The I-5 Killer

by Ann Rule

  COUNT II:

  Violation of Section 187 of the California Penal Code, a felony. The said defendant … on or about February 3, 1981 … did willfully, unlawfully, and with malice aforethought murder Janell Charlotte Jarvis, a human being.

  It is further alleged that … the said defendant personally used a firearm … a handgun.

  COUNT III:

  … The said defendant, Randall Brent Woodfield, on or about February 3, 1981, did willfully and unlawfully, then being a person over the age of twenty-one, participate in an act of sodomy with Janell Charlotte Jarvis, a person under the age of sixteen years.

  There were ten counts listed in the document naming Randy Woodfield: two counts of murder, one count of sodomy, two counts of robbery, three counts of burglary, one count of oral copulation, and one count of rape. All of the Shasta county victims, it was hoped, would one day have their turn in court. Two of them were dead, and physical evidence would have to speak for Donna Eckard and her daughter Janell.

  California wanted Randy Woodfield, and wanted him badly. But even though the arrest warrant was dated August 27, 1981, California would have to wait a long, long time to confront Randy.

  Oregon Courts were far from finished with him.

  The delay must have given Woodfield some comfort. There was, at the time of his crimes, no death penalty in Oregon. (The death penalty has been reinstated in the intervening years, but it is not retroactive.) In California, Woodfield would be walking into the long black shadow of the gas chamber.

  Hard on the heels of the ten charges and the arrest warrant out of California, Shasta County District Attorney Steve Carlton announced that he would seek the death penalty if and when Woodfield was tried in his jurisdiction. California homicide trials are bifurcated. That is, the jury first decides if the defendant is innocent or guilty. If the defendant is found guilty of first-degree murder, the same jury is retained to dictate what the penalty will be. California law permits the death penalty in special circumstances. Among those special circumstances are multiple homicides and homicides committed during the commission of another felony crime. The Mountain Gate murders were committed during the course of a burglary — the theft of Steve Eckard's revolver.

  With the specter of a cyanide "egg" dropping into a vat of sulfuric acid waiting for him down the line, Randy Woodfield's trial in Benton County, Oregon, may have seemed a far lesser threat.

  In September 1981, the news about Woodfield dealt almost exclusively with the Benton County trial. A change of venue had been denied. Former District Attorney — and now Judge — Frank Knight reasoned that extensive pretrial publicity could be expected almost anywhere in Oregon as much as in Corvallis. Knight stressed that the key to a fair trial depended more on careful jury selection.

  As trials often are, this trial was delayed. Instead of beginning in September, the new date was set for November 2. The charges in Corvallis were sodomy, kidnapping, and being an ex-convict in possession of a firearm in the attack on the young waitress in the restaurant.

  The second set of charges included sodomy, robbery, and sexual abuse in the attack on the eight-and ten-year-old Green sisters in Corvallis on January 14. And the third set of charges stemmed from the February 9 incident in the Corvallis fabric shop: robbery and sexual abuse.

  But there were more — the charges in Linn County, resulting from the attack — also on February 9, in the Albany Laundromat: attempted kidnapping, sodomy, and an ex-convict in possession of a firearm.

  Jackson County, Oregon, and Washington State authorities would have to stand at the end of a long line to prosecute Woodfield.

  The word "overkill" comes to mind when one considers the charges piled on charges against him, but then, the same word is chillingly apt when contemplating the crimes which resulted in those charges. Rarely in the Northwest, if ever, has there been a suspect whose alleged crimes occurred on an almost-daily basis.

  On Monday, October 12, 1981, Marion County Circuit Judge Clarke Brown pronounced sentence on Randy Woodfield in his conviction in the shootings of Beth Wilmot and Shari Hull. Beth Wilmot sat quietly in the back of the courtroom as Brown asked her attacker if he had any remarks to make before sentence was pronounced.

  He did. Randy Woodfield's incongruously high, soft voice sounded sincere. "I stand before you in complete innocence."

  "Thank you, Mr. Woodfield," Judge Brown responded, polite as always, but he was hardly moved. He stared down at the prisoner in front of him, his face grim.

  "Now, Mr. Woodfield, you have been found guilty by a jury of your peers of murder, attempted murder, sodomy in the first degree, and sodomy in the second degree. I sat there and listened to all of the evidence, although I was not the trier of the fact or of the credibility to be given the evidence, or to the witnesses who took the stand. I will assure you this — I agreed wholeheartedly with that verdict, with the verdicts that were handed down by the jury. I have found that you do have a severe personality disorder which indicates a propensity to criminal activity and this, of course, gives the power to the Court to enhance the sentences from twenty years maximum to thirty years.

  "Basically speaking, there are four factors which this Court takes into consideration when it sentences a person. One of them is separation. Are you a danger to the community? Two is the deterrence. Will it deter you or will it deter anyone else in the future? Three is retribution, the old eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth idea. And number four is rehabilitation. Each case is different just the same as each individual person is a different person, and, as a result, the Court must put certain weights differently in each case on each of the four factors which are involved.

  "Now, as to rehabilitation, although the law says that this was murder, the method in which this was accomplished was nothing more than execution. It reminded me of nothing more than the 'Godfather' coming to life. The execution of Miss Hull and the attempted execution of Miss Wilmot was, in my mind, the most coldblooded type of execution which this Court has ever heard. The two acts of sodomy were vicious. Frankly, I do not think that rehabilitation is very much in the picture within this sentencing.

  "Now, as to separation, Mr. Woodfield, I very definitely feel that you are a danger to the community and that the community has the right to be separated from you

  "And then we come into the third … deterrence. The sentence which I am going to impose, I think will deter you from any further ever (sic) committing any crime, and I sincerely hope that the sentence which I give to you will make other people think twice before they commit such a crime …

  "As to Case Number 125,510, which is murder, it is the order of the Court that you be placed in the legal and physical custody of the Oregon Corrections Division for the period of the remainder of your life. As to Case Number 125,511, attempted murder, it is the order of the Court that you be placed in the legal and physical custody of the Oregon Corrections Division for an indeterminate period of time — not to exceed thirty years — which shall run consecutively with any other sentence imposed today. As to Case Number 125,512, it is the order of the Court that you be placed in the legal and physical custody of the Oregon Corrections Division for in indeterminate period of time not to exceed thirty years, which shall run consecutively to any other sentence imposed today.

  "As to Case Number 125,513, it is the order of Court that you be placed in the legal and physical custody of the Oregon Corrections Division for an indeterminate period of time not to exceed thirty years, which shall run consecutively to any other sentence imposed today."

  Judge Brown's eyes bored into Woodfield. "I have made the sentences consecutive because the Court has found that you are a menace to society. And the Court has the duty to protect the public by the use of consecutive sentences in order to protect the public from further criminal conduct by you. This Court is making the strongest possible recommendation to the Oregon State Board of Parole and Probation that you serve a minimum of fifty years before you are to be considered eligible for release.<
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  "… If the death penalty in Oregon had not been declared unconstitutional, I would have no hesitancy whatsoever to say, 'Mr. Woodfield, you are going to die … ' "

  Randy Woodfield fit within the parameters of the Oregon legal definition of a "dangerous offender." As such, the maximum sentences for each of the crimes he had been convicted of could be increased. And, indeed, Judge Clarke Brown gave Woodfield the maximum sentence.

  Life in prison plus ninety years. "If you are released earlier, it will not be because the Court has failed in its duty."

  CHAPTER 24

  The Benton County trial in Corvallis might seem superfluous. Why bring a man into trial when he has already been sentenced to life plus ninety years? There are many reasons. Chief among them was the chance that the Wilmot-Hull verdict might be reversed on appeal, an appeal whose wheels were already in motion. Not likely — but within the realm of possibility. Next, there was the victim's right to confront her attacker, a right that is just as important — if not more important than — the defendant's right to confront his accuser. Further, more and more judges, prosecutors, and detectives have become angry and frustrated at the number of criminals who commit two, or three, or dozens of crimes for the "price of one."

  Since one of the Benton County victims was the daughter of a law enforcement officer, it was not surprising that she wanted her day in court. Jill Martin had been terrorized in the restaurant restroom on February 25 in Corvallis; she had heard all her life that unless victims are brave enough to testify, criminals go free. She was not about to let that happen.

  Jury selection began on Monday, November 2, 1981. This time, the selection went rapidly and by day's end eight women and four men had been seated in the jury box.

  Woodfield had a new defense attorney. Jim Hilborn of Corvallis had been court-appointed to defend him. He also had a new alibi.

  Arden Bates, his former landlady — but mistakenly identified by the press as "Woodfield's girlfriend" — had changed her story and was now prepared to swear that Randy had been home with her and her son in Springfield on the night of February 25. Perhaps Arden was suffering pangs of guilt; she had been the one who turned over her phone records to Captain Dave Bishop. Those phone records played a major role in tracing Randy's violent peregrinations along the I-5 freeway — and in convicting him in his first trial.

  Arden, reversing herself, had flung herself into Randy's arms in the Salem courtroom, telling him how sorry she was. Randy's ultimate "forgiving nature," and barrage of letters had apparently softened Arden's heart.

  Kenneth Osher, for the prosecution, would present his own witnesses — three of Randy's alleged victims. After a verbal tussle in court, Judge Knight granted Osher's motion to allow courtroom identification by the three victims: Jill Martin, and the two women who had been assaulted in the Corvallis fabric shop on February 9. Hilborn maintained for the defense, just as Charlie Burt had, that the victims' memory had been tainted by viewing a mug lay-down and then the in-person line-up In Springfield In March.

  Jill Martin took the stand on Wednesday, November 4. Chief Deputy D.A. Osher led her gently through the events of the night of February 25.

  "Can you tell us what happened that night, Jill?"

  "I left the kitchen of the restaurant about eight-thirty to use the restroom. I was just washing my hands and getting ready to go back to work when this man with a small silver gun forced his way in and told me that I couldn't leave."

  "What did he say?"

  " 'Do what I say and I won't hurt you.' He told me to sit on the toilet seat, and I said I wouldn't."

  "And then what happened?"

  "He cocked the hammer of the pistol, and I saw the cylinder move."

  And then Jill had to tell the gallery and the jury the explicit details of the perverted sexual attack. In a steady voice, she said that the intruder had forced her to strip to the waist and perform oral sodomy on him while he fondled her. After he had ejaculated, he had bound her hand and foot with tape, and left her lying on the floor of the restroom.

  "What did the man look like?" Osher asked.

  "He wore a dark stocking cap on his head, and he had a full beard that looked fake. He had a white bandage over his nose. He was about five-feet-eight to five-feet- nine inches tall."

  Jill had misjudged her attacker's height, and it was an error that Hilborn would attempt to blow up to major proportions.

  "So you can be fairly certain that the man was five-eight or five-nine?" Hilborn asked Jill on cross-examination.

  "Yes."

  Randy Woodfield is, of course, six feet, two inches tall. But any expert on witness identification will agree that crime victims and witnesses are wrong about height more often than any other physical characteristic.

  The jury wouldn't know that.

  But the jury had watched, fascinated, as Jill selected Randy Woodfield out of all the males in the crowded courtroom, and said he was the man who had assaulted her sexually.

  Tony Niri, Randy's ex-con, ex-friend, told the Benton County jury that he had watched Randy as he tried out disguises shortly before thanksgiving, 1980.

  "He put a piece of white tape across his nose, and then he put on a fake brown beard and a navy blue stocking cap."

  "Where did that take place?" Osher asked.

  "In my apartment in Portland. We were talking about pulling a job, and discussing what kind of disguises we might use."

  Detective Neal Loper from the Beaverton Police Department testified to the search of Randy's room in Arden Bates's Springfield home. He had seized for evidence — with Randy's permission — a box of adhesive tape and a small gun-cleaning kit.

  Criminalist Michael Howard from the Oregon State Police Crime Detection Lab in Portland explained to the jury how something as seemingly prosaic and mass-produced as white adhesive tape can be reduced to its essential components — thereby making it unique. Howard had tested both the tape from Woodfield's bedroom and the tape used to bind Jill Martin's ankles and wrists.

  "The elemental composition of the tape was the same," Howard explained. "That led me to believe that it was produced by the same manufacturer … and was probably from the same batch."

  Perhaps the most intriguing testimony from forensic science experts came from Jim Pex of the Oregon State Police Crime Lab. Pex is one of America's definitive experts on blood components both in humans and in animals. He lectures frequently, and testifies often as an expert witness. Pex explained to the jury that Randy Woodfield was a "secretor," one of the majority of the human species whose blood type can be determined by analyzing body fluids — blood itself, saliva, semen …

  A semen stain found on Jill Martin's clothing proved to have come from a type-B secretor. This is a relatively rare blood type which occurs in only nine percent of the population of the world.

  And then Jim Pex moved into enzyme characteristics of blood, particularly Randy Woodfield's. "His enzyme genotype was one-two-plus — which narrows it down even further. That genotype is found in only 3.7 percent of the population. When you combine the three characteristics of that semen stain — that is, from a secretor, from someone with type B blood, and from someone with one-two-plus genotype, you are talking about only .27 percent of the population of the world! Randy Woodfield had all three characteristics in his body fluid …"

  Would the jury even be able to understand the highly technical serology testimony Jim Pex had given, all those unfamiliar terms about what makes up a man's blood? Had they believed Jill Martin?

  Apparently they had.

  After only three hours' deliberation, the jury found Randy Woodfield guilty of sodomy and of being an ex-convict in possession of a weapon.

  They had not believed Arden Bates. And they most assuredly had not believed Randy himself — not even when Jim Hilborn had asked him straight out if he had committed the crimes against Jill Martin, and Randy had answered earnestly, "No, I sure didn't!"

  On December 18, 1981, Randy Woodfield's Christm
as season was blighted considerably when he was sentenced to thirty years on the sodomy charge and five years on the ex-convict in possession of a weapon. Judge Knight stipulated that this additional thirty-five-year-sentence was to run consecutively to the sentences handed down in the Shari Hull-Beth Wilmot attack.

  Randy now faced life plus one hundred and sixty-five years in prison.

  Merrisue and Megan Green were spared the ordeal of a trial, the fabric store victims' case was put on hold, as were the Linn County case, all the other Oregon cases, the Washington State cases, and the California murders of Donna Eckard and Janell Jarvis.

  Randy Woodfield was transported once more to the Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem, where he would start doing his time as he awaited new trials through the appeal process. He had left that prison slightly more than two years earlier with promises about the Christian life he planned to lead, with dozens of people prepared to support him emotionally — and financially. Now the man deemed not to be a "violence risk," was back in the "joint," for the rest of his life.

  UPDATE: 1988

  Randy Woodfield was indigent; all of his attorneys were supplied by the taxpayers of Oregon. He was represented in his appeal by Gary D. Babcock, a public defender. Babcock cited thirty cases as precedents as he asked the Court of Appeals of the State of Oregon to reverse Randall Brent Woodfield's convictions for Murder, Attempted Murder, and Sodomy in the First Degree (two counts) in the death of Shari Hull and the near-death of Beth Wilmot.

  Notice of Appeal had been filed November 13, 1981. How bizarre, really. Even as Randy Woodfield was being tried for sodomy in Benton County, his appeal had been filed in Salem.

  Babcock's arguments were familiar; he hit at Beth Wilmot's identification of Randy Woodfield, suggesting her memory was flawed, that eyewitness testimony is fallible. He questioned the State's expert witnesses in ballistics and hair and fiber identification, and he argued that Judge Clarke Brown had not had the authority to invoke the dangerous offender statute when imposing Woodfield's minimum sentence: fifty years.