Insurance Fraud Casebook: Paying a Premium for Crime

Woo, Wed, Insure, Murder

WILLIAM P. HIGHT

Lake Snoqualmish lies a few miles east of Puget Sound. A 500-acre legacy of the Ice Age, its eastern edge laps at the foothills of the Cascade Mountain range. To the south Interstate 90 skirts the lake and begins an initial climb on its path to Granville. Despite its rainy reputation, western Washington experiences a perennial summer drought, and temperatures can reach the high 90s in late July and August. The cool, refreshing water of Lake Snoqualmish then attracts boaters, skiers and swimmers . . . and others who enjoy rowing a raft east across the narrow lake to quieter coves. This latter activity appealed to Chance Cagney and his new wife, Darcy, but the temperature that late July afternoon had soared to 99 degrees, and the normally quiet cove was filled with people, some of whom would become witnesses.

Chance and Darcy had been married for about a year following only a month of intensive courting. They set out on this boating adventure alone, leaving Darcy's two sons, ages nine and 11, and Chance's son, age 14, in a supervised swimming area. Chance, 39, an automobile mechanic at a local dealership, had been married three previous times and had custody of his son from his first marriage. Darcy, 34, was a homemaker whose first husband and father of her children had died of cancer five years earlier. His foresight in purchasing life insurance ...