![]() When Mark wasn’t in the mood, which had been very often during their last months in Pikeville, Kathy had been the stalwart who patiently endured Susan’s crying jags on the phone, the one to assure Susan that she had value, that she was better than she believed. Kathy had been Susan’s friend, her confessor, even her role model. Mark, never a negotiator, argued as if a compromise could be reached. If you don’t, I’ll ruin your life.” She smiled triumphantly. Second, you will leave that whore Kathy and those spoiled kids and marry me. You will be there when it’s born and sign the birth certificate as its daddy. Now please just tell me straight, what do you want from me?” His heart was pounding. From day one, all you’ve done is bitch and feel sorry for yourself. “Susan, just tell me what you want from me. “I own you! Own you! Ron says they’ll fire you and Kathy will leave you!” I own you, Putnam! I own you and your precious job!” I can’t wait to see the look in your wife’s eyes! Then you know what I’m going to do? I’m going right on down to your FBI Miami Vice office and tell your new friends there how you solved your cases by fucking an informant and leaving her pregnant and barefoot to look after herself in Kentucky. Your son is going to want to know why the baby’s name is Mark Jr., the same as him. “I’m going to bring this baby down to Florida and knock on your door and put the little bastard right into your precious daughter’s arms. “And now I’m going to have a little Mark Jr.,” Susan went on, having regained her composure. He realized he had been using his index finger to poke at her chest for emphasis. Leave Kathy and my kids out of this.” She looked down with surprise. “Susan, I’ve given you everything I could. Buddy wasn’t a word she used, and Mark thought he knew where she had picked it up. He had the sense that these were lines someone else had given her. I’ll be goddamned if I’m going to let you prance down to Florida with your little wife and your spoiled kids to resume your wonderful life. “What do you mean me? You’re messing with me, Mark! I know that now. He listened, as if trying to extract from the gloom any sound other than Susan’s short panting.Placing his hand on her shoulder, he said, “Let’s try and work this out instead of acting like a couple of idiots.” This was exactly the kind of lonely dark setting that had led to sex on other occasions, but even the intimation of affection now caused Susan to recoil in revulsion and slap his hand away.“What’s gotten into you, Susan?”The question set her off again. ![]() Mark rolled the window down and felt the air on his hot cheeks and burning eyes. Where the sky showed above the ridge, it was filled with stars. Susan’s sobs were the only sound in the darkness. Fighting to keep control of the car, he made out the contours of one of the coal-road turnoffs in his headlights and turned abruptly onto it, bumping about fifty yards up the road and scattering gravel loudly under the car. As they approached the crest of Peter Creek Mountain, she caught her breath and lunged across the seat at him, slapping him with both hands. Kathy Putnam As they drove toward Freeburn and Barrenshee Hollow, Susan sobbed uncontrollably. ![]() Once in the hills, the only turnoffs are narrow gravel roads put in by mine companies who then abandoned the roads when they finished blasting out the coal, leaving behind chewed out mountains. FBI.”Īt the coal town of Meta, he turned right onto Route 194, a narrow two-lane that winds southeast along Johns Creek into the rugged hills that border the Tug Valley. ![]() “Ron says they’ll fire you when they find out.” ![]() But then she took a breath and her voice was calm. He thought about the two and a half miserable years working grueling hours in Pikeville, the phone calls at three in the morning, the threats, the corruption he saw everywhere he looked, the stress of the impending trial, Kathy’s misery, the intimidating phone calls from Poole, Charlie Trotter wavering in his motel room, the stress of starting a job anew in a high profile bureau like Miami. But unless it was to renounce everything else and stay with her forever, he could not figure out what she expected him to do. She insisted that the baby was his, and that she would tell the FBI, his wife, and his children about it. Believed to be the first active FBI agent ever to commit homicide, Mark Putnam made headlines for his “crime of passion.” Susan Smith Joe Sharkey’s true crime account Above Suspicion, soon to be a movie starring Game of Throne’s Emilia Clarke as Susan and Jack Huston as Mark, gives a detailed account of the events leading up to Susan’s death and the aftermath of Mark’s crime. ![]()
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