A CLOCKWORK MURDER: The Night A Twisted Fantasy Became A Demented Reality

by Steve Jackson

  Peggy blamed the loss of her daughter’s affections on Lemon and hated him for it. She reacted like a mother bear protecting her cub, so much so that she fantasized about hurting him. One particularly black afternoon, depressed and missing Jacine, she pulled up in front of a pawnshop and considered going inside to purchase a handgun. She sat there imagining what it would be like to drive the five hours to the town where Lemon worked and then seeing the look on his face when she shot him.

  Of course, she knew that she couldn’t act on her urge. She was just venting. The anger, however, remained so strong that she sought counseling. It helped her realize that Jacine was not a child, and she couldn’t protect her daughter from all harm anymore.

  Peggy had been overjoyed when Jace announced in January that she wasn’t seeing Lemon anymore. Only recently had mother and daughter patched the quilt of their relationship and started talking frequently again on the telephone.

  So considering Peggy’s well-known animosity toward Lemon, it had been a surprise to hear his voice on the answering machine. But the surprise gave way to fear. Lemon said he’d heard something on his police scanner about the Colorado Springs police looking for Jacine. He left the name and telephone number of a detective in “the Springs.”

  Bob Luiszer called the telephone number that Lemon left, as Peggy hovered next to him. He was connected to a detective who told them that the police had received a report of a woman being abducted from an apartment complex parking lot by two men. The detective said there’d been a number of witnesses to the alleged abduction. Someone even had the presence of mind to take down the license plate number of the car used by the men to take their victim. A purse had been found in the parking lot containing a driver’s license belonging to Jacine Gielinski.

  The Luiszers asked if they should get in their car and drive to Colorado Springs. “No, just stay put until we find out more what’s going on,” the detective said.

  So began a vigil of sitting at the small table in the kitchen, waiting for updates from the police. Not knowing what else to do, Peggy called her friend and neighbor, Cathy, who rushed right over, assuring her that it was all “probably just a prank.”

  At some point, Peggy got up from the kitchen table and wandered into Jacine’s bedroom. The walls were painted lilac, purple being her daughter’s favorite color, and the room reflected Jace’s personality clearly. It was filled with trophies and stuffed animals—especially lions, the mascot of her alma mater Littleton High School—and peopled with photographs of her family and friends.

  The room offered little except to remind Peggy that its owner was missing. So she left and went back to the kitchen to wait. Every so often, the telephone would ring with a new update from the Colorado Springs police, none of them good.

  There was a call to say that the police had learned the identity of the man suspected of driving the getaway car. They needed to ask a few questions. Did Jacine know anyone named Lucas Salmon? A friend or, perhaps, someone she might have met high school?

  The Luiszers said they’d never heard the name, but they looked through Jacine’s high school yearbook just in case. There was no Lucas Salmon. She had a cousin named Luke who lived in Arizona, they told the detective, but they knew of no one with that last name.

  More time passed, and the dark outside pressed in against the windows. Then the ringing of the telephone slapped them out of their private thoughts. It was the police again. They’d located the car outside an apartment building and were talking to two male suspects. Another question: Did the name “George Woldt” ring a bell? No, they replied, he and Salmon were strangers to them and, as far as they knew, to Jacine.

  The Luiszers held on to a ray of hope, but their grip slipped with each telephone call. The next one informed them that the suspects’ car had been searched. Several items had been found in it smeared with what appeared to be blood. That was when Bob knew it was hopeless. The tears welled in his eyes as he recalled the last conversation he’d had with Jacine. She’d been talking about her dead father, but she stopped to reassure him of his place in her life, as she always had when there might be some question. “He was my father,” she said, “but you’ll always be my dad. You’ll be the one who’ll be walking me down the aisle someday.” The words echoed in his mind now as the tears rolled down his cheeks. He knew there would be no marriage, no tears of joy. But he tried to stay strong for his wife.

  Peggy was a wreck, weeping, staring with fear at the telephone every time it rang. She kept hoping that she was about to wake up and find out it was all a dream. Wake up, wake up, she told herself. But the nightmare kept unfolding telephone call by telephone call. She took down a photograph of her daughter taken that previous Christmas that had been on the mantel above the fireplace. Jacine smiled at her in that way she had that made anyone who saw it smile back. She was so pretty—blond curls to her shoulders, blue-eyed—yet she was no porcelain doll. Her beauty was enhanced by the aura of an accomplished athlete.

  Suddenly it struck her, there was no more pretending. Peggy knew when she looked at the photograph that her only child was dead. Murdered. The word infested her mind like a cancer, eating up everything around it until there was nothing else but the blackness it left behind. Murdered, but why? Who would want to kill such a lovely young woman? Her daughter got along with everyone; she had friends in all walks of life, many of them since childhood. Peggy had never once heard her daughter say that she hated anyone, or that anyone hated her. What could she have done now that someone would want to kill her?

  The Luiszers knew she was gone and yet they didn’t know, so they waited as the minutes dragged on beneath the harsh fluorescent light in the kitchen. The telephone rang again at 2:30 a.m. “This is the hardest thing I have to do as a police officer,” began the detective on the other end of the line.

  Peggy never heard the rest. She began to scream. “They killed her!” she yelled and wept at the same time. “What did they do to her?” She reeled as if mortally wounded, as though she felt her daughter’s torment.

  Bob Luiszer watched his wife, helpless to do anything for her. He wanted to break down himself, but he remained on the line to listen to the last thing he would ever have expected to hear.

  The detective said that they’d located Jacine’s body. She had been murdered. The two suspects had confessed and took the police to the scene of the crime. Lucas Salmon and George Woldt were under arrest and being questioned further. There wasn’t much else, he said, that he could tell them until after the autopsy later that day. “I’m sorry,” he added.

  Crying without reservation now, Bob wanted to ask one more question, but he was afraid of the answer. At the last moment, he mustered the courage. “Did she … did she suffer?”

  There was a pause. Then, softly, the detective answered, “Yes, she suffered.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “I thought it was just a joke”

  Sgt. Jerry Steckler, who was heading up the initial response, ran the license plates and found they belonged to a 1985 Ford Thunderbird registered to Lucas Salmon, whose date of birth was given as February 9, 1976. The detective quickly ascertained that the address on the registration was for a business, Motorcycle Accessories Warehouse.

  At ten minutes after midnight, Steckler called the owner of the business, Bob Salmon, at his home and asked if he knew Lucas Salmon. “He’s my son,” Bob said, confirming that Lucas drove a gray Ford Thunderbird. He told Steckler that his son wasn’t living with him, but thought he was staying with a friend, George Woldt, and Woldt’s wife, Bonnie. He produced a telephone number for the Woldts.

  Tracing the number to an apartment at a condominium complex on King Street, Steckler and other officers arrived outside the building. A gray Thunderbird was parked in the driveway. The sergeant looked through the windshield and saw an identification card belonging to Lucas Salmon lying on the dashboard.

  Steckler approached the front door while other officers took up positions until they had the place s
urrounded. Officer Tom Heath crept up to the front window, which had its blinds pulled down, but he could just see under them into the lighted living room. When Steckler rang the doorbell, Heath saw two pairs of feet move to the front door. The sergeant knocked again and shouted, “Police officer!” This time the lights went out and Heath saw the feet walk out of the room.

  Getting no answer, Steckler radioed to the dispatcher and asked her to call the apartment and announce his presence. He heard the telephone ring in the apartment, but no one answered it.

  At that point, Steckler told Heath to go around to the back of the apartment and break a window to get the suspects’ attention. A minute later, there was the sound of shattering glass and Heath shouted that he was a police officer.

  At the same time, a frightened voice from within yelled, “Hey!” Then the dead bolt on the front door clicked and the door was opened by a young man with dark hair.

  With his gun drawn, Steckler told Woldt to back away from the door. “Are you armed?” the sergeant yelled.

  “No,” Woldt said. He was wearing a white polo shirt and black slacks, the pockets of which he now emptied at Steckler’s command, placing a pager and a silver-colored nail clipper on the table.

  Another young man entered the room. His head was shaved and he was wearing a striped shirt and jeans. He was followed by an obviously pregnant woman, who tried with limited success to keep a bathrobe wrapped around her as she kept asking, “What’s wrong? What’s wrong?”

  Steckler immediately had his officers separate the three occupants of the apartment. He told Heath to take the dark-haired suspect, who’d identified himself as George Woldt, outside. The woman—who said she was Woldt’s wife, Bonnie—was escorted back into a room where her son was sleeping.

  The bald male identified himself as Lucas Salmon. Steckler sat him down on a couch in the living room and told him why there were there. Witnesses had seen a woman assaulted and kidnapped by two men, who’d driven away in a vehicle matching the description of his car and license plate.

  Salmon said he had no idea what Steckler was talking about. He and his friend George had been playing pool at the Comer Pocket all night until they came home.

  It was a few minutes after 1 a.m., and Steckler asked Salmon if he minded if police officers searched his car. Salmon mumbled something incoherent so the sergeant repeated his question.

  The police discovered Jacine’s bloody sweatshirt and the murder weapon, a common kitchen knife, in the trunk of Salmon’s car. (Photo courtesy of Colorado Springs Police Department)

  Salmon sighed. “Yeah, go ahead. You can search it,” he said. He handed the keys to Steckler, who got up and passed them on to Officer Olav Chaney, who’d just arrived from the kidnapping scene.

  Chaney and another officer looked first at the interior of the car. There was a Bible on the backseat, but he saw no sign of blood or a struggle. He next proceeded to the trunk to see if the victim had been placed inside. There was nobody, living or dead, in the trunk, but what he saw was chilling nonetheless.

  Lying inside was a light gray sweatshirt, which was smeared with a dark substance and also a drying red liquid that appeared to be blood. On top of the sweatshirt was a wooden-handled steak knife; the blade of the knife was bent and it, too, was covered with what looked like blood.

  Chaney didn’t touch the items and closed the trunk of the car. Crime-scene investigators would be called in to carefully document and remove the evidence. He walked back into the apartment and took Steckler aside to tell him what he’d seen.

  Steckler nodded and went back to confront Salmon. That’s all it took. The young man said matter-of-factly, “We stabbed a girl.”

  What struck Steckler about the admission was that the way Salmon said it without emotion. He could have been admitting to running a red light.

  As soon as Salmon confessed, Steckler stopped the conversation and advised him of his Miranda rights. But Salmon waived his rights to have a lawyer present and to remain silent. They’d stabbed the girl, he repeated, and left her beneath a white van “near a park.” He didn’t think that she was still breathing.

  The sergeant, a twenty-year veteran, immediately called for more help and alerted paramedics. There was a chance the girl was still alive, but they had to find her quickly.

  The trouble was getting Salmon to recall where he and Woldt left her. It was a dark parking lot surrounded by a fence, he said, but he wasn’t from that part of town and wasn’t sure where they ended up after leaving the kidnapping scene. He agreed to go with them when Steckler asked him to help to locate the victim.

  Salmon was handcuffed and placed in the backseat of Steckler’s vehicle, and they were followed by Chaney. They drove to the general area where Salmon thought he’d been that night. As they checked out different streets, Salmon related bits and pieces of the events leading up to their assault on the girl and then the attack itself.

  Salmon said that he and Woldt had been looking for a month for an attractive woman to abduct and rape. After subduing and raping this woman, they’d discussed what to do next and decided to kill her so that she couldn’t identify them. As he spoke, Salmon’s voice was calm and subdued, a matter-of-fact, monotone recitation of the facts.

  At eight minutes after 2 a.m., they drove over a set of speed bumps that Salmon said he remembered. He noted that they were at the right place when they pulled up next to the Foothills Elementary School, about a mile from the apartment complex where they’d kidnapped Jacine.

  Steckler pulled into the parking lot and saw a white van. He turned on his car’s searchlight and shined it on the vehicle. Even at a distance, it was easy to see there was a nude body lying facedown on the pavement beneath the vehicle.

  As he pulled up closer, Steckler looked in the rearview mirror at the suspect. Salmon sat calmly, his shaved head turned so that he could see the victim, a slight smile playing across his lips.

  Steckler and Chaney stopped their car some distance from the van. The searchlights had caught what appeared to be a large pool of blood on the ground near the van, and they didn’t want to chance destroying or contaminating any of the evidence.

  Chaney carefully approached the body and checked for signs of life. She was cold, and he couldn’t find a heartbeat. So he backed off to wait for the ambulance, which arrived about thirty seconds later. The paramedics also checked for a pulse but shook their heads. They were too late. Jacine Gielinski was dead.

  Back at Woldt’s apartment, George was talking, too. When Salmon confessed, the police sergeant told Officer Heath to read Woldt his rights. As soon as that was done, Woldt turned to Heath and asked, “Could we talk in private?”

  The police officer led him up a flight of stairs to a landing, where Woldt repeated his friend’s confession about the stabbing. However, he added that after they spotted the pretty blond woman in a car next to them at a stoplight, it was Salmon who’d said, “She’s the one” and insisted they follow her.

  Woldt admitted that he was the first one to grab Gielinski. But the whole reason behind the abduction was that Salmon was a virgin and Woldt felt obligated “to find him a girl.”

  When he first started to tell his story, Woldt was emotional, his hands shaking and tears welling in his eyes. But as he got into the tale, he calmed down and he, too, gave an unemotional account of the night. The only time he got flustered again was when he asked what was going to happen to his wife.

  Heath told him that she would be all right legally if she had no prior knowledge of the crime. Woldt blurted out that he “might have” told her after he came home that he’d killed someone. But he calmed down when the officer assured him that his wife was not in trouble.

  After the murder, Woldt said, they drove around for a time, smoking cigarettes and discussing what had happened and its ramifications. Salmon kept accusing him, he said, of coercing him into the act “because we had talked about raping and killing a female so many times.” But Woldt said he never intended to hurt anyone
, “I thought it was just a joke.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  “Looks like a death penalty case.”

  April 30, 1997

  Colorado Springs, Colorado

  Dave Young was sleeping soundly when the ringing of the telephone jarred him out of his dreams. He looked at the clock. It was 1 a.m., not a good time for a phone call to a prosecuting attorney. The news was never good.

  Nor would it be this time. He recognized the voice of Sgt. Rod Walker, who headed the Homicide Unit for the Colorado Springs Police Department. The sergeant briefed him quickly. A young woman was dead, apparently raped and murdered. Two suspects had already confessed and were in custody. The sergeant paused and cleared his throat, then said, “Looks like it could be a death-penalty case.”

  The remark caught Young by surprise. He’d worked with Walker on a dozen or more murder cases, and the normally taciturn veteran had certainly never said anything remotely like that before. If Walker thought it was bad, it had to be really bad.

  Young sighed. Thirty-two years old, clean cut, he was getting ready to leave the district attorney’s office for private practice. He and his wife, Denise, were planning to start a family. It was time to make a little money, something he certainly wasn’t doing as a deputy district attorney for the Fourth Judicial District Attorney’s Office, usually referred to as the El Paso County District Attorney’s Office.

  He was already working on one murder case. It was a “Fatal Attraction” case in which a woman shot her former boyfriend, a well-liked schoolteacher, in the back of the head while he was sleeping. The case was pretty open and shut; the defendant was expected to plead to second-degree murder. When it was over Young thought he would leave the office.

  Young had never gotten into law to be a prosecutor in the first place. He was a local boy, born and raised in Colorado Springs. He left to attend college in Texas and then got his law degree at the University of Wyoming. His first job out of law school was with the Wyoming Public Defender’s Office, filing appeals for prison inmates.