Empty Promises (37 page)

He was not.
Arnold Brown had been incarcerated before, but this time he probably knew that his chances of surviving inside the walls after the other convicts learned of his crimes were slight. He must have known he was a pariah. Perhaps he could not bear the thought of never going free, of never seeing his dog Queenie again; he seemed to find something in the companionship of animals that he never realized with people.
There may well have been ghosts haunting him in his cell, memories of the children he had injured and killed.
Prisoners in the jail's mental health unit were looked in on every fifteen minutes, but Arnold took advantage of seven minutes of solitude. Eight minutes after a check, he fashioned a noose from the sheet on his bed and hanged himself. Paramedics could not revive him.
Arnold Brown left several suicide letters— to his attorney, to a Catholic priest, to his parents, and "To Whom It May Concern." The contents of those letters are sealed and will never be revealed in their entirety, but some of his thoughts were published in the newspaper. He wrote, "I didn't mean for her to die, but when that feeling came over me, I somehow couldn't control myself."
Although he didn't know the terms that described his sickness, in his own words Arnold admitted in his last letters that he was an addicted pedophile. He had seen a picture of children in a magazine, and his eyes had gone out of focus as he was seized with a terrible headache, "something a little worse than a migraine," he wrote. "That's when it started to happen."
It may be that Arnold Brown was born without the restraints that normal humans have; he may not have possessed the ability to resist a strong impulse. In the end, he gave himself the sentence that a jury could not bring itself to hand down. If only he had confided his bizarre fantasies to the many psychiatrists who tried to understand his behavior while he lived, he might well have provided a key to treat other pedophiles— but he left only those last vague letters. With his suicide, a deadly siege ended. Arnold Brown, at least, would do no further harm.

To Kill and Kill Again

A decade before Arnold Brown was sentenced to life in prison, a similar drama played out in the King County Courthouse. The nineteen-year-old defendant in this case was an exception to the long-held belief that multiple murderers tend to stalk similar victims, repeatedly seeking out the same kind of quarry. This killer
did,
however, represent a frightening category of murderers who kill simply for the sake of killing. Because he varied his choice of victims, he was all the more difficult to trap. Nothing connected his four victims, save for the fact that each of them vanished suddenly and inexplicably. They were seen, and then they were not seen, until their bodies were found in wooded areas.
Although the media are quick to publicize profiles and categories, it's always a mistake to describe murderers too narrowly. Aberrant behavior can never be forced into a box with tight parameters, no matter how many criminologists try to predict what a particular subject will do. By its very definition, aberration means "a deviation from the norm."
Among the felons I have written about, I never found one as unpredictable as this one. Anyone could have been his victim— anyone who was alone and unaware of who was following.
It was a hot August day in 1969 Seattle and the sun was shining on Elliott Bay as the ferries crisscrossed the sparkling water, heading for Bainbridge Island, Vashon Island, and Bremerton. Only four blocks up the hill from the bay, in room W-863 of the massive gray King County Courthouse, Judge David W. Soukup was presiding over a trial that was drawing more spectators than any procedure in the past two years. The proceedings cast a pall of loss and pathos over officers of the court and spectators alike.
The selection of any jury is a tedious procedure, but the senseless killings of four young people in Renton, Washington, had received so much television and newspaper coverage that it seemed unlikely that thirteen registered voters— one of whom would be an alternate juror— who hadn't already formed an opinion about the defendant's guilt or innocence, could be found. Indeed, over a hundred prospective jurors were questioned before a full jury panel was chosen.
Compared to Seattle, Renton is a small town in King County. Even so, its population burgeoned over the years, mostly because of the number of workers drawn by the Boeing Airplane Company plant located at the edge of Lake Washington. Renton is an unpretentious suburb, much of it built on hilly land rising for miles to
the east above the lake, or spilling south on flat land that drifts toward the Green River Valley. There used to be coal mines southeast of Seattle, and there are still abandoned mines near Renton, but the ore veins ran out many decades ago. By 2000, there would be 46,000 people in Renton; when the horrific crimes took place, there were half that many. The biggest distinction Renton had in the seventies and eighties was its loop, which drew high school drivers who circled for hours on weekend nights. Second to that was the Renton Public Library, part of which was actually built over the rushing Cedar River.
But beginning in December 1969, Renton took on another— very unwelcome— distinction. Its citizens moved through a holiday season chilled with dread. Even while Christmas lights swung in the wind over the downtown streets, a killer moved like a wraith among them, leaving victims along isolated pathways. There were scant clues for Renton police detectives to follow up. In truth, they didn't know if they were looking for one suspect or several.
Carole Adele Erickson was nineteen years old on December 15, 1969. She was a pretty girl with huge aqua-colored eyes, long shiny hair, and a slender figure. Carole worked in a local restaurant to help pay for courses in food preparation at the Renton Vocational School. On that chilly, dank evening in December, she left a note for her roommate, saying that she planned to do some research on a school project at the Renton Library. She said she would probably be home early.
Carole went to the library— there was no question of that. She was seen there by the librarians who knew her. But when one of her former boyfriends, who was home on furlough from the army, went there to surprise
her, he couldn't find her. He got to the library a little after 7:00 P.M. and walked through the entire building looking for Carole. He even zigzagged between the stacks, where she sometimes preferred to study.
Assuming she had left for home, he went to her cottage to wait for her. He sat there making polite conversation and then strained conversation with Carole's roommate as the minutes ticked by. He was really anxious to see Carole, but hours passed and there was no sign of her. Finally he and her roommate decided she must have had a date. The young soldier finally left. "Tell Carole I'll call her before I go back," he said.
Carole's roommate went to bed only moderately concerned. She fell asleep quickly, unaware that the night was passing and Carole had not come home.
Well before daylight the next morning, two fishermen drove onto the rutted road that ran along the bank of the Cedar River north of the library building. The road ended abruptly and became a gravel footpath. They parked their vehicle, grabbed their fishing gear, and walked about twenty-five feet up the path, squinting through the murky light. Suddenly they stopped as they saw a motionless figure lying several feet off the path. It was half hidden in some brush and looked like a store mannequin. Moving closer, they could see that it was a partially clad young woman. She appeared to be either dead or unconscious. The fishermen ran to their car, drove to a nearby service station, and telephoned the police.
Renton Patrol Officer Dave Smith responded to the call. He touched his fingertips to the fallen girl's neck and felt no reassuring pulse in her carotid artery. Her skin was as cold as the ground beneath her. She was dead, and probably had been for several hours. Smith called the detective division of the Renton Police De
partment and reached Detective Don Dashnea, who had just reported for duty. Dashnea hurried to the death scene, which was only a few blocks from police headquarters. By 7:30 A.M. a complete crew of Renton detectives had joined him.
The dead girl lay on her back, her legs spread-eagled, her arms thrown above her head. Fresh scuff marks in the dirt formed a trail between the path and her body, suggesting that she had been dragged to where she lay. She wore only a long-sleeved yellow sweater, a bra, and white socks. A single scarlet stain was visible on her white bra and in a startlingly macabre touch, leather shoelaces were wound tightly around her neck.
While waiting for King County deputy medical examiners to arrive, the officers searched the immediate area meticulously. Detective Arnold Huebner found a school notebook. Inside it, someone had written directions for the preparation of an international dinner. There was also a letter, written in the same neat hand, which was dated only the night before and signed "Carole." It was addressed to another woman, who said she was "in the library doing homework."
The Renton detectives located a pair of rain-soaked women's jeans and some panties in the brush near the body, along with a pair of women's shoes. The shoes had no laces.
It wasn't long before they found a wallet, as sodden with rain as the clothing was. It contained pictures and a driver's license for Carole Adele Erickson. The picture on the license resembled the face of the dead girl, but it was difficult to be positive.
The officers thought they knew who she was; they had no idea how she had come to be abandoned on the riverbank.
Don Dashnea and E. A. McKenney drove to the address listed on the license but found no one at home. Another officer said he knew the Erickson family— the man who lived there was probably at his job as a custodian in a nearby factory. There was a teenage girl in the family. They found the father at work and told him they needed someone to identify the body of a young female. The anguished man accompanied the detectives to the King County morgue. There he nodded silently as he looked at the body of the victim. It was, indeed, his nineteen-year-old daughter, Carole Adele.
He gave the detectives a studio portrait of his daughter. Seeing a clear image of Carole, several detectives were startled to realize that they recognized her; she had often served them at lunches hosted by the foods preparation department at the vocational school. Because the students were graded on how well they cooked and on their presentations, the lunches were popular with the police department— great food for a reasonable price.
One of the detectives recalled Carole: "She was very vivacious, always friendly, with a smile for everyone."
Neither her father nor her roommate could imagine any reason why someone would want to kill Carole. Her roommate knew that Carole routinely used the riverside path to reach their cottage from the library because it was an easy shortcut.
Don Dashnea read again the last letter Carole had written and looked up to say, "She wasn't afraid of anything; she had no idea in the world what lay outside. This was a letter to a close friend. If she was worried or afraid about anything, surely she would have mentioned it. Instead, all we've got here is a rough timetable of the last few minutes of her life. She finished this letter and then she took the shortcut home."
Arnold Huebner walked the path between the library and Carole's cottage and checked his watch. At a reasonable pace, the walk took seven minutes. Although many people used the shortcut, several nearby residents said they considered it dangerous because the path was hidden from view by dense underbrush. They had, in fact, asked the city to clear the brush away. The detectives already knew that; with grim synchronicity, a work crew had arrived that morning to chop down the underbrush, only to find detectives already there, processing the murder scene. If they had cut down the thicket a day earlier, the young woman might still have been alive.
It was almost impossible for the investigators to cast plaster moulages of tire marks on the path because of the gravel surface. But they did note that a car— probably a foreign model with very small tires— had been near the body site. They cast those tracks the best they could, hoping they might one day have a suspect's car to compare them with.
At eleven o'clock that morning, Dr. Gale Wilson, medical examiner for King County, performed an autopsy on Carole Erickson's body. Carole was 5 feet 6 and weighed 126 pounds. Oddly, she had suffered only one severe injury. Someone had plunged a knife into the middle of her back, causing a deep, thrusting wound that had severed her seventh rib and pushed the rib into her chest cavity. The knife then penetrated the lower lobe of her right lung and entered the right atrium of her heart. According to Dr. Wilson, such a wound would have caused her to collapse at once and die within five minutes.
There were two constriction marks caused by the leather shoelaces tied around her neck. They were deep enough to cut into the flesh, but the larynx beneath had
not been fractured. Save for a small abrasion on her upper lip, there were no other wounds on the victim's body and no defense wounds to indicate that she had fought her attacker.
The vaginal examination indicated evidence of rape and the presence of viable sperm. "It could have been deposited there just before— or just after— death," Wilson said.
Dr. Wilson set the approximate time of death at 9:00 P.M. on December 15, fourteen hours before the postmortem examination. It looked as if someone had dealt Carole Erickson a fatal blow as he came up behind her on the path. If he had approached her from the front, surely she would have fought him, but there was no evidence that she had. She was slender, but she wasn't a small girl; she could have put up a fight. Sexual intercourse had taken place— but it had not been consensual intercourse.
Women reading about Carole's murder were afraid. How terrible to be walking along a dark path where no one could help you, where the sound of the river would drown out screams. Even after the brush was cut down, the shortcut to the library no longer attracted walkers; they now preferred to take the longer— safer— route.
The Renton detectives launched a massive manhunt, following up on leads they obtained from Carole's school and work associates. A picture of Carole was printed in local papers along with a request for information from anyone who might have seen her on the day she died. There were many responses, but most of them were from people who meant well but who had little useful information.
Some of the people who worked at the restaurant with her recalled that Carole had argued with her current boyfriend on the very day she died. She told her
co-workers that they had had words when he drove her to work that afternoon. Dashnea and Huebner were very much interested to learn that Carole's current boyfriend drove a small foreign car. They questioned him about his activities on December 15. Regretful now that his last moments with Carole had been angry, he explained that their quarrel was brief and over something silly. He said he'd been with several friends throughout the evening. When the detectives checked, they found that he was telling the truth.
Even more interesting was a fellow student of Carole's at Renton Vocational Tech. Her friends described him as "very shy, afraid of girls." He apparently had a crush on Carole. "He got up his nerve once," one girl told Dashnea, "and he wrote her a really corny note, like 'Meet me tonight. I'll be wearing a white carnation.' That kind of thing. She didn't go, but he still acted like he was spaced out about her."
Investigators found the lovesick student. He was certainly nervous and very unhappy about Carole's death, but he assured them that he had nothing at all to do with her murder. He was appalled that they would think he would ever hurt her. He agreed to take a polygraph examination to back up his claim. The test, administered by Seattle Police polygraphist Dewey Gillespie, supported his protestations of innocence. He was telling the truth.
With the cooperation of the Renton Library, the detectives began a tedious search. With no other clues to go on, they could only wonder if someone had seen Carole in the library and decided to follow her down the gravel path when she left. Now they copied down the names of every patron who visited the library on December 15. They found that
eight hundred
people
had passed through the library on the day Carole was killed. Was the killer somewhere on that list?