The I-5 Killer

by Ann Rule

  All in good time, Loper promised her.

  Dixie explained that she knew the second gun had been silver too, only because Randy had told her that it was. She kept repeating that she thought the gun had come from a "private party," but would say no more. The bullets she'd bought for him were for that gun.

  Loper sensed that Dixie was holding back information, and he suspected that she might have actually "ridden shotgun" with Randy on some of his forays. But he doubted that she had been an active participant. Her value to the investigation was the information she had given them — and, hopefully, would continue to give them.

  Like most of Randy's women friends, Dixie had been the recipient of gifts. He had bought her a phone. a sweater, given her eighty dollars for Christmas, and he often filled up the gas tank in her car. "He gave me those things just because I was a good friend."

  "Where did he get all his money?" Loper asked.

  "Well, I thought most of it was from unemployment. He was getting quite a bit from unemployment, and then when he was working at the Faucet and —"

  "He tell you about ripping off the Faucet?" Loper cut in.

  "Yeah."

  “What'd he tell you?"

  "He told me that … ummm … that he had done it."

  But no matter how much Loper and Boutwell pressed for details, Dixie evaded their questions.

  "Let's talk about Valentine's Day weekend," Loper said.

  Now they were getting into the Julie Reitz murder case, and the details of Randy Woodfield's movements on that day were vital to the probe. Dixie seemed to relax a little when the questioning concerning the guns stopped. She was willing to talk about that weekend.

  "He called me up and came over and we went shopping and out to lunch about eleven in the morning on Valentine's Day. Down in Milwaukee, to the Blade Men's Clothing Store, and we picked out a sweater and a pair of pants for that night 'cause he was holding a party at the Marriott for whoever wanted to come."

  Randy had changed into his new clothes at her house and left about six P.M. to go to the Marriott Hotel, but when Dixie had called his room at seven, he wasn't there. He did call her later and asked her when she'd be coming down. But Dixie said she had felt ill and that she never went. Randy kept calling her until about midnight. She didn't hear from him again until nine the next morning.

  "He said he was going in the Jacuzzi and that he had to check out by three. Then he was going home."

  Dixie and her boyfriend had joined Randy that afternoon for racquetball, and she'd found him just as he always was. He had mentioned to her, however, that he didn't need his gun any longer and that he'd thrown it in a river.

  "Has he contacted you recently and asked you to provide him with an alibi?" Loper asked suddenly.

  Dixie was silent for a few moments. "Well, he called me the day before they [the police] came to his house. He said he needed my help because they were suspecting him in that Beaverton girl's murder, and I told him, 'No, I can't help you about that.'

  "I was really shocked, and I go, 'What? they're suspecting you of murder?' and he said it was no big deal, that he just needed my help. Just as soon as I got off the phone, I told my sister that if he did call, to say I was away with one of my girlfriends somewhere."

  "Did he ever tell you that he knew Julie Reitz?"

  "No."

  "Did you know Julie Reitz?"

  "No."

  Dixie said she had known about Darci Fix's murder, and about Cherie Ayers' murder too — through information from Randy — but only that they had been killed, nothing more.

  Jay Boutwell asked Dixie about Randy's sexual preferences, and she appeared embarrassed. Finally she said that Randy seemed to be fixated on fellatio rather than straight intercourse.

  "You've indicated that Randy did like girls," Boutwell said. "Did he ever tell you how many girlfriends he had?"

  "He just dated. He had a lot of girlfriends he dated. Different ones."

  "If you were to draw an opinion of Randall, how would say his opinion toward women is?" Boutwell probed.

  "Well, I'd say he likes women a lot. He's crazy about them. He's just always talking nice about them whenever he's gone out with a girl; he's always said nice things about her."

  "Okay. You feel that he feels he's been wronged by women?"

  "He could have, yeah. He might have felt rejected a few times by some."

  "Okay," Boutwell continued. "So you think that Randall liked girls, but you had a feeling that he thought he'd been wronged by girls … he'd felt rejection?"

  "Maybe by a couple. Well, he used to tell me that he couldn't understand why girls stood him up. And I used to tell him I couldn't see why either, 'cause he was a good-looking guy. And he goes, 'You even stand me up.' But he said that didn't matter because we were just friends … and we kind of laughed about it."

  "Did he describe to you what he meant by the words 'stand up'? Did he explain that to you?"

  "No. He just said they'd stood him up. He just said he didn't know why. He said he was nice to them. He didn't know why they stood him up."

  "He indicate how many times this happened to him?"

  "Quite a few. He says girls always stand him up."

  "Did you feel he had any hatred toward them?"

  "No. He didn't ever seem like he hated them. Every time we ever went out together, he was always asking a lot of girls to dance, and he always seemed happy around them. Always had a lot to talk to them about, was always nice to them."

  Neal Loper excused himself from the interview and went to a phone to call D.A. Chris Van Dyke.

  "She's not telling us everything. She's holding back."

  "Arrest her for hindering prosecution," Van Dyke decided. "I'll file a material-witness complaint against her."

  A shocked Dixie Palliter was advised of her rights under Miranda. When she was placed under arrest, she suddenly remembered that she had, indeed, seen Randy Woodfield with a silver .32-caliber gun in his possession.

  "But I only saw it once. He had it in the car, right after I bought him the bullets, and he was trying to put the bullets in the gun."

  Later, however, Dixie admitted to the detectives that she had seen the gun again. She had seen Randy cleaning the gun sometime before Christmas 1980.

  "You still say you never went to Seattle with Randy?"

  She shook her head. "He asked me to go with him to see Tim so that he could comfort Tim because Darci got murdered. That was the week before Christmas. He also said that he was going to rob some stores because he needed some Christmas money. He told me about the Baskin-Robbins deal when he got back. He said he wore a Band-Aid over his nose, a stocking cap, and a beard. He said he always went to where girls were working because they were easier. He said he switched jackets sometimes."

  Dixie Palliter was proving to be an essential witness. She was still holding back a little. Chris Van Dyke made the decision that Dixie would have to be granted immunity from prosecution for whatever part she might or might not have played in Randy's crimes. Dixie insisted to Van Dyke that that wouldn't be necessary; she was now telling the truth.

  Dixie told Jay Boutwell and Neal Loper that she had begun to wonder if her good friend Randy might not be the I-5 Killer after she watched television news. She thought it was odd that all the places where the I-5 Killer had struck were places where Randy had been.

  "I even mentioned my worries to him once, but he told me not to jump to conclusions. He wouldn't talk about it. He'd told me before that I shouldn't tell anyone about the gun. He told me that I should be quiet about anything he told me."

  Dixie Palliter was given a polygraph test, which she agreed to willingly. She said that she wanted to clear her name.

  Lieutenant Teuscher of the Oregon State Police administered the test at three P.M. on March 11.

  Teuscher found that Dixie was deceptive in her negative responses to the following questions:

  "Did Randy Woodfield tell you about killing anyone?"

&nb
sp; "Were you with Randy Woodfield when he committed robberies or murders?"

  "Did Randy Woodfield tell you where he threw the gun? Or were you with him?"

  "Do you know the exact location where the gun was thrown or gotten rid of?"

  "Do you know where Randy Woodfield purchased the silver gun?"

  "Have you ever been in the state of Washington with Randy Woodfield?"

  "How many times have you purchased gun ammunition for Randy Woodfield?" (When Dixie answered "Once," the polygraphs leads registered deception.)

  "Did Randy Woodfield ever give you any money which was the proceeds of a robbery or theft?"

  "Were you ever with Randy Woodfield when he committed any murders?"

  Dixie still was holding back. And she always would. But she had, of necessity, been promised that nothing in the polygraph-test results could be used against her in a court of law.

  The silver .32 would never be found. A hundred years from now, it will probably still lie in the muck at the bottom of some river in Washington, Oregon, or California. Still, having the gun itself would not be essential for conviction. The bullets taken from the heads of Beth Wilmot, Shari Hull, Janell Jarvis, and Donna Eckard, and the bullet retrieved after the nonfatal shooting of the girl in Sutherlin, Oregon, had all been fired from the same gun. The lands and grooves left by that gun's barrel were identical on the fatal bullets under a scanning electron microscope. Moreover, the lone .32 bullet found in Randy Woodfield's sports bag had been tested through neutron-activation analysis at Oregon State University and its essential elements were identical to the other bullets, suggesting that it had almost certainly come from the same lot as all the other .32 slugs retrieved. All Remington Peters long.

  This brand of .32 ammunition is rarely sold. Even the biggest outlets for ammunition traditionally sell only one or two boxes of Remington Peters .32 bullets a year.

  The bullet that had killed Julie Reitz had been a .38 probably fired from a Model 60 Smith and Wesson revolver. Shasta County Detective Craig Wooden contacted firefighter Steve Eckard again to ask what kind of bullets he had used in the weapon which had been stolen the night his family was killed.

  Eckard said that he had loaded his own bullets. Wooden obtained some examples of those bullets and hand-carried them to Neal Loper in Beaverton. They were full lead slugs, and one of them was of particular interest. It was jacketed with three-quarters of an inch of copper and had a blunt-nosed lead end.

  It was identical to the bullets taken from Julie Reitz's body.

  It was only after Randy Woodfield had been arrested that the missing .38 Smith and Wesson stolen from Steve Eckard's home surfaced. And it was found as a missing gun might have been found in a detective novel. A boy playing near the banks of the McKenzie River, which divides Springfield from Eugene, glanced into the clear water and saw the shiny barrel of a revolver. He fished it out and turned it in to the Eugene Police Department.

  The gun had a stainless-steel barrel, so it had not rusted; the serial number was easy to read. A Eugene detective, not actively involved in the Woodfield investigation, placed a routine call to California. "We've got a gun here that was probably stolen in a burglary in your state."

  He read off the serial number. Within minutes the word came back. "That gun wasn't taken in a routine burglary — it came from a double homicide scene in Mountain Gate!"

  Steve Eckard's gun had been thrown in a river only blocks from the house on E Street where Randy Woodfield had rented a room. Because the barrel was in no way corroded, the gun was still operable. The lands and grooves matched. The bullets from Julie Reitz's brain had been fired from that gun.

  And yet, as dawning as it might seem, the gun could only be used as circumstantial evidence. No one had actually seen the person who had thrown that gun into the McKenzie River.

  The case against Randy Woodfield continued to grow … and grow … and grow. The phantom killer who had moved up and down the Pacific Coast, convinced that no one would ever identify him, had left all manner of clues.

  Detective Ron Womack of the Beaverton Police Department had been given the assignment of talking with Nancy, Randy's sister who lived in Portland and with whom he had lived off and on when he was between jobs.

  Nancy recalled that Randy had arrived at her home on Friday night, February 13. He had gone out that evening, and returned, she thought, very late. The next morning, he'd complained that he had a hangover. He had left that afternoon to have lunch, he said, with someone named Dixie. His sister had not seen him at all on Saturday night.

  Asked if there were any guns in her residence, she produced a .22-caliber handgun which she'd found, still in its holster, where it had always been.

  Womack had received a phone call from yet another of Randy Woodfield's roster of female acquaintances. This girl, Dru Casey, who had met Randy a year and a half before, reported that something odd had occurred at her home in Beaverton during the early hours of the morning of Valentine's Day, 1981.

  "I was in bed at about a quarter of three in the morning. My boyfriend had just called me from eastern Oregon and asked me to drive over and go skiing. I told him I couldn't, and I went back to bed after I'd set my alarm for seven. Suddenly I saw someone walk by my bedroom window. I got out my can of Mace and went to the window. I saw a tall dark man outside, just a quick glance. I didn't recognize him as Randy Woodfield at the time. The man tried my front door, and I dialed the police department and ran out the back door. Officer Jim Johnson came out and he checked the house, but he didn't find anyone inside. But someone had ripped my phone out of the wall — inside the house — and the screen was off my bedroom window. We never did find out who the prowler was.

  "Later, I found out that Randy Woodfield had been in Beaverton that weekend — and I wondered …"

  CHAPTER 20

  The official indictment of Randall Brent Woodfield on murder and attempted-murder charges came down from the Marion County grand jury on March 16, 1981. Randy would continue to be held without bail. The court appointed a defense attorney for Randy, and he was given the cream of the crop: Charlie Burt. Burt, a former president of the Oregon state bar and the successful defense attorney in some of Oregon's most publicized cases, began at once to prepare a defense. Oregon justice moves swiftly; Randy Woodfield would stand trial within ninety days.

  Randy pleaded innocent to all of the charges.

  A public hungry for details about the handsome ex-football hero would have slim pickings. A Portland television station showed footage of a shiny silver gun, but it wasn't the gun actually used in Shari Hull's murder. Both Chris Van Dyke and Charlie Burt were angry that the broadcast had implied that the actual gun had been found.

  Burt told the press that his primary duty was to see that Randy Woodfield got a fair trial, but he said he could find no cogent reasons for seeking a change of venue from Marion County. There had been so much publicity that there was probably nowhere in Oregon where potential jurors had not heard of his client.

  "Where do you change it to — maybe Mars?" Burt asked.

  Dixie Palliter remained in jail under $290,000 bond. Dixie's friends talked to the press and explained that she wasn't the "kind of girl who would go out and try to get in trouble, but she's rather naive."

  Dixie's mother stressed that her daughter hadn't been that close to Randy. "He's been to the house a few times, but I think they're being a little harsh on her myself. She's never been in trouble. You can't help it if someone you meet commits a murder."

  If knowing a murder suspect was a felony, then there were several hundred young women in Oregon who could be in jail right along with Dixie. Pretty girls all over the state were staring at Randy's face on the news and shaking their heads. He looked familiar to a lot of them — some who'd turned aside his advances, some who'd dated him and found him a little weird, and a few who had actually fallen for him.

  On March 19 the hindering prosecution charges against Dixie Palliter were dropped, and Dixie was held o
nly as a material witness.

  On March 24 Randy pleaded innocent to two counts of sodomy, two counts of attempted kidnapping and one count of being an ex-convict in possession of a firearm in Linn County, these additional charges the result of his alleged crimes in Albany, Oregon.

  He had also been charged with one count of robbery in the Baskin-Robbins holdup in Bothell, Washington.

  Next came charges of sexual assault at the Dairy Queen in Bellevue, Washington, on February 12.

  On April 1 Randy pleaded innocent to seven felony charges in Benton County, Oregon (Corvallis). There were two counts of sodomy and one count of burglary stemming from the attack on Merrisue and Megan Green in their home, robbery and sexual abuse charges from the fabric store in Corvallis, and sodomy and kidnapping charges from the February 25 incident at the fast-food restaurant in the same city.

  If murder charges were to be filed in Beaverton in the murder of Julie Reitz, and in Shasta County, California, in the double homicides of Janell Jarvis and Donna Eckard, the authorities in those jurisdictions were keeping mum about it. Murder trials tend to come about in order of time sequence. The Salem murder had occurred in January 1981, and the California murders had been committed on February 3, with the Beaverton murder on February 14.

  Marion County would have the first chance to confront Randy Woodfield with its case. However, it looked as though Randy Woodfield would spend the coming months in court someplace, no matter what the verdict was in the murder trial that lay ahead in Salem.

  The Shari Hull-Beth Wilmot trial date would be set on May 5 in Marion County Circuit Court. Before those proceedings, Randy was brought down to Judge Wallace P. Carson's court in the green coveralls issued to all prisoners in the jail.

  When he entered the second-floor anteroom, he saw that there were spectators in the courtroom and he asked to be returned to the jail. The request was granted, and he appeared a few minutes later wearing gray slacks, a sports shirt, and a white V-neck sweater.