Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [312]
As a general matter, Claudia Riley was spooked by corpses. “I don’t view bodies,” she explained. “It’s not necessary; they’re gone.” But there were so many “wild” rumors circulating about Jim McDougal’s death, she called her daughter and said, “We’re going to the funeral home.” They entered the Murry-Ruggles Funeral Home on Clay Street in Arkadelphia, where she directed the undertaker to open the casket so that she could peer inside. “It was obviously Jim,” Claudia said. “None of us wanted to do this, but we did.”
Just before he had left for prison, McDougal had sat at a table in Claudia’s living room and announced that he wanted to “write out a few things.” Claudia now opened the sealed envelope and discovered a handwritten will, naming her as the sole executor. Jim had expected (or hoped for) money from the sale of his book. In his last will and testament, he asked Claudia to handle all arrangements and to take care of two people: an elderly aunt, who was his only surviving relative, and his ex-wife, Susan. Said Claudia softly, “He cared about Susan to the end.”
Susan McDougal was in the federal Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles, a facility that primarily housed the poor and destitute. It was here that she received the news from a Catholic chaplain.
Susan’s overwhelming feeling was one of numbness. She would later reconstruct her thoughts: “I wasn’t sure how I felt about Jim’s death. The Jim I’d known had died years earlier, and I had already mourned that passing.” The ultimate irony, she felt, was that Jim was so terrified of dying in prison, that he was willing to tell Starr’s prosecutors anything they wanted to hear. “Jim had made his deal with the devil,” she said, clasping her hands together, “and then he died in prison, anyway.”
As she sat in her own dark jail cell trying to make sense of Jim’s bizarre demise, Susan’s dominant thought was, “Oh my God, Jim, you can never take this back.” She had always thought there would come a day when Jim would be freed from jail and he would confess to her face-to-face that he had cooperated with OIC because he was “scared” and wanted desperately to “save himself.” When that day came, she had been prepared to forgive her ex-husband, who had ruined her life. Now, they would never have that conversation. Susan concluded: “We were left with that.”
This complex and tragic man who had once been her chivalrous husband, Susan McDougal told herself as she stared blankly at the walls of her cell, “was capable of unbelievable acts of generosity.” Yet the same man could engage in “unbelievable acts of perversity and deceit.” She had come to loathe that second Jim McDougal, “the man who threw away every principle he believed in … the man who cared about no one but himself and who seemed to take pleasure in hurting others.” Another feeling kept sneaking in and made her even more confused: Despite the anger, Susan could not shut out a feeling that approximated love. “For every bad thought I had about Jim, there were also numerous good memories of the Jim I’d married, the man who so effortlessly gave whatever he had to [others],” she said, recalling that strange period of mourning in prison.
But her thoughts toward Ken Starr and Hickman Ewing and the whole crew from OIC remained unwavering: These sentiments were so un-Christian and filled with hate that she preferred not to repeat them. Susan would later reflect, “Whatever sins Jim committed—and he certainly committed his share—he didn’t deserve to die lying on a concrete prison floor, pleading for help.”
When Claudia Riley called Susan in prison to discuss funeral services, Susan sobbed into the phone and reminded Claudia that Jim “always wanted a jazz band.” Susan seemed distraught and was feeling helpless because she was locked up a thousand miles away. As Claudia recalled, “And I simply talked her through it, because I was sort of a mother figure and a friend figure and I love her very much. She’s like a beloved daughter to me.”
Claudia finally said, “Susan, leave this one with me. I’ll handle it. I’ll do exactly what