Married To Murder

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Prologue

Grand Canyon, April 11, 1993

Donna Sundling Spangler had nightmares about hiking in the Grand Canyon. Her legs were not strong and she suffered from vertigo. But her husband, Bob Spangler, loved the area so much that she steeled her nerves for yet one more backpack trip into the Canyon on Easter week, 1993.

You don’t have to go! her friend Sandy Brooks told her on the telephone before Donna left her home in Durango, Colorado.

I know, Donna replied, but Bob loves it so much. And he really wants me to go with him.

How are things between you and Bob? Brooks asked.

Donna sighed and said, We’ll have to talk when I get back.

Four days later, as Donna stood panting on the dangerous trail above the Redwall on Horseshoe Mesa in the Grand Canyon, she felt dizzy and leaned on a ski pole she used for balance while hiking. The view down the side of the cliff was magnificent and terrifying in its immensity.

Out of the corner of her eye, Donna casually noticed Bob walking toward her. Perhaps he was coming to straighten her backpack or give her a hug for being such a good sport and accompanying him on this difficult hike. Instead, she noticed a strange, almost quizzical, look on his face. He held out his arms to touch her; then, with all his strength, he pushed her backward over the cliff.

It happened so suddenly and unexpectedly that Donna didn’t even have time to scream. In one horrifying instant her worst nightmare had come true. She was hurtling through space into the depths of the Grand Canyon.

Chapter 1

A Woman Named Sharon

Durango, Colorado, 1994

It was a street that dreams are made of—American dreams. Oak Drive in Durango, Colorado, is where people went when their ships had come in; the reward for a lifetime of hard work. Oak Drive wound through smart upscale homes with elegant designs and large plate glass widows that fronted the La Plata Mountains. Aspens and rock gardens abounded in well-landscaped yards, and Land Rovers and Mercedes-Benzes filled the driveways. The inhabitants of Oak Drive came from everywhere to capture a piece of the Rocky Mountain High, leaving behind the endless flatlands of Kansas, the rat race of New York City and the mean streets of Los Angeles. Oak Drive at six thousand feet was about as close to paradise as you could get.

In 1994 Sharon Cooper Spangler was one of the inhabitants of Oak Drive. She was fifty-two years old and her own journey to Durango had been varied and colorful. She had grown up in the suburbs of St. Louis, Missouri, and had been an English teacher, yoga instructor, dog trainer and public-relations assistant for the American Water Works Association (AWWA) in the Denver area. Even more important, Sharon was the author of a well-respected book, On Foot in the Grand Canyon. It was more than just a guidebook of the canyon, it was a window into Sharon’s soul.

She said of one particular hike with a friend: We found a spot where I had rested, intoxicated by the forms, colors, and light. We rested in silence. In the silence you could hear the blood coursing in your skull, and you knew that it was being driven by the same primal energy that was driving everything around you, including the rock.

No less a person than Harvey Butchart, the dean of Grand Canyon trekking who had hiked more than anyone alive in the canyon, had nothing but praise for her writing. He said in the foreword to Sharon’s book: She has exhaustively researched and carefully written the most complete and reliable guidebook to hiking the trails of the South Rim. It’s also an engaging personal adventure story, a good read for hiker and armchair adventurer alike. All of this is woven into a lively narrative that avoids the clichés and inadequacies of an attempt to rhapsodize over the indescribable grandeur of the scenery.

But despite all the acclaim and her beautiful surroundings in Durango, as the fall of 1994 approached, Sharon Cooper Spangler sank deeper and deeper into a mood of despair and foreboding. She had always been prone to bouts of depression and often used medication to ease her troubled mind, but there was something else adding to her sense of frustration and gloom that year. She was now living with the man whom she had once loved, then married and finally divorced. The man was Robert Merlin Spangler.

Once, Sharon would have done anything for Bob. She had called him her soul mate, her beloved, but now she was only a guest in his house, a roommate paying rent for the right to exist under his roof. It was a testament of just how far she had fallen since their divorce in 1988 that Sharon had to come crawling back to him in the summer of 1994, seeking refuge from the strains of her life.

Life for Sharon after the divorce, which was supposed to have been liberating for her, was a disaster. She had tried teaching yoga and dog obedience training in Littleton, a suburb of Denver. Both had failed. One relationship after another, each seeming so promising, had all ended badly. One that finally held some promise sputtered along with an individual named Michael, who had his own set of emotional problems, and he needed medication for maintenance. Sharon tried writing another book. It never got off the ground. She thought of relocating to Arizona to be closer to the Grand Canyon, but that fizzled out as well. With the hopes that a new location might be beneficial for her state of mind, she moved to the beautiful small town of Pagosa Springs in southern Colorado. A gemlike location should have been a balm to her spirit, but more than ever, Sharon felt alone and separate from the individuals in this town.

Jim and Janece Ohlman, a couple of her best friends and hiking partners, knew Sharon very well over these difficult years. Jim related, I don’t know why Sharon moved to Pagosa Springs, other than to get away from old memories that lingered in Littleton and perhaps to give her and her dogs more room to move around in. Janece and I visited her in the last apartment she was in prior to leaving Littleton, and she was in the process of repainting it for sale then. Sharon really talked up the move to Pagosa Springs, but once there, things just never seemed to suit her. She wanted to teach yoga and dog obedience training while there, but I’m not sure she ever got either of those two ventures going.

Janece added, Sharon had a lifelong battle with depression. It was always looming in her background. She would maintain it for a while. And then it would slip out of control.

Sharon’s actions became more and more chaotic during 1994. Janece related that Sharon would call her up day or night to talk about her troubles. Good friend that she was, Janece always listened. She knew what pain Sharon was suffering.

Janece recalled, Sharon would buy some expensive item, only to sell it for a loss a few weeks later. She would accumulate things to make her feel better then get rid of them as if trying to purge herself of some bad memory.

And then there was the matter of her boyfriend, Michael. Jim recalled, Michael was Sharon’s boyfriend after the divorce, before Sharon left Littleton. She spoke often of him, and at one time said that because he had more problems than she, there probably wasn’t any future in their relationship. According to her, he later found the right set of medications for whatever ailed him, and they became an item. After Sharon moved to Pagosa Springs, she and Michael still found time to see each other.

But this relationship was always rocky at best. If Michael had found the right medications, as Sharon had said, apparently she had not. She bounced from one extreme to another. Manic activity was followed by mind-numbing lethargy and hopelessness. To make matters worse, her mother was now gravely ill in St. Louis, Missouri. Sharon made long road trips there during a time she could barely take care of herself. By May 1994 it had all become too much and she ran for shelter under the roof of her former husband, Bob Spangler.

In June 1994 Sharon began writing her last will and testament, with references to how chaotic and miserable her life had become. She wrote that she was now living in Bob’s house as merely a rent-paying housemate. She said that their relationship was somewhat strained but not intolerable. She noted that she’d been on numerous trips back to St. Louis because of her mom’s heart condition. She said that her trips there had been a nightmare for me. I was only in St. Louis two and a half days (on the latest trip) and thank God I’m back home in Durango now. She stated that all her furniture, linens, hardware and large household items were still in her Pagosa Springs home, while all her clothes and personal items were in Bob’s home in Durango. She seemed to be living in two worlds and not inhabiting either one of them well.

Sharon spoke of perhaps selling her own home in Pagosa Springs and thought that she might put the earnings into money market mutual funds. She went into some detail about her financial concerns. But before long, her thoughts wandered back to more important things on her mind—the direction her life had gone.

Sharon wrote, It’s been hell to be torn and traveling so much among St. Louis (Mom’s health and loneliness), Denver (Dr. Bell and my health), and this still somewhat alien type of life in Pagosa and Durango. It’s culture shock of small town USA.

In another document she related, This (Durango) isn’t a normative small town. The entire region’s towns are growing amazingly fast, are tourist draws, multi-ethnic and socio-demographically just downright weird. However, I seem to be getting used to this strange world and am accepting that for now and however long, I need to be in a small town and not live alone. But the man she had chosen not to live alone with carried a lot of emotional baggage for Sharon. He was a man she had both loved and despised and ultimately feared. But by 1994 her sense of despair was stronger than fear. In fact, when it came to Bob Spangler, all her emotions ran the gamut and they were irretrievably tied in an immense knot.

Adding to her sense of despair was the fact that her longtime companion, a dog named Shadow, died that summer. Sharon was disconsolate for days, crying uncontrollably at this new loss.

Finally, in a separate document, Sharon got down to the nitty-gritty of her burial instructions. Even given the high level of stress and trauma of the past weeks and months, and agreed to by Bob, I do NOT WANT to be cached in St. Louis! I am to be cremated. My ashes are to be buried with Shadow, nestled as closely with her as possible, where she is buried adjacent to Bob’s patio on Oak Drive in Durango.

Then as a footnote she added, Bob will likely be the one to perform this task, including with my cremains a photo or two with me and Shadow and with all three of the Spangler girls (dogs), Mollie, Shadow and Sunshine. And likely including one with Bob in the photo.

Sharon soon related in a letter to a cousin just what her relationship with Bob Spangler had become: I’m grateful to have this safe harbor as we call it. To live in it for however long. To have the proferred opportunity to gain time to heal from the hurts and heart-crushing loss of Shadow, who rests under the sod just outside my window. And though I still cry for her and miss her so much, Sunshine and Mollie do help fill the void. And Bob is just wonderfully here for me.

Just what hurts and disappointments she had suffered, Sharon soon related to her cousin. She said she had been involved recently with a man named Michael, whom she loved, but could no longer live with. She said, Michael is my psychic twin. My beloved dear one, who has shared and struggled with me during my illness. We wanted to make a life together, as lovers, as friends, perhaps as man and wife someday.

But her illness was paramount now and Michael had struggled with his own demons. He could barely take care of himself, much less her. As Sharon’s life spiraled down, she could no longer think of a normal life with Michael. She couldn’t think of a normal life at all.

Racked with manic-depressive fits, Sharon Cooper’s life was becoming a living hell on the quiet street of Oak Drive. She didn’t feel like she fit in anywhere—not in Pagosa Springs, not in Durango and certainly not on Oak Drive. Sharon was once a very active walker, but now some neighbors were not even aware that she lived in Bob Spangler’s home. She was like a zombie, hiding in the shadows of the house, mourning her dead dog, Shadow, who lay in a grave right outside her window, and trying to cope with powerful bouts of anxiety and deep depression. Within a short time her safe harbor had become a self-imposed prison.

Adding to Sharon’s sense of gloom was the knowledge that the warden of her prison, Bob Spangler, had some dark secrets in his past. Rumors had always swirled around him—vague, nebulous speculations about what had happened to his first family and third wife. Even though he rarely talked about it, Sharon knew that her ex-husband’s first wife, Nancy, his daughter, Susan, his son, David, and third wife, Donna, had all died violent and mysterious deaths. Nancy had supposedly shot the children, then herself, back in Littleton, Colorado, in 1978. And Donna had fallen to her death at Sharon’s favorite spot in the world, the Grand Canyon. No matter how she looked at it, people close to Bob Spangler seemed to die sudden and tragic deaths.

Death was like the third presence in their house now. The ghosts of Bob’s former wives and children hovered constantly in the background, and Shadow’s own ghost haunted Sharon with unrelenting pain.

Janece Ohlman noticed the worsening of Sharon’s depression during August and September 1994. Though Janece lived many miles away in Arizona, Sharon kept up a constant stream of late-night calls to ease her pain. These were rambling soliloquies bordering on madness. Janece wondered if Sharon had stopped taking her medication. She tried to help talk Sharon through these dark spells, but there was only so much she could do.

By the end of September 1994, neither the shelter of Bob’s roof nor the late-night phone calls were enough for Sharon Cooper’s tormented soul. She sought a more permanent solution to all her agonies. On October 1, while Bob Spangler was away officiating a soccer game, Sharon sat down and began to write her final good-byes. In a letter to Bob she wrote, You’ve said you wanted one of your former wives’ lives to turn out okay. Your nurturing love gave me so much. And this release is, for me, a turning out okay. Please, my dear friend, acknowledge that this is the only way I could finally be okay and be well. To join God, and Shadow and Dad. Love, Sharon.

Having second thoughts about Michael, she wrote a separate note that he was to receive $35,000 and all her personal effects. And to her friends Jim and Janece Ohlman were to go all royalties she received from her book, On Foot in the Grand Canyon.

Then in a last-minute rush she dashed off a hurried note that said, 10-1-94. I would like it if Rich (her cousin) and Michael would be present to help you, Bob, and me, when my ashes and tokens are buried with Shadow. My dear Bob, thanks for all you’ve tried to do for me. Give my love to Mollie and Sunshine.

She signed the note with a simple letter S.

Sharon then took out a bottle of prescription drugs and swallowed them all at once, along with large swigs of alcohol. Before she lay down on the bed in her room, she tacked a note to the door for Bob to find. It read: I’ve done it this time.

At around 3:30

P.M.

, according to Bob Spangler, he returned from officiating a soccer game to find Sharon’s door closed. He didn’t think much about it at the time and went on about his business for almost an hour, before passing the door once again and spying the note. Damn it! he swore when he read its contents, then burst into the room to find Sharon conscious but dazed and slipping into toxic shock. Scooping her off the bed, he managed to slide her into his car and rushed her to Durango’s Mercy Medical Center, about seven miles away from his home in West Durango.

According to one source, Sharon was still conscious enough when they arrived to tell a physician named Dr. John Boyd that she had taken an overdose of drugs. She was administered a charcoal treatment in the intensive care unit to try and clear her system. The process went on for hour after hour. And strangely enough, during part of this time Bob Spangler was left alone with his ex-wife in ICU. His presence there would only add more rumors to his already mysterious past. What transpired between Bob and Sharon in the time they were alone? What medical knowledge did he have about her condition and ways to either improve it or make it worse? And was she more important to him dead or alive? After all, everything that had transpired in his home earlier that day would later be recounted only by him. There were no other eyewitnesses.

Whatever happened to Sharon Cooper while no one was watching in the ICU, except Bob, one fact became clear—the poisons in Sharon’s body were more powerful than the antidotes. After twelve hours of struggle Sharon Cooper died from her self-inflicted overdose.

Bob Spangler cursed once more and muttered, I always knew she would do something stupid.

But Bob’s anger wasn’t directed at her loss. It was directed at the fact that she had brought attention to him. He now had one more dead ex-wife to add to an already long list of dead spouses and children. His third wife, Donna, had suspiciously slipped and fallen off a cliff at the Grand Canyon, where he and Sharon used to hike. And his first wife, Nancy, had supposedly killed the children and herself back in 1978. But Bob knew the terrible truth. He had killed them all. He’d pushed Donna off a cliff at Horseshoe Mesa in the Grand Canyon. And he’d murdered his entire first family just so he could be with the young Sharon Cooper. And now she was dead as well.

As Sharon’s heart stopped beating, Bob Spangler knew one more thing: law enforcement officers would once again come pawing around his door, looking for clues that all these deaths were somehow more than tragic acts that had befallen his wives and children.

Chapter 2

The Deadly Surprise

Littleton, Colorado, 1978

Bob Spangler had once been in love with pretty, petite, dark-eyed Nancy Stahlman Spangler, but that had been years before in the 1950s when they’d gone together in high school. Now after twenty-three years of marriage, with two teenage children, he felt restless and trapped in a boring, middle-class existence. His seventeen-year-old son, David, wore long hair and played in a loud rock and roll band that often practiced in the basement of the Spanglers’ comfortable home on South Franklin Way in Littleton. And fifteen-year-old daughter, Susan, had numerous boyfriends, none of which Bob cared for very much.

Even though Nancy still doted on him, life seemed stale and ennervating to Bob despite his interesting job as a public-relations director at the nearby American Water Works Association. He was good at what he did and had a gift for gab and raising money for the association. He was either a friendly mentor or a hard-driving boss, depending on whom you talked to there. But no one denied that he was bright and articulate. The only thing missing from his world was something or someone exciting to renew his zest for life.

That someone appeared one day in the mid-1970s in the form of Sharon Cooper. She became his assistant at the American Water Works Association, and she felt like a breath of fresh air to Bob after all the years of married life. Sharon was talkative and flirtatious, where Nancy was conventional and quiet. Sharon was filled with flamboyant ideas and of New Age sensibility, where Nancy was basically old-fashioned. And Sharon was an outdoor person, much like Bob who loved to hike and ride his motorcycle, where Nancy was a stay-at-home mom.

Before long, it came to the attention of coworkers that Bob Spangler was spending an awful lot of time with Sharon Cooper. And it was obvious he was more than just breaking her in on a new job. It was the way he talked to her, the way they stood together and seemed more intimate than was necessary. Before long, almost everyone in his department knew that Bob Spangler was having an affair with the pretty and young Sharon Cooper. In time he couldn’t even keep this fact from his wife, Nancy. Nor did he want to.

Heated arguments erupted in the Spangler household between Bob and Nancy. In January 1978 he moved out of the house and into a home with Sharon Cooper. He liked her style and extravagant nature, but living with Sharon was no bed of roses either. She had a temper and, unlike Nancy, would not back down in arguments. One coworker said, They would fight like cats and dogs. She would even throw things at him when she was angry. She had a nasty temper. So did he on occasion.

All the backpacking trips in the nearby Colorado Rockies with Sharon may have been fun for Bob, but there were arguments and quarrels that went along with them. Perhaps missing a quiet spell of domesticity and wanting one last chance at reconciliation, Bob moved back in with Nancy and the kids in November 1978. Nancy did try to make a go of it. She wrote to her cousin Martha Winter that she and Bob were planning to take a motorcycle trip together in Colorado. Also, in some attempt to turn Nancy into Sharon, Bob had convinced her to take a backpacking trip with him into the nearby Rockies, even though she wasn’t very strong physically and suffered from arthritis in her right hand. Nancy was willing to go, however. She’d try about anything to get her family back together.

Because of his attempts at reconciliation, Nancy was upbeat and optimistic about their future together. She said she had been working at a temp agency and particularly enjoyed marketing and public relations. She said she planned to seek full-time employment in the new year.

Nancy wrote her cousin that David was getting pretty good at his guitar playing with his band and they all practiced in the basement. And she related that Susan practically had a live-in boyfriend, Timothy Trevithick. As for the Christmas holiday that had just occurred, Nancy wrote, Had a fine time this year for Christmas. I have bought him (Bob) a backpack so we can try hiking again.

Christmas with Bob had been so good, in fact, that Nancy was sure she’d heard the last of Sharon Cooper. Bob Spangler, however, had drawn a whole different conclusion about family life on South Franklin Way in Littleton. The reconciliation may have been working out for Nancy, but it was not working for him. He was tired of the chaos that his teenage children brought to the house. Both David and Susan had little respect for a father who had deserted them for nearly a year. He knew they smoked marijuana with their friends. He suspected they took harder drugs than that. And above all else, when he compared the quiet, somewhat shy, Nancy to the flamboyant Sharon Cooper—even with all her problems—it was Sharon that he wanted.

There was just one sticking point.