Fatal Friends, Deadly Neighbors (36 page)

Olive Bramhall was struck from behind as she walked toward her kitchen to prepare a snack for someone she trusted. She and her husband, Burle Bramhall, were a happy, elderly couple who still enjoyed their lives when they were murdered. (
Police file
)

Burle Bramhall kept a full supply of tools. He liked to fix things around the estate where he and Olive lived. Unwittingly, he loaned the death weapon to his killer. Detectives found the bare spot on his wall of tools with an outline traced in the pattern of a sledgehammer.
(Police file)

The lifelong philanthropist didn’t have a chance against his much younger attacker. His body lay in his garage, next to his Mercedes.
(Police file)

Photo of Dick Reed, Seattle homicide detective, who was called out from home to investigate the Bramhalls’ murders.

An aerial shot from a police helicopter of the Bramhalls’ mansion and grounds. They lived there for many happy years, unaware of how close danger was to them.
(Police file)

The fireplace and indoor garden in the Bramhall home. The killer used the fireplace poker to murder Olive, and a five-pound sledgehammer to murder Burle.
(Police file)

“FIRE!”

Those who set fires deliberately are not necessarily killers. Some of them burn buildings because they are literally addicted to the sight of flames. Their addiction may be sexual in nature, or it may be they have a need to feel power by destroying something. Some need to gloat, knowing that
they
were the ones who caused sirens to scream in the night, that
they
were the reason firefighters rushed to respond.

The motivations behind arson are many: greed, revenge, sexual stimulation, profit through insurance. The motive, not infrequently, is a desire to be a “hero.”

Arsonists often insinuate themselves into the crowds that gather to gasp at their conflagrations. That way, they can prolong the thrill they feel.

Some arsonists are merely pragmatic. They are professional fire-starters, highly skilled at what they do, often devising a delayed fire so that they are long gone before the flames actually blossom. They may be doing it for insurance purposes, or in reprisal.

And, of course, there are murderers who use fire to destroy the evidence of what they have done. When they use flames to destroy other human beings, they are extremely dangerous.

All too often, the fire-starter takes victims he doesn’t know—nor does he care about that. He himself has no way of knowing how many he will kill. Once unleashed, fire takes its own path; it can grow to tremendous and deadly proportions, for fire is an unpredictable entity.

Still, arson investigators have something going for them. Even though the arsonist believes that flames will destroy evidence, fire is its own evidence. Trained investigators know how to look for their clues in the ashes left behind. What seems like useless rubble to the firebug may actually be a trail incriminating him as surely as if he’d painted bright red arrows to his front door.

Experts have found that most arsonists have limited imaginations. If a certain technique works once, it will be repeated.

Marshal 5, the Seattle Fire Department’s arson investigation unit, had long been a shining example to other departments around the United States. They worked cases differently than police departments do, and I was curious to learn how clues could be left behind—even in an inferno—when I asked for permission to ride with Marshal 5.

The arson team was made up of former firefighters who had truly gone through a baptism of flames. They had all seen the tragedies caused by accelerants and the instruments used to torch them.

While I have to admit it was exciting to follow the sirens and show the pass the fire chief gave me that allowed me into buildings that were “tapped,” meaning fire controlled, but still with little licks of blue, yellow, and orange flame trying to creep back, I quickly found out why firefighters are called “smoke-eaters.”

Marshal 5 was challenged by a series of fires that began in January 1975. They grew in intensity until they exploded in a veritable “towering inferno.” The person who eventually emerged as a suspect appeared to laymen at least to be a most unusual choice. Before they zeroed in on one man, however, the investigators had to look at some of the strangest characters they had ever encountered.

*   *   *

The University Towers Hotel was located at Forty-fifth Street and Brooklyn Avenue in the University of Washington district. When it was constructed in 1931, it was viewed as very modern and soon became a landmark in Seattle. In 1933, the now long-defunct
Seattle Star
newspaper called it “One of the Seven Wonders of Seattle.”

Initially called the Edmond Meany Hotel, it was built in the round, so that every room was a corner room. Revamped and remodeled into a plush hostelry, the “Towers” was much in demand by those who sought the finest in accommodations. It had a restaurant, cocktail lounge, ballrooms for conventions, meetings, and banquets, all heavily booked.

New Year’s Eve 1974 was no exception. There was a large private party in the University Ballroom and the celebration was such a rousing success that the band was prevailed upon to keep playing until three o’clock in the morning. When the last celebrants left just after three, a hotel employee checked the banquet room thoroughly to be sure there were no smoldering cigarettes.

She was especially careful in checking the table where the last party had sat, but she found everything in order and locked the ballroom.

Half an hour later, Rodger Peck, who worked for a security agency and was on the night shift, entered the ballroom as part of his regular rounds. He found the huge room full of acrid smoke. Peck quickly located the source: flames flickered from a corner of the cloth at the table where the lingering guests had sat. Peck was able to extinguish the still small fire. Luckily, it hadn’t had a chance to do any more damage than destroying the cloth itself and leaving a small scorched spot on the carpet. Peck felt the incident was so minor that he wrote “quiet night” for the overnight period on December 31–January 1 in the log that all security guards kept.

There could well have been a lighted cigarette that had fallen on the floor and gone unnoticed by the cleanup crew. A potentially dangerous situation, but Rodger Peck had found it soon enough. And that was especially fortunate because many of the hotel guests were a little tipsy after celebrating New Year’s Eve. It might have been a daunting task to wake them all and clear the hotel if the flames had taken hold.

Slightly more than two months later, on March 6, 1975, a man passing the University Towers around 10:30
P.M.
looked up and saw smoke billowing from an upper floor. He immediately called the fire department and alerted the hotel staff.

Assistant manager Ralph Jefferson was in the restaurant when he heard that there was a fire on the sixth floor. He raced to the front desk, where a patrolman shouted, “It’s on the eighth, ninth, and tenth floors!”

As the first wails of fire sirens approached, Jefferson joined Rodger Peck in the service elevator and the two rode up to the tenth floor. They split up there and Jefferson checked the eleventh floor. There was a faint odor of smoke there, but he saw no flames. He ran to the back stairway and grabbed a fire extinguisher before he headed toward the tenth floor.

Rodger Peck was already there. The men couldn’t find any flames on that floor, either, and they moved down to the ninth floor. Now they could hear the pounding of running firefighters on the floor above them.

Peck ran ahead of Jefferson on the ninth floor and called, “Here it is!”

The manager relayed the information to firefighters, and then joined Peck outside the door of room 904. The security guard had obtained a fire extinguisher, too, and he had already kicked the door partially in; it was splintered in its frame but not quite open. Peck kicked the door again and ran into the smoke-filled room. Unerringly, he headed toward the right and sprayed the extinguisher over the bed. Firefighters, just behind him, had the flames out in minutes.

A tragedy of major proportions had been averted. Oddly, room 904 was unoccupied.

Rodger Peck told fire inspectors from Marshal 5 that he had been able to get into the room by crouching down to the floor.

“There was about three feet of good air,” he said. “I was able to spray the flames with my fire extinguisher until your firemen got there.”

“How did you know which room the fire was in?”

“I thought it was that room because I went along the hallway feeling the doors. The door to 904 was hot,” he explained.

Rodger Peck said he didn’t have a key to the room. “We never have room keys, but we do check doorknobs to see if unoccupied rooms are securely locked. I passed by 904 on my last sweep of the building, and I know it was closed and locked at that time,” he emphasized. “But it must have been burning then. You know, there wasn’t enough time for anyone to open that door unless they had a key and went in and set a fire.”