Poisoned Dreams Read online

  Though their curriculums have expanded in recent years, private women’s universities are still primarily geared toward liberal arts degrees. Translate that: Proper Wife Diplomas; although schools like Hollins have the highest academic standards, they actually have little to offer the career-minded young woman. A popular trend is for ladies who want professional training in business, medicine, or law to transfer at the end of their sophomore year. Nancy didn’t follow the trend; she remained at Hollins and received her bachelor’s degree in 1975. Her undergraduate grades were above average, her career at Hollins unremarkable.

  Or unremarkable in most respects. In 1974, during her junior year, Nancy had a secret abortion. After her death the hidden incident would come back to haunt.

  Embarking on life with a liberal arts degree wasn’t as much of a problem for Nancy Dillard as it might be for many young women struggling to survive. Secure in the knowledge that Big Daddy would foot the bills she couldn’t cover herself, she could afford to work for peanuts. Whether the job was fun was more of a factor than salary, so Nancy took a job with a museum in Washington. For the next two years she conducted walkthroughs, pointing out the more riveting aspects of cavalry swords and Civil War uniforms to tourists who dropped by on their way to the Lincoln Memorial or Washington Monument. Not surprisingly, after the novelty had worn off, Nancy’s museum job bored her to tears.

  During the time she worked in DC, Nancy decided that, careerwise, the time she’d spent at Hollins University had been pretty much a waste of time. Her liberal arts training simply hadn’t prepared her enough, she thought. At that time in her life Nancy had no thoughts of marriage anytime soon, and she certainly wasn’t willing to spend the rest of her life as a museum guide. If she wanted to excel in any profession, she was going to have to go back to school. With continued education in mind, Nancy began to look around.

  With family resources to back her up, she could afford to take her time about choosing a career, but she didn’t take long in setting a course once she’d decided to return to school. Landscaping fascinated her. She seldom passed one of the grand homes in the finer Washington suburbs without having an idea that would improve the exterior looks of the place. Some grading here, more trees there, perhaps a row of hedges. During the latter portion of her second year at the museum, Nancy took a trip home to Dallas during which she let Big Daddy know of her desire to become a landscape architect. Her father liked the idea—though it’s likely that, where his younger little girl was concerned, Big Daddy would have thought it marvelous if she’d decided on a circus career or anything else that had popped into Nancy’s mind—so in the fall helped her move to Philadelphia and enrolled her in the Penn School of Design. Two years later, bolstered by a B-plus average in undergraduate school, she continued on to do work at Harvard.

  On the hot September day when Nancy first laid eyes on Richard in a Harvard classroom, she was twenty-six years old, having already completed four years at Hollins, two years with the museum, and two more years at Penn. Richard was four years younger than she, though he looked much older. Their love affair would be well along before she confessed the difference in their ages.

  Though the two felt instant chemistry, Richard and Nancy didn’t actually date for several months. Richard was involved with Dawn, of course, though the relationship was doomed to go the way of many college long-distance loves, and Nancy simply didn’t seem interested in going out with anyone. While otherwise a self-confident and assertive young woman, Nancy actually seemed frightened of men. On more than one occasion she accepted invitations for dates and then, at the last minute, backed out. At other times she would go, and suddenly during the middle of an evening would invent excuses to be taken home.

  One chilly November Saturday she went to the Princeton–Harvard football game with a law student named Douglas Meems and three other couples. The group planned to attend a party after the game down in the Boston Bay area, all four young couples deciding to pile into Doug’s ten-year-old Lincoln for the drive.

  “Talk about an attitude reversal,” he says. “I mean, this was a sharp and attractive girl. I’d heard some stories that she could be a little bit weird, but, man, this I didn’t expect. From the outset, when I picked her up and we headed for the game, she just sort of bubbled over. Talked my freaking ear off, told a few jokes, and up until we got seated with the other people we were meeting I was having one helluva good time. Then, whammo.

  “It was pretty cold, damn cold, I guess, for your part of the country”—Doug Meems is a Manhattan lawyer, and was speaking long-distance to Dallas—“but something we all get used to up here. Anyway, I spread a blanket over us, and I had a little flask and all, and there we sat watching the ball game. All of a sudden, and I don’t know if it was the drinks or my body odor or what, but all of a sudden she just clammed up. Would barely speak to me, and every time I’d try to start any kind of conversation it was like I’d done something wrong.

  “Around the middle of the third quarter, I guess it was, Nancy just up and disappears. I can’t remember if she said she was going to the bathroom or what, but all of a sudden there I am, just me and these other couples. I went out and hunted all over for her to no avail, and after the game even went by her place looking for her. I don’t mind telling you I was more than a little pissed, and I had to let this other guy borrow my car because I couldn’t, felt like I couldn’t, go along with the others without a date. And guess what? The next time I saw her on campus she runs up with this big friendly grin like nothing was wrong. No apologies, no nothing. I’m telling you, as far as I was concerned, the lady invented weird.”

  As much as Nancy was taken with Richard’s looks, her attraction to him had equally to do with his attitude. She knew that Richard was next to engaged, and that any relationship he had with a fellow student was going to be platonic. And in the beginning, Richard’s association with Nancy was a just-friends thing and nothing more. They studied together often at the library and went for long campus walks during which their discussions centered on classwork. They became lab partners in one course and undertook projects together. Though many on campus thought of the two as an item early on in the school year, the truth was that they rarely saw each other away from the campus. Nancy confessed to close friends that if being seen with Richard kept other college men at bay, then that was just the way that she preferred the situation.

  And though Richard admitted to a strong attraction to Nancy from the beginning, any romantic plans he may have had were well hidden. There would be many, years later, to say that Richard’s primary interest in Nancy had to do with Big Daddy’s finances, but for the first half year of their relationship, at least, he didn’t even know she was wealthy. She made good small talk, was an excellent study partner and campus friend, but Richard’s heart at the time was three hours away, back at UMass with Dawn. As the school year progressed, though, that was going to change.

  There is nothing unusual about college romances falling apart when sweethearts attend separate schools, and Richard’s relationship with Dawn Minai wasn’t much different from the norm. Back in Amherst, with Richard away in Cambridge, the lovely Dawn began to develop other interests. She never wanted for attentive young men, before or after her romance with Richard, and the temptations were more persuasive once Richard was gone from sight. During the fall of 1979, her calls to and from Richard slacked off, and his visits to Amherst became more and more infrequent. By the Christmas break of that year, in fact, the relationship was more off than on. When Richard returned to Harvard in the spring, he considered himself a free man. His unattached days were to be numbered indeed.

  With his romance involving Dawn at a close, Richard began to see Nancy in a far different light. During that spring they went on picnics together and attended campus outdoor parties where Richard would strum his guitar and other students would join in and sing. They had much in common; both enjoyed movies, both were reserved, and both were
immersed in their studies. And sometime during the following months, when they eventually went to bed together, they found that both in their own way were pretty much sexual novices.

  Since Nancy was older, that she wasn’t more experienced in making love was surprising to Richard, but his own inexperience turned out to be just what she needed. He was slow with her, and understanding as well, and tentative as their first encounters might have been, Nancy soon lost all hesitancy with him. By the end of that semester in school, she was hopelessly in love, and her devotion to Richard would one day become an obsession that would border on the psychotic.

  It is somewhat surprising to many, given Richard’s good looks and his allure to women, that there wasn’t more romance in his life before Nancy, but his only lengthy relationship up to that time had been with Dawn. People tend to take on patterns in their love lives, and Richard was no different. For the balance of the time that he and Nancy attended school at Harvard, they kept the outward appearance of living apart, just as he and Dawn had done during their years at UMass, but in reality Richard and Nancy spent most of their nights together. They slept in a twin bed at Richard’s for much of the time, studying together into the wee hours and then crawling off to sleep entwined in each other’s arms. They arranged to take the same classes whenever possible, and even took great pains to have similar handwriting patterns. They practiced for hours, writing sentences over and over until even trained experts would have trouble telling Richard’s writing from Nancy’s, and vice versa. That two people would consciously strive to have their writing patterns indiscernible seems strange at first glance, but apparently there was a method to the madness, at least from Richard’s point of view.

  Herb Wagner was a landscape student at Harvard, from upstate New York, and currently heads his own construction firm in the Dallas suburb of Garland. “Sure, I followed the case,” he says. “Who in this area didn’t? That handwriting business didn’t really surprise me, and I’ll let you in on a little secret. All the country-boy gee-whiz aside, Richard was a user. He was always borrowing class notes from somebody because his own weren’t really that good, and once he had Nancy, school really got to be a snap for him. She was a real whiz in the classroom, and I’ll tell you that those last two years in school at least, if Richard ever did an assignment on his own, I’d be surprised. She used to sit up half the night and make two copies of all her assignments, in longhand, mind you, while he sat around and watched TV or played the guitar. The next day he’d hand one copy in and she’d hand in the other. That was what those handwriting sessions were all about, pure and simple. Rich was a friendly and likable guy, don’t get me wrong. And he may have been nuts about Nancy, I’m not saying he wasn’t. But the guy was a user. Don’t make any mistake about it.”

  Although Richard wasn’t aware of the extent of Nancy’s wealth when he first began seeing her, he wasn’t long in finding out. Big Daddy kept up with his little girl. For a long time he and Sue had been concerned about Nancy’s lack of a love life, and when the stories began to filter back to Park Cities—some through Nancy’s friend Alice Eiseman, a Highland Park girl who roomed with Nancy when she wasn’t staying with Richard, some through Nancy’s brother and sister, and some, though told rather timidly, from Nancy herself—about Nancy’s new Harvard beau, Mom and Dad were bursting with curiosity. Just about any Harvard man is automatically an eligible suitor for the daughters of Park Cities, but once the eligibility is established, there are certain other criteria to be met before final acceptance. What are his bloodlines? Does he wear well socially? Is he ambitious on his own, enough so that he is potentially able to support one’s daughter in the manner to which she is accustomed? With these and other questions in mind, Big Daddy and Sue decided on an eyeball-to-eyeball meeting in the fall of 1980.

  The leaders of the Dillard clan chose New York City for the meeting place, partly so that Big Daddy could combine the Richard-examination journey with business, and flew to the Big Apple to check into the Hilton. Nancy and Richard came down from Cambridge, and for the next three days the Dillards and their prospective son-in-law (though no official wedding plans were in the works at the time, Sue and Big Daddy certainly saw Nancy’s eventual union with Richard as a definite possibility) got acquainted. The foursome went out to dinner at some of Manhattan’s posher establishments, took in a Broadway show, and caught a concert at Carnegie Hall, and during the daytime Sue took Nancy shopping while Big Daddy and Richard did lunch and visited.

  For Richard, the whole thing was an eye-opener. Though he had an uncle who was a member of a prestigious Manhattan law firm, the kid from Mansfield-Willimantic had never really observed the lifestyle of the wealthy firsthand before, and he definitely liked what he saw. He put forth his maximum effort where Sue and Big Daddy were concerned, and by the time the visit was over, Nancy’s parents were thoroughly enchanted.

  Once during the Manhattan sojourn, Nancy and Richard had a midnight tryst. Silently they crept from their separate beds into the Dillard suite’s parlor, and there made passionate love that lasted far into the wee hours. Nancy was later to confide to friends that never before that night, or ever again in their entire relationship, was Richard more attentive to her physical needs. It was as if pleasing her on that evening with Sue and Big Daddy slumbering nearby, and making the encounter one that she would remember always, was at that moment to Richard the most important thing in the world.

  Though the Manhattan trip gave Richard an inkling as to the Dillards’ extensive wealth, it was the following summer before he was to see the empire firsthand. During the summer recess from classes he flew from Boston to DFW International Airport, and was the Dillards’ guest for a couple of weeks in their magnificent Rheims Place home. During the visit Richard toured the length and breadth of Park Cities with Nancy as his guide. The couple lunched in the Highland Park Shopping Village and shopped at Northpark Mall, and as Big Daddy’s guest had dinner at Dallas Country Club. Big Daddy gave Richard the cook’s tour of his own fine offices at 2001 Bryan Tower and introduced the Harvard lad around to some of the Dillard business cohorts, among them then Texas Rangers owner Bob Short, and then Dallas Cowboys owner H. L. (Bum) Bright. The mansions along Rheims Place and Beverly Drive set Richard’s mouth agape, and on his return to Harvard the next fall his Dallas trip and the grandeur of the Dillard lifestyle were all that he could talk about.

  It was also during Richard’s initial visit to Dallas that he first met Bill Jr. By this time Nancy’s older brother had graduated from college, completed his European odyssey, and along with a partner named Joe Bowers had bought into one of Big Daddy’s real estate companies. Bill Jr. was then at the height of his party-time career, and Richard found the older Dillard son’s manner more than a little offensive. Nancy’s quiet and reserved posture was the exact opposite of Bill Jr.’s, and her brother’s hard-drinking, raucous carrying-on was something that Richard simply couldn’t tolerate. Bill Jr., on the other hand, seemed to interpret Richard’s lack of interest in burning the candle at both ends as some sort of character flaw. The conflict between the two, husband and brother, would carry on throughout Richard’s marriage to Nancy. The friction was still there on the day that Nancy died.

  “It was about that time,” the convicted drug dealer says, “when we used to call the guy ‘Cabbagehead.’ Wasn’t behind his back or anything, it was just his nickname. You’d go, Cabbagehead this, or Cabbagehead that, and everybody’d know who you were talking about.”

  “Jesus Christ. Cabbagehead?” the interviewer says.

  “Yeah, this was late seventies, around then. Time before last for me.”

  “You mean, two incarcerations ago?” the interviewer says.

  “Yeah. I’m telling you this is the last go-round, too. I’ll shovel shit before I’ll get into that again.”

  “I’m not throwing stones,” the interviewer says. “I’m not in any position to.”

  It is Sunday noon. The
visiting room at the Federal Correctional Institute, Big Spring, Texas, is packed to the gills. The visitors are for the most part harried-looking wives who clutch at the moment, desperately holding hands with prisoners who wear castoff air force garb: fatigues, pistol belts, khaki short-sleeve permanent press shirts. The inmates’ clothing was original issue back in the sixties, when the prison was a strategic air command base. The interviewer and the convicted drug dealer share a table. Both sit in hard plastic chairs, and lean close to each other to be heard over the shouts of visiting children and the hubbub of nearby conversation. Some families have bought vending-machine sandwiches and spread lunches on the tables under the ever-watchful eyes of guards who stand here and there about the room.

  “It was his hair,” the drug dealer says. “Man, like a big round head of cabbage, that’s just what it looked like.”

  “You met him doing a deal?”

  The dealer grins. He is a slender, balding man, and wears fatigues along with black hard-toed boots. “I guess you could say that. The statute’s run on anything back then.”

  “You knew him well?”

  “I guess about as good as I knew any of those guys. A lot of those rich kids used to come around, money was easy back then. I tell you I didn’t know anything about his sister, though, or any of the rest of his family.”