by Ann Rule
Forgetting completely about the habits of water birds, the man ran to a phone. Seattle Police patrol officers, Tact Squad members, and handlers with their K-9 dogs responded within minutes to the “found-body” alert.
The officers confirmed that there was a woman’s corpse in the park. They cordoned the area off with yellow crime scene tape while they waited for detectives from the homicide unit to arrive.
And then, incredibly, the activity in the park escalated. A man ran up to them, shouting, “Someone just tried to rape my wife!”
The officers quickly determined that the would-be rape victim was safe at the moment—if hysterical. They obtained a description of the suspect in that attack. Since it had just occurred, they figured he was still in the park.
They wanted to find him as quickly as possible—before he managed to vanish into the crowd that had come to beat the heat of the day.
The descriptions they received from witnesses were quite similar to one another. They were looking for a black male, six feet to six feet two, and slender. According to observers, he’d been wearing a soft white hat, red and white checked pants, and a long-sleeved white shirt. That outfit would certainly make him stand out.
On police orders, Seward Park was immediately sealed off; there was no way for the rape suspect to escape unless he went by water, and that outlet, too, was monitored by boats from the Seattle Police Harbor Patrol Unit. Air One, the department’s helicopter, was now hovering overhead.
Two of the patrol officers drove the jogging loop road as they searched for the suspect. They soon came across a pretty female jogger accompanied by her large dog. They warned her of the danger and took her safely to the park gates.
“You know,” she began, “I did see a man dressed in red and white, with a floppy white hat on—”
“Where was he?”
“Near the bathhouse. He started to go down to the north end of the park as I headed south.”
It was a weird situation. The Seattle police might be looking for one man who was responsible for both a murder and an attempted rape. On the other hand, they might be tracking two different men who had erupted into violence during the same twenty-four-hour period. The latter hardly seemed likely.
While the homicide crew headed to Seward Park to start their investigation into what appeared to be a murder, more and more police cars moved in to seal off all exits and to search for the man who had tried to rape the latest victim, who identified herself as Tricia Long.*
Was a killer-rapist stupid enough to return to the park the day after Penny DeLeo vanished, and then assault a second woman? A lot of killers have been known to hang around the rim of a police investigation, reliving the thrill of the murder they’ve committed. If he wasn’t stupid, he was probably obsessed with bloodshed and wanted a front-row seat to watch what came after.
Still shaking, Tricia Long agreed to go to police headquarters to give a statement to detective Merle Carner in the Crimes Against Persons Unit.
Tricia told Carner that she had gone to the park earlier that Wednesday morning with her husband, their baby, and her sister-in-law. The two women planned to jog the loop, as Tricia was training to run in a women’s marathon and wanted to scout the course.
“We made one loop together,” she said. “and then my sister-in-law got a really bad cramp in her leg and we couldn’t massage it away. So I told her I could run alone. My sister-in-law went back to feed the ducks with my husband and our baby.”
“What happened next?” Carner asked.
“As I was running, I could see this tall black man up ahead, who was sitting under a tree,” Tricia recalled. “When I got within about twenty-five feet of him, he stood up and moved onto the pathway. He didn’t look at me—he was facing away from me. He was just standing in the middle of the asphalt path.”
“You weren’t frightened at that point?”
“No, not really. He didn’t seem menacing, but he was acting kind of strange—fidgety—with his hands at his waist. As I passed him, he didn’t make any move toward me. I kept right on running. But then, about ten yards farther on, I heard some footsteps running up behind me.”
Tricia’s words came faster, and Merle Carner noted that her face was washed of color.
“Almost simultaneously,” she said, “he grabbed me from behind with his left arm around my shoulder, trying to put his hand over my mouth. He wasn’t holding me that tightly, but he said, ‘I kill you! I kill you!’ ”
She said she’d fought the stranger, trying to get free of his grip on her shoulder. She had looked to see if he had a weapon or if he was just threatening her.
“I saw a whitish, plastic handled, short kitchen knife about five inches long—like a steak knife.”
“What went through your mind at that point?” Carner asked.
“Naturally, I feared that he was going to rape me. But, when he said, ‘I kill you! I kill you,’ I believed he would. He was pushing me from behind, trying to get me off the roadway toward the woods. We struggled. I started screaming my husband’s name and yelling ‘Help!’ I was fighting him with my arms and legs as hard as I could.
“It seemed like an eternity, but I think it was only about ten seconds. Then he suddenly let go of me and went running off into the woods.”
Tricia Long recalled running faster than she had ever run before, screaming at the top of her lungs, and her husband and sister-in-law heard her and came running. They had tried to call police via a marine radio on one of the boats at the park’s dock, but that failed.
It was at that point that the Long family had come across the police officers who were the first responders to the “found-body” report.
Tricia was sure she could identify her assailant if she saw him again.
It was 10:15 a.m. when detectives Ted Fonis and Wayne Dorman checked out the fully equipped crime scene van. The morning was warm and hazy, and the sun was blurred by a smoky overcast caused by forest fires high up in the mountains east of Seattle. Fonis and Dorman were two of the most experienced homicide detectives in their division, having spent many years there honing their craft. They worked together easily, rarely having to speak. They could almost read each other’s minds.
After passing through the tight cordon at the entrance to Seward Park, the homicide team was directed to a wooded area close to the bathhouse. It was near the north loop on the lower level of the park, and they were glad to see that it was roped off and closely guarded by several police officers.
The two detectives walked up an inclined path into a thick cluster of trees where the path became a lonely trail. The grass here was matted down, as if a struggle had taken place.
They saw soiled clothing just off the trail: a woman’s top, white with blue trim; a pair of running shorts of the same colors; and beige panties.
Her body lay twenty-five feet away. She was nude, save for a white bra, and a pair of green and blue running shoes and socks.
“She can’t weigh more than a hundred pounds,” Wayne Dorman commented. “She couldn’t have put up much of a fight.”
The victim lay on her stomach, with her legs spread wide. They couldn’t yet see her face but saw that she had chestnut-colored hair, cut short.
“I guess we can say that robbery wasn’t a motive,” Ted Fonis said. “She’s still wearing a couple of thousand dollars’ worth of jewelry.”
They looked at her left arm where she still wore an expensive wristwatch. She had a gold band ring with a large diamond on the third finger of her left hand. Ironically, the watch was still running and gave the correct time.
“Whoever he was,” Dorman said, “he was angry. If it was a ‘he.’ Either he knew her and wanted to punish her, or he was mad at the world.”
They could see that the petite woman had been stabbed again and again, too many times to count—in her back, buttocks, thighs, even her neck. Her right wrist was cut so deeply that the tendons had been severed, possibly a defense wound suffered when she tried to fight back.<
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Oddly, a pattern was etched in blood on her thighs and back. It looked like the crisscross soles of tennis shoes. The investigators saw that the same pattern appeared in patches of sand close to the body.
“The canine unit just ran by me,” a patrolman called to them. “They’re tracking someone.”
If the dog had picked up on a scent, the killer had probably returned to the scene of his crime, because this woman in front of Fonis and Dorman had been dead for at least twenty-four hours. Rigor mortis was well established, making her joints rigid, and there were other signs that she had lain in the woods overnight.
Looking through recent missing persons’ reports brought to the park, the detectives were almost certain they had found Penny DeLeo. The clothes were right, the physical description was right, and she had last been known to be heading for Seward Park.
The King County Medical Examiner, Dr. Donald Reay, responded personally to the scene.
“Doc Reay,” as detectives called him, knelt next to the body, examining her back first.
“The bruises near her tailbone and on her upper right hip occurred before her death,” Reay said. “But all these other scrapes on the rest of her back and legs happened after she died. Her killer may have dragged her deeper into the woods so no one could see her.”
Penny DeLeo’s murderer had shown no respect at all to her body, a significant psychological reaction. And this tended to strengthen the impression that he had been consumed with a terrible rage.
Before they attempted to turn the victim’s body over, Reay, Dorman, and Fonis carefully placed bags over her hands, securing them with rubber bands. If she had her killer’s skin under her fingernails, or hairs from his head, or anything else that might help to identify him, they didn’t want to lose it.
When Penny DeLeo was moved to a supine position, they could see that her white bra was stained crimson over her breasts. And now, more wounds were apparent. In a murderous frenzy, the man who assaulted Penny had stabbed her in her chest, neck, and abdomen. A slender gold chain with a precious stone setting was caught in her hair.
“She’s been in the same position since she died,” Reay pointed out, tracing the bright purplish-red striations on her chest, stomach, and legs. They had formed when her heart stopped pumping, and blood sank to the lowest portion of her body.
“This lividity pattern is classic for the prone position she was found in,” Reay said. “There is no secondary lividity that we’d see if she was moved before the initial pattern was fixed.”
Detective Wayne Dorman began to bag the evidence found at the scene: Penny DeLeo’s clothing and running shoes, her jewelry, and even some of the matted plants and weeds that were stained with her blood. The detectives also took dozens of photographs of the body and the surrounding area.
Penny DeLeo had been a strong, vigorous young woman in the peak of health, but no woman as small as she was—or even a tall, husky woman—could have withstood what appeared to be a extraordinarily violent attack. A number of the knife wounds had probably penetrated her arteries and vital organs.
From the position of her body, the motive for the young mother’s murder appeared to be rape—or attempted rape. Perhaps autopsy findings would tell the investigative crew something more.
Penny DeLeo’s car hadn’t been found in Seward Park or within miles of it. It was still missing. If car theft was the reason she was attacked, there would have been no need to kill her. It would have been so easy to simply overpower her and take her car keys.
A description of the missing Toyota Celica was broadcast to all patrol units in the city, along with an admonition to avoid touching the vehicle if it was located. “This vehicle may be prime evidence in an open homicide case.”
When Doc Reay finished his survey at the murder site, Penny DeLeo’s body was removed by the medical examiner’s deputies to await a complete postmortem exam.
As detectives Fonis, Dorman, and Moore prepared to clear the scene, they received news that the patrol units had a suspect in custody. “He’s on his way into your offices.”
A patrol officer searching the southeast portion of the park had seen a flock of crows suddenly take to the air as if they’d been startled. As he watched, he saw a tall figure running toward the water. The officer radioed his position to other police personnel in the park. Tact Squad officers Brian Petrin and Larry Miller were just above the area where the fleeing man had been spotted. They quickly drove their car onto a grassy sweep and spotted the man, who was still running.
But the tall runner had managed to get himself into a dead end when his pursuers drove up to him, blocking him.
He had nowhere left to go when Petrin and Miller leapt from their vehicle with guns drawn.
“Lie on the ground,” Petrin ordered him.
The suspect complied and moved his hands to his back so he could be handcuffed. When they searched him, they found no knife—or weapon of any kind.
He wore no hat, so they didn’t know if he was the would-be rapist who’d had a floppy white hat, but the rest of his clothing matched the description of the man cops all over Seward Park were looking for: wine, red, and white plaid pants and high-topped tennis shoes. If he’d had a white shirt on earlier, he was bare-chested now. His pants were wet—as if he had been wading in the lake.
Advised of his rights, the suspect said he understood.
Although he was bigger than most grown men, at six feet one and 170 pounds, he told Petrin and Miller that he was only fifteen years old. When they looked at him more closely, they could see that was probably true; he had a youthful cast to his features, and areas on his jaw where whiskers hadn’t sprouted yet.
“What’s your full name?” Larry Miller asked.
“Lee Wayne Waltham.”*
“What were you doing in the park this afternoon?”
“I just came down to swim about twenty minutes ago,” he mumbled.
“How’d you get in the park?” Officer Miller asked. “We’ve had it blocked off for almost three hours.”
“A guy I know dropped me off from his boat, and I waded in.”
At Seattle police headquarters, detectives Billy Baughman and John Boatman prepared to question the youthful rape suspect. His clothes were taken into evidence, and he was handed coveralls to put on.
Now, three teams of detectives were working on the intricate case—or possibly two cases. There was still no way of knowing if the cases were intertwined or mere coincidence. Half of the seventeen men assigned to the homicide unit were deep into one phase or another of the murder or the attempted rape.
Detectives Chuck Schueffele, Merle Carner, and Al Lima were talking with the attempted-rape victim, Ted Fonis and Wayne Dorman were processing evidence from the murder scene, and now John Boatman and Billy Baughman were seeing the prime—and only—suspect for the first time.
Investigators, who had spread out around Seward Park, located a maple tree adjacent to the route Tricia Long had taken. It was an ordinary bigleaf maple and there were scores of them in the park. However, this one had a pile of cigarette butts littering the ground beneath it. Anyone who sat or stood there would have had a perfect view of the jogging path in both directions.
Had the rapist and/or killer waited there? He could have had plenty of time to pick and choose the victims that appealed to him most, and the women were probably unaware of his presence as they came jogging by his look-out spot. The huge tree hid him, and he could also have reassured himself that no one else was nearby to identify him.
Lee Waltham said he lived with his parents a block from the park. Baughman and Boatman spent a great deal of time going over the Miranda rights form with him, and they asked that a detective from the Juvenile division be present during their interview.
The suspect admitted early in the questioning that Waltham wasn’t his real name. “My last name is really DuBois,”* he said.
“Why didn’t you give the first officers your real name?” John Boatman asked.
They let that go; they could check on whether they had his legal name later.
“What did you do this morning?” Boatman asked. “Like when did you get up, where did you go, and so forth?”
“I got up about nine thirty, and walked over to the hydroplane pits. They were still cleaning up from the races ’cause, you know, people leave a lot of trash behind.”
DuBois said he’d watched the cleanup crews for a while, and then he’d met a man who’d offered him a ride in his boat.
“Then he took me over by the fish hatchery and let me out in the shallow water,” the tall youth said. “I waded in the water, trying to catch some little fish that were there. I kept my shoes on because I was afraid the crawfish would bite me. I was just getting out to take my shoes off when the two policemen arrested me.”
“Did you assault a woman earlier this morning?” Baughman asked.
“No, I didn’t do it.”
“Didn’t do what?” Baughman asked immediately.
“Whatever you’re asking me about.”
“What did you do yesterday?” Boatman asked.
DuBois’s answer came quickly, almost as if he’d memorized it. “I got up around six thirty and went to the high school to play basketball. I got home at nine. I met my cousin Reilly Jones,* who’s up visiting from L.A., and we went walking over to Boeing Hill. We got home about one thirty. I worked around home, watched TV with my little brother, had dinner, and then did some yard work. When it was dark, I watched the Tuesday night movie and the program after that, and went to bed around eleven.”
It was a very precise, complete schedule of the day before, almost too precise.