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right to choose a mate.
    By November 1986, Jami and Steve were living in a double-wide mobile home on Portola Avenue in Palm Desert, California. They were secretly engaged, and Steve gave Jami an heirloom ring. It was a size four, yellow gold with three round full-cut diamonds. The center stone was perfect and over a carat in weight; the side stones were .24 carats each, and it was appraised at $13,500. Steve suggested they take out insurance on it and their other expensive possessions. The policy, which went into effect in October, was written by Farmers’ Insurance for a year.
    Steve called the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department on November 4 to report that someone had broken into the mobile home and stolen a number of items, including Jami’s ring. Their claim form listed computers, cameras, miscellaneous jewelry, silver dishes, and a Colt .357. They estimated that their total loss, allowing for depreciation, was well over $32,000. They had paid only the first quarter of the premiums due on their renter’s policy, and their coverage was due to expire on January 2, 1987. The claim agent for Farmers’ was uneasy about the timing, but the insurance company decided eventually to pay off Steve and Jami’s claim.
    They should have used the insurance money for something practical, but it didn’t last long. Steve still had expensive tastes—and more expensive habits. Although he had been raised in a wealthy family, he was nowhere near the entrepreneur his father had been. Soon Steve and Jami were barely able to pay the rent on the mobile home on Portola Avenue. It was a far cry from the posh country club home his parents had once owned in Palm Desert, the house where his father died.
    Steve may have consciously or unconsciously hoped to recapture that splendor in his own life. But he was failing miserably. Finally, Jami placed an ad in a local paper seeking someone to move in and share the rent. Sally Kirwin,* a twenty-six-year-old woman from Wisconsin, found herself in a situation where she had to move in a hurry. Her landlord was an alcoholic and she was afraid of him. She answered the ad and arranged to meet Jami.
    “Jami was about twenty-two then,” Sally remembered. “She was very, very small.” Sally liked Jami and was relieved to learn that she could move into the extra bedroom in the mobile home without putting down a deposit or paying first and last months’ rent. Later she met Steve Sherer, Jami’s boyfriend. He seemed pleasant enough. He had long hair, and she wasn’t sure what he did for a living. It didn’t really matter, though, because Sally wasn’t looking for roommates with whom she had a lot in common; she just needed a place she could afford where her cat would be welcome, too. Jami and Steve said a cat would be fine with them. They occupied the master bedroom at the back of the mobile, they used one bedroom for their exercise equipment, and said Sally could have the extra one for only $300 a month.
    Sally had a job as a publicist for famous and wanna-be famous people, and it kept her so busy that she wasn’t home much. However, she accepted Jami and Steve’s invitation to join them for Thanksgiving dinner. The three of them posed for photos around a heavily laden buffet. She didn’t really know them, but she liked Jami, and Steve had a good sense of humor. Sally was planning to stay in the mobile home only long enough to build a nest egg so she could get her own apartment.
    There was nothing at all to warn Sally Kirwin that she had walked into a volatile situation. She had never been exposed to domestic violence and the thought never occurred to her.
    A few days before Christmas 1986, Sally was packing to head home to Wisconsin for the holidays. She was terribly afraid to fly, trying to psyche herself up for the next day. She accepted a beer Jami offered her and sat down with Jami and Steve, trying to relax and convince herself that flying was a perfectly safe mode of transportation.
    As