Deadly Divorces

F
ew things decimate a person quite like divorce. The oft-quoted statistic that divorce is the second most traumatic life event after the death of a member of one’s family is misleading, for with death comes its own inevitable closure. Divorce, which can feel like the slow, tortuous disembowelling of a marriage, has no such finality. Though you might grieve for the life you had, for the person you lost, there is no body to bury ritualistically and no gravestone at which to unleash your feelings and weep. Instead the once-loved partner who has carved up your finances, your family life, your sense of self-worth, your very heart is still walking and breathing and a daily testament to the failure of your dreams.

Two out of five marriages currently end in divorce but it would be dangerous to allow the commonplaceness of divorce to negate its terrifying power and impact. It’s a battlefield in which the three most primordial human obsessions – love, sex and money – become inextricably and dangerously intertwined. The stakes are high and the spoils of war deeply symbolic: children sometimes, not to mention status and home.

The truth is that divorce cuts to the very bone of a relationship exposing the ugly, bleeding flesh we normally try so hard to cover up. Marital homes purchased with hope and optimism become pressure cookers of building tension as accusations fly and barely formed emotions are ripped from deep within us in all their raw, howling intensity.

A recent poll by insidedivorce.com found that nearly one in five British couples admit to being on the brink of splitting up. That’s a huge percentage of people riding the emotional rollercoaster of marital breakdown. When you factor in the discovery that infidelity, with its poisonous legacy of betrayal and bitterness, is the biggest single trigger for divorce, you start to build up some understanding of the extent of the devastation currently taking place behind closed doors.

Divorce tears at the very fabric of who we are and how – sometimes even why – we live. It’s like a giant shredder from which our past life emerges in tatters; it pits lover against lover, parent against parent in a battle in which there
are no rules, no protective clothing, no referees and no real winners. Recent years have seen some acrimonious and very public celebrity break-ups from Sir Paul and Heather McCartney to Britney Spears and Kevin Federline. These high-profile divorce cases merely prove fame is no protection against the vitriol released when a marriage is in meltdown. Divorce is, if nothing else, a great leveller.

With emotions running high, it’s not surprising that the breakdown of a marriage can result in violence and sometimes even in death. Crimes of passion may no longer be recognised in law but would certainly be understood by many people who have undergone a traumatic split. Less easy to identify with are crimes that are planned out meticulously and methodically over the time it takes for a relationship to unravel. Do these count as temporary insanity or cold-blooded execution?

‘Each man kills the thing he loves,’ Oscar Wilde tellingly wrote. Certainly most of the crimes detailed in this book bear testament to that most poignant of sentiments. Love isn’t always selfless or benign. It can be violent, possessive, exclusive and even predatory – and when it is threatened, it can also be deadly.

S
ome days Rena Salmon could not believe her luck. Some days she would gaze around her
£
400,000 home in the affluent Berkshire village of Great Shefford, listening to her son and daughter laughing with their school friends in a different part of the house, and she’d wonder yet again how on earth she’d managed to end up there.

Great Shefford is prime commuter belt territory; near to Reading and Newbury, and not too far from London itself. Its picturesque cottages, good schools and country air make it a magnet for stockbrokers, solicitors and anyone else who dreams of a rural-style life with all city amenities close by – oh, and who can afford the hefty price-tag that property there commands. Luckily money wasn’t a problem for
Rena because her husband Paul made a fortune as an IT consultant. Rena got to swan around in a fancy Merc and to take holidays at their seaside home in Dorset with its own private section of beach. Not bad for a woman who’d run away from home at the age of 13 and had spent most of her teenage years in Care. No wonder she sometimes had to give herself a good hard pinch to make sure this was actually real.

Born in Birmingham on 20 February 1960, Rena Beyum Uddin had not had the easiest of starts. Depending on who you talked to, you’d get a slightly different version of what childhood was like in the Uddin household, but let’s just say none of the accounts would put you in mind of the Waltons. The story Rena and her sister Sabeya told was that their mother had been a prostitute; first in Birmingham and then Burnley. Growing up, they said, the house had been full of dirty old men, all clients of their mother’s. Both Rena and Sabeya had dark skin, apparently a legacy of their different Asian fathers. This physical characteristic was a constant source of irritation to their mother, claimed the women, and she’d regularly scrub them roughly with a mixture of bleach and scouring powder to lighten their skin and referred to them as ‘black bastards’.

Imagine what such a childhood would do to an impressionable young girl. Consider the daily beatings your ego and sense of self would sustain. Think how you’d shrivel inside and start hating your reflection in the mirror;
imagine how you’d come to believe that no one would ever love you, that you’d never be worthy of respect or affection. Picture how little hope you’d hold out of ever getting away from that situation, of ever being allowed anything ‘better’.

Living in a series of foster homes and children’s homes from the age of 13 hadn’t done much either for Rena’s fragile self-esteem. What message does that background send to a girl whose faith in people is already so tarnished? That nothing is permanent, what appears to be security can be whisked away at a moment’s notice, that it’s a cruel world and you have to hang onto what’s yours because there’s always someone else behind you waiting to snatch it away, leaving you with nothing.

But Rena’s luck – or rather the lack of it – changed when she joined the Army. Here finally was her opportunity to belong to a group; almost a ‘family’ that would always take care of her in the way her real family had failed to do. After so many years of feeling like she didn’t have the right clothes, of always sensing she was second best, Rena was proud to put on smart uniform everyday, finally to fit in.

She trained as a Data Telecoms Operator and in 1980 was posted to Northern Ireland. For many servicemen and women being sent to a place where hostility and tension seemed to hang heavy in the grey skies overhead would have constituted a nightmare posting, but for Rena it was
the start of a dream life because it was here that she first met Paul Salmon. Paul was a technician with the Royal Signals. With his clear, sparkling eyes, curly brown hair and easy charm, he was the kind of man Rena Salmon had never imagined might actually be interested in her. But over time, the two struck up a friendship that deepened into romance.

There was only one slight blot on the pages of this fairy tale – Paul was already married. However, he wasn’t going to let a little thing like that get in the way of a blossoming love affair. He set about getting divorced and in 1985 he and Rena tied the knot. For the girl who’d always felt unloved and unwanted; who’d been brought up to think she wasn’t good enough, it was a day she thought she’d never see. At last she had found someone who loved her for who she was and didn’t want to change her. After taking her vows, she silently added a couple of her own: that she would love this man forever and she would never let anything come between them.

Every new bride experiences that thrill of being reborn – of feeling as if she is starting out on a new life with the man she loves. For Rena Salmon, this sensation was even stronger than most. Her old life had been one of hardship and neglect. She wanted to put it far behind her. This new life was the real life where the true Rena would have a chance to come forward, shine and grow. And it was all down to Paul. With him by her side, at last she could find the happiness and security that had always eluded her.

When her son was born in 1989 and followed by a daughter in 1992, Rena’s fairy tale seemed complete. She threw herself into being a perfect mum, showering on her own children the love and affection she herself had been denied. Everything she’d always thought lacking in herself, she now invested in her children. They would have the childhood she’d only ever seen in films – the meals out, the trips to the cinema, the family dinners. Gazing down at their sleeping bodies, she promised herself they would never come to harm and that as long as she lived she’d strive to give them the stability children so desperately need.

While Rena was delighted with the emotional riches married life had given her, it also didn’t hurt that materially she now had everything she could wish for. In civilian life Paul had found a niche as a high earning IT consultant and within a short time he was earning over
£
80,000 a year. Rena too started working full time two years after her daughter’s birth. For the first time in her life she didn’t want for anything: she had beautiful clothes and expensive cars; she went on shopping sprees to New York and took pleasure in buying herself nice things. Finally she was starting to let herself believe that she was worth it.

In 1998 the Salmons moved to the Great Shefford house. Rena was in her element, buying things for the house, creating the home she’d never had. She started to make friends in the neighbourhood; mostly women she met
while dropping off or picking up her kids from school. One of these new friends was Lorna Rodrigues.

Although Lorna was seven years younger, the two just seemed to click. Lorna was energetic and fun to be around, the perfect pick-me-up for the more reserved older woman. Also, being married to a mixed-race Australian meant that Lorna was more multi-culturally aware than most of the people in this predominantly white
middle-class
town.

Lorna ran a successful beauty salon in Chiswick, west London and her husband Keith was a computer expert but at weekends they liked to spend time with their two daughters and other local families. It wasn’t long before the Salmons and the Rodrigues began socialising outside school, enjoying dinner parties and barbecues at one another’s houses; it was the kind of friendship Rena had always craved. She felt as though she could talk to Lorna about anything, including her worries about her marriage.

You see, Rena had begun to feel as if Paul was slipping away from her. It had started a few years before when she’d developed chronic back pain. Depressed and largely immobile, she started to binge eat and the weight had piled on. Paul, a fitness fanatic who always took pride in keeping in shape, had tried to encourage her to eat properly:‘Come on, you’ll feel better if you just eat a little healthier,’ he’d coax her. But one of the most damaging legacies of Rena’s past was the way emotion always crowded out reason in
stressful situations. Lacking any coping skills for dealing with pressure, she’d give in to her emotions. She knew she shouldn’t stuff herself with food –she knew it was driving her husband away – but that very knowledge made the urge to eat even stronger.

Paul became increasingly distant. He stayed out late after work and seemed to have lost interest in her. Their once solid marriage was looking more and more fragile. Rena had hoped that moving to a new area would provide the fresh start they needed but while they both loved being there, it hadn’t brought them closer.

‘Our sex life has really gone down hill,’ Rena confided to Lorna one day. Lorna was immediately sympathetic: ‘What you need is something to spice things up in the bedroom,’ she advised her new friend. But the sexy new underwear Rena splashed out on did nothing to stop the rot in her marriage. Paul simply didn’t seem interested. During the week he was always at work and then at weekends he’d go out drinking with friends. She never knew where he was and though she suspected there were other women, she chose to ignore this rather than face her suspicions head on. The couple became locked into that cycle that most unhappy marriages come to know so well. One partner feels the other is pulling away so they become clingy and emotionally needy which in turn pushes the other partner still further away. The word ‘divorce’ began to loom large in Rena Salmon’s fears.

She couldn’t accept it; wouldn’t accept it. Here was a woman who’d been rejected all her life. Finally she’d found someone who made her feel wanted and accepted. She’d made a life where she had a place and a value. Not only this but she’d invested all her emotional reserves, all the love she kept inside her through the dark years in her family and her man. She couldn’t live without him – he
had
to stay with her. She’d change, she’d get thinner; she’d start being more outgoing and less clingy. She’d do anything,
anything
to keep him.

What could be crueller than a once loving relationship where one partner has lost interest? What could hurt more than looking into clear eyes that were once full of love to meet only indifference? Rena knew she’d let herself get overweight and she knew her emotional dependence was driving her husband away. But she didn’t know what to do about it. Thank goodness she had Lorna to turn to in those lonely moments when it all seemed too much to bear.

But by the end of 2001, Lorna Rodrigues had other things occupying her mind apart from her friend’s marital problems: she had a new lover. Even thinking the words sent a thrill through her. She hadn’t been looking for it, hadn’t ever thought about it but then along came this man saying all the right things and wham! She’d fallen into this full-blown love affair. There were only two problems (i) he was married and (ii) he was married to her best friend.

Paul Salmon had taken to Lorna the first time he met her.
She was so much fun plus she was a successful businesswoman and as the owner of a beauty salon she was always immaculately turned out – the exact opposite of his own wife, in fact. The more time Paul spent with Lorna, the more he couldn’t help comparing her to Rena. Why couldn’t Rena be more independent? Why did she always have to ask him where he was going and what he was doing? Why did the little things she did irritate him so much?

He started imagining what life would be like if it was Lorna he went home to at night instead of Rena, if it was Lorna he watched undressing before bed and if it was Lorna’s body laying beside him at night. Soon thoughts of the younger woman began to obsess him. She was never far from his mind and he knew he had to tell her how he felt.

In November 2001, after a series of chance meetings, Paul phoned Lorna and said he’d like to see her. They arranged a meeting and, with his heart pounding, he confessed his feelings. This was the moment everything else hinged on, the moment that set in motion the chain of events that came after. Did Lorna hesitate? Torn between her undeniable attraction to Paul and her loyalty to his wife, did she struggle to suppress her feelings for this married man? If the battle between guilt and temptation that waged inside Lorna Rodrigues had gone a different way, so much tragedy might have been avoided. But she was flattered. Who wouldn’t be? She loved the idea that this successful, handsome man found her attractive. Sure, it was
a shame they were both married but then no one else needed to find out, did they?

Just a month later, Keith Rodrigues was looking through his wife’s email account when he came across a message that made his heart freeze:

We all think we know how we’d react when faced with a spouse’s infidelity – yell, scream, throw things, storm out. Yet for many of us the only course of action is no action, just an immediate paralysis, a wall of denial and disbelief that springs up around the heart to protect it from cracking right down the middle. Keith Rodrigues stood rooted to the spot. It couldn’t be true. Surely she wouldn’t do that to him; what about the children, too? What about the family they’d so carefully and so lovingly built up? Would Lorna really want to jeopardise all that? In shock he scrolled through the message again and again. There was no mistake, there could be no innocent explanation: his wife was having an affair.

Keith Rodrigues loved his wife; he adored her, in fact. Sure they’d had their problems over the years but what couple hadn’t? He never imagined she would have betrayed him like this and with someone they both knew. It was a real kick in the teeth for the unassuming family
man. What had he done that was so wrong that it sent her running into another man’s arms? Hadn’t he been enough for her?

Any spouse discovering infidelity feels inadequate. Men in particular can feel like sexual failures, as if they haven’t been man enough to please their wives. They become haunted by visions of their spouse in bed with someone else, so-called ‘mind movies’ of the lovers having sex play incessantly through their heads as if on continuous loop. Everyone reacts in different ways. Some are angry, some disbelieving, others just broken but all they want the same result: they want it to stop.

When a trembling Keith Rodrigues confronted his wife in December 2001, deep down he knew what he wanted. More than anything he wanted Paul Salmon off the scene and his family to stay together. The couple talked long into the night. Keith was adamant Rena should know what had been going on for she was as much betrayed as he was. She had a right to be told, to know what kind of man she was living with. Plus, once Rena knew, she’d be able to keep an eye on what Paul was getting up to and maybe he’d start to leave Lorna alone.