The I-5 Killer

by Ann Rule

  An autopsy on Julie's body produced a bullet from deep in her brain. It was a .38, the kind of bullet used in Smith and Wesson .38 Specials. Time of death was estimated as having occurred between three and four A.M. on February 15. Acid-phosphatase tests were positive for the presence of male ejaculate, and the man who had raped Julie had left behind the semen that marked his blood as Type B with no PGM enzyme factors. There was not enough fluid left to isolate positive or negative RH factors.

  Sheets from Julie's bed were stained with the same type of semen. Both Julie's mother and her roommate were adamant when they said that Julie had not been sexually active in recent months. The semen stains on her sheets had to be fresh.

  It was impossible to tell whether intercourse had taken place before or after the victim's death.

  Dave Bishop is a "charter," a detective who believes that if only enough information is gathered and recorded, the truth will eventually surface.

  "We had a huge office," he recalls, "and we soon had all the walls covered with butcher paper. Every name, every connection — no matter how slight — to the victim was jotted down. I want to see what I'm doing, study it, read it, talk to it. If you can see it written down, sooner or later the common denominator is going to jump out at you."

  Within a week of the murder, Bishop's crew of detectives had questioned over a hundred people, taken reams of statements, and given three dozen polygraph tests — all of which cleared the subjects.

  And all for naught — or so it seemed.

  One bit of information listed on the chart came to the Beaverton detectives through a circuitous route. A woman who worked in the lunchroom of a school in Aloha, Oregon, had overheard a conversation among several teachers. One of the teachers' sons, a student at Beaverton High School, knew someone who had seen a Volkswagen Bug driving up and down the street in front of Julie Reitz's town house very late on Valentine's night. The car had finally pulled over to the curb and the headlights were flashed off and on.

  Pretty thin stuff, but the words "Volkswagen Bug" were printed on one of Bishop's butcher-paper charts.

  Neal Loper and Dave Bishop continued to question friends of Julie Reitz, and then friends of friends, always with the same question: "Will you list for me everyone you can think of that Julie knew? Will you try to remember where she went, and with whom? Even if it doesn't seem important, we want to know."

  The butcher paper inched around the Beaverton office, and the blank spaces on the paper filled up. If a name appeared twice, it was starred. Somewhere, Bishop believed, there was a connection, if they could only link the correct factors.

  Forty-five miles southeast of Beaverton, in Salem, Dave Kominek decided that another joint meeting was needed.

  In Oregon, the state attorney general's office is available to assist city and county jurisdictions with criminal investigation and prosecution. Kominek talked with Bob Hamilton, chief assistant attorney general in the criminal division. Hamilton had lost the election for Marion County district attorney in a close race with Chris Van Dyke, but there was no enmity between the two attorneys. Hamilton agreed that the I-5 Killer case was one to which the state office should offer whatever assistance it could.

  Kominek organized a joint meeting to be held in Roseburg, Oregon, and Bob Hamilton served as chairman of that session. The attorney general's office would print and disseminate information on the I-5 Killer to all agencies who might be involved. The Oregon State Crime Lab would handle all the evidence turned up in that state's cases, and the Department of Justice Crime Lab in Redding would evaluate evidence from California crimes. All Washington evidence would go to the Western Washington Crime Lab in Seattle, whose director was famed criminalist George Ishii.

  A massive force of detectives, forensic science experts, and prosecuting attorneys was about to concentrate all its efforts on one man. The need for haste had accelerated. The roster of crimes was growing.

  In going over new cases sent to him, Dave Kominek could see that the I-5 Killer had apparently returned from California on February 4. Wherever the man's home base was, it had to be located midway up the Oregon coast. He seemed to work north, south, and west of that general location.

  On February 12 the suspect had headed north again. It was a busy night for him, frightening proof that his crimes were accelerating.

  He started in Vancouver at a quarter to six in the evening, when he robbed the Sassy Dress Shop on Main Street of fifty dollars and bound the elderly clerk with adhesive tape.

  An hour and a half later, he was in Olympia, Washington, a hundred miles north on the I-5 freeway. He forced two teenagers into a freezer of a drive-in restaurant and subjected them to sexual abuse before cleaning out the cash register. He left his victims locked in the almost airless freezer.

  By ten P.M. he was in Bellevue, Washington, confronting two employees at a Dairy Queen as they were counting the day's receipts. He grabbed the stack of bills, locked the male employee in the freezer, and turned to the young woman.

  Five minutes after the bearded man with the Band-Aid on his nose left, his third set of victims in one night called the Bellevue Police Department. The case was assigned to Detective Gary Trent. The assailant was long gone; he had used his standard escape route, the I-5 freeway.

  The composite pictures drawn in Vancouver and Olympia and Bellevue were almost identical. And they were, of course, almost identical with all the other composites.

  The atmosphere at the Roseburg conference was tense; instead of the new information on the suspect they'd hoped for, the officers attending were hearing only about more cases — unsolved cases. Dave Kominek described the I-5 Killer's M.O.:

  "The subject hits various businesses in the evening hours, normally between five P.M. and eleven P.M., with emphasis on the early-evening hours. He goes in when there is a lull in business. We believe he is armed with a thirty-two-caliber silver revolver. In most instances, he ties or tapes his victims — with hands crossed behind their backs and ankles He usually picks businesses with young women on duty, and often with two young women. He has them disrobe, but he only unzips his trousers. He forces victims to masturbate him or to perform oral sodomy. With older females he usually only fondles. He invariably takes his victims to the back of the building where they cannot be seen from the street. He sometimes removes the telephone receiver to prevent victims from calling for help."

  Kominek wrote on a blackboard:

  Tape on nose.

  Green jacket or windbreaker-type jacket.

  Hood or ski cap.

  Fake beard.

  Gloves — ski, sporting, driving.

  No odors detected.

  Soft-spoken, rarely uses profanity.

  Macho — considers his penis is large, and brags about it.

  When he leaves, orders victims to count to 100 or 500.

  Vehicle thought to be left several blocks away.

  White male — 25 to 28.

  5' 11" to 6' 1 ", medium build.

  Dark hair, possibly curly.

  Dark eyes — "sad eyes" or "tired eyes."

  Good-looking. Possible acne scarring.

  Weapons: .32-caliber 6-shot revolver, nickel- or chrome-plated.

  Smith & Wesson model 60 stainless-steel .38

  Special 5-shot with a 3" barrel, wood grips.

  Vehicle: Volkswagen Bug???

  There was a tentative psychological profile. The handouts noting the profile were stamped "Confidential." No one but the detectives should know that much about the suspect at that point.

  "Subject is a male Caucasian, possibly recently divorced or separated from girlfriend. Released within the last year from some type of institution. Has a very macho image of himself. Is the type to drive a four-wheel-drive or sports-type car. Uses false beards as a possible macho symbol. The Band-Aid is simply to hide behind. This man is probably the type who would be considered a very nice person by the people next door. Primary motivation is sexually related. Subject is a loner and possibly ha
s latent homosexual tendencies.

  "Our man has herpes," Kominek continued. "Several of his victims have contracted the disease after being sexually abused. As far as we know, he has never attempted normal intercourse; his fetish is oral or anal sodomy. I don't have to tell you how frustrating this investigation is. We know what he looks like, we know his patterns, and we even know where he hits — but he's playing cat and mouse with us. When we're looking in Oregon, he's in Washington or California. He may act like a monster, but he looks like the guy next door. There are probably a lot of people who know him well, who think he's a great guy — people who are going to be struck dumb when we catch him. He's as dangerous as any subject most of us will ever encounter, and he's stepping up his attacks. He's killed at least three times, he's attacked children, and he's attacked women. He's in some kind of sexual frenzy. Let's go get him."

  The detectives at that Roseburg meeting could not know just how closely the profile correlated with the characteristics of the man they sought. He could not know just how much they knew about him.

  He thought he was home free.

  Each agency attending the joint meeting was given the responsibility of checking out and eliminating suspects in cases in their jurisdictions. Information on every suspect who could not be eliminated would then be forwarded to Dave Kominek in Marion County. A photographic mug lineup with all the composites to date would be sent to all agencies concerned.

  When the meeting was over, each investigator knew what all of the others knew. They knew so much … and yet so little. They didn't have a name. They didn't have a face.

  Marion County District Attorney Chris Van Dyke called a news conference; he could not possibly warn all of the women in Oregon, but he hoped his words might alert some of them to the danger. Van Dyke's usual broad smile was absent as he talked to reporters and television cameras. He told the press that there had already been two dozen incidents of sexual attack on young women who lived and worked near the I-5 corridor.

  "Unfortunately, the common thread that runs through a lot of these cases is a situation where two women are together in isolated Laundromats, businesses, their homes, and places of employment."

  Van Dyke said that authorities had real fears that the killer might strike again in Salem within the next few days. He stressed that he did not want to create a climate of fear but that he had no choice but to warn women.

  Monty Holloway spoke up. "He's probably one of those individuals that, when he's caught, all of his neighbors will say: 'I can't believe it. He's such a nice guy.' "

  "He could be your next-door neighbor," Kominek added.

  Women were afraid. Teenagers working in fast-food outlets and convenience stores near the I-5 jumped at shadows. More calls came into police departments, but no one really knew who the killer was. None of the information helped.

  The murder of Julie Reitz on February 15 did not seem to be connected to the epidemic of violence along the freeway. Julie had been killed in her own home, and almost certainly by someone she knew. The I-5 Killer, on the other hand, seemed to choose his victims in a totally random pattern. Furthermore, Beaverton was west of Portland, and not on the direct route along the I-5.

  Dave Bishop and Neal Loper worked long hours on their case. Dave Kominek and Monty Holloway continued to work seven days a week on trapping the I-5 Killer. The Marion County detectives had never heard of Julie Reitz; the Beaverton detectives had heard of the I-5 Killer, but the M.O. wasn't right for their case.

  The man with the Band-Aid disguise continued to attack women.

  Three days after Julie Reitz died of a bullet in her brain, a customer walked into the 7-11 store on Coburg Road in Eugene at three-twenty-five in the morning. He waited patiently for the clerk, but no one appeared to wait on him. And then he heard a muffled thumping sound coming from the back room. A little uneasy, he walked back and found the female clerk lying on her stomach, her hands and feet bound tightly with surgical tape and a swath of the stuff over her mouth. Quickly he freed her and called the Eugene police.

  The I-5 Killer had struck again. This time, he had stopped at sexual molestation.

  Detective Ron Griesel of the Eugene Police Department took over the investigation at three-thirty that morning. Griesel spent most of the night going over the 7-11. He gathered what slight physical evidence he could find. There were no usable fingerprints. There was adhesive tape in the storeroom, and more of it was found in the street outside the convenience store. There were a Band-Aid box and a Band-Aid, thrown away when the robber was through with them. Saline swabs were brushed across the victim's nipples on the faint chance that the suspect's blood type might be isolated in the saliva he'd left there.

  Griesel found what might have been a real bonus: the television camera that constantly scans the aisles and counters of all 7-11 stores. Several frames from the videotape were snipped and then frozen. But when they were blown up, they proved to be disappointing; in some of the frames, the man was out of sight below the counter. In others he appeared only as a tall, slender figure in a dark jacket whose hood obscured his features. He was as elusive on videotape as he had always been.

  There seemed to be no end to it. The map on Kominek's office wall had new flags marking new incidents, more drawings of the familiar bearded face. The man had been prowling for more than three months, and the weary detective wondered if they were any closer to catching him than they had been at the outset of the probe.

  As if to thumb his nose at the police again, the suspect hit three days later; he didn't even bother changing cities. He had varied his pattern only a little; he was working later. Three in the morning at the 7-11. This time, a little after nine at the Taco Time on River Road in Eugene. The two teenage girls on duty were back in the kitchen area, and the place was empty of customers. The girls were wary; they'd read about the I-5 Killer and they were nervous whenever the business lulls came.

  They heard the front door open and looked up to see the tall dark man in the khaki jacket and watch cap walk directly into the food-preparation area. They couldn't see his hands; he had them jammed in his pockets.

  Seventeen-year-old Connie Soldano didn't wait to see what he wanted. She bolted and ran toward the back door.

  "Stop!" the man shouted, and she half-turned and saw that he was pointing a little silver pistol at her. She kept on going, expecting to feel a bullet in her back.

  And then she was free.

  She ran into a neighboring Dairy Queen and grabbed the phone to call the Lane County Sheriff's Office. She felt guilty, leaving her friend alone, and she begged the operator to send help at once.

  The big man had turned his attention to his lone captive.

  "You! You squat down on the floor and don't move."

  Terri Brady did as she was told, and the man ran out. Moments later the Taco Time was surrounded by police officers. Terri signaled to them that the robber was gone.

  And he was — completely gone. No car. Nothing left of him but a wadded-up piece of surgical tape that he'd tossed away onto the parking lot in mid-flight.

  There would be only one more. Time was running out for the I-5 Killer.

  On February 25 he found a setup that appealed to him. He appeared in Corvallis at a small restaurant at eight minutes to six in the evening. The employees were two pretty teenage girls, one of them the daughter of a Corvallis police officer.

  The man watched from his vantage point outside the restaurant, marking time until a customer picked up his order and left. Eighteen-year-old Jill Martin walked outside the restaurant and around to the back of the building where the restrooms were. As he had done before, the bearded man forced his way into the restroom.

  Jill Martin resisted — until she saw him cock the hammer of his silver gun. When he had climaxed, he laughed as she spat his ejaculate on the floor, and then he bound her hands and feet with tape and left her alone in the dark room.

  It took Jill fifteen minutes to free her feet. She could not get the tape
off her hands, but she stumbled to the door of the restaurant and kicked at it until her friend heard her and let her in.

  The semen found on the bathroom floor by Corvallis detectives was tested by the Oregon State Crime Lab. It was the ejaculate of a man with B-negative blood with no PGM-enzyme characteristics.

  Kominek and Holloway read this last report, and Kominek slammed it on his desk.

  "Enough! Dammit, that's enough! It's time our side got lucky."

  And finally it did.

  CHAPTER 13

  In Beaverton, Oregon, Captain Dave Bishop and Detective Neal Loper were as stymied with the progress of their murder case as Dave Kominek and Monty Holloway were with the stalemate in tracking the I-5 Killer. While both departments were peripherally aware of the other's investigations, all the detectives were working around the clock on their own cases. Anyone who has not been caught in the vortex of an intensive murder probe can never really understand what is involved. Detectives' lives are literally put on hold while they work day and night in a boiler-room situation where nothing else matters. They eat, sleep, and breathe the details of the homicides and their minds are a jumble of possibilities — most of which are reviewed, analyzed, and then discarded. If they make a mistake, even one, there is the dread possibility that someone else is going to die, and it will be their fault — or they will believe it is their fault.

  Bishop's ulcer flared up, and he gulped antacids and ignored it. Both he and Loper saw their homes infrequently, and then only to catch a few hours of sleep. The memory of Julie Reitz's body on the stairway of her own home haunted them. The thought that someone had held a .38 to the back of her head was ugly. The pretty, slender girl could not have been much of a threat; she had clearly been shot either because someone hated her so much that he wanted to destroy her or, more chilling, because he wanted to silence her.

  They kept coming back to the concept that Julie's killer had to have been someone she knew. They were sure they had already cleared the most likely suspects. That meant that it must have been a man who moved just outside the edges of her usual life, someone from her past that most of her friends had forgotten about — or even someone she had recently met.