of course, by that point, todd told the police, she was a very unstable woman. started drinking, started binge drinking. i was afraid for the children. she was just spinning into this mental cycle of self-destruction. and then todd s defense revealed this little gem. she s signed up for california sweetheart, which is an adult connection kind of you can judge for yourselves what it is. married to a man she d grown to hate, in an affair with a man she was maybe thinking of cheating on, said the defense. she was conflicted, said todd s attorney. she was telling people she was afraid of todd. and yet she sure didn t act like it here, todd and rachel look happy. compare it with this photograph taken in las vegas about just a few days before rachel died. but there was something else, said todd s attorney, and it was reason number two, that rachel s death was not murder. and that was that his client had a psychotic breakdown when
rachel attacked him. his ability to understand what he was doing was diminished. why should the jury believe that? well, as you ll remember, rachel herself described todd as unstable at times. and now the defense presented evidence of what they said was his history of psychotic episodes. the first one happened in asia, something like 20 years earlier when todd was married to cathy and was flying with the fighting samurai squadron. he was caught shoplifting from a base px. he claimed amnesia. so the air force sent him off for psychiatric tests. but then it got even more bizarre, and cathy called her friend tanya. she telephoned me saying, i m in hawaii. todd had a mental breakdown, and so he s in a psychiatric facility. she had said to me that he escaped and was in the wooded area in hawaii.
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practice? i had actually kind of looked at todd as kind of a guy s guy . you enjoyed their company. we did. enjoyed todd a little more than rachel, maybe. i knew her less well than i knew todd, i feel. i feel like we were both in the same place in our lives, but sort of moving in different circles and and she wasn t one of those people who kind you immediately were attracted to or what? no. i don t i really liked her but she always seemed a little bit distant. very polite, very friendly but a little bit distant. you want to go over there? yeah. let s go over there. by 2009, rachel and todd had two little daughters eva and ariel. he always seemed very involved and very engaged with the kids and to me, always seemed to be trying to help rachel and give her a break. rachel and todd to us were like the perfect little family. mh-mm. they were both very proactive parent. yes. loving parents, caring parents as well to each other, a
todd took her credit cards and maxed them all out and bought a plane and just put her in debt for, like, $45,000. whoa. i was, like, whoa . i m all, aren t you freaking out? and she said, yeah, but we he ll take care of it. which sounded less like complaining than maybe boasting. tim, after all, could barely qualify for credit at all. eventually, being on the outside looking in was just too hard. i couldn t take it no more. it s, you know it was getting harder and harder. so he asked her to stop calling him. he had to move on, start painting again, forget her, though as he admitted to us, he wasn t very successful. i thought, you know, maybe later on down the road, we can, you know, get together again and share life again. wishful thinking, of course. tim simply failed to understand that rachel s life with husband todd was getting more exciting by the day.