by Burl Barer
When the body was carefully examined on-site, an identification bracelet was clearly visible on the body’s wrist. The name on the bracelet was Roxanne Doll. “Roxanne’s ID bracelet says ‘I love you’ in several different languages,” recalled Gail Doll. “She had picked it out in September of that year. They sent out a flyer on them from school.”
“The presumptive identification of the body,” confirmed Dr. Kiesel, “was done by the ID bracelet, the physical description; the clothing, and the fact that we only had one little girl that age missing at this point in time. So we made a presumptive identification, and we always look for a more objective method to confirm our presumptive IDs, since visual identification would be difficult, because of the decomposition.”
“After that excavation, and the observation of the ID bracelet on the victim’s wrist,” recalled Detective Herndon, “Detective Stillman and I went back to the victim’s house and spoke with the family.”
Herndon acknowledged that he was very uncomfortable at the time of this contact. “No one enjoys telling a family that you’ve found their child dead—and I have never, ever been comfortable delivering notification of death. I just wanted to get out of there as soon as I could.
“Stillman and I got out to the house, and it was full of people—family and friends being supportive—and Gail asks, ‘Did you find her? Did you find her?’ and I said, ‘Yes, I think we found Roxanne.’ Well, everyone is asking a hundred questions and I just wanted to get out of there.”
Herndon and Stillman were about to walk out the door when Gail Doll called out, “Detective Herndon, may I ask one last question?”
“Sure,” he replied, “what is it?”
“Do we get the reward money?”
Gail Doll’s question, seemingly shocking and situationally incongruous, was not an expression of greed, or avarice, but resigned practicality.
“Roxanne had been missing for over a week,” said Gail. “By then, I felt in my heart that if they found her at all, she still wouldn’t be coming home. I knew they were looking for her body—a precious, little body that we couldn’t even afford to bury. We had severe financial problems. I had no idea how we could pay for her funeral,” she said. “The reward money, if ours, would allow Roxanne to be buried in a deserving manner. I thank God that many people, compassionate people, came forward and helped us out. Baxter’s South, a local tavern, did a fund-raiser for us to help us cover expenses.
“In addition to the cost of the funeral itself,” said Gail, “the children had no formal clothes appropriate for a funeral. Kim, bless her heart, got me out of the house and down to the Bon Marche in the mall to pick out clothes for Nicholas and Kristena to wear to the funeral.”
Customers, recognizing Gail Doll from television news coverage, made disparaging remarks that she easily overheard. “They were saying things such as ‘Her daughter’s been murdered and she’s out shopping.’ My God, what was I supposed to do?”
“It’s true,” confirmed Herndon. “I got calls from customers at the Bon who told me that they thought Gail was involved in her daughter’s death because they saw her shopping.”
“I was numb, not only from the horror and shock of my baby being kidnapped and murdered, but from the hate mail and phone calls we received,” stated Gail.
The insensitive and the unstable heaped abuse on Roxanne’s family. “There is only one person responsible for my daughter’s death, and that’s Richard Clark,” said Gail. “The fact that I went to a movie that night, or that Tim fell asleep on the couch, had nothing to do with the acts and actions of Richard Clark. If he hadn’t done it that night, he would have done it another night. He came in through the bedroom window, abducted her in her sleep, and took her away. Tim and I could have been in bed in the next room and it wouldn’t have made any difference.
“We were criticized for not crying enough on TV,” recalled Gail sadly. “The worst hate mail we received,” she said, “was directed at my husband. Tim was devastated by what happened to Roxanne, and it really hurt him to get hate mail accusing him of raping and murdering his own little girl.”
The hate mail, hurtful and cruel, added emotional insult to the personal pain of child loss. Caring and compassionate, however, were the outpourings of support and sensitivity. Some of it was poetic.
Doll
I’ve seen her picture for days
Roxanne Doll, age 7,
school photo beaming brightly with an unforced smile,
teeth erratically spaced,
with big, blue, painless eyes like warm blueberries,
hair thin and blonde, long in back.
Unlike the coloured TV picture,
the Xeroxed black and white flyer is stark.
Bright bouquets reduced to shades of grey on a white dress,
matching ribbon around her neck.
Yesterday 2 little girls found her body
in a shallow grave
under thick trees
dirty and torn.
Cause of death was multiple stab wounds to the neck.
No more smiling photos lace the screen
they are replaced by film taken
of a small thick yellow body bag
tied to a stretcher with heavy black belts.
Cut to her mother; tear flushed
and cursing the arrested family friend
who pleaded with his brother to lie to the police
to say that the blood in his van
belonged to a poached deer.
—Rü Lindenberger
“I received a lovely thank-you note from Gail Doll,” said the poetess, “after her daughter saw my poem on my Web site.” There were other poems as well and a song for Roxanne, featured on a CD popular in the Northwest.
April 9, 1995
The autopsy of Roxanne Doll revealed bruising and tearing in her vagina, with two lacerations measuring two and three centimeters long. These injuries, according to Dr. Eric Kiesel, examining pathologist, were caused by the insertion of something the size of an adult penis.
“These injuries alone were enough to cause her death,” he explained, noting the significant blood loss. “Roxanne Doll died, however, due to at least seven stab wounds to her neck, one of which severed her left internal jugular vein.
“Actually, all of the injuries in combination are potentially life threatening,” said Dr. Kiesel. “Clearly, the one that transected the left internal jugular vein was a life-threatening wound. The reason they are all potentially life threatening is because the head and neck area is very vascular, but the head in general has a very large blood supply relative to a child’s size. It’s a fairly large area. All of these wounds, even the superficial ones into the skin, will bleed.”
Blood loss, especially when you are dealing with this number of wounds, can be significant and life threatening. “The more superficial ones you don’t generally think of as being life threatening,” Kiesel said, “but we start getting into the wounds that enter the muscle, those are going to bleed. But again, you may be able to stop that bleeding by putting pressure on it. But if nothing is done to stop the bleeding, there isn’t much you can do to save her life. Theoretically, even the transected jugular vein, with proper and rapid-enough medical treatment, is potentially a survivable wound.”
Potential is one thing, action another. There was no treatment or medical aid summoned for Roxanne Doll by the person who stabbed her. “This person died,” stated Kiesel, “because no such treatment was provided. As far as telling you how long it took for Roxanne Doll to die, I believe there are too many variables because you can’ t tell how rapidly these wounds were being caused, or which order they came in.
“If you cut the jugular first,” he explained, “death is going to be quicker than if you have so many subcutaneous wounds, because you are going to be bleeding faster. Clearly, I think from the blood loss, though, you are probably talking on the order of minutes, at most up to a half an hour.”
There was no indicatio
n that death was caused by any method other than multiple stab wounds—no strangulation or suffocation.
“There are a couple of things that we use to try to determine the nature of the weapon itself,” he commented. “One is to look at the nature of the wound. Does it have smooth edges or are the edges scalped? That could tell us if we have a straight edge knife or a scalloped knife, if we are dealing with a knife. You try to proximate the wounds; that is, pull the margins together and look at either corner to see if you got a sharp edge and a blunt edge. This might tell you if you are dealing with a double-edge knife or whether you are dealing with a sharp edge and a blunt edge on a knife.”
Part of Kiesel’s examination was an attempt to discern as much about the wounds as possible, and thereby determine the nature of the weapon. “It is interesting in finding out where the wound track is, what did this wound hit, what was the direction of the wound—was it up, down, sideways, front to back, back to front? And the other thing we try to do,” he said, “is determine what the estimated depth is. And I say estimated depth as opposed to actual depth, because the depth that I measured can vary because of the skin flexibility, the body cavity flexibility, and because of that ability to compress. All we can do is estimate at the depth. What that does is help narrow down what type of weapon you might be looking for. It can’t identify the weapon specifically, but it can help rule in, and out, various weapons.”
Kiesel was quick to explain that the depth of a wound did not tell you the minimum length of the blade, assuming a knife was used. “If you have a long knife, you can stick the knife in only a little bit, so you can have a relatively short weapon. If you got a wound, I’m going to exaggerate, twelve inches deep, you are probably not going to create that with a blade that’s three inches long. That’s not reasonable. But you may be able to create a wound that’s four inches long, possibly even five inches long, with a three-inch blade. So, by itself, it’s helpful in ruling certain weapons in or out, but you can’t distinguish exactly what weapon did it, without—that would require other testing.
“The body appears that she had been dead clearly over a week. But we know she was alive somewhere on the thirty-first, so we know death had to occur after that point,” said Kiesel. The condition of decomposition begins at death, and as to the question whether she was dead someplace else for a considerable amount of time before being placed at the recovery site, Dr. Kiesel did not find that highly probable due to the body condition and body posture.
“I don’t believe this was dramatically changed from where she was at the time of death. There is certain changes that occur after death, settling of the blood within the body. . . . [These things] are consistent with her body’s position at the recovery site. Wherever she was prior, she was very likely laying on her back.”
The size and shape of the wounds, according to Dr. Kiesel, were consistent with a small, single-edged blade, such as a pocketknife. Roxanne’s hands also displayed knife wounds, and it was unclear whether the wounds were defensive or intentionally inflicted.
“A number of knives were recovered during the course of the investigation,” reported Herndon. “Various knives were found by officers around the Everett area during the course of the week that Roxanne Doll was missing. One knife was found on Broadway, and there was another located by patrol approximately four blocks from the body recovery site, north on East Grand. And I believe there was maybe one removed from Clark’s van during the search conducted under the search warrant. There were five knives taken from Clark’s residence on Lombard Street under a search warrant served on April ninth. All knives were submitted to the crime lab for testing and analysis.”
Chapter 9
April 10, 1995
While evidence recovered from the body’s exterior, autopsy, and the body site itself was being cataloged and sent for analysis, Detective Herndon was checking another site for evidence—the body of Richard M. Clark.
“Detective Jim Phillips, Detective James Duvall, and I went to the Snohomish County Jail medical unit, where we met with Mr. Clark and served him with a search warrant,” reported Herndon. “The purpose of this search warrant was to collect blood, saliva, and hair to include pubic, head, facial, and body hair. We wanted to gather evidence to compare with trace evidence expected to be recovered from the victim.”
When Detective Kiser requested the warrant, he also asked for permission to photograph in detail the entire nude body of Richard Clark. This was to determine if any injuries existed, such as scratches, bruises, and lacerations that could have been sustained by Richard Clark during the assault on the victim or disposal and concealment of the body.
The investigating officers shot a roll of film, mostly of Clark’s legs. “The reason we took pictures of his legs,” Herndon explained, “was that we were looking for any injuries. The place where the body was found had plenty of blackberry bushes that could have scratched him up pretty good.
“If you look at the photos,” commented Herndon, “you’ll see numerous scratches of that nature from his knee area down to his ankles. There was also a scratch healing on his chin.
“I’m not an expert on injuries,” said the detective, “but what do you see when you look at the pictures of Richard Clark’s legs? To me, it looks like he tangled with thick blackberry bushes and a feisty seven-year-old girl.”
April 11, 1995
“Did you kill that little girl?” It was Toni Clark asking her stepson the most direct of all possible questions.
“No, I didn’t do it,” answered Richard. “I don’t know who did.”
The conversation took place when Richard Clark called collect from Snohomish County Jail. He spoke with Toni while George Clark Sr. listened in on the extension phone.
“Did you rape her?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you kidnap her?”
“I don’t think so.”
“What do you mean, you don’t think so?” asked Toni. “Either you did or you didn’t.”
“Well, I don’t remember everything that night.”
When Toni asked him why he didn’t remember, Richard Clark said it was because of all the alcohol and “crank” (methamphetamine) he’d used that night.
“Don’t grieve for me if I get the death penalty,” said Richard Clark, “don’t grieve for me.”
Richard Clark never lived with Toni and George Clark for any extended period of time, especially in his adult years. “He would stay here maybe one or two days at a time, but we didn’t want him living with us,” acknowledged Toni Clark, “because of his drinking.”
The majority of time between the disappearance of Roxanne Doll and his arrest, Richard Mathew Clark primarily lived with his aunt Carol on Lombard Street—a residence searched numerous times with the same meticulous care with which forensic scientist George Johnston of the Washington Sate Crime Lab in Seattle treated the trace evidence recovered from the body of Roxanne Doll.
Johnston held a bachelor of science degree with his major course of study in science from the University of Mississippi. “After graduating from college,” he recalled, “I worked for one year in my hometown, a research facility, not a forensic lab, but a different type of laboratory. And I worked for three years in the Houston, Texas, Crime Lab Department.”
In November 1980, Johnston moved to Seattle and began work with the Washington system. His established area of expertise was trace evidence; he had testified in over one hundred cases, and carried a most impressive list of professional credentials.
“I attended the FBI Academy on three or four occasions,” he said, “once to study basic serology, other courses of examination of forensics, hair and fiber evidence, another time on paint evidence. I received training in microscopy and advanced microscopy, which is an institution that examines microscopic evidence, extensive on-the-job training in various courses and workshops from our professional organizations and associations. It is also part of my job to teach and train other forensic scientists in hair e
xamination and fiber examinations.”
He also was a respected member of the Northwest Association of Forensic Scientists, the American Academy of Forensic Scientists, a diplomat and fellow of the American Board of Criminalistics, and also a laboratory inspector for the American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors. “Part of that job,” explained Johnston, “is to go to other laboratories and to inspect and to do an audit basically on their operations to make sure that they are fulfilling the needs of forensic science.”
Ask Johnston what he does with a piece of evidence, and you’ll get an understandable introduction into the art of forensic science. “A piece of trace evidence or piece of debris evidence is basically something that can be transferred very easily from person to person, or from thing to a person. Part of my job is to examine debris evidence or full pieces of evidence, collect that debris and then examine that microscopically either using a variety of visual methods, stereomicroscopic methods, or compound microscopic methods of comparison between those pieces of evidence.
“Trace evidence is not evidence that is used to identify a particular item,” explained Johnston. “It’s not possible for us, for instance, to identify a fiber as coming from one specific piece of evidence. There are millions, I’m sure, of carpets or clothes made of those same fibers. So what we try to do is determine if there is a link between this piece of miscellaneous evidence and a controlled sample of the carpet or of a coat or something like that. We do a similar type of thing with hair evidence or paint evidence, for that matter. We take the unknown piece, the questioned piece of evidence, compare that using microscopic and instrumental methods and try to determine if it could have come from a particular source or if indeed it did not come from that source.”
According to Johnston, there is no way to say a paint chip came from one particular car, based on chemical examinations. Nor can you determine if a hair came from a certain individual, or if a fiber came from a particular piece of clothing.