the realization struck—I would never be able to talk to her. I would never bump into her in Central Market. I would never laugh with her over lunch. I would never hear the sound of her voice or see the sunny glow of her smile.
At that moment, I was struck by a sense of loss so visceral it took my breath away and formed pools of water in my eyes. The light of a life-enriching personality was snuffed out, never to brighten anyone’s day again. Gone forever—all because of the violent selfishness of one man.
Beyond her loss of life, the scars inflicted on her three young boys will live forever. Never again will they be able to turn to the unconditional love and support of their mother. Never again can they seek her advice, her approval, her comfort. Surely, Rick McFarland must have understood—and not cared about—what he stole from them on that fatal night.
How can we ever understand him or his motivation? He and Susan created life together—three young lives. How could he plot and plan to take her life away? How can we conceive of a heart that hard—that cold?
Richard McFarland’s family was not forthcoming about the events and influences in his childhood that molded him into the man he became. But while in San Antonio, his mother made many remarks that granted a glimpse into a twisted concept of reality that could be the root of it all. Most telling of all was her insistence that Rick had many reasons to justify what he did.
There are those in the community who question why, in the face of Rick’s strange personality and bizarre behavior, Susan did not act sooner—that she did not protect her sons better. If she had not hesitated, they insist, she would not have been lost.
But to place blame on Susan is unfair and uninformed. We all sit here with the advantage of a hindsight that Susan did not possess. We all look at the problems in the family from the outside in. From that vantage point, the signs of destruction seem lit with neon. But Sue was in the eye of the storm. In her close-up view, all changes were gradual and slow. All sense of normalcy was skewed in a dysfunctional prism—blurred by the numbing pattern of everyday life.
Yes, to some extent, she was in denial—blinded by an intense desire to have a normal marriage and family—crippled by her determination to take charge and fix all that was wrong. Most of us have, at one point or another, used denial as a coping mechanism for dealing with circumstances beyond our control. Many of us have stuck with a stubborn persistence in a belief that we could rectify a situation that is beyond repair.
Susan had passed through that place and entered another. She had a plan in mind. She was moving forward.
There is no way to be sure that any different or quicker action by Sue would have changed the outcome. No matter when she’d made the decision to leave—whether at the time she did, or two years earlier—Rick might still have set his plan into motion and acted upon it without warning. He was a passive-aggressive manipulator, who orchestrated the scenario that unfolded at 351 Arcadia. Once he realized she was going to leave, and he decided that was not acceptable, there was no line he would not cross.
Sue was a planner, arranging with infinite detail for every eventuality before she made her move. She wanted to create the least disruption and trauma for her boys as possible. She even found housing for the husband she intended to evict from her home. If she had been more impulsive and just fled with her boys in the middle of the night, would she still be alive? Maybe. Maybe not.
The fact is that the most dangerous time for any woman is that transition period from when she decides to leave, through the months of the separation. That is when many women are battered. That is when many women die. Statistics show that separated women are three times more likely than divorced women, and twenty-five times more likely than married women still living with their husbands, to be victimized.
In 2002, the year of Susan’s death, 117 women in Texas were killed by a husband or a boyfriend. While women are less likely than men to be victims of violent crime overall, they are five to eight times more likely to be victimized by their intimate partner. On average, more than three women are murdered by those men in this country every day.
Even if Sue had managed to keep her divorce a secret from her husband until the papers were served, she had no statistical guarantee that her fate would have changed, because of the elevated risk to her safety during the estrangement period. It is just as likely that a man in Richard McFarland’s state of mind may have made the same murder plans after he was forced from the family home as he did while he still resided there.
Susan McFarland did not imagine her divorce would be free of conflict, but she did not envision the fatal consequences that did result. It is my fervent wish that her story not be repeated again.
It is my hope that you have learned from reading this book and are now more aware of the warning signs of destruction and more cognizant of the risk of violence.
I hope, if the need arises, you will be able to use this knowledge to save your life or to save the life of someone dear to you.
That is my prayer.