If You Tell: A True Story of Murder, Family Secrets, and the Unbreakable Bond of Sisterhood

by Gregg Olsen

It isn’t a mask that she wears to cover the past but an invisible badge of courage.

Lara and Les came to know something that few understood in the late sixties and seventies: no one can help a troubled person who doesn’t think they need it.

“Make her wallow! She’s a pig, Dave! Teach her a lesson!” More water tumbled over her shivering body. “Wallow, Nikki!” Dave said. “I’m sorry, Dad.” “Wallow!” On one occasion, as she tried to lift herself, Nikki’s fingertips felt frozen shards of ice. It was the depth of winter. The mud puddle of the wallowing hole was frozen at its edges. She was all but sure she’d get pneumonia and die.

Dying, she thought, is the only way out of what is happening to me.

“I think as a kid I depended on her, her being my mom, I don’t think I ever thought I had any other options but to live with her. As an adult I kick myself for not doing something to help myself back then. My mother could show affection and say kind words when she wanted to . . . she would abuse me, then the very next day hug me or tell me how I was her baby and she loved me blah, blah. I think it worked like any abusive relationship . . . a person feels trapped, nowhere to go . . . they are abused and then the abuser reins them back in with kindness and the person being abused settles, not quite thinking about the next time they are beat etc. just relieved the abuse is over (for now). My mother was a ticking time bomb . . . I never knew when she would go off. Everything could be great for a few days then boom. I loved my mother because I didn’t know I had a choice. I had to love her.”

Nikki had always been fascinated by crime; she wanted to understand why bad people did the things they did.