The I-5 Killer

by Ann Rule

  Randy Woodfield was very thoughtful that Valentine's Day. He also sent an arrangement of red roses and white carnations to his parents, who were celebrating their thirty-fourth wedding anniversary. The flowers reached them in Reno, the first stop on an extended trip that would take them to Tokyo. His mother was especially touched by the gesture. They had been through much grief over Randy, and now it seemed that things were going to be all right after all. He was engaged to a fine young woman and talking enthusiastically about finishing his college degree at the University of Oregon. In the meantime, he had enrolled in a bartending school in Portland — which he would attend sporadically, even though he now lived in Eugene.

  The Woodfields flew off to Tokyo with Randy's flowers carefully packed in damp paper, assured that all was well.

  No one seemed to wonder that Randy could afford to send seventy-five dollars' worth of yellow roses to his fiancée and an expensive floral arrangement, plus champagne, to his parents even though he had no job and had had no employment for some time.

  By the end of February, Shelley Janson missed her fiancé so much that she called him in tears. They agreed that they had to be together, and Shelley made plans to withdraw from school on February 24, pack her belongings, and drive to Eugene.

  Shelley actually headed north on March 4, but when she got to Eugene, her world and everything she'd hoped for in the future had shattered into a million pieces.

  CHAPTER 10

  Dave Kominek and Monty Holloway had received the information from Shasta County, California, that indicated that a suspect who sounded just like their suspect had struck in California along the I-5 freeway from January 28 to February 4, 1981. They also received copies of almost identical case reports from agencies ranging from Eugene, Oregon, to Seattle, Washington, and its suburbs. That meant that they probably were tracking a man whose geographical parameters included eight hundred miles of freeway, vast stretches of fast roads that allowed him to attack and be long gone by the time police were called. He had killed at least three times already. He had raped most of his victims.

  And nobody knew who he was. But he had a nickname now: he was the "I-5 Killer."

  Kominek was sure that the same man had used his silver gun on Shari Hull and Beth Wilmot in Salem after the attack on Merrisue and Megan Green in Corvallis. Perhaps his crimes against the Green children bothered him. Perhaps he was tired after "working" night after night all along the freeway. Four days had passed between the Corvallis incident and the carnage in the TransAmerica Building in Salem.

  Corvallis police never located the missing phone receiver. They had found that someone had deliberately unscrewed the porch light on the Greens' front porch, and they tried to lift fingerprints from the bulb, but found only smudged glove prints.

  There was no respite at all after Shari Hull and Beth Wilmot were shot; indeed, the next report in sequence had come in from Vancouver again. At seven-thirty on Monday, January 19 (as Beth lay under heavy guard in Salem Memorial Hospital), the man with the curly dark hair, the regulation false beard, and ski gloves robbed the Vancouver Skating Rink. The rink office was deserted except for the female cashier, seventeen, and three boys ten and eleven years old, one of whom had come to the rink that night to celebrate his birthday.

  The man held out a silver gun, demanded the money in the cash register, and left after warning the cashier and the boys not to watch where he was going.

  On January 26 he robbed the Dari Mart in Eugene at eight-fifteen in the evening. Again, he used Band-Aids over his nose. The twenty-three-year-old female clerk said he'd worn a brown corduroy or suede jacket with a hood and sheepskin lining. Again, no one saw a car.

  Kominek turned to Holloway. "That's the pattern so far. It's quiet from here to Eugene after January 26. But it looks like that's because he was in California for the next several days. Almost two dozen cases that have to be the same man. There may be more that we don't even know about yet. What do we do now? Plant a stakeout in every fast-food spot between Canada and Mexico? If anybody had that much manpower, we might stumble onto him in a year or so. He's killed already; he's not liable to stop."

  District Attorney Chris Van Dyke agreed that the time had come to coordinate the investigation in person with the California investigators. On February 6 Van Dyke, Kominek, and Holloway chartered a private plane and flew to Medford. There they met with detectives from the Shasta County Sheriff's Office, the Redding Police Department, the Yreka Police Department, and the Ashland, Medford, and Grants Pass police departments. Chris Van Dyke and the Marion County detectives presented the facts of the cases that they had come up with. And then the Shasta County investigators discussed their cases. They had conferred with the police north of them. There were more incidents to discuss.

  The Shasta County investigators presented the information they had gathered that seemed surely to be the violent handiwork of the same suspect. The cluster of attacks in California and southern Oregon had occurred in a time frame that marked the man an insatiable sex prowler. Sergeant Rusty Brewer and investigator Ron Kingsley described attacks that were like carbon copies of those Kominek had received from Washington and northern Oregon. They went over the Eckard-Jarvis murders again for the benefit of the group.

  Donna Eckard and Janell Jarvis had been alive at six P.M. on February 3 (when Kristin talked with her mother on the phone), and their bodies still warm at nine P.M. (when Kristin discovered the murders).

  "Now it looks like that wasn't the first hit on the third," Rusty Brewer said.

  It seemed impossible, but the Shasta County sergeant said they had found another case on February 3 whose M.O. was almost identical. Earlier on the same night, a woman and a teenager working at the Burger Express restaurant in Redding had suffered an ordeal at the hands of an unknown suspect.

  Marie Sloane, forty-six, owner of the Burger Express, was in the kitchen, and Lia Morris, eighteen, was at the front counter when a man with dark wavy hair walked in. He was over six feet tall and wore a wool cap, a windbreaker, faded jeans, and expensive jogging shoes. His hands were concealed by blue gloves with gray trim. Lia Morris looked up to take his order and saw that he was pointing a silver revolver at her. The man placed himself in a position where he could watch both women, and then he turned to Mrs. Sloane.

  "Sit down, and you won't get hurt," he ordered.

  Mrs. Sloane instructed Lia to get the money out of the cash register. The girl complied and handed it to the gunman.

  He told Mrs. Sloane to lead him, with Lia in tow, to the bathroom. She obeyed, and the man told the shop owner to kneel down on top of the toilet. He taped her hands behind her back and then taped her ankles together. When she was helpless, he taped her mouth shut with a broad strip of tape. And then he turned to Lia and barked, "Take your clothes off."

  While he was waiting for the teenager to remove her clothes, the gunman fondled Mrs. Sloane's breast, but went no further. He was waiting for Lia. Then he ordered Mrs. Sloane to get off the toilet and face the door. When she said she couldn't move, he helped her to the floor and warned her to keep her face toward the door.

  In the tight confines of the restroom, the intruder then turned to Lia Morris. The girl sobbed, terrified, but there was nothing her employer could do to help her. The gunman forced the girl to fellate him, but he did not ejaculate. He pushed her to the floor facedown and attempted anal sodomy. Still not satisfied, he demanded oral sex again. Finally he climaxed.

  Finished with his victims for the moment, he fastened his clothes. They thought he was going to shoot them, but, providentially, Mrs. Sloane's husband stopped by the burger shop to check on her. She heard him outside the bathroom door, pushing against it, and then the man with the gun calmly saying, "It's busy."

  Their captor opened the door and held the gun on her husband, forcing him into the bathroom. But he did not shoot them; they could hear his steps running away.

  The women had come very close to death, but they were lucky. Lia Morris was ta
ken to a hospital for treatment, and the Sloanes estimated their loss at two hundred and thirty dollars.

  Within the next hour, someone shot and killed half of the Eckard family in Mountain Gate, less than ten miles away.

  Yreka, California, is seventy miles north on the I-5, located on the other side of the Shasta National Forest, twenty miles south of the Oregon border. Almost exactly twenty-four hours after Donna Eckard and Janell Jarvis had been shot to death, Jessie Clovis, twenty-one, got into her Maverick after buying cigarettes at a liquor store in the north end of Yreka. She was about to start the car's engine when a man who looked to be in his mid-twenties suddenly opened the driver's-side door. She whirled, surprised, and saw a dark man who wore a green down jacket.

  "Move over," he said. "I've got a gun."

  She moved over and he said, "Don't look at my face."

  She stared instead at the gun, and saw what seemed to be a small silver revolver with white grips. All she could think was: I can't believe this is happening.

  She slid her eyes sideways, and she could see that the man wore blue jeans and running shoes. She let her eyes move up, and she could see his sports gloves, a watch cap, and the wide swath of tape covering the bridge of his nose. He did not realize that she had seen him.

  The man adjusted the seat to fit his long legs, started the engine, and backed the car out. He made a right turn on North Main Street and headed north toward Highway 263.

  "May I have a cigarette?" she asked.

  "No. And don't look at my face. Do you have any money?"

  "A twenty-dollar bill."

  "Is it in your purse? Get it for me."

  She fished out the bill, and asked him if he wanted the change too, but he said she could keep that.

  It wasn't money he was after anyway. He wanted to know the whole history of her sex life. Did she? How many men had she had? She said she didn't know. About how many? Jessie Clovis finally said, "Two," and began to cry.

  "Stop crying. I'm not going to hurt you."

  He ordered her to lie down across the seat so that her head was in his lap. She had to brace herself with her hand on the dashboard to keep from falling to the floor. He asked if she'd ever given oral sex before, and she said no. He forced her to unzip his pants, and she cried harder. Her tears seemed to anger him, and he demanded that she stop crying.

  "Do what I say. You understand that, don't you?"

  He asked if he could touch her breasts, continuing to use gutter language, but he hadn't really sought permission; he was already fondling her.

  He seemed to want approval. He wanted her to tell him how much she was enjoying what he was doing. He squeezed her breasts until they hurt, and she obeyed and she said what he wanted her to say. She lied and told him that his hands pleased her.

  "Do you let your boyfriend do this to you?"

  "No."

  "Why not?"

  "Because it's wrong."

  He was silent for a short time as the car hurtled down the highway, but the man had plans for Jessie. He ordered her to touch her own body intimately, and she pretended to do so. Now he ordered her to fellate him. She refused, and he grabbed her by the hair and bent her over his penis. She gagged, and that pleased him.

  "I'm bigger than your boyfriend, aren't I?"

  Jessie lied and said she guessed so.

  Her abductor gave directions, demanding that she do this … and this … to him to stimulate him. She was sure she was going to die if she didn't do everything he asked. At length he ejaculated into her mouth and hair. She fought to keep from vomiting.

  They were still racing down the highway, getting farther and farther away from populated areas. He promised her that there would be more; he insisted that she masturbate herself so she would be moist and ready for him. He was obviously having a good time, and he seemed almost casual about what he was doing to her. He kept her pinned flat to the front seat of her car so that no car passing by could see her.

  She felt his thigh harden as he braked, and heard him say "Oops gotta turn around."

  The car stopped and made a U-turn. She hoped and prayed that they were heading back toward Yreka. It seemed to be only four or five minutes before she felt the car slow again and pull off to the side of the road and stop.

  "Take your pants off, and your underwear, and your shoes," he ordered. "Now, get in the backseat. But keep your head down and don't look at my face."

  The dark man told Jessie Clovis to bend over so he could enter her from the rear. She obeyed him, but he was annoyed because he hadn't achieved a second full erection.

  Slowly he became erect, and now he toyed with her. "I could either come inside you or pull out and make you drink my come. It's up to you."

  She could not bear to fellate him again. Resignedly she told him to ejaculate inside her. But he was playing a sadistic game; he'd only wanted to find out which act would upset her the most, and she'd given him his answer.

  He demanded that she swallow his ejaculate. She started to cry again, and he barked at her to stop. Her sobs spoiled the game. It seemed necessary for him to be accepted as if he were truly her lover. She tried to pretend; she wanted to live.

  "That was good, wasn't it?"

  She nodded, wary of angering him.

  "Now," he said, "lie back down."

  She saw something in his hand, and knew that now he was surely going to shoot her with the silver gun. But he held only a roll of white tape. He showed her the tape, and she saw that it was half gone. He taped her wrists together so that she couldn't move, and then he took a rag and wiped the seat clean of any fingerprints he might have left.

  "Don't go to the police," he warned. "If you do, I'll just say that you picked me up hitchhiking and you asked for it. They'll believe me. That would be an embarrassment for you." Jessie lay weakly on the rear seat as the big man climbed back into the front and started the car, heading toward Yreka.

  "Why did you do this to me?" she asked finally.

  "Because all women are alike," he snorted. "They only give you pussy when they want it. My girlfriend was a waitress and fooled around behind my back. She attracted a lot of men, and that made me jealous. I'm a very jealous guy."

  Jessie tried to keep him talking so he wouldn't stop the car and rape her again. "Why did she do that to you?"

  "Because she was a bitch. She put out only when she wanted to. Like you — you should give it to your boyfriend all the time."

  She moved slightly to relieve the pressure on her wrists and shoulders. He heard her.

  "Don't move!"

  "Are you going to kill me now?"

  He laughed. "No, I'm not that kind of a guy. Do you think I'm that kind of guy?"

  "No. No, of course not."

  She asked what he was going to do with her, and he replied that he would drop her off in front of the store. She asked for her clothes so that she wouldn't be left naked on the streets of Yreka, but he refused, saying that she might try to get away.

  And then she could see streetlights through the car windows, and felt the car stop. He was gallant now. He explained that he had stopped between some parked cars so that no one could see her.

  "Okay?" he asked cheerfully. "Now, don't report this to the police."

  "I won't," Jessie Clovis lied.

  The dark man reached back and grabbed her breast and shook it lightly. And then he was gone.

  Jessie raised up in the backseat and saw his broad shoulders disappearing toward Sambo's Restaurant by the I-5. She struggled to get the tape off her wrists.

  It took her fifteen minutes before she was free. Trembling, she threw her clothes on and drove to her home. Then she called the Yreka Police Department.

  She described her rapist. "Twenty-five to thirty. Six feet tall, 175 pounds. Brown hair. Short beard and mustache. Tape or Band-Aid over his nose. Blue watch cap, green jacket, blue jeans, white tennis shoes. Nickel-plated revolver, approximately four to six-inch barrel."

  The description was beginning t
o sound familiar.

  Rusty Brewer told the other officers at the Medford meeting that the Shasta County investigators had found more cases, all of them along the I-5 freeway, and all within a week of the double murder in Mountain Gate.

  On January 29 a twenty-year-old clerk working alone in Winchell's Donut Shop in Grants Pass, Oregon, had been accosted by a man who fit the familiar description. He had robbed the shop of seventy dollars and fondled both the clerk and a teenage customer.

  Only an hour later, the man with the tape on his nose held up the Richards Market in Medford, Oregon, thirty-five miles south on the I-5. He used the same silver revolver.

  The investigators at that first meeting had little doubt that they were all looking for the same man. The physical description, the M.O., and the connection to the I-5 freeway all matched. That was circumstantial evidence, very strong circumstantial evidence, but only probable.

  The next day, lab reports gave the investigative team absolute physical evidence correlation. The bullets found in the bodies of Donna Eckard and Janell Jarvis matched exactly the bullets removed from Shari Hull and Beth Wilmot. They had been fired from the same gun.

  And there was more; the surgical adhesive tape that had been used to bind the victims in Grants Pass, Medford, Redding, Yreka, and Shasta County not only matched in all classes and characteristics but also had come from the same roll! The torn edges could be approximated.

  By coordinating their efforts, the investigators could have a virtual army of detectives working against time to catch this sexual sadist who apparently thought no one had connected his myriad crimes. Given the magnitude of the danger the suspect posed, was the "army" big enough?

  On the trip back from Medford, Kominek made a wager with Holloway. "Where do you think he'll hit next? I'll put my money on Albany or Salem."

  "I'll match you." Holloway responded, "but I say Corvallis or Eugene."