by Ann Rule
“I want to give myself up.”
McKenna questioned Meyer gently, never pressing but gleaning as much information as possible. He learned that Meyer was calling from Salem, Oregon, and that he was in a phone booth near a gas station.
“What I’d like you to do, Steve,” McKenna said, “is stay on the line, but stretch the cord so you can just step outside the phone booth there and see if you can give me the address of the gas station next door. I’ll wait while you do that.”
He held his breath, but within thirty seconds Meyer was back on the line and telling him the address. He had to trust that it was really the address where the fugitive was.
Without altering the soft, almost casual tone of his voice, McKenna gestured to Schoener and scribbled on a message pad: “Call Salem State Police office. Have them go to the Texaco station at 1390 Broadway North. Meyer!!!”
Schoener nodded. He quietly placed the call and quickly reached Lieutenant B. L. Kezar of the Oregon State Police and gave him the information. In the meantime, Detective McKenna kept Meyer on the line.
“If I arrange for someone to pick you up, will you wait there?” McKenna asked, as calmly as if he were inviting Meyer to join him for a beer. “I can have them give you a lift.”
Meyer hesitated. “Well, if it doesn’t take too long, I might wait.”
Meyer was waffling, and he sounded as if he was about to “rabbit” on McKenna and run. But the patient detective kept Meyer talking, heaving a silent sigh of relief as Schoener signaled to him that the Oregon officers were on the way.
And then suddenly Meyer muttered, “I have to hang up now.”
McKenna’s heart sank as he heard Meyer go off the line. He could picture him running away before the Oregon troopers got there. He didn’t know that Lieutenant Kezar, along with fellow troopers John Newell, Phil Starbuck, and Kenneth Lamkin, had pulled up to the Texaco station phone booth within five to ten minutes after Dick Schoener’s call.
“This fellow was sitting on the curb,” Kezar said. “I went over to him and he walked to meet me. I said, ‘Are you Steve?’ and he said, ‘Yes.’ John Newell, who’s one of our investigators, was with me and we informed Meyer of his rights. We leaned him up against the car and checked him for weapons, and then we took him to our Salem Patrol Headquarters. We informed him again of his rights as we traveled in the car.”
In Seattle, Owen McKenna and Dick Schoener waited anxiously by the phone, willing it to ring. Finally, Lieutenant Kezar’s voice came over the line: “We’ve got him!”
Kezar questioned Meyer, who appeared to him to be rational. “To the best of my knowledge, the suspect behaved in a normal manner,” Kezar said, “but I hadn’t known him before, so I couldn’t positively state what was normal for him.”
Neither Newell nor Kezar thought Steve Meyer was intoxicated or even hungover. He didn’t smell of alcohol at all.
When they had Meyer take his shirt off, John Newell saw that he had scratches and nicks on his hands and a three-inch scratch on his shoulder, but it wasn’t possible for the Oregon State Police investigator to say for sure how fresh they were. However, one of the cuts on his hand was severe enough that Newell gave him a small bandage for it.
As soon as they knew Steve Meyer was in custody, Owen McKenna put in a requisition for a car, and by evening he and George Berger were on the way to Salem to bring Steven Meyer back to Seattle for arraignment. He had waived extradition, agreeing to return to Washington State.
The two Seattle detectives arrived in Salem late that night. Ruth Coster had been dead only twenty-four hours before her killer was in custody. But it had seemed like a week, especially when McKenna was convinced that when Meyer hung up the phone he had disappeared in Oregon.
On Sunday morning, they looked at the wreck of the car that Ruth Coster had treasured. That afternoon, McKenna and Berger were on their way back to Seattle with Meyer.
• • •
On Monday morning, November 11, Steven Meyer gave a written statement to Seattle homicide detectives. It answered many questions, yet cloudy areas remained. Perhaps nothing could ever really explain his maniacal attacks on November 9.
“I, Steven Terry Meyer, born June, 30, 1948, have been advised of my constitutional rights and choose to make this statement of my own free will, knowing that it may be used against me in a court of law.
“On November 8 about 8:30 P.M., Mallory Gilbert and Ruth Coster came to Dave Romano’s and my apartment. Dave was not home. We met Dave at Brownie’s Tavern and drank beer. Dave and Mallory then went to our apartment, and Ruth and I went to her apartment. We drank and ate stew she made. Then Ruth and I went back to our apartment. Dave was passed out on the couch. I drove back to the girls’ apartment with them. Ruth drove and Mallory sat beside her and I sat by the door. I was drunk. We all sat around and talked at the apartment. I had two or three beers.”
Meyer described where he had put the empty bottles when he finished and said most of it was Rainier beer. His statement verified what the detectives knew: the bottles were on the floor of the kitchen, next to Ruth’s bed, and on the living-room floor, just as Meyer described.
“The girls were tired and went to bed. Mallory slept on the couch and Ruth in the bedroom.
“Ruth had on a pink negligee and black bikini panties when she brought out a sleeping bag and gave it to me to sleep on the living-room floor. The girls went to sleep. I wanted to go to bed with Mallory and I tried to wake her up. She said, ‘No.’ I went back to sleep and later I heard Ruth crying. I went in to see what was the matter and she said she’d had a nightmare. She told me her mother had died in a fire when she was away from home and she’d dreamed about it. She said, ‘I should have been there . . . ’
“I got her a glass of water,” Meyer continued. “Then she asked me to lie down beside her because she wouldn’t be so scared with someone beside her. We started to ‘make out.’ I got completely undressed. We had intercourse—it was the first time we ever had. I dreamed about Linda and I wanted to be with her. I knew she’d leave me if she found out.”
He had not been a faithful lover to Linda Crousseau. He had first attempted to have sex with his former girlfriend as she lay sleeping on the couch, and he admitted to having intercourse with Ruth Coster, despite the fact that the detectives knew that wasn’t true. Her autopsy report refuted that.
“After laying on my side for an hour,” Meyer said, “I went berserk. I choked Ruth with my hands. She struggled for a short time and then went limp. I kept on, and then snapped to and realized what I was doing.
“I tried to wake Mallory, but she wouldn’t wake up and talk to me. I got scared and I went to the kitchen and got a knife from the top right-hand drawer. I tried again to talk to Mallory but she wouldn’t wake up.
“I grabbed her by the hair and I cut her throat from left to right. I cut her again. I hit her twice. We knocked over the coffee table and I hit her again. She headed for the door and I dragged her back. She grabbed my legs and held on. I think she scratched me. She was sitting leaning against the couch. I squatted down and took the broken knife blade and cut her throat twice more. I used my T-shirt to wipe the blood off my arms and hands. I went to the closet and grabbed a patterned shirt.”
The defendant went on to say that he’d spotted Ruth’s car keys and took them. Then he said that as he was leaving, he glanced at Mallory where she half-leaned, half-sat on the floor and saw that she was still breathing. “I was sorry then, and I wanted to help her, but I was afraid.”
Meyer said that the next several hours were a blur of headlights coming toward him, endless freeways and service stations where he’d stopped to ask directions. He thought that he must have fallen asleep at the wheel as he headed south from Salem. “When I woke up, the car was spinning. Then I had no car and only fifty-six cents in my pocket.”
• • •
Steve Meyer spent the upcoming holidays in jail, and it was almost spring—March 10, 1969—when he went on trial for mu
rder and attempted murder. Outside the windows of Superior Court Judge George H. Revelle’s courtroom, the sky was blue and cloudless, and spring was making a false start with temperatures hovering close to 60 degrees.
Inside the courtroom, however, everyone’s thoughts were on the grim predawn horror of the previous November 9, where one lovely young woman had died and another had been permanently scarred. The death and the disfigurement were known facts that had been emblazoned in headlines in Seattle papers. Still, there were questions to be answered that might shed some light on how a pleasant evening for four young people had degenerated into a fatal bloodbath.
If court watchers had expected the defendant to look like a glowering killer, they were surprised as Steve Meyer walked in and waited for court deputies to remove the handcuffs from his wrists. He was very handsome, with dark blond hair and brown eyes. He looked more like a California surfer or a heartthrob actor than he did a coldblooded killer. The sports shirt he wore added to that impression, and there was a murmur that rippled through the courtroom at the sight of him.
He sat down, flanked by his attorneys, Steven A. Mack and Walter T. Greenaway. King County Chief Deputy Prosecutor C. N. “Nick” Marshall would represent the State.
It took a while to pick a jury. Finally, both sides were satisfied with a jury made up of seven women and five men.
Mallory Gilbert could not be in the courtroom before she testified, standard procedure so that prospective witnesses won’t be influenced by what others who take the stand say. Mallory sat nervously on a long oak bench just outside the courtroom. If the media cameras hoped to get a look at her scars, they were disappointed: she wore a blouse with a high collar.
Meyer’s other alleged victim could no longer testify—not in person, anyway. Marshall would have to get as much of the gruesome physical evidence as possible and the dozens of graphic photographs entered into the record so that the jurors would have some concept of the abattoir Ruth Coster’s apartment was when detectives arrived. That would have to speak for Ruth.
There was, of course, Steve Meyer’s own confession, but his attorneys would try to keep the jury from hearing that. The jury’s decision could mean death for the defendant, who was now pleading innocent to charges of murder in the first degree and first-degree assault.
Despite the defense’s objections, the confession was accepted into evidence. The courtroom was hushed as Detective George Berger read the shocking statement. Steven Meyer sat, head bowed, eyes closed, as his words of confession filled the room. How much of his statement was realistic was a matter of conjecture. Ruth Coster could not defend her reputation. Had she really tempted Meyer by wearing a filmy pink negligee and black panties? Marshall quickly erased that impression. He showed the jurors the gown that was tightened around her neck like a garotte to render her unconscious before she was manually strangled.
It was pink all right; however, it wasn’t a diaphanous sheer pink gown but rather what is commonly known as a “granny gown.” It was made of opaque flannel and it had a high neck and long sleeves.
The defense argued that consideration should be given to another pink gown found on the floor near the foot of the bed, allegedly of the type described by the defendant in his statement.
Marshall reminded the jurors that there was absolutely no evidence that Ruth Coster had engaged in intercourse, either on Friday, November 9 or for several days before her murder. If she had, Dr. Wilson would have found evidence of it during her autopsy. It was more likely that the sex—consensual or forced—was only one of Steve Meyer’s fantasies.
The prosecution thought so. The passions or bizarre mental processes that had triggered the homicidal rage were known only to the defendant—and possibly not even to him, for he had told his girlfriend, “I don’t know—I just don’t know why I did it.”
Mallory Gilbert gave her testimony in a determinedly firm voice. The blouse she wore was high-necked, with a ruffled jabot at the throat, but it didn’t completely hide the numerous angry red scars that crisscrossed her neck. As she spoke, spectators realized that they were seeing and hearing a girl who had undoubtedly been as close to death by murder as anyone ever had and still survived. It was a sobering experience to hear testimony about acts that usually were reconstructed only by evidence found at a crime scene.
Nick Marshall led Mallory gently through the events of the fatal night and morning. As she left the witness stand, she avoided Steve Meyer’s eyes. There was little doubt that she would never completely recover from either the physical or the emotional ordeal she had been through.
Testimony in the Meyer trial continued for five days. The jury heard statements from members of the Seattle Police Department: George Berger, Owen McKenna, Charles Larsen, and John Nichols; from Oregon officials John Newell, B. L. Kezar, Phil Starbuck, and Kenneth Lamkin; from witnesses Linda Crousseau, Dave Romano, and Mallory Gilbert; and from the Russell family and Ralph McNeill.
Dr. Wilson’s testimony was vital in helping the jurors understand why death by strangulation can, indeed, be premeditated under the law—just as much as a death resulting after a killer spends months plotting his crime.
Wilson explained that there is no way to know how quickly a human being will die when his or her breath is cut off, when blood flow to the brain is blocked. For some people, it takes only seconds; for others, it may take several minutes. During those seconds and those minutes, the strangler has time to form intent, aware that if he does not release his grip, the person will die.
As always, Nick Marshall had prepared a watertight, case, and he gave his summation address to the jury with assurance. As Meyer was charged with first-degree murder and first-degree assault in the cases of Ruth Coster and Mallory Gilbert, respectively, Marshall stressed that the premeditated action necessary for conviction of murder in the first degree was present in Ruth Coster’s death.
“There need only be sufficient time to formulate the intent to kill, no matter how short—even seconds. Steve Meyer stated that he felt Ruth Coster go limp and he could have stopped then, but he did not: he choked her until she was dead.
“This man is an animal, devoid of any human feeling. He is capable of killing at the snap of a finger, coldblooded and heartless. He is not fit to walk the streets of Seattle.”
Defense attorneys, in their summation, urged the jury to remain unemotional—to view only the facts in the case—and, particularly, to judge each charge separately. “You will be shown pictures when you enter that jury room which will shock you, but you must struggle to avoid an emotional decision. This man, if convicted of less than first-degree murder, will still undoubtedly spend the rest of his life in prison. He will not be walking the streets of Seattle. He is not like you; his thinking processes are not like yours. Try to project yourselves into the events of that night—to the shock and fear he felt. He had no sleep for days, drank twenty-five or more beers, and was not responsible for his actions.”
For an hour the two defense attorneys pleaded eloquently, but it was, perhaps, one of their own phrases that provided Nick Marshall with his strongest rebuttal argument:
“If you will project yourselves, project yourselves instead into the minds of those two girls. Feel the helpless terror they felt. Feel Ruth Coster’s agony as the life was squeezed from her. Steven Meyer said he felt ‘sorry’ for Mallory Gilbert when he saw she was still breathing. Yet, he went calmly about washing her blood from himself and changing clothes as she lay there gurgling, choking on her own blood.”
The sun was gone from the courtroom windows and stormy gray clouds lowered outside by the time the final arguments were over.
• • •
On Friday, March 14, 1969, at 3:30 P.M., the jury retired to make their decision. The bailiff followed them with the physical evidence: a score of photographs, the victim’s nightgown, the defendant’s knife that had broken in half by the force of the attack and was still stained scarlet, carrying with it the memory of Mallory Gilbert’s testimony that
Steve Meyer had taken half of that blade to slash her several more times as she sat on the floor, already grievously wounded.
Most of us in that courtroom expected a quick verdict and were loath to leave the courthouse, so we sat on the benches that lined the marble hallways outside Judge Revelle’s courtroom. I watched Steven Meyer as he was led, hands manacled behind him, toward the jail elevator. He would wait to hear his fate in his cell, and would be brought back into the courtroom only when the jurors were finished adjudicating. As he walked the long courthouse hallway, he passed Mallory Gilbert and slowed his step to stare curiously at her.
What did he want? Was he going to apologize? Was he, perhaps, reliving whatever rush he’d experienced as he plunged the knife into the soft flesh of her neck again and again?
The pretty brunette drew her coat more closely around her and looked straight ahead, although she had to know that the man who had tried to kill her was only three or four feet away. The regular elevator, used by court personnel and visitors, stopped, the doors slid open, and she stepped in, mercifully through at last with her unbelievable ordeal. She did not intend to wait around for the final chapter.
The jurors took longer than most of us had wagered. At ten P.M. on Friday night, after seven hours of deliberation—minus a dinner break—they announced that they had reached a verdict. Steven Terry Meyer was found guilty of murder in the first degree and guilty of first-degree assault. However, they did not recommend the death penalty. With recommendations by the prosecuting and defense attorneys, the Washington State’s Board of Prison Terms and Paroles eventually set Meyer’s sentence as life in prison. That didn’t mean much: life was really thirteen years and four months. Meyer also had the right to appeal.
• • •
Just as the death sentence doesn’t always mean death, a life sentence can’t be taken literally, either—unless it is mandatory.
In 2004, Steven Terry Meyer turned 56 years old. He had been paroled sometime during the eighties, but he violated his parole when he was convicted of sodomy and on illegal drug charges. By 1996, Meyer was back in prison. He now resides in the Airway Heights prison in Spokane, Washington, one of Washington State’s newest prisons.