Page 21 - Gary's Book - Final Copy 7.9.2017_Active

Suzanne married Wally Holder, a St. Louis Cardinal baseball rookie; they had one
child and then divorced shortly thereafter. She then married Phillip Bollinger who
got into drinking, selling drugs and violent relationships. One night on his way
home, the van he was driving caught fire in the alley one block from home, and he

died at the scene.
My youngest sister, Betty, has dropped me from her life. She felt that I was the
only one in the family that she could count on. One time about ten years ago, she

thought that I forgot her birthday, so she said, “good-bye.” I had called her on the
phone teasing her that she probably thought I forgot her birthday and told her that
her card and present were on our dining room table at home but that we were on
the road. I told her that I would send them as soon as I got home. Well, when I got
home, Betty had left a lengthy message on our phone recorder calling me a liar.

She had such a mixed acceptance of our family. After Mom let us go, her life
changed in a negative way, and she continued to live through bad experiences on
the farm, in her marriage and throughout life.

Betty married William DeMars and had a daughter, Kerri Lynn, who was
constantly in trouble with the law. Betty did all she could for her but decided to
move on with her life, so she moved to Peoria, Arizona. She has worked in the
maternity wards of several major hospitals as a nurse and retired several years ago.

Her husband, also a heavy drinker, late one night while returning home on Hwy. 40
in South St. Louis County, drove under an 18-wheeler parked on an exit ramp and
was decapitated.

While we were living in Saddlebrook, Arizona, on Friday, July 22, 2005, in the
mid-afternoon, Sue received a phone call from Jen Bollinger, my niece, Suzanne’s
daughter-in-law, who was in St. Louis at the time. She said she had just received
an unusual package, appropriately timed, from Betty containing all her jewelry and

her biography and a letter stating she was committing suicide. Jen called the Peoria
police immediately, and they went to the house, but her nurse friends were there
and told the police that everything was okay, so they left. I guess their uniforms
and medical terminology made the police believe them. Since we were then living
less than two hours away from Peoria, Jen asked if we would check on her, so off
we went. Betty had emptied all her cabinets, deleted everything on her computer
and had the garage filled with her clothing and things. Betty was in bed with her

pistol and had placed a plastic sheet behind the headboard.

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