Solo, Hope Solo [best non fiction books of all time .txt] 📗

definitely liked to party. Here we are in college with our friends Megan and Van.

Training with legend Briana Scurry in 2007 kept me focused: I needed to have my job on lockdown. (Julie Jacobson/Associated Press)

Despite my string of three 2007 World Cup shutouts, I was relegated to the bench against Brazil in the semifinal. I watched in horror as our team imploded. (Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images)

After I spoke up following Greg Ryan’s decision to bench me, the team treated me like a pariah and decided I couldn’t suit up for the “celebration tour.” (Kyle Ericson/Associated Press)

With Carli Lloyd, my best friend on the national team

and the one teammate who publicly supported me in 2007.

I’ve known Tina Ellertson since we were teammates at the University of Washington, but it was in St. Louis that we became friends for life.

My manager and partner in crime Whitney helped shepherd me through the post–World Cup craziness: here we are at the FIFA Ballon D’Or in Zurich, where I celebrated my Golden Glove Award as best goalkeeper in the World Cup.

CHAPTER SEVEN

“I Should Have Died a Long Time Ago . . .”

The day before I left for China, a grisly murder made headlines in Seattle. A forty-year-old real estate agent named Mike Emert was found dead in an upscale home for sale in Woodinville, an enclave northeast of the city. When the homeowner who had hired him returned, she found Emert’s body face down in an upstairs bathtub with the water still running. He had been stabbed more than twenty times and, judging by the trail of blood leading up the stairs, had been dragged from the lower floor up into the bathroom.

By nightfall, police had identified my father as a “person of interest” and had taken him into custody for questioning. I didn’t know it, but the night before our team left town, a detective knocked on Lesle’s door and asked for my address. He told her my father was implicated in a murder case. Lesle was shocked—she had gotten to know my dad a little, and she couldn’t believe the accusation, but her main concern was for me; she stalled the detective, telling him I was out of the country even though I wasn’t leaving until the next morning. Police called my mother’s home in Richland. They tracked down Marcus. They were on the hunt for any information they could find.

Of all the members of our family, I had had the most regular contact with my father, but I was six thousand miles away. Lesle and Amy were worried that either the police or the media would track me down in China, or that I would randomly find out—one of my teammates had a sister who was a Seattle cop. My coaches and family were eager to protect me as much as possible. Lesle called the team’s sports psychologist, who was with us in China, and explained the situation.

“Don’t tell Hope,” Lesle told her. “She doesn’t need to know about this until she gets home. We’re trying to keep it quiet on campus. But she might find out somehow, and I want you to be aware.”

Things didn’t go exactly as planned. The psychologist told April, who just blurted out the bombshell: “Hope, your father has been accused of murder.”

I gasped. Murder? I knew my father had a criminal past, and that trouble seemed to find him. I knew he presented himself as a tough guy. And I knew he had made strange threats in the past: the bomb scares, the vendetta against Terry. But I was certain the affectionate, caring man I had gotten to know was incapable of committing cold-blooded murder. I believed that with all my heart.

I was frantic. I called my mom and Marcus, tried to make sense of the whole thing. Was my father in custody? Had anyone seen him? Nobody knew where he was.

Back in my room, I huddled in front of a computer in my hotel in China, and read the lead of the story in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

He admits to a troubled past—to a life of street hustling and petty crime. And he acknowledges that he set up bogus meetings with female real estate agents as part of a shameful con game to meet women.

But he insists he’s not a killer.

Nonetheless, authorities investigating the slaying of Eastside Realtor Mike Emert are now focusing on Jeffrey John Solo—the mysterious man with a limp whom they consider a “person of interest” in the case.

Jeffrey John Solo. The man I knew as Gerry. His picture was on the paper’s front page. The story said my father had come to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer building to tell his side of the story. Days earlier he had been taken into custody, had been given a polygraph test, had hair and blood samples taken, and then had been released. But he remained a “person of interest.”

He matched the description of the suspect in a few key ways: he walked with a limp, carried a cane, had a thick New York accent, and admitted to hustling female real estate agents. He told the reporter that he would meet the agents in houses, get to talking, and then ask them out on dates. He said it was a con to get their money and confessed, “Like I said, I used women and did some bad things.”

My father’s criminal history was laid out for everyone to see: two years in Walla Walla State Penitentiary, several convictions in the Richland area—including for forgery and the bomb threats. My father told the newspaper things I’d never known: that he had been charged in a robbery conspiracy when he lived in Boston years earlier and had also been convicted of being in possession of stolen property in King County, Washington.

A quote from an unnamed source made my father sound like he was capable of anything, including murder. The reporter