by Ann Rule
There was a TV tray next to a recliner, and it held a familiar red-and-white sack from Kentucky Fried Chicken. Jim Reed cupped his hand around the sack and found it was still slightly warm. It couldn’t have been there for long. When he peered in, he found an order of chicken for one person.
A set of car keys and a pair of sunglasses lay on the floor next to the staircase, and two piles of mail were stacked precisely on a side table. One pile had been opened; the other envelopes were still sealed.
As Reed stepped into the kitchen, he felt the presence of the woman who lived in this house even more. Amazingly, there was a saucepan of corn on the stove. It had cooked down so that it had only just begun to scorch slightly on the bottom.
The double sink was filled with water. The sink on the right held warm soapy water, and the one on the left, filled with cool water, held women’s clothing, delicates that required hand washing.
The woman upstairs had to have come home within the hour and set down her chicken dinner to wait while she cooked some corn to go with it. She had, perhaps, run the kitchen sink full of soapy water and rinsed out some clothes while she waited. She hadn’t even had time to open the paper or read her mail. Now, she lay dead upstairs. It was unreal.
Seattle Police officers F. Aesquivel and A. Thole strung up yellow police tape to cordon off the parameters of a possible crime scene and stood guarding the house and yard while the investigators worked inside.
Inspector Jim Reed headed upstairs. The hallway outside the fire room had sustained very little damage, only some surface blistering on the ceilings and walls. The bedroom beyond, where the woman had died, had similar damage to most of the walls and ceilings—nothing deeply burned at all, just surface burns.
In the fire room, there was a king-size bed against the south wall, a nightstand next to it, a swivel chair, a nine-drawer dresser with a blackened mirror, and the melted TV set on its metal stand. The light switch controlling the single ceiling fixture was in the off position. The only electrical outlet was behind the dresser.
The room was carpeted with thick shag carpeting, and it was this carpet that had pushed against the door, making it difficult for Ochs to open it.
Even though most of the fire room was uncharred, Dorothy Jones’s body had been exposed to such intense heat that her skin had begun to “sleeve” on her legs, forming a thin shell that could be slipped off like a glove. Both of her nostrils were full of soot, and so was her ear on the side that was exposed to the room.
Jim Reed and Sergeant Jim Whalen bent over the dead woman, searching for some sign that she had been attacked, possibly even killed, before the fire began, but they could detect no wounds whatsoever on the part of her body that they could see. Reed took several photographs before Whalen carefully turned her over.
The mystery only grew. There were no wounds on the nether side of her body either—nothing at all to indicate why the woman hadn’t simply gotten up and fled the flames. Perhaps an autopsy would show why. Deputies from the medical examiner’s office removed the dead woman, and the investigation continued.
Reed surveyed the bedroom. There was no damage to the shag carpeting. Fire burns upward, and this was to be expected. The mattress was not burned on top, although the sides were scorched. This tended to eliminate smoking in bed as the cause of the fire. Besides, the ashtray on the nightstand next to the bed held only fire debris, no cigarettes or tobacco residue or ashes.
The nightstand itself was scorched, the telephone atop it melted. The stand and the television set had been only a few inches from the bed.
The two investigators lifted the mattress off its metal frame. The carpet beneath it was consumed, with the most damage just under the center of the bed. The floorboards there were charred.
They carried the mattress out to the front yard. There, under strong auxiliary lighting, they could see that Dorothy Jones’s wallet, checkbook, and savings deposit book were entangled in the bedding. But robbery didn’t appear to be a motive: the wallet held $280 in cash.
When the mattress was flipped over, a mass of fire damage came into view. The worst charring was in the center and on the left edge where the foot of the bed would have been.
It seemed obvious that the blaze in the room had not started accidentally—at least not from the usual reasons that arson investigators expect. They had found nothing beneath the bed that could have started the fire—no wires, small appliances, heating pads, electric blanket controls, candles, matches. Nothing. It was as pristine under Dorothy’s bed as in the rest of her house.
Jim Reed checked the television set. Although the case was melted, the interior wiring appeared intact and undamaged. The on-off knob was also melted, but he removed it and found that the control shaft was in the off position. It was plugged in behind the dresser and the cord was in good condition.
The two detectives moved to the east bedroom just across the hall. Here, there was no fire damage whatsoever. The room was furnished much like the fire room, and it was as tidy as the downstairs. There was a jewelry case on the dresser, and it was full of both costume pieces and expensive rings and necklaces. There was an open packed suitcase on the bed. Clothing bags holding suits and slacks hung nearby—as if someone was about to take a trip. A pair of white women’s slacks, a silk blouse, and a lacy bra were folded perfectly in a neat pile on the bed.
Josh Nathan,* the neighbor who had called in the first alarm, paced outside, waiting to talk to the two investigators.
“Me and the wife always look after Dorothy and Carl’s place while they’re away,” he said. “He’s a long-haul trucker, and he’s out on the road all but one or two days a month. Dorothy’s usually here alone.”
Nathan said that he had picked up his parents at the Sea-Tac Airport earlier in the afternoon, and then picked up his wife on the way home. Shortly after they arrived home, he had glanced out the window and seen the flames.
“I called 911 and my wife ran over there. She told me the front door was unlocked and I went in. I found the corn just starting to burn and I turned the stove off. The lights were on downstairs, but I didn’t see any upstairs. I didn’t go up because the smoke was so heavy.“
The Nathans had seen Dorothy’s car outside her house, but no other cars nearby, and they were sure no one had left the house—at least not after they got home.
Working in the front yard of the Joneses’ house on this increasingly chilly December night, Jim Reed and Detective Bill Berg carefully rebuilt the mattress from the fire room, sifting debris as they worked. They found the remains of a brassiere caught in there, too.
The burn patterns on the mattress confirmed Reed’s first impression. He had thought that the fire had been caused by someone holding a flame under the bed at the center and near the foot. But that would have been a very tight squeeze for anyone who wasn’t really thin.
Or who didn’t have exceptionally long arms.
But why? Moreover, Dorothy Jones should have had time to jump out of bed and escape the inferno before anyone under the bed could wriggle out from the narrow space beneath it.
But of course she hadn’t.
Jim Reed, Jim Whalen, and Bill Berg worked far into the early morning hours on the baffling case. At eight the next morning, day-shift arson investigators took over. Marshal 5 veterans Jack Hickam and Gary Owens attended the postmortem on Dorothy Jones. King County medical examiner Donald Reay performed the autopsy, and he was a pathologist who always looked for even the smallest sign that signaled an unnatural death.
Perhaps there was some preexisting condition that had rendered Dorothy helpless to escape the flames. Maybe she had suffered an injury not easily detectable the night before. She could have been strangled or suffocated, and the bruise marks from the killer’s fingers or the petechiae (broken blood vessels) could be hidden beneath her burned skin.
But Dr. Reay found nothing beyond a small bump over her right eye, and there was no hemorrhaging beneath it. Reay opined there was a slight chance that
the bump had come from a blow to her head that might possibly have knocked her out momentarily—but hardly long enough for her to lie there unconscious and die from smoke inhalation. And he didn’t really think she had sustained even that.
Her flesh had no needle marks, and the blood tests would come back with negative readings on blood alcohol and a wide spectrum of drugs. Reay acknowledged that there were “dozens” of more obscure drugs that could have been administered and gone undetected.
The blood from Dorothy’s heart chambers was bright cherry red, an indication of carbon monoxide poisoning. There was a 61 percent concentration of carbon monoxide in her blood, more than enough to kill her, but that was a result of the fire.
The official cause of her death was “death by asphyxiation due to inhalation of products of combustion.” Her severe burns had been sustained after her death.
In the end, her autopsy showed that Dorothy Jones had not been strangled, shot, knifed, beaten, or smothered. There was no obvious reason why she hadn’t fled the burning room.
Yet she had not.
Evidence of rape or recent intercourse showed on the vaginal swabs taken. A test for acid phosphates showed that there was semen present in her vaginal vault, which turned the swabs reddish purple. Dorothy had engaged in sexual intercourse shortly before her death. The man involved had no sperm cells in his ejaculate; he had had a vasectomy to render him sterile. According to criminalist Ann Beaman of the crime lab, intercourse had taken place the truck driver’s wife within two to four hours before Dorothy died; an active woman will not retain semen in the vagina longer than that.
Jim Reed set out to find out everything he could about the victim—how Dorothy had spent her last hours, her lifestyle, the human relationships that might have led to her murder. He was to discover an extremely complex woman, one who was different things to different people.
One of Dorothy’s elderly in-laws told Reed that she had passed by the Jones house at four that afternoon and she was positive that Dorothy’s 1974 Cadillac was not parked in front at that time. “Dorothy’s the only one who ever drives that car,” the woman said. ”If it wasn’t there, that meant she wasn’t there.”
A woman neighbor recalled seeing Dorothy come home just after 5 P.M. on December 20. At 6:20, she was dead. That narrowed the time frame to what should have been quite workable for the investigators. These two witnesses substantiated that the crucial time period was less than an hour and a half.
An hour and a half to come home, start dinner, remove her clothing, make love, or perhaps submit to a rape.
And die.
Dorothy’s husband’s aunt had nothing but good things to say about her. “Dorothy’s always been good to me,” the woman said. “She usually drove me to work every morning and she was always calling me to be sure I was all right. I talked to her Sunday morning and she told me she was going to the Esquire Club that night and would be out late. Then, on Monday morning, she said she was too tired to drive me to work. I tried to call her Monday night at five-fifteen and there was no answer. When I tried a few minutes later, someone picked up after three rings. But no one spoke. I heard some rustling movement and then the phone just got hung up. I tried again and the line was busy.”
Asked if her niece-in-law had any male friends, the woman shook her head. “No. Ohh, no—I don’t think so. Dorothy’s a very nice girl.”
Jim Reed called the doctor whose name was on a prescription bottle found in Dorothy’s home. It was for a sinus condition. Nothing dark or mysterious about that. The doctor recalled that Dorothy had been in an auto accident in October 1975 and had sustained back and neck injuries.
“She also complained of blurred vision.”
“She ever have dizzy spells?” Reed asked.
“No—not that I know of. She never told me about any condition that might have caused her to lose consciousness or faint.”
Dorothy had received a settlement from an insurance company after that accident—something around $10,000.
Maybe that settlement could explain Dorothy’s magnificent wardrobe. She had 115 blouses (the cheapest estimated at about $60), 50 pairs of slacks, 37 dresses, 24 nightgowns. And she had shoes, boots, and accessories to match. Although her husband surely made a comfortable living as a long-haul trucker, it hardly seemed adequate to clothe his wife like a movie star.
Carl Jones himself arrived in town at 2 P.M. on Tuesday, December 21. Marshal 5 Inspectors Hickam and Owens met him at the house where his wife had perished only the day before. Jones, who had been delivering a load of furniture in Dallas the previous night, was shocked and incredulous about his wife’s baffling death.
He said he had arrived in Dallas the previous day, unloaded his van, and driven to his mother’s house in San Antonio. That was where he was when he got the phone call from a neighbor late Monday night telling him that Dorothy was dead.
“I got the first flight I could today to fly home to Seattle,” Jones said tearfully, clearly overwhelmed by his loss.
Asked about his marriage, he said that he and Dorothy had been together for sixteen years, ever since she divorced her first husband. They had had no children. Their marriage had been a good one, although they actually spent very little time together since he was on the road four weeks a month. He seemed about to say more but stopped speaking, too grief-stricken to go on.
Jones said he felt the whole picture surrounding Dorothy’s death was “fishy.” He could not understand how anyone could have gotten into their house without Dorothy’s consent, and she was much too smart to be tricked by anyone.
“Dorothy never stayed ten minutes alone in the house without locking all the doors,” Jones said. “It was reflex action for her to turn the locks behind her.”
He confirmed the investigators’ impressions about Dorothy Jones being a woman of precise habits, almost fanatically neat.
“She always slipped off her shoes at the door, and she put on bedroom slippers. After that, she took her street clothes off in our spare bedroom and folded them real careful.”
That was just as the arson detectives had found them.
“How about in the house?” Jack Hickam asked. “Did she sometimes walk around without clothes—after she locked the doors?”
“No way. She was a very modest woman. She never walked around naked!”
The next questions were more difficult. Hickam and Owens tried to be tactful as they approached the question of Dorothy’s possibly having a boyfriend when Jones was out on the road.
“I never suspected she had one, nothing like that—although we were separated so much of the time because of my job. I just don’t know. I’d hate to think that was true.”
On December 28, Jim Reed received a call from Carl Jones. He said he had gone to his home at 8:25 in the morning and found the front door ajar and a back door wide open.
Jones said he couldn’t stand to live in the house where his wife had died, and he was preparing to move. He had had the couple’s belongings packed by a commercial mover. All the nonfurniture items from the downstairs had been sitting in boxes in the living room. The upstairs rooms were not yet packed. Someone had entered the home—although not forcibly—and thoroughly ransacked it.
“I locked the place up myself at six-thirty last night,” Jones told Reed, “and I don’t know of anyone else who has a key. Only me and Dorothy.”
Oddly, Jones said, he hadn’t found anything missing.
“I can’t be sure of everything Dorothy had, of course, but the only thing that seems to be gone are some wooden kitchen tools.”
Criminalists from the Seattle Police Department dusted the living room and obtained some good latent prints from the underside of a marble coffee table.
In the mid-seventies, unfortunately, the Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) didn’t exist. Most people didn’t know what a computer was, and there certainly weren’t state or nationwide clearinghouses where computers had huge banks of known prints. The FBI’s Crim
e Lab filed single fingerprints from their “Ten Most Wanted” felons on the run, but that was all. Unless the detectives found a suspect whose fingerprints could be compared to those retrieved from the coffee table, they were virtually useless.
Beyond those few latent prints, they had no clues they could link to whoever had entered the home the Joneses had rented for nine years, or any discernible motive. If Dorothy Jones had been murdered, maybe her killer had panicked, remembering some item in the house that would point to him, and returned to retrieve it. It couldn’t have been a set of inexpensive wooden spoons and spatulas.
And when Carl Jones first got home, he had searched the house and hadn’t found anything that didn’t seem to belong there.
Jim Reed talked with the manager of the Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise that was identified by the number on the receipt. He learned that the receipt found in the carry-out bag in the victim’s living room on December 20 showed that the food had been purchased in the fifty-fifth sale of the day.
“According to our usual pattern that should have fallen somewhere between three and four-thirty,” the manager estimated.
So Dorothy was alive at three, alive at five. Where had she spent the rest of her day? There were many facets of the investigation that didn’t fit with Carl’s aunt’s description of her as “a nice girl.”
On January 3, Carl Jones came into the Marshal 5 offices that were located in Station 10 near Seattle’s historic Pioneer Square.
His face looked strained as he told the arson investigators that he had been asking questions, and gotten some answers that he really didn’t want to hear. He had come to the conclusion that his wife hadn’t been completely faithful to him.
“I’ve heard some rumors,” he said. “They say that Dorothy was seeing some guy—some businessman. His name is Dante Blackwell.”*
At Jim Reed’s request, Jones looked over the address book found in the scorched bedding, and he pointed out other names there that he didn’t recognize. There were seven.