There is a phrase Rachel Bellesen can’t shake, even to this day. It echoes in her dreams, the moment the judge read her the charges: deliberate homicide. Punishable by death.
Punishable by death. To this day, Bellesen can’t remember much past that phrase. The last 24 hours had already been a blur: the assault, the shooting, the arrest and now this – her arraignment.
It was 9 October 2020. Bellesen had started the day thinking she was the victim. After all, she had already explained how her ex-partner attacked her. How he tried to rape her. How she shot and killed him in self-defense.
But throughout the night, Bellesen noticed she hadn’t been treated the way a crime victim should. Still, she figured if she was being charged something, it had to be because she had been driving drunk or didn’t have the proper gun permit. It didn’t occur to her until now that the justice system saw her as a perpetrator – as a killer. Not after everything she had survived at the hands of Jacob Glace.
“I felt like I was dead inside,” Bellesen says, looking back. “I felt like a person standing very still in the center of a tornado that was just exploding all around – and not being able to move or breathe or think or feel anything.”
In the United States, nearly one in four women – and one in 10 men – experience intimate partner violence or stalking during their lifetimes. Bellesen thought she had left that all behind; moving to Montana was supposed to be a fresh start.
But her history with Glace was about to come flooding back – in a public trial that would test the lengths necessary to prove self-defense, even after a lifetime of domestic abuse.
Until her move, Bellesen had lived with the specter of violence almost her entire life. It started, she says, with abuse she sustained as a child at the hands of a relative.
Then came Glace. Bellesen, née Hansen, was only 15 when they met, living in a remote mountain neighborhood outside Leavenworth, Washington. Glace was 23, a pot dealer with a handsome face and a love of the outdoors. They were dating within weeks.
At first, the relationship spelled freedom for Bellesen. They shared a passion for hiking and snowboarding, and Glace, with his car, could whisk Bellesen far from the confines of her tiny town.
But soon, freedom turned to isolation. Bellesen got pregnant shortly before her 16th birthday. Her mother presented her with a choice: either have an abortion and move with her family to their new home in Montana, or stay in Washington with Glace. She chose Glace.
Cramped with him living in a shed that had been converted into a studio apartment, Bellesen felt increasingly adrift. She stopped going to school. She lost contact with most of her friends. And without a driver’s license, her horizons seemed to shrink. Glace, once so eager to sweep her away on adventures, increasingly left her at home.
Bellesen says Glace started raping her after the birth of their first child. If she rebuffed his advances, he would call her a tease. If she cried as he pinned her down, he would berate her for making him feel bad. It would take years for Bellesen to realize that what was happening was a crime.
She was still in her teens when she found herself pregnant with her second child. He stopped raping her during the pregnancy, but the violence continued. Glace would shove her as he passed, often with an “Oops, sorry, I didn’t see you there.” Once, while holding her firstborn child, Bellesen made the mistake of interrupting him while he was outside with friends. As she turned to leave, a sharp pain pierced her shoulders. Her infant slipped from her fingers. Glace had thrown a beer bottle square against her spine.
Whore. Bad mother. Ugly. Loveless. Clingy. The insults were daily. And then, days after she returned home with her second child, Glace started raping her again. “That was much more violent than before,” she would later tell her defense team. The sutures from her C-section nearly tore open. She attempted suicide.
When she woke up in the emergency room, Glace looked like he’d been crying. He seemed scared – more for himself than for her, she suspected.
The physical assaults stopped for a while after that. Glace promised to do better, to be better. It was during that lull that Bellesen agreed to marry Glace. She figured it was the right thing to do: they had children together, after all.
But Glace soon returned to his pattern of violence, only now it escalated. Strangulation became part of the routine, Bellesen says. One incident left her so injured, she peed blood for three days afterwards.
Bellesen tried to leave, but she faced pressure from family to stick it out and be a good wife and mother. Even after they finally separated – following an incident where Bellesen says she discovered Glace sleeping with another teenager – she would sometimes notice Glace’s black Chevy Tahoe following her.
Feeling alienated from family and friends, Bellesen went through periods of homelessness, of addiction to drugs and alcohol, as she attempted to recover from all she endured.
Montana was going to be different. In 2005, after reconnecting with her mother – whom she hadn’t spoken to in years – Bellesen hopped on a train out of Washington with nothing more than a backpack. Given her lack of housing, a judge had awarded Glace custody of their children.
“Moving here was very difficult. I left behind everybody I knew. I left behind my kids,” Bellesen says. “I didn’t know if I was jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire. But I really felt like it was my only choice to really try and get my life back on track.”
Bellesen initially settled in the tourist hub of Whitefish, a ski destination just like Leavenworth had been. The resort-town dynamics felt familiar: there were the locals, and then there were the tourists. In Leavenworth, Bellesen had the pride of being on the locals’ side. “We felt like it was our town,” she recalls. But in Whitefish, the tables had turned.
It was a lonely time. The only people she knew in Montana were her sister, her mother and her stepfather – and those relationships remained largely strained. Without a support system, Bellesen continued drinking, leading to a string of convictions for intoxicated driving.
But slowly, Bellesen turned her life around. With Glace’s agreement, Bellesen’s two sons came to live with her. She received treatment for her addiction, and in 2012, newly sober, she registered for the dating app Match.
One profile stood out to her. It featured a father of two from southern California, with a description that was brief and to the point: Not social. Doesn’t do bars. Must like kids. And no drama. It belonged to Corey Bellesen.
They exchanged emails and telephone calls for a couple of weeks before they agreed to meet in person. Corey, a tall man with bright eyes and a scruffy, close-cropped beard, remembers being instantly smitten. In her plaid shirt and jeans, Bellesen seemed casual but confident. Her hair, long and dark at the time, spiraled down past her waist. And then there was the ease he felt around her: “It was like talking to an old friend,” he recalls.
Their first date played like something out of a movie. First they went for a meal, followed by a stroll by a lake. Sitting on a rock by the water’s edge, lost in conversation, they were caught unaware when the sky turned black. But even as the downpour began, they chose to stay – if but to remain in each other’s company a little while longer.
Soaking wet, they drove back to Corey’s house to dry off on the porch. He knew right away that she was the one. “It was crazy,” he says. “She just had a smile and a gleam in her eye.” They got married that same year.
By 2017, Bellesen was finishing a degree in addiction studies. She wanted to be a counselor. Looking for opportunities, she stumbled across a listing for the Abbie Shelter, a Kalispell nonprofit supporting survivors of domestic and sexual violence. She decided to volunteer.
Entering its headquarters for the first time proved to be a shock. It was nothing like the cold, institutional shelter Bellesen had spent nights in back in Washington. She made her way across a big yard dotted with flowers and a swing set, toward a welcoming, purple-trimmed house. Inside, she was greeted with the fuzzy pillows, couches and a room buzzing with life.
At the center of it all was the Abbie Shelter’s executive director, Hilary Shaw. Bellesen met Shaw at her first volunteer meeting. A chipper, self-described ski bunny from Connecticut – who jokes that she moved to Montana after meeting a “cute guy,” her husband – Shaw sat breastfeeding in the middle of the room. It was an image of confidence that seared itself into Bellesen’s mind.
“When she spoke, she spoke in a way that I never really heard another woman speak before,” Bellesen explains. “It was the voice of a woman who had been told her whole life that she was perfect just the way she was and that she was confident and capable and strong.” Bellesen pauses. “And I had not experienced women like that, ever.”
Bellesen set to work making herself an essential part of the Abbie Shelter community. She even brought her own set of power tools, helping to fix the fence and rewire the electrical system. Soon, she was promoted from volunteer to staff member.
Still, Bellesen kept much of her personal experiences to herself. “I’ve found over the years that, when I would tell people about my history with Jake or growing up with my stepdad, they either would get extremely angry about the situation or they would get completely grossed out about it and distance themselves.”
But even as Bellesen made strides in her new life, she couldn’t shake her nagging self-doubt. Glace’s voice echoed in the back of her mind, taunting her, warning her she wasn’t good enough. She couldn’t escape it. Nor, as it turns out, could she escape Glace himself.
The assertive Roman nose. The blue-grey eyes. The small ears. The strong jawline. Every time Isaac Glace caught a glimpse of himself, he saw a younger version of his father: “I’d look in the mirror and I’d see the person I hated the most on this earth.”
Isaac, now in his early 20s, hadn’t always felt that way. Growing up, he saw his parents’ relationship as nothing more than “an awkward game of custodial tug of war”, no different than in other divorced families.
As Glace and Bellesen’s youngest son, Isaac was too little to remember his move to Montana. But he does recall that his father started commuting to the state shortly afterwards. Glace would try to insinuate himself into his children’s lives, attending birthdays and theater recitals.
“My father, he would show up one night, like every six months, and take me and my brother out to dinner or something,” Isaac recalls. He could tell his parents’ reunions were uneasy but that they muscled through with a “do-it-for-the-kids” attitude.
But something still felt off. As Isaac entered his teenage years, he started to realize the tension went beyond the usual divorce drama. It prompted Bellesen and her husband Corey to join him for a family therapy session. There, Isaac started to learn about his mother’s past – and his father’s violence.
“It felt so obvious in hindsight, you know? And I felt bad for not understanding sooner what had gone on,” Isaac says. As he grew older, there were more and more incidents that chipped away at his father’s nice-guy persona.
The turning point came one night when Isaac was about 15 years old. He had gone to visit Glace in the town of Plains, Montana, where he was living with his then-girlfriend, Jasmine Sayler. It was close to midnight when Isaac was awoken up by the sounds of a fight.
“Whore.” “Bitch.” Isaac remembers his father, drunk, shouting in Sayler’s face. He feared the insults would escalate into violence, so he dialed 911. But then Glace did a sudden about-face. His anger disappeared. He seemed calm, kind even. And with the 911 operator on the other end of the line, he convinced Isaac to end the call.
“The moment I hung up, he went right back to being incredibly violent and incredibly abusive – but this time to me.” Isaac says Glace pointed a rifle in his face before storming off into the night.
Ultimately, it was on the premise of talking about his son that Glace suggested he and Bellesen meet on the afternoon of 8 October 2020. Bellesen felt she had little choice: Glace was upset at Isaac and itching to confront him. If Bellesen didn’t agree to a visit, she feared Glace might ambush Isaac and berate him – or worse.
The day started like any other. Her husband Corey, an operations manager at an internet service provider, got out of bed in his Lakeside home and kissed his sleeping wife goodbye before heading to work.
By the time he saw her again that evening, she was sitting at the Cornerstone Convenience store on a desolate stretch of Highway 28, racked with shock. Corey’s eyes traveled from her tattered shirt to the blood on her jeans.
Bellesen had been planning for a relaxing afternoon. She had a half day off, so as soon as she wrapped up her work at the Abbie Shelter, she headed to the slopes of Blacktail Mountain for a hike with her dog. That’s when she received Glace’s telephone call, pressuring her to meet.
She was irritated. Still, she did what she thought was right: She returned the dog home and prepared to set out on the hour-long drive to Paradise, Montana, where Glace was living at the time.
Nobody knew where she was going, not even her husband – Corey wouldn’t have approved. Instead, she texted him and kept her absence vague: “work is busy, I’ll see you late tonight.”
When Bellesen arrived, she noticed Glace had been drinking. His demeanor seemed a little too friendly. “He has this face that he gets where he smiles, but his eyes don’t smile,” she would later tell her defense team.
Bellesen had arrived in a new car, a 2020 Land Rover Discovery, and Glace insisted they take it for a drive. It would give them more privacy, he argued. She obliged, despite her misgivings. She suspected his friendliness was a smokescreen for his anger.
With Bellesen behind the wheel, Glace guided her out of his sleepy little town, away from its lonely antique store and white picket fences. They drove across the Clark Fork River, over train tracks and down an empty road where the conifers grew tall and dense.
A rocky outcropping rose out of the ground before them, about two stories high. Glace instructed Bellesen to turn onto a dirt road behind it, where a clearing opened onto the river. They parked, and Bellesen lifted the back hatch of the car. She sat on the tailgate while they shared swigs of vodka.
“Well, what do you want me to say?” Bellesen remembers asking, exasperated. The conversation about their son had reached an impasse. Glace deflected: “You look really good.” He commented on her breasts, sneering about how Corey was a lucky guy.
His temperament seemed erratic – and Bellesen grew anxious to leave. She glanced at her cellphone. No signal. Glace moved in for a kiss.
She quickly pushed him away, but by then, the hairs on the back of her neck were standing on end. She moved to slide off the tailgate, but her feet never reached the ground. In that second, she says, Glace had come at her again – only this time, he pinned her down by the shoulder and was ripping at her shirt with his free hand, tearing the buttons and the clasp of her bra.
It all happened so fast. Trapped under his weight, she feared he would choke her like he had in the past. She felt like she might die. His eyes seemed so narrow, so glassy. Scratched and bruised, she managed to wriggle free – but Glace’s hand shot forward as she sprinted around the side of the Land Rover, catching her pants with such force that her pants went slack. Her zipper had broken.
But she made it to the front car door. As she tried to climb inside, Glace behind her, she noticed Corey’s Glock 26 pistol in the car’s center console. She spun around, closed her eyes, and squeezed the trigger.
Missoula-based attorney Lance Jasper was not looking for another homicide case to represent.
In fact, as he puts it, he was having a pretty shitty day.
His wife lives with progressive multiple sclerosis, an incurable disease that attacks the nervous system, and was in the process of transitioning to a wheelchair. Jasper was frustrated: there was nothing he could do to stop the disease’s advance. He was faced with a constant onslaught of bad news he was powerless to do anything about.
“I like to have control – or at least think I can direct the outcome of something in a manner consistent with effort, right? If you try hard enough, things will get better,” he says. “Whereas when you are stricken with a disease you can’t do anything about, you just watch it take a person, the person you love the most.”
It was during this time that a friend at the public defender’s office tipped him off about a new case: a woman was in jail in Thompson Falls, Montana, charged with deliberate homicide in the shooting of her abusive ex. Would Jasper be interested in representing her?
He wasn’t sold on the idea but leapt at the prospect of getting out of the office. Driving helped clear his mind.
A straight-talking ex-construction worker with a round face and a horseshoe mustache, Jasper counts nearly two decades of working criminal defense cases. But what he saw in the Thompson Falls jail that day was a rarity in his line of work. It was a “unicorn” case – a true instance of self-defense.
Bellesen sat across from him behind a glass window, speaking into a telephone mounted on the wall. She kept repeating: “I didn’t have a choice, I didn’t have a choice.”
Bellesen was afraid she was facing the death penalty, but Jasper knew such a verdict was rare in Montana. Only three people had been executed in the state since 1976. A lengthy prison sentence, however, was not out of the question.
“I saw a woman really in terror,” Jasper says. “I didn’t quite have a real idea of all the trauma at that point in time that she had went through. But what I saw was a victim.”
Experts often explain domestic violence as a means of control – a pattern of behavior used to intimidate, silence and isolate victims, on top of any physical injury they may endure. As he started to delve into Bellesen’s case, he saw how that control had played out in Glace and Bellesen’s relationship.
But here was a chance to seize back the control – both in Bellesen’s life and his own – by coming to her defense. Jasper decided to take the case pro bono.
“It helps balance me, in the sense that seeing someone else in need, that’s something I can do,” Jasper says. “You’re not changing the world, but you can change some things.”
The first hurdle, however, was getting Bellesen out of jail.
Bellesen had been in custody ever since police officer Gary Stanberry picked her up from the convenience store where she and Corey dialed 911. Home since then had been a square cement cell she shared with three other women.
One of her cell-mates, Bellesen soon learned, was a domestic abuser herself. Lying on her bunk, Bellesen tried to drown out the insults the woman screamed over the telephone to her family by placing a blanket over her head.
“Being forced to listen to that every day for three weeks was horrible,” she says.
Estimates vary as to how many incarcerated women have suffered sexual abuse and domestic violence themselves, though many studies suggest a correlation. One 1999 survey of female prisoners in New York documented a rate of physical and sexual abuse as high as 94%.
And yet, a struggle remains when states hand down charges and sentences. In 2021 alone, advocates in Washington state and Oregon introduced bills requiring courts to consider histories of domestic abuse, when relevant, as cause for lowering criminal penalties.
These bills were modeled after similar legislation in California, Illinois and New York, which enacted its Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act in 2019.
Both bills have thus far failed to pass, but they are part of a growing field of domestic violence law that, itself, is relatively new.
“The fact of [domestic] violence has gone on for hundreds, thousands of years. But it’s only, I would say, since the 1960s and 1970s that there has been the recognition, understanding it as a serious legal harm,” says law professor Elizabeth M Schneider, an early leader in the field.
Even when legal strides are made, it can take time for the public – and the justice system by extension – to catch up. “What we see in many areas,” Schneider explains, “is that even when the law changes, it can take the public a very, very long time to change.”
Even though Bellesen had survived what she saw as an attempted rape, Jasper noticed that her body wasn’t treated like the crime scene it was. No photos were taken of her ripped clothing, her scratches, when officers first encountered her. And what evidence was collected was improperly handled, he says.
“We only had what the police put in their report, which was geared to saying it was a homicide,” Jasper explains. Later, as he interviewed Sanders county investigator Brian Josephson as part of Bellesen’s defense, Jasper would discover that officers delayed taking Bellesen to a clinic certified in collecting forensic evidence for sexual assault.
“Why did you not take her there?” Jasper asked him.
Josephson replied: “There was not penetration, so I decided not to take her there.”
There are moments in life when your world suddenly shifts. For Abbie Shelter executive director Hilary Shaw, one of those moments came late on 8 October 2020, when her phone rang with a call from Bellesen’s husband Corey.
Those early hours were filled with shock and confusion. She knew little beyond the basics: that Bellesen had shot her abuser.
“There wasn’t a clear path of escalation in Jake and Rachel’s relationship towards homicide, the way there typically is when someone’s still in that abusive relationship,” Shaw says.
Only later did she discover that Glace’s violence had escalated – just with different partners. At the time of his death, he faced two charges from 2020 of felony “partner or family member assault” – one in nearby Mineral county and one in Sanders county itself.
Still, Shaw never doubted that her colleague acted in self-defense. “It’s a great illustration of how there are some abusers that you just can’t ever be free of,” she says.
That night, Shaw didn’t sleep. Instead, she drafted a list of who to call in the morning, laying the groundwork for a grassroots campaign in support of Bellesen.
One of the first people she reached out to was Kelsen Young at the Montana Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence. Whenever she’s asked to illustrate the hurdles of prosecuting domestic violence in Montana, Young points to one fact: it takes only two offenses for an animal abuser to qualify for a felony. For domestic abuse, it takes three.
But the solution isn’t as simple as changing the laws. “I would love to be able to say that our criminal codes need enhancements and that the path to enhancing those is clear. It’s just not,” Young says.
A bill designed to stiffen penalties for domestic violence might enter the Montana legislature — and come out with amendments that make existing punishments more lax, Young explains. The result is that her organization sometimes has to defeat its own legislation.
Bellesen’s case was playing out against the backdrop of an election year, so Young had to be careful. Montana Republicans were on the eve of taking back the governor’s mansion for the first time in a decade. Young had to weigh whether her coalition’s support would turn Bellesen’s case into a political football.
“Just the right amount of pressure might’ve made it worse” for Bellesen, Young says.
The initial plan was a show of force at Bellesen’s bail hearing: bail was set at $200,000, far beyond what she and Corey could afford to pay. Bellesen’s colleagues at the Abbie Shelter had started a GoFundMe campaign to offset the costs. The next step was to show support, either by calling the prosecutor or attending the hearing itself.
Young did receive pushback from members of her coalition, which includes advocates based in state and local government. They felt it was a conflict of interest to weigh in on the affairs of their colleagues in Sanders County.
But Shaw was adamant they move forward: “It’s like: Who are we serving? Are we serving our partners in the judicial system who can’t handle being held accountable for their mistakes? Or are we serving survivors? When we try and advocate for survivors in a way that reflects poorly against prosecutors, it’s not okay for us to be shamed about that.”
On 27 October 2020, Bellesen and Jasper appeared in front of Judge James Manley in an attempt to lower the bail. Due to the pandemic, the public was invited to attend remotely, via Zoom.
Bail hearings are usually sparsely attended – a few dozen people on a good day – but this time, Jasper remembers the tally of Zoom participants kept climbing.
“Judge Manley’s a guy that kinda has got a furrowed brow. And he just starts looking at me, shaking his head,” Jasper recalls, chuckling at the judge’s bewilderment.
The number of participants that day peaked at over 100. By the evening, Bellesen was free from jail, her bail dropped to $20,000.
It was a triumphant day – but not wholly so for Bellesen. What she remembers, more than anything, is the shame she experienced walking into the bail hearing. Even to be transported from the jail to the courthouse – neighboring buildings – Bellesen says she had to be shackled at the ankles and wrists, with a big leather belt across her stomach to secure her chains. With the addition of a face mask to protect against the spread of Covid, she felt like Hannibal Lecter.
As she turned a corner to walk past the metal detector, she found herself face to face with her husband and kids. It was humiliating. “I had to walk past them dressed with those chains and everything. I wasn’t allowed to look at them,” she says softly.
And then there was the courtroom itself. To her left, a TV was set up to display the Zoom participants. The screen was speckled with little squares, each representing a different viewer. It felt like the whole world was watching – and there she was, looking like a murderer.
Bellesen had been aware that Glace had had other relationships since their marriage. But she never knew just how violent those relationships had been. She had no clue other women had been raped, too: “I thought it was just me.”
But in the courtroom that day, Jasper called a witness Bellesen knew personally: Jasmine Sayler. She and Glace met in the winter of 2010, when Sayler was a single mother working at a casino. Within months, they were dating.
At first, Glace seemed polite and caring. But then the insults and accusations started. And when Sayler became pregnant with the first of their two children in 2013, Glace turned physically violent. From there, the aggression only intensified.
Sayler remembers one incident when her son was four: Glace had shoved her on a coffee table, with his forearm across her throat and his fist balled around a handful of her hair. His other arm was raised to punch when her son burst in, yelling: “No! Don’t hurt mommy!”
She felt like a shell of the person she once was. Even her kids were affected. The slightest disturbance sent them into a state of terror. Once, a FedEx delivery man knocked on the door unexpectedly. “I found them in the kitchen with my son protecting my youngest daughter behind him with a butter knife.” Sayler pauses. “They were seven and five at the time.”
Sayler says she stopped counting how many times she called the cops on Glace – how many times her neighbors called, her kids called. Each time, when the authorities arrived, Glace had either settled down or left the house. No action was taken.
“The main thing people don’t get is that men, women and children are not just sitting there getting abused, doing nothing,” she says. “They also don’t understand that people do try to leave, but when you try to leave, that’s when it’s more dangerous.”
Sayler was one of the two women who filed felony assault charges against Glace in the spring of 2020. But even after Sayler and her children enrolled in the Montana’s Address Confidentiality Program as part of a protection order to keep Glace away, Sayler still had to contend with his manipulations. She says he used family and friends to gather information about her whereabouts.
Speaking to the court by telephone in Bellesen’s bail hearing, Sayler remembers being asked if she was afraid – not of Glace but of Bellesen.
The question alone made her angry. Her answer was matter of fact: No, absolutely not.
The evidence of Glace’s prior assaults was overwhelming. There was a trail of police reports stretching back to his time in Washington state.
But what Jasper needed to understand were the specifics of Bellesen’s self-defense – specifics that could help diffuse any arguments that this was an “execution,” as one police detective termed it. After all, that same history of abuse could be argued as motive for premeditated murder.
Jasper knew the burden was on the prosecution to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Bellesen’s actions did not constitute self-defense. But he was also aware that, around the country, defendants with histories of sexual violence routinely end up behind bars, despite claims that they feared for their lives. They include high-profile cases like Cyntoia Brown, Nicole “Nikki” Addimando and Marissa Alexander.
Studies indicate that juries can bring powerful misconceptions into the courtroom, including the idea that an abused partner can simply exit the relationship. A 2012 report found 62% of mock jurors felt battered women were convicted in self-defense cases because they should have found an alternative to homicide.
Jasper had to find a way to make Bellesen’s fear real for the courtroom. In her panic, Bellesen had taken actions even Jasper struggled to understand: how did she manage to shoot Glace five times in the heat of the moment, when she only remembers squeezing the trigger twice? Why did she wait to dial 911? And why did she jettison Glace’s shirt and cellphone as she drove away?
He had to illustrate the toll domestic violence could take on the psyche. Bellesen’s future depended on it.
“If you do lose, you know that that innocent person’s likely going to spend the majority of their life in prison,” Jasper reminded himself. So he decided to assemble a “million-dollar defense”: a group of experts, all working pro bono, that he dubbed “the A-Team”.
Jamie Merifield was among the firearms specialists, medical experts and legal advisors that Jasper assembled. A blonde woman with short curly hair, born and raised in Montana, Merifield formerly served 12 years as a police detective specializing in domestic and sexual violence.
She also happened to have firsthand experience with sexual assault. Her abuser, she says, was a fellow detective, a good-time guy everyone seemed to like: quick with a smile, quick with a laugh. In 2007, she alleges he trapped her in her chair, opening her legs and placing his knee between them while “verbally berating” her.
“When I was assaulted, I was terrified,” Merifield says. The distrust many sexual assault survivors feel toward the criminal justice system was something she grappled with herself, even as a member of the police force. “I didn’t say anything for six weeks.”
What stood out to Merifield about Bellesen’s case was that she was never treated like a victim. Bellesen was put into handcuffs before the police even ascertained whether she needed medical attention.
“Law enforcement is a power-and-control job, and so is domestic violence. The difference is, law enforcement should be on the right side of it,” Merifield says.
While Merifield was tasked with reviewing police procedure, Sarah Baxter – a clinical and forensic psychologist – was brought on board to help unravel the dynamics of abuse.
In a state where outsiders can sometimes be viewed with suspicion, Baxter takes pride in the fact that she’s from Twodot, a tiny agricultural town named for the dots a local cattleman used to mark his herds. Her goal was to articulate why Bellesen took actions others might struggle to understand.
“Sometimes child sexual abuse survivors seem to really repeat that pattern and hook up with people who tend to be also abusive,” Baxter says. “They don’t read dangerous situations well. And rather than learn from their experiences, they seem bound to repeat them to some extent.”
That mindset can be difficult for judges and juries to understand, Baxter adds. “That can turn into victim-blaming, in the sense of people asking, ‘Well, why was she drinking? Why did she go out to X, Y or Z location?’”
Baxter also believes the burden of shared parenting played a large role in Bellesen’s decisions. “That’s a failing of our legal system, because we can’t figure out very effectively how to manage the co-parenting relationship when there’s been domestic violence,” she says.
For Bellesen herself, the challenge was how to work through her trauma. Jasper feared that she might sound rehearsed on the witness stand if she delved too deeply into the events during therapy.
“When you go to trial, you don’t want to have someone necessarily that has dealt with the issues [with a counselor]. It all needs to be raw,” Jasper explains. “It needs to be as real as it can be.”
But that was difficult. “I really just tried not to think about it,” Bellesen says. She immersed herself in house projects: repainting her kitchen, baking, watching a lot of what she calls “stupid TV”. Sitting at her black Janome sewing machine, she threw herself into quilting for the first time in years, piecing together tiny scraps of fabric into a king-size blanket.
Her everyday routines had been upended. Before, she and Corey used to eat brunch in a little café each weekend, the kind of place where the wait staff knew your name. But the events of October 2020 put a stop to that.
“I don’t think we’ve been back to that place twice since October,” Corey says.
The first time they did attempt to go out, for a meal at Famous Dave’s BBQ, Rachel’s face was plastered on the front cover of the local newspaper. Copies were available for guests to read at the entrance of the restaurant.
“Sure as shit, it was sitting right there as we walked in,” Corey recalls. As his wife sat down at a table, clearly shaken, Corey excused himself. He walked over to the stack of newspapers and turned them upside down.
“I don’t think there was a day we could go by without being reminded of it,” he says. “We constantly lived with the fact that, if [the trial] goes wrong, this could be the end.”
The Bellesens describe themselves as an introverted family, and the media attention and the pressure of the case made them retreat even further. Articles rehashed Bellesen’s history with addiction and suicide, plunging her into anxiety and shame.
Knowing her friends and colleagues at the Abbie Shelter could be called as potential witnesses, Bellesen couldn’t reach out to them. “I was cut out of the very service that my agency provides,” she says.
Her children were supportive, but she was keenly aware that they were grieving too – and that she was the person who killed their father. She offered them comfort as best as she could, but her past threatened to overwhelm her.
“Not only did it all just come rushing back out of nowhere – all of the memories are just as vivid as if those things had just happened – but the whole world knows about it now,” Bellesen says.
Glace’s voice kept echoing in her mind: “No one’s going to believe you.”
Bellesen desperately wanted to stay in bed until the whole ordeal was over. But as the months passed and the winter snows started to melt, the defense team proposed a new tactic: reenacting the afternoon of 8 October on the very site where it happened.
“I was horrified. I did not want to do that,” Bellesen says, furrowing her brow at the thought. By that point, she was working with A&E on a TV documentary about her case. The legal team would be recording the reenactment for her defense, while the A&E crew would capture it for TV.
The day of the reenactment, Bellesen had three sets of microphone wires snaking up her shirt. All eyes were on her. She plucked up her courage by reminding herself this was a chance to tell her story: If the media was going to talk about her anyway, she might as well have her say.
One moment in particular caught her off-guard. She looked up to see the crime-scene dummy in the same position Glace was lying in after he was shot. “Everything was exactly the same as in that moment,” Bellesen says. “It all came flooding back. Like I got hit by a semi-truck.”
Baxter caught sight of Bellesen as she doubled over. “I thought she was going to vomit, but she was just gasping for breath.”
But despite the stress involved, the defense team hoped the reenactment would help bolster their evidence – and convince Montana assistant attorney general Chris McConnell to dismiss the case.
In April, the prosecution seemingly relented. It submitted a motion to dismiss the case, citing the difficulty it faced in meeting the high burden of proof. But in the final paragraph, the prosecution included an ominous note: it hoped to “make a determination at a later date” whether to refile the case.
Jasper says that language infuriated him. “I don’t think I’ve been that pissed in my life ever. When I get a dismissal, I should be doing a dance,” he says.
The possibility that Bellesen could be recharged left his client vulnerable. Chances were high that she wouldn’t have the same resources in the future as she did with Jasper. And because there is no statute of limitations for deliberate homicide charges, the case would hang over her head for the rest of her life.
“It frustrated the shit out of me,” Jasper says, swearing liberally at the thought of it. His voice rising, he emphasizes that self-defense is perfectly legal: “There’s nothing wrong with the state patting someone on the back and saying, ‘You know what? You did follow the law. And that’s why it’s here. It’s here to protect you.’”
For Jasper, the evidence was clear. “She didn’t get away with murder. She saved herself from being murdered.”
Bellesen also found herself filled with rage. “It was a slap in the face,” she says. She decided then and there that she would risk trial rather than living with the possibility of criminal charges looming over her. She was done staying silent.
Isaac Glace had to psych himself up to go to court on 25 May. He didn’t know if the hearing would be another step in sending his mother behind bars – or if it would result in her freedom.
He felt so nervous, he forgot to take his sunglasses off as he walked into district court judge Amy Eddy’s courtroom. Lance Jasper and his mother were already seated; so too were supporters and experts ready to testify.
But a counter-protest had also assembled: about 10 individuals wearing shirts printed with the slogan “Justice for Jake.”
From the get-go, Bellesen and her supporters were nervous. They were pushing for what seemed to be the impossible: a dismissal with prejudice, one that would prevent prosecutors from ever pursuing the case again.
After hearing arguments from prosecution and defense attorneys, Judge Eddy announced she was prepared to issue a decision immediately. Citing Bellesen’s constitutional rights and a lack of substantive outstanding evidence, she announced the case was indeed dismissed – with prejudice. Rachel Bellesen threw her head back in relief.
“I think I had been holding my breath while she was talking. And then when she said that, it was like all the air just rushed into my body,” she says. “It was indescribable really – maybe the exact opposite of the way it felt when that first judge said ‘punishable by death.’”
Jasper himself had been feeling the ups and downs of the court acutely: “At first you think you’re winning. Then you’re losing, winning, losing.” When he sensed the judge was about to make her final pronouncement, he did something he doesn’t ordinarily do: He glanced at his client’s face.
“So I turn, and I look at her. And there was a moment there I’ll never forget – of seeing that weight lifted and that faith coming back to her, in a way that I just can’t describe.”
The decision came as such a surprise that Isaac didn’t even realize his mother had won until he started to hear clapping. A wave of relief rushed over him, as if hope itself had been restored to his life. “There gets to be a tomorrow,” he remembers thinking. “There gets to be a future.”
Isaac believes his mother’s legal victory sends a message: “If it can happen in small-town, rural Montana, despite the odds, it can happen anywhere.” He is now in college, studying criminology. He aims to help families like his.
When Bellesen woke up the morning after the verdict, she didn’t feel the elation she expected. Instead, she was swallowed by depression.
“I couldn’t figure out why I was feeling that way,” she says. “I’m like, ‘The best possible outcome that one could expect happened. I got what we fought so hard for. Why am I not happier?’”
In ways big and small, the people around her were contending with similar feelings. For Abbie Shelter executive director Hilary Shaw, it was a quote published in the Associated Press that got under her skin.
A “Justice for Jake” supporter had told the reporter, “She walked out of there after she killed my best friend because she knew the right people, she knew what to say, she knew what she was doing.”
Those words cut deep. “When Jake’s friend made that comment of ‘she knew all the right people,’ that was painful for me,” Shaw says. “Not that I thought he was right, that Rachel unjustly or unethically utilized her connections to get an unjust outcome. But that, because Rachel is connected to all the right people, she did receive more support than most survivors would. And as service providers, that is painful for us to admit.”
Corey Bellesen was likewise grappling with the fury he felt reading reactions on social media – comments along the lines of: “Money can buy you freedom.”
He understood, to a degree, where those reactions stemmed from. “You’re supposed to be innocent until proven guilty. But in reality, if you don’t have the means to prove your innocence, you’re guilty,” he says.
He estimates his family’s out-of-pocket expenses ranged from $30,000 to $40,000, just for travel, medical bills, jailhouse phone calls and costs like the alcohol monitoring bracelet Bellesen was forced to wear.
His nails dig into his crossed arms as he recalls how he installed a camera in his truck at one point, fearing he was being tailed by the police in Sanders county. If Jasper had not offered legal services for free, he believes his wife would be in prison.
“Do I think if this was in the hands of the public defender that we would have had such a favorable outcome? Absolutely not.”
Bellesen herself echoes those concerns. She sees factors like race and class weighing heavily in her case, paving the way for a successful outcome.
“If you’re a victim of abuse, you probably struggle with substance abuse and chronic, untreated mental illness,” she says. “And if you do have to use lethal self-defense, odds are you’re probably not going to be the right color. You’re probably not going to be someone with enough money. You’re not going to be sober enough.”
In the months since Judge Eddy’s decision, Bellesen and her family have endeavored to move on from last year’s events. In June, Bellesen’s Land Rover was released from the police impound. After cleaning away the crime scene tape, Corey quickly sold it. He didn’t want his wife to see it again.
Bellesen herself was able to return to work at the Abbie Shelter in a new role: community advocate. She lights up just talking about it. Ever the crafter, she already plans to paint a landscape onto the wall of her new office: a window onto the world that’s forever sunny.
When asked about whether she feared lingering suspicions in the community – or from the “Justice for Jake” crowd – Bellesen instead expresses sympathy.
“Abusers are manipulators, the very best of the kind, and they don’t just manipulate their partners. They also manipulate everyone they’re around,” she says. Glace’s supporters may not know it, she adds, but they’re victims too: “Just a different kind of victim. They’ve been completely duped.”
Still, Bellesen struggles to move forward as she seeks to redefine her life without the violence that shaped her. “All the way up until the day of the hearing really, I had spent all of my life just fighting against one abuse after another, one horrifying event after another,” she says.
“When you go through things like that over and over and over and over again, it just becomes part of who you are. It’s written into your narrative, your internal belief system about yourself.”
Her chin quivers. “I did not know how to live in a life where those things didn’t exist anymore.”
Those feelings are beginning to subside, though the nightmares about Glace endure. Still, it pains her to see the people she cares about wrestling with the fallout of Glace’s death. At least one is battling mental health and substance abuse issues.
On 8 October 2020, after Bellesen shot her abuser, she remembers thinking, “It couldn’t get any worse than this.” But now she says it can – and it has. “I can honestly say that I would rather go through October 8th every day for the rest of my life” than watch her loved ones suffer, she says quietly.
Since her legal victory, well-wishers have congratulated her. “I bet you’re glad to have your life go back to normal,” they offer. But Bellesen knows life doesn’t go back to normal after domestic assault. There is no normal to go back to.
The only thing she can think to do now is discover who she might be without violence in her life – and go forward from there.
In the US, the domestic violence hotline is 1-800-799-SAFE (7233). In the UK, call the national domestic abuse helpline on 0808 2000 247, or visit Women’s Aid. In Australia, the national family violence counselling service is on 1800 737 732. Other international helplines may be found via www.befrienders.org.