by Ann Rule
That was all they could prove at the time. DNA identification lay in the future, and Type A is one of the most common blood types.
But the man who claimed to be “Carl Johnson” had come to the attention of police in another jurisdiction even before Geri Slough’s body surfaced. In reality, he was Charles Raymond Schickler, thirty-nine. A few days after Geri Slough disappeared, he was arrested by Kitsap County deputies in connection with an auto theft and break-in.
The car, a 1979 Grand Prix, was being checked by Washington State Patrol troopers after he appeared to know a great deal about the disappearance of Geri Slough.
It had apparently all been an elaborate plot to lure young women to Schickler. There was no Comp Tec. Although Schickler had no history of violence, he had been arrested for mail fraud. A dozen years earlier, he had used another alias to place an ad in a coin collectors’ magazine offering rare coins for sale. According to court records, he collected $6,000 but never delivered any coins.
Charles Schickler had long suffered from manic-depression, soaring from ebullient plans to bleak depression. Once, when he was in the manic phase of his disease, he had leased a huge space and installed fourteen phones for a business that was only in his head.
But Schickler, a former mental patient, would never answer questions about Geri Slough or anything else. Using a sheet, he hung himself in his cell in the county jail, without ever explaining what had happened after Geri Slough arrived at his “office.”
Geri Slough’s murder and the Green River murders shared headlines on western Washington newspapers for a few weeks, and then the Slough case disappeared.
But the Green River headlines continued.
Any time a murder is still unsolved within forty-eight hours of its discovery, the chances that it will be solved diminish in direct proportion to the time that passes. Now, the term serial murder was being used to refer to the Green River Killer, whoever he was.
With the press clamoring for more details, Dick Kraske gave them something—information that was already a rumor on the street. He said publicly that all six known “river” victims had died of “asphyxiation,” although he would not say whether it was by strangulation or suffocation, and turned away more questions by being somewhat inscrutable, “There are different ways of strangling people,” he said.
How many victims were there, really? There was no way of telling. If disappearances weren’t reported, no one would know to look for them. And almost all the girls who worked on the street had several names. They had a real name, and sometimes more than one real last name because a lot of them had come from broken homes with a series of stepfathers, and then they had more exotic-sounding street names.
In retrospect, there were far more missing women than anyone knew. Despite the reasons they chose not to live at home, many young working girls kept in close touch with their mothers or their sisters, calling at least once a week to allay their relatives’ fear, and as a kind of lifeline for themselves. But others flew free, far away from home and family.
With the holidays ahead, some families were bound to realize that a daughter hadn’t come home or even called. The detectives wondered if the killer was enjoying Thanksgiving and Christmas with friends or family, sitting down to turkey dinners and opening presents with a clear-eyed smile hiding what lay beneath his mask. Was he a wealthy businessman or an airline pilot who lived far away from the darkened, rain-puddled streets of the Pacific Highway? Was he even, as the predominant rumor among the lay public now said, a police officer himself?
I heard that rumor a hundred times. The killer was a rogue cop, someone the women knew—and either trusted or feared.
10
ALONG WITH FELLOW F.B.I. special agents Robert Ressler and Roy Hazelwood assigned to the Behavioral Science Unit, John Douglas was among the first to agree with Pierce Brooks that there was, indeed, a category of murderers who fit into a serial pattern. Someone taking victims one after another after another after another. There had to be a differentiation between mass murderers, spree killers, and serial killers. The early 1980s brought together the Green River Killer saga and the forensic psychology experts who understood the inner workings of aberrant and destructive personalities.
The B.S.U. had received accolades for its agents’ ability to formulate profiles of killers. They were no more blessed with psychic ability than most working detectives, but they had had the opportunity to interview any number of killers, evaluate their answers, compare them to known truths, and study the affect of their subjects. From there, they connected the psychological dots.
Their profiles were most useful in cases where police agencies around the United States needed second opinions. If they were already weighing the likelihood that one suspect among two or more was the guilty one, profiling often worked. The B.S.U. agents could say, “We think it’s this one.” It was more difficult for them to describe phantom killers from scratch; tests with multiple choice answers are easier than open-ended tests. And the Green River Killer was still a phantom.
In the first six months of the Green River Task Force, there were a number of suspects: Melvyn Foster, Max Tackley, John Norris Hanks, and possibly even Charles Schickler. John Douglas now used his experience and the information supplied to him by the Green River Task Force investigators to draw a profile.
Douglas began with his take on the victimology of the six known dead women. He deduced that all of them were either prostitutes or “street people.” Their ages and race hadn’t seemed to matter to the killer. It had been Douglas’s experience that even the savviest street people could be tricked or fooled.
He felt the lay public’s belief that the killer was a cop or someone impersonating a cop could be on target. Douglas said this was a common device used to reassure or intimidate potential victims. A badge or fake uniform could help someone accomplish his first goal—control over the girls on the street, whose lifestyle made them vulnerable. Calling them “victims of opportunity,” he said they were easy to approach; they often initiated conversation with potential johns.
The F.B.I. profiler sensed that one man was responsible for the death of all the victims, a man who wasn’t worried about being discovered at either the abduction or the body sites.
“Crime scene analysis,” Douglas continued, “reflects that your offender is comfortable at the crime scene location.”
Douglas believed that the killer felt no remorse over his crimes, and that he probably felt that the girls deserved to die. “He probably even feels he is providing a service to mankind.”
“The crime scene further reflects that your offender at this point in your investigation is not seeking power, recognition, or publicity. He is not displaying the victims after he kills them. He does not want his victims to be found, and if they are eventually found, he has the mental faculties to understand that items of evidentiary value will be more difficult to develop…if he disposes of victims in a body of water.”
Next came a more detailed description of a man with no name and no face—yet. It seemed to John Douglas that the man now referred to as the “GRK” had either worked, lived, hunted, or fished near the Green River area. Like most serial killers, he would be highly mobile, although he would be most likely to choose a conservative vehicle at least three years old. It was probably an ill-cared for van or a four-door car.
“Your offender has, in all probability, prior criminal or psychological history,” Douglas wrote. “He comes from a family background that included marital discourse [sic] between his mother and father. In all probability, he was raised by a single parent. His mother attempted to fill the role of both parents by inflicting severe physical as well as mental pain on [him]. She constantly nagged her son, particularly when he rebelled against all authority figures. He had difficulty in school, which caused him to probably drop out during his junior or senior year. He has average to slightly above average intelligence.”
The killer was probably attracted to women, but felt “burned�
�� by them because they had spurned him or lied to him. “He believes he was fooled one too many times. In his way of thinking, women are no good and cannot be trusted. He feels women will prostitute themselves for whatever reason and when he sees women ‘openly’ prostituting themselves, it makes his blood boil.”
John Douglas believed the killer was drawn to the SeaTac Strip and its open prostitution because he had suffered a recent failure in a significant relationship with a woman in his life. It could well be that he had been dumped for another man.
“He seeks prostitutes because he is not the type of individual who can hustle women in a bar. He does not have any fancy ‘line’ as he is basically shy and has very strong personal feelings of his inadequacies. Having sex with these victims may be the initial aim for your subject, but when the conversation turns to ‘play for pay,’ this causes flashbacks in his memory of times past with other women. These memories are not pleasant. The straightforwardness of prostitutes is very threatening to him. They demonstrate too much power and control over him.”
The F.B.I. profiler felt the Green River Killer was “mentally comfortable” in killing prostitutes because of these feelings.
And what was he like in terms of appearance and lifestyle? Douglas pondered on that. “Your offender will be in relatively good physical shape. He will not be extremely thin or fat. He is somewhat of an outdoorsman. We would expect him to be in an occupation that requires more strength than skill, i.e., laborer, maintenance.”
He doubted that the GRK minded getting wet or dirty, because he was used to that from his job and/or his outdoor hobbies. “He will not be very meticulous, neat and/or obsessive-compulsive in his everyday lifestyle. He is a beer drinker and probably a smoker. Since these homicides, he has been doing both with more frequency.”
It was a precise description, yes, but you could go into any tavern and topless bar along the Strip and find several men who fit within its parameters. Scores of men fished along the Green River. Hundreds of local men hunted, drank beer, smoked, felt women had done them wrong, and drove dirty old cars. Where would the task force start?
Douglas guessed that the killer was Caucasian, somewhere between his midtwenties to early thirties, but cautioned against eliminating older subjects because there is no “burnout” with such murderers. “He will not stop killing until he is caught or moves from the area.”
Evaluating what profilers had learned from other serial killers, Douglas opined that he would not stay idle. “He is nocturnal and a cruiser. He feels comfortable during the evening hours. When stress at work or home increases, he cruises the area where the prostitutes are available.”
There was little doubt that the GRK revisited the river and other areas where he’d left his victims’ bodies, and it seemed likely that he was still contacting prostitutes, probably talking to them about the murders.
“He has followed newspaper accounts of these homicides and has clipped out some for posterity and for future fantasy and embellishment. If items belonging to victims are missing [i.e., jewelry], he will give them to the significant woman who is rooted to him—girlfriend, wife, mother.”
Although the Green River Killer had operated in his “comfort area,” Douglas felt that he was now having difficulty sleeping and was experiencing periods of anxiety, scanning newspaper accounts to see how thorough the investigators were. “He fears being detected.”
To ease that fear, the GRK might turn to alcohol, or even to religion.
In the Behavioral Science Unit’s experience, media coverage could have a profound effect on an unknown murderer. If the press stressed that the case had dead-ended and nothing was happening, the killer might feel he was “off the hook” and be able to cope very well with memories of his crimes.
Douglas suggested possible ways the media could help in flushing out the Green River Killer. If they mentioned how advances in forensic science and new techniques were helping to track him, he might well interject himself into the probe hoping to throw the detectives off.
A somewhat grisly suggestion from the profiler was to have the media give the location of cemeteries where the victims were buried. On a night when the Green River Killer couldn’t find a new victim, he might desecrate their graves.
Another ploy that sometimes worked was to create a “Super Cop Image.” The media could glorify one detective as an ultimate investigator assigned to the case. That man could give TV and newspaper reporters derisive quotes about the “demon” killer, while he painted the victims as angelic. This had worked in the past to draw a killer out of the shadows and into a dialogue with the top man.
There was another, opposite, possibility to consider. A psychologist or a well-liked reporter could give statements that the killer was the real victim, not the women of the streets. There would have to be a means for the killer to contact this sympathetic person who he felt would understand him.
What would entice one multiple murderer wouldn’t necessarily be effective with another. But there was a chance one of the schemes would work. The man the task force wanted to find might risk being identified and arrested, or he might be glorying in his success at duping the detectives who hadn’t caught him yet.
When—and if—the investigators had enough probable cause to execute another search warrant, John Douglas suggested that they take special care to take away scrapbooks, pornography, and any personal diaries they might find. Some killers papered their walls with newspaper clips about the murders they had committed, or kept macabre souvenirs and photographs, clothing, jewelry, even locks of hair. These things would be pure gold in a murder trial.
Historically, taking advice from the F.B.I. has often been difficult for local and state detectives, but communication got a lot better with the demise of J. Edgar Hoover. Special agents were no longer encouraged to appear above the crowd, and the exchange of information—once one-sided, with little being offered by “The Bureau”—was flowing more freely.
Even so, there remained a certain enmity. Sharp, old-fashioned cops with long experience at hitting the bricks and canvassing for information still came up with their own profiles, honed by their seat-of-the-
pants instincts. But the F.B.I. and the Green River Task Force were engaged in a war with an unknown killing machine. Anything that would help stop him and trap him was more important than personal egos.
With the wisdom that comes with hindsight, Douglas’s first profile would prove to be very accurate in some areas and totally off the mark in others.
THERE WERE, indeed, more working girls missing in King County than anyone yet realized. Although their names hadn’t yet appeared on an official “missing” list, something truly frightening was occurring.
DEBRA LORRAINE ESTES disappeared on September 20, 1982. She had just passed her fifteenth birthday. The last time her family saw her, she had dark hair permed in a Jheri curl close to her head, and wore little makeup. Debra had run away from home many times, and her mother, Carol, worried herself sick over her while her father went out looking for her. She was a wild child who was impossible to rein in. One of her relatives, who sometimes let Debra stay a few days when she was upset with her parents, tried to explain. “Life was a game to Debra.”
Although her parents didn’t know it, Debra had gotten a prescription for birth control pills at Planned Parenthood when she was only ten. She routinely added four years to her age, and there was no law requiring that parents be notified when teenagers asked for birth control advice.
The last time Debra’s parents had reported her as a runaway was in July 1982. They were never really sure where she was or whom she was with, although that wasn’t for lack of trying on their part. That July, she had come home with a friend who was a few years older than she was, Rebecca “Becky” Marrero. Debra asked if Becky could move in with the Estes for a while, but Carol Estes had to say no, that wasn’t possible. That angered Debra and the two girls left.
Becky found an apartment in the Rainier Vista housing project
, and Debra moved in with her. Through Becky, Debra met a number of men in their twenties. Some were even older, including her boyfriend in the summer and fall of 1982. Actually, “boyfriend” was a euphemism. Sammy White* was a pimp. He and Debra stayed at most of the familiar motels along Pac HiWay: the Moon-rise, Ben Carol, Western Six, and the Lin Villa in the south end of Seattle. Whether Sammy knew she was only fifteen isn’t known.
The Esteses had had three children, but they’d lost their son, Luther, in an automobile accident. And now Debra was missing. Their other daughter, Virginia, worried with them.
As young as Debra was, she had nevertheless been booked at least twice into the King County Jail, and her mug shots looked like two different people. The most recent one showed a girl with golden blond hair, wearing very heavy eye makeup and bright red lipstick. Even her own mother would have had trouble recognizing her. Blond or brunette, Debra was extremely pretty and very petite, but her young life was troubled.
She went to a King County deputy some time in September 1982, telling him that she had been hitchhiking on the highway when a man in a white pickup truck opened his door and agreed to take her to the SeaTac Mall on S. 320th Street. Instead, he had driven to a lonely road and forced her to perform oral sex and then he raped her. He had stolen what money she had. But when Debra Estes reported the sexual assault, she used her street name: Betty Lorraine Jones. She told detectives Spence Nelson and Larry Gross that the rapist was about forty-five, five feet eight inches tall, and had thinning brown hair and a small mustache.
When the two detectives located witnesses who had seen the truck going in and out of the wooded area Debra described near 32nd Avenue South and S. 349th Street, she agreed to file charges. It was about September 20 when Larry Gross picked her up at the Stevenson Motel in Federal Way and took her to the sheriff’s office to view “lay-downs” of mug shots of suspects. Spence Nelson drove her back to the motel. Neither detective knew Debra by her real name. She was “Betty Jones” in the pending case, a witness who had suddenly bailed on them.