by Ann Rule
“They’ve got Kari,” she said. “We’ve got to call the sheriff!”
Owens ran back to Sancho Panza and called the Solano County sheriff and Fairfield Police Department’s emergency lines.
Along with Fairfield officer Fred Jones, the same trio of officers who had responded to the call for help with the suicidal resident only about an hour earlier were back. They had the advantage of having seen the men who had abducted Kari. But there was no sign of them or of Kari or her car now.
An all-points bulletin was issued for the Ford Granada and its occupants. They all hoped that there were still three people in the car.
The taller man—John Martin— was familiar to some of the counseling staff at Sancho Panza, and police learned that he had walked away from the Delancey Street facility in San Francisco without authorization only the night before. A look at his rap sheet was not encouraging: John Martin had a number of aliases, including “Butch Martin” and “Leroi Martin.” He had previously been arrested for rape, grand theft, and some lesser crimes. Martin had been charged under California statute 261.3 P.C.—“Rape by Force.” Deemed a candidate for rehabilitation, he had been placed in the Delancey Street offenders’ program in lieu of state prison.
The investigators also called Ben Lindholm,* Kari’s husband, and told him that his wife was missing—missing under highly disturbing circumstances. He threw on his clothes and drove to Sancho Panza. He made up his mind that he would not tell Kari’s mother—who lived hundreds of miles away, just north of Los Angeles—that her daughter had been kidnapped. If they could find Kari quickly, her mother might never have to know. Why put her through the anxiety if he didn’t have to?
If the news wasn’t good, Kari’s mother would have to know soon enough.
Sergeant Jim Bridewell went into the living room to gather up whatever evidence the kidnappers might have left. He carefully bagged their coffee cups into evidence, along with the cord from around Shelly’s wrist and a pile of cigarette butts. Then he asked that an ID technician be dispatched to the abduction scene to dust for fingerprints.
The counselor due to come on duty for the morning shift, Gracie Phelps,* was notified, and she came to work early so that, if Kari somehow managed to call, she could be told that everything was normal and the police had not been called. Moreover, someone had to be on duty at San-cho Panza to oversee the residents and the clients who would be coming in for counseling.
Kari was still alive. It was probably lucky that she didn’t know about John Martin’s criminal background, and yet she dreaded the possibility that either he or the man behind the wheel might have more than kidnapping in mind.
Unfortunately, she was right. Once they appeared to be heading in the right direction, John turned toward Kari and applied more pressure with the knife that he continued to hold against the skin of her throat, stopping just short of drawing blood. He traced an invisible pattern in her flesh, enjoying the way she involuntarily cringed.
“Take off your pants,” he ordered, adding, “I’m sure you knew this was going to happen.”
Kari had made up her mind to do whatever she had to do to live, and she had known all along that a sexual attack was a very real danger. She had to disassociate her body from her mind. If she fought John, as unstable as he seemed to be, it might well set him off. She had no hope of escape at this point. She had to do what he ordered.
“I took off my shoes first, and then my pants. John said, ‘Keep going,’ so I took off my nylons, which left me completely exposed from the waist down...”
“Lay down [sic],” John directed. “No—lay down on top of me.” He didn’t remove his trousers but unzipped his fly as he rested on his back in the backseat. Kari obeyed his order and moved on top of him.
“He then started kissing me, thrusting his tongue in my mouth. He started rubbing his penis mechanically against my pubic area until he started to get an erection. John also put his finger up my vagina and began to probe, hurtfully.”
She tried not to think about his body odor, or what sexually transmitted diseases he might have. She knew how insecure he was, and that showing distaste or revulsion toward him would surely make him angry.
“I didn’t fight or struggle or protest while John was raping me,” she recalls. “I had decided that my best bet was to go along with him. The knife was ever present. He told me to get on the bottom. I was so frightened that when he was through—if he was ever through—that would be when he would kill me, and dump me off on some deserted road. If he didn’t have an orgasm, he would be so angry that he would probably kill me.”
It seemed to Kari that, either way, she didn’t have much of a chance.
“John thrust his penis up my vagina so violently that it hurt and he started pumping. I thought he was going to knock the wind out of me,” she remembers. “After what seemed like an eternity, he had what seemed like an orgasm. His body sort of ‘tremored’ and he seemed to lose his erection. He got off me, and told me to get my clothes back on.”
Kari dressed, all but her shoes. Satiated, John appeared to feel some regret for raping her.
“I’m not proud of what I just did,” he said, “but I’m a sicko person, and I haven’t had a woman in a long time.”
Kari would never remember just when they had finally gotten on the freeway headed toward Reno. Her captors had a plan of sorts. Their main concern was to get as far from Fairfield and Sancho Panza as they could before 7 A.M. when the day shift showed up for work. They would find Shelly tied up on the floor of the office, and would surely call the police and report her kidnapping. They planned to ditch Kari’s car before then, and obtain a rental car. They had expected to find enough money in the two women’s purses to pay for the rental car, but they still needed three hundred dollars—whatever that was for.
John now pawed through the two purses, looking for cash and credit cards. But Shelly had only fifteen dollars in hers, and Kari had nothing but change.
“I have my paycheck,” Kari offered. “It’s for $306.50. I can probably cash it at an Albertson’s store because I have a check guarantee card with them.”
“We’re not going back to Fairfield,” John argued.
“No—no,” Kari soothed. “There are some Albertson’s stores in Sacramento. I think they’ll honor my guarantee card.”
Although she had convinced John and Mike that they needed her alive in order to get cash, she was very careful not to say much to either of them. “They were very jumpy, nervous, and seemed like they could blow it at any moment.”
As they hurtled east on the freeway, John told Kari that the two of them had been planning to assault her and Shelly as they sat in the living room of Sancho Panza. “At first, we were going to kill both of you, steal your purses, and take one of your cars,” he said, as easily as if he were talking about the weather.
It chilled her blood to think that the two men had been sitting near them for hours, calmly planning their murders when, all the while, she and Shelly had been completely unaware of the danger.
“For some reason,” Kari remembers, “they didn’t kill us. It might have been because we had to call the sheriff for the resident and the deputies arrived so quickly. Maybe they figured it would be too risky to hang around there.”
John kept telling Kari that they were “totally desperate men. We don’t have a goddammed thing going for us. We don’t give a fuck what happens.”
And then, with what seemed to be flawed reasoning, John explained that it would be better for them when they were captured to be facing murder charges as well as kidnapping, auto theft, and any other charges. He said that would get them fewer years in the penitentiary. Kari didn’t dare ask them how it could possibly work out that way. Murder charges certainly didn’t add any stars to felons’ crowns.
But she didn’t argue with them. Any criticism on her part would, she knew, be like waving a red flag in front of a bull.
The two men spoke of how they had never had a chance in their misera
ble lives. “Nobody never gave us no breaks,” Mike whined.
Kari realized now that John must have been treated at Sancho Panza, because he knew the names of several counselors who worked there. While he and Mike bemoaned their unhappy past, Kari also detected anger, hostility, and fear.
“This hostility was precariously maintained and controlled,” she says. “They needed constant reassurance that we weren’t being followed by the California Highway Patrol or the Solano County sheriff’s deputies. I kept telling them that Shelly wouldn’t call the police, and that she was tied up, anyway, so she couldn’t call anyone. Mike, John, and I agreed that I should call Sancho Panza right at 7:00 A.M. so I could catch Gracie before she called anyone.”
Even though Kari was cooperating with her kidnappers and subtly giving them the sense that the three of them were in this dilemma together and they seemed to trust her, she still believed that they intended to kill her.
“I just didn’t know when...”
If she had any chance of escape, Kari knew that she had to get to a place where there were other people around. She didn’t want anyone else to get hurt, but she hoped she could let someone know where she was. She thought about how she might alert a clerk or manager at an Albertson’s store. But if John caught her signaling, she had no doubt he would dispose of her as soon as possible.
Now, as they entered the outskirts of Sacramento, they exited the freeway at the Jefferson off-ramp. Kari had thought that would take them into the historic Old Town section of the California state capital, but once again, she was lost. Mike was getting antsy. He wanted to dump her car before 7:00 A.M. when an alarm might go out from the day crew at Sancho Panza. He was trying to find a deserted area along the Sacramento River where her car wouldn’t be noticeable, but they couldn’t even find the river itself.
“I’m goin’ back on the freeway,” Mike muttered.
Now they were headed south toward Los Angeles. But Mike jumped from freeway to freeway, and ended up on the one that led back to San Francisco.
“Mike seemed to know where he was going,” Kari remembered, “and I saw a sign that said, ‘Airport Boating Recreation,’ and he got off there. Both of them were really nervous because it was almost seven. They were frantic to find a deserted phone booth where I could call Sancho Panza and tell the day shift people not to call the police...”
They came to a small café on a narrow road that ran parallel to the Sacramento River, and John pulled Kari out of the car, warning her, “You better pray that nobody at San-cho Panza has called the sheriff. Your life depends on that.”
He kept the knife pressed into her flesh as he walked her to the phone booth.
“I placed a collect phone call,” Kari said, “and Gracie answered the phone in the office.”
Kari’s voice sounded odd even to her as she said, “Gracie—please tell me that you have not called the sheriff, the police, or anyone—otherwise I’m dead.” She had to be very careful what she said, because John had his head pressed to hers so he could listen to the other end of the conversation.
“I haven’t called anyone, Kari,” Gracie lied. “And I won’t call anyone. I promise.”
John grabbed the phone from Kari’s hand, and said, “Shelly, your friend’s life depends on this. If we see a sheriff, we will kill her. We have nothing to lose—we’re going to the pen. If nobody comes after us, she can phone after two. If everything goes right, we will leave her in a designated area, locked in her car.” It wasn’t Shelly on the end of the line; it was Gracie, but he had forgotten that. “And Shelly,” he said, using the wrong name again, “we’re going to party awhile before we let her go.”
Kari wondered how Shelly was doing and if they had untied her yet, but she didn’t dare ask. “Gracie,” Kari said, cutting her off before she could blurt out something that might trigger John into another spate of paranoia. “I will call you at two o’clock—”
John placed his finger on the phone lever, and the phone went dead.
Unfortunately, the phone call had been too short for the investigators to trace the location Kari had called from. Her coworkers prayed that the “partying” John Martin had referred to didn’t mean that Kari was headed for a hellish experience.
And then they were in Kari’s car again, hurtling along back roads until Mike turned at a sign that pointed toward the airport. The kidnappers decided it would be best to get a rental car, one that wouldn’t be so easy to spot by police—just in case the people back at Sancho Panza were lying and had already reported Kari’s abduction.
Kari herself didn’t know if they had or not. Gracie had been amazingly cool, and she wondered if that meant there was already a dragnet out looking for her car.
She devoutly hoped so.
Her kidnappers told her they would need the three hundred dollars in cash just as soon as they had the rental car. She had a leaden feeling that she was not going to survive this crazy crisscrossing of the city of Sacramento; something would surely go wrong again. John continually reminded her that she was going to be killed, but then he would reverse himself and say he might let her live if she did everything they told her to do. He was far too volatile to read.
They parked at the airport and John led Kari toward the Hertz rental counter. He warned her again not to “pull anything” because he still had the knife. “It’s right here under my sweater,” he repeated. “You stay cool, and you pretend you’re my wife, and tell them we need the car for two days because we’re going to Reno.”
It wasn’t 8:00 A.M. yet and Kari’s heart sank as she saw the Hertz desk wasn’t technically open for business. But the woman behind the glass spotted them, smiled, and opened the window.
The clerk noted that the couple appeared quite nervous, but the man kept talking to her—explaining that they were headed for Reno. He jingled change in his pocket as he said they were going “gambling.”
Kari said what John had told her to say: that her brother-in-law had dropped them off outside the airport.
“I thought they were having an affair,” the Hertz clerk said later, “and that was why they seemed so anxious.”
The woman showed her a credit card in the name of Ben Lindholm (which the clerk noted did not match the name “John” that the man had given her).
The woman began to write a personal check for the car, saying, “It’s OK—he knows about this.”
That made the Hertz representative believe even more that these two were sneaking away for a stolen weekend. “John” was being absolutely charming and charismatic, babbling on about how he and “the wife” were going to have a fabulous holiday in Reno. Still, when Kari handed her check over, the clerk told her she couldn’t accept the check. She had to have something with Kari’s name on it.
Kari glanced at John, and he seemed perfectly at ease, playing his role as her husband. Kari had her Chevron Travelers’ Card, and the woman behind the counter said that would do. Kari knew it was out of date, and she hoped the clerk would notice that and at least call her manager or someone. Any other time she would have, but this time, she was distracted by John’s rapid-fire conversation. The clerk didn’t care who they were or what their relationship was—as long as their credit was good.
Although Kari darted her eyes around the rental car area, she didn’t see anyone she could run to for help; at this time of day, it was virtually deserted. If she screamed, she would only endanger the Hertz clerk. The two women would have no chance of overpowering John, not with his knife just beneath his sweater. As far as finding a place to hide in, there was nothing, no stairwell or cubbyhole or door she could rush through and shut behind her. The moment John realized she was trying to escape, she would be as good as dead.
She gave up for the moment. Maybe she would get another chance at their next stop.
Soon, they were out of the airport and headed toward the red and white Thunderbird that John had selected. Once more, Kari wondered about his common sense; it wasn’t an inconspicuous car. It was a dumb
choice for someone who wanted to avoid the police.
“You drive,” John ordered. “I don’t have a driver’s license. Mike will follow us in your car until we find a place to ditch it.”
She almost laughed. John had already broken a number of laws that were far more serious than driving without a valid license. But she didn’t argue; she climbed behind the wheel and put a shaky foot on the accelerator.
“We headed back toward the river,” Kari remembers. “It was about ten miles away from the airport, and we were on the road that ran beside the river again. John told me to take a road off to the right, but I missed it, and had to turn around. We were in a farming area and he finally told me to pull the car off the dirt road next to some kind of abandoned structure, with a lot of trees around. I knew that they were probably going to kill me at that point and stuff my body in the trunk of my car.
“John told me to get my belongings out of my car. There was no one around, not a person, not a car, for miles.”
She wondered if this was to be the “field” where they would “drop her off.” Or if they were going to lock her in her car trunk. In California in September, under a hot sun, she would suffocate in there before anyone found her.
And then, just as Kari accepted she was about to die, she was surprised to hear John order her into the rental car. She sat in the middle of the front seat between Mike and John—who had changed his mind about the dangers of not having a license and was now driving.
The men seemed to have relaxed a bit, now that they had another car, and, seemingly, a new identity. But Kari was still full of dread. “My life depended on my getting that three hundred dollars for them.”
Kari had homed in on their predictable behavior, but that didn’t make her feel much safer. Their pattern of response was up and down, and back and forth. But she figured they needed her at least until she got the money for them. They were leery of going in to cash a check without her. As she tried to lull John and Mike into believing they could trust her, Kari found herself employing the same arguments and sentences that she had used in her dream only last night.