The I-5 Killer

by Ann Rule

  In May 1980 Chris Van Dyke took a gamble. He ran for Marion County district attorney — and won. He was only twenty-nine years old, and he had yet to prosecute a murder case.

  Chris Van Dyke is as dedicated to the law as his father is to the theater, and as punctilious about the detail and hard work that go with career success. Van Dyke worked closely with Kominek and Holloway to track Shari Hull's killer. Van Dyke agreed that Beth Wilmot might remember more about her attacker if she were to undergo hypnosis. Beth trusted Dave Kominek, and on February 3 she agreed to be hypnotized in the presence of police artist Dave Barrios, in the hope that a more precise image of the hooded killer might emerge.

  Kominek asked Beth to pick a place where she felt safe and happy, and she chose to picture herself in the room of a boyfriend whom she cared about. She would be safe, Kominek assured her continually; she would view what had happened on a "television set," removed from all danger. She would not have to relive the attack; she would only be an observer — as if she were only watching a television show.

  "Now, Beth," Kominek's voice droned, "while you're in this very, very comfortable place, you just really feel good. You can hear everything that's going on and you just want to remain like you are. You're very, very relaxed, very, very comfortable. I want you to just think now, imagine that you're at the top of a stairs, and the stairway is about ten steps … real gradual steps. I want you to imagine that you're going down. Each step you take, you're going further and further into relaxation. You start with the top step, and that's number ten, and then down to nine … down to eight … down to seven … six. Five. Four. Three. Down to two … one."

  Beth was in a beautiful garden. An imaginary balloon was tied to her wrist and her arm was light as a feather as it floated upward with the balloon's delicate tug. Kominek asked her to imagine a calendar, and then the pages were ripped off until she found herself once again back to the eighteenth of January.

  "You remember that you are not really there; you can just watch this. You are watching this on TV. You can take this TV and bring it up close or you can push it further away."

  Beth smiled and nodded. She was not afraid.

  "You and Shari are going to get the gas. Now you are going to have to go to work. You can see that Shari has to take a shower. Now you are getting ready to go to work. It is just you and Shari, and you go to work."

  Again Kominek reminded Beth that she was only watching the scene on a television set — that she was in no danger, that no one could hurt her.

  "Now, this man is going to enter. You can see this on the TV. He comes through the door. You can see him coming through the door. He's got a gun in his hand. Now, Beth, I want you to watch him. I want you to concentrate on what he is wearing."

  The tape recorder spun on as Kominek left the room. There was no sound but Beth Wilmot's relaxed breathing. Then Kominek ushered Dave Barrios in to listen to Beth's responses and sketch a face as she talked. Even in Beth's hypnotic state, the tape recorder would pick up some tension in her voice, fear that surfaced despite Kominek's repeated assurances that no one could hurt her.

  Slowly Beth described the killer again.

  Beth: "I can't see his hair."

  Barrios: "You can't see his hair. Did he have a hat on?"

  Beth: "He had a hood."

  Barrios: "He had a hood on? Did he keep the hood on all the time?"

  Beth: "Uh-huh."

  Barrios: "Like a sweatshirt hood … or a jacket hood?"

  Beth: "Jacket."

  They worked on. Beth's eyes teared and her mascara melted into smudgy streams down her cheeks. She did not notice. For an hour she answered Barrios' questions. At length his sketchpad was filled with a ghostlike face. The killer looked at him from lidded eyes, his mouth drawn into a cruel, tight line. The hood had emerged almost like a monk's hood.

  Gently Dave Kominek led Beth back through the days of the calendar until it was once again February 3. She sat up and looked around.

  "How long do you think you were in here?" he asked her.

  "A half hour."

  "Okay. What time did we come in?"

  "I don't know."

  "It was about two-thirty. It's five after four now."

  Beth was amazed. "Really! How long have I been in here?"

  "An hour and a half."

  Kominek handed Beth a tissue and suggested that she wipe the smeared mascara from her cheeks. She couldn't remember that she had cried. Embarrassed, she was a typical teenager again, worried that her makeup looked "awful."

  "I didn't remember enough," she apologized. "I saw his eyes. I kept seeing his eyes."

  Beth looked directly at Kominek. "I want you to take me to TransAmerica. We'll go back there and I'll remember more. I'm afraid to go back there, but I will if it will help."

  Kominek agreed to drive Beth to the building where she had come close to death. But even when they walked through the lunchroom at the TransAmerica Building, she remembered no more. The man was young, tall, and cruel. He had worn a Band-Aid on his nose, dark red and white sports shoes, and a hooded jacket. The memory of his face still terrified her, frightened her so much that her mind shut down whenever she tried to recreate it in detail.

  "Catch him," Beth said. "If you catch him, I'll know him. I'll never, ever forget that face."

  CHAPTER 8

  After the death of Shari Hull, citizens in Salem, Oregon, had flooded the Marion County Sheriff's Office with tips on possible suspects in the murder. Detectives were receiving over two hundred phone calls a day. Marion County had only four detectives, and Lieutenant McCoy and Jay Boutwell were working on another, unrelated homicide. That left Dave Kominek and Monty Holloway to find Shari's killer. The pair followed each new thread of information to its end, finding nothing that would help in the investigation.

  They obtained computer listings of all parolees released in the previous two years from the Oregon State Penitentiary after serving time for rape, other sex offenses, or murder. They ran down the location of each parolee, and found not one who physically resembled Shari Hull's killer.

  The only conclusion Kominek and Holloway could reach was that the killer with the Band-Aid on his nose was not local, that he had to be a drifter who had seized the moment when he chanced to glimpse the two girls cleaning the TransAmerica office. If he was not local, he might well be anywhere, long gone.

  Deputy Bernie Papenfus had told them that he'd seen a man just after the first call for help came in, and that man had been on foot. That did not mean that he hadn't stashed his vehicle somewhere safely away from the crime scene and walked back to confront the girls. But no one could know what that vehicle looked like. No one but Beth Wilmot knew what the man really looked like.

  On February 3 Dave Kominek sent out a teletype request for information on similar crimes to the seven western states. The M.O. (modus operandi) of murder and sexual assault was new to Salem; Kominek hoped that it might sound familiar to detectives in other jurisdictions.

  "We got a call the next day," Kominek recalls. "From all the way down in California, Shasta County to be exact. Captain Jim Carter and Detective Gene Farley called. They had had a double murder down there the very day I sent the teletype — a terrible crime — and they thought that the death weapon might have been a .32-caliber gun, just as ours was. They were waiting for autopsy results to be sure. "

  On February 3 Steve Eckard, a Redding, California, firefighter had drawn a twenty-four hour shift at the Mountain Gate Station. It is ironic that policemen and firefighters, who protect other men's families, often have to leave their own families unprotected during the dark, dangerous hours of the night. Eckard's wife, Donna Lee, thirty-seven, and his fourteen-year-old stepdaughter, Janell Jarvis, were home alone on that Tuesday evening. A young stepdaughter, Kristin Jarvis, twelve, was away from home during the early part of the evening. The Eckard family lived at the end of Holiday Road in a development in Mountain Gate, California, some eight miles north of Redding, just south
of the Lake Shasta Caverns and directly on the I-5 freeway.

  Donna Lee Eckard worked as a registered nurse at Mercy Hospital on the day shift, and when Steve worked nights at the fire department, it seemed that they were like ships passing in the night — but they both were devoted to their professions, jobs that saved lives.

  Steve Eckard talked to his wife for the last time at three-thirty in the afternoon. Donna Lee had been to a doctor that afternoon for a minor surgical procedure, and she told her husband that she wasn't feeling well and that she was going to lie down.

  Twelve-year-old Kristin Jarvis stayed late at the Bass school to watch a basketball game, and called her mother at six P.M. to ask permission to go to a friend's house. Donna Lee sounded sleepy to Kristin, as if she had just been wakened from a nap. She told Kristin that it would be all right for her to visit her friend if she was home by nine o'clock.

  The seventh-grader arrived home promptly, and checked the downstairs clock, noting that it was eight minutes to nine. She called out to her mother and sister … but no one answered. Not really alarmed, she walked through the neat home, still calling to Donna Lee and Janell.

  When she came to her parents' bedroom, Kristin Jarvis stumbled on a frozen tableau of horror — a sight that no twelve-year-old should ever have to see. Both her mother and her sister were in the house, but they could no longer respond.

  They lay side by side on the bed. Donna Lee lay on her back; she wore only a night- gown that had been pulled down, exposing her breasts. Her glasses were still in place, but her ankles were crossed and bound with white surgical tape; her arms had been twisted beneath her and her wrists were bound with the same tape. A wide swath of tape covered her mouth and nose.

  Fourteen-year-old Janell was completely nude, her face covered with blood.

  Kristin accepted with dull shock that her sister was dead, but she thought her mother might be alive. She wrenched the tape gag from Donna Lee's face and begged her to answer. Her mother didn't respond.

  And then Kristin was afraid that they were both dead. As a firefighter's daughter, Kristin had been taught what to do in an emergency. She had been told that you must never assume the worst, that sometimes accident or drowning victims could be brought back if medical help was called in time. She picked up the phone and dialed the emergency number that fed into lines at Mercy Hospital.

  "My mother … my sister … send help quickly. Holiday Road. The Eckards."

  The call came in at one minute after nine. Sergeant Boatner and Corporal Dan Cunningham of the Shasta County sheriffs patrol responded to the call, along with officers Coe and Wooden. Personnel at Mercy Hospital called the Mountain Gate fire station to ask that emergency medical technicians respond. For Steve Eckard, it was the nightmare that all peace and fire officers dread. This time, it was his own home where help was needed.

  Chief Dave Selby, Assistant Chief Leroy Porteous, and Captain Dan Selby raced with Eckard to his home. It wasn't very far to Holiday Road; Mountain Gate is a small town. The fire-department personnel arrived at the Eckard home in five minutes. Two minutes later, the sheriff's men pulled up.

  The deputies could see Steve Eckard comforting Kristin in the living room, and Dan Selby and Porteous advised them that there were two bodies in the upstairs bedroom. Steve Eckard told them that he had viewed the bodies, that they were those of his wife and elder stepdaughter.

  Cunningham and Boatner could see what appeared to be a bullet wound in Janell Jarvis' neck, and the tape bonds on her mother. They immediately secured the scene and notified detectives Gene Farley and Rick Burnett.

  Parley and Burnett recognized the "execution-style" method of murder. They saw that Donna had been shot too, possibly twice. Janell had suffered many wounds, at least a half-dozen, all in the back of her head. What they could not fathom was why this peaceful residence at the dead end of a residential street should be the scene of such carnage.

  The two detectives had to ask the most onerous question, to get it out of the way, although they felt they already knew the answer. Detectives always look first at those closely related to murder victims, since statistics bear out the fact that most victims are killed by relatives and close associates. They signaled to the fire chief and drew him aside.

  Where had Steve Eckard been during the previous three or four hours? The answer came immediately from his fellow firefighter. Eckard had been on duty at the station.

  Kristin volunteered that she had talked to her mother at six and that she'd been fine then. A little sleepy, but she hadn't sounded frightened or alarmed about anything.

  "Did she say anything, Kristin — anything about what she planned to do this evening?" Farley asked gently.

  The girl shook her head, and then remembered. "She said she had to go down to Jake's Market to get a couple of things."

  Parley and Burnett knew Jake's; everyone who regularly traveled the I-5 probably knew Jake's — a little store located just off the freeway at the end of the street where the Eckards lived. Vacationers traveling into the resort area around Lake Shasta could count on Jake's for a supply of cold beer, beans, hot dogs — the standard camping provender.

  Janell's jeans lay on the floor next to the bed, and Burnett carefully fished a check from the back pocket. It was dated February 3, made out to Jake's, and signed by Donna Eckard. Something had stopped Janell from going into the store and cashing it.

  No one but the killer could know exactly what had happened to Donna Eckard and her daughter, but reconstruction of the crime suggested that the two had left their home to make a quick trip down to Jake's to purchase breakfast supplies. Donna Eckard had apparently thrown on a coat over her nightgown and driven Janell down to the store. The coat was in the bedroom too, carelessly thrown over the end of the bed. All things being equal, Janell would have taken the check and gone in to buy bread, milk, and cereal.

  The detectives checked at Jake's Market and found that Donna and Janell had not been in to shop earlier in the evening. They hadn't made it that far. Someone had intercepted them.

  The motive for murder? Clearly sexual. The bodies were nude and half-nude. It would take an autopsy to determine if rape had actually occurred. Steve Eckard checked through the house and said that all the items a burglar or robber might look for were there: the stereo, television sets, jewelry. The only thing missing was his handgun: a .38 Special Model 60 Smith and Wesson. It was a unique gun with a stainless-steel three-inch barrel and walnut grips. Eckard was able to give the Shasta detectives the serial number of the missing weapon.

  The bodies of the victims were removed to await postmortem examination.

  When the results of those autopsies came in a day later, Gene Farley and Rick Burnett were back on the phone to Kominek in Salem. Donna Lee Eckard and Janell Jarvis had been shot in the head: seven bullets for the teenager and two for her mother. The bullets retrieved had come from a .32 caliber handgun, just as had the bullets in the shooting of Shari Hull and Beth Wilmot. Even though Mountain Gate, California, was more than four hundred miles south of Salem, a commonality was developing between the cases: female victims; two victims at a time; .32 caliber bullets; execution-style wounds to the back of the head; location of crime scenes hard by the I-5 freeway.

  And there was more. Beth and Shari had been subjected to oral sodomy. Fourteen- year-old Janell Jarvis had been sodomized anally, after death. There was no evidence that Donna Lee Eckard had been sexually abused, although her nightgown had been disarranged. The victims had died only an hour before they were discovered by Kristin Jarvis; rigor mortis had not even begun when they were found, nor had there been any lividity patterns in the lower portions of the bodies. (Lividity is the purplish-red striation that results when blood settles after the heart stops pumping.)

  Kristen's arrival home had surely come almost on the heels of the killer's departure. A few minutes earlier, and Kristin Jarvis too might have become a murder victim.

  "And the Mountain Gate case isn't the only one that seem
s to fit," Burnett continued. "A subject wearing a green jacket, jeans, gloves, and tennis shoes, with tape over the bridge of his nose, is wanted down here for questioning in a rape, kidnap, and sodomy case in Redding on February 3. We've got one the next day in Yreka, and I've found a Winchell's Donut robbery in Grants Pass on January 29, a grocery-store robbery in Medford — same day — a motel robbery in Ashland on February 4."

  "I think we're looking for the same man," Kominek said. "It looks as though a whole lot of jurisdictions are looking for the same man."

  They promised to stay in touch; the Shasta County sheriff's detectives would look through reports for more "Band-Aid" cases in northern California and southern Oregon. Kominek would check north from Eugene.

  Shasta County was not the only department responding to Kominek's teletypes asking for similar cases. The response was far greater than he had expected. Indeed, he had begun to receive a virtual storm of replies.

  CHAPTER 9

  Randy Woodfield had so many jobs and so many addresses between July 1979 and March 1981, it was hard for his parole officer, Judy Pulliam, to keep track of him.

  He usually doctored his employment application forms so that the four-year gap left by his stint in the penitentiary didn't have to be explained. Basically, all he had to do was subtract those years from his age; he didn't like to admit even to himself that he was thirty years old. He was in good shape; he looked younger, and he could easily pass for a man in his mid-twenties.

  Randy jumped from woman to woman, even more frequently than he changed jobs, trying to find someone who might remain completely entranced with him. While it might be expected that a man who had been without female sex partners for four years would be "hungry" for sex, Randy Woodfield was "starving."

  Randy looked for likely female candidates everywhere, and he was very resourceful. Just after his release from prison in July 1979, he followed two pretty young women down the I-5 freeway, passing them, pulling back, and signaling until they stopped, rolled down their car window, and asked him if he wanted to go swimming. He nodded and followed them to their apartment.