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reputation. Renee would have been very young when she gave birth to two babies, probably in her midteens.
    Joe hadn’t found her to be a very attentive mother to either of her children. He disapproved of that. He had no idea who had fathered Diana and Brent; Renee didn’t talk about it.
    Joe had always put his own children first—and he vacillated over which of his young girlfriends to choose.
    “On the drive back from my wedding,” Gypsy remembers, “my brother Dean said Dad asked the kids which of his girlfriends they liked best, Kim or Renee? They told him they couldn’t make that decision for him, although I guess all of us secretly wished he would choose someone closer to his own age.”
    In the end, Joe chose Renee. Unfortunately, in choosing Renee, Joe also got her mother, Geri. They came as a matched pair.
    In 1977, he decided to move to Alaska. The pipeline construction was under way, and he could see tremendous potential there if he started his own door-to-door meat business. He’d learned the ins and outs of selling meat in big lots while he worked at Gerard’s in Seattle and was confident about striking out on his own.
    He brought Renee Curtiss up to Alaska to work for him. Geri Hesse was in the process of getting a divorce from Renee’s father, and she soon followed, bringing her granddaughter, Diana, with her. Renee’s son, Brent, was in one of the many foster homes he would live in.
    Joe called his new company Alaska Meat Provisions. It was located on International Airport Road in Anchorage. He picked up the steaks, roasts, and ground meat from a wholesaler and delivered them to customers from Anchorage to Fairbanks while Renee managed the office in Anchorage.
    In essence, Joe was supporting Renee, Geri Hesse, and Diana, although he never lived with them: they rented a house on Jewel Lake. Joe put a bed for himself in an unfinished room over his office.
    Geri was much closer in age to Joe than Renee was, but it was Renee who fascinated Joe. He bought her jewelry and almost anything she said she wanted, along with presents for Geri and Diana.
    It wasn’t long before Joe fell completely in love with Renee. He knew she didn’t love him as much as he cared for her, and he suspected she was seeing other men.
    It didn’t matter. Joe Tarricone was obsessed with Renee Curtiss. His children disapproved, his parents in New Yorkweren’t at all happy that he was divorced and chasing after a woman thirty years younger than he was, and all his relatives and friends worried about him.
    They wondered what such a young and beautiful woman might want from him. Renee could probably have just about any man she chose, and they were afraid she was after Joe for his money. He scoffed at the idea, convinced that he would win Renee over in time.
    In the meantime, he had a warm friendship with her, Geri Hesse, and little Diana. In a sense, he had another family group.
    Renee had an Irish pixie look about her, thanks to her bright blue eyes, deep dimples, and her cap of dark hair. Her figure was perfect. She didn’t
look
like a femme fatale; she resembled a wholesome college girl.
    Being with her made Joe feel as though he was in his twenties again. His business was doing very well. Although he missed his seven “kids,” who were scattered from New Mexico to the Northwest to Hawaii, he was in touch with them often.
    His life was good in 1977.
    Believing that the victim on Canyon Road was, indeed, Joe Tarricone, Ben Benson realized that his prime suspects were likely to be Geri Hesse and two of her own children—Renee Curtiss and Nick Notaro, whom Geri had adopted when he was a baby.
    Benson began background checks on all of them. He found that Renee had been arrested several times for DUI(driving under the influence). In one instance, police had found her car stopped in the middle of the 405 freeway between Renton and Mercer Island in the wee hours of the morning. She was inside, passed out from alcohol. Renee was lucky