Read Dead by Sunset: Perfect Husband, Perfect Killer? Online

Authors: Ann Rule

Tags: #General, #Murder, #Social Science, #True Crime, #Criminology

Dead by Sunset: Perfect Husband, Perfect Killer?

BOOK: Dead by Sunset: Perfect Husband, Perfect Killer?
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Dead By Sunset

 

By: Ann Rule

 

 

 

 

 

Synopsis:

 

Another chilling and creepy book from the reigning queen of

true-crime, Ann Rule, who also penned the riveting bestseller

Small Sacrifices. Here, we encounter a charismatic con-artist

accused of brutally bludgeoning his wife and follow his case through

to its strangely redemptive end.

 

Pocket Books;

 

ISBN: 0671001132

 

Copyright 1996

 

September 21, 1986
, was a warm and beautiful Sunday in Portlandþin the

whole state of
Oregon
, for that matter.
 
With any luck, the winter

rains of the Northwest were a safe two months away.
 
The temperature

had topped off at sixty-nine degrees about four that afternoon, and

even at 9

 

P.M. it was still a relatively balmy fifty-eight degrees.

 

Randall Kelly Blighton had traveled west on Highway 26þthe Sunset

Highwayþearlier that evening, driving his youngsters back to their

mother s home in
Beaverton
after their weekend visitation with him.

 

A handsome, athletic-looking man with dark hair and a mustache,

Blighton was in his twenties, a truck salesman.
 
His divorce from his

wife was amicable, and he was in a good mood as he headed back toward

Portland
along the same route.

 

The Sunset Highway, which is actually a freeway, can often be a

commuter's nightmare.
 
It runs northwest from the center of
Portland
,

past the OMSI zoo and through forestlike parks.
 
Somewhere near the

crossroads of Sylvan, the Multnomah Washington county-line sign flashes

by almost subliminally.
 
Then the freeway angles toward the Pacific

Ocean beaches as it skirts
Beaverton
and the little town of

Hillsboro
.

 

The land drops away past Sylvan, giving the area its name West Slope.

 

trails off the Sunset Highway down the curves of the slope, past

pleasant neighhorhoods, until it runs through a commercial zone

indistinguishable from similar zones ananhere in
America
: pizza

parlors, supermarkets, car dealers, strip malls.
 
Approaching

Hillshoro, the
Washington
County
seat, Route 8þthe TVA Highc7ayþslices

through what was only reccntly farmland.
 
The
Tualatin
River
valley,

once richly agricultural, is now a technological wonderland.
 
Its

endless woods are dwindling and the area has become known as the

Silicon
Forest
.

 

There are acres and acres of corporate parks in
Washington
County
now:

Intel, Fujitsu, NEC, and Tektronix.
 
Intel is already the largest

single employer in
Oregon
, soon there will be more workers in the

computer and electronics industry in
Oregon
than there are timber

employees.

 

Apparently serenely untroubled by the encroachment of modern

technology, the Sisters of Saint Mary have been stationed along the TVA

Highway for many years, their nunnery and school on the left, their

home for wayward boys on the right.

 

In an instant Route 8 becomes

Tenth Avenue
in
Hillsboro
.
 
A left turn

on

Main Street
leads toward the old city center and the county

courthouse.

 

Main Street
is idyllically lined with wide lawns, wonderful old houses

with gingerbread touches, jack-o'-lanterns at Halloween and spectacular

lights during the Christmas season.
 
But it hasn't fared so well

commercially since the new Target store and the mall went up south of

town, its chief businesses are antique stores and, except for the

Copper Stone restaurant and cocktail lounge, the kind of restaurants

where ladies linger over tea.

 

The Washington County Courthouse is surrounded by manicured grounds

with magnolias and towering sequoias planted more than a century ago.

 

It smells like a courthouse, at least the original structure does: wax,

dust, the daily lunchroom special, and old paint baking on radiators.

 

The people employed there are comfortable and at home, bantering with

one another as they go about their work, the people who come there on

all manner of missions are more often than not angry, worried,

grieving, frightened, annoyed, or apprehensive.
 
Some walk away with a

sense of justice done, and some don't walk away at all, they are

handcuffed and locked up in the jail next door.

 

Not far from the courthouse, something terrible happened on the Sunset

Highway on
September 21, 1986
, at the Sylvan marker, just inside

Washington
County
.
 
And in the end, it would all be settled in this

courthouse, as Christmas lights glowed in the branches of a tall fir on

the corner of
Main
and First Streets and icy rain pelted court watchers

and witnesses alike.

 

The end would be a long time coming.

 

It was about
on that Sunday night in September, and dark enough so

that Randy Blighton needed his headlights to see what lay ahead of him

on the curving Sunset Highway.
 
He was startled as he came around one

of those curves near Sylvan in the West Slope area and saw that cars a

half mile ahead of him were suddenly swerving out of the fast lane into

the right-hand lane.
 
It looked as if there might be something in the

road ahead that they hadn't been able to see until the last moment.
 
A

dead animal perhaps, or maybe a truck tire.
 
Whatever it was, it had to

be dangerous, a last-minute lane switch only worked if the right lane

was clear.

 

Blighton traveled another hundred feet and now he could make out the

dark hulk of a
Toyota
van turned crosswise on the freeway.
 
Its lights

were off and it was in a perilous position, completely blocking the

fast lane.
 
Luckily, the drivers ahead of Blighton had been alert, but

it would be only a matter of time before someone came around the curve

in the fast lane and smashed into the van.
 
People usually drove the

Sunset Highway between fifty-five and sixty-five miles an hour and a

crash like that would undoubtedly escalate rapidly into a fatal

multicar pileup.

 

Blighton was grateful that, for the moment at least, the freeway was

not heavily traveled.
 
And that was only a freak circumstance.
 
At

on a Sunday night after a weekend of good weather, there had to be

hundreds of vehicles heading back to
Portland
from the coast.

 

Randy Blighton's first inclination was to swerve around the van, he had

things to do at home.
 
"I was going to go on by too," he later

recalled, "but then I spotted the silhouette of an infant seat in the

van.
 
I couldn't ignore that.
 
I'd just left my own kids, and I could

never live with myself if there was a baby or a little kid in that

van."

 

Blighton's reflexes were good.
 
He tapped his brakes, pulled his car

over on the right shoulder, grabbed a couple of flares, and then ran

across the freeway toward the van.
 
As he got close to it, he could see

that it was perpendicular to the median that separated the eastbound

and westbound lanes, its front bumper repeatedly tapping the concrete

Jersey
barriers.
 
The van's engine was still turning over, and it was

in gear, inching forward and then being held back by the barriers.

 

Blighton knew that he was as much a sitting duck as the
Toyota
if a car

came around the curve, and he hurriedly lit the flares and set them out

in the fast lane to warn motorists, in time he hoped, to veer to the

right.
 
He had no idea what he might find as he reached for the

driver's door handle of the vanþpossibly someone who had had a stroke

or a heart attack.
 
It might even be a driverless vehicle that had

slipped its brakes and somehow ended up on the freeway.
 
In 1986, at

this point on the Sunset, there were still some neighborhood streets

from which cars could enter the freeway as if the Sunset was merely

another intersection.
 
Southwest 79th, just to the south of the

accident, was one of those streets.
 
Maybe the driver of the van,

unfamiliar with the Sunset's eccentricities, had turned far too widely

and rammed into the barriers.

 

Blighton opened the driver's-side door.
 
The van was not empty.
 
He

could make out a figure lying on the front seat.
 
The person's legs

were near the gearshift console and extended over the driver's seat.

 

The back was on the passenger seat, and the head was tucked into the

chest and drooping over toward the floor.
 
He didn't know if it was a

man or woman, but he saw a smallish loafer-type shoe on one foot that

looked feminine.

 

There was no time for Blighton to try to figure out who the driver was,

or how heþor sheþhad ended up crosswise on the freeway.
 
He stepped up

into the driver's side, pushing the legs out of the way as much as he

could.
 
Now he could see that there was a woman's purse jammed between

the accelerator and the firewall.
 
That would explain why the van

continued to move forward.
 
Blighton felt along the dash to try to find

the switch for the emergency flashers but he couldn't locate it, he

didn't know that it was overhead.

BOOK: Dead by Sunset: Perfect Husband, Perfect Killer?
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