When Karen Palmer met Gil, he was 36, a father of three, and a petty criminal who liked to show off his multiple driver’s licenses in various names. Palmer was 17, already grieving a major loss, and had a thing for “slinky-hipped delinquents who could teach me something,” she writes. “Sometimes I think I married him just to prove that I could.” They were together 14 years. “Things changed,” Palmer writes. “Slowly at first, then all at once.”
Gil (not his real name) pressed a loaded gun to her pregnant belly; he locked her in a closet; he pinned her to the living-room floor and gagged her with a sock when he wanted sex. They had two children. When Palmer finally left him for her longtime friend Vinnie, Gil began stalking her. “The prospect of violence excited him,” Palmer writes. “He threatened to shoot Vinnie. He threatened to shoot me. He told me he’d cut off my head and stick it in the refrigerator for the girls to find. And then, months into our separation, he kidnapped our younger child.” Gil moved 3-year-old Amy from hotel to hotel, cutting her hair short and dyeing it to disguise her. A judge granted Palmer full custody, and when Gil finally returned her little girl, Palmer ran.
