by Ann Rule
“Jim would just show up—and it was hard to get rid of him,” she said. “Dina had no interest in him, but she didn’t want to hurt his feelings.”
Shortly after 9 P.M., Dina and her girlfriend had begged to be allowed to walk to a nearby restaurant to buy a pizza. They would eat it there, and they promised fervently that they would be back by 10:30.
Dina’s mother finally relented and the two girls joined one other teenager to walk the few blocks to Michael’s Restaurant on NW 195th.
Jim Groth had elected to stay in the basement to watch the end of a TV movie and wait for the girls to return.
Leanne Peterson heard Dina come in the front door about 10:30, relieved that she was home on time, just as she’d promised.
Dina’s sister Marilyn had come home from a birthday party shortly before and she was sitting on her mother’s bed, chatting about the festivities.
Within a few minutes, Leanne and Marilyn heard a little “scuffle” in the backyard of their home and two “playful” screams. It didn’t sound out of the ordinary. There was horseplay in their house and yard often. The motion light in the backyard came on, too.
“We heard something like ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Stop it!’ ” Marilyn said.
Leanne thought it was Dina and one of her friends and the sounds did not indicate at all that Dina was distressed. But her mother was afraid the noise might annoy the neighbors so she’d gotten out of bed, put on a robe, and gone downstairs to the recreation room.
Outside in the dark yard, she’d seen two people in what looked like a playful wrestling match near the rockery. She even opened the sliding glass door in the recreation room and called Dina’s name several times, telling her to be quiet.
There was no answer, but she wasn’t concerned. She let Dina’s little dog out, knowing Dina would bring him in with her. Leanne Peterson locked the door so Dina would have to knock to get in, and then Leanne returned to bed.
When Len Randall asked Leanne Peterson about Jim Groth—who had been waiting for Dina and her friend to return—her mother nodded.
“I found him still down in our basement rec room, watching TV all by himself,” she said. “I asked him what he was doing there, and he said he was waiting for the girls to come back with the pizza. I told him they were going to eat their pizza in the shop, and I sent him home. That would have been about ten P.M.”
* * *
As the homicide crew worked at the scene in Richmond Beach, the temperature dropped dramatically and now snow sifted over the scene. They hurried as much as they could before the white drifts covered any physical evidence they might yet find.
Dina’s anguished parents tried to think of who might conceivably have wanted to hurt their ebullient daughter. She wasn’t a girl who confided all her secrets to her parents, but then that is standard teenage behavior.
Usually, high school students’ peers often know more about them than their own mothers and fathers do. The detectives hoped to find Dina’s friends, who might know if she had reason to be afraid of anyone, or if she was secretly worried about anything.
Overwhelmingly, the friends who were Dina’s age said she was a good girl, an obedient teenager for the most part, and upset when she broke her curfew. She was very close to her family. Her boyfriend, Tim Diener, was nineteen, out of high school and worked at The Boeing Airplane Company.
“She trusted just about everyone,” one girl said.
Dina Peterson was a “helping” kind of teenager who reached out to people with problems.
“We used to always tell the kids to feel free to bring home their friends anytime. But Dina usually didn’t. We didn’t really know how many friends she had. She kind of collected people with problems. Maybe she had empathy for them. I don’t know,” Leanne Peterson recalled sadly. “Whenever I objected if she brought someone home who seemed like they had too many problems, she would tell me they were beautiful human beings but that nobody understood them.”
The night before she was killed, Dina had baked two pies. In the crusts, she’d pricked out patterns with a fork. One spelled out “Welcome All Strangers” and the other said “Smile—God Loves You.”
Had Dina met a stranger who was not a beautiful person?
But when? She’d been gone to the pizza parlor for only an hour. Had someone deadly followed her home?
Detective Randy Hergesheimer joined the investigative team; he would take over responsibility for the case.
The first thing for the team to do was trace Dina’s movements after she left her home at 9:30 on Valentine’s night. The detectives talked to the two sisters who had accompanied her to the pizza parlor. They verified that the trio had called the restaurant, ordered a pepperoni pizza, and then walked there to eat it. They’d started walking home shortly before 10:30 because Dina was anxious to keep her promise to her mom. Halfway home, Kathy Strunk and several friends from school stopped and offered them a ride. It was cold out, and even though they were close to home, Dina and the sisters had climbed into the back of the pickup truck.
When they got to the Petersons’ house, Kathy Strunk said that Dina had gone inside immediately, through the front door. The other teenagers had stayed on the sidewalk in front of her house talking to two of the girls in the truck. They gave the detectives the names of the other two girls.
One of the other girls told detectives that Dina had been so concerned about getting home on the stroke of 10:30 that she’d barely waved goodbye as she ran to the front door.
“We four stood there talking,” Kathy said. “Sometime—maybe about ten fifty—I heard a sound from the backyard of Dina’s house.”
“What kind of sound? A scream, or something like that?” Hergesheimer asked.
“No,” she said. “Not like that. It was like a person hitting the ground after jumping off of somewhere, and then I heard just running steps.”
The owner of Michael’s Restaurant recalled that the three girls had been in his pizza place around 10 P.M. “They called in to order a pepperoni pizza,” he said. “They split it three ways and ate it here. It would have cost $2.84. I remember them especially because they all dug in their jeans to come up with enough nickels and pennies to pay for it.” He identified a picture of Dina Peterson as having been one of the girls.
Detectives still had dozens of teenagers and neighbors to talk to. But first, they attended the postmortem exam of the sixteen-year-old victim.
Dina had been completely clothed when her father found her, wearing the same clothes she wore to the pizza parlor: blue jeans, all of the buttons—even on the inner waistband—buttoned, an emerald-green long-sleeved sweater, a blue full-length coat, white bra, pink panties, red socks, and brown suede shoes.
There was a single rip in the back of the coat and a corresponding tear in the sweater—both caused by the knife in her murderer’s hand.
Dr. Patrick Besant-Matthews, the King County medical examiner, performed the autopsy. The forensic pathologist took blood samples, vaginal smears, hair samples, fingernail clippings, and a few soil samples. Even a couple of stray hairs that still clung to her clothing were preserved. They were probably from her own head, but no one could be sure of that.
It was 1975, and no one had heard of DNA matching at the time. However, if the hairs still had “tags” at the scalp end, they might be able to ascertain blood type.
Dina Peterson was petite at five feet, two inches and she weighed only 117 pounds fully clothed. Besant-Matthews found one puzzling factor as he surveyed her body. The lividity pattern on her corpse was not in keeping with the supine position of her body when Dina was found.
When the heart stops beating and pumping blood, the life fluid drops to the lowest part of the body. If the victim is moved before this pattern—called lividity—is set, there will be a second staining on the new bottom body portion. Only it will be much lighter: pink instead of purple.
Dina Peterson had two patterns of lividity. Besant-Matthews and the detectives attending her autops
y could see that she had lain on her face for some time after she died. But someone had turned her body over during the night. The striations of bright purple livor mortis were on the front of her body; lighter pink areas marked her back.
Few laymen understand livor mortis, or, for that matter, rigor mortis. Nor do they understand how accurately these postmortem changes can tell time and manner of death, and if the victim has been moved after death.
The King County detectives had questioned everyone on the scene carefully. Her father had not turned Dina over; he had only touched her face and then covered her with blankets. Even so, they asked him if he owned any knives. Chagrined at what they seemed to imply, he led them to his workshop. All of his tools, including knives, hung from their labeled spots.
Homicide detectives do often have to ask difficult questions, and they explained that to Dina’s father.
Patrol officers recalled that the priest who’d administered last rites had not touched her at all. The EMTs had merely looked for a pulse and noted the rigor in her jaws.
Who, then, had turned Dina over?
The autopsy continued. There was blood in Dina’s right ear, nose, and mouth. Her legs were skinned and bruised. She had some facial bruises and scratches, which might have been sustained as she fell, or they could have resulted from being hit in the face.
It seemed probable that she had struggled for her life—if even for a short time—but she was tiny and would have been very easily subdued by a larger attacker.
Dina’s cause of death was, however, the single knife wound nine inches above her waist. The bone-handled knife was only one and five-eighths inches to the left of the midline of her back. It had pierced her back almost five inches deep and penetrated her left lung, causing rapid death from hemothorax—blood hemorrhaging into her lungs. The thrust of the knife was downward, suggesting her attacker was taller than she was. She could not have lived very long before she drowned in her own blood.
There were no defense wounds at all on Dina’s hands. That was interesting. She must have been taken by surprise, perhaps by someone she completely trusted.
A homicide where there is only a single knife thrust is very unusual. Pathologists and detectives are far more likely to find victims who have been stabbed again and again in a frenzy of anger or passion.
What did just one wound mean? A killing done on impulse? A cold-blooded murderous erasure of someone the killer wanted to get rid of?
An accident? No, not an accident—not when a knife had plunged so deep.
Dina’s stomach still contained barely digested bits of pizza. Dr. Besant-Matthews estimated that the time of death would have been between 10:30 and 11:30 P.M.
It was tragically apparent that the “friendly scuffle” her mother had observed had been Dina’s death struggle. And that knowledge was devastating to Leanne Peterson, even though she had no way of knowing the truth at the time.
* * *
Detective Randy Hergesheimer questioned Jim Groth, the sixteen-year-old boy who’d spent the early part of Valentine’s night watching television with Dina in her recreation room. Groth was nervous—but that was to be expected. He told Hergesheimer that he had remained in the Petersons’ basement after the girls left.
He sat on the couch there until about 10 P.M. He was watching a movie, titled, ironically, Murderers’ Row.
“I left by the back—the patio—door, after Mrs. Peterson told me to go home,” Groth said. “I couldn’t figure out how to lock the door from the outside, though, so I left it unlocked.”
Jim Groth recalled that he had then walked to a bowling alley, where he stayed from 10:45 until shortly after 12:30.
“Then I walked home and my mother let me in.”
Groth added that he had stopped on his way home to visit a friend, Tim Diener, who was, of course, Dina’s boyfriend.
“Tim was sound asleep,” Groth said. “In his bedroom—it’s in the basement. So I just went on home.”
Jim insisted that he and Dina had been only friends, and if Dina felt romantic about anyone, it was Tim Diener.
Dina’s friends had already confirmed this, but they also suspected that Jim Groth had a crush on Dina.
Dina’s sister Marilyn believed that. “He was always hanging around, and he would wrestle with Dina. It was the only way he could touch her.”
Jim Groth had some scratches on his arms, but he explained those away—saying they came from bushes with brambles that he ran into in the dark as he took a shortcut through the backyards to his house, which was two doors down from the Petersons.
The investigators also talked with Tim Diener, whose basement bedroom was only about twenty-one feet from the Petersons’ house. He was the one most closely connected to Dina—both geographically and emotionally. He seemed shaken and his eyes were red as he told them that he and Dina had been dating since August, and that he was very fond of her.
“Her real name is—was—Diana, but we always called her Dina or Dynamo.”
“You two ever argue—fight?”
Tim shook his head. “We never had any serious fights.”
“When was the last time you saw her?”
“We spent most of the afternoon together on Valentine’s Day. She came over to my house and we visited with some of our friends. I asked her to make some brownies for my family’s dinner, and she did. My folks came home while Dina was still there.”
“When did she leave?”
“It was about a quarter to six. Dina said she had to get back to her own house for dinner.”
Diener said he hadn’t seen her after that. She was grounded at night, so he’d gone to Snohomish County and spent the evening with friends there.
“I got home just before eleven and I went to sleep with the TV on in my room. The TV was off the air and humming when it woke me up at six.”
Diener said he’d heard the commotion outside and seen the police and fire department aid cars outside Dina’s house.
“That was when I found out what happened.”
Randy Hergesheimer and his crew verified that Diener had been with friends during the evening, and they talked with the youth who had driven him home at five minutes to eleven.
One of Diener’s relatives, who lived in a nearby house, said he had seen Tim come home at approximately 10:45 in his friend’s pickup truck. “He went right into his house.”
Tim Diener seemed to have a good alibi with witnesses to back him up. But he failed a lie detector test.
Sheriff’s detectives served a search warrant on Diener’s home, and they found a pair of trousers with blood on them. There was not enough, however, to determine the blood type.
Jim Groth also agreed to take a polygraph test to validate his truthfulness. The results, however, were surprising. The polygrapher viewed the charts and felt that Groth was also being deceptive in some areas.
Now the sheriff’s men had two possible killers. Even so, they suspected that Tim Diener was the more likely suspect.
The probe bounced back and forth as they looked at all possible suspicious people.
And then, a few days later, on February 18, Jim Groth admitted to Randy Hergesheimer that he hadn’t told the complete truth in his first statement. He had lied—but only because he was frightened. He had a juvenile record for underage drinking and drug use, and he was afraid he might be tied to Dina’s death.
This time, Jim Groth said that it was true he had gone to the bowling alley after he left the Peterson home. But he had stayed there only until shortly before 11 P.M. It really was true that he planned to visit Tim Diener but found him asleep.
To reach his own house, Jim Groth said he cut through backyards. Now he hesitated and drew a deep breath.
“I want to tell you the real truth now,” he said. “As I passed through the Petersons’ yard, I stumbled across Dina’s body in the dark. She was lying facedown with her arms at her side and her legs out straight. I could see the knife in her back. I think the knife belonged to Tim
.”
Groth recalled that he’d been “really scared,” and he had nudged Dina with his foot. But she hadn’t moved at all.
“What time was this?” Hergesheimer asked.
“Pushing eleven. I ran all the way to my house. I sat around smoking cigarettes at the park on the beach for a while, trying to think what to do.”
It was confusing that both Tim Diener and Jim Groth had failed the first lie detector tests they took. Relieved now by “telling the truth,” Groth agreed readily to another polygraph exam. This time he passed it, with no evidence of deception on questions concerning guilty knowledge in the death of Dina Peterson.
The running footprints cast at the scene had been Groth’s and a bit of promising evidence was now rendered useless.
But something rankled Hergesheimer. Why hadn’t Jim Groth called for help for Dina? Perhaps she was only unconscious; it seemed grotesque that the teenager would wait all through the freezing night, knowing that Dina lay outside. Alone.
Randy Hergesheimer talked with a neighbor whose home’s backyard abutted the Petersons’ backyard. She recalled that she’d fallen asleep at 9:30 that evening and wakened around 10:30 or 10:35 because she heard what sounded like “children’s” voices in distress. It sounded like whimpering.
“By the time I was fully awake, the noises had stopped,” she said. “I felt like the voices were coming from the Petersons’ house. I fell back to sleep around eleven and I didn’t hear anything else.”
Roger Dunn and Randy Hergesheimer talked to dozens of Dina Peterson’s friends at Shoreline High School. Not one of them could recall any threats on her life, or come up with anyone she was even afraid of. She had never been in any trouble and was considered a popular and perpetually cheerful girl.
Still, the rumors circulated wildly. One girl said she was afraid of Tim Diener and that she had heard he “killed animals.”
Many students believed that Tim Diener was guilty of stabbing Dina.
At length, Tim was arrested, but he was soon released because the lawyers in the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office didn’t think there was enough evidence to charge him with murder.