Excerpt
5 THE BOYFRIEND WHO BECAME A KILLER

In 1957 my Aunt Mildred came to LA on vacation. Her friend owned the luxurious Hermoyne Apartment Hotel on Rossmore and treated her to a suite during her stay. Aunt Mildred hadn’t seen me since we moved to California when I was thirteen.

She was so impressed with her friend’s son that she couldn’t stop talking about him and did everything she could to fix us up. In her mind, it was a perfect match. Every time she talked to my mother, she kept repeating how pretty I’d become and that she knew her friend’s son would love me.

Mom didn’t rise to the bait, knowing that I didn’t like to be fixed up. Then Aunt Mildred called me several times and tried to convince me to meet this great guy. During those calls she listed everything she thought would sway me, almost like a shopping list for the perfect date. He was a student at USC, he was in a good fraternity, he was handsome with a great personality, and came from a good family. “So,” she said, “what more could a girl want? He is very anxious to meet you.” Heaven knows what she told him about me. She was persistent and didn’t give up, so I finally gave in just to stop the phone calls.

The day of the date arrived, he picked me up and we drove to the Hermoyne. The plan was for an afternoon of hanging out around the pool and getting acquainted. I figured that seemed okay. After all, if I didn’t like him, it was just an afternoon.

When he arrived, one of his fraternity brothers was with him. In fact, the friend whose name was Paul Perveler was the one who drove. His car was a new Ford convertible, and the top was down.

The three of us spent a nice afternoon around the pool. My aunt was right. This dreamboat was definitely handsome and very nice, but despite my aunt’s hopes, there was no spark between us. When the afternoon was over, Paul said he would be happy to drive me home.

He had been fun all afternoon, and on the way back Paul’s winning personality was on display full force. He was so charming, I think he could have talked anyone into anything. When he asked me out, I was happy to say yes. That was the beginning of a six-month relationship.

Our first date was not a garden variety one. He took me to a police shooting range in Sepulveda canyon and taught me how to shoot a forty-five. For years I remembered him showing me how to sight a gun whenever I was at a shooting booth in an amusement park. I soon discovered, Paul was fascinated with guns and had several in the trunk of his car because his mother would not allow them in the house.

In my opinion his new Ford convertible was great, but he confided that he hated it because his parents had promised him a Jaguar when they decided to move to California from New York. The thought crossed my mind that most guys his age would have been delighted with it. We saw a lot of each other, went to fraternity parties, movies, dinner and more. I never learned to swim and was afraid of deep water. I was fine as long as my feet could touch the bottom. To give you an idea of the trust Paul could instill in someone, he is the only one in my whole life who ever got me out in the deep end of the pool.

He made no secret of his thirst for danger. His parents lived in a three-story apartment building on Norton off Wilshire. One time he dove into the pool from the railing on the third-floor walkway just to see if he could do it. During the summer he got a job driving an emergency blood delivery vehicle because he loved the thrill of driving fast with the siren on. He rode horses in Griffith Park and went on Sunday morning fishing charters. As I later learned from a newspaper article, although he was studying psychology when we were dating, he joined the Highway Patrol after graduating. The article said he had to resign a year later when it was discovered he provided a fellow officer with the name of an abortionist for his pregnant girlfriend.

We visited his favorite gun shop, and sometimes he bought a new one to add to the collection in his trunk. Imagine driving around with all those guns in the trunk of your car now. Even though I was young, after we dated for a while I noticed his sociopathic tendencies. Although I enjoyed being with him, that bothered me.

Eventually, the bloom was off the rose as the saying goes, and we broke up.
I heard from Paul again the day before I got married. He said he had been drafted into the service shortly after we broke up and recently got back from Germany. In typical Paul manner, he said he had been thinking about me and hoped we could get together again.

Talk about timing. My answer was, “I don’t think so because I’m getting married tomorrow.”

He didn’t miss a beat. “So, will you be at home with your Mom this evening?”
When I said I would, he said, “I would like to bring over a bottle of champagne and toast to your wedding, if that’s okay with you and your mother.”

Mom always liked Paul and said it would be nice to see him. He arrived with a bottle of Dom Perignon, and we drank champagne and talked about old times. Then he hugged my her and gave me a kiss on the cheek. That was the last time I saw him.

I didn’t think about him again for ten years. My sister Phyllice was living in Alaska by then, but still subscribed to the LA Times. She had noticed an article in the paper that sent chills up her spine and sent it to me. She circled the headline about a murder in Burbank in red and wrote, “Sis, but for the grace of God you could be pushing up the daisies.”

My first thought was why would she write that until I realized the man in the photo was Paul. He and his girlfriend were arrested for killing his twenty-two-year-old second wife as she sat in her car at their apartment building. It continued to say they also killed his girlfriend’s husband. He had tried to kill his first wife as well as his parents. Wow. Phyllice was right. Good thing I broke up with him when I did.

Another ten years passed. In 1978. I was at the beauty salon and my hair stylist was totally absorbed in reading a book in one hand while combing out my hair with the other. Unusual? You bet. I asked him what had him so fascinated and he showed me the cover of a book by Vincent Bugliosi, entitled Till Death Us Do Part. He said it was a fascinating true crime book and he would give it to me to read after he finished it.
During my next appointment he handed me the book. “After you read it, tell me what you think.”

He was right. It was absolutely fascinating, and I couldn’t stop reading. However, as I continued, dread inched up my spine at each new thing. Why did so many of the details seem familiar? I read that when he was in college, the murderer Alan Palliko drove a Ford convertible but was upset his parents hadn’t bought him the Jaguar his mother promised him. He belonged to the Tau Delta Phi fraternity. The character had a fascination with guns and Bugliosi wrote about him visiting his favorite gun shop—one we visited. As I continued to read, there was so much more I felt I was reliving incidents in my own life. The connection to everything I had experienced while dating Paul couldn’t be a coincidence.

Imagine my shock when I flipped to the front of the book to see if the name of the murderer, Alan Palliko, had been changed from the killer’s real name. It had. I was drenched in cold sweat when the realization hit. What I was reading was familiar because Alan Palliko had to be Paul Perveler. An eerie feeling invaded my thoughts as I read details about his feelings, characteristics and places we visited during the time I was Paul’s girlfriend. Reading about his life after we dated and how he and his girlfriend murdered her husband and his second wife for the insurance filled me with morbid fascination. Even though I didn’t want to continue reading about the horrible things this man who had been my boyfriend did, I couldn’t stop. I read the book in one sitting. Phyllice was right, I was really lucky.

A movie entitled Till Death Us Do Part starred Treat Williams as Paul. It was even more chilling to watch the movie than to read the book. Vincent Bugliosi had captured him perfectly in the book, and Treat Williams brought him to life on the screen.