Chapter 19

While the prosecution began to interview witnesses and forensic experts, I had a list of my own of people that I wanted to talk to, namely the other members of the Thompson family. The prosecution was interested in the happenings surrounding the deaths of the women, but I wanted to know who William was at his core.

I watched the back of William's head, which by default meant that I watched the family members who sat behind him. On the third day of the trial, I saw William's mother head to the bathroom during one of our breaks and I scurried after her.

William's parents, Mark and Cindy, had been high school sweethearts. Mark was on the football team and Cindy was a cheerleader. Mark's father was a lawyer and Cindy's father the CEO of a bank. Both of their mothers stayed at home. Depending on who was listening, it was either the perfect love story or a type of slow asphyxiation.

They went to college together with the knowledge that they were going to get married upon graduation. Cindy got pregnant on their wedding night and they bought a house in their hometown with the understanding that they'd eventually move into the Thompson family estate when Mark's father passed.

In his letters, William described how Mark liked to think of himself as a man who pulled himself up by his bootstraps, even though he was born already wearing boots.

My father thinks we live in a meritocracy only because it has never been suggested to him that he is without merit.

He was friends with the mayor, half the city council, and multiple state legislators. Every morning, Mark got breakfast with other lawyers in town at a breakfast spot that hadn't changed their prices in thirty years. On the weekends, he golfed at the local club that his grandfather helped found, and there were multiple billboards around town that featured pictures of his face.

The only reason that my father hasn't run for office himself is because he likes the strings that he pulls to be invisible. No one can critique you if they can't see what you're doing.

Cindy didn't fit the mold that was made for her quite as nicely, though from the outside, no one would've seen it. She didn't like being a mother or staying at home and coped by hiring a brigade of nannies and joining the board of every charitable organization that would have her.

People think that my mother is a good person because she volunteers for numerous charities. As a nonprofit employee, I'm sure you know that there's a difference between being on the board and getting your hands dirty. My mother likes to go to lunches and galas and have her picture taken. She is an expert at holding auctions and theme parties and getting tax breaks for my father.

Though their lives were perhaps more complicated than they were made out to be from the outside, the one thing that Mark and Cindy Thompson were certain of was that neither of their children would grow up to be serial killers and thus, they were frustrated by recent developments that caused a deviation in their already paved path.

I have to admit that there is some schadenfreude in destroying the perfect image that my parents try to project of themselves. The mayor refuses to be seen with my father in public and some of my mother's charities have asked that she step down from her role—while continuing to still give anonymously, of course.

After I followed Cindy into the bathroom, I wasn't sure what to do next. I lost sight of her before she disappeared into one of the stalls, and though her red heels were recognizable, I decided against peering beneath the doors to figure out her location. I waited at the wall of sinks for Cindy to emerge, ignoring my own full bladder.

That was when I met Lauren.

"Do you have a tampon?" she asked.

I could see her face in the mirror, young and pretty. I guessed that she was one of Anna Leigh's friends. I rummaged around in my purse and handed her a tampon after wiping some lint off the packaging.

"Thanks," she said.

Cindy emerged from the stall. Lauren and I watched as she washed her hands before reapplying her lipstick.

"That's William Thompson's mother," Lauren whispered after Cindy left the bathroom.

"I know," I replied.

Like had found like, we realized. Lauren wasn't at the trial for Anna Leigh at all, but rather for William, who was the second murderer that she'd fallen in love with. The first was a forty-five-year-old white man, Kris Cooper, who was accused of setting his house on fire and killing his wife and son in the process. Cooper insisted that he had not set the fire and would never hurt his family.

"You don't know what it's like to be accused of causing the biggest tragedy of your life," he told the media.

Lauren learned about Kris Cooper from a true-crime podcast when she was a sophomore in high school. She'd made being a fan of true-crime podcasts one of the key components of her personality, which she figured was better than the girls who made "being a member of the soccer team" or "liking horses" their primary persona. The podcast made a convincing case for Cooper's innocence, and Lauren, who had been told repeatedly that she could do anything, became determined to set him free. In the end, Cooper lost his appeal, and when Lauren's parents found the sexually explicit letters that he'd been writing their underage daughter, they forbade her from ever talking to him again. It was difficult to forbid someone from writing letters, and Lauren would hide stamps around her bedroom in order to continue contact. It was Cooper who eventually lost interest in her when he found someone younger, still fresh, who was eager to love him.

Lauren shrugged when she talked about it.

"I was young," she said. "I didn't know what true love was."

Now nineteen, Lauren had long, dark hair and a skinny frame that I was envious of. She wasn't beautiful in the conventional sense. Instead, she was something worse, a unique sort of beauty that was appreciated in adults and lost within the cruelty of high school.

"Aren't there boys your own age that you're interested in?" I asked her.

Lauren laughed.

"Boys my age are boring," she said. "All they want to do is play video games."

I didn't know how to break it to her that boys didn't get better after that either. I suspected that if she was choosing to spend her summer break watching the trial of a serial killer, then maybe she already knew.

There was security in our little group. Sitting there between Dotty and Lauren, I experienced a kinship that I hadn't felt since high school when all of my friends would gather in the theater classroom before the first bell rang. How I'd taken those days for granted and then longed for them in retrospect. It was silly that as an adult, a person needed to become obsessed with a serial killer in order to make new friends.

I hadn't told them that William was my boyfriend. It seemed like something that I'd made up, even though I carried the letters in my purse as proof. Dotty and Lauren thought that we were the same. Three women in an unrequited relationship with an accused serial killer. I didn't want to break that uniting bond to explain that, no, actually, I was in a requited relationship with him, especially considering that I hadn't received a letter from William since I'd arrived in Georgia.

While the prosecutors called up witnesses, I wrote letters to William and took notes on anything the witnesses said that stood out as being particularly important.

Dear William, Your hair is looking especially good today. Do they allow you to use hair products in jail or is that all natural?

Guilty: police found William's business card tucked inside of one of Anna Leigh's purses.

Dear William, I made friends with a few other people at the trial. You've probably seen me sitting with them. You have seen me, right?

Innocent: Anna Leigh had business cards from a number of people in the same purse. She was actively working on building a network.

Dear William, You're getting my letters, right? It's been a while since I've heard from you. It's so strange being in Georgia on my own. I've never really been on my own before, not like this. I've always had my parents nearby or Meghan.

Guilty: video footage of William in Kimberly's gas station days before she died.

Dear William, I found a good donut place near the courthouse. I wish I could bring you one. Personally, I love a good cake donut. If I threw one at you, would you catch it?

Innocent: hundreds of people went to that same gas station in that time span.

Dear William, I sat by the hotel pool after the trial today. It was almost like being on vacation except for the relentless sound of leaf blowers in the distance.

Guilty: Jill made a note of a personal training appointment with William on her calendar two days before she disappeared.

Dear William, You got so close to me today that I almost reached out and touched you. I'm not sure that you noticed me.

Innocent: there was no sign of William at the gym on the day that Jill actually died.

Dear William, I tried the taco truck that parks outside the courthouse today. The pork taco was a 10/10.

Guilty: William was the last person that Emma was ever seen with.

Dear William, I hope to hear from you soon. I miss your words.

Innocent: no other woman that William met from a dating app was ever murdered, though one did die in an unrelated car accident.

If some of the testimony was difficult to watch—and much of it was—I focused my attention on the Thompson family.

When the forensic experts showed pictures of the corpses, bruised and rotting, I watched Mark wrap his arms around Cindy's shoulders. When they described the torture that the women had undergone before they were ultimately killed, I noted how Mark whispered something into William's brother's ear.

As the jury tried to determine whether William was guilty, I looked for signs that Mark and Cindy were as conniving as William made them out to be in his letters. Surely, if I watched them for long enough, I would see the places where their masks started to peel away from the skin to reveal the monsters behind them.