06.Evil.Beside.Her.2008 (17 page)

In his then seventeen years in law enforcement, Undersheriff Wheeler had worked more cases than he cared to remember, but none that had drawn out so long or terrorized the community as much as that of the Parkwood Rapist. Later, Wheeler would credit hubris and a twist of good luck for James Bergstrom’s arrest that clear May 1989 day. He would also describe it as one of the most frustrating cases of his years on the force.

“We had every officer we could afford to have in that area,” says Wheeler. “I was patrolling it on my way to and from work. The switchboard in the office lit up constantly with residents calling to report anyone suspicious. Anyone moved in or near that subdivision, we heard about. The whole area was on guard.” Still, the police came up dry.

The hubris that trapped Bergstrom was his own. A description of the Peeping Tom was plastered over local papers and detailed on radio news reports. It matched that of the rapist. It also described Bergstrom. If he had lain low, at least until the media moved on to other stories and vigilance waned, he may never have been caught. But it was obvious to Wheeler and everyone else, as sightings of the peeper continued to pour in from Parkwood East, that whomever this man was—and Wheeler was convinced the voyeur and the rapist were the same guy—he wasn’t hiding out. This fellow believed he was good, good enough to skirt around unseen in the midst of one of the biggest manhunts in Kitsap County’s history.

The lucky breaks began a few nights before the arrest, when James, dressed in sweats, told Linda he was going for a “jog.” That night, a deputy circled Parkwood East in an unmarked squad car. She saw Bergstrom in his brown 1979 Grand Prix and made a note on her log. Remembering the car resembled the description of one spotted near some of the incidents, she took it one step further and called it in. “There’s a guy,” she radioed into headquarters. “I don’t know if he’s connected or not connected. But I don’t like the way he’s driving around looking at houses.” Before signing off, she relayed the license number, make, and approximate year of the car. At headquarters, it was only one of a flood of possible leads, and a notation was made to check out the car and its owner as soon as time permitted.

On May 18, while Linda looked for James in the apartment and found only the wastebasket missing its bag, a switchboard line lit up at the sheriff’s office. A Parkwood East woman wanted to report another sighting of the Peeping Tom. “I saw him,” she told police. “He just left here.” In seconds, marked and unmarked squads from the entire area descended on Parkwood East, combing the streets. Deputies drove the winding blocks, peered in backyards, knocked on doors to talk to neighbors. Women who had been home caring for their children flocked out in the unusually warm May day and clustered together, their fears only exacerbated by yet another sighting. Everyone was on edge.

Still, no trace of the intruder was found.

Though deputies arrived within minutes of the report and had Parkwood East covered, it appeared the man had slipped through their grasp again. As on all the other sightings, it was as if he’d simply vanished.

Unaware, Linda left for the car dealership to claim her license plates as police called off the search. Minutes later, a sergeant driving down Fairgrounds Road noticed a dark-haired man matching the description of the Peeping Tom walking out of the convenience store at the Cedar Valley Plaza shopping center. The sergeant called for backup and
then followed in his squad car as the man loped casually across the street to the Central Park Apartments. In the parking lot, outside unit number eleven, the officer noticed the 1979 brown Grand Prix that had been called in a few nights earlier. He screeched to a stop and got out. The man in the sweat suit looked at him calmly.

“Can I help you?” James Bergstrom asked.

“Yeah, is that your car?” the officer said, flashing his badge.

“Yeah,” he answered. “Is there a problem?”

“We’re looking for a guy who’s been peeping in houses,” the sergeant said. “I’d like to see some identification.”

“Sure,” Bergstrom said, politely handing over his wallet.

Other squad cars and unmarked cars converged on the apartment parking lot, surrounding Bergstrom.

One of the detectives got out and introduced himself.

“We’d just like to take a little look around in the apartment and your car,” he said, holding out a clipboard with two forms. “How about signing a search warrant for us?”

“No problem,” James said, signing them with his careful scrawl. “Anything to clear this up.”

As one group of deputies searched the apartment, another combed through the car. All the time, James stood to the side, casually answering questions.

“What do you do?” asked the detective.

“I’m in the navy, on the
Ohio
,” said James. “I’m an interior communications man.”

“Must be interesting work,” said the detective, noting a navy man fit the on-again-off-again rapist’s MO.

Just then another squad drove in. When the door popped open, the woman who had called police to report seeing the Peeping Tom jumped out.

“That’s him,” she shouted, pointing at Bergstrom. “That’s the guy.”

James Bergstrom’s eyes opened wide and his face blanched as he looked from officer to officer.

“You’ve got the right to remain silent,” the sergeant began
as he removed handcuffs from his belt. “If you choose to speak, anything…”

By the time Linda met with detectives that afternoon, James had been transported to the Kitsap County Sheriff’s Department in Port Orchard, at the base of the peninsula, for further questioning. Faced with a positive identification, he confessed to the peeping incident but maintained that was all he was guilty of.

“I didn’t rape anyone,” Bergstrom, seated in an interrogation room at the station, told Wheeler. “I’ll admit I’ve got a problem, but I’m not a rapist.”

Wheeler wasn’t buying Bergstrom’s protestations. The department had already run a check on the days Bergstrom had been out at sea and knew his onshore dates corresponded with both the peeping incidents and the rape and attempted rapes. That only bolstered Wheeler’s conviction that the Peeping Tom and the Parkwood Rapist were the same man.

“What about the gun?” Wheeler asked. “What did you do with the gun?”

As he had whenever the subject of the gun came up, Bergstrom went as silent as the rock in the nearby cliffs.

“James, we know you have a gun,” Wheeler said. “Your wife even gave us the receipt for it. Now you need to tell us where it is.”

Still, James was mute.

As they did whenever a navy man was arrested, Wheeler had notified authorities on base of Bergstrom’s arrest. His two chiefs from the
Ohio
, Swartz and Haberstock, had rushed over and stood nearby, watching. Swartz, who had been the only man on the
Ohio
occasionally able to crack Bergstrom’s shell, stepped forward. “Let me give it a try,” he said to Wheeler. “Maybe James will tell me.”

Nodding, Wheeler moved back and let Swartz take over. The undersheriff was willing to do whatever he needed to do to get the gun and the ski mask worn during the rape. Without them, Wheeler was painfully aware that he had no
physical evidence linking Bergstrom to the rape or attempted rapes.

Swartz moved forward and sat down next to his shy crewman. Wheeler watched with Bill Haberstock from a distance as Bergstrom and Swartz whispered. Wheeler didn’t ask Haberstock what he thought about the young crewman. If he had, Haberstock would have told him that he believed they’d probably pulled in the right man. “I had a hard time with it,” said Haberstock later. “But I thought, deep inside, that yeah, he was capable of doing it. I remembered the way he had beaten his wife and the complaint at the apartment complex. I figured he was capable of it.”

When Swartz and Bergstrom stopped whispering, Swartz walked toward Wheeler. “James says he threw the gun in the water,” said Swartz. “He says it’s in the sound.”

“That right, James?” Wheeler asked.

“Yeah,” said James. “I threw it out.”

“Why did you do that?” he asked.

“Just seemed like a good idea,” said Bergstrom.

Wheeler looked at the young man seated before him and shook his head. “I didn’t believe it for a second,” said Wheeler later. “He had no idea we were on to him and he was still operating. He had no reason to dispose of that weapon. I figured he had it hid somewhere; the question was where.”

As soon as she’d handed the detective the receipt for James’s nine-millimeter handgun, Linda got on the telephone. First she phoned Chris, who told her to stay put while he went down to the sheriff’s office. Then she called her mother in Houston. “Linda was hysterical,” Santos would say later. “I couldn’t understand what she was saying, something about James being a Peeping Tom and maybe a rapist. I said to her, ‘No, Linda, that can’t be right.’”

It was hard for anyone who knew the shy, quiet James Bergstrom to believe. Even Linda, who had experienced his angry, violent side, couldn’t reconcile the man she knew with the allegations police were making. “I was out of hand,” said Linda later. “I knew James could be mean, but I couldn’t believe what they were saying about the man I married.”

The detectives treated her patiently, realizing the young navy wife was stunned by the accusations. One assured her they would try not to disturb her apartment any more than necessary. “It’s a nice place,” he said, kindly. “You’ve really fixed it up.” Then he bent toward her. “Listen, you’re too emotionally upset to be alone. Why don’t you call someone to come be with you?”

Numb, Linda dialed the phone again. This time she called Patricia, one of her friends from work. When Pat answered, she tried to explain what had happened, but it was like stumbling through a maze. How could she explain what she didn’t
understand? Finally she said, “Just come over here. I need you to be here.”

Since she lived only blocks away, Patricia arrived just minutes later. At the door to Linda’s apartment, a deputy stopped her, spilled her purse out on the cement, and checked its contents before motioning her inside. When she entered, she saw more deputies and detectives pawing through Linda’s possessions, and Linda seated on the living room couch, crying.

Between sobs, Linda explained to Patricia in skeletal terms what had happened, that police claimed James was the Parkwood Rapist. “I told her that couldn’t be right,” Pat said later. “James was just this thin, shy guy. It wasn’t possible that he was the one.”

To Linda, it seemed the rest of Silverdale learned about her husband’s arrest only moments after she did. When the
Bremerton Sun
arrived on area doorsteps at five that afternoon, it contained a hastily written bulletin, banded in a thick black box: “Parkwood rapes suspect arrested.” Though the
Sun
identified Bergstrom only as “a navy man stationed at Bangor,” reports blaring out over local radio stations were more specific. They reported that James Bergstrom, a sailor on the U.S.S.
Ohio,
had been arrested that afternoon. “Police sources say he is a suspect in a series of incidents including a rape in Parkwood East,” the newscaster announced.

As soon as the news broke, the phone began ringing continually, with Linda’s friends offering help. She talked briefly to each, glad to hear friendly voices, but hung up as soon as possible. It was too painful talking to anyone. Finally she handed the phone to Patricia, who took over fielding calls. Linda simply didn’t feel up to talking to even the most sympathetic caller just then.

“I didn’t know what was happening or who to trust,” she would say later. “I was so confused, I’m not sure that if any
one had asked me, I would have been able to tell them my own name.”

That night Linda couldn’t sleep. She woke up continually in a heavy fog, drugged by stress and fatigue. “I kept going over it in my mind,” said Linda later. “I kept thinking about why this was happening. That the woman who’d been raped was tied up and gagged. Maybe it was James. But why? Had I done something? Then I’d think,
No, no, this can’t be
. It just wasn’t possible. Maybe James was a Peeping Tom. But a rapist? Never.”

Patricia, who stayed to do what she could, watched her tossing and turning. She offered to get her aspirin or a glass of water. Linda just stared off into the darkness. Although thankful for the small kindnesses, she was exhausted, barely able to nod yes or no to her friend. “I could hardly walk,” Linda recalled later. “It was like someone had turned the world upside down and I was holding on by my fingernails.”

The following morning, Chris picked Linda up and the two of them drove to the sheriff’s office together to see James. In the car, her brother-in-law turned to her and put his finger to his lips. “Chris told me, ‘Keep your mouth shut,’” said Linda later. “He said, ‘Just don’t say anything.’”

When they arrived at the headquarters building, James was seated in a room, alone. After asking permission, Linda went in to talk to him for the first time since her world had shattered with the previous day’s accusations.

“Did you do this?” she asked him. “Did you do what they’re saying?”

His eyes rimmed in red, James looked up at her. “No, I didn’t,” he said. “The peeping, yeah. But not the rape. I didn’t do the rape. I’ve got a problem, yeah. I like to watch women undress. But I’m not a rapist.”

Not knowing what to believe, Linda obeyed when Undersheriff Wheeler motioned for her to join him in another room. She felt Chris slip in silently behind her as they went through the door.

“Now, this gun, Mrs. Bergstrom,” said Wheeler. “Do you have any idea where we can find this gun?”

“No.” She shrugged. “No idea.”

“Tell me why your husband bought the gun,” Wheeler pressed on. “What did he need one for?”

“He said he needed it for protection, that’s all,” said Linda.

“For protection?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t think your husband bought that gun for protection,” Wheeler pressed. “I think he knew exactly what he was going to do with that gun when he bought it.”

“How can you know that?” she asked.

Wheeler then went over the evidence: James’s schedule matched the occurrences of the peeping, the two assaults, and the rape; his description and that of the car matched accounts given by witnesses; he was identified by the final victim. “The reason we had such a hard time catching him is that you lived so close to Parkwood East,” Wheeler went on. “He was ducking into your apartment and hiding out after each attack.”

Though up until now he’d been silent, Chris Bergstrom suddenly cut in. “You’ve got the wrong guy,” he insisted, angrily. “My brother’s not your rapist.”

Despite her brother-in-law’s objections, Linda reluctantly tabulated the similarities. “I don’t know who to believe,” she told Wheeler. “Let me talk to James again. Maybe I can find out about the gun.”

Alone again with her husband, Linda asked, “Tell me about the gun.”

“What about it?” James replied, softly.

“Where is it?”

“I threw it away,” he maintained. “In the water.”

“Why?”

“Because we kept arguing and I was afraid if I kept it, I might use it to hurt you,” James said. “I didn’t want to take the chance.”

Linda had to admit James made sense. She’d repeatedly warned him of the dangers involved in having the gun in the house.
God, if there was only some way for me to know the truth,
she thought.

“Well?” Wheeler asked, when she rejoined him.

“He says he threw it in the water,” Linda answered.

“Well, we searched the coastline, and guess what—no gun. I don’t believe him, and don’t you believe him either,” said Wheeler. “Your husband knew exactly what he was going to do with that gun, and he did it. He used it to rape.”

Years later Wheeler would look back on that afternoon and remember how disoriented and confused Linda seemed. “You could tell she just didn’t know what to believe,” he said. “We’d have her halfway convinced he was guilty and then she’d talk to her husband and he’d convince her that he was innocent.”

Just a day after James’s initial arrest, it was determined that there wasn’t enough evidence to charge him with the attempted rapes or the rape. Wheeler reluctantly agreed with the county prosecutor that they could prosecute him only with second-degree trespassing on the peeping charge and allow him to make bail.

“If we would have found the mask and the gun, we would have had a good case against him,” said Wheeler later. “Without it, we had no choice except to turn him over to the navy.”

May 19, 1989,
Bremerton Sun:

That afternoon, James went before a judge and was charged with a misdemeanor, second-degree criminal trespass. With his release imminent, Linda conferred with his brother, Chris, and his chief, Steve Swartz, about what to do next. “I don’t want him coming home,” Linda told them, more frightened of James now than she had ever been in the past. “I think the navy needs to do something.”

“Well, I could suggest he check into the naval hospital for psychiatric evaluation,” offered Swartz. “We can’t order him, but we can suggest it.”

Linda agreed and that afternoon put down five hundred dollars, plus the registration slips on her car and on Chris’s truck, for James’s bail. Once he was freed, Swartz drove him to the hospital, while Linda and Chris followed behind in Chris’s truck.

Chris Bergstrom would later decline when asked to discuss any of the events surrounding his brother’s arrest. He refused comment on what was discussed that afternoon as he and Linda rode down the highway toward the naval hospital or what he may or may not have later done to ensure his brother’s freedom. But as Linda describes their conversation, it introduced fears that would haunt her for weeks to come.

Linda recounts the conversation this way:

Angry and confused, now that she knew her husband to be at the very least a voyeur, she reexamined the last few months, remembering how James frequently disappeared. And she considered again the denial he’d made the day she saw him looking through a bedroom window. Then she thought back to their abrupt move from the Silverdale Apartments and the allegations that caused it.

“I guess the girl at the apartment was telling the truth,” she said, wiping tears from her eyes. “James must have been harassing her.”

“I don’t know, Linda,” Chris replied.

“Don’t bullshit me now,” she told him. “Isn’t it obvious?”

“Yeah, he probably did it,” Chris said, turning toward her, his face solemn. “But I’m going to do whatever I need to do to keep my brother out of jail.”