LAST DANCE, LAST CHANCE - and Other True Cases

by Ann Rule

  Members and clergy of the Lighthouse Free Methodist Church held a massive cleansing service to rid their building of the real or imagined miasma of horror, pain, and bloody death. They gathered to pray on the grounds, asking God to give them back peace and love and to remove the sad mind pictures of an innocent woman trapped and dying in a dark crawl space.

  One church elder visited Jim Elledge in jail. He was looking for answers as he asked Jim, “Was there anything we could have done to prevent this?”

  Jim shook his head. It wasn’t the church’s fault. He was sure he hadn’t given anyone any warning about the compulsion he carried within him.

  He had hurt the church that reached out to him. Even though he had had no access to the nursery school, the state closed it down. Members drifted away, unable to shake the memories. Rita Bentsen would eventually bring suit against the church.

  Duane Grooters, who had come into the Monroe Reformatory so many times to help Elledge find God, was shaken. He wasn’t sure if he could ever be involved in prison ministry again. If Jim had fooled him so completely, how could he ever know what any convict was really thinking?

  Eloise Fitzner was laid to rest, and her brother adopted the last two cats she had rescued—Bruce and Sheba—and took home a half-finished ceramic piece that she had been painting as a surprise for him when she died. Michael Helland said he had no interest in what happened to Jim Elledge as long as he couldn’t hurt anyone else. Whether her confessed killer lived or died, it wouldn’t bring Eloise back.

  On May 27, 1998, Jim Elledge pleaded guilty to aggravated first-degree murder. Snohomish County Prosecutor Jim Krider said he would seek the death penalty. Elledge instructed his attorney not to send arguments against his execution to the prosecutors. Not only did he not want to fight to live, he seemed anxious to embrace death.

  He would have no trial per se; when he faced a jury, they would decide only his punishment. Would he get a life without parole sentence? Or would he face death by hanging or lethal injection? In Washington State, he could choose the method of execution.

  Bill Jacquette, Elledge’s public defender, had promised him that he would argue—not for his client’s life—but for the death penalty, as Elledge wanted. But, as trial neared in mid-October, there were those who stepped up to try to save him. A Seattle attorney made a motion to Superior Court Judge Joseph Thibodeau, asking to raise potential defense issues that would block the death penalty. She said she was speaking for a lawyers’ group.

  Judge Thibodeau denied her motion. “I’m satisfied it’s not for the Court to override the constitutional rights of a fully informed and competent person in how he directs his particular defense.”

  If Jim Elledge wanted to die, he might just get his wish, although representatives of churches of many denominations wanted to rescue him. It was a most unusual situation: most accused killers fight to live; Jim Elledge was fighting to die.

  The actual trial began on October 20, 1998. It was an abbreviated affair, although too long for Elledge.

  Prosecutor Krider presented three witnesses the first day. Lynnwood detective James Nelson gave the jurors an overview of the case. He told them how Jim Elledge had hated Eloise and how he had carried out his plan. Nelson read a letter of warning that the victim had sent to the woman who was now the defendant’s wife: “Please don’t stay with that awful man anymore,” Eloise had pleaded with Ann Elledge. “He told me he is just using you for sex and because he needs the income from your job.”

  That letter had made Jim Elledge angry.

  The jurors learned of the grisly results of that anger from the forensic pathologist who performed the postmortem exam of Eloise Fitzner’s body. They blanched as autopsy photos were passed to them. The courtroom lights were dimmed, and they watched the Lynnwood investigators’ video footage of the crime scene.

  Next, they listened to Jim Elledge’s confession to murder. In a way, even he didn’t understand why he had done what he did, but there was no question that he had killed Eloise after planning and plotting how to accomplish it.

  “There’s something wrong with my nature,” his voice, amplified in the courtroom, began. “An evil I can’t control. I had to make my mind up that I was going to get even with this woman who tried to wreck my marriage earlier in the year. I had been carrying that anger inside of me for over a year…and it just spewed out.”

  Later in his confession, he seemed baffled. “I had no real reason to go after this woman. I mean, I have had a reason to be angry with her, but I didn’t have a reason to kill her…and I threw away a fairly good life, you know…I couldn’t control myself.”

  Elledge had written a letter to his wife before he lured Eloise and Rita into the church—a communiqué that added to the premeditation theory.

  “My Darling Wife,

  “I’m really sorry I screwed up our marriage…Do one thing for me. O.K.? Turn to God, honey. I know things will be bad for you for a while, but give God your heart and soul. I will always love you…

  “Jim.”

  Although they had been forced to look at terrible pictures and listen to a killer describe his crimes, the jurors held up well until Eloise’s brother testified in the late afternoon. At that point, several of them had tears in their eyes.

  Mike Helland told jurors of his sister’s strong faith. “She was a compassionate person who, to the extent that anyone can, lived by Christ’s example. Her faith sustained her.”

  He recalled an idyllic childhood when he and Eloise were small. That made her seem more real than anything the jury had heard yet.

  The next morning, Jim Elledge himself took the witness stand. He was 55, but he looked 15 years older. He was testifying for the defense, but in his case, he declared there was no defense. He looked impassively at the jury and tried to explain to them that he had no way of knowing when the “dark times” would creep up on him, although they usually happened just when things were going well for him. He spoke of rage that boiled up inside of him like a volcano erupting, explosive anger that burned like the fires of hell, even though someone watching him wouldn’t be able to sense it.

  And things had been going well for him. He was happily married, and shortly before the murder of Eloise Fitzner, he’d paid off a $3,000 debt. “I even bought a car. I don’t think anyone who knew they were going to be in trouble would go out and make all those payments and buy a new car.”

  The jurors looked mystified. Was Elledge suddenly denying that he was guilty? He sat in the witness chair, his expression calm, if dour.

  “There’s no doubt in my mind,” he said softly, but with profound conviction, “that there is a very wicked part of me. And this wicked part of me needs to die.”

  Final arguments began, and both Bill Jaquette and Deputy Prosecutor Mark Roe spoke of the need for Jim Elledge to be executed. It was an almost unheard-of situation, and it was difficult to tell which of the two brought up the most damning information from Elledge’s past.

  Jaquette was personally against the death penalty, but he was obeying his client’s instructions to fight to get him the death penalty.

  “If you are worried that you might be assisting my client in suicide, don’t be. You won’t be taking the law into your own hands. You will be obeying the law.”

  It was the first and only time in Jaquette’s career that he had implored a jury not to show leniency for his client.

  Roe spoke of Eloise’s pain and fear as she lay on her back, bound and gagged, helpless to fight as Elledge cut off her airway.

  Deputy Prosecutor John Adcock, the co-prosecutor, urged the jurors to remember Eloise and the brutal way she had perished at the defendant’s hands.

  When both the prosecutors and the defense attorney were finished, Jim Elledge thanked them all and hugged Bill Jaquette.

  “I feel Mr. Jaquette has done an excellent job,” he said. “I think the prosecutor’s office has done an excellent job, too.”

  It took only 90 minutes for the jurors to retur
n with a verdict. The nine men and three women gave Jim Elledge what he wanted. Death.

  But it would not be soon. In death penalty cases, it is mandatory that the Washington State Supreme Court review the case. On July 5, 2001, the high court agreed that Jim Elledge had waived his right to appeal “knowingly, voluntarily, and intelligently.”

  Within a few weeks, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Catholic Archdiocese filed a clemency petition with the state Clemency and Pardons Board. They insisted that the jury might have voted differently if they had been told about Jim Elledge’s miserable childhood or if they had known that he had once helped foil a prison escape and saved a guard.

  On August 6, the Clemency Board voted three to two to recommend that Governor Gary Locke allow the execution to proceed. On August 17, Locke acted on their recommendation.

  James Elledge’s execution date was set for August 28, 2001.

  There would be no delays. Bill Hubbard, the former Lynnwood City Council member who had once shared his apartment with Jim Elledge for a few months, lived in Kansas City in 2001. He left his telephone number at the prison in Walla Walla, just in case Jim wanted to call him collect. A week before August 28, Jim did call him. He declared his continuing faith and said he knew his death alone would not make up for killing Eloise.

  He had something more to confess, too, so that he would go to his death with a clear conscience. “He said the $400 I thought I lost years ago wasn’t lost; he had taken it,” Hubbard said. “He was sorry.”

  On Monday night, August 27, 100 anti–death penalty demonstrators began to gather outside the prison in Walla Walla, holding signs that said, “Execute Justice—Not People!” They held hands and chanted as they held a candlelight vigil for a man who wanted none of their help.

  James Elledge spent the night before his execution in a holding cell that had a mattress, a pillow, two sheets, two towels, and three blankets. He declined to make a request for a last supper. His last meal, then, was the breakfast he’d eaten that morning: apple juice, oatmeal, hash-browns, toast, a boiled egg, and coffee.

  Shortly after midnight, Elledge was moved from his cell to a gurney in the death chamber. He had chosen death by lethal injection.

  Witnesses sat tensely in the room with a large window, where they could see the execution. Bill Jaquette was there, as was Deputy Prosecutor John Adcock, along with the two detectives who had worked on the Fitzner murder case. Jim Nelson said he felt little sympathy for Elledge. “I feel a lot worse about her than I do about him. He knows what’s coming. He’s had a chance to make his peace with whatever he feels he needs to do. And he did this to himself. He committed his second murder, and he’s been given chance after chance.”

  At 12:30 A.M., a white curtain that hid the execution chamber from the witnesses suddenly rose. The witnesses could see Elledge lying on his back. A dark blue sheet was pulled up to his neck, and his eyes were closed. He seemed to be dead already, but then they saw the faint movement of his chest as he breathed in and out.

  Prison Superintendent John Lambert announced, “Inmate Elledge has no last words.”

  At 12:39, the petcock was turned on the first of the drugs and it began to flow through the saline solution into Elledge’s veins. All the witnesses saw was the two lines. Just as those who throw the switch on an electric chair never know which switch is a dummy, these executioners would not know which of them let loose the fatal drugs.

  First, there was thiopental sodium to relax the muscles, then pancuronium bromide to paralyze the lungs, and finally potassium chloride to stop the heart.

  Scott North, a reporter for the Everett Herald, sat watching, his notepad in his hand, almost forgetting to write.

  Jim Elledge moved so slightly that it was almost undetectable. He seemed to take one deep breath. After several minutes, his mouth fell open slightly.

  And then the curtain fell.

  Almost immediately, Department of Corrections spokesman Veltry Johnson announced that Elledge was dead. It was 12:52. The entire process had taken 13 minutes. The oldest prisoner ever to be executed in the state of Washington was dead at the age of 58.

  Eloise Fitzner’s brother, Mike, didn’t go to the prison to observe the execution. Instead, he stayed with their elderly mother, who was in a nursing home. They had both hoped that Elledge might ask for forgiveness for murdering Eloise—but, of course, he had not said a word.

  “In my mind,” Helland said, “Elledge is just kind of a nonentity. [My sister]—through no fault of her own—ran into a bad guy, a person who was broken. I’d just not like to think about him anymore.”

  There was no one left to talk to who could speak for Bertha Lush—not after 27 years.

  No one can say for sure what event, if any, in Jim Elledge’s early life had filled him with so much rage. It was probably a series of losses, disappointments, abandonments, griefs. It might have been nature or nurture, or a genetic predisposition to violence enflamed by his desperate childhood. But one thing was certain: he would surely have gone on hurting and killing people as long as he had the strength to do it.

  He stopped that, fully aware of the black thing inside of him, even though he didn’t understand it.

  He took himself out of the game before he could do it again.

  The Beach

  Grays Harbor County,Washington, is a great sprawling county that edges the coast along the Pacific Ocean near the southwestern corner of the state. It isn’t a heavily populated area, perhaps because it rains so much there—a relentless gray curtain of water that can leave even the most ebullient personality discouraged. The economy has driven some residents away; the timber industry has fallen on hard times.

  Aberdeen, the biggest town in Grays Harbor County, has under 20,000 residents, and the whole county has somewhere between 60,000 and 70,000 people. But that number doubles, often triples, during a clam tide. Commercial and sports fishing are a big draw; there are scores of shake mills, endless miles of beach, plush resorts, and modest cabin camps. It is a county with place names that sound strange to a visitor: towns named Humptulips and Satsop ring oddly to the ear. The hamlet of McCleary has the biggest summer festival, and the cuisine is bear stew.

  In spots, the timberland of Grays Harbor County gives way to acres of bog, which is almost like quicksand. One oceanfront section was called—quite realistically—Washaway Beach. It did indeed give up more and more shoreline as the hungry ocean gnawed at it year after year.

  The Quinault Indian Reservation is the northwest corner of the county and has its own tribal police force.

  Grays Harbor has had both its stunning failures and its roaring successes. For those who truly love the wildness of the ocean as it has been for eons, Grays Harbor is a much desired destination, and that will never change. The Satsop Project, designed to convert atomic energy to civilian use, collapsed into a financial fiasco that left nothing but looming silos. A singular success was Kurt Cobain; perhaps the most brilliant—if troubled—musician ever to come out of the Northwest was born and raised in Grays Harbor County.

  But Kurt Cobain was only a tow-headed, blue-eyed little boy on Monday, April 14, 1975. On that day, Grays Harbor County Sheriff Harold Sumpter and a friend who was a Superior Court judge were driving to a weekly lunch meeting. It had become something of a ritual for them over their years of association. They had just left the county seat of Montesano and were nearing Satsop on old Highway 12 when they noticed two young girls with backpacks walking along the side of the blacktop.

  They shook their heads at the danger inherent in the situation, but they had no reason to stop the girls. Hitchhiking wasn’t against the law at the time. The judge commented that it was “too bad” that their usual lunch companion, who was a juvenile court worker, wasn’t with them. “He probably knows them.”

  If he had been with them that day, they might have found a reason to give the girls a ride home.

  In mid-1975, young women in Washington and Oregon were still afraid of runni
ng into the mysterious “Ted,” the faceless wraith who was wanted for the murders and disappearances of almost a dozen girls, some of whom had been last seen hitchhiking. These two young women had tucked their thumbs in when they saw the sheriff’s car, but Sumpter knew they were hoping to catch a ride.

  Law enforcement officers file away information almost unconsciously, and Sumpter remembered later that one girl was of medium height and the other much shorter and very petite; both carried orangy-red backpacks. Still, he was never absolutely sure that the young women he saw near Satsop were the same girls he would see later in horrifying circumstances.

  Most homicides in Grays Harbor County erupted out of family beefs and domestic violence situations. But there was no way to predict how many predators—not animal but human—prowled the highways and beaches looking for the vulnerable and the trusting. No, hitchhiking wasn’t against the law, although the “Ted” case had spurred activists and police alike to circulate petitions to send to the Washington State Legislature to ask for a law that would ban it. No one knew yet that the real Ted—Ted Bundy—had moved on to Utah.

  Harold Sumpter was a man born to the badge: his grandfather was a judge, and his father was the sheriff and then a marshal in Mason County, Missouri. The lawmen in his family warned him that if he ever expected to have any money, he’d better avoid police work. He knew they were right, but the urge was too strong. He signed on at Grays Harbor County in 1963 as a special deputy, rose through the ranks to resident deputy in the eastern sector of the county, and then became Chief Criminal Deputy. When he was off duty, Sumpter painted houses to add to his income.

  Sumpter knew his citizens and the back roads of his county as well as most men know the block they live on. He had 27 working deputies (he included himself in this count), but he recalled only too well a time when he was the only officer on night patrol in the entire county. The idea of having a backup unit if he ran into a potentially dangerous situation was unheard of “unless you could wake up somebody at home, and then it was usually too late,” Sumpter said with a grin.