Susan Grund, Oversexed Murderess

By the summer of 1992, Jimmy Grund had begun to complain bitterly to friends about the state of his marriage.

The couple argued incessantlyboth in private and in publicnot about Susan's affairs but about her extravagant spending on clothing, jewelry, lingerie and cars.

Grund knew he was stuck with a wife who did not love him. Worse, he had reached the sobering conclusion that he had been inveigled by a seductress who wanted not him but his lifestyle.

Grund wanted out. In mid-July, he visited a fellow lawyer in Peru to ask him to begin the divorce process.

He decided to wait to file the paperwork until he and Susan and her two children returned from a long-planned vacation to Alaska, according to author Clarkson. During that trip, Grund informed Susan that he would file for divorce when they got home.

He didn't get a chance. They returned to Peru on August 1, a Saturday. Scarcely two days later, at not quite midnight Monday, Jimmy Grund was shot through the eye and killed. His murder was one of those cases that leads to head-scratching by those blessed with common sense.

By the time of the slaying, half of the population of Peruincluding cops and prosecutorsknew that the Grunds' marriage was on a fast track to dissolution. The other half had slept with Susan.

Did she not expect to be scrutinized?

The investigation began with klieg lights pointed at the widow. From the beginning, law enforcers believed she was responsible. Yet the probe got off to a balky start, stymied for several months by a lack of definitive evidence.

The break in the case came from the usual place: the suspect's mouth. And it would lead to the undeniable conclusion that Susan Grund may have been sexy, but she wasn't very smart.