Peterson in a 2010 booking photo.The cover story at Seattle Weekly’s sister paper Dallas Observer this week is a tragic tale (or rather, series of tragic tales) concerning Vickie Peterson, formerly known as Vickie Steve. Those with good memories might remember her latter alias from a late-’90s case involving Clarence L. Peterson, an old, semi-wealthy guy from Lakewood who married Vickie on a whim, despite her being about 50 years his junior, then proceeded to give her nearly every dime he had before dying. Steve, who after marriage became Peterson, was sued by Clarence’s family, who said her relationship was an orchestrated scheme by her and her Gypsy family. The woman eventually fled to Dallas–where’s she apparently has been doing the same thing to other vulnerable old men. As Observer writer Patrick Michels lays out in his exhaustively reported article, Peterson’s latest victim was one Robert Whiteside, who was asked for directions by the woman, then in her mid-30s, and eventually ended up dating her. And by “dating” I mean meeting up somewhat regularly for dinner or drinks and convincing him to write her checks. Victoria and Clarence Peterson were married in Seattle in 1995. Clarence’s death two years later led to a legal fight over his estate.Oh, and sometimes when they were out, Whiteside’s house would get robbed.Which leads us to the other main thrust of the article and that is: Peterson’s Romani heritage. As Michels writes:Police who investigated her in the Pacific Northwest in the mid-’90s, before she moved here, say she’s one of three daughters of an ethnic Romani leader in suburban Seattle–part of a community known colloquially, and to the cops that track them, as Gypsies.There are apparently entire investigative teams that track the crimes of Romani groups. And “sweetheart swindles,” the crime that Peterson has seemingly developed into an art form, are supposedly becoming their bread and butter.Peterson has apparently been paid by two other elderly men in the Dallas area, and in each case the family accuses her of preying on the men’s desires to feel loved and to feel young.Peterson is the bad romance their kids warned them about, the hidden friendship and the muttered name at the family Christmas. She’s the irresistible fantasy that it’s not too late for love, or something like it. She is the fountain of youth, and the drain out the bottom.Bad romance stories, however, can still make for a great read. And this one–tragic as it is–is certainly that.