by John Bateson
“That never happened before or since,” Holmes says, “but it happened with her.”
In 2003, researchers at the University of North Texas were commissioned to build a large database of DNA samples from suspected victims of a serial killer in Washington State. The killer, named Gary Ridgway, picked up young women—primarily prostitutes—near Sea-Tac Airport, a major transportation hub for drug and sex trafficking. After he killed them, Ridgway left their bodies near the Green River, which runs south of Seattle. So many young women and girls were reported missing in the 1980s and 1990s that police investigators decided a database was needed to identify them all. In the course of building it, researchers input every missing-person report they could find, including that of seventeen-year-old Tammy Vincent.
Tammy was a headstrong girl from Okanogan County, Washington—about 140 miles northeast of Seattle. She ran away from home multiple times, often disappearing for weeks at a stretch. In 1980, her mother filed a missing-persons report that included oral swabs from herself and her other daughter. It contained a significant mistake, however. Tammy’s mother didn’t know the date when her daughter went missing, and estimated that it was sometime earlier that year. In fact, Tammy already had been dead six months by the time the report was submitted.
It was standard operating procedure that whenever the Marin County Coroner’s Office had a body it couldn’t identify, the investigator issued a found-unidentified report. This is the opposite of a missing-persons report in that it notes that a body has been found without identification. Public and private investigators who are looking for a missing person go through these reports, of which there are thousands, to see if there is a match.
Holmes doesn’t know how his found-unidentified report from Marin County ended up in the database that was created for Washington State, but it did. Because of the discrepancy in dates, however, his report wasn’t matched with the report filed by Tammy’s mother. After the database was developed, it automatically generated matches every Monday morning. Since Tammy was listed as dead half a year before she was listed as missing, her DNA wasn’t compared with her mother’s and sister’s DNA.
“It was another part of Tammy’s unfortunate life,” Holmes says.
In 2007, he received an unexpected phone call. University of North Texas researchers told him that they had found a match for Jane Doe #4-79 from Marin County. A report was run from the database in which dates were ignored, and that’s when Tammy Vincent’s name came up.
Researchers thought initially that Tammy might be another victim of the Green River Killer, aka Gary Ridgway. She was from the same general area, and involved in prostitution, although the fact that she died in Marin was perplexing. In November 2001, Ridgway had been caught, and as part of a negotiated deal he pled guilty to forty-eight counts of murder, including forty-two of the forty-nine Green River victims. He showed police where the bodies were buried in exchange for the death penalty being waived. He never admitted to Tammy Vincent’s murder, however, and in retrospect almost certainly had nothing to do with it. Nevertheless, he was the reason why she was able to be identified, because of the database that was created to identify his victims. Since then, the database has been expanded and is part of the University of North Texas’s national Center for Human Identification (UNTCHI).
Once Holmes learned of the match, he notified Tammy’s mother and sister. They were overwhelmed by the news that after nearly thirty years Tammy’s remains had been identified. He asked them what they wanted him to do, and Tammy’s mother said she wanted the remains exhumed and cremated, and Tammy’s ashes returned to her. This was done.
As for Tammy’s killer, the most likely suspects were members of the Gypsy Jokers, a motorcycle gang that reportedly controlled prostitution, drugs, and guns in the Seattle-Tacoma area, although their network was much broader. Tammy was working in a scam house run by the Jokers. Seattle cops told Holmes how the houses worked.
“Men traveling on business were lured by young women to come to a residence for sex, not with them but with another woman,” Holmes says. “At the front door the first woman left and the john talked with someone else. They discussed prices, he paid, then he was sent down a hallway to the door of a room where he was supposed to get laid, only the door led outside where a big bouncer was waiting and told the guy to get lost. If the guy protested, the bouncer said threateningly, ‘What are you going to do about it?’ The answer was nothing because no one wanted to mess with the Jokers. They’re the only motorcycle gang that Hells Angels are afraid of—at least, that’s what I’ve been told.”
Police raided a residence where Tammy was staying, rounded up her and others, and offered her immunity if she testified against five men who were accused of forcing women and girls into prostitution. Tammy was young and afraid. She agreed but never showed up for the trial. According to one report, she was last seen getting into a silver Lincoln Continental that was owned by one of the suspects in the case. It was speculated later that she was driven to California and put to work at the Palace Theater in the North Beach section of San Francisco, although this wasn’t proved.
The defendants in Seattle were convicted of promoting prostitution and sentenced to prison terms ranging from five to eight years. No other charges pertaining to Tammy Vincent were filed against them.
In 2007, after Tammy’s identity had been established, Marin County Sheriff Robert Doyle expressed optimism that her murderer would be found. It was only a matter of time.
“I’m confident we’ll ultimately be able to make some arrests and bring those responsible to justice,” he told the media.
Ken Holmes wasn’t so certain, and he turned out to be right. To date, no one has been charged with Tammy’s murder and there have been no further developments. From the point of view of the coroner’s office, the case is closed. Tammy’s remains were identified, exhumed, and returned to her family, and the cause and manner of her death were determined.
From the point of view of law enforcement, it’s still open, her killer or killers still free or incarcerated for other crimes but not for her murder. The case grows colder every day.
CHAPTER 08
THE TRAILSIDE KILLER
When Edna Kane’s body was found on Mount Tamalpais in Marin County in the summer of 1979, naked except for socks, it was clearly a homicide. The forty-four-year-old married bank executive had been raped, stabbed repeatedly in the chest, and shot in the head while she was kneeling, execution-style, perhaps pleading for her life. Most of her clothes, along with her glasses and a black waist pouch containing her wallet, were missing. Searchers discovered Edna’s body the following day after she failed to return home from a hike. Her husband and friends had gone looking for her, concerned that she had fallen and was in some inaccessible place. When they couldn’t find her, they called the police. No one could explain why she had been attacked. It seemed most likely to be a crime of opportunity—a woman on her own in a remote area—although that was even more puzzling. Most murderer-rapists operate in cities, where they blend in with the crowd, can find isolated victims easily, and are able to disappear without being seen. What was a murderer-rapist doing on the mountain? No one had an answer, nor were any weapons found.
The following spring, there was a second murder on Mount Tam. Twenty-three-year-old Barbara Schwartz, known as “the bread lady” because she sold homemade breads and cakes to local restaurants, had been hiking with her dog, a black Lab, when she was attacked and stabbed twelve times in the chest while kneeling in the dirt. Bill Thomas had been the coroner’s investigator in Edna’s death, and Ken Holmes was the investigator for Barbara’s. This time there was a witness, a female hiker who had seen the attack through the trees. She ran for help while Barbara’s dog barked, and police responded as quickly as possible. They weren’t quick enough, though, as the assailant managed to escape.
As with Edna’s murder, the police couldn’t find a weapon, but now they had a general description of the suspect. Unfortun
ately, it proved to be erroneous in almost every way, hindering rather than helping the investigation. While authorities focused on finding a thin, athletic-looking man in his twenties with a hawk nose and dark hair that possibly was pulled back in a ponytail, they ignored the fact that other hikers said they had seen an older man in the area who was alone, balding, had glasses, and was wearing a raincoat even though it hadn’t been raining.
Wanting to see the scene again, which was still cordoned off by police tape, Holmes returned later that day, after dark, and found a pair of glasses off the trail where the murder had taken place. They were obscured by leaves and twigs, and he saw them only because the lenses were reflected in the beam of his flashlight. During daylight everyone had missed them. A fine splatter of blood was on the outside of the lenses, and the Department of Justice laboratory subsequently confirmed that the blood was Barbara Schwartz’s. When the glasses were shown to an optometrist, he said that it was an unusual prescription. One eye was markedly different from the other, and the wearer had to be nearly blind without the correction. It seemed like an important clue, but the police didn’t pursue it aggressively. They were still focused on the witness’s description, and she hadn’t mentioned glasses.
Several days later, some teens found a ten-inch boning knife three hundred yards from the crime scene. The knife had dried blood on it and turned out to have been purchased at a chain grocery store, although police couldn’t determine the specific store. In the course of reporting the story, a female TV reporter inexplicably handled the knife and obliterated any fingerprints that might have been on it. Other than being the probable murder weapon, the knife now had little value.
MORE MURDERS
The third murder on Mount Tam occurred seven months after the second and, for me, was personal. Anne Alderson, twenty-six, was my sister’s best friend and had vacationed with my family when she was younger. She was smart, pretty, independent, and loved animals and the outdoors. After graduating from UC Davis with a master’s degree in animal husbandry, en route to becoming a veterinarian, she joined the Peace Corps and spent two years in Bogotá, Colombia, studying animal genetics. She had just returned to her parents’ home in Marin County the week before, and in all likelihood didn’t know that there had been two murders on Mount Tam. A caretaker at the park said later that he saw her sitting alone in the five-thousand-seat amphitheater watching the sunset. He was tempted to warn her but decided that she might not want to be disturbed. He also said that earlier in the day he had seen a lone man, about fifty years of age, in the area, but he didn’t match the killer’s description on posters that were being circulated.
Like Edna Kane, Anne was shot in the head with a single bullet from a .38-caliber pistol, and probably was in a kneeling position at the time. She was fully clothed, but apparently had been allowed to get dressed after being raped. Her body was a quarter mile from the outdoor theater, on Telephone Line Trail. Holmes was glad that he wasn’t on duty when her body was found. He knew Anne’s parents, as did I. Both were physicians—Bob Alderson was our family’s doctor—whom Holmes sometimes asked to sign off on death certificates.
Over the next year, there would be four more murders on Mount Tam, as well as two murders and an attempted murder in the Santa Cruz Mountains south of San Francisco, all committed by the same person. In addition, the day after Anne Alderson’s body was discovered, police responded to the scene of a double homicide at a residence near the foot of Mount Tam. The victims—seventy-four-year-old Helen McDermand and her forty-year-old son Edwin—had been shot by someone who left an angry handwritten note that made the killer seem like a good suspect for the trailside slayings, too.
Police had come to the house in response to a neighbor’s request for a wellness check. The neighbor hadn’t seen the occupants in more than a day, yet lights were on in the home.
Off the garage, beneath the house, was a single room with a mattress on the floor. The door was locked and police had to force entry. Attached to the inner door handle was a note.
“Dear Shitheels: By the time you read this you will be way too late. The next time you see me it will be on the news or on a slab. Either way I will still look the same, ugly.” It was signed, “Mr. Hate.”
The room was dirty and had an acrid smell. There were spent .38-caliber casings, live rounds of .22-caliber ammunition, and ankle holsters for a handgun and a knife.
When Holmes arrived, he saw that Edwin had been shot multiple times and his mother once. Edwin’s body was in a hallway to the left of the living room, and Mrs. McDermand’s body was lying on a bed, covered by a blanket. The house was cluttered and disheveled, but there were no obvious signs of a struggle. The only things out of place were the spent casings from the killer’s weapon that were scattered across the floor.
Holmes told the police that the McDermands had been dead three or four days. That meant the murderer could be far away by now, but at least there was an obvious suspect. Mark McDermand, thirty-five, lived with his mother and brother, in the basement room. He had been working as a short-order cook at Denny’s and was wanted on a no-bail warrant for embezzling money from a local 7-Eleven store.
McDermand didn’t have anyplace to go, as it turned out, and remained in the area, in part to be able to follow news coverage of his crimes. He took to writing letters to local newspapers and the Marin County Sheriff’s Office in which he claimed responsibility for his mother’s and brother’s deaths. A handwriting expert said that the person who wrote the letters was the same person who wrote the note that was tacked to the basement door.
McDermand said in the letters that he “was as dangerous as a coral snake in a sleeping bag” and never would be caught alive. Nevertheless, the six-foot-four, 190-pound killer surrendered to police eleven days later without incident in front of an International House of Pancakes restaurant in neighboring Solano County. He was sitting on the hood of his car with his hands clasped in his lap—a pose that had been arranged in advance by police in a phone call with him. He had a loaded .38-caliber revolver on his right hip, and inside his car, a yellow Chevy without license plates that police had been searching for, were a .22-caliber pistol, twelve-gauge shotgun, and ammunition. There was also a metal box filled with hypodermic syringes and vials of insulin. McDermand was a diabetic.
He said he wrote the letters not for publicity but to correct erroneous information about his case, including speculation that he was responsible for the Mount Tam slayings. Those were committed by somebody else, he said. His motive for killing his mother and brother was that his mother was an invalid who wouldn’t live much longer and his brother had schizophrenia and he didn’t know what would happen to him after their mother died. Inasmuch as McDermand confessed freely and didn’t match the description police had of the Tam suspect, the police tended to believe him. A jury found him guilty of two counts of first-degree murder, and he was sentenced to death.
Any further thoughts that he might be the Trailside Killer, as the murderer on Mount Tamalpais was being called, were dispelled when none of McDermand’s weapons matched the bullets used on Edna Kane and Anne Alderson. Moreover, even after McDermand was jailed, the murders continued. Mount Tam became a place for everyone—and especially single women—to avoid.
ACCIDENTAL DISCOVERY
On November 29, 1980, while searching for two women who didn’t know each other and were reported missing after getting separated from friends on hikes in two different parks, police chanced upon the decomposing remains of two other people. Both had been shot in the head and then stashed in a small hideaway off one of Mount Tam’s trails. Once again Ken Holmes was called to the scene, only this time there were different challenges.
“The toughest part of a decomposed body,” Holmes says, “is determining how long the person has been dead. The more time you’re dealing with, the harder it becomes. The victim’s gender can be determined fairly easily. The collarbone, jawbone, and area behind the ear are more prominent in men than women. Wom
en who have birthed children can be identified by changes in the pelvic area.”
The victim’s age can be determined by analyzing the cellular structure of the center of bones. Throughout a person’s life, bones “remodel”—that is, they make new, microscopic tubes called osteons, which contain blood vessels. The older a person is, the smaller his or her osteons are. Additionally, the number of osteon fragments is greater as new osteons form and disrupt older ones. Younger adults have fewer and larger osteons.
As for determining the cause of death, this depends on the condition of the body. Knifings and strangulations are the hardest, gunshots the easiest. In some stabbing cases a bone is nicked, while in cases where someone is strangled there may be damage to the neck bones. With gunshots, sometimes the bullet is inside the body.
In this instance, the coroner’s office was spared a lot of work because the two victims were able to be identified from dental charts in their missing-persons reports. One was nineteen-year-old Richard Stowers. He was on the verge of graduating from radioman’s school at a Coast Guard training center near Petaluma, and was considered AWOL after failing to show up for a class. The other victim was his fiancée, eighteen-year-old Cynthia Moreland, vice president of her senior class at Rancho Cotate High School. She had been one of two honors students selected to speak at commencement ceremonies and was a finalist for the school’s homecoming queen. She also had been selected as a varsity song leader her senior year, but dropped out in order to work a part-time job at the training center’s commissary. That was where she and Richard met. He was scheduled to begin working soon at the Coast Guard Communication Station in Point Reyes when he disappeared. Both had been missing for six weeks.