Albuquerque Iwama Aikido

Thanks to Dr. Jongwoo for the illustration.

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One Hour Before a Hitman Came to Kill Her, She Read a Poem. "I Will Not Die an Unlived Life."

She had no idea how those words were about to be tested.

On the evening of September 6, 2006, fifty-one-year-old Susan Kuhnhausen finished her shift at Providence Portland Medical Center in Portland, Oregon, and stopped at a hair salon on East Burnside Street. She mentioned to her stylist that her marriage of nearly eighteen years was finally ending — Mike had moved out, and the divorce was underway. While she waited, she picked up a copy of Oprah magazine and read a poem.

"I will not die an unlived life. I will not live in fear."

An hour later, she drove home to her Cape Cod in the Montavilla neighborhood. In the mudroom she found a note from Mike by the microwave. Gone to the beach, he said. Back Friday or Saturday.

She walked toward the bedroom. It was strangely dark.

Then a man stepped out from behind the door.

He was fifty-nine years old, wearing yellow rubber gloves and a baseball cap pulled low. In his hands was a claw hammer. He swung it at her left temple before she could process what was happening.

For most people, that moment ends one way.

Susan Kuhnhausen was not most people.

She had worked as an emergency room nurse for thirty years. She had encountered violent, injured men. She had trained regularly in self-defense — learning how to escape headlocks, how to take someone down, how to survive situations most people never face.

Instead of retreating, she rushed toward him. A hammer has less force at close range. She slammed her body against his and pushed him into the wall.

He spoke the only words she would hear him say.

"You're strong."

In that moment, she understood. This was no burglar. He hadn't asked about money or a safe. He was there to kill her.

She wrestled the hammer away and hit him with the claw end — three times, maybe four. Her father, the carpenter, had always told her a hammer could be used for self-defense. The claw end would work best.

He grabbed the hammer back. She reached for his throat and squeezed until his face went red, then purple, then darker still. She screamed at him to tell her who had sent him. He said nothing. She let go, thinking it was over, and tried to run.

He caught her in the hallway. He punched her in the face. She fell to the floor.

He stood over her with the hammer raised.

"He was standing over me with the hammer," she said later. "I looked at the floor and I thought, I'm going to die today."

She doesn't know how she did what came next. She pulled him down to the floor with her. She bit him on the arm, on the thigh — hoping that if he killed her, her teeth marks would at least link him to her death. Then she threw her leg over his body, climbed on top of him, and locked her arm around his throat.

She pressed down until he stopped moving.

The fight had lasted approximately fifteen minutes.

Susan grabbed the hammer and ran to her neighbor's house. The neighbor called 911.

"We have an intruder in the house next door. The woman who lives there thinks she may have strangled him." The dispatcher asked if she needed an ambulance. "No, she's a nurse. She says call an ambulance for the guy. He may be dead."

Police arrived to find Edward Dalton Haffey dead in the hallway. In his backpack was a day planner. On the week of September 4, someone had written: Call Mike. Get letter. Inside a folder was a phone number belonging to Michael Kuhnhausen.

Mike had hired Haffey — who once worked as a custodian under him — to kill Susan for $50,000. He wanted her dead so he could inherit their house. He had driven to the Oregon coast the day of the attack to establish an alibi.

He was not the first person Mike had approached. He had solicited three others before finding someone desperate enough to say yes.

In August 2007, Mike pleaded guilty to soliciting aggravated murder. At his sentencing, Susan stood before him and held up photographs of her bloodied face.

"You told police that you found out I was okay," she said. "Do I look okay?"

Then she delivered the line she had prepared.

"I am damaged by what you have done to me. I am damaged. But I am not destroyed."

Mike received ten years. Susan sued him for $1 million in civil court — not for the money, but to ensure he couldn't afford to hire anyone else when he got out. The jury awarded her $1,053,783. In June 2014, three months before his scheduled release, Mike died of cancer in prison.

Susan changed her name to Susan Walters. She moved to a new house. She lived with what she called two life sentences — the trauma of knowing her husband had tried to have her killed, and the weight of having taken another man's life.

"I don't know that you ever get over having killed another human being," she said. "I've always said I don't take any pride in what I did. But I also feel no shame."

Today, Susan Walters is a victim advocate in Portland. She helped create Case Companion, a free website that allows crime victims to track their offenders' court dates, sentencing, and release information. She works with WomenStrength and GirlStrength programs, teaching others what she learned the hard way.

"If you can't run and you can't hide," she says, "you have to fight."

"I didn't choose my attacker's death for him. I chose my life."

One hour before a hitman walked through her door,
she read a poem about refusing to live in fear.
She had no idea she was about to prove every word of it.

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