commentary by Patrick H. Moore
There are civil wars and there are wars between sovereign nations and then there is that ultimate and unending battle known as the war between the sexes. Anyone who has ever been in a long-term relationship knows what I’m talking about. [If you’re a same-sex guy or gal just substitute the phrase war within the same sex for war between the sexes (WBTS).]
Why, you ask, do I say this particular war can never be won? A most valid question…
Even though you may win one skirmish/argument, that’s all it is – a skirmish/argument – which will be repeated in slightly different form the next day (or even the next hour). The next time around your partner may win and then the following day you might win. It’s a bit like Amanda Knox’s trial – one day you’re guilty, the next day you’re innocent, then you’re guilty again and so on until you lose your mind…
The war between the sexes is just too open-ended; though you and yours may declare ceasefires, they will certainly be broken when the pressure gets too great.
Suppose you decide that the war is just too taxing and that you want to opt out. In that case, if you’re not married and have no children you can simply slip away into the night. If you are married and must enter divorce proceedings, however, you may well be in for a very expensive sojourn in hell.
The above examples presuppose that the participants are non-violent and that the battles consist primarily of words and/or erecting walls of silence.
But suppose that you or your partner are prone to violence or even in extreme cases – murder most foul. Just today I had to report for jury duty in Compton, USA, and though the case settled just before the voir dire and we were all released, had the trial gone forward, we would have been treated to four or five days of testimony centered on a domestic violence incident.
Suppose, however, you don’t want to merely beat your partner bloody; rather, you want him or her dead. And then suppose you don’t want to personally commit the foul crime. Your only other choice is to hire a hit man. Which, incidentally, while not common is not that uncommon.
When a relationship has deteriorated to that point, and if you’re not smart enough to simply vanish, disappear, go AWOL, etc., you may find yourself if a position similar to that which Michael Kuhnhausen, a southeast Portland, OR, resident found himself in back in 2006, when he unsuccessfully recruited a hit man to kill his wife.
Michael’s wife, Susan Kuhnhausen (her last name is now Walters), was an emergency room nurse. I don’t know how tall she is, but in 2006, she weighed in at a solid 260. As an ER nurse, she had been specifically trained to deal with violent, explosive people.
Michael, however, was so intent on getting Susan whacked that he ignored the fact that she, when aroused, could prove to be a very formidable opponent; either that, or her formidable nature might be precisely why he hired someone else to carry out the hit.
The hit man’s name was Edward Haffey, and based on his choice of weapon, he may not have been a true professional. On the other hand, using a hammer may have simply been subterfuge to make the authorities think it was a crime of passion, perhaps committed by a random intruder or burglar. In any event, when Haffey attacked her at her house one fine September day, Susan didn’t give an inch.
“I got the hammer and started hitting him with the hammer several times. My father, the carpenter, always taught me a hammer could be used for self-defense — the claw end would work the best,” Susan, who was 51 at that time, testified in 2006 at Michael’s sentencing hearing. Once she had disarmed Haffey and battered him sufficiently with the hammer to completely neutralize him, Susan then strangled him with her bare hands reportedly crushing his windpipe.
She then ran to a neighbor’s house to report the intruder, identified later by police as 59-year-old Edward Haffey.
* * * * *
Anyone who has ever engaged in the WBTS, knows that what makes the war ultimately unwinnable is the fact that both parties invariably think they are right, and will often not hesitate to resort to under-handed tactics to gain the advantage, however fleeting it might be.
At her husband’s sentencing, Susan, who spoke for over an hour, cleverly painted a scenario in which she described herself as thrice-victimized Susan.
In remarks before the court, she said she felt as though she is serving three life sentences, one for the man she had to kill in her home, another for knowing the man she loved tried to have her killed and yet another for the worry she will continue to have about a repeat attack as long as Michael Kuhnhausen remained alive.
At one point, Susan Kuhnhausen rebuked Michael and his attorney for not paying attention and smirking while she testified before the court. She spoke for an hour and 10 minutes and detailed her struggle with her attacker, whom she strangled to death.
“I blame him [attacker Edward Haffey] in some measure for what he did,” Susan Kuhnhausen said at one point, “but I blame you more. You took advantage of a desperate person to do a desperate thing that you were too cowardly to do yourself.”
Shucks. Here I was fantasizing that the hit man was a professional, yet Susan is describing him as a desperate person. For all we know, Haffey could have been a doper, a PDST veteran or an out-of-work high-school principal.
Fighting the bloody WBTS to the bitter end, Susan was hardly content with merely calling her ex a coward. In fact, at one point, she leaned forward toward Michael and stated, “If I ever, ever believed that you deserved to be dead, I would of at least had the balls to kill you myself.”
After Susan had completed 70 minutes of dramatic testimony, Michael Kuhnhausen rose to face the judge with tears in his eyes, stating:
“I’ve hurt a lot of people in the last year, and I’m sorry. That’s all I can say.”
In response, Susan burst into laughter and then began to weep.
* * * * *
Michael Kuhnhausen received a 10-year sentence based on his guilty plea to solicitation to commit aggravated murder.
With Haffey dead and Michael Kuhnhausen salted away in an Oregon state prison, we might assume that Susan’s worries are over and that her particular WBTS is a thing of the past. This would be false assumption, however. There is a little thing called parole. Michael is now eligible and could be a free man later this year. As part of the parole workup, in what could be viewed as a continuation of the WBTS, according to KPTV, Walters told the parole board that she’s concerned about keeping Michael away from her if he is released. She quickly countered this uncharacteristic moment of weakness by stating that she’s prepared to fight again if she has to.
In her KPTV interview, Susan mentioned that she hopes her story serves as an inspiration for other targets of violence.
“If you feel like, ‘Wow I don’t feel like I can do that.’ You can. You’re stronger than you know,” she said.
* * * * *
On balance, it’s evident that in the case of Michael and Susan, their personal WBTS is ongoing, at least in Susan’s mind. Even if Michael is released and does the smart thing and makes no attempt to contact her and just says no to any desire he may be feeling to send a new and improved hit man after her, Susan will spend the rest of her life waiting and wondering when, and if, the shoe will drop and she will once again be forced to fight for her life.
Thus, WBTS not only manifests in the endless fights, arguments, manipulations and subterfuges the parties bring to the table, but it may also permanently manifest in the mind of either or both of the hapless players.