by Ann Rule
Charles Campbell’s juvenile record showed arrests for auto theft, burglary, and resisting arrest, and that he had spent time at a juvenile detention center. In 1973 he had been charged with defrauding an innkeeper, and the 1974 drug charges had stemmed from his alleged possession of sixty tablets of amphetamines. And that was just in Snohomish County. Far across the Cascade Mountains, in Okanogan County, Campbell had been arrested in the fall of 1974—before the attack on Renae Wicklund—for violation of the federal firearms act, resisting arrest, criminal trespass, burglary, two counts of grand larceny, carrying a concealed weapon, and second-degree assault. Those charges were still extant.
All in all, Charles Campbell was not someone any woman would want to see running up her driveway.
Renae Wicklund was vastly relieved when Campbell was arrested after she identified him in March 1976. He was charged with one count of first-degree assault with intent to kill and one count of sodomy. By reporting what had happened to her, she had become one of the small percentage of women who have the courage to turn a sex criminal in to the police. Law enforcement authorities agree that statistics on sex crimes are almost impossible to chart accurately, that perhaps only one out of ten victims makes a police report. Women who have been raped and sexually molested are afraid and embarrassed. They are naturally hesitant to get on the witness stand and tell strangers in a courtroom the intimate details of an aberrant sexual attack.
But Renae Wicklund reported Campbell, and she got up in court and told it all. Her neighbor, Barbara Hendrickson, went on the stand, too. There was no way they could refuse to testify and face their consciences knowing that a monstrous criminal might go free to harm other women. Still, the ordeal was agonizing.
Under our justice system, the suspect has the right to face his accusers, and Renae had to testify about the sexual appetites of her attacker as Charles Campbell stared at her, this huge man with the piercing dark eyes.
Renae Wicklund’s testimony was bolstered by testimony from a young woman who had once lived with Campbell. The woman said she lived near the Wicklunds’ home and that Campbell had visited her often—including the week of the rape. Campbell’s former lover said that he carried a knife and that he had told her, “You never know when you’re going to need it.”
The seven-woman, five-man jury found Charles Campbell guilty of both the assault and the sodomy. They also found that he had committed those crimes while in possession of a deadly weapon. At his sentencing, his prior record was introduced, and the consensus was that he was not fit to be on the streets for a very long time. Campbell had already pleaded guilty to second-degree burglary in the Okanogan County cases and had received up to fifteen years in prison with a five-year minimum. In Snohomish County, Judge Phillip Sheridan sentenced Campbell to another thirty years in prison with a seven-and-a-half-year minimum for the attack on the Wicklunds.
Charles Campbell’s trial in the attack on Renae and Shannah lasted only three days. It didn’t even rate a headline in the Everett papers.
The headlines would come later.
Renae Wicklund went home to pick up the pieces of her life, scarred as all sexual attack victims are by a pervasive fear that never quite goes away. Her marriage to Jack Wicklund broke up, partially from the lingering emotional trauma of the sex attack and partially for personal reasons. She and Shannah remained in the modest little white house in the woods, and Renae worked hard to support them. She worked as a beautician and also as an accountant for beauty parlors. She was a very intelligent woman and a single mother who wanted to be sure Shannah had everything she needed. Her own mother, Hilda, had always worked, and Renae’s life was solidly grounded in the work ethic.
Renae remained on friendly terms with Jack after he moved out. She also stayed close to her in-laws, who lived in a little town in Kitsap County across Puget Sound. Jack’s parents had always liked Renae. She joined their family get-togethers happily; her own mother and her sister Lorene were more than a thousand miles away in North Dakota. Renae was a great cook and brought food to every Wicklund holiday gathering, and she was a wonderful mother to Shannah, their granddaughter. Even though Renae was divorced from their son, she made sure that Jack’s parents saw Shannah often.
Once they got used to Jack’s being gone, Renae Wicklund and Shannah seemed to do all right. Don and Barbara helped out with chores Renae couldn’t manage, and both the Hendricksons adored Shannah.
Jack Wicklund was the one who now became a target for violence. In December 1977 he was almost killed in a bizarre attack. Wicklund was found in his West Seattle home, tied to a chair and severely burned over most of his body. He was rushed to a hospital, but it was a long time before doctors would cautiously say he might live and even longer before Wicklund could give a statement. All he remembered was that a stranger had walked into his home carrying a package and wished him Merry Christmas. He insisted he had never seen the man before. The stranger then tied Jack to a chair, poured gasoline over him, and struck a match.
Miraculously, Jack Wicklund didn’t die, but he was horribly scarred and lived with constant, unyielding pain. He was forced to wear a kind of rubber suit to minimize the formation of scar tissue.
In April 1978 Jack Wicklund left his parents’ home in Hansville, Washington, after a visit. They were worried about his burns, and it had been awful for them to see their son in his strange rubber suit, but he was alive. A few hours after Jack left to go home, a Kitsap County coroner’s deputy came to his parents’ home and broke the news that Jack had been killed in a one-car accident on the Hansville Road. His car had left the road and crashed into a tree, killing him instantly. There were no witnesses. The ensuing investigation into Jack Wicklund’s death never produced any definite answers as to why the crash had occurred. After surviving what should have been a fatal torching, Wicklund had met his fate on a lonely road. The curve where the car had left the road was known to be dangerous, but Wicklund had traversed the county road countless times before, and he knew the curve was there; he should have been prepared for it. Perhaps he had been temporarily blinded by oncoming headlights. If so, the other car hadn’t stopped. Perhaps he had been run off the road.
Seattle police have never solved the murder attempt on Wicklund. Perhaps he was suicidal and it took him two tries to succeed in destroying himself. Perhaps he was involved in something unsavory or dangerous—or both. Or perhaps Jack Wicklund was only a very unlucky man.
The shock of the deliberate torching of her ex-husband and then his accidental death coming so hard on the heels of the murder attempt only served to heighten Renae Wicklund’s constant anxiety. The attack by Charles Campbell had made her think that the world was a terribly dangerous place where tragedy waited just ahead. She could not help but wonder if the incidents were somehow connected, if they were more than just random misfortunes. She told friends and coworkers that she lived and walked in terror that something awful was going to happen again. And who could blame her?
Still, Renae Wicklund put on the facade of a cheerful, outgoing woman who was confident that she could take care of fatherless Shannah. Maybe trouble came in threes; people always said that. If that was true, then her three were all used up: the sexual attack, the burning, Jack’s fatal car crash.
Renae Wicklund didn’t know much about the workings of the justice system. She knew that Charles Campbell had been sent to the Monroe Reformatory—Washington’s mid-level penal institution. Security was not as tight there as it was in the state penitentiary at Walla Walla, but it was much stronger than at Green Hill Academy, the boys’ training school in Chehalis. Renae didn’t care where Campbell was as long as he was locked up. All together, he had forty-five years hanging over him. That seemed like a safety net. Renae assumed that Campbell would be over sixty-five when he finally got out. By then Shannah would be middle-aged and Renae would be an old woman. They would probably have moved far away, too, maybe even back to North Dakota.
To a layman, forty-five years does sound like
a long, long time. However, Charles Campbell’s two sentences would run concurrently, not consecutively. Although it wasn’t likely, it was within the realm of possibility that he could serve only the seven-and-a-half-year minimum and be released in 1983 or 1984. He would, of course, have to have some time off for good behavior to do that.
Renae had no idea that forty-five years didn’t really mean forty-five years.
She and Shannah stayed in their old neighborhood, and Renae worked to keep the house and yard up. Shannah grew through the toddler stage and became a pretty little girl with straight shiny brown bangs, a pageboy haircut, and big brown eyes. Tall for her age, she was quiet and a little shy. She went to the Shepherd of the Hill Lutheran Church Sunday school and they teased her fondly about being their “little missionary” because she was always bringing a new friend along with her.
Renae had played the flute as a girl, and Shannah had ambitions to master it, too. She invited Don and Barb over for “a recital,” and they clapped as if she were a child prodigy. She took dancing lessons, and Don Hendrickson took pictures of her in her costumes. Her grandpa Wicklund helped her learn how to ride a two-wheel bike.
The neighborhood in Clearview was a good place for a little girl to grow up, even though it might have been easier for Renae to live in a city apartment where she didn’t have to cope with leaking roofs and broken plumbing and keeping a yard clear of weeds. She really counted on her neighbors. She and Shannah shopped at the Clearview market, and everybody knew both of them. Barbara Hendrickson’s grandchildren grew up along with Shannah, and they often played together.
Renae proved to be a really clever businesswoman. She operated her accounting business for beauty parlors out of her own home, and her clients were pleased with her know-how and efficiency. She was expert in helping students get grants and loans to help them through beauty school. In early 1982 Renae was only thirty-one, but she was shouldering her responsibilities with great maturity.
If she thought about the man who had broken into her home eight years earlier—and those close to her say she did—the scary memories crept up full-blown only when the moon was hidden behind scudding clouds and the wind sighed in the tall trees around her little house. He was part of a nightmare she couldn’t quite forget, but his image was gone when the sun rose again.
Renae bought a large dog, an Afghan hound, more to keep her company than for protection. Afghans are not particularly territorial or effective as watchdogs. But it would bark if anyone came around her property.
Less than 25 miles away, Charles Campbell was locked up in the Monroe Reformatory. He had earned the nickname “One Punch” because his fist was so powerful. He was a bully, and weaker inmates toadied to him, fearful of that fist. Guards were aware of Campbell’s drug trafficking—inside prison—and his infraction record grew thicker and thicker.
Renae was serene in her belief that her attacker was locked up in prison and still had years and years to go on his sentence. Nevertheless, she was super-cautious, because she knew what could happen. Charles Campbell wasn’t the only man who attacked women. Renae had strong locks on the doors and windows, and she warned Shannah never, never to go with strangers.
It snowed in early January 1982, and Don Hendrickson noticed footprints one morning outside the side windows of his home. Later that day, Renae told Barbara that she too had found footprints beneath her windows. Since her house stood so far back from the road, the large prints in the snow upset her.
Hilda Ahlers had been visiting Renae over Christmas, as she almost always did. Renae had never told her mother about the man who had attacked her seven years earlier.
“Renae was so strong,” her mother said. “I never knew. She didn’t want me to worry.” But with the clarity of hindsight, Hilda would come to see that something was wrong that winter. “I remember one night when Renae’s dog—who normally never barked at all—went wild and began barking fiercely. I thought there was something horrid outside, but I was afraid to look.”
Not long after that, the Afghan nipped a neighbor’s child, and Renae decided to give it away.
Looking back, Hilda Ahlers remembered more. “Another time, I saw Renae looking out the window at the road with the strangest look on her face. I said, ‘What do you see out there?’ and Renae just answered, ‘Oh, nothing.’ She didn’t seem frightened; she was just watching so quietly.”
Renae didn’t know that Charles Campbell had been out of prison that weekend in January. Incredibly, and despite a stack of infractions, he had somehow earned time off for good behavior. He had served less than six years in prison, and he was already going out on furloughs.
Neither Renae nor the Hendricksons were aware of that. No one had bothered to tell them. Nor did anyone tell them when Campbell was transferred a month later to a work-release facility located less than ten miles from Clearview.
Renae missed the Easter service at church on April 11,1982. She had a terribly sore throat. Don Hendrickson finally coaxed her into seeing a doctor. “I’ll go with you; I’ll hold your hand,” he kidded. And he did hold her hand while an emergency room doctor examined her. She had strep throat, and she had to stay in bed for days, taking penicillin and trying to swallow the soft foods that Barb Hendrickson brought over to her.
April 14 was a Wednesday—just as it had been a Wednesday when Charles Campbell attacked Renae and Shannah in 1974. It was sunny but blustery, and the bright periods alternated with overhanging clouds. Daffodils, dogwood and fruit trees were in bloom, and spring had almost arrived. Except for the fact that Renae was sick, everything was normal. Barbara ran over in the morning to see how she was and found her a little better. She promised she would be back in the afternoon. Renae watched television and tried to read a little.
“Barb went out to the end of our driveway to get our mail that afternoon,” Don remembers. “She met Shannah coming home from school and told her to tell Renae that she’d be over soon to make Jell-O. I remember it was 4:20 when Barb asked to borrow my watch; she wanted to use it to check Renae’s pulse.”
Barbara Hendrickson then headed toward Renae’s house. There were no loud sounds from the Wicklund home, nothing to alarm any of the neighbors. She was gone for quite a while, but Don didn’t think anything of it. She and Renae and Shannah often visited for hours.
It seemed to get dark earlier than usual that evening. A gale-force wind battered the Hendrickson house. Don glanced at the spot on his wrist where his watch usually was and then got up from his chair and checked a clock. He discovered that it was almost six. His wife had been gone for an hour and a half.
Don put on a jacket and walked down his driveway, across the street, and up Renae’s long driveway. He usually went in through the sliding glass doors to the kitchen area. The glass doors were partly open and he paused. That’s odd, he thought, and then he slid the doors open more and stepped into the house.
“The house was so quiet,” he said later. “It was unlike anything I’d ever heard before—or since. Totally still. And then, as I got further into the house, I heard something—water running from a faucet somewhere.”
It was the faucet in the kitchen sink. He turned the spigot off and listened for some other sound. There should have been three of them in the house—Barb, Renae, and Shannah—and they always made enough noise for six. He listened again, but he heard nothing. Don looked around the kitchen and shuddered involuntarily when he saw that a chair had been knocked over near the dinette set. That wasn’t right. Renae always kept everything so neat. The silence kept Don from calling out to his wife or Renae or Shannah.
Donald Hendrickson found them in a few moments of horror that he will never forget.
He had left the kitchen and moved slowly toward the short hallway that led to the bedrooms. He found Barbara first. His wife of thirty-four years lay motionless in the hallway, her throat slashed, the arteries severed. Even as he knelt beside her, he knew she was gone. A halo of blood soaked the carpet beneath her head and stained her
beautiful prematurely silver hair. It was a scene that Don Hendrickson would never, ever be able to erase from his memory.
His wife’s throat had been slit from one side to the other with a razor-sharp knife, allowing the blood to course out of her jugular vein and carotid arteries. She could have lived only moments before she bled to death.
Numb with shock, Don got up from Barbara’s side and continued to make his way down the hall. He didn’t want to, but he had to see what was behind the other doors. Shannah’s bedroom was empty. He moved to Renae’s bedroom next, pausing at the door before he made himself turn and look inside.
They were both there on the floor. Renae was nude—her body hideously bruised and her throat slashed with macabre efficiency. Shannah lay across the room from her mother. She had been almost decapitated by a knife’s merciless edge. Nine years old, with her throat cut. All of them dead.
Automatically Don Hendrickson picked up the phone with nerveless fingers and dialed 911. Then he walked outside to try to make his mind function. “I heard a car engine start up,” he said. “It was Renae’s next-door neighbor and her daughters, and I ran out and shouted at them, ‘Shannah and Renae are dead!’ But they just looked at me, and then they got out of their car and ran back into their house. I think they were afraid of me because I was acting so wild.”
Snohomish County deputies arrived shortly. They took one look at the carnage inside the Wicklund home and radioed in for the homicide detectives. What they encountered on April 14 would mean days of working almost around the clock. The public had no idea at first how ghastly the triple murder was. The Clearview story hit the media as a very short, deliberately succinct news bulletin.
The detectives released almost no information: “Three people were found dead on April 14 in south Snohomish County….”