by Robert Scott
As Lane noted, “All these cases were different, and then they weren’t. I knew that David Gerard liked to travel a lot, and I found that he liked to spend time around the Pacific Highway, in southern Pierce County. Not that Minyan Hensley was a prostitute. She may have just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. This area, however, near Tacoma, was an area that I learned was known for its prostitution activities. It was there, that on September 27, 1996, Gerard was arrested in a ‘john sting,’ by the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department.” This john sting put him right in the area where Minyan Hensley had disappeared.
Lane learned that on that date Gerard had propositioned an undercover woman police deputy, and they agreed to have sex for $40. At the time Gerard was driving his Jeep, and this was only a few weeks after the murder of Carol Leighton. The undercover deputy told Gerard to meet her at a nearby motel room. Gerard did as instructed, and when he entered the motel room, clutching two 20-dollar bills in his hand, he was arrested.
Yet, even caught red-handed, Gerard did as he always did—he made up a lame excuse and stuck with his story. He denied wanting to have sex with anyone, and he said that he always walked around with money in his hand. Even when it was pointed out how ridiculous that sounded, he would not change his story.
What was interesting to Lane now was that this arrest was only weeks after the murder of Carol Leighton, who was known to engage in prostitution activities. During the arrest on September 27, 1996, in Pierce County, Gerard spoke of being stabbed by a prostitute a few weeks earlier. When PCSD officers looked into this, they found that Gerard had filed a report on September 18, 1996, about being robbed by a woman while he was on South Tacoma Way. He said that he’d been on his way home from his warehouse job in Auburn and had stopped at a 7-Eleven store outside of Tacoma, where he’d gone to get something to drink. According to Gerard, a woman was standing outside the store and asked him for a ride. Then he said she asked him if she could borrow $40.
According to Gerard’s report, the young woman suddenly grabbed his wallet, which was sitting on the vehicle’s console. Gerard said that she quickly removed $110 from the wallet, bolted out the door, fleeing. He denied that it was a “prostitution date” gone bad. During his later interview with Pierce County officers, Gerard mentioned almost as an afterthought that the woman had pulled out a small knife and stabbed him superficially. He also said that he wasn’t able to do much at the time to stop her, because his right arm was in a sling.
Lane was intrigued by this remark that Gerard’s arm had been in a sling at the time. Lane began to suspect that Gerard’s arm had been in a sling because of his repeated and savage stabbing of Carol Leighton, only weeks before. During that attack Gerard’s actions might have been so violent as to injure his right arm. Lane requested and got medical records on Gerard from the Community Hospital in Aberdeen for the time in question. Indeed, Gerard had gone to the Community Hospital around that time, complaining of an injured shoulder. Gerard said he’d received the injury from moving heavy furniture. Lane Youmans thought otherwise.
Because David Gerard was constantly driving all over the Puget Sound area and Olympic Peninsula, Lane Youmans began looking at an unsolved case in Pierce County, near Tacoma. It concerned a teenager named Misty Copsey, who went missing in 1992, and in some ways it had similarities to Tracy West’s case. Both girls were not prone to running away; both had good grades in school; both were considered to be “good girls” by their friends. Misty was athletic and played on a softball team and volleyball team. She had never been in trouble with the law, and her friends all said that she did not drink or do drugs.
Fourteen-year-old Misty lived in Spanaway, Washington, with her mother, Diana. Misty’s parents had separated when she was very young, and Misty and her mom moved from a mobile home park to a duplex in Spanaway in 1992. On September 17 of that year, Misty begged her mom to let her go to the nearby Puyallup Fair with a friend, fifteen-year-old Trina Bevard. After continual pleas, Diana finally let Misty go with Trina to the fair, unescorted by an adult.
When Misty left home, she was wearing a pair of stonewashed jeans with distinctive stitching. The girls had fun at the fair, and everything would have been okay, except that the girls missed the 8:40 P.M. bus from Puyallup to Spanaway. At 8:45 P.M. Misty called her mother, and said, “Mom, I missed the bus!” Misty wanted to get a ride back home with a boy she knew named Rheuban Schmidt, but Diana did not trust Rheuban. He was eighteen years old, whereas Misty was fourteen years old. In the past Diana had thought that Rheuban had paid way too much attention to her young daughter. Diana told Misty that she did not want her riding home with Rheuban.
Trina Bevard got a ride home with a boy she liked, but whom Misty didn’t like. Misty did not ride back to Spanaway with them, and the last that Trina saw of Misty, she was walking down a road toward a bus stop. All night long, Diana waited for her daughter to return, but she never did. Eventually, in a panic, Diana called 911. The dispatcher said that nothing could be done at that point because the chances were that Misty was a runaway. Diana adamantly disagreed, saying that everything had been fine between herself and Misty, and that her daughter had not run away.
Eventually some at the Puyallup Police Department (PPD) began to think that perhaps Diana was right. Captain Gary Smith, who often dealt with runaway teenagers, wrote a note to Sergeant Herm Carver: This is one of those jus’ don’t feel right reports. There is nothing here that points to foul play, but it just don’t feel right. It has been a week and nobody has heard from the girl. Mom is contacting the media complaining that the cops aren’t doing anything.
Matters weren’t helped any for Diana after a student who knew Misty told the police that she’d seen Misty at a rock concert several days after Misty was reported missing. This only added credence to the police theory that Misty was indeed a runaway. Later, however, this student admitted that she wasn’t positively sure the girl she had seen had been Misty.
Diana started going to a victims support group, and one of the individuals there was the father of Mignon (Minyan) Hensley, the murder victim whose body had been dumped in Lewis County in 1991. Soon thereafter, Diana was contacted by a local man named Cory Bober, a self-styled sleuth, who was absolutely convinced that a man named Randell Dean Achziger was the Green River Killer. Bober was also convinced that Misty Copsey was one of Achziger’s victims.
Bober continually phoned Diana and they began an uneasy alliance. She didn’t totally trust Bober, but with almost no help from the police—now that they believed Misty was a runaway and not a murder victim—Diana threw her lot in with Bober. Not unlike Bober, Diana believed that Misty’s remains were somewhere in a field or forest outside of Puyallup. Bober was so sure of this, he convinced Minyan Hensley’s father to accompany him on scouting trips in Pierce County to look up and down Highway 410 for signs of Misty’s dump site. One region Bober keyed in on was highway marker 30. The bodies of two teenagers, Kim DeLange and Anna Chebetnoy, had been found near there in previous years.
On February 7, 1993, Bober started one more search near the thirty-mile marker on Highway 410, with several volunteers, including Misty’s mother, Diana. The volunteers started walking down a Weyco Mainline Road, off Highway 410. One of the volunteers was fourteen-year-old Jeremy Brown, who was a Boy Scout. Brown poked along a roadside ditch with a stick. Suddenly he stopped and pulled out a pair of blue jeans from the ditch with his stick. Then he yelled to the others, “Hey, there’s some clothes here!”
Diana rushed over and just stared at the clothing that Jeremy had pulled out of the ditch. Then she began wailing and nearly collapsed. The clothing that Jeremy had pulled from the ditch was a pair of blue jeans with distinctive stitching. Diana knew those were the jeans that Misty had been wearing on September 17, 1992, when she had gone to the fair.
Eventually the searchers also found a pair of Hanes brand panties and a pair of blue socks. Trina Bevard later remembered Misty changing from white socks to blue, because they ma
tched some of her other clothing. The searchers did not find Misty’s blouse or shoes.
The lead Green River Killer detective from King County, Jim Doyon, came out to the site and admitted to the press, who’d gotten wind of the discovery of the jeans, that seven women’s bodies had been found between Enumclaw and Green River since 1984. In fact, Kim DeLange and Anna Chebetnoy, whose bodies had been discovered not far away from the jeans site, were on Doyon’s list of possible Green River victims. And then Doyon added one more thing. He said that there were also dissimilarities to the jeans site from the other Green River body dump sites.
Doyon met Cory Bober, and neither one became a fan of the other. Doyon believed Bober was a megalomaniac in his belief that Achziger was the killer of Misty Copsey and all the other Green River victims. Bober, for his part, was convinced that Doyon was just one more inept law enforcement detective. As time went on, in fact, Doyon and other law enforcement detectives began to wonder if Bober was actually Misty’s murderer, who had gone to the Weyco Mainline Road before the searchers found the clothing items and had planted the jeans there. He might have had the jeans because he killed her.
Herm Carver’s notes outlined this mistrust of Bober: Why weren’t the clothes strewn about? Taken off pants and placed there? Planted. If still on victim—wouldn’t be found like that!
Carver asked Cory Bober to come in and take a polygraph test to prove his innocence. When Bober heard that, he exploded, but he agreed to do so. Later he canceled this test, and never did take one. And yet, because of the search he organized, this was the first tangible evidence that Misty Copsey was a murder victim and not a runaway.
Bober was correct once again when DNA tests proved that the blue jeans had belonged to Misty Copsey. There was no blood on the jeans or semen. Several foreign hairs were found upon them, however, and three tiny red paint chips. These paint chips were deemed to be transfer chips, and might have come from a vehicle.
Then on November 30, 2001, the Green River Killer was finally arrested—Gary Leon Ridgway. Ridgway was charged with forty-eight murders, although he claimed that he had killed seventy-two women. Wondering if Misty Copsey was one of his victims, detectives asked Ridgway if he had murdered the girl. Ridgway didn’t remember killing her, and said that he hadn’t killed any girls down near Puyallup. Then he added, “I will not take credit for killings I did not do.”
Detectives later took Ridgway on various roads, where he pointed out where he had dumped bodies. On four different occasions detectives took Ridgway out on Highway 410, right past the area where Misty’s jeans had been discovered along the Weyco Mainline Road. Not once did Ridgway indicate that he had murdered anyone there or deposited their clothing there. And he’d already claimed that he’d killed seventy-two women. One more wouldn’t have made any difference to him if he had murdered Misty Copsey.
Lane Youmans thought that Gerard was a possible suspect for this murder. Gerard was an opportunist, and a girl walking alone down a road at night might have seemed too good an opportunity for him to pass up.
There was even another case of a fourteen-year-old that got Lane Youmans’s attention. He said, “It was kind of early in the chronology of possible cases that might have been connected to David Gerard. It happened back on July 4, 1981, when he would have been nineteen years old. The victim was a girl named Carla Owens. She was a fourteen-year-old who disappeared while babysitting at a residence in Kalaloch, Jefferson County. The baby’s mother spent the night at a place called the Horn In Tavern and stopped by the house a few times to check that things were all right. The mom eventually wound up sleeping in her car. When she went home, she found the baby alone and no sign of Carla. There was a note, supposedly from Carla, saying that she was going home, and a smashed wine bottle on the floor with blood on it. Carla seemed to have been assaulted in the residence, so this would have been different for Gerard. Of course, he was just nineteen then, so his MO might have changed over the years from that point forward. He was more of the type to take advantage of a woman who needed a ride somewhere. Carla’s remains were never found.”
This case in some ways had an aspect like that of Colleen Moran, of Kitsap County. She had left her three-year-old with a babysitter and walked to a cocktail lounge in Port Orchard, in Kitsap County, on August 20, 1985. If there was little information available to Lane on Carla Owens, there was even less on Colleen Moran. She simply disappeared after going to the cocktail lounge and was never seen again.
With a lot of these cases, Lane Youmans had one particular gripe. He said that rotating detectives in and out of investigations meant there was little continuity on a cold case. Lane added, “I always thought it was a shame that a lot of smaller departments rotated detectives through the system. The reasoning was that it gave the officers more experience in the department. But I felt that at least some of the detectives needed to stay within Investigations. If I had not done that, I don’t think I ever would have connected the name David Gerard from the milking shed to the house fire to the Weyco Haul Road.”
Then Lane added, “Did I think David Gerard was connected to all of these murders? No. But he definitely could have been connected to some of them. Each one had to be studied to see if there was a connection and how he fit into the case.”
As Lane Youmans collected various criminal reports, he decided that he shouldn’t just limit his search to murdered women in the area. By now, Lane knew that Gerard’s murders stemmed from rage, as much as anything else. When in such a state, he could just as easily have murdered a man as a woman. True, Gerard picked women more often because he viewed them as easier targets, and also because he became angry at them when some “romantic or sexual” situation turned bad. But this didn’t exclude men from being targets of his rage.
Lane looked at two cases concerning missing men in Grays Harbor County, and one particulary interested him. Bill Delano had gone deer hunting in the eastern Humptulips area in 1983. He went missing and his vehicle was found where he had left it on a logging road. A massive search in the area turned up nothing. One thing that was known was that Delano had gone hunting with a .270-caliber rifle, but the brand was unknown.
Lane discovered that when David Gerard was arrested in Lewis County for destroying Frankie Cochran’s clothing and other items, the deputies there took two of Gerard’s rifles. One was a .22-caliber rifle, while the other was a Voere Shikar .270-caliber rifle. Lane learned from people who had known Gerard that he liked to hunt deer, elk and bear around the Humptulips area. Lane was able to prove from a hunting citation that Gerard had been hunting in that area in the early 1980s. In 1984, Gerard had been cited in the Humptulips area for selling bear meat illegally and hunting without a license. And Lane already knew from the report about David attacking his brother Donald that Gerard told an officer he was going bear hunting on that particular day. It also proved that David could become extremely violent with another male when he was “pissed off.”
Try as he might, Lane could not find a serial number connected to Bill Delano’s .270-caliber rifle. For whatever reason, the investigating deputy had not obtained that serial number or even the make of the rifle when he wrote the report in 1983. Lane tried contacting the Delano family about the rifle, but by 2003, Bill’s father had died, and the rest of the family members couldn’t recall any other information about the rifle.
Lane wondered, “Did Bill Delano and David Gerard’s paths cross one day in 1983? The rifles were still in the Lewis County Sheriff’s Office evidence room. I received permission to check the rifles out of the evidence room. I photographed them, then took them to the WSP Lab in Tacoma, where they were test-fired, and the bullets and casings were entered into the Automated Ballistic Identification System (ABIS) computer system, which can compare the rifling and firing-pin marks. I felt that there might be a bullet or casing in the system that might match Gerard’s rifle. But it never went beyond that.”
By 2001, Lane Youmans recalled, “I was putting a case together against
David Gerard, and I got to the point that I thought about him all the time. I knew eventually that we would have to question him. We had DNA evidence that now tied him to Carol Leighton. Elaine McCollum’s panties were sitting on a shelf in the state crime lab evidence refrigerator, waiting to be analyzed. I wanted to be prepared for the interview even though I was pretty sure he would not confess. Gerard never had confessed to anything in his life, and instead he came up with ludicrous stories. Nonetheless, it was worth a try.”
Gathering even more information on Gerard’s background, before going to talk with him, Lane spoke with one of David’s former girlfriends, Tracy Hall. She told Lane that shortly before they broke up, there had been a fight between them, and she went outside one day to find that the tires on her vehicle had been slashed. They were Les Schwab tires that Gerard had bought for her. A witness had spotted Gerard’s car in the area, shortly before Tracy’s tires had been slashed. At the time Detective Tony Catlow had questioned Gerard about the slashed tires, and Gerard said he hadn’t slashed them.
Then quite unexpectedly, Gerard added, “I didn’t do it. I hired someone to do it.” Just why that would somehow look better in law enforcement’s eyes was hard to comprehend. Gerard refused to name the person who had supposedly slashed Tracy’s tires. He was charged with malicious mischief and pled guilty. In fact, law enforcement officers believed that Gerard had done the actual tire slashing, and not some unnamed person whom he had hired.
Tracy Hall moved to Springfield, Oregon, and shortly after moving there, her tires were mysteriously slashed again. Once again it brought up the possibility that Gerard had traveled all the way to Springfield, just to slash her tires. Or this time he actually had hired someone to do the dirty work. What was interesting to Lane now was that this was the only time that Gerard even came close to confessing to a crime that he had committed. Of course, Gerard probably knew that for a crime such as slashing tires, there wasn’t much of a penalty. It would be something he could live with, if it gave him the satisfaction of wreaking havoc on his ex-girlfriend’s car.