A very interesting post. Thank you. I think your sister was a rarity; most family members (including my own in a similarly dangerous marriage) seem to bend over backwards to avoid causing *trouble* or bad feelings when they see that we're so in love. And it's possible they knew we wouldn't have believed them, anyway, but would have pulled away from them and isolated ourselves even further in a deadly relationship.
It may have been thus for JD in her marriage to FD: her family may well have seen or suspected his dark side, but out of love and concern for her they may have simply tried to make her situation more secure by augmenting JD and FD's financial and domestic life. I think at some point the blinders came off for JD's parents, though--FD's financial irresponsibility, his greed, and his seeming dishonesty might have been the beginning of that for them.
After I got free of my violent husband (a high-up civic official in a major California city), my family members told me, one by one in private, that they had never felt welcome in our home whenever he was present. Silence is a killer, and so is the protective insulation we put around our own abusive relationships. In the end, I left on a train with my two children one night and moved to the Midwest. He married a much younger woman after that, and she left him three years later, after coming to fear him. Then she died mysteriously--a healthy, active young 31-year-old professional. I will always wonder about that. Did he fear that she was about to blow his cover? Might he have found it *necessary* to silence her? I will always feel guilty for my years-long silence that kept his *reputation* intact and allowed him to abuse others after me.
The only way I can make up for the guilt I feel for my long silence is to volunteer now in a domestic violence shelter, encouraging other women to believe in their own strength, in their power to make a new path for themselves, their ability to create a whole new life. I'm following this case because of my own history with an abusive, compulsively lying, repeatedly unfaithful man. And I pray that JD's remains are found, her family is safe, and FD is locked up for life.
