The Innocent and the Psychopath, Part One

Photo by Timothy Eberly

Our handyman, and new friend, Will Pliner came over one early evening bringing his sister Marta, who was visiting from Texas, to meet us. He also wanted to talk to my husband Jake about a job Jake had called him about. We invited them to sit and join us for our little happy hour to talk about the job and get to know his sister. Will was more than happy to sit and have a drink, because he seemed a bit depressed, which was unusual for him. He was always happy-go-lucky.

Jake told him about the gardening job he had in mind to see if Will would be interested, since Will was known to be an exceptional gardener, besides knowing how to fix about everything in a house, or out. After Jake explained that he wanted to redo the front yard into a xeriscaping concept, Will was eager to help. But when Jake asked if he could come on Wednesday, Will hung his head and said, “Sorry, but that is the day I have to go to the city to see a lawyer, which is why Marta is here. She will be helping me with that situation.”

We didn’t want to pry, but we were concerned for him. Why would he need to see an attorney, we wondered?

When I asked if he wanted to talk about it, he seemed eager to get it off his chest, and immediately said, “You do know that my girlfriend Jasmin left me, don’t you?”

“We’d heard something about that from Sam, but he didn’t know the details,” I told him. “We’re so sorry.”

“Thanks. It was quite a shock since it seemed to come from nowhere, yet it’s not such a bad thing,” he told us and then began explaining. “Jasmin, over the past few months, started to get mean, but that’s not why I need to see the lawyer,” he quickly added.

“Mean?” Both Jake and I asked at the same time, not understanding what he was trying to tell us.

“Yeah, mean. She’d push me around and say really ugly things to me and even started breaking things we bought together, and, you know, was just being mean. She’d never acted that way in the three years we’d been together, and I couldn’t understand what was happening.”

In other words, she was being a real Bitch, I was thinking to myself. I had never liked Jasmin from the moment I met her because she seemed a little too eager to please us yet talked more about herself and her many accomplishments before she met Will than she seemed interested in Will, or us. Those actions made her seem phony and very self-centered. It seemed as if she was acting out a role.

So, this news didn’t upset me so much as how Will was taking it. Because he was such a nice guy and didn’t know how to stand up for himself, Jasmine had taken full advantage of him, I could see.

When he made his next statement, which sounded just like something she would do, it really pissed me off. He told us that he was seeing an attorney because Jasmin was suing him for money that she claimed he owed her for what she’d put into the house.

Will explained. “When we moved here, Jasmine had just gotten a new credit card, or so she’d told me, and wanted to use it to build up her credit rating, so whenever we needed to buy something big, she’d pay with her card, and I would pay her back in cash. Unfortunately, I never thought to keep receipts or notations, except for the withdrawals from the bank, because we were a couple and in love. I didn’t see a need to keep receipts or make notes of paying her.

“And now, she is claiming that I didn’t reimburse her and she’d suing me for $100,000 because she has her credit card receipts and I have nothing.”

“That bitch!’ I exclaimed. “I want the whole story, if you don’t mind. How could this have happened? How did you meet this witch in the first place? I had never heard the story, at least the true story from you, Will.”

Will, with Marta’s help, began at the beginning.

Photo by Megan Thomas

Will, the youngest and only boy of William (Bill) and Betty Pliner, with three sisters, grew up on the family’s forty-acre farm in northern Arizona. Will had helped his dad from the time he was a young lad to take care of the hayfield for the cattle they raised in one section, and the vegetables they’d planted to sell to the local grocery stores in another large area. It was a lot of work, but Will thought it very satisfying.

A plot of trees surrounded their two-story frame house and barns that gave shade to their large grassy yard, where they’d loved to play. Will, growing up with the same kids in school, was friends with many, who enjoyed Will’s carefree attitude, and would come to play in the summer.

But in school Will didn’t do well with his studies. He struggled throughout the years to get things right but to no avail. His teachers gave him low grades, thinking he just wasn’t interested in studying. They didn’t talk to his parents about this problem, nor did they think he had a problem other than laziness. But Will was anything but lazy.

When a new teacher came along, she saw that Will might have a learning disability and advised his parents to seek professional help. It turned out that he was dyslexic. Special programs were suggested to help him learn to cope with his dyslexia, but they didn’t have the money or the time to take him into the city for help at that time. And then later, to add to his learning disabilities, Will developed a hearing problem from a high fever when he came down with a bad case of measles. Both of his disabling conditions made his progress in the small-town school difficult. Some teachers, not understanding the problems he had, didn’t want to work with Will, and would punish him instead, for not getting things right. Will being an innocent was too soft-hearted and simple-minded to the ways of the world to argue.

Because of abuse throughout elementary and then junior high school, not only from the teachers but by some of the bullies wanting to pick on someone weaker than they, Will dropped out of school.

He helped his dad on the farm instead. The girls had married and moved away after high school, which had left Will to take care of everything alone. When Will’s dad, fell ill, he sold all the cattle before he died, giving Will the relief of not having them to deal with, and giving him more time to take care of his mother until her death.

The farm had been willed to the children: Will getting half and the girls sharing the other half because they likely would never live there, but Will took care of it all and he was lonely.

When he met a young Native American woman at a town social function, they dated and then married. Her name was Chawna, and Will no longer felt burdened by his loneliness.

To add to his happiness, his new wife knew a lot about gardening and was a big help with that aspect of the farm. They cultivated and used the empty cattle field for growing herbs along with other vegetables, which added to their income by selling the herbs to stores along with their fresh produce. All seemed good for quite a while.

The farm kept them busy, and the two were fairly happy over the next few years, but all was not bliss. Chawna was not the easiest person to live with.

When they saw across the field that new neighbors had moved into the house just up the road, Will and Chawna went over to welcome them. The new owner was just a single woman, tall, slender and blonde. She was not unattractive, and Will happily offered his help to get her moved in. Chawna didn’t seem to mind.

The woman’s name was Jasmin. She accepted Will’s offer and together they got all her stuff into the house. But his help didn’t stop at just getting her moved in. Jasmin told him that she could use some help with getting things put away, and then this and that needed to be fixed, and so, as the weeks went by, and Jasmin needed more and more help throughout that summer, Will was hardly home. To his surprise, but not regret, an affair of the heart and body ensued.

Photo by joey senft

He felt guilty, since he was a married man and still loved his wife but told himself that his marriage wasn’t doing so good, and this affair helped him get through the rough times. Ah, the things we tell ourselves for justification of misdeeds, he later admitted to himself.

At the time, his naiveté was too overwhelming to see that he was being manipulated. All he could see was his infatuation for this woman who gave him love and attention, which he thought to be real and honest. After all, throughout his life, he saw everything in either black or white. If something was obviously black, he avoided it; all else he considered white with purity and honesty, especially with people he liked. He couldn’t determine the underlying nuances of someone’s personality when he or she might be psychotic or a pathological liar. Everyone was honest until proven otherwise with Will.

And so, a year later, after the relationship had progressed nicely, Jasmin had told him that he needed to make a decision about leaving his wife and moving in with her, and he also needed to sell his property. But because he didn’t want to hurt his wife, nor did he want to sell the family farm, he kept dragging his feet. However, Jasmin, having other ideas and goals in mind, took matters into her own hands.

Click to Read Part Two. Find out what happens when Jasmin rears her ugly head and Will must deal with the consequences of their affair.