TRACE EVIDENCE: The Hunt for the I-5 Serial Killer (30 page)

Watson took Maulsby to the
crime scene.

Old Meyer’s Grade Road was a remnant of the old highway used decades earlier before a new section of U.S. 50, which it roughly paralleled, had been completed. Three miles long, the sloping two-lane paved road was gated at each end and locked. It was opened to vehicular traffic only when the state road department occasionally used it as a bypass during avalanche control on U.S. 50. Local residents in the sparsely populated surrounding hills used it daily for walking and jogging.

Jane Doe’s body had been found in a woody area off the road about 600 yards downhill from the top gate, where Watson parked.

“He either parked here or down at the other gate, which is more difficult to find,” Watson said. He explained that there weren’t any highway patrol units patrolling on this section of Highway 50 at that time of night.

As they walked down the road, Watson pointed to white evidence cards with numbers on them stuck in the earth alongside the road. Articles of clothing had been strewn along the way; first her panties, then her black jacket, her dress, a black patent leather high heel.

“I think he took her down to the scene alive and made her walk,” Watson said. “It’s too far to carry a body. I checked the bottom of her feet. They weren’t scratched at all. She obviously had her shoes on.”

“Undressing her as they went?” Maulsby asked.

“Or he undressed her at the scene and then walked back to his car, throwing her clothes along the way.”

Watson led them off the road to a clearing about 35 feet into the tall pines. Amid scrub brush and large boulders, evidence cards dotted the landscape like so many craters on the moon.

“We found her over there,” Watson said, pointing to a small clearing next to a rotted-out log. A rudimentary outline of the body had been made in the matted-down grass.

An inhospitable place to die
, Maulsby thought. In the dark, alone with a serial killer, forced to walk down a deserted road to what she had to have known would ultimately be her death. Doubtless, the end had not come
quickly for her. The killer had brought her to this godforsaken piece of ground so that he could take his time.

“She was face up on her left side,” Watson said. “Her right arm was behind her back and her left arm was draped across her left thigh.

“Right here,” he said, pointing to a spot about 2 feet away from the outline of the victim’s head, “we found a short piece of white cord. Two more pieces of the same cord were found back up the road. One piece next to her dress and the other one near her panties.”

Found near the body, Watson went on, was a pack of Newport cigarettes, a white lighter, and two condom packets.

Maulsby wanted to know if the condoms were used. When she worked Sex Assaults, she’d heard of savvy rapists who used them to avoid leaving semen evidence.

“One package was open but not used,” Watson said.

It was her first murder scene since working Homicide, and Maulsby made notes and took in all the information she could. Still, she was happy to leave. As they returned to the car up at the gate, she wondered how in the world the killer had found such a desolate place.

Later that week, Maulsby went to see Jim Streeter, who had received and was evaluating all the physical evidence from the Jane Doe crime scene.

Streeter was in his lab taking tape lifts off a piece of the latest victim’s jacket—it had been found
cut into four sections, including the one used as a ligature. The material was laid out on a lab table atop a single sheet of white butcher paper. Holding a piece of Scotch tape between his fingers, Streeter tapped it on the garment two or three times, then suspended the length of tape across a small plastic dish. He pressed the ends of the tape down on the sides, then placed a lid over the dish, which would later be placed under a microscope for examination of hairs and fibers. In this way, every square inch of each garment from the crime scene would be methodically covered by tape lifts.

When his hands were free, Streeter took Maulsby to the opposite side of the lab. There, he introduced her to his mute assistant, long retired from the retail business, now serving a higher calling. A bald mannequin used to help examine damaged garments was wearing Jane Doe’s pink, sleeveless dress, which Streeter had already processed for tape lifts.

“Here’s a classic example of what I’ve been calling nonfunctional cutting,” Streeter said enthusiastically. “Assume the attacker wanted to get to her breasts and pelvic areas immediately. What would be the best way?”

It was a quiz, Maulsby could see. She pointed to the zipper that ran
diagonally across the front of the dress from the left shoulder down to the lower right hem.

“Uh-huh. But what does this guy do? He cuts up from the bottom seam a couple of inches on the left side, then stops. It accomplishes nothing. Then he cuts along the shoulder seam on the left side and down the back about six inches. He cuts likewise along the other shoulder. See what I mean? They serve no obvious purpose.”

“So he didn’t cut her dress off?”

“Not in my opinion. See, the cutting is just the way he plays. I think he cuts the dress while it’s on her, then unzips it when he’s good and ready. Several teeth are missing at the bottom, as if the zipper was forced.”

Streeter moved toward another lab table.

“This is her
pantyhose.”

Maulsby counted five pieces of nylon, including a section that contained the reinforced crotch liner. Each was inside its own plastic evidence bag.

“This section here—it’s a foot and part of a leg—was used as the gag. They look cleanly cut to me, not ripped or torn. If I had to guess, I’d say she was wearing them when they were cut.”

Streeter asked Maulsby if she was familiar with the Sabrah case.

“I’ve read the file.”

“You remember her pantyhose was cut?”

“Yes.” Maulsby also recalled that Sabrah had been found with her wrists still bound by pieces of her nylons.

“Well, it’s the same artist at work here. Sabrah’s pantyhose was cut in the same exact fashion.”

“What about her panties?” Maulsby asked.

“They aren’t cut. But I can tell you they came off her while she was still alive.”

“How do you know that?”

Streeter told her.

The criminalist next showed Maulsby the three pieces of white cord found at the scene. They measured between 17 inches and 23 inches, he said, and appeared to be a common nylon cord available at any hardware store.

The detective picked up each piece of cordage, looking for stains or marks, but saw none.

Before she left, Maulsby asked Streeter if there had been any progress on identifying Jane Doe.

“So far, no match on dental with any of our missing persons,” he said.
“I had her hand with the short fingers X-rayed yesterday. It’s a birth defect. Maybe that’ll help.
El Dorado is planning to send out a flyer.”

Jane Doe had been Maulsby’s first face-to-face murder victim. The detective couldn’t shake the overpowering remorse she’d felt at the morgue, and again at the scene.

If the hills could only talk, she had reflected at
Old Meyer’s Grade, what tales would they have told of the screams and struggles and crimes of a fortnight ago?

To Kay Maulsby, rookie homicide cop, Jane Doe was more than another female body dump.

That had been someone’s child lying there.

Somebody was surely worried sick about her.

Fourteen

J
udy Frackenpohl feared the worst.

It was unlike her seventeen-year-old daughter, Darcie, not to call home every week or so—a curious contradiction considering Darcie had been a chronic runaway for the past two years.

Judy, forty, a short brunette with green eyes, was a single mom of two: Darcie, and her younger brother,
Larry, two years her junior. Her two kids couldn’t have been more opposite: Larry, the good boy, quiet and appreciative, and Darcie, the wild seed, affectionate but rebellious.

Judy had a good job and rented a home in a middle-class suburb of Seattle. She’d been on her own financially and in most every other way since her divorce thirteen years ago. Her ex-husband had not been very good about paying child support but he’d been around for the kids on birthdays and holidays until his death, at age thirty-four, eight years earlier. He had been married for a third time but was living alone when diagnosed with terminal cancer. As he became sicker, he had no place to go. Judy had him move back in for the last months of his life, bringing in a hospital bed and caring for him. When he died, it had been difficult on both the children, then nine and seven years old. However, losing her father seemed to hit Darcie the hardest. Always a daddy’s girl, she remembered his promise to her after the divorce that he’d never leave her.

Darcie had not only her mother’s eyes and light complexion, but also her outgoing personality. Her nickname as a child was “Little Miss Big Enough” because she wasn’t afraid to do anything. In large crowds, Darcie would approach and talk to anyone. In the third grade, she was walking home from school one day when she had to go to the bathroom; she knocked on
the door of the next house she came to and asked to use the toilet. A parent could worry about a willful child like that, and worry Judy did.

As Darcie turned fourteen, mother and daughter fought incessantly. Judy saw in her daughter an inability to come to terms with the major event of her young life: losing her father. On an emotional level, she seemed to resent that he’d broken his promise not to go away. Her mother was the first and best target of Darcie’s smoldering anger. Darcie went into counseling—individually as well as family—but nothing seemed to help. Darcie refused to accept her mother’s rules, cut school, and at fifteen began running away. Whenever she came back home, she seemed more impatient than ever with her mother’s values. The friends she brought home, misbehaving and troubled truants, were a parent’s worst nightmare. Darcie’s boyfriends were always black; Judy was convinced her daughter did this for shock value, as it hadn’t been occasional or gradual, but 100 percent all the time. Once, Darcie’s beau turned out to be an intelligent, college-prep student whom Judy liked. Perhaps it was an acceptance Darcie wasn’t seeking, as her very next boyfriend was the worst yet. Judy had the feeling that Darcie was dropping down the social ladder until she got to a level of society that she could be sure her mother would never approve of. Eventually, she stopped bringing anyone home. By the time she’d turned sixteen, Darcie was running away for weeks at a time, living in the streets, and becoming involved in prostitution.

A Seattle police officer called collect at 2:00
A.M.
one night to tell Judy he’d just had a long talk with Darcie on the street and let her go. “I know she’s a listed runaway,” he said, “but I can’t force her to go home. We talked for more than an hour, and I have to tell you I don’t know why your daughter is out here. She’s not a heroin addict with caved-in veins. She just doesn’t belong on the streets.”

Judy was at a loss to understand it, too. The three of them had always been a tight little family, camping out of their 15-foot trailer that Judy hauled to national parks behind an old pickup, and vacationing every summer in Alaska, where Judy’s parents lived. Judy was proud of the stability she’d single-handedly given the kids—living in the same house their entire childhood, going to the same school, having plenty of extended family nearby.

After Darcie’s rebellion, Judy’s efforts had run the gamut: from driving around frantically looking for her, to angrily locking Darcie out of the house when she ran off, to finally accepting Darcie’s absence as her decision.

Over a period of time, “tough love” won out. Judy stopped giving Darcie money and footing her bail on charges ranging from vagrancy and
shoplifting to prostitution. “I do not condone what you are doing,” Judy told Darcie, “and I will not contribute financially to your lifestyle.”

At the same time, Judy never hesitated to reinforce to Darcie that she was free to come home any time. She always had a home and the door was always open, but with one caveat: she had to abide by her mother’s rules. These rules included getting back into school, not doing drugs (Darcie was a dabbler), helping around the house, and otherwise being a responsible member of the family. It was Darcie’s choice.

More than not, Darcie opted to stay out.

The previous Christmas (1986) Darcie had spent in a Seattle jail cell on a loitering charge. A local television station did a story on the unfortunate souls spending Christmas in jail. They handed out gifts on Christmas Eve to prisoners, and interviewed some of them live on camera. Darcie looked into the camera and said she didn’t have a home and, flashing her baby blues, how she didn’t have anywhere to go. It was an Oscar-worthy performance, and Judy had been mortified, even more so when friends and relatives started calling to say they’d seen Darcie on TV.

At times when Darcie became desperate enough—like when she had to be hospitalized on her mother’s insurance for an acute venereal disease shortly after the Christmas she spent in jail—she returned home. But she never stayed for long; usually two or three days, a couple of weeks at the longest. When she left again, it could be in the middle of the day or night, without notice, and usually she didn’t even pack a bag. Rain or shine, she would walk out the door with the clothes on her back.

Still, she had
always
called home regularly, never going more than two weeks without touching base.

Darcie’s last call had been on August 23 (1987), a Sunday afternoon—collect from Sacramento. She was checking in, telling her mother that she and James planned to go to Disneyland, then maybe to Texas in a couple of weeks.

Judy had never met
James Brown but she knew from Darcie he was her twenty-year-old black pimp-boyfriend. They’d met several months earlier in Seattle when Darcie was on the streets and Brown had just gotten out of jail on a pandering charge. He had recruited her on the spot. As far as Judy was concerned, nothing good would come to Darcie from this symbiotic relationship or from her traveling farther away.