Crime Scene

Bizarre, compelling and authentic true crime stories of murder and mayhem. In these pages you will find a story about serial murder and cannibalism, a celebrity murder, torture murders, crimes of passion, among many others—chilling crimes that could only be perpetrated by the twisted minds and gruesome obsessions of coldblooded killers, the stuff that horror movies and novels are made of, brought to you from the vault of bestselling true crime author and serial killer expert Gary C. King.

CRIME SCENE True Stories of Crime and Detection Gary C. King Accolades for Gary C. King

Accolades for Gary C. King

“Using the most intimate of facts, King draws readers as far inside the mind of murderers as rational, moral people can go—the rest of the journey, thank the gods, is beyond our knowing. King’s talent and faithful service does honor to the dogged truth-seekers who finally bring justice for those whose lives were stolen.” Noreen Ayres, author of the Smokey Brandon mystery series.

“A page-turner for true crime fans.” Vincent Bugliosi, author of HELTER SKELTER and THE PROSECUTION OF GEORGE W. BUSH FOR MURDER, on BUTCHER. “Gary C. King is one of the best true crime writers on the scene today.” R. Barri Flowers, Author of THE SEX SLAVE MURDERS. “You will never want to walk alone again after reading this book.” Dr. Maurice Godwin, Criminal Psychologist and Author, on BUTCHER. “In a serial murder case almost too ghastly to comprehend, skilled true crime researcher (and writer) Gary C. King leads the reader deep into a world of unimaginable depravity, to meet a savage killer unlike any before him, who literally fed on dozens of helpless young women—whose defiled bodies then simply…disappeared. This book will jolt you…a page-turner.” Clark Howard, author of City Blood and Love’s Blood, on TO DIE FOR. “Writer Gary C. King knows the dark side of the Northwest as well as anybody…an unflinching account of one of the most vicious reigns of terror by one of the sickest psychopaths in the annals of crime.”--Official Detective, on BLOOD LUST: Portrait of a Serial Sex Killer

“Effective account of the worst serial killer in Oregon’s history.”— Publishers Weekly, on BLOOD LUST: Portrait of a Serial Sex Killer.

Also by Gary C. King Blood Lust: Portrait of a Serial Sex Killer Driven to Kill Murder in Room 305 To Die For An Early Grave The Texas 7 Murder in Hollywood Angels of Death Stolen in the Night Love, Lies, and Murder An Almost Perfect Murder Butcher Rage The Murder of Meredith Kercher Savage Vengeance Murder Most Foul

Š Copyright Bleak House Publishing, Inc. and Gary C. King Enterprises, Inc. 2013 Cover image copyright Andrei Klochkov 2013. Used under license from Shutterstock.com.

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For Alex.

Thanks for everything!

Contents Chapter 1: Tortured by the Sadist in the Press Box Chapter 2: The Piece of Meat was Pamela’s Thigh Chapter 3: The Riddle of the Missing Sea Dog Chapter 4: Pretty Tourist’ Trek to Torture Chapter 5: A Rage to Destroy the Pristine Screen Beauty?

Chapter 6: Humiliation, Torture and Murder!

Chapter 7: New Mexico’s Murder Most Foul!

Chapter 8: “If You Don’t Kill Me, I’ll Do Anything You Want!”

Chapter 9: Pervert Used His “Torture Kit” on Krista!

Chapter 10: The Lethal Caress of a Devil Worshipper?

Chapter 11: Kinky Swingers Flung Their Sex Slave Off A Cliff!

Chapter 12: Torture Slaying of the Woman and the Demon Seed Chapter 13: Tamara Sent Her Stud to Snuff Her Ex! Chapter 14: Mass Murder on the Mississippi Coast Chapter 15: Jeffrey Dahmer: The Butcher of Milwaukee’s Human Slaughterhouse About the Author Also by Gary C. King True Crime Podcasts: A behind the scenes look at writing true crime.

Tortured by the Sadist in the Press Box The evening of December 27, 1979 was a cold one. The sky was mostly clear, free from the clouds so common to many parts of the Beaver State, and the light of the moon and stars shone brightly off the snow that had made itself a temporary home in the hills surrounding Ashland. The effect made the night seem colder than it actually was, and it gave the small southern Oregon tourist community a peaceful quality with a brilliance all its own.

Then, suddenly, the tranquility of the evening was harshly broken by the loud, terrifying screams coming from the press box which overlooks Southern Oregon State College’s football field located on the town’s south side.

“Rachel! Oh, Rachel, how could someone do something like this?” the terror-stricken man cried out. He had discovered the cold, mutilated body of 11-year-old Rachel Isser, one of two young girls who had disappeared earlier in the day. The girl who was still missing was Deanna Jackman –the distraught man’s daughter!

Rachel’s body was nude; it was evident that she had been dead for several hours. Numerous lacerations were visible on her body, inflicted by some sharp instrument which accounted for the massive amount of blood on the floor. The girl’s face was swollen and blue, and a white cord was wrapped tightly around her slender neck.

Although Rachel Isser and Deanna Jackman attended separate elementary schools, they became close friends after meeting each other at a Jewish Sabbath school. They regarded their friendship very highly and always looked forward to spending their free time together.

Early on the afternoon of December 27 they decided to play tennis at nearby Hunter Park, where they had played many times before. The two sixth graders left Rachel’s home shortly after 2 p.m., and Rachel told her mother that they would be back in a couple of hours.

About an hour after the girls had left, Mrs. Isser noticed that Rachel had not worn her coat to the park. Since it was a cold afternoon she decided to take the coat to her daughter. Upon arriving at the park, she discovered that Rachel and Deanna were not there. Somewhat worried, she started towards home, her concern growing. It was not like the girls to say they were going somewhere and then not do so, she thought to herself.

When Rachel and Deanna did not return home for dinner, the parents of both girls became worried. They decided to search the neighborhood, fanning out and taking the most direct route to the park. But there was no sign of the two children, and their efforts seemed to be in vain. Shortly after 5 p.m. they called the Ashland Police Department and asked for assistance.

Hours passed, and the parents became frantic in their efforts to find their daughters. Suddenly Deanna’s father stopped in front of the bleachers at the college stadium. There, lying on the ground in front of him, were two tennis rackets and a can of tennis balls. A sudden feeling of panic overwhelmed him. As he searched the area of the bleachers thoroughly, he noticed that the door of the press box was slightly ajar, and that is what had led him there in the first place.

He opened the door and — much to his horror — saw Rachel’s naked body sprawled on the floor. That is when he began to scream.

Police were nearby, aiding in the search, when they heard the frenzied man’s shrieks. When they arrived at the press box, the distraught father was kneeling over Rachel’s body, sobbing. Police found several pieces of Deanna’s clothing there, identified by her father, but Rachel’s clothing was

missing.

The search for Deanna continued into the long hours of Thursday night and Friday, but the outlook appeared bleak. Still, nobody had given up hope.

Ashland and nearby Medford Police, Oregon State Police, Jackson County Sheriff’s Office, and the southern Oregon State College campus security police all played a major role in the search for Deanna. More than 50 people participated, and a trained police dog was brought in by Jackson County officers to aid the searchers.

Then, at 3:45 Friday afternoon, the search for Deanna Jackman ended.

Her body - completely naked - had been spotted from a helicopter by state police. It was lying in a clearing across from gravel pits on Dead Indian Road, east of Ashland in a lonely, secluded area about six miles from the site where Rachel’s body had been found. From the marks on her body, it appeared to police that she may have been thrown out of a moving car.

“This is the first time in Ashland that we’ve ever had a case like this,” said Police Chief Vic Lively. “We’ve had murders here before, but never children. It’s got us very upset.”

Leads began to trickle in, but so far none had proved helpful in finding a suspect.

“At this point we need any information we can get,” Chief Lively said at a press conference.

In his concern for public safety, Lively expressed fear that the killer might strike again.

“The possibility scares me to death,” he said.

Public concern, outrage, and fear continued to grow in the town of

15,000 as police followed up every lead. Never in the history of Ashland had such an unsavory offense been committed. Parents were afraid to let their children go anywhere alone, and most parents took their children to school and picked them up afterwards. Children were escorted to hamburger stands and ice cream shops by their parents; the Ashland Daily Tidings, the local newspaper, changed their circulation schedule so its carriers would not have to be outdoors after dark. Everyone in the community was affected in one way or another, whether it be by grief, sorrow, fear, or outrage.

Ashland was always regarded as a relaxed, peaceful town, where people would come to enjoy a play at the Oregon Shakespearean Festival, to ski the slopes of Mt. Ashland, or to simply enjoy the scenery. But now Ashland had become a place of sadness and terror, and so it would remain until the sadistic child slayer could be apprehended and brought to justice.

The next day the state medical examiner ’s office, under the direction of Deputy Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Larry Lewman, reported that Rachel Isser had died of strangulation.

“She died by a ligature - something tied tightly around the neck - and Deanna Jackman died from traumatic asphyxiation, due to pressure that was placed over her nose and mouth by a soft object, such as a pillow or a hand,” Lewman noted.

Numerous abrasions and deep cuts were visible on both girls’ bodies, and the cuts were obviously produced by a sharp instrument of some sort most probably a knife or razor. Marks on Deanna’s body made it appear as if she had been raped and brutally beaten. It looked as if the marks could have been made with a whip or leather belt. Both girls had been viciously raped and it was evident they had been tortured prior to their deaths.

“The details of what happened to these girls are certainly gruesome. I

have seen individual cases like this in the past,” said Lewman. “But this is the first time I have seen the sexual as-saults and murders of two little girls.

That’s what makes it a unique and frightening case,” he said. Lewman also stated he felt the Ashland killings were the first of their kind in Oregon.

“We’ve received nearly one hundred leads,” said Chief Lively. “But so far we still do not have a suspect. We have several pieces of evidence, but no one to link it to. We found fingerprints on one of the tennis rackets that do not belong to the owner, and these are still under analysis at the state crime lab.”

The police continued their search for evidence along Dead Indian Road where Deanna’s body was found. Lawmen went door to door in an attempt to find useful leads. Officers tore out sections of the press box where Rachel was murdered, and sent them to the state crime lab for analysis.

People who had been jogging on the track at the football field on the afternoon of the Isser girl’s death came forward and offered police a description of a man who had been observed sitting alone in the bleachers.

One jogger told authorities of a dark-haired man in his mid-twenties who looked angry and confused, and appeared to be talking to himself.

A young boy and his sister told police about a stocky man who had asked them to play basketball with them, but they declined the offer. They said the man was wearing a green sweat shirt and looked “like a Mexican.”

Witnesses who had seen the man in question were asked to draw sketches of him to aid the cops in their composite drawings of the man.

According to Sgt. Daymon Barnard of the Ashland Police Department, the descriptions and drawings of the man were all very similar, indicating that only one man was probably involved in the slayings.

“None of the people interviewed by the police saw more than one

man,” Barnard said. “The descriptions differed on the length of his hair and whether he had a moustache, and on the color of pants he wore,” he continued. “But the descriptions of the man in question were very consistent in that he is in his early or mid-twenties, of medium height and build, has dark hair, and was wearing a green or blue sweat shirt.”

And then, on Sunday, the police felt confident they had their man. A 27year-old man confessed to murdering the two girls, after he first attempted suicide by jumping from an Interstate 5 overpass onto a passing semi-truck and its trailer. However, after investigating the details of his confession thoroughly, their confidence was quickly shattered. His confession conflicted with the evidence that had been collected and, after administering a lie detector test to him, he was cleared of any involvement in the homicides. It turned out he had psychological problems and was of the type to confess to heinous, high-profile crimes—not because he committed them, but because of the attention he could get from doing so.

On Monday, December 31, the Ashland Police Department released three composite drawings to the news media of a man they believed was a witness to the first murder and possibly a suspect in the case.

Meanwhile, Ashland Police Sgt. Mel Clements was assigned by Chief’ Vic Lively to head a four-man detective force to investigate the homicide case, along with assistance from the Oregon State Police and the Jackson County Sheriff’s Department.

The next day, after the composite drawings had been released to the public, the Ashland Police Department was swamped with telephone calls, each one offering information and names that could lead to the identity of the man being sought for questioning.

Police felt optimistic that they would solve the case soon. Nonetheless,

they took precautionary measures by issuing warnings to parents and teachers to be suspicious of any strangers hanging around the schools.

Parents were warned not to let their children go out alone, especially in the evening, until the case was solved.

The door to the press box at Southern Oregon State College’s stadium was always left unlocked and the area of Dead Indian Road was very secluded, located on the outskirts of town. This led police to theorize that the killer was an area resident because a transient would likely not be aware of such details.

Meanwhile, the Jackson County District Attorney’s Office made it known to the public that a hand-made quilt, soiled with dirt and blood, had been found inside a paper sack at a car wash. Tests showed that the blood on the quilt matched that of Deanna Jackman. A photograph of the quilt appeared in the local newspaper and on television, and authorities urged that anyone who recognized it to call the police immediately.

The photo of the quilt brought quick results. It was identified by Peter White as belonging to him. He said he left it on his bed at his home on Idaho Street, along with many other personal belongings, when he began staying at another residence. White also told police he had met a man by the name of Manuel Cortez in late November, and he had allowed Cortez to use his Idaho Street residence on a temporary basis. He also informed the police that Cortez worked at a Mexican restaurant, the El Toro Blanco, in Ashland.

After questioning the owners of the restaurant where Cortez worked, detectives felt they had enough evidence to arrest him on suspicion of murder. However, when police arrived with their warrants at the Idaho Street residence on January 4, 1980, it was clear that Cortez had fled, leaving the police with no one to take into custody for the double murder.

Police learned from a girlfriend of Cortez’s that he had lived in the Ashland area for only six or seven weeks and was originally from City of Industry, California, located near Los Angeles. She told police she did not know much about him, for she had only gone out with Cortez a few times.

After checking with California authorities, Detective Clements learned that Cortez was wanted in California on kidnapping and attempted rape charges. He allegedly kidnapped a 16 year-old Pomona girl in 1977 and held her for ransom in a garage, where he tried to rape her. He had planned to ask a ransom from her parents, but the girl refused to give Cortez her parents’ phone number, and she escaped unharmed and telephoned police.

Through painstaking detective work by those investigating the case, authorities learned that Cortez had a brother living in Salinas and a mother in City of Industry, both very likely spots for the hunted man to appear.

California police were alerted by the Jackson County Sheriff’s Department that Cortez might be going to visit his brother in Salinas, but their efforts were once again thwarted. Cortez had just left his brother ’s home prior to the arrival of police.

Not wasting any time, detectives set up a stakeout of Cortez’s mother ’s house in City of Industry, where they waited for his arrival hoping that he would, indeed, show up.

And then, around noon on Saturday, January 5, 1980, Manuel Cortez was observed by detectives approaching his mother ’s home. He was arrested immediately without resistance, only eight days after he allegedly raped, tortured, and killed Rachel Isser and Deanna Jackman.

Cortez, waiving his Miranda rights, agreed to a taped-recorded interview with Los Angeles Police. During the course of the hour-long

interview, he confessed to killing the two Ashland girls and made comments concerning his mental state of mind. The police were certain they had the right man, for his confession did not conflict with the evidence in any way.

The tape would subsequently be used as evidence and played at his trial.

Extradition procedures were instituted against Cortez immediately.

California authorities agreed to support his extradition to Oregon rather than retain him for trial on the California charges.

Meanwhile, at the urging of Jackson County District Attorney Justin Smith, a grand jury returned two murder indictments against Manuel Trinidad Cortez, charging him with the strangling death of Rachel Isser and with suffocating Deanna Jackman.

The trial of Manuel Cortez was to be heard in Lane County Circuit Court in Eugene, Oregon, due to a change of venue granted earlier in Jackson County Circuit Court. The district attorney’s office intended to prosecute Cortez in two separate trials, first for the murder of Rachel Isser and following with a trial for the murder of Deanna Jackman.

The first trial, which began in July, 1980, lasted for three weeks. In spite of the 95 pieces of evidence and the testimony of 35 witnesses, not to mention the taped confession Cortez made while in Los Angeles, Lane County Circuit Judge George Woodrich declared a mistrial after 14 hours of deliberation because the jury could not reach a unanimous verdict.

It was then decided by District Attorney Smith to consolidate the two cases into one trial. The new trial was expected to be less prolonged than the first one, lasting from four to six days. The court would hear testimony from 40 witnesses.

Robert Webber and Lee Werdell, the defense attorneys who represented Cortez in the first trial, withdrew from the case. They disagreed

with Cortez, who wished to use a defense of mental disease or defect. In the first trial the two attorneys tried to convince the jury of a lack of intent on the part of Cortez to kill the two girls.

Attorney Harry Carp was selected to represent Cortez after Webber and Werdell withdrew from the case, and Carp decided to use the defense of mental disease or defect. The second trial was scheduled to begin in October but was postponed at Carp’s request.

A jury of seven men and five women was chosen on November 14, and the trial was set to begin on November 18, 1980. Harry Carp told jurors that they would hear gruesome testimony.

“You will hear testimony that you will not want to tell your children about,” he said. “By the end of this case, you will have heard about carnage, and you will have heard about torture.” He also stated he hoped the jurors could keep an open mind regarding the charges against Cortez, despite the manner in which the girls were killed.

On the other hand, District Attorney Justin Smith said he hoped the jurors would not consider the possible penalty Cortez could receive when deciding if he was guilty or innocent. If he was found guilty of murder, he could be put to death in the state’s gas chamber.

When the trial began on November 18, it was held before the same Lane County Circuit Judge George Woodrich. Cortez remained calm and relaxed, listening intently, as he did during the first trial. Harry Carp, the defense counsel, waived his opening statement, allowing the prosecution to proceed.

Jackson County Deputy District Attorney Frank Desimone told the jury in his opening statement about the 26 events which led up to the discovery

that the girls were missing. He told of how they found the disfigured bodies of the two girls, and gave some of the details of the investigation which eventually led to Cortez’s arrest at his mother’s home.

After the prosecutor completed his opening statement, he called Ron Carson to the witness stand. Carson, of Ashland, testified that he was jogging on the track of the college football field on the afternoon of December 27, 1979, the day the Isser girl was murdered. He said that he saw a man who looked similar to Cortez in the stadium.

“He looked weird, agitated, and hostile,” recalled Carson. “He looked as if he was in a bad mood and appeared to be under intense pressure, as if he might explode,” he said.

Bill Mead and his wife Gail, the owners of the El Toro Blanco restaurant — Cortez’s former employers — testified Cortez had worked for them for about three weeks in December 1979. Mrs. Mead told the court that when Cortez showed up for work on December 30 his hair was mussed and his shirt was wrinkled.

“He usually was neatly dressed and personable,” said Mrs. Mead. “He could normally wait on about eight tables, but that day he could only handle about three.” She also testified that he had to be sent home from work that day.

Mrs. Mead also said that Cortez came in the day before and asked for his check early, so he could put down a deposit on a house he wanted to rent.

She said his hair was in clumps on that day, and it looked as if someone had been pulling on it, indicating a struggle might have occurred. It may have appeared to the jury that his hair was pulled by one of the girls while being raped, in an attempt to thwart the attack.

Marie Langley, the Mead’s bookkeeper who issued the check to Cortez,

said he wasn’t looking like himself. She testified that he usually dressed neatly and his appearance was always immaculate.

“He had on wrinkled clothes and his hair was a mess,” she said. “It looked like it had been pulled very hard, and as if he was having trouble combing it down.”

An acquaintance of Cortez’s told the court that she loaned her car to him early in the day on December 28. She said Cortez told her he needed to haul some wood for a woodworking project he was working on. She said that he was gone for about 45 minutes. When he returned he asked her for a paper bag, which she gave him. She said Cortez put a blanket into the bag and left on foot.

Peter White, the man whose home Cortez was staying in, testified that although he no longer lived at that address he continued to keep most of his clothes and belongings there, including a hand-made quilt and a pocket knife, both evidence in the case. White identified the quilt as the one he left on his bed. It now had a bloodstain on it, though, which matched the blood type of Deanna Jackman. White also identified the pocket knife, which now had a fingerprint belonging to Cortez on the blade.

William Zeller, Oregon State Police fingerprint expert, told the court that a right thumb print belonging to Cortez was found on the blade of the knife seized at the house where Cortez had been temporarily staying.

A right palm print which matched that of Cortez was discovered on a tennis racket which belonged to Rachel Isser, according to Oregon State Police fingerprint expert Clifford Daimler.

According to witnesses from the state medical examiner ’s office, Rachel Isser had been cut on her torso by a sharp instrument, and clothing belonging

to Deanna Jackman was removed from her body by cutting it off. It was believed the knife with Cortez’s thumb print was the same instrument that was used.

Oregon State Police criminologist Michael Hurley took the stand and gave testimony concerning some of the items which were seized at the house where Cortez was living. Of special interest to the prosecution was a jacket with bloodstains and hairs on it, which matched those of Deanna Jackman. A hair matching those of Cortez was also found on the jacket.

A man told the jury that he knew Cortez through a mutual friend and that Cortez had asked him for a ride to Grants Pass on January 2. Since he did not know the way to Grants Pass, he let Cortez drive the car. Cortez told him he was going to visit relatives and would return on Sunday. However, Cortez got out of the car at the Greyhound bus depot.

During the course of the trial, Defense Attorney Harry Carp asked very few questions during his cross-examination. With the evidence against Cortez, there was little reason to engage in lengthy cross-examination for fear of bringing more damaging facts to the surface, which could only prove detrimental to Cortez.

Gary Ralph Edwards, a detective from the Salinas, California Police Department, took the witness stand and told the court how he obtained a search warrant and searched the home of Cortez’s brother to obtain the suspect’s personal belongings which he had taken there.

Marks on Deanna Jackman’s mutilated body matched a pattern on a belt belonging to Cortez which Detective Edwards had seized at Cortez’s brother’s home, indicating she may have been brutally whipped with it.

District Attorney Smith attempted to introduce as evidence a photo of Deanna’s body displaying the marks. Counselor Carp objected on the grounds

that the photo would be prejudicial and unnecessary. Judge Woodrich excused the jury to hear the arguments as to whether or not the photo should be introduced as evidence.

Prosecutor Smith countered Carp’s objection, contending the photo was a part of proof of intent to murder. Carp had previously intended to use a lack of intent as a defense because of mental disease or defect in the killings of the two girls.

Judge Woodrich ruled that the top portion of the photo was to be cut off and the lower part, which showed the marks, could be introduced as evidence. After this was done the jury was called back and the lower half of the photo was shown to them.

Michael Hurley, the criminologist who testified earlier in the trial, took the stand again. He testified that bloodstains found on a rug in the house where Cortez was staying were of the same type as Deanna’s, indicating she was taken there and tortured. Hurley also identified a pair of Kid Power tennis shoes and a pair of Hobo jeans as those that were given to him by Ashland policeman Buddy Grove, who said earlier that they were in Cortez’s possessions when he was arrested.

Deanna’s father substantiated Hurley’s testimony by identifying the Kid Power shoes as belonging to his daughter. Rachel’s mother also identified the jeans as those of her daughter.

“Bloodstains that were found on the jeans are consistent in every way with Deanna Jackman’s blood type,” Hurley noted. He also added that some rope was found in a pickup truck which Cortez had used and that the rope was microscopically and chemically similar to rope which was discovered in the press box, where Rachel’s body was found.

As it was earlier agreed upon by the defense and prosecution, the taped confession which Cortez had made while in the custody of the Los Angeles Police Department was played to the jury in its entirety.

“I killed two girls up there (in Ashland), two little girls,” admitted Cortez in the tape recording. “This is very hard for me to discuss. It was very terrible.”

At one point Cortez said he considered taking his own life after he had time to realize what he had done.

“After it really hit me, what I had done, that is, I just wanted to die,” he said. He said that there was a rifle in the closet which had been left by his friend White.

“There were a lot of bullets in a drawer,” he stated on the tape. “I took one out, and laid it on the bed. I just laid it there. I didn’t load it. I sat and looked at it. I sat there and I just looked at that gun, trying to get up and do it.

My mind wanted to do it but my body just wouldn’t move,” he said.

“Then I got the bullet and put it in my pocket and I put the gun back,” he said, and was silent for awhile.

In the taped statement Cortez corroborated his acquaintance’s testimony about having borrowed her car. He said he borrowed it to take Deanna Jackman’s body into a mountainous area outside of town to dump it.

Cortez said in his confession he had met the girls while they were walking through Ashland on their way to play tennis. He said all three of them sat down on the bleachers at the football stadium and talked for awhile, and then he asked them to go to the press box after gaining their confidence.

“I told them to go in and sit down, and that’s when it happened,” Cortez

said.

He said he killed Rachel in the press box, after he first tied them up, using strips of their own clothing. He said that Deanna did not see her friend being raped or killed and she did not see Rachel after she was dead.

Cortez said that after he killed the Isser girl, Deanna walked with him to his duplex. He was then asked if Deanna had put up a fuss about going with him.

“No. She was just a friendly little girl. She didn’t see her friend get hurt.

She was separated from her friend,” he explained.

“I killed her there, at the duplex.”

Cortez did not reveal, however, how he had kept Deanna separated from Rachel or how he prevented her from hearing what was happening to Rachel. Was it possible he killed Rachel immediately, keeping her silent while strangling her with the white cord, and then engaging in sexual activities with her? Did he mutilate her body after she was dead? Or did he lie on the tape about Deanna not being a witness to her friend’s torture and death? Cortez refused to clear up the matter, and he was not called as a witness in his own trial. When asked during the taped interview why he killed the two girls, he replied: “I don’t know. It’s the same question I’ve been asking myself.

“I feel like I’ve got a wall around me — a glass, clear wall,” he continued. “It’s like I’ve been walking around invisible, and I don’t like it.

Sometimes I wake up and I feel like I’m a different person, like I’m nothing, just a body moving listlessly, you know. I feel like I need help, a shrink. I feel like there’s something inside of me that I just don’t understand. Maybe it’s too late now. It is, isn’t it?” He was then heard to vomit and break out crying.

Only one witness for the defense was called in a 29 minute presentation contending that Cortez was suffering from a mental disease or defect. The witness for the defense was Portland psychiatrist Barry Maletzky.

Maletzky stated that he was asked to review the transcripts of the previous trial and to listen to the taped interview of Cortez. He said he suspects Cortez might have suffered a depersonalization disorder at the time of the murders. He also stated that Cortez referred to the clothes of the two girls in a passive tense, an indication that Cortez may have been thinking of himself in the third person.

The prosecution had one more witness in the case against Cortez, Oregon’s Deputy Chief Medical Examiner Larry Lewman.

“You will find the nature of this material quite offensive,” Lewman told the jury, showing them 12 photographs of the two girl’s bodies while he explained the details of the injuries.

“The deaths were sexual sadistic homicides,” Lewman said. “They involved bondage, torture, and sexual abuse. Much of this was clearly done while they were alive.”

Cortez remained calm, as he had throughout the trial, while he listened to Lewman’s testimony. He took notes, and looked as if he were deep in thought.

In his closing arguments to the jury, District Attorney Smith said the state had proved Manuel Cortez intended to kill, mutilate, and sexually abuse the two girls he is accused of murdering. He pointed out that death by suffocation takes from three to five minutes.

“So what we have is screwing down this ligature around Rachel’s neck for three to five minutes,” said Smith. He walked toward Cortez, and said all

that was left of the two girls was there in the courtroom. He said there was some torn clothing, some blood, and some hair. Nothing else remained. Smith pointed at Cortez and said, “And that’s what he did — for his own sexual gratification.”

Prosecutor Smith told the jury that a verdict of manslaughter would not be acceptable, pointing out that manslaughter was reckless killing, not necessarily intentional, but that murder was an intentional act.

“I think that the motive is obvious,” he said. “The motive is this man is a sexual sadist. I would liken Mr. Cortez to a predatory animal, who went out with the intent to find a victim.”

Most of Defense Attorney Harry Carp’s closing statement attempted to convince the jury that Cortez was suffering from a mental disease at the time of the killings and was not responsible for his actions.

“These killings were the work of a madman,” said Carp. “Evidence presented in the case requires a verdict of manslaughter, not murder.”

And then, on Tuesday, November 25, 1980 after the jury deliberated for two hours and 35 minutes, they returned a verdict of guilty on two counts which could bring Cortez the death sentence.

Defense Attorney Carp made very few comments after the reading of the verdict. He conferred briefly with Cortez, and said that he would challenge the prosecutor ’s request for a death sentence on constitutional grounds.

District Attorney Smith praised the police investigation for producing 40 witnesses and 95 pieces of evidence.

“It’s the finest police investigation I’ve ever seen,” Smith added. “It’s

also probably the hardest case I’ve ever been involved in. The defense did an excellent job, given what he had to work with,” he said of Attorney Harry Carp. “I can’t find fault with anything he did.” Smith also made it clear that he would press for the death penalty.

Although considered eligible for the death penalty at trial, the Oregon Supreme Court struck down the state’s capital punishment law and Cortez was sentenced to two life sentences, each with a minimum term of 25 years, to be served consecutively. In 1983 he pleaded guilty to the kidnapping of a City of Industry teenage girl. Cortez has also been suspected of being a serial killer due to crimes committed before his arrest for the Ashland murders, linked by police to a dozen or so abductions and slayings. It is believed he will spend the rest of his days behind prison walls.

Editor’s Note: The names Peter White, Ron Carson, Bill and Gail Mead and Marie Langley are fictitious and were used because there is no reason for public interest in their true identities.

The Piece of Meat was Pamela’s Thigh The case which follows contains such gruesome and cold-blooded elements that it has been described by many people, including Lane County District Attorney Pat Horton, as “unparalleled” in the history of Lane County crime. And justly so, for during the course of the investigation, homicide detectives uncovered shocking, horrifying details of a sordid, sadomasochistic sex orgy that led, ultimately, to the stabbing and dismemberment of an unwilling participant.

This bizarre story opens in the college city of Eugene, Oregon at approximately 12:30 on the morning of February 24, 1978 when two human scavengers were rummaging through one of the dumpsters of a west side shopping center in a search for cardboard. They found plenty of what they were looking for, the intended use of which was known only to them.

However, as the couple dug deeper into the trash bin, one of them came across a plastic bag that apparently warranted further investigation.

The bag must have weighed at least 25 to 30 pounds or more, but it was easy to pull free. They had it lifted out of the bin and onto the pavement in no time at all, anxiously tearing open the bag to examine their “find.”

At first glance, the contents of the bag simply appeared to be a couple of chunks of discarded meat, one small piece and one large piece, probably spoiled and thrown out a couple of days before from the meat department of the adjacent grocery store. However, upon closer examination, the cold, rancid smelling meat suddenly looked frighteningly familiar, almost human!

While examining the large piece of meat, one of the rummagers noted there was very little blood, about as much as would be present in butchered, prepared beef. Although the smell of the meat was nearly intolerable, the

men’s curiosity compelled them to examine the smaller piece. Although the smaller piece was nearly unrecognizable, it faintly resembled a severed, mutilated female breast!

Sick and retching from revulsion, the man threw the meat to the pavement and vomited. Following a few moments of illness and nausea, the two regained some of their composure and rushed to the nearest telephone and called the Eugene Police Department, informing the cops of the wretched discovery.

Due to the lateness of the hour, not to mention the seriousness of the trash bin discovery, the police dispatcher who took the call knew he would have to wake up someone with higher authority. He chose to wake up Lt. Don Lonneker, detective division commander.

When Lt. Lonneker and the first police units arrived, officers immediately cordoned off the area to hold back the curious onlookers and the graveyard shift of press members in an attempt to preserve any bits of evidence that might be present.

After the area had been completely sealed off, police detectives took statements from the two midnight rummagers regarding the events that led to the discovery of the two pieces of meat.

The police personnel set up lights and began going through other trash bins and garbage cans in search of still more body parts, but when it was evident there was nothing more of any significance to be found, the two pieces of meat were wrapped up and sent off to the medical examiner ’s office.

In the meantime, the Eugene Police Department launched a massive

search effort of other garbage dumpsters and cans in the vicinity of the west side supermarket where the alleged body parts were discovered.

Unfortunately, their efforts were futile.

A few days later Dr. Ed Wilson, deputy Lane County medical examiner, reported that tests had determined that the larger piece of meat was that of a female thigh, which had been severed just above the knee and from the groin to the waist, and that the smaller piece was a female breast, ravaged by so many human teeth marks that it was nearly indistinguishable as a human anatomical part! Dr. Wilson reported that further tests were being conducted in an attempt to identify the victim’s blood type.

Meanwhile, police detectives began checking their female missing person’s files, singling out two young women who were reported missing at approximately the time the body parts were discovered in the shopping center dumpster.

The cops considered Elizabeth Green as the most likely victim, although no hard evidence had been found linking the 24-year-old mother to the mysterious and gruesome thigh and breast. Mrs. Green was described by friends and relatives as a dependable and a devoted mother, and was reportedly to have picked up her infant daughter at the hospital on the day of her disappearance.

According to hospital officials, Mrs. Green arrived at the hospital on the day in question at approximately 11:00 a.m., and she nursed her baby that had been born five weeks prematurely. She was last seen by a parking lot attendant as she drove away from Eugene’s Sacred Heart General Hospital shortly after 11:00 a.m., and her car and purse were found the next day in separate parking lots in the 1400 and 1500 blocks of Franklin Boulevard.

Pamela Lee Bruno, 24, was another woman the cops added to their list of possible victims. Mrs. Bruno, a childless housewife, was described as white, 5 feet 8 inches tall, and approximately 165 pounds. She had blonde shoulder-length hair and hazel eyes. She lived with her husband in the 4600 block of Main Street in nearby Springfield in one of several run-down, almost uninhabitable apartments.

According to Springfield Police Chief Brian Riley, Mrs. Bruno was last seen by her husband, Johnny, at their apartment on February 16th. According to Riley, she was wearing a short brown plaid coat, blue jeans, and brown shoes. She did not own a car, and relied on hitchhiking and taxicabs for her transportation. Considered by many to be a heavy drinker, Mrs. Bruno was known to frequent the local bars and taverns.

According to Mrs. Bruno’s husband, Pamela was gone when he awoke on the morning of February 17th. However, he didn’t report her as missing until February 22nd.

“This has happened several times in the past, according to Mr. Bruno,” said Chief Riley. “It’s not unusual for her to be gone this long.” According to Chief Riley, Mrs. Bruno was reported missing eight or nine times in recent years. But, he said, her most recent disappearance was different and unusual because none of her friends or relatives had heard from her for over two weeks, and she was never gone for more than two or three days at a time.

In the meantime, with only the thigh and the breast to work with, forensic scientists from the Oregon State Police Crime Labs in Eugene and experts from the University of Oregon were able to determine, by studying the bones, that the victim was a young woman between 18 to 30 years of age, and that she was of medium weight, approximately 140 to 160 pounds. They also determined that the blood type found in the severed parts was not of the same type as Mrs. Green, thus eliminating her as the possible victim.

However, the scientists were continuing to work round the clock in an attempt to connect the severed body parts with Mrs. Bruno. But unless they could locate some kind of official record listing her blood type, little progress in linking the parts was unlikely. The scientists did say, however, that the description they arrived at fit more accurately with Mrs. Bruno than with Mrs. Green or any other woman who was reported missing at that time.

The technique the scientists used to confirm that the thigh came from a woman was relatively simple. They merely examined tissue samples under a microscope in search of “Barr bodies,” which, in simplest terms, are tiny specks or dots appearing in the nucleus of a cell that are present in females but not in males.

The detectives turned to the help of an anthropologist specializing in bone structures to help narrow down the age gap of the victim. The techniques involved were far more complicated than those used in determining whether or not the victim was male or female. They had to make estimations and calculations based on measurements of the length and diameter of the thigh bone and compare their findings with statistical tables and graphs. But when their tests were completed, they determined that the victim was between 25 and 30 years of age.

“We’re taking a further interest in Springfield’s missing woman,” said Lt. Don Lonneker, detective division commander, after conferring with other detectives from several local law-enforcement agencies.

In the meantime, Springfield police stepped up their efforts in their search for Mrs. Bruno, and checked further into the backgrounds of the missing woman and her husband.

The cops soon discovered that the Brunos had lived in the Springfield

area for about three years, having moved there from Vancouver, Washington.

They were married for seven years, but had no children.

Digging still further into their backgrounds, police detectives soon discovered that Johnny Bruno was convicted in Vancouver for driving while under the influence of intoxicants and for hit and run, and that both he and his wife were convicted of contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

According to the Brunos’ former probation officer, the latter charge was a result of an incident in which Mrs. Bruno invited two 15-year-old girls into their apartment and gave them alcoholic beverages, then proceeded to have explicit sexual intercourse with her husband as the two girls excitedly looked on! Johnny Bruno then had intercourse with one, possibly both, of the young girls during the incident after arousing their prurient interests.

Meanwhile, police divers searched the area near the university and the parking lots where Mrs. Green’s car and purse were found, but they found nothing to help them locate the missing woman. According to Lt. Lonneker, however, divers did find a rusty knife in the water, but denied that it had any significance to the severed thigh and breast case. “It unquestionably has no bearing on our investigation,” he said.

Lonneker did say, however, that the severed thigh “appears to have been cut with a knife.” He also said that he had temporarily suspended the search for additional anatomical parts and other physical evidence connected with the murder and missing persons’ cases after a week of exhaustive efforts. “We’ve simply run out of places and directions to go,” he said.

In the meantime, on February 28th, detectives went to the Brunos’ cottage in Springfield to obtain hair samples from Mrs. Bruno’s hair brush, and they attempted to find out what her blood type was by conferring with

her husband. But he simply repeated that he didn’t know her blood type, and all that detectives left with were a few strands of long blonde hair and the frustration of knowing that it was likely to be some time yet before positive identification of the severed thigh and breast could be made.

According to Dr. Ed Wilson, deputy Lane County medical examiner, investigators knew that the female victim had not been dead for long, unless the thigh and breast had been preserved by freezing, which they seriously doubted. He also said they could only retrieve a small blood sample from the body parts, but stressed that it would be enough for the Oregon State Police Crime Labs to establish the victim’s blood type, the results of which would soon be known.

If the scientists could have obtained more blood, said Wilson, they would have attempted to measure the amount of prolactin (a hormone) in the blood and could possibly have determined whether or not the victim had been nursing a child, a clue that could have been of vital importance to an investigation of this nature. But considering the small amount of blood they had to work with, the blood type identification was the best they could hope for.

The first real breakthrough in the case came when detectives finally learned Mrs. Bruno’s blood type through her medical records in Vancouver, Washington, which they wouldn’t release to the press. And almost as soon as they had discovered the missing woman’s blood type, the Oregon State Police Crime Labs reported to detectives that their samples were of the same blood type as Mrs. Bruno’s type.

Considering that detectives now knew that the victim was a female Caucasian, 5 feet 4 inches to 5 feet 7 inches in height, and that she weighed

approximately 140 to 160 pounds, they now felt Pamela Bruno might be the victim that had been so savagely butchered.

A short time later, Springfield police Detective Don Bond paid a visit to the Bruno apartment. He told Mrs. Bruno’s husband that it was likely his wife was dead, and that it was now believed that the thigh and breast were parts severed from his wife’s body, although they were not one hundred percent certain Mrs. Bruno was the victim. While Detective Bond was relating the details to Mr. Bruno, Bruno’s dog came barking into the room, at which time Bruno became irritated and angry with the animal.

“I’ve got to get rid of that damn dog, too,” Bruno remarked to Bond. It was at that precise moment that Bond began to suspect that Bruno killed his wife, although he didn’t immediately acknowledge Bruno’s apparent Freudian slip of the tongue. Instead, he acted as if he hadn’t noticed and asked Bruno to visualize the severed thigh found in the trash bin. Astonishingly, Bruno described to Detective Bond precisely how the thigh had been severed!

The investigation continued, and finally, on March 10, the severed thigh and breast were positively identified through laboratory analysis as being parts of what was once Pamela Lee Bruno.

With this sudden new development, police went to the Bruno apartment with search and arrest warrants, but in spite of their efforts they could find no traces of blood or other physical evidence that would indicate the murder occurred inside the Brunos’ residence.

Police arrested Johnny Charles Bruno just the same, and took him to Springfield Police Headquarters for further questioning. Bruno was cooperative for the most part, and seemed to want to help the police. On a “cop’s hunch,” Detective Bond told Bruno that they thought someone else was also involved in the grisly murder.

“Well, you know, don’t you?” Bruno told the cops. He then broke down and cried, making a full confession of how his wife was repeatedly stabbed and dismembered, and implicated one of his friends and co-workers, Charles Haynes, 31, and Haynes’ wife, Lionetti Anita, also 31. The two men worked together for nearly three years as tree planters for a local firm, and Mrs. Bruno and Mrs. Haynes were known to associate with each other when the Brunos would visit the Hayneses.

On Saturday, March 11th, police went to the Haynes’ rented house in Eugene, located in the 800 block of West Fifth Avenue, a poor area of town, and arrested Charles Leroy Haynes. The next day, when Mrs. Haynes appeared at Springfield Police Headquarters, she too was arrested.

All three suspects were accused of “acting in concert” with each other when the stabbing of Mrs. Bruno occurred, which police alleged was on or about February 21st, and each allegedly participated in the subsequent ritualistic dismembering of the victim’s arms, legs, breasts, and head.

District Attorney Pat Horton would only describe the murder weapon as a “stabbing instrument.”

“There is a certain uniqueness in this case which I think is unparalleled in Lane County,” said Horton. Springfield Police Chief Brian Riley stated he couldn’t remember a murder case as gruesome, and went on to praise the cooperative efforts of the Springfield and Eugene Police Departments.

“I’ve seen a lot of investigations of crimes involving more than one jurisdiction done in other places,” said Eugene Police Chief Pierce Brooks, a former detective division commander at the Los Angeles Police Department.

“But I’ve never seen it done as effectively as here.”

In the meantime, Lane County District Court Judge Gregory Foote ordered the suspects held without bail at the Springfield city jail, where they would be appointed attorneys by the court.

Police now alleged that Pamela Bruno was killed and “slaughtered” at the Haynes’ residence in Eugene, and Chief Brooks sent crime lab supervisor Mary Ann Vaughn to the house to investigate.

Wearing an oxygen mask and tank inside the house, Ms. Vaughn used special chemicals that emit toxic fumes to search for “trace evidence” in each of the rooms of the house. Brooks said they were looking for evidence “so minute that it might not be visible to the naked eye.”

However, District Attorney Horton and police officials refused to comment further on the case, saying only that a Lane County grand jury would be asked to indict the three suspects. When asked whether additional body parts had been found, Horton replied, “To my knowledge, (additional) body parts have not been found.”

On Thursday, March 16th, a Lane County grand jury returned murder indictments against Johnny Charles Bruno, Charles Leroy Haynes, and his wife, Lionetti Anita Haynes. The three suspects were transferred to the Lane County Jail in Eugene, where they were held without bail.

As the weeks passed and turned into months, detectives continued their investigation of the butcher-murder of Pamela Lee Bruno, but chose to remain tight-lipped about their results, preferring to save the details for the soon-to-begin trials.

It was Tuesday, May 23, 1978, and the Lane County Circuit Court of Judge Roland Rodman was filled to capacity, with hopeful spectators being

turned away. Johnny Charles Bruno was the first to go on trial for the brutal slaying and butchering of his wife, a trial that the people of Eugene and Springfield would not soon forget. Inside the courtroom, opening arguments were being heard.

Deputy District Attorney Brian Barnes’ opening statement was a recounting of the events of the February 24th discovery of the severed thigh and breast, a synopsis of the investigation leading to the arrests of the three suspects, and details of Bruno’s confession.

“At the end of this case,” said defense attorney Harry Carp, “no matter what evidence the state presents, you’re not going to have a pretty picture.

You’re going to be looking at a charnel house.”

“I suggest to you it was more than a charnel house,” countered Prosecutor Barnes, “which, as I understand it, is a place where dead bodies and bones are deposited. It was more like a slaughter house, an unparalleled ritualistic killing involving blood, guts, and gore. It’s something you will not easily forget.”

It was noted that Carp had filed notice of intent to argue his client’s defense of extreme emotional disturbance or mental defect which, under Oregon status, is the same as an insanity plea. However, he reserved the right to change his defense theory if necessary.

When Prosecutor Barnes described how Mrs. Bruno’s body had allegedly been strung up over the bathtub in the Haynes’ residence and “disemboweled and butchered like an animal,” Mrs. Bruno’s mother, grandmother, and aunt all left the courtroom hurriedly.

To visualize how a loved one had been drained of her blood, and had her entrails scraped out into a cold porcelain bathtub, then to hear details of the grisly dismemberment, was understandably more than a relative of the

deceased could bear.

In his statement, Barnes said the state would prove that Mrs. Bruno’s death was caused intentionally by her husband and Mr. and Mrs. Haynes during an evening of alcohol, marijuana, and group sex which included sadomasochistic acts.

Dr. David Myers, assistant Lane County medical examiner who examined the tissue of the thigh and breast, told the court that the breast was so mutilated by human teeth marks that he could not immediately recognize it. He also told the court that the body parts had almost no blood, leading him to believe that Mrs. Bruno’s body had been drained of blood through a cut or a wound caused by the woman’s killers.

The feeling in the courtroom was cold and dismal in a psychological sense rather than physical. It was generally felt that in order for Mrs. Bruno’s body to have been so completely drained of blood, her killers would have had to have her strung up over the bathtub for quite some time, a clear indication that her killers were in no hurry to get rid of the body, and that they might well have even enjoyed the ritualistic killing and subsequent hacking up of the victim’s body.

On the third day of Bruno’s murder trial, a packed courtroom of curious spectators and a shocked jury listened intently as a taped statement Bruno made to police was played.

In the taped statement Bruno made while being interviewed by Springfield police detective Donald Bond, Bruno described how he and his wife Pamela hitchhiked into Eugene and arrived at the Haynes’ home about 8:00 p.m. Bruno said that after some heavy drinking (he was known to down a six-pack of beer in less than 20 minutes) and pot smoking, Charles Haynes

and the Brunos decided to have a session of group sex.

According to the tape, Pamela Bruno had agreed at first to participate in group sex with her husband and the Hayneses.

“Pam agreed at first,” said Bruno on tape, “then she didn’t, so we took her in the other room and tied her up.” He also stated on the tape that he bit one of his wife’s breasts so hard that he took off part of the nipple.

He also stated on the tape that Mrs. Haynes was the first one to stab the victim because she was enraged when she saw her husband having sex with Mrs. Bruno. He further stated that Charles Haynes stabbed the victim several times after Mrs. Haynes passed him the knife, and that he (Bruno) stabbed his wife only once.

Bruno said he stabbed his wife in the chest after Charles Haynes passed him the knife, but “not very far ‘cause I was so weak and leaning against the wall and everything. I couldn’t believe this was happening.

“Haynes stabbed her quite a few times,” Bruno’s taped voice said, repeating that he stabbed his wife only once. “I don’t even think I got into her far enough because I was so weak at that point and so scared.” The tape continued, and the defendant’s voice told the details of what occurred after the stabbing.

“Chuck (Haynes) says,” according to the tape, “We gotta do something about this now. We’re gonna have to cut her up,’ he says.” Bruno then described how he helped Haynes drag Pamela into the bathroom, occasionally breaking down and crying as he told the horrible details —the blood, the torn flesh.

According to the tape, once they had the victim’s body over the bathtub,

her blood was drained. Later, the Hayneses and Bruno allegedly cut up Mrs. Bruno’s body with a butcher knife, placing the severed parts into several plastic garbage bags. They then drove away with the packaged parts, according to the taped testimony, and deposited the parts in trash containers around various areas of Eugene. However, the only body parts that had been recovered by the police were the breast and thigh found on February 24th.

When asked by Detective Bond in the taped interview if he knew what he was doing on the night of the murder, Bruno replied he did know right from wrong at the time. Bruno’s attorney had been trying to show Bruno was too drunk on the night of the murder to form the specific intent to commit murder.

When asked “if this act of sex and violence” would have taken place had there been additional people present Bruno answered, “I would have gotten some help. I would not have been so scared to be alone with him (Haynes).” In yet another statement, Bruno made the implication that Haynes had ordered him to participate in the killing and savage butchery.

Warren Reid, a neighbor of Bruno’s, took the witness stand and testified that the Brunos fought regularly. He testified that Bruno had attempted to throw his wife in front of an oncoming car, and that he saw Bruno kick Pamela in the back of her head while he was wearing his work boots.

Reid also told the court that Mrs. Bruno would very often insult her husband in front of others, telling all about her sexual activities with other men.

“He would sit back and take it for a long time,” said Reid. “But then he would become violent with her, and she would fight back.” He further stated

that the Brunos were drunk or becoming drunk every time he was with them, and that they fought in his presence almost every time he visited with them.

As Reid continued his testimony, he said that after Pamela’s disappearance Bruno told him “he knew Pam wasn’t going to return,” and said that Bruno asked him at least two or three times “if I (Reid) was able to kill someone.” According to Reid, Bruno often talked about killing and death in relation to Bruno’s army experiences in Vietnam, where he received a Bronze Star for bravery before being reduced from the rank of specialist 4 to private for leaving his guard duty post to see his wife.

On the seventh day of Bruno’s trial, the defense called Portland psychiatrist Dr. Barry Maletzky to testify that Bruno “blacked out” on the night of the murder. Maletzky, an expert on alcohol’s effects on the brain, testified that Bruno appeared to remember very little about what occurred on the night of his wife’s murder, and that his apparent lack of memory was caused by alcohol.

“In a blackout,” said Maletzky, “a person is not processing and retaining information in a normal way.” He also said Bruno didn’t forget or repress what happened the night his wife was killed, but that memories were never formed in his brain in the first place due to alcoholic blackout.

It was clear that the purpose of the defense was to show that Bruno didn’t intentionally commit murder, even though he admitted to the police that he was involved. It is necessary to point out at this stage of the trial that even if the jury accepts the arguments of no intent, Bruno could still be convicted of felony murder which, according to legal statutes, “is a murder committed in the course of another felony such as rape or sodomy.”

“I think Pamela was a big part of Mr. Bruno’s life,” continued Maletzky, “and he would not have planned to murder her. John is not a leader. He’s not

a strong person. It’s absolutely inconceivable to me that he could plan such a crime.”

He went on to say that Bruno was constantly struggling to be accepted by others, and he always wanted to be accepted in a group.

“I think if people suggested things for him to do,” testified Dr. Maletzky, “he would go along.

Under the influence of alcohol, he would have gone along with anything...just to be accepted.”

Several other defense witnesses also took the stand and testified that Mrs. Bruno was a very promiscuous woman, and that she drank heavily. And according to Daniel Olsen, a volunteer for the Eastside Baptist Church in Springfield, Mrs. Bruno jeered at her husband when he attempted to become a Christian in the spring of 1977.

Olsen testified that he went to the Brunos’ apartment after Bruno called the church seeking to “accept the Lord,” but when he arrived Bruno was drunk. Olsen said he told Bruno to wait until the next night because he should be sober for the religious experience.

But when Olsen returned to the Bruno residence the following night, he testified, Bruno wasn’t home yet so he sat and talked with Mrs. Bruno, who “indicated to me she was too far gone to be saved,” and further stated that Mrs. Bruno started bragging about her numerous affairs with other men.

Another defense witness, Philip Wright, who was an attendant at the service station near the Haynes’ home in Eugene, testified that he observed Mrs. Bruno walking down the middle of Sixth Avenue about 3 a.m. on a morning in Mid-February. Wright testified that he called her off the street

because she appeared to be intoxicated. When she walked over to the station, she asked to use the women’s room. But when he told her the station had no restrooms, she dropped her pants and squatted, and urinated on the ground in front of him.

In a rebuttal to the defense contention that Bruno blacked out on the night of the murder, the prosecution presented Medford psychiatrist Dr. Hugh Gardener, who testified that Bruno couldn’t have possibly blacked out the night his wife was killed because he “indicated in several ways that he remembered his role in what happened that night.

“Bruno had sufficient understanding of what was going on around him to form an intent to kill his wife that night,” continued Gardener. “He’s an amoral, selfish, sociopath who is quite capable of using anybody for anything to satisfy himself.”

June Lerner of Newport, Mrs. Bruno’s grandmother, was called to the stand as a witness for the prosecution. She testified that Bruno called her on February 24th.

“He wondered if Joan (Mrs. Bruno’s mother, also of Newport) and I could take this and if we were ready for it,” said Mrs. Lerner. “I asked him what he meant,” she continued, “and he said there had been a stabbing. I asked what he meant, and he said ‘forget it,’ and hung up.”

Nearing the end of the trial, John and Rose Martin both testified that they were living at the Haynes’ home and were, in fact, sleeping in the next room on the night Mrs. Bruno was allegedly killed! They astonishingly reported that they heard nothing unusual. However, both the defense and the prosecution agreed during the trial that the Martins were deceptive in their answers when they were questioned during a lie detector test about whether

or not they were involved in the killing, a clear indication that both defense and prosecution felt their testimony in court was questionable.

After closing arguments were orated by the prosecution and the defense, which took most of the last day of the three-week trial, all that could be agreed upon was the uncertainty of whether they would ever know the full story of what happened on the night of February 21st.

“We don’t know yet whether we have the full story of what took place that night in the Haynes’ house,” Barnes told the jury only minutes before they were charged with their obligations and went into deliberations.

Although it seemed longer, the Lane County Circuit Court jury of five men and seven women found Johnny Charles Bruno guilty of felony murder after barely three hours of deliberations, because they decided that his wife’s death occurred during the course of a sexual assault.

In the meantime, while Bruno was awaiting sentencing for his conviction, Charles Haynes’ trial date was fast approaching. It was June 13th, only one day before his trial was to begin that Haynes surprisingly waived his right to a jury trial and was swiftly convicted by Judge William Beckett in a “trial by stipulated facts.” Judge Beckett immediately sentenced Haynes to life in prison.

It should be pointed out that in his agreement to a trial by stipulated facts, Haynes did not plead guilty to the crime of which he was charged, but simply admitted that the state had enough evidence to convict him. In such an agreement, the defendant retains the right to appeal the verdict. If he had pleaded guilty, he would not have had the right to appeal for there would not have been a verdict delivered.

Jack Billings, Haynes’ attorney, stated that his client would appeal the verdict on the grounds that a portion of the state’s evidence was “improperly

admitted” in the case by a ruling of circuit Judge Douglas Spencer. According to Billings, Spencer ruled on May 18th that statements made by Haynes to the Springfield police about his role in the killing would be admissible in Haynes’ trial.

However, Judge Spencer rejected Billings’ argument that Haynes’ statements were inadmissible as evidence. Billings had argued that Haynes’ rights were violated because Springfield police allegedly refused to let the defendant talk to a lawyer hired by Haynes’ family. But the court ruled the statements as admissible because Haynes had not hired the attorney in question himself, and furthermore had no knowledge that an attorney had, in fact, been retained. The attorney in question had been retained and dismissed within only a few hours, supposedly because Haynes’ family decided they couldn’t afford the cost.

In the meantime, Mrs. Haynes was still being held in Lane County Jail awaiting trial. Her trial was postponed four times, and she was denied bail three times. By November, 1980, it was beginning to look like she may not go to trial at all—she had remained incarcerated since her arrest in March 1978.

The Oregon Supreme Court heard oral arguments concerning that very issue from Mrs. Haynes’ attorney, who pleaded with the court to set his client free because he contended that she had been denied a speedy trial.

But the Supreme Court denied the requests, ordering Mrs. Haynes to remain in jail. But the court said “that any further postponement of her trial will no longer be ‘trial within a reasonable period of time.’“ The court stated that charges against her would have to be dropped if she could not be tried or released on bail.

Meanwhile, the Oregon Supreme Court reversed Charles Haynes’

conviction on the grounds that Springfield police kept him from seeing an attorney, a charge that Springfield police repeatedly denied. Nonetheless, a new trial with a change of venue was ordered, this time to be held in Salem.

Johnny Bruno and Lionetti Haynes were not so lucky. Bruno’s conviction was upheld after his appeal, and he is currently serving a life sentence. Mrs. Haynes was finally brought to trial and convicted of firstdegree manslaughter following a trial in which she vehemently maintained her innocence. She was sentenced to 20 years by Judge William Beckett, but the judge ruled that Mrs. Haynes be given credit for the time she spent in Lane County Jail awaiting trial.

In May, 1981, Charles Haynes received his new trial in Marion County, but was convicted after a two-week proceeding and was sentenced to life in prison.

Haynes and his wife appealed, but on March 18, 1982, the Oregon Court of Appeals upheld their convictions. More than four years after the gruesome murder of Pamela Lee Bruno, her convicted killers’ cases were now fully adjudicated, and all are serving their sentences at the Oregon State Penitentiary and the Oregon Correctional Institution for Women.

Editor’s Note: The names Warren Reid: Daniel Olsen, Philip Wright, June Lerner, John and Rose Martin, and Elizabeth Green are fictitious and were used because there is no reason for public interest in these persons.

The Riddle of the Missing Sea Dog Lopez Island, third-largest of the San Juan Islands in Northwestern Washington, is a well-liked tourist attraction, popular with kayakers and like its neighbor to the west, San Juan Island, is an idyllic location where orca whales can sometimes be seen. It is also the location where one of the region’s most diabolical and premeditated, if not gruesome, murders occurred.

Sometime in August 1980, long-time Lopez Island resident Rolf Neslund, 83, disappeared, almost without a trace. Although his body was never found, not even a piece of it, San Juan County authorities as well as the state attorney general’s office pieced together a chilling tale of greed, murder and grisly dismemberment surrounding the old man’s sudden and mysterious disappearance. It took the Washington lawmen two years to build a case against a suspect, a difficult task since there was no body, and another three years to bring the defendant to trial, making for one of the longest, most challenging cases in that state’s history.

Born in Norway in 1897, Rolf Neslund moved to the United States with his parents during the early part of the 20th century, shortly after Orville and Wilbur Wright invented the airplane. While still in his youth, Neslund and his family moved west to Washington State. Neslund eventually moved to Lopez Island, one of many inhabited islands in the San Juan chain in Puget Sound accessible only by ferryboat. When he wasn’t working, Neslund spent as much time as he could there.

Tattooed with maritime insignia and the name of a woman, Muriel, on his right forearm, bowlegged and muscular, Rolf Neslund loved the sea, its powerful majesty as well as its serene calm. He also loved ships, so much so that he signed on as a deckhand on a freighter when he was a young man. He

moved up through the ranks quickly, eventually making captain and being given command of his own ship. Neslund made a very good income for himself and his wife Nettie Ruth Neslund, who always went by her middle name, and together they shared a beautiful, sprawling $500,000 home on Lopez Island, complete with a swimming pool and acreage.

For the most part, Neslund enjoyed good health except for type II diabetes, and for a while it seemed as if he had everything anyone could possibly want. When he reached retirement age and was qualified for a good pension, Neslund chose to continue working instead of relaxing in his golden years on his island paradise. To his co-workers, it seemed as if Neslund would never retire.

However, tragedy struck in 1978 when a freighter that was being piloted by him rammed into one of the twin draw-spans of the West Seattle Bridge, the damage to which forced construction of a new bridge at a cost in excess of $180 million. Rolf later made jokes and said that the area had needed a new bridge anyway, and that area residents should be grateful to him for wrecking the old one. He even went so far to say that the new bridge should be named after him. After a lengthy investigation, the Coast Guard found evidence of negligence on Neslund’s part and on the part of another of the ship’s officers. Shortly after the Coast Guard’s determination, Neslund was forced to retire.

With his ship and his command having been taken away from him, friends said Neslund’s life went steadily downhill. Already known as a drinker, Neslund began to hit the bottle more heavily after his forced retirement, and Ruth told investigators the he had become increasingly depressed. Those who knew him, however, said he nearly reached the point of no return after the accident with regard to his drinking, and some flatly described him as an alcoholic, but no one could say that he was depressed,

except for Ruth. Just when it seemed as if Rolf Neslund would destroy himself with booze, he vanished.

Although his somewhat craggy face seemed less formidable in his final days due, in part, to his age and his heavy drinking, Rolf’s face was handsome, and seemed to almost always flash an enduring smile no matter how unhappy he was. Always a well-dressed gentleman, Rolf maintained a slim waist and well-defined muscles in spite of his age and the drinking.

Those who knew Rolf said they couldn’t imagine that he’d simply ran away, abandoning his wife and his home. They said that a world of wisdom could be seen in his eyes as he sat on his deck and watched the screaming seagulls soaring overhead, and that running away from his island, which he described as an exquisite work of nature, could not have been further from his mind. In spite of what everyone thought, however, Rolf Neslund disappeared.

On Wednesday, August 13, 1980, Neslund’s wife Ruth notified the San Juan County Sheriff’s Department of her husband’s sudden and mysterious absence from their home. When Undersheriff Rod Tvrdy arrived at the Neslund home to take a report, Mrs. Neslund said that she had last seen her husband two days earlier, on August 11th, when he’d packed his belongings and inexplicably left in his automobile and suggested that he may have left the country to return to his native Norway. Ruth would later tell authorities that Rolf may have run away with another woman, a former girlfriend.

Lopez Island is a small island, so it was no secret that Rolf Neslund had been forced to retire because of the accident involving the ship under his command. It was also no secret that Rolf and his wife both had drinking problems that often included bitter and loud fights. His and Ruth’s drinking was often accompanied by violent physical altercations that recurrently brought the police and paramedics to their home to break up the fights,

assess property damage and to treat their injuries. They eventually became known as the “battling Neslunds,” and were often the talk of the island.

Nonetheless, they stayed together. Although Rolf Neslund looked boyishly benign, utterly harmless, he was known to have quite a temper and a flare for the dramatic. In some circles, he and his wife were described as a hell-born combination, in part because of their opposite sizes — she being rather obese —and their known heated arguments.

Mrs. Neslund told Undersheriff Tvrdy that Rolf had become increasingly depressed after being forced to retire, and often talked of returning to his native Norway, hence her suggestion that he may have returned there. Although they had recently fought over seemingly insignificant reasons, Mrs. Neslund told the lawman that she sincerely thought her husband would have returned to her after having had a chance to cool down a bit. But after two days had passed with no word from Rolf, she said she became increasingly worried and felt she should report his disappearance. It was then that she suggested that Rolf had taken up with another woman, the former girlfriend with whom he had remained friends over the years and who had given birth to two of Rolf’s children years earlier. After writing all the details into his notebook, including Rolf’s vehicle information and a list of the items he was believed to have taken with him, Tvrdy assured Mrs. Neslund that he and his deputies would do all they could to locate her husband.

Despite Ruth’s accounting of the events of Rolf’s supposed departure, Tvrdy and others remained suspicious and hadn’t entirely bought her story that Rolf had left on his own. Rolf had left behind too many of his own possessions including clothing, jewelry, eyeglasses, and medication, and follow-up investigation had shown that he never contacted his doctor to provide refills that he would almost immediately need, particularly for his type II diabetes, while away for an extended period. He also

uncharacteristically did not contact any friends or relatives after his sudden disappearance, Tvrdy would learn, and did not access any of his bank accounts when it was certain that he would surely need funding at some point.

Among the first things Tvrdy did was to issue an APB for Rolf’s car, after which he instructed his deputies to keep their eyes open for it as they patrolled the small island. He then began compiling a list of all Rolf’s and his wife’s known friends, acquaintances and former co-workers, including all those on the rolls of the Port Angeles Pilot Association, of which Rolf was a longtime active member in good standing. He then sent details of Rolf’s disappearance over the wires to nearby counties and prepared to contact customs authorities to try and deter-mine whether or not Neslund had, in fact, left the country.

A short time later, deputies reported finding Rolf Neslund’s apparently abandoned car at the Anacortes ferry dock, located north of Lopez Island and gateway by water to points north such as Canada and Alaska. Although there were no apparent signs of foul play, the car was towed to the sheriff’s department headquarters so that it could be gone over more thoroughly. If it turned out that Neslund had been a victim of foul play, Tvrdy wanted to make sure that he had every clue or piece of evidence at his disposal. When all was said and done, investigators considered the possibility that Rolf had left his car in Anacortes and caught a bus to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport to the south, an idea that also failed to pan out.

Because of Neslund’s reportedly but insufficiently substantiated depressed state of mind at the time of his disappearance, Tvrdy and his deputies had to consider the possibility that he had committed suicide, particularly since his car was located at the ferry boat dock. With this in mind, Tvrdy took a couple of deputies and drove up at Anacortes to investigate further.

At Anacortes the investigators sought witnesses who might have seen Neslund drive his vehicle to the boat dock. If anyone had seen him, they reasoned, it could provide a more useful time frame for them with which to work. And of course it was even possible that they would uncover an eyewitness who’d seen Neslund jump off the dock into the cold waters of the Puget Sound. But after several hours of nosing around, they came up emptyhanded. No one, apparently, had seen anything, leaving the lawmen with no way to accurately determine what time Neslund arrived at the ferryboat dock or why he had left his car seemingly abandoned there. And back on Lopez Island, they also failed to find anyone who claimed that he was in a depressed state of mind after the bridge incident, except for Ruth.

A short time later, Tvrdy contacted the Washington State Patrol and the State Attorney General’s office in an attempt to get additional help. When assistance was authorized, divers went into the water near the Anacortes dock to search for Rolf’s body and/or his clothing or possessions. However, after several hours, they too came up empty-handed. If he had jumped into the water, they reasoned, chances were that he had become food for any number sea creatures, particularly crab.

In an attempt to develop vital investigative leads, the lawmen decided to review Rolf Neslund’s background a bit further. Although they did not yet know if he was in fact a victim of foul play, the circumstances surrounding his sudden disappearance were indeed suspicious; they had to consider the very real possibility. The trained investigators knew that in many cases reports of crimes, such as a disappearance, are simulated to hide or cover up other crimes, which is especially true if some time has elapsed since a criminal act was committed. They even considered that Rolf had perhaps been a victim of robbery, only to be subsequently killed. But the sleuths also knew that a robber or a mugger, unless he was mentally challenged or psychotic, would not want the additional, more serious liability of murder on his or her hands

along with the initial crime.

At the conclusion of the Neslund background search, the San Juan County investigators determined that he had no criminal record, nor did he have any background in any other criminal investigations. There was very little historical information about Rolf Neslund found in the files of local, state or federal agencies, and with the absence of such background information so, then, disappeared any of the investigators’ hoped-for leads they so desperately needed to develop. Furthermore, the examination of Neslund’s abandoned car failed to turn up any significant clues, which left the investigators, ultimately, back at square one in the case. All they knew for certain was that Rolf Neslund was missing under mysterious circumstances.

Likewise, attempts to ferret out additional information from authorities in Neslund’s native Norway proved fruitless, as customs and immigrations officials had no record of him having entered the country through the normal legal channels. It seemed highly unlikely that he would have entered in any other way. However, when Tvrdy informed Mrs. Neslund of the results of his investigation, she continued to insist that she saw her husband pack his bags on August 11th, after which he said he planned to visit Norway. Tvrdy told Mrs. Neslund that there was little else he could do at this point, unless or until something new developed. Similarly, Tvrdy had been unable to develop any leads to suggest that Rolf had run out on his wife with another woman. The woman in question, whose identity is not being publicly divulged for the purposes of this article, had been located safe and sound and she had nothing of substance to provide investigators with regard to Rolf’s disappearance.

The investigation lay dormant and inactive until early in 1981, when several members of the Port Angeles Pilots Association noticed Rolf Neslund’s absence from the regular meetings and began making inquiries themselves. Undersheriff Tvrdy told the curious and concerned club

members of the mysterious circumstances, and several members asked that he re-open the investigation. Tvrdy agreed to do just that, and he returned to the Neslund home to make new inquiries, particularly since he hadn’t heard much from Mrs. Neslund since the initial in-vestigation began. Tvrdy also learned that efforts were underway by the pilots association to cut off Rolf’s retirement benefits if he did not turn up, an action that prompted Ruth to react with threats of a lawsuit if they did so unless they could show that he was deceased.

When Tvrdy was greeted at the door by Mrs. Neslund, who often used a walker to help her get around, he noticed a troubled face that was strained across the temples and the eye sockets—it was a face that exhibited the telltale signs of worry and distress. At first he had simply figured the poor woman must be worrying herself to death over Rolf’s vanishing—now, however, he wasn’t so sure. However, she had little to say to Tvrdy and offered him no new information regarding her husband’s disappearance. She simply repeated what she had told him several times before. This time, though, there was something about her eyes that seemed to betray her, something that told Tvrdy that she was no longer being truthful with him, if she ever had been truthful, an almost inexplicable look that he hadn’t noticed before.

But what was it? He could only wonder. Had she fabricated her husband’s disappearance to cover up another crime, perhaps murder?

Although Tvrdy acknowledged to himself that it was possible, he noted that it would be difficult for Mrs. Neslund to dispose of the body in her present overweight condition and general ill health. After all, her mobility depended upon her using a walker. He considered, however, that she could have killed her husband and disposed of his body with the aid of an accomplice. But who would help her? And why would she want the old man dead? With a lack of evidence and no body, Tvrdy brushed the thought aside—for the moment.

Days passed, and quickly turned into weeks and months with no significant results and no new leads regarding the disappearance of Rolf Neslund. To the investigators working his case it seemed as if he had simply vanished into thin air. In fact it began to look as if the mystery would never be solved. It wasn’t until the case seemed at its lowest point that the investigators received their first real break in the case.

As it turned out, the San Juan County Sheriff’s Department received a telephone call from a relative of the Neslunds’ who nervously told Undersheriff Tvrdy that she had information regarding Rolf’s disappearance.

The relative said that Neslund’s wife, Ruth, telephoned her on Friday, August 8, 1980 and admitted that she had shot and killed Rolf. According to the relative, Ruth Neslund called again later and confirmed what she had originally told her. Tvrdy went to the relative’s home and brought her to the sheriff’s department headquarters, where he obtained a taped and written statement from her.

“She and Rolf had a fight,” said the relative in a statement that was later used in an affidavit of probable cause. “Ruth’s brother, Robert Myers, held Rolf Neslund and Ruth Neslund shot and killed Rolf Neslund.”

A short time later, another of Ruth Neslund’s brothers, Paul Myers, came forward with additional shocking details of the alleged killing.

According to San Juan County Superior Court documents, Myers told authorities that he had lived at the Neslund home from December 1980 through the early part of 1981. It was during this time, he said, that Ruth Neslund told him that she had shot her husband. According to what Myers told the investigators, Mrs. Neslund also told him that Rolf had fallen over a living room couch when he had been shot, spraying blood and brain matter around the room. According to the court documents, Myers also told the investigators that Mrs. Neslund, after the killing, gave her other brother,

Robert, a broadax and a butcher knife which Robert allegedly used to cut up Rolf’s body in the bathtub. Afterward, said Paul Myers, the body parts were taken to a barrel on the Neslund property and burned. Myers told the investigators that Neslund had been shot twice in the head, according to what he had been told.

It was indeed a grisly story and, although Tvrdy was a seasoned cop he winced at the gory details. Crimes of this nature were rare in his county, and he considered himself lucky in some respects that he didn’t have to deal with the dismembered body, or so he hoped. Even though many months had passed since Rolf Neslund was believed to have been killed, Tvrdy and his deputies had to make an attempt to locate at least some of the victim’s remains.

In the meantime, Ruth Neslund, 63, was formally charged with firstdegree murder in connection with her husband’s alleged death. Ruth Neslund and her attorney, Fred Weedon, appeared in San Juan Superior Court where, speaking in a hushed voice, she pleaded not guilty to the charges. Noting that Ruth Neslund had well-established ties with the Lopez Island and Friday Harbor communities and had been associated with Weedon as a client on and off for the past 10 years, Weedon asked that her bail be set at $10,000.

However, Superior Court Judge Howard Patrick set bail at $50,000. A short time later, Ruth Neslund posted a property mortgage in the amount of the bond and she was released, pending the outcome of her trial.

Meanwhile, sheriff’s deputies searched the Neslund home — which Mrs. Neslund was also using by this time as a bed-and-breakfast inn for travelers — for clues. Unfortunately for the prosecution’s case, the deputies returned with no evidence of foul play. The investigation continued, however, and Mrs. Neslund remained free on bond to run her inn.

A couple of months later the case took a new turn when another of the Neslund’s relatives claimed in a probate petition that Ruth Neslund “forcibly”

caused her husband’s death. Al-though he presented no evidence, the relative contended that Ruth Neslund had hidden the body. In spite of the new witness, however, there still wasn’t enough evidence to bring the case to trial.

As the investigation continued, by this time with the assistance of the state attorney general’s criminal division, the probers learned that the alleged fight between Ruth and Rolf Neslund prior to his death involved money. At one point in the investigation, authorities learned that Ruth had transferred approximately $80,000 from their joint bank accounts and retirement funds into a new account under her own name, and had lied to Rolf by telling him that loans they had made to others were still outstanding when, in fact, they had been paid off, in her effort to explain away the lack of money. When pressed further by Rolf, according to witnesses, Ruth had claimed she transferred the money because she feared a civil action regarding the damaged bridge might come back to haunt them. She also expressed her fear that Rolf might run away to his native Norway and take the money with him, leaving her penniless.

Rolf reportedly had been very angered by Ruth’s actions, and told others that he planned to revoke the power of attorney and take Ruth out of his will, replacing her in it with the two children he fathered with the former girlfriend. Detectives learned that at one point he’d even confided to the former girlfriend that he believed Ruth was planning to poison him, and asked her to make sure his body was given an autopsy if he died. Relatives also told investigators that they had often heard Ruth threaten to murder Rolf, but she was usually drunk at those times and no one really believed her —until Rolf disappeared.

“Robert Myers told Paul Myers that when Rolf Neslund told Ruth to come up with the money, ‘or else,’” said Greg Canova, chief of the state attorney general’s division, “that Ruth gave him (the) ‘or else,’” and killed

him. Robert Myers allegedly said that he had held Rolf while Ruth shot him twice in the head with a .38-caliber Smith and Wesson revolver, and later chopped up Rolf’s body. Myers also allegedly helped Ruth burn it and later dump the ashes in a manure pile that was used as fertilizer. Myers, who was diagnosed by his doctors as being senile with dementia and receiving dialysis treatments, was not charged in the case. When asked whether charges would ever be filed against Myers, San Juan County Deputy Prosecutor Charles Silverman said, “I have no comment on that whatsoever.’’ Myers, in addition to being frail, was at least 20 years Ruth’s senior, and in his condition his days were obviously numbered anyway.

As the investigation continued, the probers uncovered another witness, a friend of Ruth’s, who told the crime sleuths that she had been called to the Neslund home on the evening of August 8, 1980 by a somewhat distraught Ruth. The witness told the investigators that while she and Ruth sat at a bar inside the Neslund home, Ruth told her that her relative was in one of the bathrooms chopping up Rolf’s body.

In spite of the mounting testimony, most of which was damaging to Ruth Neslund’s defense, the investigators wanted hard physical evidence before going to trial. As a result, they returned to the Neslund home again, and this time the search of the house and the surrounding property took nine days.

During the second search, crime lab technicians sprayed Luminol, a chemical that detects even the minutest traces of blood, even after rigorous attempts have been made to clean up any such stains. Ruth had replaced sections of the carpet, which investigators cut out and removed. Following the spraying, traces of blood were found on the living room floor, the carpet and the ceiling, in the hallway that led into the room, as well as in one of the bathrooms. A blood spatter analyst confirmed that the bloodstain on the

living room ceiling was high-velocity spatter, the type typically created when someone has been shot. Similarly, traces of blood were also found on the shower doors in the master bathroom. Also found during the search was a pistol, believed to have been the murder weapon, which had traces of blood on it, in one of Ruth’s dressers.

During the evidence-gathering phase of the investigation, police used jackhammers to remove two chunks of concrete from the living room floor, and they cut and bagged several sections of the stained carpeting. They also took three pieces of sheeting from the living room ceiling. All of the items were sent to the Washington State Patrol Crime Laboratory in Seattle for analysis.

Meanwhile, the investigators learned that Rolf Neslund had undergone surgery some 10 years earlier at a Seattle hospital and a search of his medical file determined that his blood was Type A. Tests conducted at the state crime labs on items recovered from the Neslund home showed that traces of human blood were indeed present, and that they were also Type A. The pistol seized during the second search also showed that the blood traces were Type A. However, Ruth’s blood was also Type A, and since DNA technology was not in use yet it would be nearly impossible to positively differentiate between the two for a definitive answer, in a scientific manner, as to whose blood was all over the house.

Because it had been alleged that Rolf Neslund’s body had been chopped up in one of the house’s bathrooms, the San Juan County authorities brought a back-hoe to the Neslund residence, which they used to dig up the septic tank and a nearby drain field in search of evidence such as blood and tissue that might have been washed down the drain. They also used the backhoe to dig up several sections of the yard, apparently in search of body parts, bones, and/or the tools used to dismember the old man’s body. All in all, more than

700 items of evidence were seized during the second search, much of which was not made public. During the second search, the homicide investigators also learned that the Neslunds had owned a commercial type meat grinder which they had sold to a Friday Harbor couple, the macabre implications of which won’t be gone into here.

It is important to note here that Ellsworth Connelly, co-defense attorney for Mrs. Neslund, attempted to suppress much of the massive amounts of evidence that the prosecution had built its case upon. Although the evidence was seized under order of search warrants, Connelly ar-gued that the search warrants had been issued improperly by San Juan County Superior Court Judge Richard Pitt who, Connelly contended, wasn’t “neutral’’ in his judgments because he had also acted as the inquiry judge initially involved with Neslund’s disappearance. Connelly took his arguments to the Washington Supreme Court, a move which, needless to say, held up the trial for a considerable time.

However, writing for the majority, Justice Robert Brachtenbach said that Superior Court Judge Richard Pitt was “neutral and detached in fact and his issuance of search warrants’’ related to the case “was valid.’’ The ruling favoring the prosecution’s collection of evidence came in November 1984, more than four years after Rolf Neslund disappeared. It had been a 7-2 opinion by the high court.

Although Ruth Neslund’s original trial date was set for May 6, 1985, it was postponed until the following October. During jury selection, in which 400 potential jurors were called (the largest number ever for a trial in San Juan County), Neslund suffered a severe nosebleed and nausea in the courtroom. As a result, the proceedings were interrupted on Halloween Day when she was admitted to a Bellingham hospital. Following a delay of a week and a half, jury selection resumed and a jury was seated, with three alternates.

Because of her chronic nosebleeds and high blood pressure, Judge Robert Bibb granted a prosecution request that Neslund be required to stay at a convalescent center during the remainder of her trial. As a result of the $50,000 property bond, however, Neslund was allowed to leave the convalescent center on weekends.

During the opening remarks to the jury and a packed courtroom, Prosecutor Greg Canova took the jurors step-by-step through the case, from Rolf Neslund’s initial disappearance to witnesses coming forward with information, to the massive evidence gathering. One of the first witnesses he called to the stand was one of Ruth Neslund’s closest friends, who said she had known the defendant for seven years. It was pointed out that the friend had been given immunity from prosecution for previously lying to a grand jury in return for her truthful testimony at the trial.

“Why did you lie?” asked Canova.

“I felt what had been done had been done; I was protecting Ruth,” replied Ruth’s friend. In recanting her previous testimony, she then told of how Ruth Neslund called her at her home on the night of August 8th, 1980.

“Ruth told me she wanted me to come over,’’ said the witness. “She said she needed me. Ruth let me in and she said she had killed him. She said she had shot him.” Although Canova had previously stated that the Neslunds were known as frequent heavy drinkers, prone to quarrels and threats to each other, the witness told the jury that Ruth didn’t appear to have been drinking on that night, the night of the alleged shooting and subsequent dismemberment.

Ruth’s friend said that it hadn’t taken her long to get to the Neslund residence, as she only lived five minutes away. She said that after Ruth told her what she had done to Rolf, Ruth told her that one of her relatives was

inside the house. Ruth then led her friend to the bar, where they sat on barstools as Ruth told her what had happened, said the witness.

“She indicated to me that she didn’t want me to know any of the details,” she testified. “She said Robert was in the bathroom,” said the witness, who then began to cry. “She said Robert was cutting him up.”

During the course of the trial, Ruth Neslund’s brother, Paul Myers, testified that Ruth had described the killing to him and that their other brother, Robert Myers, had described cutting up the body and burning the pieces in a trash barrel. Defense Attorney Weedon attempted to discredit Myers’ testimony by calling him an unreliable witness and “a self-confessed drunk who drank a half- to a gallon of whiskey a day...The state has to live with its own witnesses.”

Other witnesses uncovered during the intensive investigation took the stand and testified that Ruth Neslund had described in great detail how she shot her husband and helped a relative chop up and burn his body.

Undersheriff Tvrdy and state investigators also testified and described the significance of the evidence that was presented. All in all, nearly 170 pieces of evidence were submitted during the trial, including pieces of the bloodstained concrete and ceiling sheets taken from the Neslund home.

Ruth Neslund also took the stand in her own defense, and denied that she killed her husband. She told the jury that he drank heavily and reiterated that he was severely depressed after his forced retirement, and said that she thought he had taken an extended trip to Norway or had committed suicide.

In closing arguments, Defense Attorney Weedon criticized the prosecution’s case and its witnesses by saying that the authorities had failed to produce a body or even some body parts. They even failed to produce a murder weapon, he said, because the bloodstained pistol seized from the

Neslund home had not been proven to be the murder weapon, primarily because there was no body to retrieve bullets from for purposes of comparison. “They found nothing because there was nothing,’’ said Weedon. ‘‘I ask you to send Ruth back to Lopez Island a free woman,” continued Weedon. “We don’t know where Rolf is, but that is not enough for conviction. Just because Rolf hasn’t been seen since 1980, that’s no reason to believe he’s dead.”

In his closing arguments, Prosecutor Greg Canova alleged that Rolf Neslund was killed after he discovered his wife had transferred most of the money in their joint accounts to a new account in her name. Canova portrayed the Neslunds as a hard-drinking couple who quarreled often and threatened each other regularly.

“It really was a case of who was going to kill whom first,” said Canova.

“Taken together, all the physical evidence is overwhelming beyond a reasonable doubt that Rolf was killed and that Ruth killed him.”

After being charged with their obligations and sequestered in a hotel overnight, the San Juan County Superior Court jury began their deliberations on Thursday morning, December 12, 1985. On Sunday, December 15th, the nine-woman, three-man panel announced that they had reached a verdict.

Although it hadn’t been easy, they convicted Ruth Neslund of first-degree murder for the slaying of her husband. Except for a certain remoteness, Ruth Neslund’s wide face betrayed no real expression of emotion as the verdict was read. However, she began to cry as she was led out of the courtroom by Undersheriff Tvrdy. “I’ll make it. I’ll make it. It’s all right,” said Neslund as she was placed inside a sheriff’s car.

“It was not a decision we wanted to come up with,” said the jury foreman of the guilty verdict. “But the evidence was too much. It was a

difficult case for all of us.”

“We’re not happy,” said another juror. “We wanted so bad to find her innocent. It was very emotional. I haven’t slept in six weeks.”

A review of the jury’s deliberations revealed that several of the jurors were prepared to convict Neslund on the first day, but others held out and wanted to carefully review the evidence, particularly since there was no body.

By Sunday, the fourth day of deliberations, 11 jurors were ready to convict, but one held out for the “smoking gun.”

“One person used the term ‘smoking gun’,” said one of the jurors, “and until they found the smoking gun, we weren’t going to be able to prove she was guilty.” As it turned out, the “smoking gun’’ in this case was a newspaper ad for ‘the sale of the Neslunds’ home, placed on August 13, 1980, the day before Neslund said her husband had disappeared.

“If, in fact, Rolf left and she was expecting him to come back,” said the juror, “what was he going to come back to?” The jury also determined that Rolf’s murder was premeditated, prima-rily because witnesses testified that two shots had been fired, a fact which aided the jury in determining that Ruth Neslund had considered the murder for at least “a moment in time,” the quote being taken from the legal definition of premeditation.

“Obviously they (the jury) made the right decision,” said Prosecutor Canova. Under Wash-ington State law, a guilty verdict for first-degree murder carries a mandatory sentence of 20 years to life. Ruth Neslund died in 1993 at age 73 while serving a life prison term at the Women’s Correction Center in Purdy, Washington.

Pretty Tourists’ Trek to Torture Saturday, September 3, 1988, was hot and dry along the southern Oregon coast. It was the beginning of Labor Day weekend, and people flocked to the ocean to escape the rat race in the cities, only to find that it was just as crowded, if not more so, at the seashore due to the holiday. Outof-state tourists were still finding their way to Oregon’s magnificently rugged coastline. Many came from other west coast states. Others, having traveled greater distances, were on the last leg of their vacations and would soon have to begin their journeys back home.

Despite the crowds, most of the visitors to the southern Oregon coast would hold pleasant memories of the final holiday of the summer. But one couple, who were spending the day about 12 miles southeast of the community of Coquille, would have bleaker memories of that holiday weekend.

The couple, blasting rock music from their four-wheel drive’s stereo, turned onto Lampa Mountain Road shortly before 1:00 p.m. that Saturday.

The single-lane dirt and gravel road, used by the local electric company to access their power lines, was in a remote area surrounded by forest. It was a favorite spot for local teenagers, who sometimes used it as a private place where they could “park” undisturbed. But the couple, who were from a nearby community, was only out to get away from all the tourists for a while.

At one point the couple stopped at a narrow turnaround. One of them spotted something strange lying off the road in dense brush. Their natural curiosity getting the best of them, the couple got out to investigate. After walking only a few yards, however, they could easily see what they had stumbled onto was something they wished they hadn’t. They had discovered

two dead bodies, and from all outward appearances it was obvious that neither victim had succumbed to natural causes.

In a near panic, the young couple ran back to their four-wheel drive and headed back down the mountain to civilization. They stopped at the first telephone they could find and notified the Coos County Sheriff’s Department of their unnerving discovery. Although neither wanted anything further to do with the horror they had unwittingly uncovered, the couple reluctantly agreed to wait at a location determined by Sheriff Veral Tarno, who needed their assistance to lead him and his deputies to the body site.

Within half an hour Sheriff Tarno, Detective Sergeant Steve Dalton, a team of deputies, and a representative from both the medical examiner ’s office and the district attorney’s office were at the remote location. One look at the human remains was all it took for Tarno and Dalton to determine that the victims, both female, had been murdered.

Both victims, observed Tarno and Dalton, had been shot in the face at close range. Although it was difficult to determine their ages because their faces had been rendered nearly unrecognizable, the two lawmen guessed that they could be anywhere from their late teens to mid-20s. The victims’ hairstyles and the firmness of their bodies suggested to the seasoned lawmen that they were still youthful. Both victims were bound at the wrists, and then tied to each other with rope. Both were nude from the waist down, which suggested to the lawmen that rape and kidnapping were probable motives for their “execution-style” murders. A cursory examination of the bodies and of the immediate area failed to turn up any identification on or near the corpses.

“That’s the biggest thing right now,” Tarno later told a group of reporters who had quickly learned of the double homicide. “We need to get them identified.” He explained that identification of a homicide victim was the cornerstone of an investigation. In wishful speculation, Tarno said it was

possible that the two women were roommates and that it might be several days or longer before their families reported them missing.

Although evidence found at the crime scene was scant, a shuttle-bus ticket to California’s redwood forest country indicated the two women might have been tourists. Just where they were from, Tarno knew, might prove difficult to determine, but at least now probers had a California connection with which to work.

When Tarno and Dalton got back to their offices, they began checking their Oregon missing-person reports. After coming up empty-handed, they asked authorities in California, Washington, Idaho, and Nevada for assistance.

They described the victims to their out-of-state colleagues as being between the ages of 18 and 25. One of the victims was 5 feet 4 inches tall, 100 to 110 pounds, with short brown hair that was frosted at the ends. The other victim was listed in the APB as 5 feet 10 inches tall, 150 to 160 pounds, also having short brown hair frosted at the ends. Both victims were Caucasian.

Following the autopsies, Coos County Medical Examiner Dr. Gerald Bassett confirmed that each victim had died from a single gunshot wound to the forehead. The blasts from the shots had virtually destroyed their faces, he said. Tests conducted by the Oregon State Police Crime Lab at Medford indicated that both women had been raped, and showed they had been dead for three or four days when they were found, placing their time of death as sometime on August 31st or September 1st. Because of the hot, dry weather, both corpses had already begun to decompose.

At one point, Sheriff Tarno considered the possibility that the two victims had been in the area as part of an international group that had been working in the Oregon Dunes Recreation Area earlier in the summer. He discovered that three women from what was then known as West Germany

had been on that crew and had planned to do some traveling in the United States following the end of their work in August. However, Tarno soon learned that the three German women, as well as all other females on the work crew, had been accounted for and were reportedly safe and sound.

Days later, one of the investigators pointed out that both women’s hairstyles were without question distinctly European. Despite the fact that European hairstyles were popular with many American women, Tarno and Dalton, with nowhere else to go with the case, looked closely at the possibility that the victims might have come from Europe. They examined the women’s clothing, and soon discovered that the garments had brand-name labels of European manufacturers. Tracing the labels further, the sleuths learned that the clothing was most likely purchased in Europe and most probably in West Germany.

Soon after the European connection was made public, Coos County authorities began receiving a few tips. As was usually the case, most didn’t pan out. However, one held promise.

Although he wouldn’t reveal the precise nature of the tip, Lieutenant Bob Green of the Coos County Sheriff’s Department said that two young women with German accents had been seen with two men inside a restaurant at Smith River, California, a small community on U.S. 101, the Pacific Coast Highway, which runs through California, Oregon, and Washington. Smith River, located approximately 120 miles south of Coos County and only about a two-hour drive from the crime scene, placed the women in question at least within reasonable proximity to where the victims’ bodies were found.

Although the four had appeared friendly with each other while at the restaurant, the investigators knew that things could have quickly turned ugly after the foursome left. Whether or not the women were the victims, however, remained to be seen. But, said Green, it was a definite possibility

that could not be ignored.

“It’s unfortunate,” said Lieutenant Green, commenting on the possibility that the victims were foreigners. “It’s a terrible crime, but when you have the possibility of the victims being tourists, it’s a sad state of affairs.”

Because of the possible foreign link, Coos County authorities contacted Interpol, the international police network, for assistance. And because the victims might also have been kidnapped and brought across state lines, the FBI also entered the case. Coos County officials also notified the West German Consulate in Seattle, which in turn notified police agencies in Germany about the double murder in Oregon.

“We’re still not entirely certain that they were Germans,” said a spokesman for the German Consulate in Seattle. “Obviously, if they are, it would be of concern to us...[but] we don’t want to create a rumor that turns out to be untrue.”

Despite the efforts of the German consulate, there were no official or unofficial records of any German nationals traveling on the West Coast who had been reported missing—yet. Likewise, in the days that followed, additional efforts to produce missing person information with the German police failed to turn up any new leads. Along those same lines, missing persons’ reports in the United States failed to provide any leads to the victims’ identities. This prompted Sheriff Tarno to lean even more toward his belief that the women were foreign.

“We’ve had a lot of calls,” said Sheriff Tarno, “but nothing comes close to matching the descriptions.”

Identification of both the suspects and the victims was hampered by a “lack of workable information,” said Tarno. By September 9, Coos County’s

mystery of the female murder victims was still unsolved and a hope for a solution was waning fast.

However, by the next evening, Saturday, September 10, Coos County authorities received their first big break in the case as result of a telephone tip. A resident of Medford, Oregon, whom authorities would not identify out of fear for his safety, told investigators that a friend, 20 year-old David Lynn Simonsen of Medford, had told him that he was involved with another man in the killing of two women on the Oregon Coast. The tipster identified the other man as 27 year-old Jeffery Ray Williams of Ashland, a small town about 11 miles south of Medford, known for its world famous Oregon Shakespearean Festival.

The lawmen worked fast throughout Saturday night and all day Sunday.

It wasn’t until late Sunday evening, after obtaining the necessary warrants, that Coos County authorities, assisted by Jackson County sheriff’s deputies and Medford and Ashland police officers, converged simultaneously on the suspects’ respective homes. As a result, David Simonsen and Jeffery Williams were apprehended without incident. Upon their arrests, warrants to search their persons were served for the collection of head, body, and pubic hairs, blood samples, and photographs of their unclothed bodies to see if any defensive-type wounds left by the victims might be present. Details related to the searches were not released publicly.

The next day, Monday, September 12, authorities executed additional search warrants. Sheriff’s investigators scrutinized Williams’ residence in the 600 block of Siskiyou Boulevard, near the Southern Oregon State College campus in Ashland. They also searched Williams’ pickup truck. Among the evidence they seized were a number of shotguns, one of which, an illegal sawed-off type, was believed to be the murder weapon. According to Lieutenant Bob Green, investigators also developed information following

the suspects’ arrests which indicated that both women had been robbed, in addition to having been kidnapped, raped, and murdered. However, sleuths still had no information as to the women’s identities.

“We have a darn good case,” said Sheriff Tarno. “It’s just a matter of putting it together and taking it to the district attorney.” Tarno added that the telephone tip provided investigators with “some very good information, absolutely reliable,” which resulted in the arrests.

Did the sheriff believe that the two women were abducted in the vicinity of Ashland or Medford, since that was where the suspects were arrested? Reporters at a news conference posed the question.

“We don’t know,” responded Sheriff Tarno, “and it’s difficult to speculate. They could have traveled through Ashland, they may have been going up or down Interstate Five, or they may have been going down the Pacific Coast Highway.” It was even possible, he said, that the two women may have met their killers in Smith River, California, a lead that investigators were still working on.

As David Simonsen and Jeffery Williams were booked into the Coos County Jail in Coquille, each was charged with two counts of aggravated murder, first-degree kidnapping, first-degree rape, and first-degree robbery.

A conviction on a charge of aggravated murder could bring the death penalty, which Coos County District Attorney Paul Burgett, who has a reputation for obtaining death sentences, announced he would seek.

The next major break in the case came on Monday, October 10. It was nearly six weeks after the victims’ bodies were found when homicide Detective Georg Schafer of West Germany’s Wattenscheid Police Department contacted Coos County Detective Steve Dalton. Schafer told Dalton that he believed the two victims were West German college students

who had failed to return from a three-month vacation in the United States, a vacation that was due to end on September 30. The students’ names, explained Detective Schafer, were Unna Tuxen, 24, of Osnabruck, and Katrin Reith, 22, of Wattenscheid. Both women, said the German detective, had been students at the University of Marberg, a small school in southern West Germany, and both matched the physical characteristics of the Oregon victims. Schafer assured Dalton that he would send dental and fingerprint records as soon as he could obtain them.

“We are looking at those two girls as possible victims,” said Sheriff Tarno after learning of the tentative identification, “but we have no positive identification yet.” Tarno said he was frustrated by the delays in making the positive identifications. However, he felt confident that they were getting closer to finding out who the victims were.

Tarno was right. A few days later, the long wait was over. The much sought-after documents arrived from West Germany, and the Lampa Mountain Road victims were positively identified as the two West German college students, Unna Tuxen and Katrin Reith. Now that sleuths finally had the cornerstone of their investigation—the victims’ identifications—finally in place, Sheriff Tarno and Detective Dalton had to build the rest of the case around their suspects. They would start by tracing the college students’ movements after their arrival in the United States to see if they could determine when and where the women had met their killers.

Tarno and Dalton soon learned that Tuxen and Reith had arrived by air in New York City in July 1988. After seeing the sights in New York, the two college students gradually made their way to visit a relative of Tuxen’s in New Mexico. After spending a few days there, the two student tourists drove to San Diego. Upon leaving San Diego, the relative from New Mexico told Detective Dalton, Tuxen and Reith intended to hitchhike north to San

Francisco, after which they were to have seen the Redwood National Park in Northern California, near Eureka. Dalton surmised that the women had made it at least as far as Eureka before running into their killers. Dalton presumed this in part because of the shuttle-bus ticket to the Redwood National Park that had been found at the crime scene, and because witnesses had provided information about two women with German accents who were seen with two men in a Smith River restaurant. Tuxen’s relative also told Detective Dalton that the women were supposed to have made telephone calls to her periodically after their departure from New Mexico but had failed to do so, another vital piece that now fit neatly into Dalton’s homicide jigsaw puzzle.

After talking with additional witnesses, it began to look more and more as though Tuxen and Reith were indeed the two women in question. Dalton guessed that their killers had picked them up somewhere between Eureka and Smith River. It was also possible that the two tourists had hitchhiked into Oregon before meeting the men who ultimately did them in. But because of the Smith River link, that theory seemed less likely to Dalton.

In a surprise move shortly after Simonsen and Williams were indicted, it was revealed that Simonsen had suddenly agreed to plead guilty to aggravated murder. In light of his signed confession, accepted by Coos County Circuit Court Judge Richard Barron, it was revealed that Simonsen had also agreed to make a videotaped confession to police. Despite his confession, however, Simonsen made no effort to assist the authorities in identifying the two women.

Under Oregon law, even when a legal confession has been obtained, a jury must be seated to decide a defendant’s fate. If Simonsen had struck an agreement to confess in exchange for a life sentence, a jury would have been empaneled only as a formality and instructed that they could not vote for the death penalty. Under Simonsen’s agreement, however, no such deal had been

struck, and the jury’s sentencing options were left open.

In order to impose a death sentence, jurors would have to decide three issues: whether Simonsen deliberately committed the acts for which he was charged; whether he would commit future acts of violence; and whether he would be a continuing threat to society if given a life prison term. In order to impose a death sentence, the jury’s decision also had to be unanimous.

Calling Tuxen’s and Reith’s murders a case of cold-blooded murder, D.A. Burgett said he would, in fact, seek a death sentence, despite Simonsen’s confession. Burgett did agree, however, to drop most of the other charges against Simonsen. All of the charges against Williams, who did not confess and chose to go to trial, remained intact.

After a 12-member jury was seated on Wednesday, February 15, 1989, for the penalty phase, Deputy Prosecutor Steve Keutzer began outlining his case against Simonsen. During his opening statement, he told jurors the prosecution would prove that Simonsen, along with Williams, had discussed finding some women to rob, rape, and kill while they were on a trip from Medford to California, where they planned to buy some illegal drugs on August 31, 1988. Keutzer and D.A. Burgett stressed that the defendants’ plan made their ultimate actions decidedly more “cold-blooded” than if they had not intended to commit their crimes.

On the other hand, Defense Attorney Earl Woods Jr. said he intended to prove that Williams had been controlling Simonsen’s life and his actions for some time, and that Simonsen had eventually become Williams’ “robot.”

Woods contended that Williams persuaded Simonsen to begin injecting drugs during the summer of 1988. It was during that period, said Woods, that Simonsen had injected drugs for the first time in his life.

“He was grossly under the influence of drugs,” Woods argued. Woods

further pointed out that his client was the victim of a broken home. That his parents were divorced during his youth, said Woods, led Simonsen to an early life of crime and to an arrest for burglary. His broken home life, Woods contended, also brought out his aggressive personality, which was only encouraged by Williams’ negative and often violent influence.

Early in the proceedings, Detective Steve Dalton testified for the prosecution, outlining much of his investigation into the victims’ deaths. He explained how, once the identifications of the victims were made, he traced Tuxen and Reith to a Smith River restaurant where they were seen on August 31 with two men who fit the descriptions of Simonsen and Williams. Dalton described how witnesses told him that the four young people appeared to be “having a friendly conversation.”

After Dalton left the stand, D.A. Burgett added a footnote to Dalton’s testimony by contending that the witnesses’ perceptions of a “friendly conversation” at the Smith River restaurant did not support the defense, but instead supported his position that the killers’ “act” at the eatery was merely a prelude, a part of their plan to commit “cold-blooded murder.” He said that the defendants knew in advance of meeting the victims precisely what they intended to do to them after winning their confidence.

At another point, a tearful relative of Reith’s who had traveled from West Germany to attend the trials identified Reith from a photograph taken when she was still alive. He also identified Reith’s signature on a packet of traveler ’s checks drawn on a West German bank. Other relatives of the victims, who had also traveled to the United States for the trials, wept quietly in the courtroom. A reporter from the European newspaper Bild was also present in the courtroom.

F red Newman, a lifelong friend of Simonsen’s since grade school and the person who tipped police to Simonsen’s and Williams’ involvement in the

murders, also told jurors that Simonsen was lured into drug use and violence

by Williams. Newman described Simonsen as a good person who was led astray by Williams. Newman said he knew that Simonsen and Williams began injecting methamphetamine during the summer of 1988, and that they often carried sawed-off shotguns.

At that point, D.A. Burgett entered one of the shotguns as a state’s exhibit, contending that it was the weapon used to kill the victims.

Newman said he feared retribution from Williams. After he tipped police in September, he said, he took his family and fled to safety in California, afraid, for a while, to even let the police know his whereabouts.

The most damning evidence entered at the trial was David Simonsen’s videotaped confession. Simonsen, on the video, was seen and heard describing how he and Williams had been injecting methamphetamine for several days prior to committing the murders.

Simonsen described how he was in a daze as a result of a massive dose injected only a short time before he and Williams committed the rapes and murders. As the tape continued, Simonsen said he looked both victims “directly” in their eyes prior to pulling the trigger on the sawed-off shotgun approximately three feet from the victims’ foreheads.

“They were just staring at me,” he said in the taped confession. “They weren’t full of tears, they just stood there.” Although he had been the triggerman, Simonsen said it had been Williams’ idea to rob, rape, and then kill the victims.

“Two innocent young women have been given the death penalty,” said D.A. Burgett in his closing argument, “and this man is their executioner.”

Pointing at Simonsen, Burgett urged jurors to hand out a death sentence.

On Thursday, February 23, 1989, after brief deliberations, the jury voted unanimously to sentence David Simonsen to death. Simonsen remained quiet and exhibited little emotion when the verdict was announced. When asked if he wanted to make a statement before sentence was passed, Simonsen said only, “I want to thank the court for giving me enough money so I could buy these clothes and dress appropriately for the court.” Judge Richard Barron then ordered that Simonsen be sentenced to death by lethal injection.

Similar evidence and testimony was introduced at Jeffery Ray Williams’ trial, which began in April 1989. Deputy Prosecutor Bryon Chatfield outlined the circumstantial evidence against Williams and prosecution witnesses placed Tuxen and Reith with Williams and Simonsen on the day they were believed to have been killed and also testified that Williams boasted about the murders following a trip he made to California to buy drugs during the early part of September. Chatfield also presented details of Williams’ long criminal history that dated back to his early teens and presented records that showed he had done time in Oregon and Idaho prisons.

He often carried guns, said Chatfield, and had a history of intimidating friends.

Robert Brasch, Williams’ defense attorney, argued that Williams hadn’t pulled the trigger when Tuxen and Reith were killed. He argued that much of his client’s problems stemmed from abuse he suffered as a child. Brasch described Williams as a child who grew up without love. In an attempt to gain sympathy from the jury, Brasch put Williams on the witness stand in his own defense.

“Are you scared?” asked Brasch.

“Yes,” Williams replied.

“Why are you scared?” asked the attorney.

“Because I don’t want to die,” responded Williams.

Prosecutor Chatfield, on the other hand, hoped to sway the jury in favor of the victims by emphasizing their total innocence in the violent ordeal. He said it appeared that Tuxen and Reith had cooperated fully with their abductors in the mistaken belief that they would be released.

“I suggest that they were trying to save their lives by doing what they were told,” said Chatfield. “But they were shot in the head instead.” Chatfield argued that Williams should be found guilty for aiding and abetting in the commission of the murders. He contended that Williams’ long criminal background and violent history was proof enough that he would be a continuing threat to society.

The six-man, six-woman jury agreed with the prosecutor. After deliberating only three and a half hours, they returned guilty verdicts of aggravated murder against Williams. They also found Williams guilty of rape, kidnapping, and robbery in connection with the murders. On Friday, April 28, 1989, following a sentencing hearing, the same jury took only two hours to recommend that Williams be sentenced to death.

“These cases were extremely hard on everybody,” said Judge Barron before formally passing sentence. “It’s too bad that your life led to this, but two women are dead for no reason.” Barron then ordered that Williams be executed by lethal injection.

Relatives of the victims, visibly upset, told reporters afterward that they weren’t happy with the sentences for Simonsen and Williams. As opponents of the death penalty, they said they would have preferred that the two defendants be sentenced to life in prison.

Both Simonsen and Williams appealed their convictions and sentences to the Oregon Supreme Court. The court upheld Simonsen’s convictions of aggravated murder, but due to recent decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court in which it was ruled that “mitigating circumstances,” if any exist, must be considered by a jury before imposition of a death penalty, Simonsen’s death sentence was returned to a lower court for re-sentencing. However, after a new Coos County jury heard the sentencing evidence at tremendous additional cost to taxpayers, it was decided that any mitigating circumstances present in Simonsen’s life did not warrant a penalty less severe than death.

So, on January 29, 1992, David Lynn Simonsen was again sentenced to the ultimate punishment.

Similarly, in 1993, after his death sentence was set aside by the U.S. Supreme Court, a Coos County jury again sentenced Williams to death by lethal injection after rejecting his claims of having been abused as a child. At one point Williams had also argued that a sexual relationship Simonsen allegedly had with his biological mother may have been an issue that had triggered the killings, which Williams alleged that prosecutors had kept from his attorneys, to no avail.

In November 2011, Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber stated that the state’s death penalty system is “compromised and inequitable,” saying that it “fails to meet the basic standards of justice,” and declared a moratorium on the state’s death penalty effectively halting any executions while he is governor. The last execution in Oregon occurred in 1997.

Editor ’s Note: Fred Newman is not the real name of the person so named in the foregoing story. A fictitious name has been used because there is no reason for public interest in the identity of this person.

A Rage to Destroy the Pristine Screen Beauty?

The beautiful young screen actress Rebecca Schaeffer must’ve been excited, even overwhelmed, by the challenges awaiting her. In less than an hour – at 11:00 AM – on Tuesday, July 18, 1989 – she would be meeting famed director Francis Ford Coppola to read for a part in his upcoming film, The Godfather, Part III. At the age of 21, she was already an experienced and accomplished actress, but she had been rehearsing for the audition for days. Naturally, she wanted to be at her best. It wasn’t every day that one got a chance to read for Coppola.

A comer in Hollywood, she had already co-starred with Pam Dawber in the TV series, My Sister Sam, in which she played Patti Russell, Sam’s ditsy younger sister. She had also appeared on two television soap operas, One Life to Live and Guiding Light, and had a role in an episode of Amazing Stories on NBC. She had fared well on the big screen, too. Early in her career she had nabbed a walk-on role in Woody Allen’s Radio Days. Only recently, she costarred in One Point of View, directed by Dyan Cannon, Scenes from the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills.

With those credits already behind her, Rebecca’s star was on the rise.

Those in the motion picture industry knew that the part in the Coppola film, if she obtained it, would be the vehicle to push her over the top.

Tragically, Rebecca’s time ran out that fateful morning before she would keep her appointment with Coppola…

Rebecca’s doorbell rang at 10:15 AM. Her apartment’s intercom system was broken and it was impossible to know who was calling without going to – and perhaps opening – the outer security door and the hallway.

Rebecca walked to the door and opened it. A shot rang out and she slumped to the floor in a heap.

Violent crime is rampant in many areas of Los Angeles, but not in the city’s quiet, ritzy Fairfax District, located near Beverly Hills and West Hollywood.

Rebecca’s neighbor, Dave Casey, was startled by the deafening commotion. He’d been sitting in his living room when he heard the gunshot, followed by two bloodcurdling screams. He could tell the noises came from next door.

Unhesitatingly, he ran outside to see what was amiss. He founded the young actress lying on her back in the building’s entrance. There was a patch of blood at the center of her chest, growing larger with each passing second.

Quickly, Casey returned to his apartment and called 911. In an excited and agitated state, he briefly described what he’d heard and found, and gave the dispatcher and address in the 100 block of Sweetzer Avenue.

He was assured that police cruisers and a team of paramedics would be along within minutes.

Even though help was on the way, Casey knew he had to begin administering first aid if Rebecca was to have even a slim chance of survival.

He took several towels to the fallen actress and pressed them to the wound in her chest to try to stop the bleeding. But it was no use. The blood continued to flow from her body, completely soaking the towel compresses almost as quickly as he could press them in place.

Even as he feverishly worked to stem the blood flow, all color drained from her face.

As this was going on, homicide Detective Dan Andrews was going over some active case files when his telephone rang.

Somehow, he knew, intuitively, even before he picked up the phone, that he was being summoned outdoors and would soon be confronting the sweltering smog-filled jungle of concrete, steel, glass, and wide boulevards that made up much of L.A. Still, he had to answer the call.

He was hastily informed of the shooting in the Fairfax District.

According to departmental procedure, it was his turn to head an investigation, and this was going to be his case.

Uniformed officers and paramedics, the dispatcher told him, were already on the scene. So were curious onlookers and neighbors. Detective Andrews surmised that crowd control could be a problem. He knew he would be facing chaos over there.

As Detective Andrews hurried to his patrol car and sped to the scene, he must’ve recalled a chilling murder of Poltergeist actress Dominique Dunne in 1981, and the near-fatal stabbing of Raging Bull actress Theresa Saldana a year later. Both of these incidents had remarkable parallels to this crime.

Detective Andrews arrived shortly, accompanied by fellow Detectives Frank Bolan and Paul Coulter, and he briefly conferred with the officers who had responded to the original call. He was informed that the wound Rebecca had sustained had caused considerable damage.

There were witnesses, he was told, but it was going to be difficult to sort them from the curious onlookers.

Andrews instructed the uniformed officers to round up the witnesses and traverse Sweetzer Avenue and the adjoining side streets in search of the shooter and any evidence that might prove pertinent to the case.

Although they doubted that Rebecca would survive, the paramedics worked frantically and did what they could for her at the scene, then whisked her off to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center by ambulance. Her condition grew worse en route and she was pronounced dead on arrival at 10:45 AM. By this time news-hungry reporters, who are often at the scene of a crime before police, or wandering through the district’s well-manicured lawns and elegant, tree-lined streets. They were asking questions of the inhabitants, which consists of both young and old, middle class and wealthy, prominent and unknown.

Most were clearly disturbed by what had occurred, shocked by the savage brutality and senselessness of the crime. Some had important information about a suspicious stranger seen lurking in the area that morning.

“This is a quiet neighborhood,” said one resident, who had a business nearby. “Things like this aren’t supposed to happen here. We have a lot of notables around here and there has never been any real trouble. I didn’t hear the shot, but there were a lot of people gathered around outside when I came out. It was madness.”

Another resident told a policeman and a reporter that she had observed a bookish-looking man with curly brown hair flashing a photo of Rebecca Schaeffer several hours before the shooting.

Another witness confirmed this description and said that the stranger had been in the area for several hours showing Schaeffer ’s photo and asking

questions about the young actress, including her whereabouts.

He had been particularly concerned about verifying precisely where she lived, said the witness.

As the canvass widened, Investigators Andrews, Bolan and Coulter interviewed witnesses closest to the crime scene who heard – or perhaps even saw – the shooting. They worked quickly and methodically, their desire, naturally, being to retrieve as many details as possible while the events were still fresh in the witnesses’ minds.

Among those interviewed was Dave Casey, who, although still visibly upset, was able to tell the probers about the gunshot and the victim’s screams.

“There were two screams,” he said. “Not the kind of screams when you’re surprised. They’re the screams of a woman who was extremely hurt. I knew something was wrong then.”

He explained how he had found the young, gravely injured woman, called authorities, then returned to the scene to try and stop her bleeding.

Another witness, also an actress, informed the probers of Schaeffer ’s inoperable intercom, and explained that the only way she could see was summoning her was to go to the front door.

She said she heard Schaeffer walk past her apartment only seconds before hearing a loud blast and Schaeffer ’s screams. When she opened her own door and peered into the hall, she said, she saw Schaeffer lying in the foyer, moaning.

But why would Rebecca have opened the door to someone she didn’t know?

“There is some speculation that the (shooter) may have stood to either

side of the window in the door,” said Officer Roger Mora. “She could have opened the door without knowing who was there, but that’s only speculation.”

Yet another witness told police of a man he saw jogging from the area right after the shooting. The man, according to the witness, fit the same general description of the man seen by other witnesses flashing Rebecca’s photo.

The suspect fled north on Sweetzer Avenue and then east down an alley.

In the alley behind the building, he said, “was a man with a yellow shirt and short kinky hair, trotting up the block.”

Andrews and his colleagues now knew the approximate time of the shooting, and they had eyewitnesses who they hoped could place a suspect at or near the scene of the crime.

But who was this mystery man? And what could possibly have been his motive for shooting the young actress?

Working under the simple premise that the sooner he identified a suspect, the sooner his questions would likely be answered, Andrews brought in a police artist to work up a composite of the suspect from the witnesses’ descriptions.

When completed, it was to be distributed to the print and broadcast media and to other law enforcement agencies in the region.

Andrews also requested a forensics wagon. When it arrived, specialists began searching the area where Rebecca was shot, concentrating their efforts on the porch, the outer entrance to the apartment building, and the foyer.

Experts meticulously searched for latent fingerprints in the doorway and on the intercom panel.

Believing that the gunman was still in the area police promptly set up a dragnet operation in an attempt to locate and apprehend him. Witnesses reported seeing a suspect discard items as he fled up the alley. Police hoped he’d also tossed aside his weapon.

They launched an extensive search of the area near Schaeffer ’s apartment in an effort to recover the items.

Their search took them well into Tuesday night. By now, they knew that the suspect had successfully eluded their dragnet and, in all likelihood, taken the gun with him.

According to Detective Bolan, the investigators had developed no motive as yet for Schaeffer ’s killing. They were looking into the possibility that the attacker was one of her fans. Police had not found any records of fan harassment, and there was nothing to indicate that she had known her killer.

In an attempt to better understand her life and, perhaps, to uncover someone who might have wanted to do her harm, the detectives began interviewing those closest to her, including friends, relatives, and professional associates. At every turn, background information revealed that the young victim was well-liked, just as they had expected.

“She didn’t have an enemy in the world,” said her agent. “She was one of the nicest people I’ve ever known – sincere, honest and kind. She was a very successful young actress, on the ascent, getting a job after job. I can’t believe this has happened.”

“Words cannot express the grief and rage that I feel,” said actress Pam Dawber. “My question is, ‘Why?’ My heart and sorrow go to her mother and father for losing such a beautiful child.”

Probing deeper into her personal history, the detectives learned that

Rebecca was born on November 6, 1967, in Eugene, Oregon. She moved to Portland with her family in 1980. She went to Lincoln High School until her junior year when, at age 16, she moved to New York City to embark on a modeling career and complete her education at the Children’s Professional School.

She subsequently appeared in Seventeen Magazine, then travel to Japan, where she modeled for one year.

“From my standpoint, it seemed very natural,” Rebecca had said in an interview about her decision to leave home for a modeling career. “But I know my parents went through hell.”

Schaeffer ’s hopes of a career as a fashion model were soon thwarted.

Because she stood at 5 feet 7 inches tall, two inches short of the minimum standard for fashion models in the United States, the career she had eagerly gone after didn’t take off.

Rebecca hadn’t despaired. She moved to Los Angeles, where she pursued acting, paying her high rent and bills through temporary roles in soap operas and walk-on parts in movies.

But the money wasn’t enough, and soon her telephone was disconnected and her bank cards canceled. Still, she didn’t give up.

When things looked bleakest, Rebecca began searching for waitress jobs at cafes, coffeehouses and bars, with no luck. Finally, a break came in 1986 when she returned home to her meager apartment after a day of jobhunting and found a note taped to her door.

It was from Warner Brothers, requesting that she auditioned for a costarring role on My Sister Sam. She got the part, and from that time on her future was made.

At 2:00 AM the next morning, in an unusual development that occurred even as investigators continued running down leads, LAPD detectives received a telephone call from a woman in Knoxville, Tennessee. It turned out to be their first real break in the case.

The woman, who identified herself as a relative of 19-year-old John Bardo of Tucson, Arizona, told detectives that Bardo had called her only minutes before Schaeffer was killed.

She said that Bardo had described traveling to California to see the actress. He said he planned to harm Rebecca, but he hadn’t told the relative enough to prompt her to notify the authorities earlier.

She said that Bardo had written to her previously and said that if he “couldn’t have Schaeffer, no one could.”

She explained that she hadn’t realized the seriousness of Bardo’s call until she heard that Schaeffer had been killed.

“She told us that Bardo had a fixation for Miss Schaeffer and had expressed the intent to harm her,” said Detective Andrews. “He was an obsessive fan, and there were indications that he had written affectionate letters to her and had tried to contact her a number of times in the past.”

The relative, according to Andrews, also told investigators that Bardo kept several videocassettes of the My Sister Sam series, and had obtained an autographed picture of Schaeffer.

A short time later, anticipating that Bardo might return to his home in Arizona, LAPD contacted Tucson police to inform them of the tip they had received. Tucson police assured their colleagues in Los Angeles that they would be on the lookout for the young man and would immediately began checking things out at their end.

Some eight hours later, and what initially seemed unrelated to the Schaeffer case, a young male pedestrian walked onto the Interstate 10 freeway near downtown Tucson and began “playing tag” with fast-moving cars, zigzagging on foot near a freeway exit.

The responding officers reported that he appeared to be disoriented and dirty, and was possibly attempting to commit suicide by running toward oncoming cars, and hurling himself at them.

His suicidal behavior wreaked havoc with the traffic, and there were several instances in which he nearly succeeded in getting himself killed.

Fortunately, the police arrived quickly and arrested the young man for jaywalking.

It wasn’t until approximately 10:00 AM that a connection was made between the Tucson jaywalker case and the Los Angeles slaying of Rebecca Schaeffer.

Suspecting that Bardo had just gotten off a Greyhound bus from Los Angeles shortly before walking onto the freeway, Tucson authorities began to query him about the Schaeffer case. They advised him of his Miranda rights, but, according to the Tucson police spokesman, Sergeant Paul Hallums, Bardo was willing to talk.

“The guy’s real passive with everybody,” said Hallums. “He’s passive and polite with everybody.”

being

According to Detective Andrews, “Bardo made statements (to Tucson police) that led us to believe he was connected to the murder.”

Andrews sent Detectives Coulter and Bolan to Tucson to question the suspect.

Although Arizona officials were unwilling to disclose all that was said during their interviews with Bardo, they did release some of the details.

Among the things they said Bardo had told them was that he had discarded a yellow shirt, a gun holster, and a book near Schaeffer ’s apartment. The book, it turned out, was a classic novel about an alienated, depressed youth, J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. The book, reflected detectives, had been the choice of John Lennon’s assassin, Mark David Chapman, which he placidly read after shooting the former Beatle on December 8, 1980, in New York City.

Over the next several hours, Los Angeles police searched the yards and buildings adjacent to the alley near Schaeffer ’s apartment with the man with the yellow shirt had been seen trotting up the block after the shooting.

It took awhile, but police found a yellow shirt above a dry-cleaning shop and the red paperback book on the roof of a rehabilitation center. The holster was also found nearby.

Unfortunately it held no handgun.

“It could have been picked up by a passerby, or if it was discarded in a trash can, it might have been picked up and disposed of by now,” said Detective Andrews.

Andrews said the gun was believed to have been a .357-caliber Magnum, purchased legally in Tucson. Although there is no background check to purchase a gun in Arizona (at that time), one must be 21 – Bardo was 19 – and an Arizona resident.

“We know where, when and how the gun was purchased,” said Andrews.

Although he revealed few details about the purchase of the gun, Andrews said

that the gun may have been originally purchased by someone else and given to Bardo at a later time.

Meanwhile, the search of Bardo’s home in Tucson where he lived with his family turned up videotapes of My Sister Sam. A relative told detectives that Bardo knew who Schaeffer was, but insisted that Bardo’s interest in the actress wasn’t out of the ordinary.

“He watched her on TV, and he was a fan of hers,” said a relative. “But he watched a lot of shows. It wasn’t as if he was an obsessive fan. He didn’t have any photos of her on his walls.”

Bardo had attended Pueblo High School in Tucson during his freshman and sophomore years, but despite grades of all A’s and one B, he dropped out.

School officials barely remembered him when called on by authorities, and they said they assumed he’d transferred to another school or moved when he failed to return for his junior year.

“He was just a face in the crowd,” said an assistant principal at the school. “The only mention of him is in the freshman class picture. From what we know, he didn’t participate in any activities.”

Investigators learned that until a week before Schaeffer’s slaying Bardo had been employed as a custodian at a fast-food restaurant near his home.

Employee said he’d been unable to cope with the pressures of working in a fast-food environment.

Neighbors painted an unfavorable picture of the suspect in their descriptions to police and members of the press, saying that Bardo often exhibited bizarre, sometimes destructive behavior. He was often seen hanging from the eaves of his parents’ single-story house, swinging himself in through the windows, and was often seen charging into a concrete wall in his backyard.

“He was always out acting funny,” said a kid from Bardo’s middle-class subdivision. “He used to jump out of the windows a lot and (would) often get down on his knees and scratch at the side of the house.”

Other neighbors said it wasn’t unusual for him to play hide-and-seek with imaginary friends in his front yard. Many said they had initially been concerned about Bardo’s bizarre behavior, but had become accustomed to it over time. Some said he was prone to wide mood swings, and others portrayed him as potentially violent.

A few days before Schaeffer ’s slaying, police learned, Bardo had become upset because of a neighbor ’s party and threatened to quiet things down with a .357-caliber Magnum.

“If you don’t shut up, I’m going to get my .357-caliber Magnum and shoot you,” a guest of the party quoted Bardo as saying.

“He said he would come back and bring his .357-Magnum,” said the neighbor responsible for throwing the party. “But he never came back. The next day he said, ‘I’m sorry it happened. I didn’t feel very good.’”

“He was a real ‘Psycho’ guy,” said yet another neighbor in his characterization of the slaying suspect.

Investigators learned that Bardo had been sending Schaeffer letters through her agents in New York and Los Angeles for about two years.

“I wouldn’t call it a threatening letter,” Andrews said of one letter. “I would call it an affectionate letter, a bit rambling. There is no indication he ever saw it.”

Police also learned that Bardo left Tucson on a Greyhound bus bound for Los Angeles on Monday, July 17, the day before Rebecca was shot to

death. No one, it seems, had been concerned that he was missing. “(His relatives) knew he was out of town,” said Sergeant Hallums. “He does that periodically.”

He had traveled to Los Angeles several times in the past, including a trip about a month before the July 17 trip following an argument with relatives.

“There have been indications that he has visited California a number of times, and there were ongoing attempts to contact (Schaeffer),” said Andrews.

On one such occasion, on June 2, 1987, Bardo made several telephone calls to Schaeffer ’s production office, asking to speak to the actress. After his efforts failed, he showed up at the lot known as “The Ranch” at the Burbank studios where Schaeffer was taping a segment of My Sister Sam. He was carrying a teddy bear and a bouquet.

He insisted on seeing the actress to give her the flowers and the bear, but security guards refused to allow him entry. When he refused to leave, they escorted him to the office of the chief of security.

“I thought he was just lovesick, which I think he was,” the security chief told the investigators. “He was terribly insistent on being let in. ‘Rebecca Schaeffer ’ was every other word. ‘I gotta see her. I love her. If I could just see her for a minute.’”

The security chief said he told Bardo that he could not interrupt the taping of a television show, and he finally persuaded Bardo to just go home.

He told investigators that he drove Bardo to a run-down motel in Hollywood, after Bardo promised he would return to Tucson.

“He seemed to be an intelligent kid,” said the security chief. “He was no raving lunatic, no dumbbell, but something was definitely wrong, mentally.

There was something haywire going on, but I didn’t perceive it as potentially violent.”

Security has since been tightened at the studio lot.

In the uneasy aftermath of Schaeffer ’s violent death, many wondered how Bardo had been able to discover her home address so easily.

“If a person is inquisitive enough, a trail can be found,” said Detective Andrews.

Bardo, Andrews explained, found the trail six weeks before Schaeffer ’s death when he walked into the offices of a Tucson detective agency that advertises its ability to find missing persons. He showed the private investigators a studio publicity photo of the actress and explained that he was an old friend. He said he wanted her current address so he could mail her a gift. He paid the firm $250 for their services. The agency in turn easily located Schaeffer ’s home address through the California Department of Motor Vehicles’ public records.

As investigators probed deeper into Bardo’s background, they learned that Rebecca Schaeffer had not been the only celebrity he had been fascinated by. And they learned that his travels to satisfy such fascinations had not been limited to California.

In 1984, Bardo, at age 14, hitchhiked from his home in Tucson to Manchester, Maine, in an attempt to meet schoolgirl Samantha Smith, according to Tucson Police Captain Michael Ulichny.

(It should be recalled that Smith gained international recognition in 1983 when, at age 10, she became a pen-pal of then-Soviet Premier Yuri

Andropov. Later that same year, she visited the Soviet Union and became an international peace symbol. She died tragically on August 25, 1985, along with her father in a plane crash.)

In following up, LAPD detectives learned that Bardo had made at least a dozen telephone calls to Smith over a period of several months and had spoken with Samantha at least once in what was described as a long, rambling conversation.

“He was just a troubled kid,” said one of Smith’s relatives, who noted that she began screening Samantha’s calls after she became well-known.

She described Bardo as persistent but never rude.

“I finally asked him not to call anymore,” said Smith’s relative. “He was difficult to get off the phone. He keep talking and talking. You almost had to be rude to get him off the phone.”

The relative said that she never sensed Bardo was a threat to Samantha.

Bardo was picked up by the Kennebec County Sheriff’s Office only a few blocks from Samantha’s house. He had no weapons on him, and there was no indication that he planned to harm Samantha. He was held as a runaway.

Before his plans went awry in Maine, police learned, Bardo had also planned to travel to New York to seek out pop music stars Tiffany and Debbie Gibson.

Why did he have such a strong desire to meet famous females? Was he simply bored with his own life? Was he trying to make his life more meaningful? Or did he suffer from delusions, somehow believing he could win the affections of the celebrities he admired if he could only meet them?

“It looks like he felt a compulsion to meet the people he became

obsessed with,” said Sergeant Hallums. Whatever caused his seemingly uncontrollable obsessions, no one knows for certain.

After reviewing the facts of the case, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office issued a felony arrest warrant for Bardo accusing him of one count of murder. He was held without bail in the Pima County Jail in Tucson under a 24-hour suicide watch.

At his arraignment before Pima County Justice Pro Tem Walter Weber, Bardo’s bail was set at one million dollars. Public Defender Lori Lefferts was assigned to represent Bardo, who decided to fight extradition.

Meanwhile, Rebecca Schaeffer ’s family brought her body back to Portland, Oregon, for burial. More than 300 people gathered at the Ahavai Sholom Cemetery chapel to mourn Rebecca’s death, including several of her celebrity friends. Pam Dawber and her husband, actor Mark Harmon, were among those in attendance.

“We are shocked by the senselessness of what happened to Rebecca,” the rabbi told the tearful mourners were gathered around Rebecca’s light wood casket, graced with a spray of white, blue and mauve flowers.

“The truth of the matter is that her life will ultimately be a source of comfort to her parents. She had succeeded at an age where most others are still finding themselves. Perhaps what was known best about her was that she evoked admiration rather than jealousy.”

“She brought more in her short life to the other human beings than most of us bring in a lifetime,” said another rabbi. “Rebecca was a precious gift to her parents, to her friends and to the entire land. She has been snatched back to the earth, but she will never cease to touch our lives.”

In the meantime, on Thursday, August 10, 1989, in a move reminiscent

of the drama and intensity of the old Perry Mason TV mysteries, two LAPD detectives arrived in Tucson after a red-eye flight, took Bardo from the Pima County Jail and spirited him back to Los Angeles with a full approval of Los Angeles County District Attorney Ira Reiner.

The highly unusual – if not questionable – move was made possible after Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney Marcia Clark, assigned it to prosecute Bardo, discovered a momentary lapse in Arizona’s ability to hold the suspect after Bardo’s attorney, Lori Lefferts, filed the wrong motion in the wrong court to fight her client’s extradition in what amounted to a legal technicality. Lefferts, said Clark, failed to immediately take corrective action.

“I didn’t act until I was certain it was the legally proper thing and the right thing to do,” said Clark of her actions. “She (Lefferts) filed a motion in Justice Court (in Tucson), which has no jurisdiction. She should have walked across the street and filed a writ in Superior Court. The Justice Court judge couldn’t grant her a stay even if he’d wanted to.”

According to Clark, August 18 was the deadline set for the prosecution to present its extradition papers for Bardo. She added that the defense lawyers made an error by assuming that the date applied to their motion, too, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Lefferts countered by insisting that the August 18 date was the correct deadline and that she had not made an error.

“I filed the writ in the proper court before the August 18 deadline (for the writ) expired, but that was done after Bardo was illegally taken,” Lefferts said, quoted by the Los Angeles Times.

Lefferts also said that the county attorney in Tucson “apparently didn’t understand the law” regarding extradition procedures.

“And to cover up,” she said, “they have blamed me for making a mistake….We are extremely angry that (the police officers) would sneak over here in the middle of the night and do something like that,” she said.

“I’m not saying Ira Reiner did anything wrong,” said Deputy Public Defender Stephen Galindo, appointed to represent Bardo in Los Angeles.

“But all the facts surrounding the transfer are suspicious.”

Lefferts said that she’d planned to argue that Bardo was mentally incompetent and should not be extradited.

“There’s nothing I can do,” Lefferts conceded. “Arizona law does not allow me to get him back.”

A month later, despite all the defense protests, Los Angeles Municipal Court Judge David M. Horwitz ruled that Bardo was returned to California from Arizona legally. Bardo’s rights had not been violated.

On Tuesday, December 6, 1989, the preliminary hearing was held in Los Angeles Municipal Court. Following the presentation of testimony and evidence, Robert John Bardo was ordered to stand trial for murder in the shooting death of Rebecca Schaeffer. He was ordered held without bail.

According to Deputy District Attorney Marcia Clark, Bardo could face either the death penalty or life in prison without parole if convicted.

Following negotiations, Bardo agreed to have his case heard before a judge and not a jury after the state agreed not to pursue the death penalty.

Although mental illness issues were examined during the trial, in which Bardo had claimed that the U2 song, “Exit,” had been an influence in the Schaeffer killing, Bardo, in October 1991, was found guilty of murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole.

In the wake of Rebecca Schaeffer ’s violent death, legislation was introduced restricting access to driving records in California. The bill, signed into law by Governor George Deukmejian, allows Californians to request that the Department of Motor Vehicles keep their home addresses confidential. The law took effect on January 1, 1990.

In part because of Bardo’s actions and the manner in which he had obtained Rebecca Schaeffer ’s address, the U.S. federal government followed suit and later passed the Drivers Privacy Protection Act which prohibits state motor vehicles departments from disclosing the home addresses of state residents.

O n July 27, 2007, Bardo was stabbed repeatedly while on his way to breakfast in the maximum security unit at Mule Creek State Prison, located in Amador County, California. Two inmate-made weapons were found at the scene. He was treated for 11 puncture wounds at the University of California Medical Center in Davis and returned to the prison, according to officials.

The suspect in the attack was another convict, serving 82-years-to-life for second-degree murder.

Editor ’s Note: Dave Casey is not the real name of the person so named in the foregoing story. A fictitious name has been used because there is no reason for public interest in the identity of this person.

Humiliation, Torture and Murder!

The sky glared hot and blue over Portland, Oregon, on Sunday, July 20, 1986. Cecil Hoyette Higgs Jr., 41, peered out from the fashionable, comfortably air-conditioned department store where he worked in the southeast corner of the city. Even though he loved and excelled in his work, he was clearly bored on this particular day. He yearned to make the two-hour drive to the beach for a much-needed break from the store’s tailoring department where he was the assistant manager. It was a trip he had been planning to make for some time.

The temperature must have been near 100 degrees when Cecil walked out of the store and headed for his car, a 1977 Oldsmobile Cutlass, which he usually parked in a far corner of the mall’s lot designated for employee vehicles. He had left the windows open a crack, but it hadn’t helped much. No sooner had he slid behind the wheel than beads of perspiration began to pop out all over his face. As soon as he started the engine, he turned the air conditioning on high and headed for home, a small Southeast Portland apartment he shared with another man, Bruce Gagnon, who had been his roommate and friend for the previous five years.

Bruce was home when Cecil arrived. Cecil promptly told him that he was going downtown for a few hours later that evening, just to do something simple to relieve his boredom. He asked Bruce if he wanted to go with him, but Bruce politely declined and told him to have a good time without him.

Cecil then took a cool shower, changed clothes, and prepared a small meal for himself. When he had cleared his dinner dishes he said goodbye to his roommate, unaware that he would never see him again. It was shortly after 8:00 p.m. when he finally left the apartment for the last time.

When he arrived downtown, Cecil spent only a few minutes in the area.

He walked around a bit and, finding that there wasn’t much happening on a Sunday night and seeing no one that he knew, headed back to his car.

Unknown to him, however, he was being watched by three young men who followed a short distance behind him. It wasn’t until he reached out to open the door of his car that they attacked him, taking him fully by surprise.

But Cecil wasn’t the type to become anyone’s victim easily, at least not without putting up some type of resistance. He struggled angrily with his attackers, who’d made it clear from the outset that they intended to do him bodily harm, but he didn’t fight with them.

Cecil, by his very nature, simply wasn’t a fighter. Aware of their intentions he broke away and ran. But the young men chased and caught him, knocking him down only a few yards from his car. He got to his feet and ran again, only to be caught and knocked to the asphalt once more. Their knives drawn, they demanded that Cecil turn over his car keys. When he complied, one of them opened the trunk and together they forced their terrified victim inside, and then sped away from the scene in Cecil’s Cutlass.

When Cecil didn’t return home that night, Bruce naturally became a little worried. But since Cecil was planning to go to the beach the next day Bruce decided, incorrectly, that his roommate must have left town a day early. He thought little else about Cecil’s absence until two days later.

On Tuesday, July 22nd, a farmer in North Portland was walking toward one of his cucumber fields, looking towards the ground to check the progress of his labor, when he saw what appeared to be a small picture of someone encased in plastic. It was lying in the grass and, upon closer inspection, he could see that it was someone’s Oregon driver ’s license. When he picked it up he noticed another plastic card nearby, a membership card to an athletic

club. Both bore the name Cecil Hoyette Higgs Jr. The farmer thought it was a bit strange that these two pieces of identification should be found on his farm. This prompted him to pick them up and place them in his pocket. When the farmer had finished his day’s work he thought over what he might do about the mysterious identification.

Although he had never heard of Cecil Higgs, he felt it was his civic duty to at least try and get the identification back to its rightful owner.

After striking out with the Portland telephone directory, he decided to call the athletic club. They would likely have Cecil’s home telephone number, the farmer felt. The club’s number was listed, along with its address, in small print on the back of the membership card. Moments after dialing the number the farmer reported what he’d found to the club’s manager.

The club manager politely declined to provide the caller with Cecil’s telephone number, explaining that it was against club policy to do so. But when he had finished talking with the farmer, he promptly called Cecil’s home where he reached Bruce Gagnon.

Naturally, Bruce told the manager that Cecil wasn’t home and explained that he didn’t expect him for a couple of days. The manager then informed Bruce of the mysterious circumstances surrounding the discovery of Cecil’s identification. Bruce was at a loss for words as to why his roommate’s identification should be found in a North Portland cucumber field, but the implications appeared to him to be indeed sinister.

The news brought back the same uneasy feeling Bruce had experienced when Cecil failed to return home from downtown on Sunday evening, except this time the foreboding wouldn’t go away. If Cecil had merely been robbed, Bruce reasoned, he would have shown up and reported the incident to the police. A gut feeling told Bruce that something more dreadful than robbery

had happened to Cecil.

The Portland Police Bureau promptly responded to Bruce Gagnon’s request that they look into the growing mystery surrounding his missing roommate and friend. First they sent a team of officers around to speak with Gagnon, hoping to learn more about his last contact with Cecil.

“When he didn’t return home that night, I became concerned, but I thought he may have run into a friend,” Gagnon told the investigating officers. “He had planned to go to the beach the next day, which was his day off. When he didn’t come home I thought he may have left town already. But two days after he left home, I called the police,” he said, adding that he made the call to authorities after receiving the telephone inquiry from the manager of the athletic club where Cecil was a member.

In response to additional probing by the officers, Gagnon said Cecil had taken less than $20 with him when he left the apartment. A subsequent inquiry with acquaintances on the Oregon coast revealed that Cecil had not shown up where he was supposed to; he had not arrived at the beach.

After reporting their findings to their superiors and writing an official report of the interview, the investigating officers went to North Portland to interview the farmer who had found the pieces of identification. It was the trip to the farm that produced the most significant results; it also brought on a grim outlook for all those concerned. The farmer took the officers to the location where he found the identification.

“I wasn’t too concerned about finding the identification,” said the farmer as he pointed to the spot where he picked it up. “I just thought it was a little strange finding something like that out here.”

The officers agreed.

After poking around the field for a few minutes one of the officers called over to the other one, who was still talking to the farmer. He pointed out what he thought looked like blood. His partner agreed; it did look like blood, he said. But where had it come from? Was it human or animal blood?

There was no way for them to make such a determination by mere observation. The farmer told the officers that he hadn’t been injured and that he didn’t know of anyone who worked for him who had recently been hurt.

So where had the blood come from?

After collecting some blood samples and surrounding materials, mostly soil and vegetation, for analysis, the officers continued their examination of the field and adjacent areas. However, there was no body to be found there, no evidence of any recent digging and, as best as they could tell, there was no more blood anywhere else in the field.

The only thing they did find was a broken jar, and there was no way to determine at this point if it had any bearing on the case. After all they were, for now, only investigating a missing person. But the implications surrounding Cecil’s disappearance were getting more and more mysterious that couldn’t be denied.

A few hours later, the test results of the samples submitted by the officers were sent by the crime lab to the missing-persons detail. The report stated that the blood found in the field was definitely human, but from whose veins it had spilled continued to remain unknown.

Author’s note: DNA analysis at that time was just coming into being and was not being used on a regular basis yet.

At this point little else could be done. Investigators made all the usual contacts in a missing person case, including all known relatives, friends, and co-workers. Unfortunately, though, nobody could shed any light on Cecil’s

sudden disappearance. And in what they hoped wouldn’t be a futile effort, the lawmen issued a multi-state APB for Cecil’s Cutlass. Now all they could do was wait for a new lead to come in, one that they hoped would take them down the right path.

As they continued with their inquiries, the investigators learned that Cecil was a soft-spoken man, well-liked by everyone who knew him. A humanitarian, he was known to take in stray cats and attempt to find homes for them. He was also described as a master tailor who had a keen interest in costume-making for the theater, and he was known to make many of his own clothes. He had, in fact, made the shirt he was wearing the night he disappeared, detectives learned.

Nearly a week passed, and no new information surfaced regarding Cecil’s disappearance. His car hadn’t been spotted. With no new leads, it seemed as if he had simply vanished from the face of the earth.

The cops knew that he hadn’t, of course. They knew that sometimes a person who has a special reason to disappear, such as someone with too many bad debts, a marriage or love relationship that has gone sour, a bitter child custody dispute, or simply enemies for any number of reasons will vanish of his own choosing. But Cecil simply didn’t fit into such a profile. He had no reason to disappear, at least none that the cops could uncover. Instinct told them that he had met with foul play, and that he would likely turn up as a corpse sooner or later.

It was Monday, July 28th, before anything new surfaced. As it turned out, three children walking through the woods to their grandmother ’s house near Carrolls, Washington, some 50 miles to the north of Portland in rural Cowlitz County, would provide investigators with the next piece to their difficult puzzle.

It was hot, another scorcher, and the children thoroughly enjoyed the shade provided by the forest trees. It wasn’t very far to their grandmother ’s house, and the beaten path they took was their regular shortcut. They weren’t in a particular hurry—not yet, anyway—to get to their grandmother’s house.

At one point along the path, as they neared a steep embankment, one of the youngsters in the lead noticed a strong, unpleasant odor coming from the woods. He quickly brought it to the attention of the others. It was unlike anything they had ever smelled before, and the children clustered together to try in their own fashion to figure out what the odor might be. But no matter what they guessed, they couldn’t have been further from the truth. Finally, they decided to press on toward grandma’s house.

But as they got nearer to the embankment the odor turned into a definite stench, like something rotten and decaying. It seemed to be coming from the bottom of the embankment, near a narrow creek bed some 50 feet below. One of the children decided to take a peek over the embankment to see if he could spot a dead animal, perhaps a deer or a bear, but when he got a little too close to the edge, he lost his footing.

He screamed as he slid and tumbled down the embankment, and his voice echoed through the woods. The children above him were frightened out of their wits, and they didn’t know what they could do to help their friend.

They just watched in terror as the boy continued his hapless descent to the bottom.

The entire fall had taken only a few seconds, but it had seemed like eternity to the boy who had made the rough and unplanned journey. When he finally reached the bottom, however, he knew he wasn’t far from the source of the horrible odor. The stench was nearly unbearable. After he regained his senses and determined that he had not been seriously hurt, that he had sustained only a few scrapes and bruises, he turned over to get up, grateful

that nothing had been broken. That was when he saw the dead body lying next to him, almost touching him!

The boy began to scream when he saw the decomposing corpse.

Shaken, he got clumsily to his feet and moved away from the body. His eyes frantically searched for a way up the hill. He soon found it a few yards upstream from where he’d landed. After a tiresome climb, the youngster finally reached the top where his friends waited.

After he told the others what he’d encountered, the petrified children ran back the way they had come, finding sanctuary at a nearby store where they told the clerk what they’d discovered. The clerk in turn notified the Cowlitz County Sheriff’s Department.

A few minutes later, Detective Sergeant Dave Smith, accompanied by a team of deputies, arrived at the store. In a soothing manner he began asking the children, who had by this time calmed down somewhat, about their gruesome discovery. After he got as many details out of them as he could, the children led Smith and the deputies to the forest location, about a half-mile east of Interstate 5.

The lawmen had no difficulty finding the body: the stench of putrefaction led them right to it. They carefully made their way down to it, careful not to disturb any evidence. When they approached the body they covered their faces with handkerchiefs.

At a glance they could tell the body was that of a middle-aged male.

Decomposition had done its damage, though, and they knew it would be difficult to make a visual identification. The body was only partially clad, a clear indication that he had been a victim of foul play. There was no identification on or near the corpse.

From the position in which the body lay—face down—it was not possible for the lawmen to immediately determine what type of injury the person had sustained. None of the investigators dared to touch or move the body at this time; they would have to wait until it was released by the medical examiner.

Instead of concentrating on the corpse at this point, the investigators surveyed the area and. attempted to determine the dimensions of the crime scene. Preliminary examination of the site indicated that the victim had been thrown over the embankment. There were clearly two sets of marks made in the earth, a few feet apart. One they determined was made by the victim when he was tossed over the side and the other by the youngster ’s unexpected tumble.

Detective Smith instructed the deputies to cordon off the area and to designate it as a crime scene, and asked them to stand by as sentries until additional personnel arrived. In the meantime Smith radioed his findings to headquarters and requested that a coroner and a crime scene crew be sent to the area as quickly as possible.

He then contacted the children who discovered the body and, after obtaining their parents’ permission to question them again, attempted to obtain additional details surrounding their terrifying ordeal. However, Smith soon concluded they had told him everything they knew and he returned to the crime scene, where he found Cowlitz County Coroner D.F. Winebrenner examining the body.

Detective Smith would have loved to determine the exact time of the victim’s death. He knew that was impossible, however. Experience had taught him there was no accurate way to accomplish such a thing. The most he could hope for was the coroner ’s best estimate based on the victim’s body temperature, state of rigor mortis, and degree of decomposition.

The victim’s body temperature, the coroner told him, was consistent with someone who had been dead for several days. Rigor mortis, he said, had quickly come and gone, completing its cycle rapidly due to the hot outdoor temperature. The scorching heat also accounted for the rapid decomposition and the fact that the body had actually swelled up and burst in certain anatomical sections, he said. Given these conditions, the coroner said his best estimate of the time of death was approximately a week earlier. Had the victim been there any longer, he said, especially in the hot outside temperature, the state of decomposition would have been much more advanced.

When the body was turned over on its back, everyone present at the crime scene could easily discern the telltale V-shaped wounds on his chest, the type of wounds consistent with those made by a single-blade knife. There were several such wounds on the victim’s chest, leaving the investigators with little doubt that he had been stabbed to death.

After the body was thoroughly photographed at the crime scene from every imaginable angle, it was placed inside the body bag and sealed. It was taken to the Cowlitz County Morgue, where the coroner conducted a thorough, definitive autopsy shortly after its arrival.

His conclusions hadn’t changed. The victim had died from multiple stab wounds, seven in all. Three wounds penetrated the lungs and liver, causing the victim to bleed to death. Some weren’t all that deep. There were also five slash wounds to the victim’s throat, none of which would have been fatal.

Someone had clearly tried to cut the victim’s throat but had failed. Because the victim had bled to death and, judging from the amount of blood found at the crime scene, it appeared likely that he was still alive, perhaps even conscious, when the perpetrators dumped his body down the embankment.

The next problem confronting the Cowlitz County lawmen was identifying the victim. There was no one on missing-person reports within their jurisdiction that even vaguely fit their John Doe’s description. That didn’t automatically rule out that he could have been from their area, though.

With little to go on, the investigators decided to begin checking missingperson reports that covered the northwest region.

They began with those from Portland, Oregon and Clark County, Washington, simply because that was the largest and closest metropolitan area within their proximity. Fortunately for them, there weren’t many. After ruling out all the females they were left with only a few males. Only one of them came close to the description of their homicide victim. His name was Cecil Hoyette Higgs Jr. After studying the sketchy information contained in the report, Detective Smith promptly got in touch with Portland authorities and asked for their assistance in verifying identification.

Dental records were promptly driven up from Portland. There was no longer any doubt: the forest murder victim was definitely Cecil Higgs Jr. Cecil’s roommate had expected the worst. Just the same, he was griefstricken upon receiving the grim news. Even though he never expected Cecil to turn up alive, he said, he had held out in hopeful anticipation.

“I called the police (when Cecil disappeared), and they went out to the cucumber field and searched the area, but couldn’t find (much),” he said, choking back tears. “A week later they found Cecil’s body. Now that I know what happened it makes me sick.”

Within hours, Cecil’s body was released to the Oregon State Medical Examiner ’s Office and transported back to Portland. There Dr. Larry

Lewman, state medical examiner, reviewed the autopsy report and examined the body. He concurred with the Cowlitz County Coroner ’s findings as to the cause of death.

A short time later, the Portland Police Bureau received word from the Mount Vernon, Washington Police Department that they had arrested three youths driving Cecil Higgs’ Oldsmobile. According to Henry Groepper, information officer for the Portland Police Bureau, a team of homicide detectives was promptly sent to Mount Vernon, some 60 miles north of Seattle.

One of those arrested while in possession of Cecil’s car was under 18, and his name was not released. The other two said they were both 18, and they were identified as DePaul E. Jackson and Tyrone Washington, both of Portland. Following interviews with the suspects, the investigators indicated they had received information that was useful to their case but they would not be specific at this point. All three suspects were returned to Oregon, and Jackson and Washington were each indicted on charges of aggravated murder, robbery, kidnapping, and unauthorized use of a motor vehicle. After additional inquiries, the juvenile was charged with unauthorized use of a motor vehicle and turned over to juvenile authorities.

“It was totally random,” said Portland Police Bureau Detective Larry Findling shortly after the suspects’ arrests. Findling said their investigation, which consisted primarily of interviews with the suspects, revealed that Cecil, a native of Houston, Texas, who moved to Portland five years earlier, was attacked at knifepoint and then kidnapped while he attempted to get into his car in downtown Portland.

“It could have been you, it could have been me. It was a mugging by people who needed some money,” Findling said. “(The victim) didn’t know his attackers and he never fought with them. He ran from them twice and was

knocked down twice.”

According to Sergeant James Cunningham, also of the Portland Police Bureau’s homicide division, Cecil was caught shortly after attempting to run, was thrown into the trunk of his car and was driven to a cucumber field in a remote part of North Portland. From the interviews, said Cunningham, it appeared that Cecil was taken from the trunk, robbed, and then stabbed, after which his assailants loaded him back into the car ’s trunk and drove him to Washington. Although investigators did not yet know if Cecil was still alive when he was loaded into the trunk a second time, Cunningham said criminalists found blood in the car’s trunk that matched Cecil’s.

During a routine background check of the suspects, detectives learned that Jackson had no known prior criminal history. He lived in the 4100 block of Northeast Eighth Avenue, an area replete with gangs, drugs, and prostitutes, and had earlier worked at the Union Avenue Disco located nearby, a community eyesore frequented by pimps, dealers, and the like.

Washington, on the other hand, had a history fighting and had been expelled from the Job Corps for such behavior, the detectives learned. The suspect had described himself as a “wild street-wise kid.” At the time of his arrest, he had living in the 5800 block of East Burnside Street and, aside from the fighting, had no prior criminal history. The detectives subsequently learned that Washington was only 17 at the time of his arrest for Cecil Higgs’ murder, making him, under Oregon law, ineligible for the death penalty if convicted. Nonetheless, Washington was remanded to adult court.

In the meantime, Jackson, who could be sentenced to death if convicted, worked out a plea agreement through his attorney, Bradley Grove, with Multnomah County Deputy District Attorneys Patrick K. Callahan and Charles R. French to avoid such a possibility. Under the plea negotiations, Jackson

agreed to testify against Washington and to provide additional details of the crime in return for the state’s assurance that they would not seek the death penalty, and a promise that charges of kidnapping, robbery and car theft would be dismissed. On Friday, January 9, 1987, the plan was presented to Multnomah County Circuit Judge Robert W. Redding, who accepted Jackson’s guilty plea to aggravated murder. Redding then sentenced him to 30 years in the Oregon State Penitentiary, where he remains today. According to Oregon state prison authorities, Jackson’s earliest potential parole date is April 28, 2014.

Washington’s case went to trial six months later, in July, almost a year after Cecil Higgs was kidnapped and murdered. The trial lasted five days, and jurors heard evidence from detectives, a coroner and a medical examiner, crime lab technicians and criminalists. They even heard testimony from acquaintances of the defendant, who said Washington and Jackson had bragged to them about the killing. But the most dramatic testimony came from Jackson, who provided intimate details of his and Washington’s sordid activities.

Jackson explained how he and Washington randomly selected Cecil as a robbery victim in downtown Portland and how they attacked him on the street. After loading him into the trunk of his own car, said Jackson, they drove him to a cucumber field in North Portland where they beat him repeatedly and forced him to strip naked. After taunting him for a while, they robbed him of $10, took his watch, a bracelet, and his car.

Jackson said that after the victim had been knocked unconscious in the cucumber field, he and Washington took turns throwing a knife into Cecil’s chest. A short time later, said Jackson, he and Washington loaded Cecil’s bleeding body back into the car trunk and drove north on Interstate 5 to Cowlitz County, Washington. They turned off the freeway near Carrolls and

drove to a secluded, wooded area.

After selecting a spot to dispose of the victim, Jackson said he and Washington dragged him to the edge of a steep hill. He was still alive, said Jackson, and moments before he and Washington tossed him over the 50-foot embankment, Jackson said he felt Cecil grabbing at his arm. After dumping him over the embankment, said Jackson, he and Washington heard him call out for help at least twice. After hearing the cries for help, Jackson said he and Washington turned up the car radio to drown them out and drove away.

Washington, at one point, took the stand in his own defense and denied any involvement in the stabbings. However, he admitted that he had pulled a knife across the victim’s throat in an attempt to slash it, but had failed because it was too dull!

The jury was not out for long. When they returned, the foreman announced that they had unanimously convicted Tyrone Washington of aggravated murder, robbery, and kidnapping. After ruling that the death penalty could not be imposed because of Washington’s age at the time of the murder, Judge Harl H. Haas set sentencing for Friday, August 29, 1987.

At his sentencing, Washington’s defense lawyers, Hap Wong and Gary Carlson, argued that Washington should not receive a longer sentence than Jackson. Wong said that Washington had a mental age of 10 or 11 and was impressionable. Otherwise, said Wong, Washington behaved well while in the company of others.

Judge Haas, however, disagreed.

“This was a case of gay bashing...of calculated torture, humiliation and killing…and intentional robbery,” said the judge. “But that wasn’t enough for these defendants. They had to kidnap him, take him to a remote field, and humiliate him by stripping him naked. Then they repeatedly stabbed him.”

The judge said the defendants showed no remorse, evident by their actions of driving their victim to yet another remote location where they dumped him over an embankment, still alive, then drove away.

After speaking his mind, Judge Haas sentenced Washington to life in prison for aggravated murder, setting a 30-year minimum before eligibility for parole. He also imposed consecutive sentences of 10 to 20 years for the kidnapping and robbery convictions, bringing Washington’s total to 50 years.

Washington is now serving his sentences at the Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution and has a potential parole date of July 22, 2016, according to Oregon state authorities.

Editor’s Note: Bruce Gagnon is not the real name of the person so named in the foregoing story. A fictitious name has been used because there is no reason for public interest in the identity of this person.

New Mexico’s Murder Most Foul!

The young dark-haired woman, although pudgy and looking somewhat pregnant, had a pretty face. Her eyes wide with excitement, she strode out of the house, raring to go. She had a mission to accomplish and, although it was a dark mission that no one but she understood, she was nonetheless full of anticipatory adrenaline as she climbed into her car and backed onto the street. Today, July 23, 1987, was going to be the day, no doubt about that. She had waited long enough. She thought aggressive and alive, and she knew she was finally going to get what she had wanted for such a long, long time—a baby.

By the time she had driven for a while, thinking through the details of her mission again and again, she began to look vacant and spent, her face set in deep thought a sheet wheeled her car off Gibson Boulevard toward the main gate of Kirtland Air Force Base (AFB).

With temperatures in the nineties and clear, sunny skies, it was a typically arid day in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The San Mateo Mountains were visible to the west, the Manzano Mountains to the east.

The security policeman on duty, an airman first-class, looked somewhat bored when she pulled up and stopped. Donning sunglasses, the young airman stock is ahead of his small gate–post cubicle and, seeing the small base identification decal on the left front bumper of the woman’s car, smiled and saluted his approval for her to pass into the highly secured military installation.

The woman knew exactly where she was going. She drove past the federal townhouses of base housing, past the civil engineering plant and the Veterans Administration hospital, until she reached her destination: a small

clinic near the main hospital. Her excitement returned as she pulled into the parking lot, and her vacant look soon turned into one of extreme preoccupation.

After she found a parking space near the clinic’s front door, she began her vigil. She watched the people come and go, nervously rubbing her fingernails with her thumb as she scanned the waiting room’s interior through a plate-glass window. She disregarded the men, but paid close attention to the women, particularly the pregnant ones going in for a routine prenatal checkup. Not any pregnant woman would do; she had to find one nearing full-term and not accompanied by her husband in order to successfully complete her mission. Finally she found the right one, and her macabre plan was set in motion.

Inside, a pretty young brunette slid off the examining table. When the doctor told her that all was going well, a blush of pleasure rose to her cheeks.

Wrapped in a warm bunting of her own feelings of impending motherhood, expressed her gratitude to the doctor. Even though she’d given birth once before, the miracle of motherhood still seemed to her something wonderful, beyond her When the young mother-to-be came out, the woman in the car swiveled her head to keep her in view. Reassured and taking confidence from the gun gripped tightly, she opened the car door and squeezed out of the driver’s seat.

Getting stiffly to her feet, she stalked the pregnant woman, a deliberate quickness in her every movement.

Her prey, at one point, saw the other woman watching her, coming toward her. Not seeing the gun at first, the woman simply stood there, near her car, watching the other woman approach. Finally the oncoming woman stopped, stiffening menacingly, and the pregnant woman could see that there

was a strange, nervous unease about her. An animal instinct must have told the young mother that all was not going to be well, and when she saw the gun she had to be overcome by horror and a feeling of impending doom.

Motioning with the gun, the woman told her victim to walk ahead of her and to do what she was told. Fearing for her own life and her unborn baby’s life, she complied and got into the woman’s car. Together they drove away.

And it must have risen in the mother-to-be as they passed the gate guard, especially since they weren’t required to stop on the way out. Even though they drove at normal speed, there was simply no way for the pregnant woman to tip off the guard that she was in trouble.

They drove east on Interstate 40 for a short distance, mostly in silence, then south on New Mexico 14, gradually ascending the Manzano Mountains.

Several minutes later, the driver stopped the car in a remote mountain area, east of the city. She ordered the pregnant woman out of the car.

A strange, cold excitement filled the kidnapper ’s whole being as her eyes met the victim’s. She took a deep breath, released it, and then leaped into movement like a sprung bear trap as she grabbed the other woman by the throat, her fingers closing tightly against the cartilage and bone as they fell to the ground. The pregnant woman gasped and kept as hard as she could as the other woman’s grip tightened. But she couldn’t defend herself.

Unconsciousness gradually took over, ending the expectant mother ’s final hair-raising, heart-pounding moments of terror.

Her bloodlust at fever pitch, the kidnapper let out a crazy, full-throated shriek as she searched for something sharp, anything she could use to open up her victim. Finally she decided on a simple key, not large but sharp enough on the edges to do the job.

After exposing the soft flesh of the victim’s stomach, the woman

scratched feverishly with the key until the skin broke. As she continued to scratch and scrape, a pool of blood bloomed from the victim’s abdomen, slowly at first, then poured out into a large puddle as the cut deepened. At last she could see the unborn baby, and she desperately tore more flesh to get at it so she could pull it out of its mother’s womb.

Meanwhile, 23-year-old Cindy Lynn Ray’s husband, who worked as a security policeman at Kirtland, was already frantic with worry about Cindy’s well-being. He was to have met her at the base clinic and was running late due to finishing up work related paperwork nearby. When he arrived at the clinic, he had noticed that Cindy’s car was still in the clinic’s parking lot. When he made inquiries inside he learned that Cindy had kept her appointment and had apparently already left. A clinic staff member told him that Cindy’s prenatal checkup had shown that there were no problems with her pregnancy.

So where could she be? Could she have gone into labor unexpectedly, after leaving the clinic? If so, why hadn’t someone called to inform him? Of course if there had been an emergency, there might not have been time for anyone to contact him immediately. But wouldn’t someone at least know about it and have gotten in touch with him as soon as possible?

Her husband began calling friends and other relatives to try to determine where she had gone. Much to his dismay, however, no one had seen her.

He checked with the hospital, but there was no record of Cindy having been admitted. Under any other circumstances he might have waited a while to see what had happened, perhaps allow a little time for Cindy to call. But with her condition, he couldn’t afford to take chances. He had to act quickly, not only for Cindy’s and the baby’s sakes, but to quell his own steadilymounting anxiety. Without wasting a single minute, the worried man notified the police of the suspicious circumstances.

A short time later, a policeman arrived at their home. After attempting to console Cindy’s husband, the officer took a detailed statement from him of the suspicious circumstances surrounding the missing woman. When the officer was satisfied that he had all the necessary particulars, he assured Cindy’s husband that his department would do all they could to try and find her and would be in touch as soon as they had something to report.

“It didn’t make any sense,” he later told a reporter for the Associated Press. “But I was a trained police officer, and I went through all the logical things at first…after a while the options started making less and less sense, that they were all I had.”

Sadly, Cindy did not return home that evening. This was highly unusual, and totally out of character for the young woman. It simply wasn’t like her to go somewhere without telling someone or leaving a note, particularly since the time of birth of her child was nearing. Cindy sold Tupperware for extra money, and her husband’s law enforcement instinct prompted him to contact Cindy’s Tupperware manager to make inquiries with Cindy’s contacts to determine if anyone had seen her.

Meanwhile, at an Albuquerque car dealership, a somewhat distraught young woman entered the showroom just before closing time that same evening. She was carrying a baby wrapped in the dress she was wearing. Sales manager Tom Nelson recognized the young woman as having recently visited the dealership with her husband, shopping for a new car. He couldn’t immediately remember her name but, seeing her obvious state of distress he rushed over to her and asked her if she needed his help. He could see from her disheveled state and general nervous condition that she was not there to purchase a car.

After speaking with her for a few minutes, Nelson learned that the woman’s name was Darci Kayleen Pierce, 19, and he was informed by her that

she’d given birth to the child following a traffic accident. Nelson promptly instructed a salesman to call for an ambulance, after which he notified a relative of Pierce’s of the unusual circumstances. It was a few minutes past 10:00 PM when the ambulance arrived. After a brief examination in which vital signs were noted, Pierce and the infant were placed inside the emergency vehicle. Nelson sent one of the dealership managers with Pierce to the hospital to offer comfort and assistance.

It was about 10:30 PM when the ambulance arrived at the University of New Mexico Hospital’s emergency entrance. The baby girl weighed in at 6 pounds 8 ounces, and doctors determined that she was about two weeks premature. However, she appeared to be in good condition.

Pierce told the emergency room physicians that she had been in an automobile accident and had delivered the baby herself earlier that evening.

Results of an additional examination of Pierce and the baby, however, contradicted Pierce’s statements. Finding nothing to indicate that Pierce had actually given birth to the child, or to any child for that matter, doctors eventually determined that the baby had been born through Caesarean section. But where was the mother? Suspicious at this point, the medical personnel notified police.

When the police arrived, they were informed by emergency room personnel of the details Pierce provided to them, the inconsistencies revealed by the examination, and of the name of the car dealer who accompanied her to the hospital. A relative of Pierce’s told police that the baby wasn’t hers.

Unfortunately, the relative couldn’t tell them who the baby belong to, nor were the police getting much information from Pierce herself at this point.

She was taken into custody while investigators tried to ferret out additional information about the bizarre series of events.

Hoping to unravel the mystery as quickly as possible, detectives promptly contacted Tom Nelson, the dealership sales manager. Even though it was late, Nelson was cooperative and provided the sleuths with some significant information. Among the things Nelson recalled was that Darci Pierce and a male relative had been to his dealership a little more than a week before.

“They said they just wrecked one of their cars and the insurance company gave them a settlement,” said Nelson. Nelson told lawmen that Pierce said she had only been in the area for a few weeks, but he added that he had since learned she had been there since May. “The woman appeared to be pregnant, very much so,” Nelson said of Pierce’s first visit to his dealership. Nelson said the woman had told him a decision on a new car would be made following the birth of her baby.

“The next time I saw her she had a newborn baby, wrapped in the dress she was wearing,” Nelson told the detectives. “She told me she had labor pains while driving down the highway, drove off the road, and delivered the baby herself.”

He said Pierce had told him she came to his dealership because it was one of the few places in town she could remember how to find. Nelson added that Pierce told him she had bitten the umbilical cord to sever it after delivery.

Nelson told the detectives that he and Pierce talked for a while about babies, and after she became comfortable with them, she asked him to help her. He agreed, and sent her to the hospital with one of the other managers.

“At the time it made me feel pretty good,” said Nelson, adding that he had called one of Pierce’s relatives and informed him that Pierce had given

birth to a baby girl. Nelson said that the relative “seemed genuinely pleased, but was curious as to why she was at the dealership.”

Police Lieutenant Roger Anderson, now assigned to the case, soon saw, after being briefed and studying the reports, that he had his work cut out for him with this case. His analytical mind skeptical of the surface truths he’d been told, Anderson continued to pore over the reports throughout the night.

Finally, as dawn came up and painted the eastern sky a delicate rose color while much of the world slept, Anderson considered the various strategies he might use in dealing with Pierce to get her to talk. After deciding on a game plan, he and another investigator approached her with their questions.

After questioning Pierce at length about the circumstances that led up to her arriving at the car dealership, then at the hospital with a newborn baby, it’s real mother as yet unknown, the detectives finally obtained a significant statement from the woman.

Although specifics of what she told investigators were not immediately made public, the detectives learned enough for them to speculate that another woman had died, probably at the hands of Darci Pierce. It soon became apparent to Anderson and his investigators that they were dealing with a case of what had become known as Caesarean kidnapping. In crimes of Caesarean kidnapping, a pregnant woman is attacked and her fetus is stolen, usually leaving the mother dead. The perpetrator in such a case is typically another woman who wants to be a mother herself but cannot for any number of reasons. After considerable quizzing, Darci agreed to show the investigators where she had obtained the baby and where, most likely, lay the remains of the real mother. Accompanied by relatives and an attorney, Pierce led the law enforcement officials in to a remote area of the Manzano Mountains.

Barely 20 minutes later, the officials pulled off the main road at a location designated by Pierce. Most of those present were grim-faced as

they climbed out of their cars, and most were prepared for a gruesome discovery. Just what they would find they weren’t yet altogether sure of, but most agreed that it would not be pleasant. It was too fresh and sunny a day for any of them to dwell on such disturbing thoughts, particularly before they knew for sure what awaited them.

The officials had walked only a few yards, however, before they saw a sprawled shape lying in the foreground, accentuated by the shadows cast by the morning sun. One of the investigators stopped in mid-stride, cold dread climbed his middle as he recognized the silhouette as a human corpse. As he approached it his breast rose heavily, and he suddenly felt sick to his stomach.

With mute, stupefied faces, the others and stared in stunned disbelief at the atrocity that lay before them. Many would recall that it was truly a sight from hell.

The corpse was a young female, the investigators noted. She had sustained a gaping tear near the center of the abdomen. Blood had flowed around and beneath the body and much of it had soaked into the dusty earth.

The victim, it appeared, had lost much of her blood, detectives recalled.

There was also dried, frothy saliva around the mouth, and markings in the area of her neck suggested to those present that she had been strangled.

Lieutenant Anderson, aware of the missing-person report on Cindy Lynn Ray, guessed correctly that this was the body of the expectant mother.

Within minutes after the grisly discovery, Darci Pierce was placed under arrest for suspicion of murder and kidnapping. Several items were confiscated by police at the time of her arrest, including a fake gun and a car key. Meanwhile, Pierce was held in the Bernalillo County Detention Center in Albuquerque.

When the official from the New Mexico Office of the Medical

Investigator arrived, he took one look at Cindy Ray’s corpse, winced, gulped and momentarily turned away to regain control of his emotions before proceeding. Raising an eyebrow, the normally-phlegmatic doctor positioned himself close to the body, gritting his teeth all the while, and began his preliminary examination.

He noted that the victim’s eyes had lost their luster, which was normal after having been dead and exposed to the elements overnight. Her cheeks were hollow, their luster and resilience also gone, almost completely drained of color. He observed that what had once been a pretty and youthful face was now hideous and a leering in its macabre condition. The ghastly sight had pierced the careful psychological armament that had taken years to acquire to deal with such things. But this was just too much. Never could he have prepared himself enough to calmly face this atrocity. To break the overwhelming silence, he immediately began in general conversation to attract anyone who felt like talking, and gradually worked into the specifics of the examination.

By the time the medical examiner had finished, he told the detectives he felt reasonably certain that Cindy Ray died as a result of blood loss and strangulation. He couldn’t say for sure at this point if the victim was dead when her abdomen had been ripped open or if she died afterward, but he said additional testing during autopsy might shed some light on the matter.

Since much of the placenta, also known as the after birth that contains fetal membranes, was present, as was a portion of the umbilical cord, the medical examiner was confident that a Caesarean operation occurred at the location where the victim’s body was found. He could not, however, say with certainty that the baby in Darci Pierce’s possession when she showed up at the hospital came from the Cindy Ray’s body. To make a determination, he said, additional tests would have to be conducted.

With the July sun like a fire on the backs of their necks, crime lab technicians and detectives worked in the crime site throughout most of the day. Swabbing their perspiring faces, they collected blood and tissue samples from and near the victim’s body, bagged other relevant evidence, and took roll after roll of photographs. When they had finished, they packed up their gear, and Cindy Ray’s remains were placed inside a body bag and taken to the county morgue.

Simultaneously, the investigators were faced with the grim task of notifying the victim’s relatives of the tragedy. Naturally the young woman’s family took her death very hard, but they issued a prepared statement saying they felt no resentment toward the killer.

“It’s a tragic thing,” said a friend of the family. “That’s all you can say about it. Obviously, (they’re) relieved that the baby is fine.”

“She was born under a tree up in the desert,” Cindy’s husband told reporters. “By all medical standards she shouldn’t have lived. It’s a medical miracle.”

Surprisingly the baby girl was in excellent condition and had not been harmed physically during her crude delivery.

Meanwhile, the sleuths attempted to establish a link between the victim and the suspect. However, after considerable inquiry, the only link they could find was that each woman had a relative stationed at Kirtland AFB. The two did not appear to know each other.

“Apparently it was a matter of opportunity,” said Lieutenant Anderson in a statement to the Associated Press. Although he didn’t release specifics of the ongoing investigation, he said his detectives had turned up the fact that Darci Pierce “wanted a baby.”

During a press conference, Mary Molina Mescall, police spokeswoman, brought the reporters up to date with what little information she was allowed to release, including the incident with Pierce and the baby at the hospital and the subsequent discovery of Cindy Ray’s body.

“It appeared the baby had been taken from Ray’s dead body by means of a crude Caesarean operation,” said Mescall, who assured anxious reporters that she would call another press conference when more information was available. The county prosecutor was also present but, like other officials, he didn’t respond.

Meanwhile, a source close to the investigation said the detectives believe Pierce used a metal key to perform the crude surgery on Cindy Ray. “The official medical report isn’t in yet,” said the source, “but right now it looks like that’s what happened.”

During their probe of Darci Pierce’s background investigators soon learned that their suspect was a former resident of Portland, Oregon. A 1985 graduate of LaSalle High School, a private Catholic school in the Portland suburb of Milwaukie, she married shortly after graduation and moved to New Mexico. During interviews in Oregon, investigators learned from one of the suspect’s former landladies that Darci was obsessed with motherhood and had once attempted to “take over” a newborn child that belonged to a relative.

Sandy Miller, the landlady described Darci and her husband as “just the loveliest couple,” and said they had lived in a duplex apartment in the 9700 block of Southeast Harny Street from May 7, 1985, until January 1987.

“They were excellent tenants, and he was a steady worker,” said Miller.

“She had an obsession with motherhood, and that’s the worst thing I could say about her. They were very nice people.” Miller also told the investigators that a female relative lived with the Pierce’s at the duplex and gave birth to a

child. When the baby came, said Miller, Darci tried to “take over the baby.” “(The relative) told me that Darci tried to take over her baby, to take full possession of it,” Miller told the detectives. “She even wanted to nurse it. She was obsessed with motherhood. I don’t know, maybe that would be a mental problem.” “(Darci) had a miscarriage when she lived here,” said Miller, “that’s what she told me. She told me the fetus starved to death because her body didn’t support nourishment. She told me, ‘There will be another time,’ when her body had recovered and she would take treatment so she could have other children. Those were her exact words.” “(The relative) said Darci told her she was pregnant when she moved out,” continued Miller. “I know she really put on a lot of weight, but it was fat. Even her legs were heavy.”

The detectives noted that the auto sales manager in Albuquerque had said that Darci appeared pregnant when she first came to his dealership in May, but they had reasoned that she could appear to be pregnant at 5 feet 4 inches and 175 pounds. And even though witnesses said that she regularly were maternity clothes and told people she was pregnant, the sleuths turned up the fact that a medical examination in May showed that she wasn’t pregnant.

As the background information on their suspect continued to grow, detectives found a friend of Darci’s, the manager of a Beaverton, Oregon hobby shop, he told me receive a letter from her in June in which she said her pregnancy was going well and that everything was fine in her life.

“I’ve known Darci for over a year, a couple of years,” said the hobby shop owner, “and I can’t imagine her doing anything like what’s been described.”

In putting together the profile of their suspect, police learned that Pierce worked as a cashier at a fast-food restaurant in mid-1985 in Portland, but later quit to take a job in the sports department of an East Portland store.

Her boss at the store said Darci had worked there for about two years, and confirmed that she had been pregnant but miscarried while employed there.

“She was a good employee, and well-liked by everybody here,” said her former boss.

However, one of her former classmates at LaSalle High School described Darci as “just kind of quiet,” and a close relative said she “wasn’t overly friendly…she just kind of stuck to herself.”

Another item of interest in Darci’s background, the detectives learned, was that she spent a year in South Africa in a Rotary Club exchange program, according to one of her former teachers at LaSalle. The teacher recalled that Darci had changed after her trip to South Africa.

Meanwhile, back in New Mexico, Darci Pierce was arraigned in Albuquerque Metropolitan Court on accusations of first-degree murder, kidnapping, and child abuse. Harry Zimmerman, Bernalillo County Assistant District Attorney, told Judge James M. O’Toole that Pierce had a fake gun which allegedly was used to trick the victim. It was also revealed that the child in Darci Pierce’s possession when she showed up at the hospital had been confirmed as the victim’s, and had since been returned to the victim’s relatives.

Dr. Ross Zumwalt, a pathologist from the New Mexico Office of the Medical Investigator, testified that Cindy Ray was alive but unconscious while her baby was being surgically removed from her body. Zumwalt said he had determined that she died of strangulation and loss of blood.

After Pierce entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity, Judge O’Toole set bail at $500,000. Unable to raise the bail, Pierce remained incarcerated at the county detention center. Assistant Public Defender John Bogren was appointed as counsel. Following grand jury indictments on a charge is a week later, District Attorney Schiff indicated he might seek the death penalty if Pierce was convicted.

Pierce’s murder trial began on Monday, March 14, 1988, amid prosecution arguments that Pierce planned her actions and knew what she was doing. Prosecutor Zimmerman said the Pierce chose to steal an unborn baby “to satisfy her obsession to have a child and, perhaps more important, to savor marriage.”

Defense Attorney Bogren, however, argued at Pierce was “a loving, caring, compassionate woman,” and presented an insanity defense, attempting to appeal to the jurors’ sympathy. He argued that Pierce had a double personality, one in which she truly believed she was pregnant and another in which she knew she was not.

The trial took two weeks to complete; on Tuesday, March 30, 1988, the jury was charged with its obligations. District Judge Richard Traub informed the jurors that under New Mexico law, insanity is defined as a result of a mental disease. Three tests must be met, instructed the judge, to classified person as legally insane: 1) the person did not know what he was doing or understand the consequences of the act; 2) did not know the act was wrong; 3) could not prevent himself from committing the act. If one or more of the three tests for insanity cannot be met, continued a judge, the jury can find the defendant guilty as charged but mentally ill, or innocent.

According to state law, said the judge, a descendant can be found mentally ill “if a substantial disorder of thought, mood or behavior impaired his judgment at the time of the commission of the offense.” A person found guilty but

mentally ill, he concluded, is subject to standard sentences, but the state Corrections Department is required to provide counseling and treatment “as it deems it necessary.”

Following six hours of grueling deliberations, the jury found Darci Pierce guilty of first degree murder, kidnapping, and child abuse. They also found her mentally ill, but not legally insane.

“I just think it’s a real sad story,” said Defense Attorney Bogren following the verdicts. “It’s sad because everybody involved were good pe ople . Two husbands were without their wives; mothers were without children. Ironically a baby is born. It’s a real sad situation.” Bogren said he would appeal the verdict.

“What’s been hard for me is adjusting to a different way of life without the one that I had hoped to share my life with, and had worked so hard to make our life the way we wanted it,” Cindy’s husband told reporters. “Cindy and I had done everything right. We didn’t let it happen, we made it happen…

It was all jerked out from under us.… When really horrible things happen, the best comes out of people. You really get to cut through the façade and see that even though there are many evil things in the world, there is still a lot of good. It is up to us to find the good and deal with the bad.”

On Thursday, April 28, 1988, after hearing testimony from two psychiatrists, Judge Traub sentence to Darci Pierce to life in prison for the killing of Cindy Ray. He also imposed 18 years for kidnapping and 18 months for child abuse, to be served concurrently with the life sentence. The sentence required her to serve a minimum of 30 years without possibility of parole.

In April 1998, after filing a petition for a new trial claiming ineffective assistance of counsel, State District Judge Albert S. “Pat” Murdoch denied

Pierce’s petition. The killing of Cindy Ray is without question one of the most bizarre murders in Albuquerque’s history.

Editor ’s Note: Tom Nelson and Sandy Miller are not the real names of the persons so named in the foregoing story. Fictitious names have been used because there is no reason for public interest in the identities of these persons.

“If You Don’t Kill Me, I’ll Do Anything You Want!”

It was just minutes before 4 a.m. on Sunday, June 21, 1987, when the smoke was first detected. It was billowing from an upstairs room of a seedy motel located in the 800 block of East Burnside Street in Portland, Oregon, and it could be seen and smelled by passersby as well as residents in adjacent rooms. A report of a fire was promptly called in to the Portland Fire Bureau, and all residents were immediately evacuated from their rooms. However, the occupant of Room 214 could not be raised, and the fire blazing inside prevented anyone from immediately entering it.

When the firefighters arrived they, too, saw and smelled the thick black smoke, the odor of which was all too familiar to them. It was the odor of seared flesh, and its rankness was worse than the smell of a barrel full of burning hair.

“Some poor soul probably went to sleep with a burning cigarette in his hand,” remarked one observer at the scene. Or passed out in a drunken stupor or drug overdose, thought another observer. This would not be an unreasonable assessment of the situation considering the slum neighborhood the motel was in and the type of clientele it attracted. It was surrounded by street drunks and prostitutes and had become, in recent years, a haven for pushers and junkies, pimps and their girls and, of course, the johns. That night had been no exception.

The firefighters had the blaze under control within minutes, and paramedics were allowed to enter the room. However, what they found was far worse than they imagined. Instead of a passed-out smoker, they found the bound body of a nude woman lying on a bed beneath a pile of furniture that had been set ablaze! It was quickly determined that no life-saving efforts

were necessary; the woman was clearly dead. Labeling this case an arsonhomicide, fire investigators immediately notified police bureau personnel, who were standing by outside, that they had a murder on their hands.

Detective Joe Goodale of the bureau’s homicide detail was on the scene before daybreak, and he brought with him Dr. Larry Lewman, Oregon state medical examiner. The two men carefully surveyed the room as technicians from the Oregon State Police Crime Lab unloaded their gear from their van, and a police photographer skillfully shot the entire scene from many different angles and distances. He focused most of his attention and his lenses, however, on the woman’s brutalized body.

When the photographer had finished with the preliminary shots, police officers carefully removed the remaining items that had been placed atop the victim’s body. Detective Goodale could then see that the woman had been gagged and “hogtied,” that is, she had been bound by ligatures that had tied her hands behind her back to her feet, effectively immobilizing her. There was also a ligature around her neck, which prompted Dr. Lewman to speculate early on that she had died as a result of strangulation. It appeared, noted the detective, that the ligatures had been made from torn bed sheets.

The photographer took many additional shots before he was finished.

When Goodale interviewed the motel manager and checked the guest register, he learned that room 214 had been rented to Candace P. Straub. The manager said she had rented the room on the morning of June 20th, and had paid cash. Straub, he said, had appeared to be in her mid-20s.

After Straub’s body was removed and sent to the Multnomah County Morgue, crime lab technicians remained in the charred room and worked throughout the day. They bagged items they thought might yield important evidence, and attempted to identify and remove latent fingerprints that could possibly be tied to a suspect later on. They noted that the shower had recently

been used, which prompted them to remove minute samples of hair and water. At this point, of course, they had no idea who had used the shower. It could simply have been used by the victim before she was killed, but the chance that her killer may have used it prompted the technicians to process it thoroughly.

Goodale and a couple of other gumshoes soon hit the streets in pursuit of whatever they could find out about the victim. As it turned out, many people from the area knew Candace in a peripheral sense, but few knew her well enough to provide the sleuths with anything that could be used to quickly clear the case. Probers did learn, however, that she had been seen in the company of two men on June 20th, but, unfortunately, no one knew their identities. The investigators took note of the information but they didn’t know what significance, if any, to place on it at the time.

As they continued to pound the pavement in their search for clues, however, the detectives obtained bits and pieces of information that, when put together, indicated that Candace Straub had lived on and off in the lower Burnside area for some time. Since records are generally kept at most of the rescue missions, the detectives decided to check them out. It turned out that one such place, Burnside Projects, confirmed that Candace had been in the area for several weeks prior to her death.

Persevering in their quest for information, the investigators soon learned that Straub was born in Long Beach, California, on July 15, 1960, christened Candace Patricia Marie Straub. She came to Portland in 1979, they learned, and had two daughters. She would have turned 27 had she lived only three more weeks.

The victim’s relatives were eventually tracked down and contacted by police, but they knew nothing that could provide significant details of the

events that led up to Straub’s murder. She was described as a good person, and none of her family members knew anyone who disliked her enough to kill her.

Other details obtained by the investigators painted a picture of a woman who had lived a rough life and sometimes associated with the wrong kind of people. When she could find work, Candace worked, but her skills were limited. She’d often work as a day laborer in temporary positions, police learned. But where had Candace been working the days prior to her death?

They wondered. They knew she had paid cash for her motel room, so where did she get her money? She had no links to prostitution, so it seemed likely she worked somewhere to get enough money to pay for the room. If they could only establish employment, the detectives reasoned, they would have another avenue of investigation to explore and could perhaps ferret out a substantial lead. But the victim’s lifestyle made it certain that the information wouldn’t come easy.

Following the autopsy, Dr. Larry Lewman included in his report that Candace Straub had been beaten, raped, tortured and strangled by a ligature in the form of a torn bed sheet that had been tightened around her neck. He said she had been tied up and sexually assaulted. He stressed that she had suffered painful injuries prior to death. Lewman said a chemical fluid, believed to have been a charcoal-lighting compound, had been poured on Straub’s body after her death and ignited “in an attempt to burn her.”

As one day followed another, detectives knew they weren’t getting any closer to identifying a suspect. They knew she was a street person with sporadic work habits who sometimes hung out with the wrong types of people. They knew, too, that she had been sexually assaulted, savagely, and that she’d been tortured before being brutally murdered. However, they knew little else at this point. The person or persons responsible for her death could

be walking the streets of Portland, or they could be long gone by now, anywhere along the north-south Interstate 5 corridor or, perhaps, they had traveled east to another state. The sleuths accepted the fact that the trail had gone cold, and that with each passing day the likelihood of obtaining the name of a suspect became more and more improbable.

Meanwhile, unknown to Portland police, lawmen in Pocatello, Idaho, some 500 miles east of Portland, had arrested a young Hispanic man at 2:11 a.m. on June 24th, two days after Candace Straub’s murder, on a charge of burglary. He had identified himself as Christopher Antonio Sanchez at the time of his arrest, but police soon realized he was using an alias. While the burglary suspect was in custody, Pocatello lawmen did some checking and learned that the man’s real name was Marco Antonio Montez II, a laborer originally from St. Paul, Minnesota. They also learned that he’d lived in Brooklyn, New York and Southern California prior to moving to Oregon in 1986, and that he’d worked on and off in construction and at casual labor jobs.

Additional background revealed that Montez had been arrested in Portland on August 28, 1986, in connection with a street robbery and beating.

Sentenced to five years, he had been transferred to a pre-release center on November 25, 1986, after serving less than three months. He was subsequently given a terminal pass pending official release and parole, and was discharged from a halfway house on March 31, 1987.

According to police and court documents in Idaho, Montez pleaded guilty to the burglary charge in Pocatello and was placed on five years’ probation. He was also ordered to leave Idaho and remain away from that state for the entire five years. Bannock County Jail personnel even went so far as to drop Montez off at a Pocatello bus depot on July 1st, to further encourage him to get out of the state, but he did not leave. Instead, Montez frequented the bars and at one point attempted to assault a local woman with

a cue stick. He ended up getting re-arrested on July 12th. Yet unsurprisingly, Pocatello police still had not connected Montez to the unsolved murder in Oregon. Considering the focus of their investigation and the fact that Portland detectives hadn’t yet identified a suspect in the Straub murder, there had been no reason that they should.

It wasn’t long, though, before local witnesses implicated Montez in a homicide in Portland, prompting Pocatello police to begin looking at him in a more serious light. Prior to his arrest, he’d apparently provided some of his acquaintances with information about a killing that had been difficult for some to live with. It wasn’t until July 22nd, however, a month after Candace Straub’s murder, that the unexpected happened for Portland investigators.

After they had gathered sufficient information, Pocatello police contacted the Portland Police Bureau and informed homicide detectives there that they had a suspect in custody that might be of interest to them.

“Information developed from witnesses who had contact with the suspect while he was out (of custody),” explained Detective Goodale, “caused Pocatello police to contact Portland police homicide detail to determine whether we had an unsolved homicide matching what they had. We did and we told them so.”

In the meantime, in another surprise move, Marco Montez, while in jail, called a reporter at the Idaho State Journal and requested an interview after informing him that he had participated in the strangulation of a Portland woman. Montez said he wanted to help other people by telling his story, to try to discourage others from following in his footsteps.

Montez told the reporter that Straub’s slaying was planned; that she had to be eliminated because she “knew too much about something.” Specifics about what Straub knew were not revealed publicly at that time. However, Montez said he wanted to warn others, especially young people hooked on

drugs.

“It’s no game,” Montez said in the interview.

“You can’t pretend to be macho once you’re behind bars...I’m looking at maybe twenty-five years to life or maybe even the death penalty, but I’m ready to pay the price for what I did. I’ve made my peace with God.” Detective Goodale immediately traveled to Pocatello, Idaho, to interview Montez, and he “obtained admissions” from the suspect about Candace Straub’s death. Montez also told the detective how he and a companion had jumped a freight train to Portland following the killing and had arrived in Pocatello on the evening of June 22nd. His companion, the detective learned, later hitched a ride with a trucker headed east. Despite the revelations, Goodale declined to discuss the case further and would not say if anyone else was wanted in connection with the Straub murder. Informed sources, though, revealed that a second suspect was actively being sought. His name or possible whereabouts were not divulged. Although Montez had not been formally charged in connection with Candace Straub’s death, he continued to be held in Idaho on the parole violation charge from Oregon and the probation violation in Idaho.

As the Portland detectives persevered with their inquiries into this unusual case, they subsequently learned that Straub, Montez, and a third individual, Timothy Lamar Aikens, 23, were acquainted and had worked together at a Hillsboro, Oregon, agricultural packing plant. A supervisor at the plant told officials that the three of them worked on Friday, June 19th, Straub’s last day there before her death.

“There was a dispute going on with them all day,” the supervisor told detectives. “I saw them arguing.” The supervisor said she didn’t know what they were arguing about, but she described Straub as a good worker. She said

she wasn’t satisfied with Montez’s and Aikens’ performances, however, and instructed the bus driver responsible for bringing casual laborers to the plant never to bring “those two” there again.

Throughout August, the detectives worked continually on the case and eventually developed information that implicated Aikens in Straub’s murder.

Although they wouldn’t say what the information was, at one point they asked the FBI for assistance since a murder suspect had crossed state lines. They convinced a federal judge to issue a warrant charging Timothy Aikens with unlawful flight to avoid prosecution. A Multnomah County warrant alleging homicide was also issued, for both Aikens and Montez.

It took a lot of hard work and man hours, but the detectives eventually traced Aikens to Searcy, Arkansas, a small town with a population of about 19,000, some 60 miles northeast of Little Rock. According to detective Sergeant J.R. Thomas of the Searcy Police Department, Aikens had been staying with a family in Baley Addition, a small neighborhood just outside Searcy. Surveillance teams were positioned at that location, as well as other places where Aikens had reportedly been seen.

However, on Friday, August 22nd, a tipster called the Searcy Police Department and told the officer on duty that Aikens would be at a pool hall, frequented by young people, at 10 o’clock that night. Portland police were notified of the new development, as were FBI agents in Little Rock.

A stakeout was set up outside the pool hall, and the lawmen began their wait. But it didn’t take long. The tipster was true to his word. Aikens showed up right on schedule. Search officers and FBI agents moved in quickly and arrested their suspect without incident. He was not armed, and offered no resistance. The Portland detectives were elated when they learned of the arrest.

Both Aikens and Montez, meanwhile, waived extradition and were returned to Portland by late August. Both were lodged in the Justice Center Jail in downtown Portland without bail.

On Friday, September 4th, Montez and Aikens were indicted by a Multnomah County grand jury on three counts of aggravated murder. They were also indicted on charges of arson and abuse of a corpse. The three legal theories of aggravated murder leveled against each defendant alleged that each intentionally killed Candace Straub to cover up the commission of a sexual assault, that she died as a result of torture, and that she was killed while the defendants were in the course of committing other crimes. Each charge of aggravated murder carried a potential death penalty.

Defended by attorneys Bradley Grove and Lynn Dickison, and prosecuted by Multnomah County Deputy District Attorneys John Foote and Kathryn Villa-Smith, Marco Montez was the first defendant to be tried before Multnomah County Circuit Court Judge Charles S. Crookham. The judge found it “clearly inappropriate” to try the defendants together. Following the selection of a jury of 10 men and two women, Montez’s trial began in late April 1988.

During opening remarks, Defense Attorney Grove told jurors that Montez helped strangle Candace Straub in a Burnside motel room, but he insisted that his client didn’t deserve the death penalty. He contended that Straub’s killing didn’t fall within any of the three alleged categories of aggravated murder. He said the jury would not be convinced that Montez had killed Straub in connection with a sexual assault or that he had used torture.

Deputy District Attorney Foote, on the other hand, approached the jury box and told the panel they would hear a “senseless, horrible tale of pain, suffering and death.” Foote described how Straub’s body had been found by firefighters, nude and bound by ligatures that had completely immobilized

her. He said he would present evidence to show that the victim had been sexually assaulted before she was strangled, also by ligature, and that furniture had been piled on top of her body and set afire in an attempt to cover up the heinous crimes they had already committed.

As the trial got underway, Detective Goodale was called as a prosecution witness. Goodale testified that he interviewed Montez three times while the suspect was incarcerated in Idaho, and during the interviews Montez revealed to him that he and Aikens had fled Portland by hopping freight trains the day Straub’s body was found. Goodale also testified that in the same interview, Montez said that he and Aikens first met in Lownsdale Square, a park in downtown Portland, five days before the victim was killed, and that he and Aikens met Straub on June 19th, while working as laborers for a strawberry packing plant near Hillsboro. After the detective’s testimony, Foote informed the jurors that they would later hear tape recordings of the interviews between Montez and Goodale.

Dr. Larry Lewman, Oregon state medical examiner, also testified early in the trial. Lewman described for the jury in great detail how Straub’s body had been tied, how she had been sexually assaulted and strangled.

“Would the victim have suffered pain from the sexual assault before her death?” asked D.A. Foote.

“Absolutely, Mr. Foote,” responded Lewman. “No question about it.”

Lewman also described how the victim’s killers had poured a chemical fluid used for igniting charcoal over her body and lit it “in an attempt to burn her.” Foote pointed out that the fluid had been purchased at a store near the motel where Straub was killed.

At another point in the trial, the jury heard a series of tapes between

Montez and investigators in which he explained that he had decided to kill Straub to prevent her from reporting to police the sexual assault that had been committed against her. He said, however, that it was Aikens who had suggested killing Straub and he had agreed to it.

“We have to do something,” Montez had agreed to Aikens’ suggestion.

He described how Aikens tore up bed sheets to make ligatures for binding the victim. Then, after she was bound and gagged, they carried her to the bathtub and placed her inside it while they discussed killing her. Later, according to Montez’s tape-recorded statement, the two men pulled on the ligature around her neck, strangling her to death. Afterwards, they placed Candace’s body on a bed, and then went out to purchase the lighter fluid.

When they returned, they set the room afire.

Although each of the four tapes provided somewhat different versions of what happened prior to and after Straub’s death, Montez admitted, in the last one, that he used his fist to inflict serious injury to Straub while the three of them were engaged in sex acts.

“I made a mistake,” said Montez’s voice on the tape. “It was a drunken mistake. Now I have to deal with it…accept the consequences…I told on myself because of the guilt inside me.”

During closing arguments, Defense Attorney Grove told the jurors that Montez was willing to face the consequences by not challenging the state’s evidence. He argued, however, that the case might never have been solved if Montez had not come forward with the details of the killing following his arrest in Idaho on unrelated charges.

“We wouldn’t be here (in court today) if it weren’t for Mr. Montez,” said Grove. “(The) sheer brutality (of the victim’s death) is enough to shake one’s

confidence in human decency,” countered Prosecutor Foote. “She had to watch as they lifted her up, carried her to the bathroom and killed her.” He urged the jury to find Montez guilty as charged.

The jury returned their verdict after two and a half hours of deliberations. They had unanimously found Montez guilty of aggravated murder, first-degree arson, and abuse of a corpse.

During the penalty phase of the trial, the same jury heard testimony and reviewed evidence they would use in deciding whether Montez should live or die.

Prosecutor Foote was quick to point out to the jury that Montez had a reputation for fighting, and that he had prior convictions for theft, robbery, assault, and burglarizing a car. Foote characterized Montez as a “sociopathic, vicious, guilt-free killer” who boasted that he had killed two other women.

Grove, on the other hand, presented a witness who was a relative of the defendant’s. She testified that Montez had the “temper of a pit bull” when angry, but said she did not think Montez should be put to death. Grove also presented evidence to show that Montez was surrendered to the state of Minnesota at age seven, and that he had lived in foster homes until age 15, when he went out and tried to make it on his own.

Two of the defendant’s former foster parents testified that Montez had suffered recurring nightmares as an adolescent, nightmares in which a close relative tried to kill him by setting their house on fire. Another person testified that a relative did in fact set fires on at least two occasions while Montez was a child.

Grove contended that while Straub’s death was indeed “ugly,” it would “be no less ugly to take this young man and strap him to a gurney and

overdose him until he is dead.”

The jury apparently disagreed. On Thursday, June 9, 1988, less than two hours after being charged with their obligations, the jurors decided that Marco Montez should be put to death by lethal injection. Montez showed no emotion as the verdict was read.

Judge Crookham imposed the sentence after Montez waived the 48hour delay authorized by the state. He also sentenced Montez to 10 to 20 years for arson and two-and-one-half to five years for abuse of a corpse.

The following August, Timothy Aikens went on trial before the same Judge Crookham, but a different jury heard the case. He was defended by Portland lawyer Forrest N. Rieke. Deputy District Attorneys John Foote and Kathryn Villa-Smith again prosecuted.

Much of the same testimony that had been heard at Montez’s trial was presented. Aikens’ lawyer admitted that his client was present when Candace Straub was killed. However, there was a twist this time around: Aikens made a more fervent attempt to place a higher degree of blame for the murder on Montez.

“This man is a monster,” Rieke said, referring to Marco Montez.

“There is no other description.” The lawyer told jurors his client would testify that Montez told him: “You’re going to help me do this or you’re going to die!” The statement was made to his client, said Rieke, after Montez decided to kill Straub. Rieke said Montez told Aikens that Straub was not the first person he had killed.

Rieke continued by describing Montez as a sadomasochistic person who had inflicted serious injuries on the victim during perverted sexual acts in which he attempted to reach sexual climax but failed.

“They both decided they had to keep her quiet so no one would know what was going on,” countered Prosecutor Villa-Smith. The deputy district attorney told jurors how Aikens tore bed sheets into ligatures, beat the victim with his bare fists and then helped kill her by pulling tight the ligature around her neck.

However, on tape-recorded interviews between Timothy Aikens and detectives, Aikens implied that his actions were a result of his fear of Montez.

“I kept telling him, ‘You don’t have to do this, man,’’’ said Aiken on the tape. “Every time I tried to help her, he kept saying he was going to kill me.”

Aikens described how the trio had met at the packing plant, and that they had talked of traveling together to Hollywood, California. They eventually checked into the motel room where Straub was slain, said Aikens, and he had consensual sex with Candace. At one point, said Aikens, Montez told him he wanted to rape Straub.

To a somewhat stunned jury, Aikens’ tape-recorded statements described how he injected “crack,” a term used for a form of cocaine that is typically smoked, then tore six to eight strips from a bed sheet and held the victim down on the bed while Montez tied Candace’s ankles to her wrists, behind her back, “like a cow.” As the terrified woman screamed for help, said Aikens, he and Montez punched her in the face while Montez attempted to rape her.

Aikens said Montez then tortured the victim.

She screamed and pleaded with them to stop, he said, and at one point Candace said, “‘If you don’t kill me, I’ll do anything you want.’ “ By this time, said Aikens on the tape, Straub was bleeding and

unconscious, at which time Aikens indicated he wanted to leave. But Montez, he said, wanted to finish her off “so she wouldn’t tell.” They then carried the victim to the bathroom and placed her face down in the bathtub, where they strangled her.

“He told me if he was going down, I was going down with him,” said Aikens. “I was scared to death.”

To the jury’s continued shock and disbelief, Aikens said Montez then took a shower while standing on the dead woman’s body and complained that “she didn’t even have the courtesy to say ‘thank you.’’’ When Montez was finished with his shower, they removed the victim’s body and dragged it back to the bed. Afterward, Montez sexually abused the corpse and tried to burn it.

In closing arguments, Deputy District Attorney Foote characterized Aikens as a “skilled liar.” He said Straub was a trusting person whose last hours were spent alone and confused after hearing Montez and Aikens discuss her execution.

“This is a very simple case,” said Foote. “He’s guilty of one thing and one thing only - the brutal execution of Candace Straub. He killed her to cover up rape and sexual abuse.” Foote said Aikens had ample opportunity to flee the scene both before and after the killing.

“If you haven’t got the horsepower to walk off, it’s hard to explain later,” said Defense Attorney Rieke, “that you’re a coward.” Rieke argued that his client was mentally slow and given his “mental equipment,” he was unable to adequately explain what happened at the motel “and it’s silly to expect him to.” He insisted that Aikens didn’t pull on the ligature long enough to cause the victim’s death. Rieke contended that it was Montez who had lost control after being frustrated from failing to achieve satisfying sexual relations with Straub.

“It was an act of sadomasochism,” argued Rieke. “Savage.” Rieke explained that Aikens, after spending a night drinking beer and injecting drugs, “was scared out of his wits...He didn’t know whether to go up or down.

In that room, he already was boxed in.” Rieke insisted that the prosecution’s version of what happened was not supported by physical evidence.

On Wednesday, August 10, 1988, after deliberating only three hours, the jury found Aikens guilty on three counts of aggravated murder. He was also found guilty of first-degree arson and abuse of a corpse.

“God knows I didn’t do it,” Timothy Aikens said to a relative after the verdict, tears rolling down his face. The case now entered the penalty phase.

Early in the penalty phase of the trial, a Portland psychiatrist who examined Aikens testified that the convicted killer was mentally slow, and characterized Aikens as a “loser.”

“I think he clearly has a personality disorder,” testified the psychiatrist.

“He’s a loser. He doesn’t have what it takes to get along in society.”

He said Aikens was street smart, but mentally slow.

“You could turn him loose tonight and he could go across the country on five dollars,” said the psychiatrist. “I couldn’t do that. But if you gave him a reading and writing test, he wouldn’t do very well.”

He said he thought Aikens had an antisocial personality.

Urging jurors to give Aikens the death penalty, Prosecutor Foote said Montez had told investigators that Aikens put his foot at the back of the Victim’s neck as they tightened the ligature around her throat, a fact which wasn’t brought out at the trial.

“The parties here know all the evidence in this case,” said Foote. “The

jury only heard half of it.”

He explained that some evidence heard at Montez’s trial was not admitted in Aikens’.

“Candace Straub felt herself being lifted up off the bed and carried into the bathroom and dumped into the bathtub,” said Prosecutor Villa-Smith. “If that’s not deliberate, I don’t know what is. It was the most deliberate murder imaginable.”

“This defendant was, in Mr. Montez’s words, ‘game for it all the way,’“ said Foote, adding that Montez had told detectives that both he and Aikens had raped and sodomized Candace Straub’s body. “When you put all this together, you know these were two vicious human beings. They may have different personalities, but they were united in cause on the day Candace Straub died.”

“None of this has illuminated him,” continued Foote, insisting that Aikens had not shown any remorse or accepted any responsibility for his actions. “He is still the same human being he was on the night he killed Candace Straub.”

In spite of the prosecution’s urging, the jury spared Timothy Aikens the executioner’s needle and instead sentenced him to life in prison.

At formal sentencing on Tuesday, September 6, 1988, Judge Crookham said: “My only regret in this case is that the two defendants in this case could not have been tried together.” He then imposed the life sentence with no possibility of parole for 30 years on the murder conviction. Crookham also sentenced Aikens to 20 years in prison for his conviction on the arson charge, and to five years in prison with a two-and-a-half year minimum on the abuse of a corpse conviction. Unless the Oregon State Patrol Board overrides the judge’s sentences, Timothy Aikens will be behind bars for 42 and a half

years before being eligible for parole.

Although granted a new penalty trial, Montez was again sentenced to death in 1992. As would be expected, Marco Montez appealed his conviction and death sentence again, alleging ineffective counsel, to no avail. His conviction and death sentence was upheld in September 2010. Whether he is ever executed or not, due to Oregon’s reluctance to carry out death sentences, remains anyone’s guess.

At a parole hearing in February 2013, a decision on granting or denying parole to Timothy Aikens was deferred for two years. Hopeful that he will one day soon get out of prison, Aikens spends some of his time seeking pen pals and friendship on the outside.

Pervert Used His “Torture Kit” on Krista!

Pretty Krista Kay Blake was 20 when she left her home on July 11, 1974, and never returned. To her family and the probers who investigated the case, it seemed as if she had simply vanished without leaving a trace.

Krista was reported missing to the Clark County Sheriff’s Department the next day, opening a lengthy and intensive investigation that would eventually uncover a trail of rape, torture and murder committed by a sexual psychopath who allegedly committed a series of other crimes using the same methods. Although the case of Krista Blake has long been cleared, it is still talked about in Clark County to this day amidst allegations that there are some still unsolved cases attributed to the same perpetrator.

Following up on leads obtained from relatives, Clark County detectives learned that Krista, who didn’t have a car, had been given a ride to 29th Avenue and K Street in Vancouver, Washington by her former boyfriend.

“She said she was expecting to meet someone there,” the boyfriend told police. “Someone she said drove a blue Ford van.”

The boyfriend told the investigators that he and Krista waited for the van and its driver for some time. At one point, he said, Krista became impatient and said, “I don’t think he’s coming.” The van finally did arrive, and Krista got inside. The boyfriend told detectives he only saw the back of the driver’s head as the van pulled away. He was unable to identify the driver, and said he didn’t know how or where Krista had met the man.

Admittedly, it wasn’t much to go on, and the detectives couldn’t help but wonder why Krista, or anyone for that matter, would get inside a vehicle with someone they barely knew. They also wondered why she hadn’t provided

more details about the mystery man driving the van to her friends and relatives, particularly her boyfriend. At this point, the detectives didn’t know exactly what they were dealing with. When she failed to return home, they reasoned that she could have been abducted, but that didn’t seem to fit considering that she waited for the man to pick her up. Perhaps she had been raped and murdered. It was even possible, they reasoned, that Krista had not met with foul play at all. For all they knew, Krista may simply have chosen to leave the area for awhile without telling anyone. After all, she was an adult and cold do as she pleased.

Nevertheless, because it wasn’t like Krista to simply leave without telling anyone, the Clark County investigators treated her sudden disappearance as suspicious. They listed Krista’s physical description, along with a photo, in all the area newspapers, and made a plea for public assistance.

Krista was said to have been wearing a sweater, blue jeans and tennis shoes at the time she disappeared, with conflicting reports about certain items of jewelry she may have been wearing.

In the days that followed, detectives Frank Kanekoa, Bob Songer and Mike Davidson uncovered witnesses who shed some light on the case but, unfortunately, provided no immediate results.

One of the witnesses, Lisa Martin, told the detectives that Krista met a good looking man at Lewisville Park a few months prior to her disappearance. Lisa recalled that the man drove a blue van.

She told the sleuths that she had met Krista at a party given by Krista and she recalled having seen a blue van parked outside. Later that evening, she said, she accompanied Krista to Lewisville Park to look for a man who drove a blue van. Lisa said they soon found the van, and Krista got out of her car to talk with the driver. The witness provided few other significant details.

Another witness uncovered by the detectives, Mark Raney, said he found a sweater near the park entrance about the time that Krista was believed to have disappeared. It was similar to the sweater Krista had been wearing. Raney said that moments after he found it, a blue van pulled out of the park, and its driver, described as a good-looking man in his mid-to-late twenties, with brown hair and a mustache, stopped and asked for the sweater.

Raney said he gave it to him.

Barely a week after Krista Blake disappeared, 15-year-old Mary Hall failed to return home after visiting friends. Unlike Krista, however, Mary Hall returned home to tell her parents and authorities of a ride she accepted from a good-looking man, a ride that had quickly turned into a living nightmare and nearly cost Mary her life.

Shortly after being picked up in Vancouver by a man in a blue van, Mary said she was grabbed and assaulted at knifepoint. Refusing to cooperate, Mary was hog-tied. The man then cut away her bra with a large hunting knife, fondled her breasts and made an unsuccessful attempt to re-move her pants, which had been fastened with a safety pin. The man attempted to gag Mary with a yellow ball and wastepaper and failed, but fi-nally succeeded when he used her bra. He later wrapped his T-shirt over her head and beat her while still in the van.

Following an unknown period of time, the van stopped at the Tukes Mountain County mainte-nance facility after it had closed. Mary, still tied, was carried by the abductor into the nearby woods along a nature path used by hikers. After veering off the path, the man tied Mary between two trees with twine and beat her again. “I al-most blacked out,� she recalled later.

Barely a week after Krista Blake disappeared, 15-year-old Mary Hall failed to return home after visiting friends. Unlike Krista, however, Mary Hall returned home to tell her parents and authorities of a ride she accepted

from a good-looking man, a ride that had quickly turned into a living nightmare and nearly cost Mary her life.

Shortly after being picked up in Vancouver by a man in a blue van, Mary said she was grabbed and assaulted at knifepoint. Refusing to cooperate, Mary was hog-tied. The man then cut away her bra with a large hunting knife, fondled her breasts and made an unsuccessful attempt to re-move her pants, which had been fastened with a safety pin. The man attempted to gag Mary with a yellow ball and wastepaper and failed, but finally succeeded when he used her bra. He later wrapped his T-shirt over her head and beat her while still in the van.

Following an unknown period of time, the van stopped at the Tukes Mountain County maintenance facility after it had closed. Mary, still tied, was carried by the abductor into the nearby woods along a nature path used by hikers. After veering off the path, the man tied Mary between two trees with twine and beat her again.

“I almost blacked out,” she recalled later.

Before the assailant left, he warned Mary not to try to escape, and told her he would be nearby listening. After a considerable time, however, Mary began chewing away at the twine that bound her head and eventually broke free of her bonds. “I thought if he found me like that, with my head free, he’d be sure to kill me,” she told authorities. Mary, however, was able to struggle to her feet, which were still tied, and hop away. She told the Clark County detectives that she’d spent the night in a nearby field, where she tried to cut through the remaining restraints on a barbed wire fence. Near daybreak, she said she began hopping again this time toward the Tukes Mountain facility, when she heard what sounded like crashing sounds in the woods where she had been. She fell down and fell asleep. When she awoke, she went on toward

the maintenance facility, where she was found by one of the workers.

“He said hello and looked at me kind of strangely, and I started to cry,” Mary told the officials. “I started to cry, and as he got closer he could see how beat up I was.” Mary said the worker cut the bonds from her hands and feet, after which he called the sheriff’s department.

Mary gave the investigators a description of her abductor and his van.

The detectives took her to several Vancouver car dealerships to look at vans, and she eventually picked out a “wind blue” Ford van.

Although by now the Clark County detectives knew they had a serious problem on their hands, there was little they could to bring it to a speedy resolution. All they had was a sketchy description of the assailant and the make and color of the van he drove, but little else. To help with the leg work in this bizarre case, Detective Doug Maas was assigned to help Kanekoa, Songer and Davidson.

The next known incident involving Clark County’s elusive abductorassailant didn’t occur until October 1, 1974, and this time the abduction occurred in nearby Portland, Oregon, located just across the Columbia River from Vancouver.

According to police reports, 21-year-old Fiona Blair was walking on a Portland street when she was approached by a good-looking man with brown hair and a mustache. He said hello, and she responded.

“I had a pretty sour outlook on life then,” Fiona later told the detectives, “and I thought that answering him might brighten somebody’s day.

It didn’t.” Fiona said the man appeared normal when he approached her and smiled. She said after the ice had been broken, he asked her to pose for photographs for a college project he supposedly was working on. He promised to pay her, and since Fiona was employed only as a volunteer at the

time, she agreed to pose.

Fiona told the detectives that she and the man then got into his blue van, which had Washington plates, and they drove to a dirt road located near Washington Park. When they stopped, he asked her to climb into the back of the van to help him unload photographic equipment. But when Fiona complied, she discovered there was no such equipment. It was then that he jumped on her with a hunting knife.

“I said over and over, ‘I don’t want to be stabbed,’” Fiona told the detectives. She said she struggled with her assailant to keep the knife’s sharp point away from her body. “Emotionally, I was in shock. I started to cry once.

Then I figured crying wouldn’t help at all.”

Fiona said the attacker finally gave up trying to use the knife on her, and instead strangled her into unconsciousness. When she awoke, Fiona said she discovered that her pants had been removed and her arms had been tied with twine. When she looked out the window, she said they were heading north on Interstate 5 towards Vancouver.

When they crossed the state border and entered Washington, they headed east on State Highway 14 towards Camas. Fiona told investigators that her abductor stopped several times to tighten her bonds, and he hit her once when he told her to “shut up.” When she asked where they were headed, the assailant replied that he was taking her to dance nude for a group of men.

However, half an hour later, they ended up at an undeveloped area of Lacamas Lake Park in East Clark County.

A short time later, the abductor stopped the van, got out and unlocked a gate, drove down a secluded dirt road and parked. It was there that he ripped off the remaining articles of Fiona’s clothing and took out an air-powered dart gun which she at first thought had been a loaded firearm. He took aim

and shot at her, and instead of bullets, sharp-pointed metal darts penetrated her soft skin.

“He shot me,” Fiona told the probers. “But I didn’t die. I looked down and they were darts. He just kept shooting at me. When he pulled them out, he asked in a sadistic tone of voice if they hurt.”

Fiona said when he finished shooting her with the darts he raped her and took some of her jewelry. He then placed a noose around her neck, led her deep into the woods and strangled her into unconsciousness with the noose.

When she awoke, Fiona told the investigators, she discovered that she had been buried beneath a pile of small logs and covered with dirt and leaves.

“I could hardly breathe,” she said.

When she finally freed herself, she discovered that she was bleeding from six stab wounds. Naked, she eventually made it to the main road and flagged down a passing motorist who administered first-aid and called the sheriff’s department.

Because of the latest description of the assailant, and the fact that the man appeared to possess a set of keys to a county park facility that he had used to open a locked gate, the Clark County investigators theorized that their rapist was a county employee. They immediately began checking the parks facilities in their search for him.

When they checked at Lewisville Park, near the Tukes Mountain maintenance facility where victim Mary Hall had been brutalized and bound, they soon learned that 26-year-old park employee Warren Leslie Forrest drove a light blue Ford van. He also closely resembled the physical descriptions given by Mary Hall and Fiona Blair. One park employee told the

sleuths that he had earlier ribbed Forrest about the similarities by telling Forrest that the description fit him.

“He turned red in the face,” recalled the employee, “and said something about cutting his mustache if he looked like somebody else.” Another employee said that Forrest had remained calm when ribbed about the resemblance. Neither employee had called the police because they simply did not believe that the assailant was Forrest.

Early the next morning at 5:00 a.m., October 2nd, detectives Kanekoa, Songer, Davidson and Maas, accompanied by several backup deputies, surrounded Warren Forrest’s home in Battle Ground, Washington. Songer crept up alongside the van, which had been parked in the driveway, and peered in through the windows with the aid of a flashlight. Songer spotted a hunting knife lying in the front of the van which closely matched the knife described by the two victims. He also saw what appeared to be traces of blood.

Moments later, the lawmen converged on the house, where they arrested Warren Forrest with-out incident. He was charged with a number of crimes, including attempted murder, rape, kid-napping and assault. After being Mirandized and served with search warrants, Forrest was taken to the Clark County Jail in Vancouver where he was held without bail.

During a search of the suspect’s van, house and adjacent property, police seized articles of clothing that belonged to Fiona Blair. They also found pieces of the victim’s jewelry in Forrest’s garbage can. A careful search of the van yielded what the detectives called a “torture kit,” consisting of an air-powered dart gun, several sharp darts, knives, twine, and an assortment of various-sized vibrators. Trace evidence, such as blood and hair, was also seized and determined to be consistent with types and characteristics of the victims he was believed to have assaulted.

As the investigation continued, the detectives uncovered yet another witness, Jackie Thompson, a Tukes Mountain area resident. In response to their questions, Thompson said she recalled seeing a van matching the one that belonged to Forrest parked near the front gate of the Tukes Mountain parks facility the same evening Mary Hall disappeared. Thompson said she was passing by but slowed her car to take a better look when she observed the blue van. She said she recalled the date because her home had been recently burglarized by thieves who, police said, had driven a van.

Two weeks later, Thompson told investigators, she spotted the same light blue van again, this time at Lewisville Park where Forrest worked. A group of young men had been standing around the van, and they looked at her as she passed by. She said she’d learned of the Mary Hall abduction after reading about it in the newspaper and had connected the blue van with the case, which prompted her to go to a nearby telephone to call police.

However, Thompson said, she became frightened when the young men continued to watch her, and she went home before making the call.

Although there was considerable evidence linking Warren Forrest to the kidnapping, torture, rape and attempted murder of Fiona Blair, the detectives were unable, in spite of the similarities, to link him to the Mary Hall case. But what about the Krista Kay Blake case? Unfortunately, even though there were also similarities in that case, there was no physical evidence to link Forrest to it. Besides, Krista Blake was still listed as missing and it would, naturally, have been difficult for the detectives to make any headway in her case unless or until she turned up, alive or dead.

Forrest—a husband and father, a track star and honor student in high school and college, and a Vietnam veteran—quickly denied any knowledge of Krista Blake’s disappearance and Mary Hall’s abduction. However, much to

the surprise of the investigators and the prosecutors, Forrest readily admitted to the abduction, torture, rape and attempted murder of Fiona Blair.

According to his attorney, he would plead innocent in that case by reason of insanity.

At a hearing in Clark County Superior Court, Forrest revealed to Deputy Prosecutor Dennis Hunter details of the attack on Fiona Blair, and said that when he buried the unconscious woman under brush and logs in Lacamas Lake Park, he thought she was dead. Hunter probed Forrest’s memory of the violent incident.

“I see myself stabbing her, I guess,” Forrest said, describing the act as “a frantic thing.” Motioning with his arm, Forrest said the “arm movement was like a hammer.”

“Why did you attempt to kill (Miss Blair)?” Hunter asked. “Were you angry with her?”

“Her and myself both,” Forrest replied. “I was disgusted with myself for being the way I was and (with) her for being the same.”

“Did you feel you did her a favor by stabbing her?” Hunter asked.

“That’s the...thinking I had...yes,” responded Forrest.

He went on to say that his memory of the incident involving Fiona Blair was dream-like, and under questioning, he continued to vehemently deny having any memory of abducting and/or attacking Mary Hall or Krista Blake.

Reverting back to the Blair case at one point, Forrest recalled having slit her throat, an act which the investigators knew had not occurred.

Forrest told the court that he had a troubled personal history, and said he had been having difficulty dealing with other people at the time of the

Blair attack. He said that he had been drinking heavily at the time, felt depressed because he thought he was employed in a dead-end job and was having sexual problems.

“I was mentally and physically run down, confused and suffering from depression,” testified Forrest. “I’d lost my personality and was more or less governed by the actions of other people.”

Forrest said he’d been brought up to believe that “big boys don’t cry” and said fears that he was becoming a homosexual were progressively making him less able to handle the roles of husband, father and breadwinner.

He hoped to convince himself that his masculinity was not faltering by picking up a prostitute and thought, at the time, that Fiona Blair was a hooker.

After realizing that he’d made a mistake, he said, he raped and stabbed her and left her for dead.

At the conclusion of the hearing, Forrest was committed to Western Washington State Hospital at Steilacoom, where he entered its program for sexual psychopaths and underwent intensive counseling.

On July 11, 1976, exactly two years from the day Krista Kay Blake disappeared in 1974, two Portland men hiking on a nature trail in the Tukes Mountain area discovered her remains. According to police reports, one of the hikers nearly stumbled over a bony foot and ankle with a boot attached. It was protruding from the ground.

Shortly after having been notified of the macabre discovery, Clark County Sheriff Eugene Cot-ton and Detectives Frank Kanekoa, Robert Songer, Mike Davidson and Doug Maas arrived at the scene, accompanied by the county coroner and a criminalist from the Washington State Pa-trol Crime Lab. The grave, they noted, was only a short distance from the Tukes Mountain County maintenance facility’s parking lot, just 160 feet from the

spot where Mary Hall had been tied between two trees two years earlier.

Reflecting on the Hall case, the detectives recalled that they had walked within 60 feet of the grave while searching for clues associated with the Hall investigation.

The severely decomposed remains were exhumed by criminalists from a shallow 15-inch-deep grave. Some of the victim’s bones had been scattered near the surface, prompting lawmen to theorize that animals had gotten to the body. When the remains had been carefully removed from the grave, the probers discovered the victim had been hog-tied. The body was recognized as a female, and following a dental comparison, it was positively identified as that of Krista Kay Blake.

Among the items examined by state criminalist Chesterene Cwiklik was a T-shirt taken from Krista Blake’s remains. According to Cwiklik, small holes surrounded by bloodstains were found on Krista’s T-shirt. The puncture holes, said Cwiklik, could have been made by the type of feathered darts that Warren Forrest admitted having shot into Fiona Blair.

Two years later, in late September, 1978, Warren Forrest remained in jail without bail. Deputy Prosecutor Dennis Hunter said the murder charge against Forrest was moved from Western State Hospital to the Clark County Jail for a hearing, at his request, for conditional release from the mental institution. However, a first-degree murder charge stemming from the disappearance and death of Krista Blake was filed against Forrest. As a result, the conditional release hearing was not held, and Forrest remained in jail.

The murder charge was not related to the Blair case. Forrest pleaded innocent to the charge.

Forrest’s first-degree murder trial began in February 1979. But due to a dispute over the admissibility of evidence of two air-powered dart guns seized from the defendant by investigators, the proceedings ended in a

mistrial. As a result, his second trial was set for April 2, and because of the tremendous amount of publicity the case received in Clark County, a jury was selected from neighboring Cowlitz County and was driven by bus daily to the Clark County courthouse in Vancouver. The trial was lengthy and it had many dramatic moments, including testimony from the defendant himself.

The prosecution’s case against Forrest was simple. Forrest’s method of operation, the prosecu-tion contended, in the torture, rape and attempted murder of Fiona Blair, that he had already admitted to in 1975, matched the circumstances of Krista Blake’s death. On the other hand, the defense’s aim was to show that the circumstantial evidence that was presented against Forrest did not conclusively link Forrest to the Blake murder.

One of the first witnesses to testify was Dr. William Brady, Oregon’s state medical examiner who was “borrowed” by Washington for this case because he is an expert in forensic pathology.

“I could not tell why this lady died,” Brady said.

Brady, as well as Clark County Coroner D. Arch Hamilton, concurred that severe decay of the victim’s remains prevented them from positively establishing Krista Blake’s cause of death. They were also unable to determine whether she had been sexually assaulted. Both doctors testified that no bullets were found in the remains, and there was no evidence of knife wounds or broken bones. Brady and Hamilton told the jury they presumed the victim had been murdered because she had been found hot-tied in her grave.

Another witness who testified was Krista’s former boyfriend, who repeated for the jury the circumstances under which he had left the victim the evening she disappeared. He recalled that after giving Krista a ride to 29th Avenue and K Street in Vancouver, he waited with her until a blue van picked her up. He reiterated for the jury that he could not identify the driver because

all he saw was the back of his head, but he pointed out for the prosecution the light blue shade of Forrest’s van on a color chart.

“All I could tell you, it’s blue,” he said. “I know blue when I see it.”

The Clark County jury heard testimony from state criminalist Chesterene Cwiklik who told of the small round holes found on Krista’s bloodstained T-shirt. Although she said the holes were consistent with holes made by a dart gun found In Forrest’s possession, she conceded, under crossexamination by the defense, that the holes could have been made by an ice pick or an awl.

County park employees also told the court that Forrest, a permanent employee, had keys to the park facilities, which included access to storage rooms where the kind of twine used to bind the victims was stored. One of the employees also testified that Forrest frequently wore a hunting knife similar to the one identified by the surviving victims. An air-powered dart gun alleged by the prosecution to have been the weapon used by Forrest against victims Fiona Blair and Krista Blake was also admitted into evidence much to the objection of Defense Attorney Don Greig.

Following the prosecution’s presentation of its case, Greig called Warren Forrest to testify on his own behalf. Once again, Forrest denied any knowledge about the death of Krista Blake or the abduction and subsequent assault of Mary Hall. He said the Blair assault was the only one that he had any specific recollection of, as he had stated on several prior occasions.

“I know I have the capability for murder,” said the obviously tired, somewhat confused defend-ant to his attorney, “because of the assault on Miss (Blair) . . . I am fairly certain I didn’t (kill Krista Blake), but at the same time I know I had the capability.”

Continuing with his testimony, Forrest admitted to his attorney that he

feared he was capable of committing additional assaults similar to the one he admitted committing against Fiona Blair in 1974. He said, however, that because of treatment he received at the Western State Hospital, he now came to view such fears as a warning signal that says, “I am not adequately expressing my feelings again.” When asked again if it was possible that he killed Krista Blake, Forrest replied: “I guess it depends on how far you want to stretch possibility.” Asked to explain his statement, Forrest responded: “The personal feeling I have relating to the facts tells me I have the feeling I didn’t (kill her).”

When a relative of Forrest’s took the witness stand towards the end of the three-and-a-half-week trial, she shocked both the prosecution and the defense when she provided a last-minute alibi for the defendant. The relative testified that on the evening of July 11, 1974, Forrest had dinner with her at her house. The relative said Forrest was at her home from 5:00 p.m., the time Krista Blake was seen getting into a blue van in Vancouver, until about 10:00 p.m. It was the first time that the relative had mentioned the alibi to authorities.

“Here we are, six or seven months after charges were filed (and nearly five years since the murder was allegedly committed), and this alibi pops up on the second to the last day of the trial,” complained Deputy Prosecutor Roger Bennett, who said the relative’s testimony “prejudices the state’s case.”

In asking the judge to strike the witness’s testimony, Bennett said he had not been notified that the alibi would be presented, which runs contrary to proper courtroom procedure.

“I did not place her on the witness stand expecting her to provide an alibi,” said defense attorney Don Greig, who argued that he could not notify

the prosecution because he did not know of the alibi himself.

Prosecutor Bennett recalled Forrest’s spouse to the stand to question her about the dinner in question, and she replied that she could not recall anything about her or her husband’s activities on July 10 and 11, 1974. But when Forrest’s relative was called back to the stand, she said: “My testimony is the truth, so help me God.” Additional testimony was heard from Forrest’s spouse, who said that her husband had been away frequently during the summer of 1974. She said Forrest had struck her on two occasions, actions she described as “very unusual,” but she admitted that their marriage was “rocky.” Although she said she could not remember her husband’s activities on July 10 and 11, 1974, she did recall that they went to Long Beach, Washington, on vacation from July 12th through July 16th. “He was very relaxed” while on vacation, she said, but added that Forrest also appeared normal and relaxed after he assaulted Fiona Blair.

Under additional questioning, the woman said Forrest often left by himself in his van. She also said he told her of having blackouts during the summer of 1974, and there were some incidents when he would end up someplace without recalling how he got there. She said, however, that she never saw Forrest with any bruises or scratches, and she never saw him with possessions of other women. She added that Forrest never carried a hunting knife but, on one occasion, he gave her one to use in the kitchen.

“I love him very much,” she said.

During closing arguments, the prosecution said it had shown that Forrest’s motive in the three alleged incidents was sexual, that the assaults were premeditated and methodical, that, as a county parks employee, Forrest had possession of keys that provided him access to the facilities where the

incidents occurred, that he had access to twine and other tools used in the crimes, that the blue Ford van he drove in 1974 matched the description given by the two surviving victims.

“You will find that who killed Krista Kay Blake was the same person who abducted (Fiona Blair),” said Prosecutor Hunter. The three attacks were “a three-act play written by one author ... Forrest is the last of many victims in a complex case that has ravaged many lives. Why is he a victim? Because after five years, reality has finally caught up with him . . . There are no winners in a first-degree murder case,” said Hunter.

“The state has never proven Mr. Forrest guilty beyond a reasonable doubt,” countered the defense attorney. “The evidence (has shown) we do not know a great deal about Krista Kay Blake’s death.”

Greig told the jury there was no physical evidence that linked Forrest to Blake’s death.

“Mr. Forrest’s future lies ahead of him—you have the power to shatter that future,” argued Greig as he urged the jury to acquit Forrest of the charges.

On Saturday, April 21, 1979, the Clark County Superior Court jury found Warren Leslie Forest guilty of the murder of Krista Blake. Forrest remained impassive as the verdict was read.

“The evidence spoke for itself,” one juror said after the verdict.

Although the guilty verdict officially brought to an end the mystery of what happened to Krista Blake, there are still some unanswered questions plaguing the Clark County investigators to this day. For example, who is responsible for the deaths of three other bodies found buried in Clark County, two of whom were women who disappeared in 1974? Although there

are no active investigations into those deaths, officials still wonder about them, and some admit they have definite ideas as to who is responsible, but none will comment about their ideas. In all, Forrest remains a suspect in the disappearances of six young women in Clark County between March 1972 and October 1974.

On April 25, 1979, Warren Forrest was sentenced to life in prison by Clark County Superior Court Judge Robert McMullen. Appeals have been unsuccessful.

In April 2011, a state parole board decided that Forrest, now 61-yearsold, will remain behind bars at the Stafford Creek Corrections Center in Aberdeen, Washington. The parole board’s decision was based on the fact that Forrest did not meet the high standard of demonstrating that he had been rehabilitated. The board also looked at the brutality of Forrest’s crimes.

Forrest will again be eligible for parole in 2014. However, Clark County Detective Rick Buckner said that investigators were still looking at Forrest in a number of other unsolved homicides that they believe might be attributed to him that date back to as early as 1971.

Editor ’s Note: Mary Hall, Fiona Blair, Lisa Martin, Jackie Thompson and Mark Raney are not the real names of the persons so named in the foregoing story. Fictitious names have been used because there is no reason for public interest in the identities of these persons.

The Lethal Caress of a Devil Worshipper?

The date was June 1, 1988. Summer was just around the corner. All indications were that it was going to be a hot one in the Pacific Northwest, particularly in Oregon’s Willamette Valley, where the cities of Eugene and Springfield are located. With temperatures in the mid-to-upper-80s, the magnolias and roses were already beginning to show their varied colors along the busy streets, in residential yards, and especially around public buildings.

It was just such a peaceful scene that several members of the Springfield Police Department were dispatched to later that same day, except that it was on lower ground near a water-filtration plant. They weren’t there, however, to listen to the treetops stirring with the whisper of a cooling breeze. They had been called there to investigate the unnerving discovery of a young woman’s body, and their presence there soon created movement from the curious transients in the nearby forest camps.

Captain Jerry Smith, who headed the investigation under the direction of Springfield Police Chief Rob DeuPree, was among the first to arrive. He briefly observed the body, noted that the woman was probably in her late teens, and then directed officers from his department to cordon off a large area around the corpse. He, along with other investigators, then set about determining the dimensions of the crime scene.

The woman, observed Smith, was only partially-clad. Her clothing was nowhere to be found. She wasn’t wearing any jewelry, which seemed odd for a woman of that age, and there was no purse or wallet on or near the corpse —another oddity.

A gut feeling told him that this wasn’t a sexual assault; it just didn’t

look like one. But, he couldn’t help asking, why was the victim only partiallyclad and where were the missing clothes? Why would the perpetrator take them? Although he didn’t really expect to find the missing clothes, Smith nonetheless instructed a couple of officers to search beyond the perimeters of the crime scene just in case the killer or killers had left any items behind.

They were also told to flush out and question any hoboes living in the area.

After photographs of the victim were taken, a Lane County deputy medical examiner made his preliminary observation. Among the things he noted was that the victim bore marks and abrasions on her neck. He suspected that the hyoid bone was fractured or crushed, often an indication of strangulation. He also observed discoloration of the neck and face, as well as a swollen protruding tongue, which also supported his theory as to the cause of death.

Postmortem lividity on the undermost portions of the victim’s body indicated that she had been killed where she was found. He agreed with Smith’s opinion that it didn’t appear she had been sexually assaulted. He said, however, that laboratory tests would have to be conducted to make certain of those presumptions.

After Oregon State Police (OSP) crime lab technicians completed their examination of the victim’s body, the corpse was placed inside a body bag and transported to the Lane County Morgue in Eugene.

Although they had conducted a grid search of the area and were fairly certain that they hadn’t missed anything, the probers went over the designated crime scene again just to be sure. But night soon drew down on the investigators like a black cowl, and they packed up their gear and called it a day.

The next day was almost as hectic. The lawmen rounded up what few

hoboes they could find for questioning, but the cops quickly decided that none of those questioned knew anything about the homicide.

Following another search of the crime scene, the probers decided that any additional effort in this area would only be futile. It appeared that there was nothing in the woods which could point them toward a suspect, and no one associated with the investigation would say what evidence, if any, had been found.

Meanwhile, an autopsy of the victim’s body by Dr. Frank Ratti, Lane County Medical Examiner, revealed that she did in fact die from strangulation. It appeared, the report stated, that she had been choked, and at some point a thin, solid item had been pressed against her throat with great pressure. Ratti did not speculate on what that item may have been. A published newspaper account reported that she had also been struck in the head by a heavy object.

Usually, Jane (or John) Doe cases are the hardest to solve because investigators don’t have a satisfactory place to begin their probe, specifically a name upon which they can lay their foundation and begin building a case.

But to the surprise of the investigators, significant progress was soon made along those lines.

By the following day the homicide probers had made at least a tentative identification of the forest victim after inquiries were made by concerned relatives of Melissa Ann Meyer, 19, from Seattle. The age and physical description provided by the inquiries certainly fit that of the victim prompting Lane County authorities to request that Meyer ’s dental records be sent to them.

Shortly after the records arrived, a positive identification was made. With the woman’s identity the probers now, at least, had their first significant lead.

From this simple discovery they could begin tracing the young woman’s movements during the last hours of her life by contacting those who knew her, and from that, with any luck, they were hopeful they could eventually focus on a suspect.

The Springfield investigators soon learned that Melissa, adopted as a child, had moved to Eugene, a college town (home of the University of Oregon), from Seattle in February 1988. She was not employed anywhere, however, and detectives could find nothing to indicate that she was attending college. Her last known address was an apartment located on West Eighth Avenue in Eugene. She was last seen on May 30th in the downtown area.

Prior to her relocation, the detectives learned, she had enrolled in a drug treatment program in Seattle. By interviewing Meyer ’s acquaintances, the detectives soon determined that she often visited Eugene’s downtown mall in the months prior to her death.

The mall was known to be frequented by prostitutes and was a favorite hangout for drug addicts and pushers. This could be where she met the person or persons who killed her, theorized the detectives. But Melissa Meyer, police learned, had no arrest record and no known involvement in criminal activity. So why did she regularly go to the mall? They wondered. Was she just a people-watcher?

As news of the murder spread through the community, a chilling question surged to the forefront. Could she have been a victim of the Green River Killer? It was a question pondered by many, especially lawmen. Like many of the 40 women (mostly prostitutes) killed by the Northwest’s worst serial murderer, Meyer was found in a heavily wooded area. And since two of the killer ’s known victims had been found in Oregon, along with two other victims in Oregon suspected to be his work, it was a distinct possibility that had to be considered.

(Author’s note: At the time this story was written and published, the identity of the Green River Killer as well as confirmation of all of his victims were still a mystery and wouldn’t be known for many years yet.)

“We don’t have any evidence that leads us to believe she was a prostitute or engaged in anything of that nature,” said Captain Smith, in an apparent reference to the possibility that she had become a victim of the serial killer. “There are a lot of things we don’t know about her right now.”

Three days later, on Friday, June 3rd, a close relative of 17-year-old Candice Michelle Roy contacted Eugene police and reported the teenager as missing. Normally police wait anywhere from 24 to 72 hours before initiating action on a missing person report, time enough for a person who left of their own free will to return home. But because of the discovery of Melissa Meyer ’s murdered body, police waived the waiting period and promptly began investigating Candice Roy’s disappearance.

In their quest for information about the girl, investigators first began by questioning her relatives. Among the things they learned was that she lived near the community of Santa Clara, just north of Eugene’s city limits, in a rural wooded area.

Like Meyer, Candice Roy had no arrest record and no known involvement in criminal activity. She had just graduated from the Eugene School District’s alternative high school, police were told.

Over that weekend, Candice’s closest friends and relatives were questioned by investigators in the hope that someone might be able to shed some light on her whereabouts. However, nobody had seen her or had any idea where she might be.

On Monday afternoon the search was over.

Candice’s partially-clad body was found beneath a cluster of fir and cottonwood trees barely four blocks from her home. The location was another wooded area, approximately five miles from where Melissa Meyer ’s body was found.

The relative who reported Candice missing provided police with a positive identification. Declining to release details, Dr. Ratti, Lane County Medical Examiner, would only say the girl’s death was a homicide. Lane County Deputy District Attorney Brian Barnes, however, said the victim bore signs of “obvious trauma,” and a police source close to the investigation said she had been strangled only a relatively short time before her body was found.

But what did “a relatively short time” mean?

Did it mean that she was killed shortly after her disappearance, or did it mean that she had been alive over the weekend? If she had been alive over the weekend, where had she been? Was it possible that she’d been held captive somewhere until her killer decided to do her in? If that had been the case, why was her body found so close to home? Had she been held in the area all that time?

The investigators knew from experience that the answers to those questions, as well as many others that would arise before this case was cleared wouldn’t come easy, if they came at all.

Was the same killer responsible for both Melissa Meyer ’s and Candice Roy’s deaths? The public, naturally, wanted to know, and so did the cops.

Moving cautiously, assistant D.A. Barnes confirmed that the two cases bore “certain similarities.”

“We have females of a similar age found in wooded areas,” said Barnes.

“But beyond that, the investigation is incomplete.” He added that the Springfield police and OSP were working practically around the clock comparing evidence collected from the two crime scenes.

“The only common link we have is strangulation, and yet that’s a relatively common means used to kill people,” said Springfield Police Captain Smith. “Other than that, we really have nothing substantial at this point to say the cases may or may not be related.”

Smith did say, however, that members of the Green River Task Force in Seattle had been contacted. They had subsequently asked for specific information about the two deaths to help them determine what similarities, if any, existed between the Lane County victims and those attributed to the Green River Killer.

Later in the week, Dick Larson, spokesman for the Green River Task Force, dispelled rumors that the infamous serial killer may have been involved.

“There are young women found dead all over this country and we aren’t naive enough to believe that the Green River Killer is the only person who murders young females and leaves them outside,” said Larson. “There is nothing at this point to link the murder or murders in Oregon with our investigations. There would be absolutely no reason for us to send anyone down there to cut past all the blue smoke and mirrors, we’re just not interested unless something else turns up.”

Meanwhile, telephone calls poured into the district attorney’s office, as well as the Springfield and Eugene police departments, from concerned citizens, some of whom claimed to know who killed Candice Roy. Whether they did or not remained to be seen, but at least investigators had some leads to run down in her case.

One such lead placed them in contact with two young women who said they knew who had killed Melissa Ann Meyer. The women told police that the murder had been committed by their boyfriends, Jason Wayne Rose, 20, and John Ray Jones, 17.

According to the information, Meyer had met Rose and Jones in Eugene’s downtown mall where she had last been seen on May 30th. For reasons unknown, Meyer accompanied Rose and Jones to a camp at a wooded site where the two men had been staying. After killing Meyer, said the witnesses, Rose and Jones removed several articles of clothing and jewelry from her body.

The investigators knew that their witnesses were being truthful. Certain information they provided was consistent with the investigation, some of which had not been released to the public. Thus, they were granted a search warrant for a mobile home in which Jones had recently resided.

When they arrived at the mobile home, neither Jones nor Rose was there. Nevertheless, the probers executed the search warrant and literally turned the place inside out. By the time they finished, investigators had several items of potential evidence in their possession, including an occult “spell book” which was supposed to enable its user to communicate with the dead.

As the case continued to unfold, the detectives learned that Rose and Jones were heavily involved with the occult and possibly satanic worship.

Along those lines they collected additional evidence, including a pair of dicelike stones which had unfamiliar markings, books for communicating with the dead and for summoning ancient gods of evil, as well as several symbolic hand-scrawled items.

At first the Lane County authorities didn’t know what to make of the

occult items or even how or whether they could relate them to Meyer ’s slaying. Admitting that they were relatively uneducated in satanic activity, the investigators decided to contact Sandi Gallant, a San Francisco policewoman who has made investigating crimes related to the occult her specialty.

Gallant helped identify the dice-like objects as “rune stones,” which she said are used by occultists to predict the future.

“She told us it looked as if the attackers killed this girl for a human sacrifice,” said Deputy D.A. Brian Barnes of Lane County. “It turned out to be a mess of belief systems tossed into one very lethal one...how the heck do you go about selling that to a jury of sensible people?”

Said one Oregon official about the general lack of knowledge of police officers in matters involving satanic activity, “Law enforcement is only now educating itself to the reality of what’s been going on for some time.”

“Many of us who now accept satanic abuse as real learned first to accept the impossible through exposure to child sexual abuse,” said an authority on satanic activity. “It’s the same awareness building process taking place all over again.”

As the Lane County authorities continued to investigate the Meyer they learned more and more about satanic activity. Among the things learned was that Satanism can generally be broken down into categories: religious Satanists; dabblers; generational Satanists; and styled Satanists.

case, they four self-

Religious Satanists such as Anton LaVey, who founded the Church of Satan in San Francisco in 1966, publicly condemn criminal activity and stress that membership is not open to everyone. This group is commonly known to be fond of placing nude women on the altar.

An Oregon member of the controversial church recently said that membership is open “only to those with exemplary public and private lives.

No individuals of criminal, pathological, or otherwise unstable characters are permitted to affiliate.”

Most of those who practice deviant behavior, including ritual sacrifice, he said, have no discernible philosophy and usually congregate in loosely formed groups.

“They merely believe in evil as opposed to good, in Satan instead of God,” he said. “They believe if you appease evil, you will get something in return. Most of them have read very little philosophy and understand little about occultism.”

Dabblers, the detectives learned, consist mostly of teenagers who have some interest in the occult. Often these teens adopt symbols associated with Satanism and get involved with games such as “Dungeons and Dragons,” and heavy metal music with satanic themes. Dabblers, the investigators learned, sometimes progress through several stages, many times leading to criminal sacrificial rites.

Generational Satanists consist of families, linked together, who have been involved with satanic worship for generations. Primarily kept in a particular family or practiced through networks of participating families, generational Satanists are generally more secret about their worship rituals than the other satanic groups.

Self-styled Satanists include the likes of Charles Manson, Richard Ramirez (L.A.’s “Night Stalker” killer), and Adolfo de Jesus Constanzo, who led the band of devil-worshipping narcotics traffickers believed responsible for 15 ritual murders in Matamoros, Mexico. It was this group, Lane County detectives believed, that Jason Wayne Rose and John Ray Jones fit in,

prompting authorities to agree that Melissa Meyer may have been killed during a ritualistic human sacrifice!

Meanwhile, investigators developed a lead which indicated that Rose and Jones had fled the state. Following up on the lead, detectives had reason to believe that they had gone to Arizona. They updated a previously issued APB, circulated the suspects’ photos, and requested assistance from Arizona authorities in tracking them down.

On Monday, June 13th, Rose and Jones were traced to Show Low, Arizona, a remote mountain town located in the eastern portion of the state near the Fort Apache Indian Reservation. Two Springfield officers flew to Phoenix and were at the location within hours.

With help from local authorities, the investigators quietly moved in on the suspects at a small motel where they were believed to be staying. Just minutes before 8:00 p.m. the lawmen flushed Rose and Jones out of the motel and arrested them for suspicion of murder.

The following day, Rose and Jones were arraigned on an extradition warrant in Phoenix. The two suspects chose not to contest extradition and were returned to Oregon on Friday, June 17th. They were taken directly to the Springfield Police Department where they underwent intensive grilling by detectives after agreeing to answer their questions. The investigators did not provide any details of the interrogation.

On Monday, June 20th, Jason Wayne Rose appeared in Lane County District court before Judge Frank Alderson for his arraignment. After reading the charges, the judge told the suspect that it was his constitutional right to make no statements about the case before consulting an attorney.

However, Rose took the courtroom officials by surprise when he readily admitted that he had taken part in the strangulation murder of Melissa

Meyer.

After the brief court appearance, Deputy Prosecutor Brian Barnes said Rose’s confession would not stop the case from going forward. He said he planned to present testimony and evidence to a grand jury to seek an aggravated murder indictment against Rose and Jones. An aggravated murder conviction, said Barnes, could result in the death penalty.

On Monday, June 27th, a Lane County grand jury indictment charging Rose with aggravated murder and first-degree robbery was handed down.

The indictment charged that Rose tortured and murdered Melissa Meyer “while deliberately affecting a human sacrifice.”

Rose, despite his earlier admission of guilt in open court, pleaded innocent before Lane County Circuit Judge Douglas Spencer. The judge appointed Terrence Gough as Rose’s attorney.

John Ray Jones, who turned 18 while being held at the Skipworth Juvenile Detention Center, was subsequently remanded to stand trial as an adult, was transferred to the Lane County Jail, and was indicted on identical charges. The indictment alleged that Jones strangled Meyer at a transient’s campsite after first hitting her in the head with a machete. Jones, unlike Rose, would be protected under Oregon law and would not be eligible for the death penalty if convicted, since he was 17 when the murder was committed. He also pleaded innocent to the charges, and Eugene attorney Dan Koenig was appointed to represent him.

While awaiting trial, Rose continued to draw satanic symbols in his cell at the Lane County Jail. The drawings consisted mostly of inverted pentagrams with a goat’s head in the center. Investigators photographed the symbols from time to time and would use them against him at his trial.

Rose’s trial finally got under way in April 1989 to a standing-roomonly crowd of spectators in the courtroom of Judge Douglas Spencer.

Prosecutor Brian Barnes told jurors during the two-week trial that Rose and Jones took more than one hour to kill Melissa Meyer during the course of a ritualistic human sacrifice. At one point, Barnes presented the spell book and the set of “rune stones.” He said that Rose told police he used them to predict the future. Barnes told the stunned jury that it was after a “roll” of the rune stones that Rose decided to kill Meyer, simply because the stones had told him to do so.

Defense Attorney Terry Gough called the prosecutor ’s version of the killing “nothing but smoke and malarkey.” He admitted that Rose caused Meyer ’s death, but most likely by applying a choke hold after Meyer informed him that she was working for a rival of his. The type of work she purportedly performed was not specified. Gough insisted, however, that his client should not be convicted of aggravated murder because no aggravating circumstances were present in the slaying.

Prosecutor Barnes, on the other hand, argued that Rose committed aggravated murder because he and Jones kidnapped Meyer, stole her jacket, jewelry, and purse, and then tortured her, slowly choking her to death by standing on a thin wooden spear laid across her throat.

At one point in the trial, Barnes brought in a VCR. He played part of a videotape that depicted what authorities believed was an actual human sacrifice. Barnes alleged that Rose had watched the tape less than a month before Meyer was murdered.

At another point, Barnes placed a nationally recognized expert on satanic practices, Patricia Pulling, on the witness stand. He asked her several questions about items confiscated from the defendant.

The drawings and writings seized from Rose’s jail cell, said Pulling, indicated a strong adherence to occult beliefs. She testified that the writings were consistent with someone who could have been controlled by a desire to explore deeper into the occult, perhaps to the point of even committing a human sacrifice. Books like those found in Rose’s possession after his arrest, said Pulling, and were commonly used by occultists to cast magical spells.

Pulling added that there comes a time when adolescents go beyond mere dabbling in satanic worship. They often pass through several stages, she told the jury, stages that include drinking human blood, use of dolls to cast spells, the desecration and robbing of graves, ritualistic mutilation of animals and, ultimately, the commission of a human sacrifice.

“Occultists believe that a human sacrifice frees the life force contained in every living body,” said Pulling. “They think they can trap and use that force.”

On Thursday, April 20th, 1989, after six hours of deliberations, the nine-woman, three-man jury returned with its verdict. They had found Jason Wayne Rose guilty of aggravated murder and first-degree robbery. Rose showed no emotion as the verdict was read.

“I’m sure he is very disappointed and he’s sad because he did not believe he was guilty of aggravated murder,” said Gough after the unanimous verdict. “He also feels some anger at things said in court he felt were untrue.”

Under Oregon law, in order for a judge to sentence a defendant to death, a jury must unanimously decide that the attack on the victim was unprovoked, that it was premeditated, and that the defendant poses a future threat to society.

During the trial’s penalty phase, Rose’s attorney did not deny that Rose’s attack against Meyer was unprovoked. He did argue, however, that Meyer ’s killing was not planned and that a mandatory 30-year prison term would effectively remove Rose as a threat to society.

“What is the value of human life?” Gough asked jurors. “You have the power to kill him. But if just one of you says ‘no’ to any one of these questions, Jason Rose lives. It’s as simple as that.”

On Tuesday, May 16, 1989, after nearly 13 hours of deliberations over three days, the jury decided that Jason Rose should die for his crime. Judge Spencer then sentenced him to death by lethal injection, making Rose the 20th person sentenced to Oregon’s Death Row since reinstatement of the death penalty by voters five years earlier. Rose’s death sentence, which now goes to mandatory appeals, was the first time anyone had been sentenced to death in Lane County since 1927.

“Melissa would be happy,” said a tearful relative of the victim’s as she left the courtroom.

Less than a month later, John Ray Jones, dressed in a pale gray suit, appeared before Lane County Circuit Judge Gregory G. Foote for the beginning of his non-jury trial. In a case that doesn’t involve the possibility of a death penalty a defendant has the right to choose a jury trial or a non-jury trial.

During his opening statement, Prosecutor Barnes described how Meyer ’s killing also met the criteria for aggravated murder, the aggravating factors being kidnapping, robbery, and torture.

“There was intent to prolong the suffering of the victim,” said Barnes.

“The defendant told the authorities in Arizona that in his opinion she was

tortured.”

Barnes also pointed out how Jones had waived his right to remain silent, after which he admitted that he had participated in Meyer ’s killing.

Jones, said Barnes, told authorities that he had been trained in first-aid and had checked the victim’s pulse, finding that she was still alive before he stood on one end of the wooden spear that he and Rose had laid across her neck.

Barnes also told the judge that a deputy sheriff would testify that Jones smiled and laughed when Rose made some “particularly callous statements about the victim’s demise.” Barnes maintained that Jones and Rose took an hour to kill Melissa Meyer as “they worshipped a god that demanded human sacrifice from them.”

Dan Koenig, Jones’ defense attorney, argued that his client only participated in Meyer ’s killing because he feared Rose and was dominated by him. During most of that fateful evening, said Koenig, Jones did not believe that Rose really intended to kill Meyer. Jones, he said, was so concerned that he wanted to try and get her away from the campsite.

After the first time Rose choked Meyer, said the attorney, Rose twice ordered Jones to kill her. The second time Rose ordered Jones to kill her, Jones picked up a machete and brought it down near the back of Meyer ’s neck, just as Rose had instructed, but he never actually hit her with it, said Koenig. Jones, said the attorney, was fearful that Rose would try and kill him after he finished off Meyer.

“It was a master-servant relationship that Johnny Jones had with Mr. Rose,” said Koenig. “John Jones did only what Jason Rose told him to, directed him to, commanded him to...he did it under threat of his own life.”

At one point in the proceeding, Koenig called a medical examiner to the stand who testified that Meyer, “in all likelihood,” was dead before Rose

and Jones stood on the spear they had placed across her neck.

On Thursday, June 8, 1989, Judge Foote ruled that John Jones clearly intended to kill Melissa Meyer. He had committed acts “to that end,” but the most probable cause of the victim’s death was a choke hold inflicted by Jason Rose. Foote then said he had found Jones guilty of intentional murder and third-degree robbery.

On Monday, July 10, 1989, Judge Foote sentenced Jones to life in prison, setting a minimum prison term of 25 years. He also fined Jones $5,000. Jones is now serving his sentence at the Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution. His earliest possible release date is June 30, 2016.

Jason Wayne Rose, meanwhile, is serving his sentence at the Oregon State Prison in Salem, and has “No Parole” listed as his earliest release date.

As of June 2013, the slaying of Candice M. Roy remains unsolved.

Although there were similarities between her death and that of Melissa Meyer ’s, there is insufficient evidence to positively link the two cases and Rose and Jones were cleared of any involvement in her death. Oregon State Police are continuing that investigation and remain hopeful that someone who knows what happened will step up and talk to investigators.

Editor ’s Note: Nick Blake is not the real name of the person so named in the foregoing story. A fictitious name has been used because there is no reason for public interest in the identity of this person.

Kinky Swingers Flung Their Sex Slave Off A Cliff!

It was chilly on Saturday morning, October 7, 1989, when Mike Lawson placed his fishing gear into the bed of his pickup. It was shortly before daybreak as he backed out of his driveway, a cup of steaming coffee in one hand, and headed out of the Portland metropolitan area. Lawson’s destination was a spot along the banks of the Clackamas River, in rural Clackamas County, Oregon. There, he would join a number of other men he did not know who, like him, were on a quest for much sought after steelhead and a day of undisturbed tranquility far away from the hustle and bustle of the City of Roses.

When he arrived at his preselected location on the river ’s south shore, about 300 yards upstream from the Carver Boat Ramp, Lawson was glad to see the first rays of sunlight rising in the eastern sky. Although it looked like it was going to be a nice day, he had prepared himself by bringing his rain gear, just in case. Weather-wise and otherwise, just about anything can, and does, happen in Oregon, as Lawson would soon find out, and rain was never an exception.

The banks of the river were lined with fog that morning despite the clear sky overhead. Although the scene was peaceful, even with all of the other fishermen around, the fog lent an eerie mood to the quiet morning.

Nonetheless, Lawson put his line in the water and hoped he would quickly hook a big one.

While waiting for a fish to hit, Lawson watched the cliffs opposite him to the north where Oregon Highway 224 parallels the river. As the nearby communities began to come to life, he could hear and occasionally see the cars and trucks as they motored down the highway.

At a few minutes before 8:00 a.m., Lawson saw a silver-blue van on the road slow down and stop along a gravel turnout atop the cliff. He watched for several minutes as the driver peeled the van’s tires in the loose gravel, backing it up and then driving it forward.

The driver repeated the process a few times, apparently trying to get the van into just the right position for some as-yet unknown purpose, at least unknown to Lawson. Finally, after the driver parked the van, all was quiet again along the riverbank.

About 20 minutes later, Lawson looked up again at the north cliffs. He couldn’t believe his eyes. He saw a man with what looked like a naked woman hoisted over his shoulder, walking to the edge of the high cliff. With one swift motion, the man took the woman from his shoulder and tossed her over the side toward the river, some seventy feet below!

As Mike Lawson watched in astonishment and horror, the body, on its way down, tumbled onto an outcropping of the cliff. The man who had tossed the body over apparently saw this, too, and he was soon crawling down the steep embankment to the ledge. When the man reached the body, he pushed it over the side and watched it fall until it made a splash in the river below.

“Hey!” Lawson shouted to a group of other fishermen nearby.

“Somebody just tossed a body off the cliff!”

Few of the other fishermen paid much attention to Lawson—until they saw with their own eyes the naked corpse drifting in the shallow water. As the stunned spectators watched, the body drifted a few yards until it became lodged against some rocks. Except for a rolling motion in time with the rushing water, the figure didn’t move, and those watching presumed she was dead. Lawson, still in a state of shock, looked up the cliff in time to see the van peeling out and speeding off down the highway.

Lawson and several other fishermen rushed to their vehicles and went to find telephones (consumer cellular phones were not commonly in use at this time). Within minutes, calls about the dead naked woman in the river came pouring into the Clackamas County Sheriff’s Department dispatch center. The fishermen who chose not to go home returned to the river to watch the action when the lawmen arrived.

Among the first officers on the scene were Clackamas County Detectives John Turner, Dale Frazell, and Lynda Estes. Jeffrey A. McLennan, Clackamas County deputy medical examiner, was also present, as were several divers. A number of sheriff’s deputies surveyed and secured the area they believed was a crime scene, while others rounded up all of the witnesses.

After briefly viewing the body, the investigators began by taking statements from those at the river that morning.

“I heard a van on the road going back and forth, you know, peeling,” Mike Lawson told Detective Turner. “Then about twenty minutes later, there was this guy walking down to the edge of the cliff with a lady over his shoulder.” Lawson described how the man threw the body over the side, and how he himself yelled to the other fishermen about what he had seen.

“Everybody looked at me like I was on drugs.”

“I kind of heard a splash,” said another witness. “Then somebody says, ‘There’s a body,’ and a minute later, there was this body floating along.”

The witnesses described the man who tossed the corpse over the cliff as bearded and burly, with dark brown curly hair. He was wearing a plaid shirt and dark pants. He appeared to be 30 to 40 years old, about 175 to 200 pounds, and estimated that he was approximately 5-foot-7 inches—it was difficult to say for sure since he’d been viewed from a distance. Some said they saw a second person with him. The witnesses weren’t certain, however, if the second person was a man or a woman.

Witnesses told the investigators that the van was either silver-gray or silver-blue and that it did not have any side windows. Unfortunately, it was too far away for anyone to see the license plate number, but the witnesses said they thought it was a mid-to-late ‘70s model, perhaps a Ford.

McLennan, the deputy medical examiner, donned chest waders to make a preliminary examination of the body while it was still in the river. He could easily see that the corpse had sustained wounds during the fall, but there were several other wounds that appeared related to her death. When he was finished, divers removed the body from the river.

So who was this mystery woman? The detectives wondered. And why had someone chosen to kill her? Without identification documents or articles of clothing, they knew that learning her identity might prove difficult. The only item on her body was a turquoise earring, and it didn’t seem likely that the earring alone could help them identify her. Because time was of the essence, they didn’t want to wait for someone to come forward with a missing-person report. That could take days, even weeks. They knew they had to move quickly, before the trail became cold. But how, with such scant clues, what direction should their probe take at this early stage?

In their effort to generate leads, the three detectives sent out alerts to all of the metropolitan law enforcement agencies with a description of the victim and the crime. They also alerted the local media, providing virtually the same information they had given to their colleagues, holding back only those details that would be known only to them and the killers, such as the exact nature of the victim’s wounds. The last thing lawmen wanted to do was attract compulsive confessors and not be able to determine whose admission was genuine and whose was false. But they knew that their best chance to solve the case would be after someone who knew her identity came forward.

They would then, at least, have a cornerstone on which to build their probe.

As it turned out, the investigators didn’t have to wait very long. The next day a Gresham, Oregon, woman contacted authorities in Multnomah County about a missing relative. She said that the relative, 27-yearold Deborah Sue Spicer, had not returned home from a night of drinking on October 6th, and she feared that something bad had happened to her. She provided the lawmen with a description of Deborah, and it fit the general physical description of the nude victim in the regional alert. The lawmen who made the missing-person contact reported their findings to the Clackamas County detectives investigating the crime.

When the Clackamas County detectives interviewed the person who had filed the missing-person report on Deborah Spicer, they knew within minutes that they had identified their nude victim. The relative showed the sleuths a photograph of Deborah Spicer. Although the victim’s face was swollen and injured when they pulled her out of the river, there was no doubt that she and the missing Deborah Spicer were one and the same. The sleuths broke the unpleasant news to Spicer ’s relatives and, as difficult as it was, proceeded with their questioning.

Spicer, they soon learned, was born on July 31, 1962, in Columbus, Ohio, and moved with her family at age 5 to California. After a year in the Golden State, the family moved to Oregon and settled in East Multnomah County. Deborah had been a cheerleader at Reynolds High School in Portland and graduated in 1980.

The distraught relative described Deborah as a social person who had many friends. Deborah enjoyed tennis, skiing, and bowling and had been working as a secretary until shortly before her death.

“She had migraine headaches, and she missed so much work that she

just had to quit that job,” said the tearful relative.

Deborah had been drinking a little lately, police learned, and had been at a local tavern the night before her body was seen being thrown into the river. The relative said Deborah liked to have fun, like other young people her age.

“She would play pool with the girls and the boys. She liked to have parties. But she also liked her home.” Her favorite pastime was reading romantic novels.

Deborah had dinner on Friday night with her relatives and a boyfriend, police learned.

“He [the boyfriend] was here when they went out Friday night. Deborah stir-fried a dinner for all of us.”

The relative told the investigators that she and another relative had last seen Deborah about 3:00 a.m. on Saturday, October 7th. She showed up at her relative’s apartment, where Deborah also lived, with a man and a woman whom the relative had never seen before.

The relative described the man as 6 feet tall, 25 to 40 years old, with dark, sunken eyes. His black hair reached his collar in the back, but was shorter on the sides. He had a beard and tattoos on both forearms. One of the tattoos was of a star, or perhaps a snowflake. The man was wearing a flannel shirt open in the front, a tank top, and jeans. He had another tattoo on his chest that read, “Debby Lynn.”

The woman was described as about 5-foot-2 to 5-foot-5 with lightbrown hair. She appeared to be in her 30s and was of medium build. She was wearing a short black jacket that extended to her waist and jeans.

A boyfriend, with whom Deborah had been fighting, told the detectives that he had received a telephone call from Deborah about 4:00 a.m. on

Saturday from an undisclosed location. Although the details were sketchy, Deborah apparently had told her friend that she was at the home of a Gresham couple and that they wanted her to engage in sex acts. She hadn’t wanted to participate, and apparently had asked for help in getting out of the situation.

“Deborah was no saint, but she was not a bad girl,” said the relative.

“That person had to be crazy to do what he did. What kind of person would do that—kill somebody just because she didn’t want to do what they wanted her to do, and just toss her without clothes off a cliff? I don’t care what that man was. I want him caught. No. I want him dead. I believe in capital punishment.

He took her life. And no matter what she was, she didn’t deserve to die...like that or any other way.”

Later that same day Dr. Karen Gunson, a deputy Multnomah County medical examiner, performed a definitive autopsy on Deborah Spicer ’s body.

Dr. Gunson determined that Deborah had sustained chest and abdominal knife wounds, a total of four, and received wounds during the trip over the side of the cliff.

It also appeared that Deborah had been beaten about the head and face, but it was difficult to determine with any degree of accuracy if the wounds were the result of a beating or had been caused by the fall. There were also signs of asphyxiation, but the medical examiner was unable to determine if Deborah had been strangled manually or by other means such as having something placed over her face. Dr. Gunson’s conclusion was that the primary cause of Deborah’s death was from strangulation, despite the four stab wounds. The stab wounds were not likely to have been fatal, but the loss of blood had made Deborah more susceptible to asphyxiation.

In their efforts to generate additional leads, the detectives enlisted the aid of a police artist to work up composite drawings of two possible male

suspects from their witnesses’ descriptions. The composites were then distributed throughout the Northwest and were shown to the public via several media outlets. The composites prompted more than 150 calls to the sheriff’s office.

“People want to help so much,” said Deputy Judy Gage, Sheriff Bill Brooks’ public information Officer. “We have to eliminate all the tips that come in. We hope it won’t be too long. Somebody must know these people.”

One such tip came in from Klamath Falls, a town in southern Oregon.

The caller reported seeing a van with a man and two women who were similar in appearance to the descriptions provided by witnesses. However, the lead didn’t pan out.

It wasn’t long, however, before sheriff’s detectives received a tip that led them to a southeast Portland tavern. It was here that Deborah Spicer was seen drinking with two other people, a man and a woman, the night before her nude body was thrown over the cliff and into the Clackamas River.

Detective John Turner and his partner, Detective Lynda Estes, wasted no time getting to the drinking establishment.

After questioning employees and “regulars” at the tavern, Detectives Turner and Estes eventually determined that Deborah Spicer had met Randy Charles Bockorny, 35, and his wife, Debra Lynn Bockorny, 34, on Friday evening, October 6th.

Witnesses who placed the trio together described Randy Bockorny as 6 feet tall—a few inches taller than the earlier witness descriptions—with a medium build, blue eyes, black collar-length hair, and a Vandyke beard. They also said he had a teardrop tattoo near his left eye and a partially drawn spider web tattoo on his left wrist. Both forearms, witnesses recalled, were covered with tattoos, as was much of his body. Someone said he even had a

tattoo of the name of a former girlfriend on the tip of his penis.

Debra Bockorny, witnesses remembered, was 5 feet 6 inches tall and weighed about 140 pounds. She was further described as having wavy lightbrown, collar-length hair and blue eyes. Witnesses said she had tattoos on both of her upper shoulders. One was of a Harley-Davidson motorcycle emblem and the other had a teardrop in its center that read, “Teardrop Randy.”

Witnesses told Turner and Estes that the couple drove a silver-blue 1976 Ford van with a gray stripe. It had no windows on the driver ’s side.

Further inquiries revealed that it had Wisconsin license plates, the indentifying number of which the investigators obtained with a little effort through cooperation of the Wisconsin Department of Motor Vehicles.

The descriptions of the Bockornys and their van matched almost perfectly the descriptions obtained earlier from the fishermen who saw Spicer ’s body fall into the river, with the exception of the height of the man seen tossing her body over the cliff. At this point, there was little doubt in Turner ’s and Estes’ minds that Randy Bockorny was the man seen throwing the body off the cliff. The homicide probers had no difficulty obtaining arrest warrants for the Bockornys on suspicion of murder.

Turner and Estes soon learned that Randy and Debra Bockorny lived in a small, isolated rental house on a large lot in the town of Gresham at the time of Spicer ’s murder. Since this was in East Multnomah County and out of their jurisdiction, the sleuths sought and readily received the cooperation and assistance of the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Department and the Gresham Police Department. The multi-jurisdictional law enforcement agencies promptly converged on the residence with search warrants.

As probers had expected, nobody was at home when they arrived.

Turner and Estes believed their murder suspects had fled the state soon after dumping Spicer ’s body into the river. Nonetheless, after being let inside by the owner of the house, they went through it room by room in their search for evidence.

Deputy John Gilliland, evidence technician for the Clackamas County Sheriff’s Department, was accompanied by his colleagues and together they collected evidence of various types. These included the obvious, such as items that might have been used as weapons, as well as the not-so-obvious trace evidence. Since they believed that Spicer had been killed or mortally wounded at a location separate from where her body was dumped, they were looking specifically for evidence showing that Spicer was inside the Bockorny’s home. Fingerprints, articles of clothing, or other personal items would be particularly useful.

In one of the bedrooms, investigators found traces of blood. They also noted that a large section of a green carpet had been literally cut away from the rest of the carpet. Turner and Estes wondered why the carpet had been cut out, and whether or not the carpet’s removal had anything to do with Spicer ’s death. They suspected that it had. Deputy Gilliland examined the areas adjacent to the cut section, looking for traces of blood.

It wasn’t until the investigators were on their hands and knees, searching the floor and, specifically, beneath the bed, that they found perhaps the most damning piece of evidence, the coup de grace, in Turner ’s opinion.

It was an earring, identical to the single earring found on Deborah Spicer ’s body when it was recovered from the river!

Because Spicer ’s body had been found in Clackamas County, and because Turner and Estes had done most of the legwork leading to the identification of the Bockornys as suspects, it was decided that Turner and Estes would continue the investigation instead of turning the case over to

their Multnomah County colleagues, despite the fact that the lawmen now believed Spicer had been killed in Multnomah County and her corpse driven to the Clackamas River and discarded.

During their background check on the Bockornys, with assistance from the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) and the FBI, Turner and Estes learned that Randy Bockorny had an extensive police record. According to NCIC records, Bockorny had 47 contacts with law enforcement dating back to 1973. The NCIC indicated that most of his record was on file with the Langlade County Sheriff’s Department in northern Wisconsin.

Bockorny, the detectives learned, had been convicted of various crimes, ranging from robbery in 1973 to attempted escape and assault of a Wisconsin state prisoner in 1977. He was also convicted for parole violations in 1983 and for disorderly conduct in 1985. On October 3rd, just four days before Deborah Spicer ’s death, Langlade County issued a felony warrant for his arrest for failure to appear in court on a battering charge filed by a former girlfriend the previous March.

Through the assistance of Sergeant Brad Henricks of the Langlade County Sheriff’s Department, Turner and Estes soon learned that Randy Bockorny was born in Antigo, Wisconsin, and had spent most of his childhood there. He had several relatives who still lived there. A search of Wisconsin’s Department of Motor Vehicles files showed that Bockorny had purchased a 1976 Ford van from an Antigo resident in 1988.

“He has served numerous stints in the Wisconsin prison system,” said Sergeant Henricks, who added that Bockorny’s various sentences totaled at least 10 years.

By contrast, however, Deborah Bockorny had no record with the Langlade County authorities. Henricks told the Oregon detectives that he

believed the couple had met somewhere on the West Coast, but he couldn’t say precisely where.

As their investigation continued Detectives Turner and Estes, with the assistance of the FBI, subpoenaed telephone records and other evidence of several Antigo residents who knew the Bockornys. The sleuths learned that the couple had ongoing contact with several friends and relatives in Wisconsin after they had fled Oregon. Turner and Estes cautioned Wisconsin authorities that the murder suspects could be in Green Bay. As a result, an APB was issued in Wisconsin for the Bockornys and their van.

A few days later, on Thursday, October 26th, a Green Bay police officer spotted a van that fit the description of the Bockornys’. The vehicle was parked in a motel parking lot on the west side of town. When the officer checked the license plate, he found that it was indeed registered to Randy Bockorny.

The officer called for backups and, when help arrived, the lawmen maintained a low profile as they checked out the motel. When they spoke with a desk clerk, they learned that a couple had registered there on October 15th under the name Debra Bockorny.

The desk clerk proved helpful. She told probers that Debra Bockorny was “very friendly,” and that she had obtained a job as a waitress at the motel restaurant. She said that Debra’s husband apparently worked elsewhere.

However, as luck would have it, the desk clerk told police that the couple happened to be in the restaurant as they spoke.

Using extreme caution, police surrounded the restaurant. When everyone was in place, an officer went inside to make sure the suspects were there. After identifying their subjects, several officers entered the restaurant and arrested Randy and Debra Bockorny without incident. They were held

without bail in the Brown County Jail on the Oregon murder warrants, and their Ford van was towed to a Green Bay police garage.

Upon learning of the arrests, Captain H. Patrick Detloff, chief of detectives for the Clackamas County Sheriff’s Department, promptly sent Turner and Estes to Green Bay to interview the murder suspects. Randy Bockorny had little to say to the detectives and invoked his rights. Debra, however, talked with the sleuths. Both suspects initially refused to waive extradition to Oregon.

Following their interviews with Debra Bockorny, Turner and Estes had every reason to believe that the Bockornys had killed Deborah Sue Spicer after they attempted to force her to engage in a lesbian sexual act with Debra Bockorny while Randy watched them. Debra Bockorny, they learned, was bisexual.

When they searched the Bockornys’ van, Turner and Estes found, among other things, the large section of carpet that had been cut away from the bedroom of the couple’s Gresham rental home. Moreover, the interior of the van smelled awful, and when they saw the massive bloodstains on the carpet, Turner and Estes knew why. When they turned the carpet over, they observed that blood had soaked it through and through. Was it Deborah Spicer’s blood? They wondered.

Results of blood typing procedures by the Oregon State Police Crime Lab indicated that bloodstains found at the Bockornys’ house in Gresham was of the same type as Spicer ’s, and that blood found inside the Bockornys’ van was also of the same type as the victim. While such evidence is not conclusive in and of itself, it can be most helpful in building a case against a murder suspect, particularly when it is combined with other physical evidence. (As stated elsewhere in this collection, DNA was still in its infancy and was not yet being regularly used).

Some three weeks later, Debra Bockorny decided to waive extradition and return to Oregon to face the murder charges. Her husband, however, continued to fight extradition. It took another two weeks and a governor ’s warrant to return Randy Bockorny to Oregon.

Once they were back in the Beaver State, Randy and Debra Bockorny were held without bail in the downtown Portland Justice Center Jail. Each was subsequently indicted by a grand jury and charged with two counts of aggravated murder and one count of murder. The two aggravated murder counts alleged that Deborah Spicer was killed during the commission of attempted first-degree sexual abuse and that she was killed in an attempt to conceal that crime. The single count of murder alleged that the Bockornys had intentionally caused Spicer ’s death by beating, asphyxiation, and stabbing.

Each suspect pleaded not guilty and, because of the nature of the evidence and defense raised by Debra Bockorny, separate trials were ordered.

Randy Bockorny went on trial first. His trial began on Monday, January 28, 1991, in the courtroom of Multnomah County Circuit Court Judge Robert Jones.

In opening statements, Bockorny’s lawyer, Kenneth Morrow, blamed Spicer ’s death on Bockorny’s wife, Debra. He said that his client learned that Debra Bockorny was bisexual soon after their marriage in July 1989, and he had expressed his disapproval. He told jurors that both women were naked and had been engaging in sex acts when Debra Bockorny suddenly became angry and stabbed Spicer with a pair of scissors. Morrow said that Debra Bockorny had twice prevented her husband from entering the bedroom where she was having sex with the victim. He said that all three had been drinking heavily on the night of October 6, 1989.

Deputy District Attorney John Bradley told the jury that Deborah

Spicer had met the Bockornys at a tavern on the evening of October 6th, after she had had an earlier argument with her boyfriend. At 2:30 a.m., closing time for drinking establishments in Oregon, the trio left the tavern.

They stopped at a store to buy beer, and then stopped briefly at Spicer ’s apartment which she shared with a relative. Afterwards, they went to the Bockornys’ house in Gresham.

Prosecutor Bradley contended that both Randy and Debra Bockorny were involved in Spicer ’s death. He maintained that physical evidence would show that Randy Bockorny had had sex with Spicer before she was killed.

At one point, Randy Bockorny testified in his own defense. He said that he had been drinking all day and all night on October 6th. He said that he twice entered his bedroom, where his wife and Spicer were lying naked on the bed, and his wife twice told him to leave. He said he went into another bedroom and passed out, but was later awakened by a noise.

When he returned to the bedroom where his wife and Spicer were, he found his wife sitting over Spicer ’s body. He said Spicer had been stabbed and Debra Bockorny was holding a pillow over Spicer ’s head. He said he saw bloody scissors lying on the floor near the bed.

“She told me, ‘She’s dead, she’s dead,’” Randy Bockorny testified.

Bockorny said he then threatened to leave his wife, after which she threatened to notify the police and blame Spicer ’s death on him if he did so.

He wanted to leave his wife immediately, he said, but didn’t because Debra told him that the police would accuse him of the murder because of his extensive prior record, and that the authorities would believe her over him.

Randy Bockorny also told the jurors that his wife had threatened to shoot him if he tried to interfere with her bisexual adventures. He said he believed her because she had once shot a previous husband and, even though

he objected to Debra’s bisexual activities, he had learned “to live with it.”

During cross-examination, Deputy District Attorney Gregory Horner told the jury that Bockorny had made no attempts to leave his wife anytime after they had fled Oregon.

“Isn’t the real reason you never left your wife because you were afraid she would tell the police of your involvement in beating, sodomizing, and killing Miss Spicer?”

“No, Mr. Horner, because I didn’t do it,” replied Randy Bockorny.

It was pointed out that the victim made a few phone calls to her boyfriend from the Bockornys’ house and had asked for help. Bockorny responded that he took the telephone away from her on one occasion and told the man she had been talking to that he’d better not come over or he “would kick his butt.” Bockorny said it was his understanding that Spicer was angry with the man she had been talking to and did not want to see him.

After he repeatedly denied having anything to do with killing Deborah Spicer, Bockorny did admit that he had helped his wife dispose of the victim’s body by throwing it off a cliff.

“I was scared,” said Bockorny. “I was confused. I was just plain numb.”

In blaming Spicer ’s death on Bockorny’s wife, Defense Attorney Morrow said that Debra Bockorny was a “mean, volatile, vicious person who goes off the handle and loses all control.”

He said that Debra Bockorny, who had previously been married four times, had fired a rifle at her first husband, shot her second husband with a handgun, attacked her third husband with a hammer, and had stabbed Randy Bockorny twice. It was pointed out that the reason she didn’t have a criminal record was because her previous spouses had chosen not to press charges against her.

“The state and you,” said Morrow, “have created a classic situation of imposing the death penalty on a person who it may well turn out didn’t commit the crimes at all.”

On Monday, February 12, 1991, the jury convicted Randall C. Bockorny of aggravated murder. The same jury chose to spare him the death sentence, and instead sentenced him to life in prison with a minimum term of 20 years before parole eligibility.

Debra Bockorny’s trial, also heard before a jury in Judge Jones’ courtroom, began on Monday, April 1, 1991. During opening statements her attorney, John Uffelman, said that Randy Bockorny had threatened to kill Debra if she did not participate in the sex acts that led to Spicer’s death.

Uffelman said Randy Bockorny had demanded that his wife and Spicer remove their clothes and engage in sex. However, he eventually began choking Spicer because he feared that she would notify the police about the forced sex acts. At one point, said Uffelman, Debra Bockorny attempted to pull her husband away from the victim, but was unable to do so.

He also characterized his client as a battered woman who was afraid of her husband. He said she stabbed the victim one time only after being ordered to do so by her husband, while the three lay in bed. He said that the one stab wound she inflicted was only a shallow wound that would not have caused Spicer ’s death. He contended that the other three stab wounds had been inflicted by Randy Bockorny, and that each subsequent wound had been deeper and more life-threatening than the single wound inflicted by his client.

Uffelman told the jurors that after the stabbing, Debra went into the living room, leaving Randy in the bedroom with Spicer.

“What happened after she left the room she does not know,” said the attorney. Uffelman insisted that Debra Bockorny had no knowledge of Spicer having been sodomized.

Testifying in her own defense, Debra Bockorny admitted that she was sexually attracted to women, but adamantly denied having any sexual interest in Deborah Spicer. She also described how she tried to stop her husband from attacking Spicer.

“I tried to pull him off,” testified Bockorny, speaking softly through tears. “I couldn’t redirect him. She trusted me to help her and I couldn’t stop him.” She admitted stabbing Spicer one time after her husband handed her a kitchen knife and demanded that she stab her.

“He said, ‘You are going to do this,’” Debra testified. “1 said, ‘1 can’t do this.’ He said, ‘Yes, you can or you will be next.’ I really thought he would kill us both.” Debra continued to cry through much of her testimony.

At one point, Deputy District Attorney Horner asked the defendant if she recalled telling a friend that she knew how to cry when she wanted or needed sympathy. But Bockorny responded that she did not remember making such a statement to anyone.

“Don’t give her a chance to victimize someone else,” urged D.A. Horner. “If not the death penalty, don’t let her out again.”

Despite her excessive crying throughout her trial, Debra Bockorny showed little emotion when the jurors returned to announce that they had found her guilty of aggravated murder.

On Wednesday, April 17, 1991, a Multnomah County jury spared Debra Bockorny her life, just as a different jury had done with her husband.

However, they weren’t as lenient as her husband’s jury had been. After failing

to find sufficient mitigating factors that would have allowed her a chance of parole after serving 30 years, the jury sentenced Debra Bockorny to life in prison without possibility of parole.

As of June 2013, both Bockornys are still in custody at Oregon correctional institutions.

Editor ’s Note: Mike Lawson is not the real name of the person so named in the foregoing story. A fictitious name has been used because there is no reason for public interest in the identity of this person.

Torture Slaying of the Woman and the Demon Seed When Trooper Ronald Ruecker pulled into the parking lot at the Columbia City office of Oregon State Police where he worked the swing shift, he likely thought it would be another routine Sunday of merely patrolling U.S. Highway 30, occasionally handing out traffic tickets to speeding motorists en route to Portland from Astoria or vice versa.

Ruecker ’s territory or jurisdiction wasn’t equally all that exciting. However, in spite of the mundane nature of his typical patrol which he had learned to count upon Ruecker, like all lawmen, was trained to expect the unexpected.

What he unexpectedly encountered on this particular Sunday was unlike anything he’d ever experienced before; it was so horrible that it would likely haunt him the rest of his life.

The homicide which occurred in Columbia County on Valentine’s Day, February 14, 1982 was so horrendously brutal that most area residents are reluctant to talk about it, preferring instead to simply try and forget that it ever happened. But it did happen, and the story you are about to read is not the “toned-down” version that appeared in the newspapers. Instead it is the shocking, bizarre, unvarnished account of a homicidal rage of such unleashed savagery that ultimately and unreasonably ended the life of a young woman and her unborn child.

It had been raining off and on throughout most of the day, and the fact that the sky was overcast with clouds brought on the darkness earlier than usual as the afternoon turned into early evening. Trooper Ruecker was driving south on Highway 30 towards the small community of Scappoose when he spotted two dark figures outlined by the dim peripheral rays from his car ’s headlights lying several feet apart on the hillside opposite him.

Were there two people lying there? He made a U-turn and pulled onto the soft shoulder of the road. It was difficult to tell what was lying there, as his vision was impaired by the darkness, the falling rain and the motion from his car’s windshield wipers. He decided to investigate further.

As he put on his “Smokey Bear” hat and grabbed his heavy duty flashlight, Trooper Ruecker noted that he was only a few yards from the entrance to Columbia Memorial Gardens, a cemetery which lay just over the hillside he was about to check out. He had an eerie feeling that night, he later said in retrospect during an interview, as he headed toward the first dark figure. Upon reaching it, however, Ruecker discovered that it was merely a backpack, gold in color with a blue jacket draped over one end of it. It looked as if the backpack had been soiled or stained in certain areas, but with only the limited illumination from his flashlight it was difficult to discern just what the stains consisted of.

Using his flashlight to guide him through the darkness Trooper Ruecker proceeded toward the second figure, which was lying in some grass above the highway from the gold backpack. He soon discovered, however, that it was just another backpack, green in color with another blue jacket draped over it and a stocking cap lying next to it. It was at this point that Ruecker thought he’d heard a voice in the distance and, his curiosity now thoroughly aroused, he climbed up the embankment, crossed a set of railroad tracks and entered the northwestern edge of the cemetery.

He could hear the voice more clearly now and was able to discern that it was that of a male. As he approached the voice he saw a human figure, silhouetted by the darkness, kneeling over another human figure, but it was too dark to see what was happening.

At this point, however, Ruecker could hear the male voice saying, “It’s okay, man, it’s okay,” but he was unable to determine if the male subject was

speaking to him or to the figure lying on the ground, or to himself.

As he got closer, Ruecker shined his light on the two figures and saw that the kneeling person had his thumbs pushed firmly into the eyes of the other person, rotating his thumbs in a circular motion until one of the person’s eyeballs popped about an inch out of its socket!

Horrified at what he saw, Ruecker knew that the person had to either be dead or unconscious because the person made no movement and made no sound. No one, he reasoned, could withstand that kind of pain if he or she was alive and conscious.

At that point the man got up, looked at Ruecker and started moving toward the trooper. Ruecker stayed calm, keeping his flashlight’s beam on the man, but nonetheless placed his hand firmly on his holstered gun. Not knowing what state of mind the man was in, Ruecker began talking to him and persuaded him to go with him. He placed him in handcuffs. On the way to the patrol car, the man began to resist, even though he was handcuffed, but Ruecker put his hand on his gun and tightened his grip on the man with the other. He decided to go along peaceably.

When he had the man locked safely inside his patrol car, Ruecker noted that his captive’s long, brown and curly shoulder-length hair, as well as his face, hands, and clothing, were literally covered in blood. Although the man, in his late teens or early twenties, was wearing a T-shirt and jeans, Ruecker thought it odd that he was wearing socks but no shoes.

Deciding not to speak with the young man at this point, Ruecker called in for back-up help and returned to the cemetery to determine exactly what the situation was there.

Using his flashlight, Ruecker saw that the human form lying on the

ground was a young, dark-haired female, now quite dead, who had most assuredly succumbed to her injuries before Ruecker arrived at the scene.

Although she was now severely mutilated, Ruecker guessed that she had been quite pretty. But now, in her present unsightly state, the young woman was difficult to look at without becoming nauseous. Just the same, Ruecker took note of his observations while he waited for back-up personnel to arrive.

He noted that the victim was lying flat on her back, her legs bent so that her knees and thighs extended upward with her feet planted firmly on the ground, her heels nearly touching her buttocks. She was wearing a T-shirt which read, “All natural ingredients. No artificial sweeteners, no preservatives added,” with a bra underneath. She was also wearing blue jeans and panties, both of which were pulled down below her knees, exposing her genitals, and was wearing tennis shoes and two pairs of socks, one pink and one blue one pulled over two yellow socks. In addition, holes were noted in the groin area of the elastic band of her pants, and there were sections of a fishing pole protruding from her vagina!

Already aghast at what he saw, Ruecker was shocked still further when he observed that the victim’s feet were tied together with rope or cord, and the suspect had used slip knots on rope or cord to bind the victim’s wrists and neck in such a manner that if the victim struggled the ropes would tighten around her neck and choke her. Abdominal wounds were also discernible, as were wounds to her eyes and nose.

A short time later, additional Oregon State Police units arrived at the scene, as did Columbia County District Attorney Martin Sells and his chief investigator, Dalton Derrick. After their observations of the crime scene and the victim, Sells and Derrick turned the scene over to evidence technicians from the Oregon State Police crime lab in Portland. Dalton Derrick and Trooper Michael Roberg, criminal investigator from the Columbia City

office of the Oregon State Police, were assigned to handle the investigation.

The investigators discovered two very large extensively rusted nails beneath the victim’s buttocks, which technician Chris Johnson, directing the crime lab operation, placed and labeled in an appropriate container for transport back to the labs in Portland. Also found in the same location was two bloodstained sections of a fishing rod—one was eight inches long and the other six inches in length. They also found two bloodstained, broken and spent sections of a Fussee, commonly called a roadside flare.

Trooper Roberg took photos of crime scene, including shots of the victim from every imaginable angle. He also took photos of the suspect, who had a large amount of blood over both eyes and blood spattered over his face.

It was noted by investigators that the suspect had several circular type wounds near center of his right palm, and that both hands were also bloody.

His hands were also photographed.

The suspect’s clothing was confiscated at the crime scene to prevent destruction or loss of evidence, and the patrol car in which he had been secured was impounded and taken to the police crime labs where it would be processed in search of strands of the victim’s hair, which the investigators believed may have been present on the suspect’s clothes and had fallen off inside the car. They weren’t going to take any chances on losing potential evidence, no matter how minute it might be.

In the meantime, the suspect was taken to a local hospital — all the while being reminded of his rights — where urine and blood samples were taken to determine whether drugs of any kind were present. He was also interrogated briefly after displaying a willingness to answer questions, after which fingernail scrapings were obtained. He was transferred and booked into the Columbia County Jail in St. Helens, and was identified as 20-year-old Delmar Anholt Jr. of Portland.

Meanwhile, back at the cemetery, investigators were still gathering evidence when Columbia County Medical Examiner Dr. John Brookhart arrived at the scene to make a preliminary or superficial examination to make sure it was okay to move the body and get it ready for transport to Portland where a definitive autopsy would be performed by the state medical examiner.

Brookhart noted that there were external wounds resulting from multiple punctures to the lower abdomen, and there were superficial abrasions as well as severe burns in the area of the victim’s anus and vagina.

He noted the presence of a metal spike that was embedded in the right pelvic region, and noted that a section of a fishing pole extruded from the victim’s vagina. There were also multiple puncture wounds of the face and both eyes, as well as lacerations and abrasions of the victim’s nose and face. He entered into his records that the victim was pregnant at the time of her death, and that the unborn child had also died. He made note of the fact that the victim’s hands and feet were bound with cord and, after taking a reading of her body temperature via the rectum, the victim’s body was placed inside a yellow body bag and taken to the Multnomah County Morgue in Portland.

“It’s the worst thing I’ve ever seen,” said Columbia County District Attorney Martin Sells, commenting on his observation of the homicide victim upon arrival at the crime scene.

“The victim was eight and a half months pregnant. There were these ten-penny spikes used for construction (authorities later learned the suspect used them for tent spikes) jabbed into her abdomen, all the way in there. The spikes were eight or nine inches long (and as big in diameter as a man’s little finger, blunt or dull on the ends). Her eyes were gouged out, way down deep into the sinuses, and her nose was practically cut off.

“Just about everything you could do to a person he (the suspect) did,” Sells continued. “At that point in time (when Ruecker entered the scene and saw the suspect kneeling over the victim), I think the officer did a terrific job,” said Sells in retrospect.

Many cops, it was noted, might have simply shot the suspect after seeing what he was doing and left the questions that might have been answered to the investigation that would come later. Ruecker was obviously seasoned and/or disciplined enough to know when to fire his weapon and when not to fire it.

Sells said that additional evidence taken by the crime labs included the two backpacks found by Trooper Ruecker, which had been stained with blood, a black stocking cap, a burlap sack, ciga-rette rolling papers, three very large extensively rusted nails (in addition to those found under the victim’s buttocks), a bloodstained white comb, 30 inches of bloodstained white cotton rope and additional sections of fishing rods, both ends broken with bloodstains and tissue adhering to the distal ends. Additionally, said Sells, it had been determined that the bloody jeans of the suspect had been stained with her own blood as had her multi-colored long sleeved shirt.

According to Sells, investigators identified the victim as 19-year-old Tara Lea McCarthy, the suspect’s girlfriend. Inquiries into her background revealed that Tara came from a rather large family of five kids, and that she had lived in the St. Johns area of North Portland. She had gone to school at Roosevelt High, where she had met Anholt through a relative.

When she was 15, Tara’s family decided to move away from St. Johns, but Tara refused to leave with them. She insisted on remaining there so that she could finish high school at Roosevelt. She was invited to live with Anholt and his family while she continued school. Her parents eventually agreed to that arrangement, and she moved in with the Anholts. The investigators

learned that it wasn’t long before she and Anholt began sleeping together.

A background check on Anholt revealed that he attended a Catholic school until the seventh grade, at which time he began to use and abuse marijuana and tobacco. He was a poor student in high school, in and out of trouble until he was eventually suspended from Roosevelt. As a result, he did not graduate.

Although he came from a good, respected family, Anholt’s home life was nothing he could brag about due, primarily, to his own self-centered actions. Things got continually worse and, at one point, Anholt threatened to kill his sister. As a result, his mother called the juvenile detention authorities and he was placed in a detention home for a few months. It was also revealed that he was once sent to a place called Sun Village, a school for youths in trouble.

At one point, while living with Tara, Anholt was charged and convicted of first-degree theft and placed on probation. However, he violated the conditions of his probation and was sentenced to Oregon Correctional Institution for 14 months. Tara was true to him during this time and visited him often, when she could get a day off from various waitress jobs she held while going to school and living with Anholt’s relatives.

When Anholt got out of Oregon Correctional Institution, detectives learned, he very rarely worked. When he did, it was always for a very short period of time, often only a half day at a time. Instead, when he wasn’t getting into trouble for criminal mischief, he did a lot of fishing, camping and wandering around, with Tara accompanying him nearly everywhere he went.

During the course of her relationship with Anholt, the cops learned, Tara became pregnant four known times. The first time, Anholt sent her to an abortion clinic in Seattle somebody had told him about, where she had the

pregnancy terminated. Anholt demanded that she have her second and third pregnancies aborted also, and near the delivery date of her fourth pregnancy Anholt killed her and attempted to take the baby, which he believed, wrongly, belonged to another man.

The investigators also uncovered, during their probing, allegations made by acquaintances of Anholt’s that he was an occultist, that he and others went out on one occasion and somehow obtained a cow or a calf and butchered it during some sort of ritual. However, the investigators were unable to establish just how deeply involved he was with the occult, and as a result were not able to establish a link between his alleged occult activities and the torture-murder of Tara McCarthy.

Following a thorough autopsy on the victim’s body by Dr. William Brady, state medical examiner, the facts of the case became even more grisly with each of his findings. According to Brady, Tara head injuries to both of her eyes, to her nose, cheek and lips. Both of her eyes were bruised and swollen, indicating the application of force against the eyeballs, and there were lacerations across the victim’s left upper eyelid. Puncture wounds present near her eyes extended down into the girl’s face and sinuses to a depth of an inch or more. Her lips were cut and bruised, and her tongue was clinched tightly between her teeth, an indication that she endured extreme pain prior to her death.

Brady’s conclusions were that the victim died from asphyxia by strangulation and by piercing of her body with a fishing pole, causing the injuries to the uterus and to the liver. Aside from complete dismemberment and decapitation cases, Brady said this was the most severe case of mutilation that he had ever seen.

In the meantime, lab tests performed on Delmar Anholt’s blood samples taken shortly after his arrest revealed that he had taken methamphetamines

and amphetamines, both of which are powerful forms of speed. Also, after being charged and indicted for murder, Anholt was examined by Medford, Oregon psychiatrist Dr. Hugh Gardner at the request of the prosecutor.

Dr. Gardner found that Anholt didn’t have a value system that is normally associated with maturity, citing as an example that Anholt once quit a construction job in order to spend the money that he’d made. Gardner said that Anholt also told him that he bought drugs such as Valium, speed, pot and beer just to make him feel good, but said that he didn’t like heroin or cocaine.

Dr. Gardner also said that Anholt bragged about his sex life at first, but later told him he started masturbating when he was in his early teens and had had intercourse with only two different females, one of whom was his victim and the other an older woman he’d had sex with when he was younger.

Gardner ’s diagnosis of Anholt was that he manifested an antisocial personality, was narcissistic and self-centered, and held no value for human life other than his own. According to Dr. Gardner, drugs did not interfere with Anholt’s ability to form the intent to commit the murder of Tara Lea McCarthy or anything else that he wanted to do.

While lodged in the Columbia County Jail, Anholt was interrogated by investigators Derrick and Roberg several times, and during the course of these sessions the officers learned that there had been some explosive arguments between Anholt and some of his relatives regarding an inheritance left by his deceased father. It was after one such argument, the cops were told, that Anholt and Tara decided to take off on a trip to Long Beach, Washington to stay at his family’s beach cabin. Anholt said they were leaving because “everything was coming down in the city. All the sluts, whores and prostitutes were going to get it,” whatever that meant.

Anholt told the

detectives that he and Tara then packed up their sleeping bags, backpacks, and other camping gear and left the house, hitching a ride on North Willamette Boulevard in Portland near the University of Portland campus.

Anholt said that he and Tara had been picked up by a motorist driving a pickup truck, and that they had been taken as for as a tavern in Linnton, just outside the Portland City limits. Anholt said the driver of the pickup was carrying two small puppies, one of which was given to Tara at her request.

Anholt added that he and Tara continued hitchhiking toward the coast, and were eventually picked up by a man driving another pickup. This time they got as far as Scappoose (about 10 miles west of Linnton) when the pickup broke down and had to be towed. They had been dropped off near the cemetery.

Derrick and Roberg began checking out Anholt’s story, to see if any of it could be corroborated. They eventually located the driver of the first vehicle, who told them basically what Anholt had said. The driver said they talked, smoked a joint of pot and stopped at a store for a can of beer on their way to Linnton. Eventually they stopped at the tavern, which was the driver ’s destination.

Derrick and Roberg then checked with the local wrecking yard in Scappoose and learned that a pickup had been towed in for repair on the day in question, February 14th. After obtaining the pickup owner ’s name and address from the wrecking yard they contacted him and, again, Anholt’s story was corroborated. The driver told the investigators that he had picked up two hitchhikers and their dog.

During the interviews Anholt told Derrick and Roberg that he and Tara came upon an old barn, not far from the cemetery, and went inside to get out of the rain for awhile. He told the cops that inside the barn there was an old mattress on the floor, a table and a couple of chairs. Anholt said that he was

wearing a knife and scabbard on his belt that day, but had lost it, probably inside the barn. Anholt said that he had been thinking about using the knife on Tara.

“Roberg and I went out and we found this barn,” said Derrick. “We went in and there was a mattress on the floor, and there were the table and chairs, and his knife was lying beside the mattress.”

According to Investigator Derrick, from statements obtained from Anholt, Tara and Anholt finally left the barn and walked on down the road toward St. Helens. About a quarter of a mile later, they entered the cemetery, located on the opposite side of the road from the barn. It was while walking through the cemetery that Anholt said he asked Tara to confess to Jesus Christ and God, which she refused to do. “It was here that he did her in,” said Derrick, because she was carrying “the demon seed.”

“It (the baby) was the devil and had to be taken care of,” said District Attorney Sells, which appeared to be what his motive was...the way he murdered her was brutal, but a lot of it (the violence) was directed toward the baby inside her womb. This time she wanted to have that baby,” he said, referring to her previous pregnancies and abortions.

“He (Anholt) claimed that she had a bad seed in her, that she had been fooling around on him,” said Derrick. “We checked back on that and found that she was almost nine months pregnant at the time of her death. She was carrying a full-term baby, which was due any day. So we checked back beyond that and found that she had left him on several prior occasions because he was mean to her. She’d gone to live with her sister on one or more occasions, and had gone to stay with friends on other occasions. Two or three months prior to her becoming pregnant, she had left him and lived with a girlfriend for about three weeks. During this time she had gone out with

another guy, told Anholt that she had sexual relations with this other guy.

Well, Anholt claimed (when she became pregnant by him) that it was a ‘bad seed,’ wasn’t his baby.”

“But you could prove that she hadn’t become pregnant by the other guy due to the passage or lapse of time,” said D.A. Sells, who said she had purportedly had sexual relations with the other guy two or three months prior to becoming pregnant.

“So we backtracked by talking with the other guy she’d been with,” said Derrick, “and with friends she’d stayed with. She was gone for about three weeks, and the rest of the time she was always with Anholt, who absolutely did not want her to have that baby.”

Was the intent to kill present inside the mind of the suspect at the time of the homicide? Was the killing premeditated?

“Dr. Gardner (the psychiatrist who examined Anholt) believed Anholt formed the intent quite some time before he did it,” said Derrick. “He (Anholt) told us he thought about it while they were sitting in the barn across from the cemetery. I’m sure he formed the intent earlier, probably prior to leaving Portland, maybe even thought about it for several days beforehand.”

“An interesting question was raised (due to the killing) because there were two murders that took place,” said D.A. Sells, “the baby and the mother.” But under Oregon law, the definition of a human being prohibited us from prosecuting on the part of the baby because, according to definition of the law, it wasn’t yet born. But when he began the acts which led to (Tara’s) murder, he actually induced labor and the baby came out of the victim’s uterus. But it couldn’t get into the vaginal canal (because of the foreign objects inserted into the vagina), and it didn’t have anywhere to go, so the baby either suffocated or drowned. But had the definition of a human

being been different, we could have prosecuted him for two murders.”

“He (Anholt) said when he got to the cemetery,” said Derrick, recalling portions of Anholt’s statements, “he was looking at this big mural painted on the cemetery’s mausoleum, which is not far from where the killing occurred.

The mural depicts Jesus with a flock of sheep. That’s when he said he decided to kill her, and he told her so. She took off running through the cemetery with Anholt in pursuit. He caught her, and knocked her down. He said he punched her in the stomach several times.

“After tying her up in such a manner that whenever she struggled by pulling her hands and arms, a rope would tighten around her neck and choke her,” continued Derrick. “He got into his backpack, took out the spikes and drove them into her body. He said he intended to bury her there in the cemetery, but he got caught before he could get the job done.”

Did Anholt ever say why he tortured Tara so, rather than just kill her quickly and be done with it?

“His intent was to kill that ‘demon seed’ inside of her,” said Derrick, “and he directed most of his actions toward that baby, her entire abdominal area. He was angry because he had to bite the skin, to make holes in it so he could drive those spikes in there. He had the imprint of the head of one of those spikes in the palm of his hand where he was pounding them with his hand to drive them into her body. He had her blood all over his face and hands. He said his intent wasn’t to kill Tara, but he had to kill that ‘demon seed’ inside of her, and she had to go along with the baby.”

According to Derrick, none of the spikes which injured the victim’s face penetrated the brain. Although the spikes entered only into the sinus cavities, Derrick said the medical examiner believed that, although those wounds were not fatal, they were likely the most painful of the entire ordeal.

“He (eventually) went down to the highway with the backpacks and laid them on the embankment,” continued Derrick. That’s when Trooper Ruecker came along and discovered them, lying several feet apart on the embankment and explained why they were stained with the victim’s blood. “He said he came back to make sure she was dead but she was still convulsing, so he decided he’d better finish her off and he got back on top of her and went to work again. That’s when Trooper Ruecker found them.”

One of the defenses used at the trial, said Sells, was that Anholt was high on drugs and didn’t know what he was doing when he killed Tara. That defense was easily countered by Sells, however.

“From what Anholt told us,” said Sells, “and from what everyone else said who was with him prior to the murder, we could determine approximately how much marijuana and amphetamines he’d had. Based on that, the psychiatrist and other doctors could give an opinion as to whether or not he’d taken enough drugs so that he couldn’t think or rationalize or form the intent (to commit murder). And they all agreed and would testify that Anholt didn’t have enough drugs that would prevent him from being able to form the intent (to murder).”

On May 11, 1982, Delmar Anholt Jr. was convicted of the torturemurder of Tara Lee McCarty. On May 25th, Columbia County Circuit Judge James A. Mason sentenced Anholt to life in prison. However, it should be noted that because of the utilization of a matrix system in place at the time, it was up to the State Parole Board to determine the actual time served.

Tamara Sent Her Stud to Snuff Her Ex! Thursday, September 11, 1986, started out as a quiet morning on the Willamette River near the town of St. Paul in northern Marion County, Or egon. The ongoing dredging of the river had begun early and would continue throughout most of the day. Under water deposits of sand, silt, and rocks were being removed to maintain water-channel depth for safe and easy navigation.

Operated by a company out of Wilsonville, a city near Portland, the dredge was essentially a power shovel mounted on a floating hull. After the dredge loosened material on the river bottom with a rotary cutter, a bucket retrieved the sludge and dumped it into a scow.

The operation was going well until shortly after 5:00 AM, when something that sounded like firecrackers began “popping” from the riverbank. Puffs of smoke rose slowly from the area where the sounds seemed to be coming from. The workers soon realized it wasn’t firecrackers they’d heard. They watched in horror as one of the dredge operators fell down, crying out in apparently intense pain. Blood stained his shirt, mushrooming outward from the small entry hole. The workers realized as they watched their coworker writhing in agony on deck that someone was shooting at them!

The workers took cover wherever they could. Someone used the dredge’s two-way radio to notify the authorities and ask for assistance for the injured worker. Within minutes, the river was crawling with Marion County sheriff’s deputies in search of the gunman. Unfortunately, the shooter had already fled.

The worker was promptly treated by paramedics and then transported

to a local hospital. The wounds were serious but not life threatening.

Although the dredge operators were relieved that their coworker would survive, everyone, including the victim, was puzzled over what the motive for the early-morning attack could have been. Sheriff’s detectives were also baffled, and had no clues to the motive or the gunman’s identity. With little to go on, the report of the incident was filed. The case would remain open, but there was little that investigators could do unless new evidence surfaced.

Five days later, on Tuesday, September 16, 30-year-old William Maurer got up shortly after 4:00 AM, his usual waking up time on workdays, and prepared to get ready for his job on the dredge. He dressed, had coffee and a light breakfast, then whispered goodbye to his 26-year-old live-in companion, Candice Hill. She stared, mumbled something back to him, and fell back to sleep. William, still a little jumpy from the previous week’s shooting attack on one of his coworkers, pulled on a light jacket, never even thinking that the intended victim had been him! He probably never noticed the car that passed by his house that morning, as it had on previous mornings recently, and he probably never saw them in getting out of it after they parked it nearby.

William Maurer had taken barely three steps down the sidewalk past the side of his house when the shots rang out. It all happened so fast that Maurer likely never had time to figure out he’d been shot. He reached for his neck, and then went down on the ground next to the sidewalk.

Maurer ’s companion, Candice, was awakened by the sounds of the gunshots.

Startled, she recalled the shooting at Maurer ’s place of employment the previous week. She quickly pulled on a robe and went outside to investigate.

Candice soon found Maurer. He was lying in a pool of blood that was getting larger with each passing second. As Candice stared in horror at Maurer, something told her that he was beyond help. But even though he appeared to

be either dead or near death, she realized that she had to summon help immediately. It wasn’t until Candice turned to run back inside the house that she saw the handgun lying alongside Maurer’s body.

Had he committed suicide? She wondered. And if he had, why had he done it right there at the site of the house? It was all too much for her to absorb at that moment, and none of it seemed to make any sense. Candice called 911 and asked for medical and police assistance.

Paramedics and a team of road deputies from the Clackamas County Sheriff’s Department arrived a short time later at Maurer ’s residence, located and the 33000 block of South Meridian Road in rural Clackamas County near the hamlet of Woodburn. A deputy medical examiner confirmed that Maurer was dead, and then released the paramedics. Seeing the apparent gunshot wound to the neck and observing the handgun next to Maurer ’s body, the officials present concurred that William Maurer had apparently committed suicide . They reported their findings to Sergeant Sam Metzger at the sheriff’s office.

Metzger called Detective John Turner at home. Turner, who had just gotten out of bed and was getting ready for work, was still bleary-eyed.

“I want you to run down to South County and take a look at a suicide,” Metzger told Turner. “It looks like a suicide, but I just want you to go down and take a look at it. We got a twenty-two lying alongside the body, and everything looks pretty cut and dried.”

Turner assured Metzger he would stop by and assess the situation on his way into headquarters. Driving all the way from his home on the Clackamas River near Eagle Creek, Turner arrived at Maurer ’s pale-green, shinglesided house with brown trim about an hour later. The house, he noted, adjoined an azalea and fruit tree nursery, and was about 4 miles south of the

community of Whiskey Hill, approximately halfway between Woodburn and Whiskey Hill.

When Detective Turner arrived at the scene, he was briefed by the road deputies and the medical examiner. He walked up beside the house to where Maurer’s body was lying, just outside the back door, as the medical examiner and the deputies continued to talk. As was his custom, Turner stood back and took in the “big picture.” As naturally as he breathed, he began analyzing the situation.

“Have you guys touched the body?” Turner asked the deputies when they had finished talking.

“No, we haven’t,” responded one of the deputies. “We wanted to wait until you got here.”

“Has anyone checked the gun to see if it has been fired?” asked Turner.

Again, their response was “No.” Turner, known for his “gut hunches,” had a bad feeling about William Maurer ’s death. Something, his gut told him, other than a suicide had occurred there.

When Turner and the deputies checked the gun, they discovered that no rounds had been fired from it. That, Turner pointed out, meant that they were dealing with a homicide, not a suicide. Someone, he reasoned, had shot Maurer as he was leaving his house for work. As Turner continued to inspect what was not considered the scene of an apparent murder, he spotted two small indentations in the side of the house Maurer and Candice shared.

“Did you guys and see these bullet holes?” Turner asked as he pointed to the indications. Again, the road deputies hadn’t noticed. Turner got on the phone and explained to Sergeant Metzger that they had a homicide and that he needed help. Metzger sent sheriff’s department criminalist John Gilliland and Detective Mark White to assist Turner with the investigation.

When Turner and White began asking questions, they learned that Candice Hill was not Maurer ’s wife. He had separated from his wife, they were told, and the divorce proceedings were pending in Clackamas County Circuit Court. Maurer ’s wife, Tamara Lynn Maurer, lived just up the road a bit on Oregon Highway 211. William Maurer had moved into the threebedroom house along with his two young children in January, the detectives learned.

A neighbor who owned the house that Maurer had been renting stopped by that afternoon to put away agricultural equipment. He was shocked, as was most of the community, when he learned what had happened.

“He was from Molalla,” said the neighbor, providing what little background information he knew all about Maurer. Shortly after Maurer and his children moved into the rental house, said the neighbor, they began attending a Methodist church nearby. Maurer’s children attended a school in Whiskey Hill. The neighbor explained that Maurer had worked as a dredge operator for a Wilsonville company and appeared to be a truly a decent man.

Maurer had been a good tenant and was known to be a devoted father to his two children. The detectives made notes of the information, particularly the employment details, which they intended to check out later.

In the meantime, Turner and White learned that Maurer and Tamara were married on March 7, 1979. However, after their separation on October 15, 1985, both Maurer and Tamara filed petitions in Clackamas County Circuit Court a month later seeking the dissolution of their marriage. Since there was a dispute over the custody of their children and their home, a domestic relations trial had been scheduled for August 26, 1986. But for reasons that weren’t clear, the trial had been postponed and rescheduled for January 29, 1987.

As they pored over court documents, the detectives learned that Maurer had requested a restraining order against his wife. He charged in the request that Tamara had slapped him, punched him, and, in divorce legalese, “had placed him in immediate fear of serious bodily injury.” On November 26, 1985, Circuit Judge Sid Brockley granted Maurer ’s restraining order, which prohibited Tamara from “molesting, interfering with more menacing William Gordon Maurer” in any way.

The following day, November 27, Maurer filed an affidavit with a court alleging that Tamara had “cleaned out our cash deposits and life insurance loan values. She also mortgaged our home without my knowledge or consent and got sixteen thousand dollars,” Maurer wrote. “Our home is no longer free and clear.”

The bitter divorce disputes continued in much the same manner over the next several months, Turner and White learned, with each party accusing the other of wrongdoing. However, it appeared that Maurer was winning the battle.

For example, according to the court records that Turner and White were studying, Circuit Judge Howard J. Blanding awarded Maurer temporary custody of his two sons on May 22, 1986.

Later, court documents showed, Tamara failed to abide by court orders that she provide a complete accounting of her financial matters, particularly the mortgage on the family home. She was held in contempt of court, and she failed to appear on July 24 for a subsequent court hearing. At the time of Maurer’s death, the family home was in foreclosure.

Since spouses and former spouses are always a good starting point in a homicide investigation – all the more so in cases involving bitter divorce proceedings – Turner and White decided that a visit with Tamara Maurer, 27, was in order. When they arrived at her home on the evening of Maurer ’s

death, they were met by Tamara and a young man.

The young man was introduced to the lawmen Tamara’s friend, Jon Patrick Thompson, 18. While Detective White and interviewed Tamara, Turner took Thompson outside to his car to talk to him. Turner soon suspected that Thompson was more than a mere friend of Tamara’s. Turner believed that he was her boyfriend, that they were intimate, and that he lived with her. It was conjecture at that point, but Turner ’s feelings were based on one of his astonishingly reliable gut hunches. Turner couldn’t help but wonder what Tamara, an attractive young woman, saw in Thompson, a wiry kid with kinky hair and Dumbo ears who didn’t seem too swift. Turner decided that love must be blind.

Turner didn’t get much out of Thompson during the initial interview.

Based on the scant statements Thompson made, Turner was led to believe that Thompson had been in bed with Tamara at the time of Maurer ’s.

However, when White came out following his interview with Tamara, the detectives noted distinct discrepancies in the stories they had been told. Aside from giving each other an alibi, Tamara and Thompson hadn’t kept their stories straight. That fact alone gave both detectives a bad feeling about the case and cast a lot of suspicion on the couple. But since they had given each other an alibi, the discrepancies, by themselves, weren’t enough to warrant holding either of them in connection with Maurer ’s death. Under those circumstances, detectives simply wouldn’t be able to place either Thompson or Tamara at the scene and, as such, wouldn’t be able to arrest them.

Frustrated, Turner and White left.

Meanwhile, Dr. Karen Gunson, deputy state medical examiner, performed a definitive autopsy on Maurer ’s body. There were no surprises, however. Maurer had died from a bullet that passed through his neck and severed his spinal cord. Gunson said the bullet probably killed him instantly.

When word about Maurer ’s death, particularly the manner of his death, began circulating throughout the community, people naturally began to talk.

As the detectives questioned more and more people, they heard over and over that Maurer ’s death involved more than a simple crime of passion. The more people they interviewed, the more they heard that Jon Thompson, and possibly Tamara Maurer, had hired somebody to bump off William Maurer.

A “for hire,” or contract, killing – aggravated murder, in other words – is an offense punishable by death.

Turner and White decided to turn up the heat on Tamara and Thompson. The sleuths confronted them with some of the details that they had learned, particularly that people were saying Thompson had hired a hit man to kill Maurer. The two detectives interviewed Thompson and Tamara again and again over several days, trying to shake their stories loose and get an incriminating statement from them. But it was all to no avail. They just couldn’t get enough to make an arrest.

In the meantime, Detectives Turner and White continued to interview people claiming that Thompson had hired a hit man to kill Maurer. After obtaining several such statements, they began focusing on a possible other suspect. The information they had developed suggested that Barry Lynn Larson, a 30-year-old Canby, Oregon resident, was the triggerman. Armed with probable cause, Turner and White arrested Larson on suspicion of murder in 6:45 PM on Thursday, September 19 at his home in the 400 block of South Knott Street.

Following Larson’s arrest, the detectives finally felt that they had enough probable cause to arrest Thompson, too. But when they went to execute the warrant at Tamara’s home and other places Thompson was known to frequent, they discovered, much to their dismay, that he had fled.

It took most of that same night before the detectives had any clues to

Thompson’s whereabouts. Backtracking Thompson’s movements of the previous 24 hours all over Clackamas County, Turner and White finally found out that the fugitive teen fled to Washington State. They put out an APB detailing the warrant for his arrest and advised Washington authorities that they believed Thompson had friends there.

It was during the early-morning hours of Friday, September 20, when a Lewis County Sheriff’s Department deputy on routine patrol near the town of Chehalis, Washington, some 120 miles north of Clackamas County, produced the next break in the case. Just before 2:00 AM, the deputy spotted a male hitchhiker on Interstate 5, right outside the Chehalis city limits. An inexplicable case that instinct, as much as anything else, prompted the deputy to pull over and question the young man. When he did, he could clearly see the young man’s face, which he recognized from the APB that had been issued only hours before. He took the young man into custody, and confirmed his identity as Jon Patrick Thompson at the Lewis County Jail a few minutes later.

Detectives Turner and White were exhausted when the call came in from Lewis County. Turner had arrived home at 1:00 AM after putting in a long, grueling day. He hadn’t even had time to go to bed when he found himself getting dressed to hit the road again. This time, however, he had a nearly two-hour drive ahead of him, a drive that both he and White were too tired to make. As a result, they agreed to meet each other at headquarters, where they decided it would be prudent to pick up a reserve deputy to do the driving for them.

Both Turner and White cat napped during the drive to Lewis County.

When they arrived, they rousted Jon Thompson out of his jail cell and took him into an interrogation room. After reading him his Miranda rights and obtaining his signature on the Miranda card, signifying that he understood his

rights, they began questioning. Much to their surprise, Thompson decided it was time to talk.

Before long, Thompson admitted that he and Tamara Maurer were lovers. They had been sleeping with each other for some time, and eventually Thompson began living with her. At one point, according to Thompson’s confession, Tamara began talking about wanting her husband dead. He had caused her a lot of problems in court, and she feared losing her children to him. She was willing to pay someone to get rid of him for her. Eventually, said Thompson, they found Barry Larson, and he agreed to be the triggerman.

In chilling detail, Thompson described how they set up the killing.

From information supplied by Tamara, Thompson and Larson knew where Maurer was living. They knew what time he normally left for work, and they drove over to his house a couple of mornings prior to the killing just so they could be certain. Moments after Maurer walked out the back door, said Thompson, Barry Larson got him in his sights and shot him with a Marlin .22 semiautomatic rifle.

When Detectives Turner and White returned to Clackamas County with Thomson, who had waived extradition, they interviewed Barry Larson again in an attempt to rattle him. The sleuths presented certain details of Thompson’s confession that implicated Larson, figuring they could anger him and get him to finger both Thompson and Tamara in retaliation. Larson, however, denied everything, claiming, just as he had done at the time of his arrest, and that he had nothing to do with William Maurer’s murder.

It wasn’t until Turner and White made inquiries at Maurer ’s workplace that the shooting incident of September 11 in which the other dredge worker had been injured, came up. When they heard the details of the early-morning shooting from the Marion County Sheriff’s Department, Turner and White became convinced that William Maurer had been the intended target in that

incident. Apparently, the would-be assassin had muffed it and shot the wrong man! As a result, the detectives reasoned, the killers had to try again.

Unfortunately, they had been successful on their next attempt.

Turner and White next returned to Tamara Maurer ’s home, located and the 86000 block of South Oregon Highway 211, to try and shake her story loose. When they explained how Thompson had confessed to being her lover and had arranged for Larson to kill Maurer, Tamara became visibly upset.

Nonetheless, she denied everything that Thompson had told them. But Detectives Turner and White never gave up. They grilled her even harder.

Tamara continued to deny any involvement in her estranged husband’s murder, but there were inconsistencies in her statements as she changed her story a couple of times. Turner, angry, got right in her face at one point, nearly nose to nose, and told her that none of what she was telling them made any sense.

“I told her that Thompson has told us one thing, and now she’s telling us another,” Turner later recalled. “I told her that there’s got to be a middle ground someplace. She was living with him, she knew what she was doing. I told her that she couldn’t tell me that she was lying in bed with Thomson, asleep, when he got up at 2:00 AM to get out there and bump this guy off at 4:00 AM. It didn’t make any sense, her sleeping that sound.”

Detective Turner ’s relentless questioning and badgering finally caused Tamara to start crying. Turner, sensing that she had seen the handwriting on the wall, so to speak, didn’t let up. He turned the tape recorder back on, and she gave him an entirely different statement from the ones that she had made before. Her statement, however, wasn’t sufficiently incriminating for Turner to make an arrest—yet.

Meanwhile, in order to make an airtight case against their suspects,

Turner and White still needed to find the murder weapon. They knew they were looking for a .22-caliber semiautomatic rifle, but they didn’t know where to find it. After filing affidavits for search warrants, the detectives searched for the rifle at the suspects’ homes and other locations where they might have hidden it. However, the rifle was nowhere to be found.

Frustrated, the detectives returned to Jon Thompson and Barry Larson.

After considering the seriousness of the charges he was facing, Larson, stopping short of making a complete confession, agreed to cooperate. He told the sleuths that he knew where the gun was and directed them to a creek a couple of miles from Tamara Maurer’s house.

A Clackamas County Sheriff’s Department diving team focused their search in Butte Creek, near the Meridian Road Bridge in the rural community of Monitor. A short time later, the diving team located the rifle and about five feet of water directly beneath the bridge.

As they continued backtracking in putting their case together, Detectives Turner and White traced the rifle to the original purchaser who, in turn, linked it to Barry Larson. Larson, they learned, had recently bought the weapon from the original purchaser.

A firearms examination was subsequently conducted on the rifle, in which bullets fired from the rifle were compared to slugs found at the crime scene. However, results of the examination or not publicly revealed.

Nonetheless, both Thompson and Larson were formally charged with aggravated murder in connection with William Maurer ’s death. Neither entered a plea at their arraignment on Monday, September 22. As a result, Clackamas County District Court Judge Robert L. Mills ordered Thompson and Larson to return the following Monday for a preliminary hearing.

Following the preliminary hearing, both were bound over for trial and both

were ordered held without bail.

Lee S. Wagner, a deputy district attorney, said the prosecutor was leaning toward seeking the death penalty if Thompson and Larson were convicted and the murder-for-hire case.

“We are proceeding at this time as a capital case against Thompson and Larson,” said District Attorney Wagner.

Meanwhile, after conferring with the district attorney’s office, Detectives Turner and White decided it was time to bring charges against Tamara Maurer and arrest her for soliciting her husband’s murder. Armed with an aggravated murder arrest warrant, the two detectives showed up at her home a few days later. To their surprise, however, she wasn’t there. The house was nearly empty, and they subsequently learned that she had fled the state.

It wasn’t until January 27, 1987, though, that the sleuths learned that Tamara was in California. By questioning all of her known relatives and acquaintances, the detectives eventually traced her to a Redding hotel. Upon learning the new information, Turner and White put out an APB for arrest and left immediately for California.

Turner and White spent much of the next day, January 28, sitting in their car staking out the hotel where Tamara was believed to be staying.

While they were sitting across the street and the hotel, unbeknownst to them, police officers in nearby Chico had picked up Tamara on the murder arrest warrant. Turner and White were notified of the arrest a short time later, and Tamara was eventually brought back to Oregon to face the charges against her. She pleaded innocent to the charges.

In the meantime, facing possible death penalties, Jon Thompson and Barry Larson worked out a plea-bargain arrangement with the district

attorney’s office through their attorneys. In return for life prison sentences, both agreed to plead guilty to murder and to testify against Tamara Maurer at her trial.

On Thursday, July 2, 1987, Alfred J. French III, a Clackamas County deputy district attorney, outlined his case during opening statements to the seven-man, five-woman jury. French said he would prove that Tamara Maurer had solicited and agreed to pay Barry Larson $10,000 to kill her estranged husband. French said he would show that Tamara had initiated the murderfor-hire plan and was actively involved with her boyfriend, Jon Thompson, in soliciting Larson to commit the murder. French told the jurors that he planned to call at least 35 witnesses, including Thompson and Larson, to testify.

However, after the jury visited the scene of the crime, the home where Tamara had lived the Thomson, and the dredging operation site on the Willamette River where the worker mistaken for William Maurer had been shot, Tamara, fearing the death penalty, stood up in court and pleaded guilty.

She decided to work out an arrangement similar to Thompson’s and Larson’s with the district attorney’s office.

Tamara Maurer, like Jon Thompson and Barry Larson, was sentenced to life in prison at an Oregon correctional facility.

Years later when Tamara Maurer was diagnosed with a rare type of cancer, fearful of dying alone in prison, she volunteered to be trained as a hospice worker for terminally ill inmates.

“You are in your room, isolated and alone, with no one to help you through those last stages of life,” she said, her cancer now in remission.

Editor ’s Note: Candice Hill is not the real name of the person so named in the foregoing story. A fictitious name has been used because there is no reason for public interest in the identity of this person.

Mass Murder on the Mississippi Coast It was hot and muggy in Nicholson, Mississippi, on Saturday, September 15, 1990. The mercury approached 100 degrees in much of the state, but down south, particularly in Pearl River County, next to the Louisiana border, the high humidity of the Gulf Coast made it seem even hotter. By nightfall it began to cool down a bit, but it was still sultry and uncomfortable. It wasn’t a good time to begin a major murder investigation; but, then, as any cop will tell you, there really isn’t any such thing as a good time to start a murder probe.

It had been a busy evening so far at the Pearl River County Sheriff’s Department, and one of the deputies on duty that night, puffing on one cigarette after another, didn’t expect things to slow down much as the evening wore on. It was, after all, a Saturday night, and the department had already been called out to settle more than its share of bar fights, domestic squabbles, and robberies. Things could, in all likelihood, only get worse.

It was only minutes before 9:00 p.m. when the call that would ultimately prove to be the worst of the evening came in. At first this latest call had seemed simple enough. It was from a relative of the local Frierson family who said she was worried because she hadn’t been able to reach them by telephone all day. There was supposed to be a Frierson family reunion for 200 family members the next day, and the relative had last-minute details to discuss. But the Friersons, who lived just off Mississippi Highway 607 in the community of Nicholson, weren’t answering their phone. It just wasn’t like them. The relative asked the sheriff’s department to send someone out to check on them.

A team of deputies arrived a few minutes later at Ray Merle “Smokey”

Frierson’s small brick home, located on the northwest corner of a NASA buffer zone near the Hancock County line. Ray Frierson had lived there with his wife Mollie since 1973. They liked it there and were well-known and well-liked throughout the community.

Except for the sounds of crickets and an occasional passing car on Highway 607, everything was quiet—almost too quiet—as the deputies stepped out of their patrol cruisers. The night’s stillness was made even more eerie by the incessant insect sounds and by the sight of occasional lightning bugs blinking their tails in the pitch black. Making the deputies feel even more ill at ease, no one came outside the house to find out why they were there. Nothing moved in or around the house.

One of the deputies knocked loudly on the door.

Nobody answered. The lights stayed dark inside the house. After several repeated attempts, all futile, the lawmen decided that they had better go inside. Gaining entry through an unlocked door, the deputies began turning on lights as they slowly went from room to room.

When they reached the front bedroom, the deputies reeled back in horror at the atrocity that lay in front of them. An older man, whom the deputies believed to be Ray Frierson, and an older woman, whom they believed to be his wife, Mollie, was lying sprawled on the floor, covered in blood. A young boy lay nearby, also covered with blood.

After regaining their composure, the deputies carefully checked the victims for signs of life. They found none. The deputies cautiously retraced their steps out of the bedroom, not wishing to disturb anything of evidentiary value.

Before leaving the house, however, the deputies checked the other rooms. It was possible, they reasoned, that additional victims might be in

other areas of the house. Speculating that the perpetrator might also still be inside, they drew their guns as a precaution.

They soon learned that their reasoning about possible other victims had been correct. In the second bedroom, they found the partially clad body of a woman, whom they believed to be in her late 30s or early 40s, spread-eagled on the floor. Noting that the victim’s clothing had been ripped or forcibly removed, the investigators strongly suspected that she had been sexually assaulted, either before or after she was killed.

After making certain that there were no other bodies and that the perpetrator was not on the premises, the deputies cleared the house and reported their grim findings to headquarters. Pearl River County Sheriff Lorance Lumpkin was located and notified of the carnage at the Frierson residence. He instructed that the area be sealed off from all unauthorized personnel and identified as a crime scene. Lumpkin arrived a short time later, accompanied by a medical examiner, a deputy district attorney, and a crime scene technician.

Each of the victims, Sheriff Lumpkin observed, had been shot more than once and in different parts of their bodies. The older man appeared to have been shot in the back of the head at close range. Tissue, blood, bone, and possibly brain matter had been dispersed about the room as a result of the force of the blast, some of which had traveled several feet from the body.

The older woman had been shot in the face, resulting in severe disfigurement. It also appeared that she had been beaten on the head.

T he boy, whom the sheriff believed to be in his teens, had also been shot in the head, but with a small-caliber weapon. He also had other wounds to his body, primarily bruises and abrasions. The female victim in the other bedroom had been shot in the abdomen and head, also with a small-caliber

weapon.

During a preliminary examination of the house, Lonnie Arrinder of the Mississippi State Crime Laboratory discovered two bloody footprints in one of the bedrooms. There was so much blood in the bedrooms that Arrinder couldn’t help but wonder why there weren’t more bloody footprints. He also found a 20-gauge shotgun and a .22-caliber rifle on the premises. The shotgun had blood and possible tissue fragments adhering to its stock and barrel. Arrinder theorized that it might have been used to beat one of the victims, most likely the older woman, in addition to shooting her and the others. He also found scattered about articles of bloody clothing, which he carefully placed in paper bags so that the bloodstains could dry and be preserved for later testing.

After the scene was carefully photographed, crime lab technicians collected blood and other bodily fluid samples, which they carefully marked according to source and location. They also vacuumed for trace evidence of hair and clothing fiber, using separate filter bags for each location, and searched for identifiable latent fingerprints.

During the evening, deputies ferreted out important information from several of Ray Frierson’s relatives. As a result, they eventually had enough information to positively identify the bodies. The bodies in the front bedroom were identified as 61-year-old Ray Frierson, 56-year-old Mollie Frierson, and 13-year-old Joshua A. Morrell, the Frierson’s step-grandson.

The body in the second bedroom was identified as 38-year-old Pamela Ann Howard. Pamela and Joshua, family members said, were relatives who had lived with the Friersons for some time. Relatives claimed that Pamela and Joshua were both retarded, one of the main reasons that Ray and Mollie had taken them in. Sheriff Lumpkin was also told that yet another relative, 17-year-old John Morrell Frierson, nicknamed “John Boy,” lived in the

house. No one, however, knew where he could be found. It being a Saturday night and John Boy being a teenager, the lawmen surmised that he was out partying with his friends.

As the lawmen continued questioning family members, they learned that John Boy and Joshua were brothers and that Ray and Mollie Frierson, who had adopted him eight years earlier after his mother was murdered, were John Boy’s step-grandparents. According to police sources, his mother ’s body had been discovered in the central part of the state, but her murder was never solved. Pamela Howard was John Boy’s and Joshua’s aunt.

With the help of relatives, a sketchy inventory of the Friersons’ possessions was obtained. Afterward, the detectives determined that the only thing of value that was missing was Mollie Frierson’s 1988 Ford Escort.

Because very little money was found in the victims’ clothes or inside the house, the investigators also suspected that cash may have been taken, but they didn’t yet know how much, if any.

With the missing car, an obvious lack of cash on hand and the possible rape of Pamela Howard, Sheriff Lumpkin and his detectives felt that they had established clear motives for the murders. The strongest motive of all, however, appeared to be the elimination of witnesses. All of the aforementioned were aggravating factors that could bring a death sentence for the perpetrator if convicted of the crimes.

According to Sheriff Lumpkin, certain signs indicated that Pamela Howard had been raped and Mollie Frierson sodomized after having been shot. However the sheriff wouldn’t elaborate on the specific reasons that led him to that conclusion.

When the criminalists no longer needed the bodies at the crime scene, morgue drivers placed the corpses inside body bags and removed them one

at a time to a waiting van. As a small gathering of onlookers watched from behind barriers, the van left for the morgue where definitive autopsies would be conducted.

While sheriff’s investigators and crime lab technicians searched for clues and collected evidence at the crime scene over the next several hours, the sheriff and several deputies questioned the victims’ acquaintances and relatives in search of clues to the killer ’s identity. It wasn’t long before their efforts paid off. One person in particular provided information that ultimately broke the case wide open.

Two days before, the informant told the investigators, Mollie Frierson had expressed concern for her safety, telling a family member that she was afraid John Boy was “going to kill them all.” John Boy, investigators were told, drank to excess. His drinking sometimes made him violent and abusive, and family members suspected that he also used drugs. Mollie had even told a family member that she planned to take John Boy to a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center following the family reunion—if, she added ominously, she “made it through the weekend.”

Investigators in any homicide case always start out looking “close to home” for suspects, and now Sheriff Lumpkin believed he would have to look no further than John Boy Frierson to find the family’s mass murderer.

John Boy, he believed, had both the motive and the opportunity to carry out the killings. The evidence, he hoped, would rule him in or out as a suspect.

Lumpkin and his deputies worked fervently as they gathered leads from John Boy’s friends and acquaintances on where the teenager might be. By the early-morning hours of September 16th, while crime lab technicians continued working at the Frierson house, deputies traced John Boy to a girlfriend’s apartment just outside Picayune, a town only a few miles north of Nicholson. Deputies quietly surrounded the apartment complex, and then

moved in to make the arrest.

Frierson was there, all right, but they didn’t have to worry about him putting up a fight. He wasn’t in any shape to make a break for it. When the deputies made their presence known, John Boy staggered into their midst, making no effort to flee. He appeared to be heavily under the influence of drugs and alcohol. The deputies arrested him at his girlfriend’s apartment without incident. He was taken to the Pearl River County Jail where he was booked on suspicion of murder in connection with the deaths of his family.

Shortly after the suspect’s arrival at the jail, Sheriff Lumpkin and Deputy Joe Stuart took Frierson into an interrogation room. The youth looked pale, tired, and weak. He was apparently coming down from his alcohol and drug-induced intoxication. After deciding that he had sobered up enough to be fully aware of what was going on, the probers read the suspect the Miranda rights again, after which Frierson agreed to give them a statement. As Sheriff Lumpkin asked the questions, Deputy Stuart took notes.

Surprisingly, according to Lumpkin and Stuart, Frierson admitted that he had shot his relatives. He said he was “mad at the world” because Ray Frierson wouldn’t allow him to go raccoon hunting. Frierson said he took $200 from a purse and wallet that was in the house, but he denied raping his grandmother and aunt. Afterward, Deputy Stuart typed up the youth’s statement and provided a copy to the district attorney’s office.

Meanwhile, Dr. Paul McGarry, a New Orleans pathologist, was brought in to conduct the autopsies. A pathology assistant prepared the corpses for the post-mortem examinations, which included running an ultraviolet light over the bodies of the female victims in search of semen. Semen appears as bright white under ultraviolet lighting, thus facilitating its collection by the pathologist. Semen was detected on Pamela Howard’s body, and vaginal

swabs were taken. Additional swabs were obtained from other parts of Pamela’s and Mollie’s bodies, just in case trace amounts of semen had been overlooked. These would be combined with acid phosphatase, a sensitive enzyme that turns pink when mixed with semen. Following the autopsies, Dr. McGarry reported his findings to Sheriff Lumpkin and Assistant District Attorney Buddy McDonald.

Pamela Howard, said Dr. McGarry, had been shot once in the abdomen and four times in the head with a small-caliber weapon. The presence of semen and signs of violence other than the gunshot wounds led Dr. McGarry to believe that Pamela had also been raped.

“Was sexual battery inflicted prior to death?” asked the assistant district attorney.

“Yes, it was,” Dr. McGarry replied.

The pathologist explained that he had collected and preserved from the victim’s body semen that could be used for deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) testing. The seminal fluid samples were air-dried and frozen and sent, along with a sample of John Frierson’s blood, to a court-recognized DNA diagnostics lab.

Dr. McGarry found that both Ray and Mollie Frierson had been shot at close range with what he believed to be a 20-gauge shotgun. The pathologist said that Ray had been shot in the head three times with a small-caliber weapon, but it was the shotgun blast to the back of Ray’s head that had caused his death. Ray was already dead from the shotgun blast when the shots with a small-caliber weapon were inflicted, said McGarry.

The pathologist determined that Mollie Frierson had sustained a gunshot wound to her chin and had subsequently been beaten on the head with a weapon consistent with the shotgun found at the crime scene. McGarry said

Mollie had received five powerful blows to the head. The approximate time of the victims’ deaths was sometime on the morning of September 15th.

McGarry said that Joshua Morrell had been shot three times in the head with a small-caliber weapon. Also present on his body were several bruises and abrasions, primarily on one of his arms, an elbow and a shoulder, all of which the pathologist characterized as defensive wounds. He said that the wounds were probably caused when the boy held up his arm as he tried to fend off the attack.

Meanwhile, a DNA diagnostics laboratory in Maryland began processing John Frierson’s blood and the seminal fluid found on and inside Pamela Howard’s body. Using conventional serological typing methods, the lab first determined that the blood type of the semen found at the crime scene was of the same blood type as John Frierson’s. Had the blood and semen been of different types, Frierson could have been eliminated as the suspect. He was not so lucky.

Next, DNA was extracted from the semen collected from Pamela Howard’s body and from Frierson’s blood samples. The DNA strands were then “cut” into small fragments by an enzyme and compared. The result, according to the scientist who conducted the DNA typing, provided an autoradiograph, a genetic “print” as unique to each individual as a set of fingerprints. As was expected by the investigators, the DNA extracted from Frierson’s blood and from the semen found inside Pamela Howard’s vagina matched.

Adding fuel to the case against the suspect, according to Lonnie Arrinder of the Mississippi State Crime Laboratory, the two bloody footprints found at the crime scene matched John Frierson’s footprints.

Meanwhile, according to Pearl River County Justice Court Judge

Richard Cowart, authorities began receiving a number of threats against Frierson’s life. People were outraged over the senseless, brutal murders that had been committed in their community, and some were determined to do something about it. Residents couldn’t understand how someone could have so ruthlessly murdered such a nice couple as Ray and Mollie Frierson and their family.

As a result of all the threats, when Frierson made his first court appearance he was taken to the Justice Court building in an unmarked police car and was required to lie down in the backseat. He was ushered by several armed deputies into the courthouse through a side door.

Despite the apparently irrefutable evidence stacked against him, Frierson pleaded innocent to four counts of capital murder and asked for a jury trial. Defense Attorneys Rex Jones of Hattiesburg and William Ducker of Poplarville were appointed to represent him. The judge set Frierson’s trial for the following August, and he was continued to be held without bail.

Shortly after Frierson’s arrest, the question of his ability to stand trial and assist in his own defense was brought up. At the request of the defense team, Frierson was sent to the state mental hospital at Whitfield where he underwent extensive psychiatric examinations. After subjecting him to a battery of tests and interviews, psychologists and psychiatrists at the hospital determined that he was, in fact, competent to stand trial.

Although Frierson was a juvenile at the time of the slayings, the prosecution sought to have him remanded to adult court over the objections of his defense team. If he was prosecuted through the juvenile system, prosecutors argued, he would be released on his 21st birthday. The severity of the crimes, they argued, demanded a more severe punishment. A judge agreed, and Frierson was ordered to stand trial as an adult.

Because of the publicity and the charged emotions surrounding the murders, Frierson’s trial was moved to Natchez, a town several counties west in Adams County. Jury selection began on Monday, August 12, 1991. After a jury was seated, Judge R.I. Pritchard III ordered that the jury members be sequestered throughout the trial because of the extensive publicity.

Dressed in a black, short-sleeved shirt and blue jeans, John Frierson appeared to be in a somber mood as he was led into the Adams County Chancery courtroom. His legs were shackled for added security, and spectators were required to pass through a metal detector before entering the courtroom.

The jury was led step-by-step through the case by Assistant District Attorney Buddy McDonald, from the time the bodies were found, through the evidence gathering and DNA testing, and finally to Frierson’s confession to Sheriff Lumpkin and Deputy Joe Stuart.

At one point Dr. Paul McGarry, the New Orleans pathologist who had performed the autopsies on the victims’ bodies, explained the details of the deaths and the manner in which all the victims were killed. McGarry used sketches to show jurors the points where bullets and shotgun pellets had entered the victims’ bodies. Gruesome color photographs showing how the victims were found were also introduced as evidence. Tearful family members were present in the courtroom. Occasional gasps could be heard from spectators, some of whom managed to glimpse the photos as they were passed between attorneys, judge, and jury.

Later, the deputies who found the bodies described the locations and manner in which the bodies were found. Sheriff Lorance Lumpkin and Deputy Joe Stuart also testified that Frierson agreed to make a statement confessing to the murders after his arrest. The two lawmen said they believed Frierson was fully aware of what was going on when they read him his Miranda rights

and when he made the incriminating remarks.

One of the most dramatic moments of the trial came when Frierson took the witness stand in his own defense. Because the state’s case against Frierson was so strong, the best defense strategy seemed to be to simply put the defendant on the stand—a move normally avoided—and try to gain sympathy from the jury. Defense Attorney Ducker asked Frierson if he had anything to say to the jury.

“I’m sorry,” said Frierson as his voice broke.

Speaking softly into the microphone between sobs, Frierson said that the day of the murders seemed like a dream to him. He said he didn’t remember giving statement to the lawmen. He said that he had been under the influence of drugs and alcohol before he was arrested and had remained intoxicated for a while after his arrest.

Responding to questions from Defense Attorney Rex Jones, Frierson said he could only remember “bits and pieces” of his arrest. He said he didn’t remember telling the officers that he had shot his relatives, took $200 cash, and stole his grandmother ’s car. He said that he had a long history of alcohol and drug abuse problems, and that he had only been “straight” for the few months after his arrest.

In closing arguments, Jones maintained that Frierson’s drug, alcohol, and emotional problems had in effect turned him into a “walking time bomb” that detonated on the morning of the slayings. Jones argued that Frierson never received the drug and alcohol rehabilitation when he needed it most.

“He was a ticking time bomb,” Jones said. “The Mississippi juvenile system failed. There was an explosion. I don’t think he intended to rob them, and I don’t think he intended to commit sexual battery. After hearing the

evidence, I think he killed them, but I don’t think he did it while in the commission of other crimes.”

Co-counsel Ducker then literally begged the jury to spare Frierson’s life, contending that the defendant might be able to turn his life around and do something constructive someday. He suggested that Frierson might be willing to participate in a prison program in which inmates held talks with teenagers warning them about the dangers of drug and alcohol abuse.

In rebuttal, Assistant D.A. McDonald pointed out for the jury that the defense never questioned the DNA testing or other evidence of sexual assault on Pamela Howard, which he said “spoke the loudest.”

“I cannot look at the photographs of the four victims here and feel that the system failed John Frierson,” said McDonald. “If this is not capital murder, there has never been capital murder in the state of Mississippi, and there will never be capital murder in the state of Mississippi.”

He urged jurors to sentence Frierson to death.

On Thursday, August 15, 1991, the jurors announced after three and a half hours of deliberations that they had found John Morrell “John Boy” Frierson guilty on four counts of capital murder. They were, however, unable to agree unanimously on whether to sentence Frierson to death by lethal injection or to life in prison. As a result, Fifteenth Judicial Circuit Court Judge R.I. Pritchard III was bound by Mississippi statutes to sentence Frierson to life in prison for each of the four counts.

Frierson, with his chin resting in his hands, remained emotionless and without expression.

“I didn’t know what to think,” said Defense Attorney Ducker afterward.

“I am just very thankful that’s the way it came out. The boy did a very terrible

thing and he’ll be punished for it for a long time, but I don’t think we’re in the business of killing seventeen-year-olds.”

“We’re disappointed,” said one of several family members of the victims who had been in attendance for the entire trial.

“We wish the jury would have been able to return a death sentence verdict,” commented Assistant D.A. McDonald.

John Boy Frierson was serving his life sentences at the Mississippi State Penitentiary. He would have been eligible for parole after serving 40 years, in the year 2031. However, in 2000, barely nine years after being convicted of murdering his family, Frierson and another inmate allegedly killed a fellow inmate, purportedly with a shank — a homemade knife. On January 14, 2008, Frierson was transferred to Colorado Federal Prison for “security reasons.” On May 27, 2008, nearly 18 years after killing his family, “John Boy” Frierson committed suicide by hanging.

Jeffrey Dahmer: The Butcher of Milwaukee’s Human Slaughterhouse It was sultry in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on Monday evening, July 22, 1991, as the midnight hour approached. Out on routine patrol, Police Officers Robert Rauth and Rolf Mueller had just turned onto North 25th Street on the west side of town, a tough section of the city replete with slums, drug dealers, and transients.

People were regularly assaulted and/or robbed in the neighborhood, and there were the expected bar fights that the police had to break up on a regular basis. On a more violent scale women were often raped, sometimes in the street, and there was even an occasional murder. It wasn’t one of the safest beats in the city, and the acts of lawlessness that regularly occurred there had always been somewhat predictable. Until the night of July 23, that is.

Officers Rauth and Mueller weren’t particularly surprised when they saw the young, good looking black man run out of the Oxford Apartments and into the street, waving his hands and yelling for them to stop. Such a display was a common sight, and the persons seeking attention were often naked and freaked out on drugs and alcohol. But they sensed that there was something different about this incident. The man seemed sober and in control of his actions. As the two cops pulled to the side of the street to see what was amiss, they noticed something shiny dangling from the man’s left wrist. When the man approached their cruiser, they saw that it was a pair of handcuffs that had been fastened around only the one wrist.

“Hey, what’s the problem?” asked one of the officers as the man ran to their car.

“There’s a guy in there trying to kill me!” the man gasped, as he

pointed toward the Oxford Apartments. The man, in a state that seemed mixed between exhaustion and extreme fright, was placed inside the squad car.

After a few minutes, the cops were able to calm the man somewhat. He told them his name was Bruce Wilcox, and said that the man who lived in apartment 213 was trying to kill him with a large knife that he kept under his bed. Although the cops were a little skeptical due to the neighborhood and the fact that they thought they had seen everything in the course of their careers, the two officers gave Wilcox the benefit of the doubt and assured him they would check it out. They asked him to accompany them to identify the man. Still shaking from fear, Wilcox reluctantly agreed.

As they walked down the blue-carpeted hallway on the second floor of the apartment building, the officers became starkly aware of an awful, putrid stench that grew stronger with each step that took them closer to apartment 213. The smell was almost unbearable by the time they reached the door of the apartment, and when the lone occupant opened it, the odor nearly overwhelmed both lawmen.

The officers were let into the small, dingy unit by a tall, soft-spoken man with blond hair and a pale complexion. With little prompting from the cops, the man politely identified himself as 31year-old Jeffrey L. Dahmer. His breath reeked of alcohol, and he appeared to be intoxicated. Officers Rauth and Mueller asked Dahmer what was causing the horrible stench, but he didn’t reply. Instead he sat down on the couch and, with a blank look in his eyes, asked them if he could drink a beer and smoke a cigarette.

Officer Mueller headed for the bedroom, while Rauth remained in the living room and attempted to learn more about Bruce Wilcox’s allegations against Dahmer from the suspect himself. Rauth’s efforts, however, appeared futile. Dahmer was in an alcohol-induced stupor, and wasn’t saying much.

When Mueller reached the oppressive, fly-infested bedroom, he found a 12-inch butcher knife hidden under the bed, just as Wilcox had said he would.

He also noted a Polaroid camera lying on the bed, and several photographs protruding from a drawer in a tall, 18th-century style chest of drawers.

When he viewed them, Mueller suddenly felt light-headed and nauseous. Several of the Polaroid shots depicted nude men engaged in homosexual sex acts, and others showed numerous corpses in various stages of mutilation and dismemberment. The flesh on one of the corpses, from its chest down, had been stripped cleanly away, he guessed from some type of acid! His stomach retching, Officer Mueller could see that the grisly photos had been taken in the bedroom where he now stood.

When Mueller went into the kitchen area, Jeffrey Dahmer jumped up from the couch and began shrieking. When Mueller opened the refrigerator door, he knew why Dahmer had reacted in such a frightened manner. There, on the bottom shelf next to a box of Arm & Hammer baking soda was a grotesquely severed human head!

Officer Mueller didn’t need to see any more. He went back to the living room and handcuffed Jeffrey Dahmer, and Wilcox confirmed that Dahmer was the person who had tried to kill him. As the two officers led him out of the apartment, Dahmer began meowing like a cat.

Over the next several hours, following the issuance of a search warrant, a hazardous materials team of police officers wearing oxygen masks and protective yellow rubber suits began going through Jeffrey Dahmer ’s apartment. It was only then that they—and soon thereafter that the residents of Milwaukee—realized the full extent of the horrors that had occurred in Dahmer’s “charnel house” of slaughter.

Three additional human heads and a human heart were recovered from a small lift-top freezer, along with a pair of lungs, a liver, a kidney, and bundles of frozen intestines. Three headless torsos were found in a 55-gallon plastic vat, or drum, submerged in unknown chemicals in Dahmer ’s bedroom.

Nearby were bottles of formaldehyde, hydrochloric acid, and chloroform, as well as a number of hand tools and three electric saws.

As the search and seizure of evidence continued, police officers found body parts, including bones, stored in cardboard boxes around the apartment.

They found a decomposed hand connected to a small piece of arm protruding from beneath the bed, and male genital organs floating in a lobster pot in the kitchen. Five male skulls, boiled and scraped clean, were seized from a box and a filing cabinet. Two more skulls were found sitting on a closet shelf, where several sets of hands and arms hung from the clothes rack.

The two skulls in the closet were painted gray, apparently to give them a plastic-like appearance, like models used by medical students and artists.

The team also discovered five full skeletons at an undisclosed location inside the apartment. By their best count, at least at this point, the cops had recovered the remains of 11 victims inside Jeffrey Dahmer’s apartment.

The kitchen, noted the cops, was filthy. Dirty pots and pans, crusted over with substances the investigators feared would turn out to be human leftovers, were strewn about the sink and countertop. Other dishes, also lying about, were just simply slimy. Interestingly, the cops noted, and with chilling and sickening connotations, they had not found one item of “normal” foodstuffs in the apartment — only a variety of condiments!

The investigators worked throughout the night and all through the next day, carrying box after box of body parts and other evidentiary items from Dahmer ’s apartment. Included in those items were several commercially

successful, gruesome horror films such as The Exorcist, several from the Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street series, among others. A lawman close to the investigation said that, considering the grisly still photographs found inside the apartment, detectives wanted to determine if any of the commercially-produced videotapes had been taped over as a means of concealing live action videos of real murder and dismemberment.

Meanwhile, Milwaukee Police Chief Phillip Arreola held a news conference and announced to the nation the grim and macabre discovery his officers had made inside apartment 213. Arreola said there were many victims, all of them male as far as they could tell, and of various races. Most of the victims were black, but there were also Hispanics, whites, and an Asian, prompting some to wonder if Dahmer had prepared a smorgasbord of races and cultures as human cuisine. Arreola told reporters that it was too early to tell whether the killings were sexually motivated.

“We don’t know if this individual acted alone or in concert with other individuals,” said Arreola. He added that Jeffrey Dahmer had been booked into jail on suspicion of homicide, but hadn’t yet been charged as of late Wednesday.

A short time later, a group of investigators converged on the Oxford Apartments and began interviewing the building’s residents. They were particularly interested in what Jeffrey Dahmer ’s closest neighbors had to say, and wanted to know whether anyone had seen or heard anything unusual coming from Dahmer ’s apartment. They also wanted to know why nobody had previously reported the foul odor of the rotting corpses.

“We’ve been smelling odors for weeks,” said one resident, “but we thought it was a dead animal or something like that. We had no idea it was humans.”

Many residents said that Dahmer often brought home stray cats.

Another neighbor told police that he had heard sawing noises coming from Dahmer ’s apartment at all hours of the day and night, and saw Dahmer take out large bags of what he thought was just garbage.

“I wondered what the hell he was building in there,” said the neighbor.

“I thought he was building bookcases or something. Then, when the buzzing stopped, I heard him yelling, ‘Moth-erfucker, I told you, goddamn it.’ It seemed strange because I didn’t hear anyone respond or talk, except for him.”

Now, however, the neighbor and others in the building told police that they wished they’d taken the tell-tale signs more seriously.

One neighbor who lived down the hallway from Dahmer ’s apartment told investigators that she always smelled an oppressive odor in the corridor.

“I went sniffing at all the neighbors’ doors,” recalled the resident.

“When I got to Jeff’s, I could smell it coming out of the crack.”

Having been able to see inside Dahmer ’s apartment on occasion, the neighbor said she had been curious about all the locks and security devices on the doors, including those to the bedroom and closet.

“I thought he was keeping burglars out,” she said. “But it seems he was keeping people in.”

When neighbors had complained to Dahmer about the stench coming from his apartment — some had complained as long as a year before the grisly discovery — Dahmer always had an excuse. Sometimes he said the sewage was backed up; other times he said his freezer, full of meat, was broken and his meat had spoiled. But nothing in Dahmer ’s demeanor, insisted

neighbors, even at the time of his arrest, unveiled the dark, macabre secret he kept locked behind his door, carefully protected not only by all the locks but by an electronic security system he had devised himself.

Most of those interviewed told the police that Dahmer was quiet most of the time, and that he rarely spoke to even his closest neighbors. When he did speak to them — usually when he was going to or coming from work — his comments were nearly always curt. Not surprising, most of the conversations he had with his neighbors were about the rancid smell that came from his apartment.

In the hours after Jeffrey Dahmer ’s arrest, detectives interviewed at length Bruce Wilcox, the man who had brought this gruesome case to light, about his nightmarish encounter with Mil-waukee’s cannibalistic butcher.

After hearing his story, those close to the case all agreed that Wilcox was lucky he made it out alive.

Wilcox told police that he was at a Milwaukee mall when he ran into Dahmer, whom he had seen regularly in the neighborhood, at about 5:00 p.m. on July 22nd. Dahmer showed him a $100 bill and suggested they spend it on a party.

“Let’s get some girls and go down to the lake and have a party,” Wilcox quoted Dahmer as saying. “I’ll buy the beer.”

Wilcox, in apparent agreement, told the probers that he and Dahmer stopped at a store, bought some beer and liquor, and then proceeded to Dahmer ’s apartment. Dahmer told his newfound companion that he had to stop off and change his clothes.

As soon as they entered the first floor of the building, Wilcox said he could smell the stench. When they approached Dahmer ’s apartment, the odor was nearly intolerable. Wilcox, feeling he was about to gag, said: “It smells

like somebody died in here!” Dahmer just laughed and said that the smell was caused by a problem with the sewer in the building. When Dahmer opened the door to apartment 213, Wilcox thought he would vomit.

Because of the smell, Wilcox suggested that they take some of the beer and drink it elsewhere. Dahmer, using agreement as his ruse, said: “That sounds good. I can barely stand the smell myself.”

Pretending that he was going to change clothes, Dahmer opened a beer for Wilcox and motioned for him to sit on the couch. As he sipped on a Budweiser, Wilcox observed that the walls in the living room had photos and drawings of men working out on gym equipment. Dahmer ’s response to Wilcox’s continued probing was simply that he was a member of a health club and that he took and drew the photos as a hobby. Wilcox, however, began to wonder if Dahmer was homosexual.

When Wilcox finished his beer and again protested about the smell, Dahmer brought him a hastily-made rum and coke. Although it tasted a little unusual, Wilcox went ahead and drank it anyway, thinking that it had simply been mixed too strong. However, soon after he finished it, he began to feel a little muddled and decided that his drink had been drugged, Wilcox told the investigators.

In the next few minutes, before Wilcox realized what was happening, Dahmer had retrieved a 12-inch butcher knife and shoved it in Wilcox’s armpit, its deadly blade directed at his heart.

“If you don’t do what I say, I’m going to kill you!” Wilcox quoted Dahmer as warning him. “I’ve done this before. Don’t make a move because I can kill you just like that,” Dahmer said as he snapped his fingers.

Dahmer then slapped a handcuff on Wilcox’s left wrist, and tried to

force Wilcox’s right arm over and behind him so that he could handcuff it too. But Wilcox, although terrified, resisted, in part because he noticed that Dahmer was already intoxicated—possibly offering an opportunity of escape.

He also knew that if he let Dahmer get the handcuff on his right hand he wouldn’t stand a chance of escaping through the double-locked front door.

In an attempt to placate Dahmer until he felt the moment for escape was right, Wilcox willingly allowed Dahmer to lead him by the handcuff into the darkened bedroom. When Dahmer turned on a light in the corner next to the single bed, Wilcox said he could see that the walls were covered with photos of nude men in nearly every homosexual sex-act pose imaginable. He also noticed a large dried bloodstain on the bed sheet, and to his horror, he saw a hand protruding from beneath the bed.

“You’ll never leave here,” said Dahmer. “It won’t be long. I’ll show you things you won’t believe.”

Dahmer then told Wilcox that he was planning to eat him! He subsequently turned on a small television next to the bed, and placed a copy of The Exorcist in the VCR. “This was the best movie ever made,” Dahmer said.

As Dahmer continued to babble about the movie, he walked over to a nearby filing cabinet.

“I want to show you something,” he said as he pulled open a drawer and removed a human skull. He rubbed the top of the skull as he fiendishly stared at Wilcox, sitting on the edge of the bed. “This is how I get people to stay with me. You’ll stay with me, too.”

At one point Dahmer forced Wilcox to lie on his stomach on the floor.

He again attempted to pull Wilcox’s right hand behind him so he could

handcuff it to his left, but Wilcox continued to resist.

“I’ll let you go if you just let me put your other hand in the handcuff so I can take some pictures of you,” said Dahmer. “Let me be more in control.

Let me take some nude pictures of you, and then I’ll let you go.”

But Bruce Wilcox did not relent. He told the sleuths that he began to talk about anything and everything to keep Dahmer ’s mind off him. He also continued to get Dahmer to drink beer, and he could see that Dahmer ’s state of intoxication was intensifying.

Nonetheless, Dahmer ’s attention kept returning to Wilcox and the grisly, vile plan that he was apparently intent on completing. At one point he took out several photographs of dead men in various stages of dismemberment and began showing them to Wilcox.

“You’ll look real good this way,” said Dahmer. “You’ll look better than they did.”

He also told Wilcox that he was beautiful.

Dahmer, still holding the knife to Wilcox’s side, forced Wilcox to lay flat on his back on the floor. Dahmer then placed his own head firmly against his intended victim’s chest.

“I can hear it beating now,” said Dahmer. “Soon it will be mine...I’m going to cut your heart out!”

Dahmer said that he wanted to see what his heart looked like, and that he was going to eat it. Based on what he had seen and heard, Wilcox had no reason to doubt Dahmer. Wilcox also believed that Jeffrey Dahmer had eaten several human hearts before he stumbled into Dahmer’s debased life.

Wilcox continued to talk, and soon convinced Dahmer to take him back

into the living room to drink more beer. Along the way they stopped in the kitchen, where Dahmer retrieved two beers from the refrigerator. When Dahmer opened the refrigerator door, Wilcox nearly collapsed when he saw the severed head on the bottom shelf.

As they sat on the couch, Dahmer began rocking back and forth, falling deeper into his alcohol- induced stupor.

“It’s time, it’s time,” Dahmer began chanting as he rocked back and forth. “It’s time, it’s time, it’s time.”

Sensing that his chance to escape was then or never, Bruce Wilcox stood up and landed a right-handed punch against Dahmer ’s jaw, hitting him with all the power he could muster. In the next instant he kicked Dahmer in the chest, knocking him to the floor. Dazed, Dahmer had difficulty getting up, giving Wilcox just enough time to open the double-locked door and flee down the stairs to safety, where he flagged down Officers Mueller and Rauth.

“At first he seemed so normal,” said Wilcox. “He turned from Mr. Right to Mr. It...It was like I was confronting Satan himself,” Wilcox told the probers.

The detectives hailed Bruce Wilcox as a hero, saying that his bravery had probably saved the lives of countless future victims that Dahmer may have killed, had his activities remained undetected. They also praised Wilcox for refusing to relinquish control, and said that that was probably what had saved his life. Serial killers, they said, thrive on being in control, and when that power is denied them, it often kills their thrill.

When Milwaukee police did a background check on Jeffrey Dahmer for priors, they learned that he was no stranger to law enforcement. He was arrested for public drunkenness on October 7, 1981, in Bath, Ohio; for disturbing the peace by dropping his pants in front of a group of onlookers

on August 7, 1982, in Milwaukee; for lewd and lascivious behavior on September 8, 1986, when he deliberately exposed himself while urinating and masturbating in front of a group of children, again in Milwaukee.

Convicted only of disorderly conduct, he received a suspended one-year sentence and was ordered into counseling. In 1988, it was alleged that Dahmer drugged a man from Illinois in West Allis, Wisconsin, and attempted to rob him of his money. However, that charge was dropped for lack of evidence.

“I wouldn’t call him a persistent law enforcement problem,” said Bath Police Captain John Gardner, who had a tough time arresting Dahmer during one of Dahmer ’s drunken episodes in 1981. “But when he got the alcohol in him, he could become completely uncooperative.”

He explained how Dahmer had been thrown out of a hotel bar, but had refused to leave the parking lot.

“As I drove up, he was standing in front of the doors, drinking from a liquor bottle.”

Dahmer ’s most serious prior police record, however, showed that he was arrested in Milwaukee in 1988 for fondling a 13-year-old Laotian boy’s genitals and offering him $50 cash to pose for nude photos. He pleaded guilty the following year to those charges, and at his sentencing hearing on May 23, 1989, Dahmer provided an excuse for his actions to the judge.

“I am an alcoholic,” said Dahmer. “Not the sort that has to have a drink every single day. But when I do drink, I go overboard.”

Dahmer was sentenced to one year in prison, but served only 10 months for the molestation conviction. He was released on work-release in March 1990 after writing the following letter, dated December 10, 1989, to

Milwaukee County Circuit Judge William D. Gardner, the same judge who had sent him to prison:

“Dear Judge Gardner, My name is Jeff Dahmer. On September 20, 1988, I was arrested in Milwaukee, Wisconsin for taking pictures of a 13-year-old minor. On September 27, 1988, I was released on bail from the Milwaukee County Jail.

On May 24, 1989, after having entered a plea of guilty in your court, I received my sentence. It was as follows: One year of work release, and five years of probation. I have, as of this date, served six months and four days of my sentence. Sir, I have always believed that a man should be willing to assume responsibility for the mistakes that he makes in life. That is why I entered a plea of `guilty’ to the crime of which I was charged. During my stay [in prison], I have had a chance to look at my life from an angle that was never presented to me before. What I did was deplorable. The world has enough misery in it without my adding more to it. Sir, I can assure you that it will never happen again. This is why, Judge Gardner, I am requesting from you a sentence modification, so that I may be allowed to continue my life as a productive member of our society.

Respectfully yours, Jeff Dahmer When his modified sentence was approved by the judge, Dahmer obtained employment as a laborer at a chocolate factory earning $8.75 an hour. He had worked there as a stock clerk, police learned, until his firing on July 14, 1991, for chronic absenteeism.

As they delved deeper into Dahmer ’s police record, Milwaukee homicide detectives learned that patrol officers had responded to Dahmer ’s apartment in May 1991 as a result of a neighbor ’s complaint that a young Asian boy, naked and bleeding from his anus and from what appeared to be head wounds, was seen running from apartment 213. Dahmer, however, had convinced the reporting officers that the naked boy was actually 19 and was his homosexual lover. Dahmer told the cops that they had been involved in a lover ’s spat, nothing more, and that the “young man” was drunk. He assured the police that he would take care of his “lover.” Since the young man couldn’t speak a word of English, the cops returned him to Dahmer, unaware that they had sealed the boy’s fate.

As investigators began identifying the remains of the victims found inside Dahmer ’s apartment, they realized that he had taken care of his lover, all right. The lover, it turned out, had been an unwilling companion. He was identified as 14-year-old Konerak Sinthasomphone, a relative of the Laotian boy who Dahmer was sent to prison for molesting. Sinthasomphone, who looked older than his age, had been reported missing after he left home to play soccer with friends. The detectives found a photograph of Konerak among those photos seized at Dahmer ’s apartment, and positive identification was accomplished through dental comparisons.

The two cops who had returned Sinthasomphone to Dahmer were suspended from duty for their bungling of the situation, but were reinstated a short time later when they threatened to file civil lawsuits against the city.

In a move that would stun the world, Jeffrey Dahmer soon confessed to detectives that he had murdered the 11 people whose remains were found inside his apartment. One of the victims, he said, he picked up at a gay bar in Milwaukee. They went to a hotel, rented a room for $43, got drunk and passed out.

“When he woke up,” said one of the investigators relating Dahmer ’s confession, “the other guy was dead and had blood coming out of his mouth.”

Dahmer explained to the investigators how he left the body inside the hotel room while he walked to a nearby mall and purchased a suitcase. When he returned to the hotel, he placed the body inside the suitcase, called a taxi, and took it to his grandmother’s house in West Allis. It was there, he said, that he dismembered the corpse and disposed of it without ever telling anyone.

A year later he killed again, Dahmer told police, this time at his grandmother ’s house. He told detectives that he met the victim at the same gay bar where he met the other one, had sex with him, and then gave him sleeping pills. After the man fell asleep, Dahmer strangled him. A third victim was killed in much the same way, Dahmer said, also at his grandmother’s house. All were dismembered.

In 1989, Dahmer told detectives, he picked up another homosexual, had sex with him, drugged him, and stabbed him with a hunting knife. He placed the body in the bathtub, dismembered it, then used hydrochloric acid to destroy the bones. He said the killings that followed were carried out in similar fashion, but added that with practice he “began getting quicker at cutting up the bodies.”

While many detectives working on the case believed sexual perversity was the major factor in the killings being attributed to Dahmer, others also believed that the profound loneliness experienced by Dahmer was a major contributing factor. Dahmer told one detective that he kept his victims’ body parts because he believed they would keep him company.

The detectives soon obtained all the reports of Dahmer ’s contacts with his probation officer from Wisconsin’s Department of Corrections. Although one of the reports stated that Dahmer “appears to be depressed all the time,”

there was nothing to indicate his apparently ongoing murderous activities.

During the interviews with his probation officer he talked about everything except the murders.

Among the subjects he discussed was his sexual orientation. He stated that he “knows he prefers male sex partners” but feels guilty about it. He also said he was uncomfortable with his family because his “father is controlling,” he has “nothing in common with his brother who is in college,” and he expressed that he is “embarrassed” by his offense of child molestation. He was also concerned about money, and asked, “Why are people who make a lot of money so lucky?”

In an affidavit written and submitted by Police Lieutenant David Kane to the Milwaukee County Circuit Court, Dahmer “stated that he would drug these individuals and usually strangle them and then he would dismember the bodies.”

Although no criminal charges were immediately filed, Circuit Judge Frank T. Crivello accepted the affidavit during a brief probable cause hearing and set Dahmer ’s bail at one million dollars in cash. Milwaukee lawyer Gerald Boyle was appointed as Dahmer’s attorney.

“I am told by authorities and by him that he has made many statements that inculpate him,” said Boyle. “He said he has no one to blame but himself, not the police, not the courts, and not the probation department. He said there comes a time when you have to be honest, and this is the time...He wants to continue to talk to the authorities, to assist the authorities in identifying the victims. The state has every right to hold him.”

Boyle stated publicly that Dahmer was mentally competent to participate in court proceedings.

“As to the information I can release,” said Chief Arreola, “for the most

part the victims are male. We have no indication up to now that we have any female victims.”

Chief Arreola declined to discuss reports that Dahmer had admitted to committing acts of cannibalism, but Medical Examiner Jeffrey Jentzen told reporters that the victims’ remains were “not inconsistent with cannibalism...We may have opinions on that at a future time.”

Dahmer ’s taste for human flesh was also confirmed through subsequent interviews with the suspect. He told sleuths that he once fried a victim’s biceps in vegetable shortening and ate it. However, that victim’s identity had not yet been determined.

“Once you’ve tasted human flesh,” said a source who declined identification, “you’ll never eat beef or pork again.”

As the authorities continued to make progress in the case, another victim was identified as Oliver Lacy, 23, of Chicago.

Victim Oliver Lacy, who was positively identified from his fingerprints, had moved to Milwaukee four months earlier to be with his 2-year-old son.

The former high-school track star, who was engaged to be married, disappeared shortly after he went to The Grand Avenue Mall for ice cream after work, relatives told police.

Dahmer told detectives that he put a “sleeping potion” in a drink he gave Lacy and then strangled him. He said that it was Lacy’s heart that they had found in his freezer. He told sleuths that he planned to “eat the heart later,” and confessed to having anal sex with Lacy’s corpse.

“I don’t know how this person lured [Oliver],” said one of Lacy’s relatives. “He wasn’t the type of person who would let someone come up to him like that.”

According to Milwaukee Police Lieutenant Vincent Vitale, Dahmer worked alone. He also said that investigators had not been able, so far, to determine that a pattern of cannibalism existed despite their certainty that Dahmer had eaten at least some of his victims’ remains.

“He apparently wasn’t consuming every person he killed,” said Vitale.

One-by-one, the identification of the victims continued to mount. Soon, as Dahmer continued to talk to the police, the remains of all 11 victims found inside Dahmer ’s apartment had been identified. In addition to Konerak Sinthasomphone and Oliver Lacy, the victims were: Anthony Sears, 24, of Milwaukee. Sears was last seen on March 25, 1989, the day before Easter. Police initially believed that Sears had been the first of the 11 killed inside Dahmer ’s apartment, but Dahmer told them later that Sears had actually been killed at Dahmer ’s grandmother ’s house in West Allis.

Dahmer said he took Sears’ skull back to his apartment to keep as a souvenir.

Police believe Dahmer may have lured Sears, who aspired to be a model, to his grandmother’s house for a photo session and the promise of money.

Ricky Beeks, 33, of Milwaukee, was last seen on May 29, 1990. Also known as Raymond Lamont Smith, Beeks had served time in jail.

Ernest Miller, 24, of Milwaukee, was last seen on September 2, 1990.

Although Miller had been living in Chicago, a relative told police that Miller came up to Milwaukee over the Labor Day weekend to get away from all of the violence in Chicago.

“He told us he was going out to eat and then back home to Chicago,” said the relative. “He was a nice person. Never bothered anybody.”

Curtis Straughter, 18, of Milwaukee, was last seen on March 7, 1991. A homosexual, Straughter found it difficult to come to terms with his sexuality

and as a result felt estranged from some of his family members. A highschool dropout, Straughter had lost his job as a nursing assistant but had told family members that he planned to go to modeling school. Police believe Dahmer may have lured Straughter to his apartment to take photographs.

Errol Lindsey, 19, of Milwaukee, was last seen around dinner time on April 7, 1991. Like Oliver Lacy, he had been to the Grand Avenue Mall, but returned home. However, he left again a short time later to have a key made.

Police wondered if maybe Lindsey had really left to keep a rendezvous with Dahmer, a date that was perhaps made at the mall.

Tony Hughes, 31, of Madison, Wisconsin, was last seen on May 24, 1991, at a dance club for gays on Milwaukee’s south side. Relatives told police that Hughes, who was deaf and unable to speak, had known Jeffrey Dahmer for about two years.

“I knew deep inside my heart that (Tony) would be one of those bodies found,” said a relative of Hughes’. “He was outgoing, jolly, happy. He could make friends easily. I just prayed and asked the Lord to show me where (Tony) was. I just wanted to know if he was dead or alive. The way he died, it hurts. Words can’t describe it.”

Matt Turner, 20, of Chicago, was last seen on June 30, 1991. He was living at a halfway house in Chicago at the time of his disappearance. When police questioned Dahmer about Turner, Dahmer told them that he had met Turner at a homosexual street rally in the Windy City.

Dahmer said he offered Turner money to watch videos with him in his Milwaukee apartment, and Turner agreed to ride with him to Milwaukee on a Greyhound bus. Like some of the other victims, Dahmer said he gave Turner a sleeping sedative.

Turner ’s head had been among those found in the freezer, and his body had been stuffed inside the 55-gallon barrel.

Jeremiah Weinberger, 23, also of Chicago, was last seen on July 6, 1991, at a North Side dance club in that city. Dahmer told detectives that he had met Weinberger at a gay bar in Chicago in early July and offered him money to pose for nude photos and to watch videos with him. He added that Weinberger stayed with him for two days, and that he had killed him when Weinberger wanted to leave. One of Weinberger ’s relatives told police that Weinberger had been in the wrong place at the wrong time when he met up with Dahmer. “(He) was hypnotized by a cobra,” said the relative. “Unfortunately, he was bit.”

Joseph Bredehoft, 25, of Milwaukee, was last seen on July 16, 1991. He had a wife and three children. Bredehoft, police learned, had recently moved in with a relative and was looking for work. Dahmer told the detectives that he met Bredehoft at a bus stop near Marquette University and offered him money to pose for photographs at his apartment. Like all the others, Bredehoft had been duped.

All of the killings attributed to Dahmer were horrible, to be sure. But the death that was felt the hardest by the police and the public was that of 14year-old Konerak Sinthasomphone, in part because Sinthasomphone’s family had been victimized twice by Jeffrey Dahmer.

“It is staggeringly hard” for a family to cope with the killing of a loved one, said a coordinator with Milwaukee County’s victim-witness program. It’s even worse to find out that the killer was the same perpetrator of the previous attack. “I can’t think of anything worse.”

Sinthasomphone’s family had fled Laos in 1980 to escape the repression of communism, hoping to find a better life in the United States.

Instead, they found that tragedy upon tragedy was befalling them.

“It is like you are running and you think you escape but you are coming to a dangerous world in this place,” said a member of the Laotian community.

“Obviously, anyone who has gone through such a tragedy as this would wonder if they’ve chosen the right path for their lives,” said a priest and family friend. “The family is filled with a lot of different emotion. Anger is certainly one of them. They hope and pray no one else will ever have to endure such a tragedy again.”

“We thought it likely that Konerak was in Dahmer ’s apartment,” said one of Konerak’s relatives when news of Konerak’s positive identification was disclosed. “The whole thing is crazy. It is terrible. I don’t know what to say.”

While the families of Dahmer ’s victims mourned their dead, Jeffrey Dahmer continued to relate his grisly tale to lawmen. He admitted that he had boiled several of his victims’ skulls to remove the flesh, and said that he bathed some of the skulls in acid to remove the excess flesh and to bleach or whiten them. With the admission that he’d killed three of his victims at his grandmother ’s house in West Allis, the death toll soared to 14. Before his wave of confessions showed any signs of receding, the death toll climbed to 16.

In addition to the initial 11 victims, Dahmer confessed to murdering David C. Thomas of Milwaukee, a father of two who was last seen on September 24, 1990; Edward W. Smith, 28, of Milwaukee, who disappeared after attending a gay pride parade in Chicago in June 1990; Richard Guerrero, 25, of Milwaukee, who disappeared in 1988; Steven W. Tuomi, 24, of Milwaukee, last seen on September 15, 1987; and Steven Mark Hicks, 19, who went missing on June 18, 1978. Dahmer then told police about killing another man, bringing the staggering death count to 17. The 17th victim, however, hasn’t yet been identified. Dahmer, it seemed, re-called more about

his victims’ tattoos and other physical characteristics — not to mention what he did to them — than their names.

In an interview with Detective John Karabatsos, Dahmer identified a photo of Steven Hicks. Hicks, said Dahmer, had been his first victim. Dahmer told Detective Karabatsos that he had picked up Hicks, who had been hitchhiking his way to a rock concert, and took him to his childhood home near Bath, Ohio, for a beer. The house, Dahmer said, had been left vacant after his parents divorced. Dahmer said they also engaged in sex.

When Hicks showed signs of wanting to leave, Dahmer bashed in the back of his head with a barbell, then finished Hicks off by strangling him. He dragged the body into a crawlspace beneath the house, cut it up and placed the pieces inside garbage bags. When he thought he was finished savoring his kill, he buried Hicks’ body parts.

However, over a considerable period of time, Dahmer exhumed the parts for more perverted frolic, buried them again, dug them up again, and so on. Finally, when the anatomical pieces gave way to severe putrefaction, Dahmer scraped the flesh off the bones. Afterwards, he smashed the bones to bits with a sledgehammer and scattered them in a ravine behind his parents’ house. When Dahmer was finished telling his grisly story, he drew a detailed map of the heavily wooded, 1.7-acre property for authorities, and pinpointed locations where he believed they would find Steven Hicks’ bones.

On the first day of their search at Dahmer ’s childhood home in Bath, an affluent Akron suburb, searchers found as many as 50 bone pieces and fragments as they raked debris from the ground where Dahmer had told them to look. Among the bones found was a pelvic bone, a long leg bone, a rib and a forearm. According to Summit County Coroner William A. Cox, as many as 70 percent of the bones were human, and some appeared to be skull

fragments.

At a hastily called news conference, Cox said that investigators hoped to extract genetic material from the bones and make a positive identification utilizing DNA printing, even though they had little or no doubt that the remains were Hicks’.

“Jeffrey Dahmer has been very truthful in what he has related to us and Milwaukee police,” said Summit County Sheriff David Troutman.

Although it would take some time, he said they were hopeful that they could determine Hicks’ genetic “blueprint” with blood samples from his parents. They could also compare the genetic evidence with locks of Hicks’ hair, which his family had saved in an album, “We may very well be able to put together who those bones belong to,” said Cox. As the search for evidence continued, the public’s inherent and continuously growing interest in true crime became conspicuously evident.

People from the neighborhood and other parts of town stopped in front of the house in their effort to get a look at the activity. Even more shocking were the children present, who had set up a lemonade stand across the street to quench the gawkers’ thirsts — for a profit of course.

“I can understand why the media was here,” said a neighbor, “but it’s the curiosity-seekers I can’t understand. It’s like they’re getting joy out of someone else’s pain.”

In reality, though, the curiosity-seekers weren’t reveling over the pain and suffering of others. They just wanted to know more about Jeffrey Dahmer ’s monstrous activities, to learn what could possibly drive a man to such violent extremes.

“There’s so much we still have to learn about him,” said Milwaukee

Police Captain Joseph M. Purpero. “We’ve only been at this a few days. It seems the more we learn, the more we have to learn.”

Within days after his arrest and confessions to police, investigators converged on Dahmer ’s grandmother ’s house in West Allis. Relatives told the investigators that they had discovered a vat of viscous substance in the basement of the home about three years earlier, but thought little of it when Dahmer explained to them that he was disintegrating dead animals.

During their search of the premises, investigators seized a sledgehammer, a hatchet, a sewer grate cover, and several prescription drug containers.

“He [Dahmer] said he administered some drugs [to his victims] and strangled them,” said West Allis Deputy Police Chief Robert Due. Before they were finished, according to West Allis Police Chief John Butorak, detectives recovered the remains of one man on the premises, believed to have been one of the three victims Dahmer admitted killing there. As for Dahmer ’s grandmother, Butorak said investigators were certain that she knew nothing of the killings.

“She’s not involved in the investigation,” said Chief Butorak. “She’s a very elderly lady, going through a very hard time.”

As the case continued to unfold and more was learned about Jeffrey Dahmer ’s background, it began to seem like the real-life version of Hannibal “The Cannibal” Lecter, a fictional character portrayed by Anthony Hopkins in the movie thriller based on Thomas Harris’ bestseller, The Silence of the Lambs, had jumped off the screen and taken up residence in Milwaukee. The revelations surrounding Dahmer ’s case also revived unpleasant memories of Chicago’s homosexual killer, John Wayne Gacy, and of Wisconsin’s own Ed Gein, another cannibal whose story served, albeit loosely, as the backdrop for

the motion pictures Psycho and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

“There’s no doubt he’s insane,” said a close family member. “But Jeffrey was not born a monster. He is not a monster.”

Jeffrey L. Dahmer was born at Evangelical Deaconess Hospital in Milwaukee on May 21, 1960. Following a move to Ames, Iowa, in 1962 so that his father could attend graduate school, Dahmer moved with his parents to Doylestown, Ohio, near Akron, four years later. At age 6, following the birth of a sibling, Dahmer began to show signs that he felt neglected. The feelings intensified while he was in the first grade, in part due to an illness his mother suffered both before and after the birth of his brother.

In 1968, he and his family moved to the well-to-do community of Bath Township, where he attended elementary school. That same year, at age 8, Dahmer was sexually abused by an older neighbor boy, an incident that was not reported to the police at the time.

While still in elementary school, Dahmer received an introductory chemistry set as a present. He soon began storing animal skeletons in bottles of formaldehyde, and he “liked to use acid to scrape the meat off dead animals.”

Dahmer eventually began roaming the streets in search of animals that had been killed by cars, and soon had quite a collection of bones from cats, dogs, chipmunks, raccoons, and squirrels that he kept stored in pickle jars filled with formaldehyde. Dahmer also kept spiders, praying mantises, and other pests in jars that lined his clubhouse walls. But he eventually became cruel and mean to animals and insects, a trait that many serial killers share.

“I once watched as Jeff caught a butterfly outside his house and told his brother to take the butterfly by the wings and pull them off,” said a former

childhood friend. “Jeff was angry at the world, even when he was a child. He just didn’t seem to fit in anywhere...and he later blamed this on being gay. Jeff hated himself and he hated gays. And that, I think, is the root of his problems.”

While attending Revere High School in nearby Richfield, one of the most affluent and respected school districts in the state, Dahmer ’s grades were characterized by school officials as “unremarkable.” He played tennis and clarinet, but rarely as part of any outside school activities. He was considered bright, possessing an IQ of about 145, but his grade-point average suffered because of the wide spread of his grades, which ranged from A to D. Instead of applying himself, Dahmer preferred to be known as a prankster.

“However, we had no record of disciplinary problems,” said an official at Revere High. “In fact, I don’t have a note of him even being brought to the principal’s office.”

“He had a bizarre sense of humor,” remarked a former classmate. “He bleated like a sheep in class, and had fake epileptic seizures in the hallways to see how people reacted. I don’t remember having a normal conversation with him.”

Dahmer soon began drinking heavily. He would often consume several beers before going to school, and friends frequently observed him swigging gin at his locker.

By age 16, Dahmer ’s taste for death and torture had intensified. A childhood friend told police that Dahmer kept chipmunk and squirrel skeletons inside a shed behind the house, and that he had an animal burial ground at the side of the house, complete with crosses and other markers.

“He had a little graveyard with animals buried in it,” recalled the former friend. “There were skulls placed on top of little crosses. He had quite a

collection of skeletons.”

One time, another neighborhood boy encountered a mutilated dog carcass while walking through the woods near Dahmer ’s house. The dog’s head was mounted on a stick beside a wooden cross, and the dog’s body, skinned and gutted, had been nailed to a tree. After the incident was investigated, it was attributed to Dahmer.

“Whatever had gone on in Jeff’s life,” said another former classmate, “he couldn’t talk about it. It seemed so clear that he was saying, ‘Pay attention to me.’ But nobody did.”

Another of Dahmer ’s former high school friends told reporters after Dahmer ’s arrest that he had seen a number of stuffed animals while visiting Dahmer ’s home in 1978, the same year in which Dahmer said he killed Steven Hicks. He had a large collection of stuffed rabbits, owls and small birds. After having spent the afternoon drinking and smoking marijuana, the friend had asked Dahmer about the stuffed animals.

“It’s taxidermy,” Dahmer had responded. taxidermy...always wanted to do that to a human.”

“I

used

to

do

As the probers continued their search to find the key that unleashed Dahmer ’s bizarre and murderous actions, they kept discovering people who characterized him as an intensely troubled person from childhood to adulthood, someone who was racist and unable to cope with his sexuality.

That characterization was illustrated by a minister who said he met Dahmer in a tavern about a month before his arrest. The minister told police that Dahmer was an alcoholic who hated homosexuals and blacks.

“The kid was nervous.” said the minister. “He was anxious. He was, I don’t know, upset all the time in the bars, like he didn’t want to be there, like

he was compelled to be by some inner feelings he was trying to repress and because he couldn’t deal with it. He would turn around and get drunk.”

By his senior year, Dahmer ’s parents were battling it out in bitter divorce proceedings, fighting over custody of Jeff’s younger brother.

Eventually his father moved out and his mother left with the younger boy, leaving Dahmer by himself, essentially deserted.

“Jeffrey was left all alone in the house with no money, no food and a broken refrigerator, recalled a family member. “The desertion really affected him.” It was shortly after being deserted, Dahmer told police, that he killed Steven Hicks.

On a lighter note, before graduation Dahmer sneaked into an honor society group photo session for Revere High’s yearbook. Because his grades were far from meeting honor society standards, Dahmer was not a member but sneaked into the photo as if he belonged there.

“It was a very Jeff thing to do,” remembered a former teacher. “It was part of his trying to be unconventional and to mock everything around him. I think he very consciously chose the honor society because I think in some ways he was laughing at himself and us.”

His picture with the honor society, however, was blotted out with a black marker before the yearbook went to press.

On another occasion, while visiting Washington D.C., Dahmer somehow managed to talk his way into Walter F. Mondale’s vice-presidential suite and humorist Art Buchwald’s office, apparently as pranks or to see if he could do it.

Laura Smith, a sophomore, was Dahmer ’s date to the senior prom. She would exclaim after Dahmer ’s arrest, “My first date was with a mass

murderer! I felt uncomfortable around him, because he was so weird and emotionless, and I’d heard stories about his heavy drinking. But I was lucky.

As far as I know, I’m the only woman to ever date Jeff Dahmer...and I got away alive! I’ve been so upset since I saw his face on television that I haven’t been able to sleep. It sends chills down my spine.”

Dahmer did not ask Laura to go to the prom himself. Instead, he’d arranged the date by having one of Laura’s friends ask her for him.

“I was told that Jeff needed a date,” recalled Laura, “and a girlfriend talked me into accepting his invitation. I was excited to be going to the prom.”

When Dahmer arrived to pick up Laura at her home, he was dressed in brown pants, a vest, and a tie. Most of the other boys wore tuxedos to the formal affair and, as was usual, Dahmer looked like he didn’t belong.

“He was so afraid of me that he couldn’t stop shaking as he tried to pin the corsage on my dress without touching me,” said Laura. “But he fumbled so badly...it was like his hands trembled as they got near a girl. Finally, my mother did it for him.”

Shortly after they arrived at the prom, recalled Laura, Dahmer hurriedly left without explanation. Laura, in the meantime, felt deserted, angry, and embarrassed.

“I was ashamed and furious,” said Laura. “I had no idea where he went...God knows, I wonder now what he might have been doing while he was away. It makes my flesh creep...Finally someone told me that Jeff went to meet his best friend.”

It was around 11:00 p.m. when Dahmer finally returned. He looked like he had been drinking, and he dropped Laura off in front of her house without

even kissing her goodnight. He merely shook her hand. Later, he explained why he had left her alone at the prom.

“He said, ‘I’m gay and I left you to go meet my boyfriend who didn’t go to the prom,’” Laura quoted Dahmer as having told her. “Jeff went on to explain that his boyfriend was angry with him because he took me to the prom. And he had to make it up to him by meeting him during the dance.”

A few weeks later Laura met with Dahmer again, this time at his home and in the presence of six other teenagers. With hands joined, they sat around a table that had a candle in the middle. When Laura asked what they were doing, one of the teens told her Jeff was having a séance.

“One of Jeff’s friends said, ‘Let’s call Lucifer!’” recalled Laura. “I thought he was joking, but as he said it, the candle on the table blew out. I bolted from the room and ran across the road and waited until my girlfriend came out...We always saw him as the type to commit suicide, not the type who would harm somebody else.”

Other former classmates apparently saw Dahmer differently. At a recent reunion, someone asked, “Remember Jeffrey Dahmer?” Another replied, “Oh, he’s probably a mass murderer.” The irony of it all is that the statements were made before Dahmer ’s now-confessed butchery had been discovered.

Following graduation from high school and the murder of Steven Hicks, Dahmer attended Ohio State University for a few months. However, his drinking increased to the point of becoming a problem. Strapped for money, he began selling his blood to get drinking money. Not surprisingly, before the academic year ended, he dropped out and enlisted in the Army.

It was in the spring of 1980 when Dahmer reported for duty at Fort McClellan, Alabama, where he began training to become a military police

officer. However, for reasons that aren’t clear, Dahmer never finished his MP training but was instead soon transferred to Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas, where he underwent a six-week course to become a medical specialist, a job similar to that of a nurse’s aide. When his training was completed, he was sent to the 2nd Battalion, 68th Armored Regiment, 8th Infantry Division in Baumholder, West Germany.

While in West Germany, Dahmer remained a loner. His room’s walls had posters of the heavy metal bands Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden. He frequently lay in bed and listened to their music with headphones as he drank himself into unconsciousness. Before passing out from drinking beer, gin, and vodka, however, Dahmer often became menacing to others living in the barracks.

“When he’d drink, he’d get real violent with me,” recalled a former bunkmate. “You could tell in his face that he wasn’t joking. It was for real.

That’s why it bothered me. It was a whole dif-ferent side. His face was blank.

It was kind of like he just wasn’t there. I’ve never seen it on anyone else’s face.”

At other times, remembered the former bunkmate, “he talked about his dad a lot. He wanted to please his dad.” The bunkmate told probers that he thought Dahmer had been an only child. “He never said anything about having a brother.”

Other Army buddies who served with Dahmer in West Germany also emphasized his drinking problem. They said he frequently mixed Beefeater martinis in the barracks using shakers, stirrers, flasks, and other bar equipment that he carried in a briefcase.

“He’d be shut out from the rest of the world,” said one of his former buddies. “He’d drink until he passed out, then wake up and start again. He

didn’t even go out for chow.”

“He was smart,” said another, “but he just wanted to slide by. He was just goofy. He always had that look about him, that sinisterness. He was on a steady decline in life. He was on a losing skid and didn’t know how to pick himself up.”

Following his honorable discharge in March 1981 (a year before his enlistment would have been completed) under Chapter 9 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, a directive that deals administratively with alcohol and drug abuse by Army personnel, Dahmer moved to Florida where he worked in a sandwich shop and slept on the beach. A short time later he moved back to Ohio, but that didn’t work out for him, either. He soon ended up moving in with his grandmother, who lived in West Allis, Wisconsin.

Then, in 1985, Dahmer went to work for a downtown Milwaukee blood bank which, considering the nature of the charges facing him, raised many macabre questions from those closely follow-ing the case. However, no improprieties or acts of wrongdoing by Dahmer have been uncovered in connection with Dahmer ’s position at the blood bank — so far. That same year he went to work for a chocolate factory where he remained employed until July 14, 1991.

Shy but intelligent, good-looking but having no permanent sexual relationships whether they are heterosexual, bisexual or homosexual, Jeffrey Dahmer remains a man of mystery despite his confessions to police and the extensive background investigators have turned up. Why did he become an aficionado of necrophilic desire, murder, and mutilation? One can only guess.

The real answers may never surface.

“At the time I knew him,” said a former neighbor whose sons were playmates of Dahmer ’s, “there was something devastating going on in his

life, and there wasn’t anybody there to help him. I feel bad about that. He’s done monstrous acts, yet he’s a human being,” she continued. “Why did he do those things? Only Jeffrey can answer that.”

One state official emphasized that, while all the answers may not be readily available in a case such as Dahmer ’s, sex offenders tend to be the most difficult challenges for probation officers and mental health professionals.

“Our knowledge of sexuality is in the Stone Age,” said the official, affiliated with the sex offender program in Milwaukee where Dahmer was supervised after his sex offense conviction. “Anyone who says they know everything about it really doesn’t know.”

Sex offenses, according to the official, are highly recidivist crimes primarily because the offenders are compelled by deep-seated motivations that are difficult, if not impossible, to neutralize.

In Dahmer ’s case, the potency of his fantasies about homosexual mutilation increased to the point “where he was bursting with self-hatred and he had to relieve it.”

“This kind of guy is really an aberration, even of the abnormal,” said a Wisconsin psychologist. “His behavior goes one step beyond...Each element of the case takes you one step farther into the bizarre...My sense is that he hated these people. He may have befriended them, but somehow their friendship hurt. He may have experienced it as pain, not rewarding or fulfilling. When people begin to treat him with friendship, it’s bewildering (to him).

“What happened to him?” continued the mental health professional.

“What was the pain? What was the alienation? Clearly he was a very alienated man personally, and socially. I don’t think he felt comfortable with himself,

with people.”

The psychologist pointed out to police that studies have shown that most male sex offenders were sexually abused, physically abused, emotionally abused, neglected, or abandoned as children. One out of five male sex offenders has been sexually abused as a child, statistics show.

However, despite the fact that a close family member reported the alleged incident of sexual abuse suffered by Dahmer when he was 8-years-old to Dahmer ’s probation officer, Dahmer denied it. He emphatically stated that “he was never abused, sexually or physically, as a child.”

The Wisconsin psychologist who assisted police in a profile of Dahmer said that existing psychological diagnoses do not fit within Dahmer ’s psyche.

He said that if he were pressed to make a diagnosis, he would have to classify Dahmer as a paranoid personality.

“I would suspect he has a delusional system that’s very peculiar,” said the psychologist. “It’s not that he walks around watching spaceships land, or that he can’t hold a job, or that when he walks down the street he sets himself apart so that everyone stops.”

Another psychologist, after pondering the extensive collection of animal remains Dahmer possessed as a youth, injected an interesting idea that might help explain Dahmer’s behavior.

“His behavior didn’t change,” said the psychologist. “The objects changed...This is a person that is very deficient in some ways. His character probably wasn’t very strong to begin with, and it got beaten down by ways in which he was treated throughout life. If there’s anything monstrous about him, it’s the monstrous lack of connection to all things we think of as being human — guilt, remorse, worry, feelings that would stop him from hurting, killing, torturing.”

Another question arose: Why did Jeffrey Dahmer strangle all of his victims? A forensic psychiatrist who serves as a consultant for the FBI thinks he knows the answer. Of the numerous serial killers that he has studied, the psychiatrist said that 58 percent strangled their victims.

“It’s a very personal, intimate means of causing death,” said the psychiatrist. “One can actually feel the victim expire.” He also said that most serial killers keep a journal of their grisly handiwork, photographs of their deeds, and they keep trophies such as body parts. Most serial killers, he opined, are sexually aroused by their victims’ blood because the victims are considered mere objects. “These were sexual props, not people.”

Dahmer certainly fit the profile of a serial killer, as put together by Special Agent John Douglas of the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit in the 1970s. Douglas’ report, in part, states that most serial killers are white males, loners from troubled homes, who possess a significant degree of intelligence but are typically underachievers. Many are often physically, sexually, or psycho-logically abused as children, and as adolescents are cruel to animals.

Another psychologist and author of several books on serial killers also believes that serial killers have a number of common characteristics. Most, he says, abuse alcohol and/or drugs, and have suffered from malnutrition.

“All have been abused, emotionally, physically, and quite often sexually.”

Many serial killers, said the psychologist, show signs of neurological or central nervous system damage that ranges from dyslexia to epilepsy. Others have memory loss, experience déjà` vu often, or are sleepwalkers. Many have fantasies of killing, or experience hallucinations. Still others, like David Berkowitz, the notorious “Son of Sam” killer, play with fire and become arsonists. Most, at some point, begin to torture and mutilate animals before moving on to torturing humans. About one-third of all serial killers turn to cannibalism, and almost all keep trophies, or souvenirs, of their victims so

that they can relive the killing in fantasy states.

Homophobia and racism are major factors in Jeffrey Dahmer ’s case, the expert says. “The victims symbolize something in the killer ’s past.” For example, he says, “John Wayne Gacy killed male prostitutes because he was extremely homophobic, and he was killing the hated homosexual part of himself. Most serial killers believe that they are doing good for society by killing certain types.” An example is the common prostitute killer.

“Part of their frustration is that they have high ability and potential but they can never realize that potential.”

As a result, they focus their intelligence toward killing.

“The more people know about Mr. Dahmer, the better chance they have for recognizing others like him,” said the psychologist. “And I guarantee you that right now there are at least two more like him out there, waiting to be discovered.”

Milwaukee police and residents alike hoped that those serial killers weren’t residing in their city. They’d had almost more than they could handle dealing with Dahmer. Milwaukee County District Attorney E. Michael McCann even went so far as to consult with William Kunkle, a Chicago lawyer who helped put John Wayne Gacy on death row in the 1970s. Gacy was responsible for murdering 33 young men and boys between 1972 and 1978. Most of Gacy’s victims were found in the crawlspace beneath his house.

Others were found in nearby rivers.

“We had a meeting and were providing Mr. McCann with some of the transcripts involved in the Gacy case, some of the motions that were filed and what our responses were, some of the legal research that was done before on some of the same questions that he’s presented with,” said Kunkle. While he

would not divulge the contents of the conversations he had with D.A. McCann, Kunkle said that he “didn’t know enough about the Milwaukee case to talk about the similarity of the people or the crimes. Obviously, they’re multiple homicides; they’re situations where there may be unidentified remains.

Those things are exact similarities” to Gacy, he said.

“We’re dealing with some of the same dynamics that we can see in Gacy,” said an author of a book on the Gacy case. “The dysfunctional family, a guy who denies his homosexual feelings to erase whatever shame he might feel in committing these acts, who destroys the people who attracted him in the first place. He’s punishing himself and punishing them at the same time.”

There is little doubt that Jeffrey Dahmer ’s horrifying revelations sent the country, if not the world, reeling. Paramount Pictures Corporation immediately pulled ads for their new horror movie, Body Parts, throughout the Milwaukee area because of the pain and suffering the victims’ families were experiencing, and Wisconsin’s largest movie theater chain pulled the film completely from their schedule.

“We pulled our TV ads out of sensitivity to the tragedy in Milwaukee, even though the storyline is not related at all to what happened,” said a spokesman for Paramount. The movie, based on the novel Choice Cuts, is the story of a criminal psychologist who loses an arm in an automobile accident but receives a new arm after undergoing an experimental procedure. The new arm was that of a murderer.

“There is some concern, naturally, over the subject,” said an executive of the National Association of Theater Owners, who suggested that theater operators in Milwaukee feared a negative reaction from the public if the film opened there. “It’s unfortunate, but it’s really bad timing.”

Also, investigators from as far away as California and Germany are

looking at Jeffrey Dahmer as a possible suspect for unsolved slayings in those locales. California’s interest stems from the discovery of a human foot near Fresno, the town where a relative of Dahmer ’s lives. Fresno authorities believe the foot may have belonged to Patrick Lawrence VanZant, 31, who disappeared on May 4, 1990. Homicide investigators tried to determine if Dahmer had made any trips to California within the time frame in which they are interested, but came up empty-handed.

Authorities in Germany also want to question Dahmer regarding five mutilation slayings that occurred near the Army base where Dahmer served on active duty. One of those slayings involved the death of a young woman, Erika Hansthuh, 22, whose body was found in snow approximately 50 miles from the Army base at Baumholder. She was found stabbed and strangled on November 30, 1980, within days after hitchhiking from Heidelberg.

Dahmer, however, emphatically denied any involvement in any deaths other than those he has already confessed to police.

“I have told the police everything I have done relative to the homicides,” said Dahmer in a statement released through his attorney. “I have not committed any such crimes anywhere in the world other than this state, except I have admitted an incident in Ohio. I have not committed any homicide in any foreign country or in any other state. I have been totally cooperative and would have admitted other crimes if I did them. I did not.

Hopefully, this will serve to put rumors to rest.”

Despite Dahmer ’s statement, U.S. Attorney General Dick Thornburgh pledged that the Justice Department and the FBI would continue to help Milwaukee police pursue out-of-state leads to other possible homicides.

As of this writing, Jeffrey Dahmer has been charged with the murders of 11 men and one boy. He has confessed to killing five others, but police had

not yet obtained sufficient evidence needed to bring formal charges against him for those killings. Each count carries a mandatory life prison sentence.

Dahmer, appearing in court on Tuesday, August 6, 1991, to hear the charges, was clean-shaven. Dressed in an orange jail jumpsuit and blue shirt, he stared mostly at the floor during the proceedings. However, he held eye contact with the judge when he responded to questions in his usual softspoken manner. Citing the “nature and gravity of offenses and the degree of violence in the complaint,” Judge Jeffrey A. Wagner increased Dahmer ’s bail to $5 million cash.

“He has preyed on the minds and the hearts of the entire community,” said Mayor John Norquist in the aftermath of Milwaukee’s horror. “The greatest tragedy of all would be for this city to allow itself to be torn apart...I understand the rage that exists...especially in the area most devastated by this killer. The desire to lash out and fix blame is strong. But we must remember one man killed his victims.”

Jeffrey Dahmer was, of course, eventually indicted on 17 murder charges; however, the charges were reduced to 15 on technicalities, such as evidentiary reasons. At his trial in January 1992, Dahmer pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. However, he was found to be sane, and was convicted of murder on all 15 charges and sentenced to 15 life terms that amounted to 957 years in prison.

While in prison, despite the numerous threats that had been made on his life, Dahmer refused offers of protective custody. One inmate, on July 3, 1994, tried to slash his throat while inside the prison’s chapel, but Dahmer escaped with only minor injuries. Dahmer declined to press charges against the inmate.

On November 28, 1994, while serving his sentences at a prison in

Portage, Wisconsin, Dahmer, while cleaning a bathroom near the prison’s gym, was beaten to death along with another inmate by fellow prisoner Christopher Scarver, 25, who used a metal bar from an exercise device inside the gym. Dahmer died from head trauma on the way to the hospital. Although the attack was at first believed to have been racially motivated due to the fact that several of Dahmer ’s victims were black, it was later determined that Scarver was merely deranged and believed he was the “son of God” carrying out the Almighty’s directives.

Editor ’s Note: Bruce Wilcox and Laura Smith are not the real names of the persons so named in the foregoing story. Fictitious names have been used because there is no reason for public interest in the identities of these persons.

About the Author Gary C. King, a freelance author and lecturer, has published more than 500 articles in true crime magazines in the United States, Canada, and England. King took over Ann Rule’s job as Pacific Northwest stringer for True Detective magazine and its sister publications, writing hundreds of articles under various names until those magazines ceased publication in the mid-1990s. More recently he has found alternate venues for his stories, including truTV’s Crime Library and Investigation Discovery. He is also the author of several true crime books including: Blood Lust: Portrait of a Serial Sex Killer, Driven to Kill, Murder in Room 305, To Die For, Savage Vengeance (with Don Lasseter), An Early Grave, The Texas 7, Murder in Hollywood, Angels of Death, Stolen in the Night, Love, Lies, and Murder, An Almost Perfect Murder, Butcher, The Murder of Meredith Kercher, and Rage.

Driven to Kill, the story of serial child killer Westley Allan Dodd’s killing spree, was published in April 1993 by Pinnacle Books and was nominated for an Anthony Award in the Best True Crime Book category at Bouchercon 25.

Blood Lust: Portrait of a Serial Sex Killer, details the bizarre case of Dayton Leroy Rogers, Oregon’s worst serial killer to date. Blood Lust was published in December 1992 under NAL/Dutton’s Onyx imprint as an original paperback. A German language edition of Blood Lust was published later, in 1995. Both Blood Lust and Driven to Kill were chosen as featured selections of Doubleday’s True Crime Book Club.

King’s television appearances have included Entertainment Tonight, Larry King Live, Inside Edition, Court TV, MSNBC’s Headliners and Legends, E!, British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), Extra TV, and several other programs. He also frequently provides radio interviews. Television

interviews also include an episode of Biography about serial killer Robert “Willie” Pickton, the subject of Butcher, and an episode of Dominick Dunne’s Power, Privilege, and Justice called “Strange Bedfellows,” about the murder of Nevada State Controller Kathy Augustine and the subject of King’s An Almost Perfect Murder.

King is an active member of the Authors Guild, Mystery Writers of America, The Crime Writers’ Association (U.K.), International Thriller Writers, and International Association of Crime Writers.