The I-5 Killer

by Ann Rule

  In return for all this, the contract stipulated that Randy was obligated to keep himself in excellent physical condition, avoid any drinking of intoxicants, stay away from gamblers and gambling resorts, and wear a coat and necktie in hotel lobbies, public eating places, and all public conveyances. He had to promise that he would not write or sponsor magazine or newspaper articles or endorse any product or service or participate in any radio or television programs without permission of the Green Bay Packers.

  There was not — at least in the official contract — any clause regarding moral turpitude, conviction of crime, and the like. It apparently was a given that players screened carefully by the Packer scouts would have no such skeletons in their closets.

  The Green Bay Packer segment of Randy Woodfield's life was probably the most memorable, although it was soon to be blighted. He saved all communiqués from 1265 Lombardi Avenue, Green Bay, Wisconsin; he would carry the stack of personal letters and mimeographed sheets with him throughout his myriad changes of residence over the coming years.

  They were akin to messages from Hollywood to a would-be starlet. They were magic.

  Immediately upon his signing the contract, letters came with instructions about early training camp to be held in Scottsdale, Arizona. An airline ticket arrived by certified mail. The early training session would be a "get-acquainted period so that in July we can all begin together toward our common goal. 'The Championship,' " wrote Hank Kuhlman, an assistant coach. A dinner would be held in Phoenix on April 4, and the Packers would pay all travel, lodging, and meals plus fifty dollars for pin money. Randy saved even the airline-ticket carbon, carrying it with him for the next eight years.

  Everything was being provided for him, everything but running shoes and football shoes.

  The Sporting News wrote from Missouri, asking for information for their Football Register so that Randy's name could be added to the new edition. Randy Woodfield was suddenly "somebody" again.

  His life was all football that spring and summer of 1974. Things went well for Randy in Scottsdale, and he returned to his Portland apartment to await further flurries of mail from Wisconsin. Each envelope bearing the logo of the Packers' helmet gave him more proof that, by God, he had been chosen.

  Trainer Domenic Gentile sent diagrams for building muscles. John Polonchek, another assistant coach, suggested that Randy try to combine Gentile's stretching exercises with pass receiving. "I would suggest that you catch as many balls as possible each week, both standing and moving catches."

  In June there was another certified letter with a first-class airline ticket — this time to Green Bay. A limo would be waiting to take Randy directly to the residence hall at St. Norbert College in West De Pere, Wisconsin. Rather than flying, however, Randy chose to drive his own car to the Midwest; it would give him added mobility.

  There were rumors that the NFL players' union was threatening to strike training camps in July if no prior settlement was made, but letters to Randy assured him he was under no compunction to join the NFL Players' Association or to participate in the strike.

  Randy didn't worry about it; he was too busy exercising, catching passes, planning for his career in the pros. When he received two letters from head coach and general manager Dan Devine himself, sending warm personal regards, it was the frosting on the cake, the stamp of approval. He would survive all the cuts; he would be on the forty-seven-man traveling squad — he was sure of it.

  But Randy Woodfield didn't make it with the Green Bay Packers. He was cut from the traveling squad. He would later say that they treated him, "more as a tackling dummy than anything else." His forte was in catching passes, and the Packers were, according to Randy, working with a preponderance of running plays.

  After he was cut, Randy stayed on in Green Bay for a while — but on the farm team, playing for the Manitowac Chiefs from September 1974 until December, and working for the Oshkosh Truck Corporation as a press-brake operator in the manufacture of fire trucks.

  Even though he had been cut from the 1974 traveling squad, Randy still thought he might work his way back up. He was content for the moment to play for the Chiefs. He would always remember that the roar of the crowds at the rookie games — forty-thousand voices strong — was music to his ears. He loved everything about being with the Packers, even if it was only on the farm team. For the second half of 1974 Randy Woodfield lived his dreams, as happy as he had ever been in his life. He hated only the weather in Wisconsin. He had been raised with rain and roaring surf in the wintertime; he could not deal with endless snow.

  The question of why Randy Woodfield was dropped by the Green Bay Packers has different answers — depending upon who is giving those answers. Randy himself says that he tensed up when he should have been playing confidently, went out too wide for passes that just tippled on his fingers and then dropped to the ground. Oddly, for an athlete whose best skill was in catching passes, Randy Woodfield has incongruously small hands. The rest of his body nears perfection; in photographs he usually poses casually with his hands behind his back. Given his problem with catching passes, and the fact that the Packers were stressing ground offense, he was the wrong man at the wrong time.

  He was, indeed, the wrong man.

  The Green Bay Packers will not comment on why he was cut. The Green Bay Police Department declines to release any records they might have on Randall Brent Woodfield — at least officially. But rumors would come back seven years later to Detective Dave Kominek that there had been between ten and twenty incidents of indecent exposure in Wisconsin involving Randy Woodfield.

  One Wisconsin detective commented off the record: "He couldn't keep the thing in his pants."

  Randy Woodfield would not be the first — or the last — athlete to see his blossoming career turn to ashes because of his sexual behavior. It is almost expected that pro players will be cocksmen who seduce willing female fans, the pretty little groupies who are there for the picking. That is the macho thing to do, and if it doesn't interfere with the players' performance on the field, who's going to blow the whistle? But when Lance Rentzel was arrested for exposing himself to young girls, he was, for all intents and purposes, through with the Dallas Cowboys. When Randy Woodfield's nocturnal exhibitionism got back to Packer management, he was finished too.

  Randy packed up and returned to Portland. He had sought one goal for most of his twenty-three years. He had had it within his grasp, and then he had lost it. The parade had passed him by. He was destroyed. He felt that he had failed himself, and, worst of all, he had disappointed his mother, who had always predicted and urged greatness for her only son.

  There was depression, and then there was rage.

  Randy returned to Portland, but there was no reason to go back to Portland State, even though he was within three terms of a college degree. He'd really gone there to play football, and he was no longer eligible to play amateur ball.

  Randy worked desultorily at an electronics firm in a Portland suburb, he worked part-time tending bar, and he dated many women, never staying with one very long. He shared a two-bedroom apartment with Tim Rossi, a friend who had graduated from Portland State University. Tim was his best friend and was currently an assistant professor at Reed College in Portland.

  Randy still saw old friends from high school from time to time. He talked fondly of the glory days at Newport High School and complained about the raw deal he'd received from the Packers. He told friends he'd been cut from the Wisconsin team for "flinching on the line." He promised that he would show his old friends footage that showed him playing with the Packers, explaining that Dan Devine himself had promised to send him films. But the films never arrived.

  Randy was almost twenty-five years old now. Most of his friends were married and parents, moving ahead in the adult world. Mike Schaeffer was a schoolteacher. Some members of the class of '69 were architects, medical students, dental students. But Randy Woodfield was going no place fast …

  In the first months of 197
5, the Portland police were dealing with an inherently explosive situation. Several women had been accosted at knifepoint by a man who prowled Duniway Park at S. W. Barbur Boulevard and Sheridan. Their attacker had exposed himself and then forced his victims to fellate him to ejaculation. After he had been satisfied sexually, he had stolen their purses. The man was described as "big" and "dark" by the victims. A few of them remarked that he was young and good-looking. He had sneaked up behind them so quietly in the lonely park that they had no chance at all to scream for help.

  When stakeouts by male police officers at Duniway Park did not turn up the attacker with the knife, it was decided that a decoy was needed to lure him from the woods. The decoy would have to be a female.

  Policewoman Annette Jolin volunteered for the assignment, aware that her safety could not be guaranteed. Jolin would have to walk down the deserted pathways alone while backup officers watched from some distance.

  Jolin was given eight dollar bills whose serial numbers had been recorded. She walked through the quiet park on several occasions, but nothing happened. Perhaps the park prowler had sensed that the police were watching: perhaps he had moved his operations to another of Portland's many parks.

  Shortly after noon on Wednesday, March 5, 1975, Jolin's neck crawled with the feeling that someone was padding behind her through fir thickets that shut out light, their feathered branches so dense that she could no longer see even the sun. She forced herself to walk slowly, to mimic the movements of the natural victim — the woman who is unaware of her surroundings, who appears to be distracted. She told herself that the officers who were backing her up weren't really far away, that she wasn't alone. She had a signaling device to call for help if she needed it.

  Shortly before, one of the surveillance officers had observed a Pontiac GTO as it pulled into the Terwilliger Plaza and parked. The driver, a tall male, strolled into Duniway Park and started up a trail. The officer waited; this was the sticky part — he had to wait for Jolin to signal if she needed help.

  Suddenly, deep in the park, there was a sound behind the policewoman, a soft footfall on the dirt path, an intake of breath. She half-turned, and felt the blade of a knife pressing against the flesh of her neck.

  Although Jolin could neither see nor hear her backups, they could see her signal, and they tensed. The man was demanding her money as he held the knife against her throat. She handed the eight marked dollar bills over and saw her assailant staring back at her boldly, apparently weighing something in his mind. His hands darted out and stroked her breasts, and then he turned and headed back down the trail.

  The officers who had staked out the park perimeters were waiting for her assailant as he emerged from the park.

  The suspect was big and muscular, but he was so surprised to find that he had attacked a policewoman, and a policewoman accompanied by several other officers, that he did not offer any resistance. He handed over the knife. It was a paring knife. "What's your name?" the Portland officers asked.

  "Randall Woodfield. I go to Portland State U."

  CHAPTER 6

  This time, there would be no probation for Randy Woodfield. In addition to the paring knife he'd used to threaten Officer Jolin with, arresting officers had confiscated a gun he'd carried with him that March day. It was an Italian-made starter pistol. Randy Woodfield's attacks against women had escalated far beyond the incidents of exhibitionism. First charged with first-degree robbery, Randy entered a plea of guilty to a reduced charge of second-degree robbery on April 29, 1975. The oral-sodomy charges involving previous victims were dropped. He was set for sentencing on June 4 — but first his case was assigned to the Diagnostic Center of the Oregon State Department of Human Resources. He discussed his "problem" with a state psychologist in the Rocky Butte Jail.

  Randy admitted that he was "totally guilty" of the crime against policewoman Jolin and said that he was "very sorry and deeply hurt" that he had caused so many problems. He seemed almost relieved to have been caught, and suggested that he possibly had a problem that would require hospitalization.

  According to Randy, his life had "collapsed" three years before because of his "sexual problems." (That would have been at the time of his first arrest for indecent exposure.)

  Randy related that he had discovered in college that he could not cope with his sexuality, and he felt he had had much "bad luck." He had lost a cherished girlfriend, had had his car stolen, and had withdrawn from college. Then, he said, he had met two religious friends who had introduced him to the Christian faith. He blamed his current troubles with the law on his own inability to follow his faith. But as far as sex was concerned, he insisted that the impulses that had driven him obsessively were out of his control.

  He was not sure why he could not control himself with women; he did not take drugs, and he had not drunk alcohol since becoming a Christian in 1972. He said he had taken steroids to help build his body. He thought that perhaps the steroids had magnified his sexual urges.

  As far as his leisure activity, he listed only music — playing the accordion — sports, and reading religious literature. He mentioned that he had tried to curtail his dating activity, as he thought removing himself from sexual opportunity might help him contain his lust for women.

  Financially, he had nothing. He had had $57.50 in a bank account before his arrest, but he'd turned that over to his attorney. He owed almost three thousand dollars to the telephone company's credit union for a school loan, and three hundred dollars to his parents for gas needed to drive to Green Bay.

  Randy Woodfield talked in a soft, well-modulated tone in speaking with the state psychologist. He appeared resigned, and depressed. He opted for jail forever — or even death — if that would mean that he could not continue his sexual prowlings. He wanted treatment now, even though he had never followed through on counseling before, although it had been a mandatory stipulation of his probation. He insisted that he had robbed the women only because he needed money and had been "too proud" to borrow from his family. And yet all of the robberies combined had netted him less than twenty-five dollars.

  Randy Woodfield was given a brief intelligence test, and scored surprisingly low. This test indicated his IQ was around 100. If it was accurate, he would have had considerable difficulty in college, and could not have hoped to meet grandiose expectations others had for him.

  The aspects of Woodfield's personality that alarmed the examiner were his detachment from his crimes and the fact that he had used a knife and had actually touched his victims. These factors separated him from the typical exposer. It was possible that there was an underlying psychotic thought process which was not easy to detect. Randy's near-fanatic preoccupation with religion might be a danger sign.

  The final evaluation read, "It would be my opinion that Mr. Woodfield's problem is so severe as to be a very serious threat to the community, and although treating him as an outpatient might actually present him with a greater opportunity to be treated, I think this would present too great a risk to the community. For the safety of the community, he needs to be in an institutional setting. However, chances of being successfully treated in such a setting are rather dim."

  Catch 22. Randy Woodfield might be successfully treated while he was free, but he was too dangerous. Locked up, treatment didn't look hopeful. He had shown that he would not seek treatment unless he was compelled to do so. No one — no one — had any idea just how dangerous Randy was.

  On June 10, 1975, Randy heard himself sentenced to ten years in the Oregon State Penitentiary for armed robbery. The Multnomah County judge who sentenced him decried the fact that the charges resulting from the sexual offenses in the other park cases had been dropped. He opined that Randy Woodfield should be placed in a program for sexually dangerous offenders in the Oregon State Hospital's psychiatric unit instead of the state prison.

  Instead, Randy joined the general population at the state penitentiary in Salem. A year earlier, the world had been his; he had been on his way t
o join the Green Bay Packers. Now he was only a convict with ten years hanging over his head.

  Where had it all gone?

  Randall Woodfield had another number now, not a two-digit number emblazoned on a football jersey, but a longer number: OSP 37376. He was not a compliant prisoner; he received several disciplinary "tickets" during his first months in prison. He did not believe that he deserved to be in the penitentiary in Salem, and he was not about to obey the rules. Guards warned one another that Woodfield had a "bad attitude."

  There was one thing that really angered Randy about the Oregon State Prison. He resented the fact that some of the guards were females, feeling that it wasn't fair that women could guard male prisoners, although male guards never were assigned to the female prisoners' sections. He was particularly annoyed when women guards seemed to have free access to shower rooms and toilet facilities. "I was in there for being an exhibitionist, and here's this female guard watching me take a piss. It was ironic, and it made me angry," he would tell detectives years later.

  In a group-therapy session sponsored by the Oregon State Hospital, Randy bristled when a nurse asked the group to share their sexual fantasies with her. He stared back at her and said, "You share your sexual fantasies with us, and then I might share mine with you."

  She declined, and wrote him up as antagonistic in group therapy.

  Some of his other infractions were more trivial. He grew a beard — mostly to annoy the prison administration. And he had high-top Nike basketball shoes smuggled in to him in prison. His knees were going bad after football, and his ankles were failing on him too; he needed the support of the high-top shoes. He laughed when someone cited him for an infraction because of the shoes. "You get dope smuggled in all the time — so why get bent out of shape over a pair of basketball shoes?"