Things that make you go hmmm.

I recently wrote a piece called Alex and Julius. It was prompted by my realization that my sister handily cut her first husband off from his best friend by fostering a relationship between me and Alex and then presumably agreeing with family that he was a bad guy taking advantage of me or perhaps suggesting it to our parents and brother.

Isolating the victim from their social support network is what abusers do. It cast new light on her first husband supporting her career while not making much money himself. Making the victim financially dependent is another tactic of abusers.

My sister talked a great deal of trash about her second husband and his family. Part of that was telling me his mother used to tell him "She killed her first husband and she'll kill you, too."

I have a serious medical condition and special needs kids, so I had a lot on my plate and didn't think too much about it. I wasn't there when it happened. I was actually living on a different continent in Germany when her first husband died, supposedly by suicide.

It was secondhand gossip I heard in bits and pieces after the fact. I simply took my beloved sister's word for the "poisonous mother-in-law" trope.

With realizing my sister isolated Julius socially and encouraged him to become financially dependent on her -- so she was most likely the abuser in an abusive relationship, not him like she always claimed -- it made me realize that things she's said separately may suggest her late mother-in-law actually had reason to think that my sister was a murderer if you put them all together and wasn't just a histrionic, neurotic old woman.

1. I knew that my sister got involved with her second husband before her first husband died.

2. I knew her second husband was "a loser" still living with his mom when she got involved with him.

3. I knew my sister spent the night at her then boyfriend's place that day and I knew that "his place" was his mom's house because he still lived with her.

But somehow I had always imagined that my sister met his mother later and the mother learned after the fact that my sister's first husband died under circumstances where police considered murder enough of a possibility to test my sister's hands for gun powder. Somehow, I imagined the mother-in-law was just was making wild, unfounded claims based on her own neurosis without any meaningful basis.

And I'm confident my sister absolutely wanted me to see it that way. She wanted me to think that it was crazy talk by an old woman with issues.

But the reality is the woman in question almost certainly saw my sister the day my sister's first husband died and she saw her in the hours immediately following the event. 

So this woman warning her son "You're dating a murderer who killed her first husband!" may have seen something that didn't add up and couldn't be explained away.

And, in fact, that's probably the way to bet if you aren't an overwhelmed young woman who just wants to take your sister's word for it that "God, my mother-in-law is OUT there and nutso and makes outrageous, unfounded accusations based on absolutely nothing. Like THIS crap about me being a murderer."

Footnote 

Updated for clarity 2 June 2026.