The End of the Dream (43 page)

“Is she illor dead? “ Marsh asked Cindy Clark. “I don’t know ..

.

I’m afraid to look, “ the tearful woman answered. Marsh entered Kay’s apartment through the screen door that led into the living room. He saw the woman lying very still on her bed in the room just beyond. She was on her back, with her left arm resting on her breasts and her right arm thrown up next to her head. As he came closer, Marsh saw that something made of a yellow or beige silk had been knotted tightly around her neck.
 
Fearing that it was far too late for medical help, Marsh nevertheless checked for a pulse in the woman’s left wrist.

There was none and her body was already locked in full rigor, the slender woman on the bed had been dead for many hours. Marsh asked Cindy Clark to stand by outside the front door while he called for detectives.
 
At 9,53 A. M. , more patrolmen arrived to help cordon off the death apartment and the surrounding area. By 10,00, the homicide detectives on duty, Sergeant Delmar Johnson and E. Hoadley, began the crime-scene investigation. There was absolutely no sign of a struggle in Kay Owens’ bedroom. The only odd elements were a makeup mirror on the bed, and a candleholder tipped . _. over on the nightstand. The cloth that had cut into the flesh of the victim’s neck appeared to be a shortie nightgown or a half-slip.

It was impossible to tell without an autopsy, but Kay Owens had probably been strangled by ligature. There was no blood visible either on the body or on the bedding beneath it. “It’s possible that she was asleep, “ Johnson surmised. “She’s a good-sized woman, and she would have put up quite a struggle if she’d had any warning.” Cindy Clark told them that Kay’s two cats had been sound asleep and curled up next to their mistress’s body when she arrived. It was eerie, everything in the place was normal furniture in place, doors locked. Whatever had happened to Kay Owens had happened very quickly and probably very quietly. Ten minutes later, a Salem Police detective, Lieutenant James Stovall, who was assigned as Liaison Officer to the Marion County District Attorney’s Office, arrived with Assistant DA Jim Hern to join the investigation.
 
Standing in the quiet duplex, they, too, wondered how a woman could have died silently and apparently without a struggle so close to help. Kay Owens’ little duplex was sandwiched between a large apartment building and a private residence. Her bedroom window faced the private residence.
 
A narrow strip of ground with evergreen bushes and shredded bark was all that separated the two buildings.

Detectives noted scuff marks in the bark as if someone had stood outside the victim’s window peering in. They found a bright orange scarf, which later proved to be Kay Owens’, caught in the branches of a bush. The Salem investigators divided up, some worked at the crime scene and others began a canvass of the neighbors. Many of the residents in the adjoining apartment house knew Kay Owens by sight and had often exchanged casual greetings with her. She was described as a good neighbor, she’d never had a noisy party, and no one could remember any of her visitors. She had been friendly but quiet and hadn’t mixed too much. “She came out every night at ten, though, “ one woman remembered, “To call her cats in.” A man named Burt Cowan* recalled that he’d seen Kay Owens the night before between 8,30 and 9,00. “I was carrying some shrub trimmings out to the back of our apartment building to dump them, “ he said, “and I saw her sitting at a table by the window. She was writing letters, and she had on a long-sleeved white blouse. Her hair was in a bun.

“

“You say anything to her? “ a cop asked. “Nope just went on by.” Burt Cowan was a husky blond man about thirty. He said he’d finished the yard work and then gone down to the first floor of his building and visited with a girlfriend. “We talked and sang songs until about ten-thirty or eleven when I went back to my apartment and went to bed.

“

“You hear anything unusual last night? “ a detective asked. Cowan shook his head. “Not a thing. Nothing suspicious all night.”
 
The elderly woman who lived in the other side of Kay’s duplex told the detectives that she had awakened about 2,30 A. M. and had seen a figure darting across her front yard. She couldn’t tell, however, if the person had been male or female. She couldn’t describe the person in any detail.
 
Burt Cowan interested the investigators. He apparently kept an eye on everything around the apartment complexes, and he loved to talk.

He told them he’d lived in the apartment house next to Kay Owens’ duplex for only a week, he was unemployed and depended on odd jobs from the apartment house owner. Cowan told detectives that he’d seen Kay Owens talking to two men in a blue pickup with a bubble top on Wednesday night. It seemed to the detectives that he had spent a lot of his time watching her. When the Salem Police investigators talked to the apartment owner, he said he’d come over to do some maintenance work at about 8,00 P. M. the night before. “Kay’s carit’s that VW wagon was parked outside her place. But I didn’t think anything of it because she usually walks or rides her bike.”

“Kay’s lived here for two yearsever since we built the duplexes, “ he said. “I’ve never had one complaint about her, or from her for that matter. She was just a really nice lady, minded her own business, paid her rent, you know.”

“How about other tenants? “ Johnson asked.

“Have you ever noticed anything peculiar? “ The man thought a moment.

“One thing. About three yesterday afternoon, I was talking to one of the young women in the big apartment house. This guy Cowan that just moved in came out and offered us both a beer. So this young gal says she’s going swimming and Cowan says great he’ll go with her. She told him no, but he wouldn’t take no’ for an answer, and he went back to his place and came back wearing his swimsuit. “He’s really pushy, you know. I could see she was trying to get away from him without being rude. She went into her apartment and then she told him that she’d just had a phone call and she had to go to work. I figured she was making an excuse to get out of going swimming with him.” Burt Cowan was the only person who’d seen Kay Owens late on the evening of the twenty-ninth, and he seemed to have quickly earned himself a reputation as a would-be Romeo.

He had clearly been fascinated with Kay Owens. A young woman tenant told the Salem Police that she had been sitting outside a few nights earlier with Cowan and some other tenants listening to his portable stereo, which he’d turned up loud. “Kay Owens came out about ten and asked us to turn it down. She wasn’t mad or anything, “ the girl recalled. “She was real polite. When she walked away, Burt made a comment about what beautiful long legs she had, and he was asking if she was married and things like that. He was calling her Legs’ when he talked about her.” Detectives talked to Lily Peele, * the woman Cowan had visited the night before Kay Owens was found.

Lily said she had lived in the apartments for almost a year. “I knew Kay as a neighbor, “ she said. “We talked in the yard, but we’ve never been to each other’s apartments. I heard her come home between five-thirty and six last night. I didn’t see her, but I heard her laugh in the parking lot. She had a great laugh. The last time I really talked to her was on Wednesday, and she was telling me about her wedding next month.” Lily Peele said that Kay’s boyfriend had been with her on Wednesday night. She had noticed that his pickup was parked outside Kay’s duplex the next morning. “He was just leaving about seven.”

“Was Burt Cowan at your place on Thursday night? “ a detective asked.

She nodded.

“He came over and ate dinner and then he got his guitar and came back and we sang Beatles songs. When he left about a quarter to midnight, I saw that Kay’s porch light was still on.”

“Wasn’t it always? “

“No, that was unusual but that was all that was different.”

“Hear anything during the night? Anything at all? “

“No. Everything was normal, and quiet.” One of the Salem detectives talked to two young male roommates in the apartment building. The men, both lawyers from Indiana, said they’d each been out very late the night before.

The last to arrive said he’d come in at 3,30 A. M. , and he admitted that he had been somewhat intoxicated. He’d found his roommate asleep.

“I went right to bed myself, “ he added. Neither had heard anything out of the ordinary during the night. Both of them knew who Kay Owens was.

“There isn’t a male in the entire complex who hasn’t noticed her, “ one said. “She’s gorgeous and she’s very nice.” The retired couple who lived in the house facing Kay’s bedroom window said they’d been up reading until 2,30 A. M. , but they hadn’t heard or seen anyone around Kay’s duplex. It seemed impossible that of all the people living close to Kay no one had heard a disturbance during the night or a cry for help. The closest thing to a witness was the old woman on the other side of the wall they shared, but she had only seen a wraithlike figure. Now, the investigators’ best hope lay in the findings of criminalists from the Oregon State Police Crime Lab. Lieutenant Manuel Boyes, Corporal William Zeller, and Corporal Chuck Vaughn processed Kay Owens’ apartment while Salem detectives photographed the victim and the premises.

Kay’s body could not be moved until all of that was accomplished.

It looked as if Kay Owens had gone to bed before her killer entered her room, her contact lenses were in their container in her bathroom.

There were frustratingly few pieces of evidence, the makeup mirror found on the bed that might have good fingerprints on it, the orange scarf caught in the bushes, samples of the bark outside Kay’s bedroom window, and the candleholder. On closer examination, the detectives found a long slit in the window screen just above a table in the dinette area.
 
Someone could have reached through it and removed the dowel that Kay Owens had put there and then opened the window wide.

The State Police criminalists found very few prints in the bedroom and bathroom. It looked as if someone had made an effort to wipe off telltale marks.

They did find the imprint of a bare foot on the top of the toilet seat, not a usual spot for such a print. After photographs of the original scene were taken, the victim’s body was rolled over.

The distinctive purple-red striations of postmortem lividity (or livor mortis) were all along her back. When the heart stops pumping, blood sinks to the lowest level of the human body. If the body is not moved, the striped pattern becomes fixed after several hours, if a body is moved before this happens, a secondary pinkish striation will appear.

But this lividity pattern showed that Kay Owens had lain in the same position until she was discovered. When Kay Owens’ body had been removed to the morgue, a detective there examined the garment that had been around her neck. Someone had cut her shortie nightgown up one side to make a square and then tied the opposite corners tightly around Kay’s neck. A purple bruise was evident on the left side of her throat where the delicate fabric had cut into her neck. The nightgown garrote had been tightened so cruelly that it had left deep grooves in her flesh.
 
Dr. Larry Lewman of the Oregon State Medical Examiner’s Office began the autopsy on Kay Owens at 2,00 P. M. on Friday, July 30. He found very little bruising on the body beyond the contusions around the neck.
 
However, he did find three small bruises on the victim’s right hip and some blood in the vaginal vault. Microscopic examination of fluid found in the vagina indicated the presence of dead sperm cells and seminal fluid. (In 1971, there was no such thing as DNA matching, although blood types could be determined from body fluids. ) Kay Owens had either been unconscious or dead when the sexual assault took place, she did not have the expected bruising to the inner thighs usually found in rape victims.
 
There were no defense wounds, which would be expected if she had fought her attacker. Her hands weren’t scratched and her fingernails were unbroken. Kay Owens had apparently died of strangulation by ligature.
 
The characteristic petechiae (small hemorrhages in the eyes, heart, larynx) were present, although the hyoid bone at the back of her throat was intact. Her killer had probably not been very strong, strangulation often crushes the hyoid bone and causes deep bleeding into the strap muscles of the neck. The minimal damage to Kay Owens’ throat also indicated that she had been either asleep or unconscious when the killer choked her. Had she fought, much more pressure would have been necessary. At postmortem exam, Kay Owens measured five feet, nine and a half inches tall, and weighed 137 pounds. She could have been a formidable adversary for any man had she been able to fight back.
 
Samples of her head hair, pubic hair, and blood were preserved, along with scrapings from under her fingernails, her fingerprints and her footprints.

Someday, they might be connected to the man who had killed her.

There was another horrific assault to Kay Owens. As her body was being prepared by mortuary attendants, they were shocked to discover that her killer had gagged her with tissue paper. Facial tissue had been jammed deep down in her throat so forcibly and deeply that it hadn’t been found at autopsy. It, too, was retained for evidence. Now Salem detectives tried to learn as much about Kay Owens as they could.

Was there someone in her life she feared? Had she been involved in relationships that troubled her? Had she, perhaps, been bothered by unwanted attention, obscene phone calls? Was there anything that might have provided a motive for her violent death? They learned that Kay Owens had been married once before. Apparently, the divorce had been amicable. Coworkers recalled that her ex-husband had phoned her at the office just to talk a half-dozen times in the year before her murder.

Nevertheless, the investigators located the ex-husband and checked out his whereabouts on the night Kay was murdered. He had a firm alibi for the entire night of July 29-30. Kay’s fiance, Dan Stone, told detectives that she had planned to quit her job in August and move in with him in Eugene after their marriage. The distraught man said that he had called Kay around 10,00 P. M. on Thursday night. At that time, she hadn’t sounded in the least upset or worried. “We made plans to look for a house in Eugene over the weekend, “ Stone said sadly. Dan Stone had last seen Kay on Thursday morning. “We always spent Wednesday night together, “ he explained. “This Wednesday night, my brother and The’s with the Oregon State Police had dinner in her apartment. My brother left after dinner and I stayed the night and got up at five, because I had to be at work in Eugene by eight.” Asked if Kay was afraid of anyone, Stone said Kay had suspected that she had a window peeper, and she had insisted that the bamboo blinds in her bedroom be pulled down securely. “But it was hard to get that shade all the way down. You could sort of see in through the side, I guess, because it didn’t hang quite straight.” Detectives Hoadley and Johnson checked the blinds and saw that they would not go all the way to the window’s edge. A man of average height would have been able to peer in. The motive behind Kay Owens’ murder had apparently been simple lust. Everything else had been eliminated. It wasn’t robbery, Kay’s expensive watch, her red wallet with money inside, her TV, stereo, and jewelry had all been found in her apartment. She didn’t have an enemy in the world, and she never argued with her neighbors or coworkers.