She Just Loved That Man to Death

I've spent 25 years sitting in courtrooms, reporting on some of the most appalling of human behavior. Here's what I know. There's marriage, and there's crime. And sometimes it's hard to tell the two apart.

Sure, people kill each other in the strangest ways, and for the most peculiar of reasons. I once wrote about two drug addicts who, angry over the quality of the product, tied their dealer down and injected her with bleach. In another case, a career criminal working at a car wash kidnapped a woman as she attempted to clean her Cadillac, placed her in the trunk of her own car, and then drove around in the car for five days as the woman, still locked in the trunk, died of thirst.

But it is not these cases that tend to fascinate people. Horrify them, absolutely. But absolute evil tends to be one dimensional, a black hole with nothing to hold our attention except a passing fear.

No, what keeps people mesmerized are stories about love and betrayal, and what happens when things go seriously awry.

It's no surprise, then, that there's been a recent resurgence of interest in the Nancy Seaman murder case. Oxygen's SNAPPED is planning a segment, and Discovery's SINS AND SECRETS was in town last month, doing interviews for an episode to run in early 2012.

For those who missed the gory 2006 trial, Nancy was an elementary school teacher, living what appeared to be a near perfect life - a large home in a gated community in upscale Farmington Hills, a suburb of Detroit, a successful and handsome husband and two sons who had made her proud by graduating college with honors.

She argued with her husband one Sunday afternoon. It was Mothers' Day.

She then drove directly to the local Home Depot in the pouring rain, bought a hatchet, drove immediately home and whacked him to death in the family garage. And she then stabbed him 16 times, just for good measure.

Nancy, at 5'2'' and 120 pounds managed to get dead Bob, 5'9'' and 190 pounds, into the back of the family's SUV (She would later explain that she rigged a system of levers and pulleys, using materials she found in the garage. She was, after all, a Science teacher). She then drove around with the body for three days, running errands, teaching her fourth grade class, and shopping at Target, where she bought, among other things, Febreeze.

The body was still in the back of the SUV that Wednesday, wrapped up in a tarp, along with the hatchet, when the Farmington Hills police arrived, alerted that Bob had stopped showing up for work.

Nancy Seaman, once named Teacher of the Year by the Farmington Hills School District, suddenly found herself charged with first degree murder.

A jury eventually convicted her, and she is serving a life sentence in a Michigan prison. There is an appeal pending.

Here's what's interesting and telling, though.

During the three week trial, she took the witness stand in her own defense. The prosecutor asked why she had not disposed of the body.

"He was my husband for 30 years," she said, clearly exasperated that anyone would ask her such a question. "I couldn't just dump him anywhere."

It was one of those rare courtroom moments where truth suddenly makes an appearance.

The entire trial had been one long and ugly account of a marriage gone south, of two people not just trapped in a loveless relationship, but waging full jihad against each other. By the time she took the ax to her husband, they were communicating only by sticky notes, little yellow squares of paper posted all over the house. Bob was just days from filing for divorce.

And yet she did not want to dispose of his body in an unseemly or irresponsible way. I believed that. Her comment spoke to the intimacy of the marriage, of all marriages, really.

Sure, she had butchered him in the garage, but they had a history, had shared the same bed, once made love, conceived two children. She used to do his laundry - an intimate chore if there ever was one. He made her happy in the early years, weeding her flower beds and taking her to dinner. There were Christmas mornings, and family vacations and anniversaries.

In Nancy's mind, I am sure, the messy business with the hatchet in the garage did not in anyway diminish those earlier joys. In fact, her husband's violent death was the logical outcome for her. There had been intimacy. He had once been hers. And he had been leaving her for years.

So her fury grew. And in turn, Bob grew more distant.

Some marriages are like petri dishes, perfect environs to breed all manner of horrors. No one will walk away. Everybody wants the last word. Every perceived slight becomes a felony, every snub a near mortal wound.

A death by a thousand superficial stabwounds.

Or a few well placed whacks with a hatchet.

Loathing is a pretty safe indulgence, when done from afar. You can loathe Newt Gingrich with all your heart and no harm will come to you.

But loathe the person asleep beside you? Loathe the sound of his voice, the smell of his skin? Now, we're in the danger zone.

Most of us are healthy enough to leave such a toxic relationship. We get bruised and battered, and then say, enough. Some would say Bob Seaman had finally reached that point. That he was no longer interested in the last word, that he wanted out.

For Nancy though, the intimacy was the rub. It was clear from her testimony.  I let you into my life, created a family, planned for the future. I let you get close to me. And now you want to leave me. And I will have the final word. Even if it's as I'm being led away to serve the rest of my life in prison.

Here's the thing with me.

I love my husband. We don't have enough energy left after raising children to punish each other over perceived slights, missed birthdays, overdrawn checking accounts.

But sometimes, late at night, when I'm just a little bit peeved, and my perpective is out of whack, I think,

"Hmmm. I could drive to Home Depot..."