went on, Garret realized that he and Liz had few shared interests. One thing they definitely did not have in common was their taste in movies. “Liz loved horror movies.” He recalls how she gravitated toward gory films. In the past, he’d had no aversion to horror films, “but I hated what they had become—which is a gore fest!” The realistic special effects and the emphasis on killing didn’t appeal to him. He preferred Hitchcockian suspense that focused on psychological tension. But Liz relished violent scenes. “Everyone else would be bothered by the blood and guts, but it never affected her at all.” He found himself cringing as they watched one of the ultra-violent Purge flicks that Liz had chosen for the night’s entertainment. He didn’t want to see people hurt even if it wasn’t real. He glanced at his girlfriend during a particularly gruesome scene and was startled to see her staring blankly at the TV without a flicker of reaction. He soon realized that was her standard response to violent scenes. “She was emotionless,” so unaffected that she sometimes fell asleep in the middle of a shocking movie. “She was almost proud of the fact that horror movies didn’t affect her,” he remembers, adding that she claimed she found them funny in the same way that most people would be amused by a comedy.
Liz also enjoyed crime programs and once posted on a social media site that Criminal Minds was a favorite show. She was also a big fan of Dexter and watched the show regularly with her kids. The TV series features a most unusual character who both solves murders and commits them. A vigilante killer, Dexter chooses victims he feels deserve death. “Bones was another one she liked.” The popular drama centers around a forensic anthropologist who studies victims’ bones for clues about their lives and deaths. As for books, Liz liked true crime, but Garrett can recall the subject of only one book he noticed on her nightstand. It was the story of the Craigslist Killer. Philip Markoff, a clean-cut Boston medical student, had a dangerous side few were aware of. He met his victims via online ads for massages on Craigslist. His arrest in 2009 opened the public’s eyes to the hazards of meeting strangers on the Internet.
When Garret and Liz were first dating, he wasn’t disturbed by her fascination with murder. Millions of people, after all, are drawn to movies and books with dark subjects. If they weren’t, producers wouldn’t make violent films and publishers wouldn’t print crime books. But most people also have other topics that intrigue them. It’s only in retrospect that Garret wonders why Liz didn’t occasionally choose a comedy over a horror film or a coming-of-age novel over a murder story. Why was she interested only in horrific things? He acknowledges that he wasn’t with her every minute and that it’s possible that Liz did sometimes choose lighter fare. He isn’t the only one, however, to say that Liz favored the most gruesome of horror flicks available.
After Liz moved in, Garret noticed that she didn’t like to cook and rarely made dinner. When she did cook, it was just for her and the kids. He hadn’t expected her to make his meals or clean his house. She was his girlfriend, not his servant. He wished, though, that she would pick up after herself and the kids.
She loved fast food, and when she was hungry, she often texted him from the basement, dropping hints until he got the message. “A lot of times I got suckered into driving to McDonald’s.” Liz expected him to pick up the tab, and while fast food should have been easier on his wallet, the cost tripled because the children needed to eat, too. He always bought enough for everyone. At least Liz purchased her own groceries, so Garret didn’t have that expense.
Even though they were under the same roof, most of their communication was through text. “When she texted me, our conversations were typically very pleasant.” Face to face, she was usually cold and distant. The friendly person texting him was “almost never the same person when she was physically around me.”
The house had just one bathroom, and Liz went out of her way to dodge him when she came up to use it. “If I was in the living room, she would go through the kitchen and dining room to the bathroom. If I was in the kitchen, she would go the opposite