had begun an elaborate escape plan. marie does a lot of charitable work and especially for animals. she always has done. and the cat protection league is one of her favorites. so, she simply said to bob she was putting out some bags for the cat protection league. on the morning of the escape, arthritic liz butterfield and pensioner marie woke at dawn to avoid kleasen. i drove up to be there for 8:00. i got the dog in the car. that was first priority. four bags of what appeared to be jumbled, these four plastic bags. they was terrified for their lives and their friend especially, she was very concerned that he was capable of killing her. fearful of waking kleasen, the women crept around the house, gathering bags before making their way to a waiting car. just in case he woke up and tried to follow us, we came all the back roads. we came routes he couldn t possibly know.
they were his children. that was the depth of his mental confusion, i suppose. kleasen was now a man on the edge. his guns had been taken, but his wife remained. as in texas in 1974, everyone around him felt threatened by his presence. i thought the only way he d whack me is if he did it sneaky. he wouldn t come into the front of the shop and do it because he knew there s a good chance i could defend myself. i felt he might well do it to his wife. at one time he d threatened mary that if ever she left him, he would set fire to the house. and we were bothered weren t we? don t you remember that? of course we were. because we were attached to her. the police still hadn t found out about kleasen s murder conviction in texas. but liz butterfield was unnerved to learn that kleasen moved a band saw into the cottage that he claimed to use to cut up logs.
wanting to fill in the gaps of kleasen s past she asked her computer-literal computer-literate son to help her out. i went to the new york department of corrections website, and i couldn t believe it. they actually put prisoner s records up there. i ll type in kleasen, robert elmer. and there was an assault charge. that was a shock in itself. the link from there led us to the texas state records which was the awful moment. you sat there. you just don t want to move. you re looking at the computer but don t want to take it in. it s this denial factor again. you think no, it can t be right. chris just ran up and he said, you just don t want to know this. he s been on death row for murder. liz now believed her best friend had been married to a murderer and headed to barton to confront mair.
how do you tell somebody that they re married to a murderer? i think by then she s got this awful feeling that this was something terrible. i sat down with a cup of tea and said i need you to look at this. this is not going to be good. she just shook. i have never in all my life seen anybody turn gray, absolute gray, putty colored, and she just shook and she shook and shook for about half an hour. i thought i had killed her. it was one of the worst things i ve ever had to do. for most of the afternoon liz butterfield tried to persuade her friend to leave the house immediately. but marie refused. so i said okay i accept what you re saying. you re not going to leave.