Authors: Burl Barer
Head Shot (9 page)
“Mom didn't really believe her own explanation,” said Gail Webb. “When she talked to Andrew, she realized that he was out of his mind and on drugsâhe had been up for three days without sleep, and nothing for nutrition but LSD and pot. She thought up that demonic-possession thing, which was plausible to her, to calm Anne down, to give the girl some peace and assurance. So there they were: Andrew out of his head, his wife scared and confused, and his mother at her wits' end. But Mom always had to come off as unruffled, self-assured, and with matters well in hand, even when they were completely beyond her grasp. An explanation involving God and Satan would seem a safe approach to just about any crisis.”
Dolores Webb embraced a theology in which religion was more magic than mercy, more wrath than reason, and promulgated fearful superstitions about superstition itself. “It was bad luck to believe in superstition,” Anne Webb said with a laugh. “For years I would never wish anyone âgood luck' because they convinced me I'd go to hell if I said that.... Poor Dolores had mental problems for sure.”
“She tried to get help at St. Joseph's Hospital, Western State Hospital, and Puget Sound Hospital, but no one took her seriously,” explained Gail. “Mom presented herself too well. She looked like she had it all together; she could express herself and was very well mannered in social situations. When she tried to explain to the doctors at the sanitarium why she wanted to be admitted and treated, they told her that she was just under too much stress, and then they suggested tranquilizers.”
“I sympathize with what Dolores went through, and I guess it explains why she was so crazy and violent, but that doesn't change what she did, the way she treated people, including her grandkids. And think of what her own children went through,” said Marty Webb. “The emotional abuse, the physical abuse, and of all tragic things, the sexual abuse. What kind of childhood is that? It sure isn't one any of us would wish on our kids. Yeah, they had some regular fun with the other kids in the neighborhood, but I guarantee you that whatever games they were playing in the yard or in the street, the games going on inside the house were more emotionally intense. Hide-and-seek takes on a whole new meaning when you know why someone is hiding, and what someone else is seeking.”
Hide-and-seek, tag, freeze tag, red light/green light, run for your life, and kick the can were the energetic fun of a strictly traditional nature enjoyed outdoors by the Webbs and St. Pierres in their younger days. As the boys grew older, the games changed to knockout, truth or dare, stick 'em, stretch 'em, and target practice.
Target practice involved throwing a knife or hatchet at targets drawn on the Webbs' old garage door. Neighborhood consensus conferred the knife-throwing championship on Andrew Webb.
“Who do you think threw that knife into Damon Wells's back?” asked Marty Webb rhetorically. “Who was the champ at knife throwing? Andrew Webb, that's who. I bet he threw the knife into Damon's back. And here's something else to think about,” added Marty. “There were several conflicting versions of what really happened to Damon Wells. Who of those three guys could possibly have a motive for killing that kid?”
The three requisites of homicide are means, opportunity, and motive. The knife was the means; deserted Salmon Beach was the opportunity. As for motive, Detective Yerbury easily offered his professional opinion. “From those threeâPaul and Chris St. Pierre, and Andrew Webbâonly one of them had anything to lose from Wells being alive, or to gain from Wells being dead. Paul St. Pierre and Chris St. Pierre had no adult criminal records. If they were charged and convicted with assault, it would be as first-time offenders. Andrew Webb's situation, however, was altogether different. He was just about to be sentenced for those three assault cases, including the one Randy Nolan and he committed against the Sanfords.”
The Webb and Nolan assault on Shane and Nellie Sanford, while never rising to the status of a rational act, is more understandable when placed in perspective. In March 1983, Andrew and Anne Webb's house was burglarized, and two items were stolen: Andrew's 9mm Smith & Wesson, and Randy Nolan's nickel-plated .357 revolver. “Honor and pride were important to the Webbs,” recalled Anne, “and it was a poor reflection on Andrew that Randy Nolan's gun was stolen while in Andrew's care.”
So Andrew Webb decided to play detective. “He questioned some girls living down the street in a home for troubled runaways if they knew anybody who had been breaking into houses in the area. By amazing coincidence, those girls had just broken up with two guys who were bragging about doing exactly that. Andrew got a hold of the kind of friends that would back him up with no questions, only actionâCory Cunningham and Paul St. Pierre.
“Armed with baseball bats, they kicked in the door of one of the ex-boyfriends of these girls. One of them asked what our boys wanted, and they gave them the name of this junior high kid they were looking for. Well, they brought the kid downstairs, and Cory, Paul, or both held this kid's hands down on the coffee table while Andrew asked the question. If he didn't respond correctly, or in willing humble tone, they would whack his hands with the bat until he was begging for another chance to get the story correct. Meanwhile, this kid's brothers are trying to help get this thing over with, saying, âYou better tell these guys everything they want to know because they are not fucking around.' This pattern was repeated at the next kid's house. The kids admitted that they sold the guns, but our armed invaders forgot to ask the name of the guy they sold them to,” Anne continued.
“On the Fourth of July, Randy Nolan was on shore leave from the navy. Soon enough, both Randy and Andrew are in a drunken stupor, talking about the robberies, and they decide to find out who the guy was that bought the guns. They loaded themselves up with every weapon they could get their hands on.... They had so many guns on them that they couldn't pull all of them out at once using both hands.
“The plan was the same as before: kick in the door and take the answer by force. On the way, they stopped by Wesley's place to see if he would go along; Marty threw a fit about it.”
“I sure did,” Marty Webb confirmed. “I threw a real huge fit. I was screaming at Wesley like you wouldn't believe, threatening him that if he went with Andrew and Randy that I was leaving him for goodâstuff like that. We'd only been married about a year or so, and he still listened to me a little bit. Also, I think Wesley used my fit as an excuse not to go. He had gone on missions with Andrew before, but enough was enough.”
“Before the assault charges, I think Wesley helped him go after a guy who ripped him off,” said Anne. “Andrew brought a guy home from work one time who needed a place to stay. When we woke up the next morning, we discovered the guy had stolen all of Andrew's marijuana plants. Well, Andrew found out that the guy was from Olympia, so he got his pal Cory and maybe his brother Wesley and they got all loaded up with guns and took off for Olympia. They got all the plants back, and that just put more fuel on Andrew's delusion that he was invincible, that he could go crashing around, waving guns at people, and have it be OK. He just kept getting more and more violent, like it was all leading up to something. The three assaults he admitted to were almost the big finale, and I wish to God they had been.”
Some people assumed that Andrew Webb's drunken assault on the Sanfords was the reason Anne kicked him out. Homeless, and not about to move back in with his folks, Andrew Webb took temporary sanctuary with Chris and Paul St. Pierre at the “Animal House” on Pacific Avenue.
“No, that wasn't the reason I kicked him out,” insisted the former Mrs. Andrew Webb. “I worked at Tacoma Catering, and I got him a job in the doughnut factory. Well, he didn't come home one night because he was out till morning making out, or getting it on, with the company's attractive secretary. He finally came home in the morning with lipstick all over his neck. I just knew right away that it was hers. I told him that someone's moving out, and it's not me. That's when he moved in pretty much with the St. Pierres. Besides, I may have been young and naive, but I wasn't stupid. Andrew was a drunk, plain and simple. The guns were legal, and Andrew had permits, so I just sort of let that go. It was the drinking. I would come home to bottles and bottlesâempty bottles of beer. He absolutely had an alcohol problem. I began to wonder if Andrew could ever be sober.”
On January 26, 1984, one month prior to the February murder of Damon Wells, a sober and somber Andrew Webb pleaded guilty to all charges in the three assault incidents. Judge Thompson delayed Webb's sentencing for several months because the presentence investigation of Andrew Webb by Probation Officer Gerri Woolf requested a complete mental evaluation of Webb. “When Andrew Webb is drunk, or when he drinks,” said Woolf, “it seems to allow him to express the anger or whatever that's inside of him, and release those emotions that are otherwise not released. If there was a real problemâa mental problemâthen the problem should be dealt with. If they could not find a problem other than Andrew Webb's drinking, then I felt he should be sentenced to prison.”
On Woolf's recommendation, Judge Thompson specifically required that Webb obtain “both neurological screening and a psychiatric mental status exam to address the possibilities of psychiatric disorder and/or a biological disorder.”
Therapist Michael Comte, former Assistant Director of the Sex Offender Program at Western State Hospital, conducted the evaluation and analysis of Andrew Webb. “His attorney at that time, Mr. Craig Adams, asked that I evaluate him,” confirmed Mr. Comte. “I spoke with him actually on April 11, and then again on April 30 when psychological testing was administered by me.”
Comte's testing procedure was to administer the test, then have it sent to Dr. Peterson, a consulting psychologist. “Dr. Peterson is not provided with any background information, nor the specifics of the event, and he's asked to interpret the testing, just the paperwork, and give his best professional shot. He came to the same conclusion I did.”
“Andrew Webb has a low frustration tolerance,” summarized Comte in his report of May 14, 1984, “an immediate need for gratification, and a hostile capacity to act out his feelings without regard for the consequences in an impulsive fashion.” Dr. Peterson noted that “Mr. Webb is unlikely to experience true remorse or guilt for his behavior.”
Comte described Andrew Webb as having a mixed personality disorder with antisocial and narcissistic features dominating, intense and abrupt mood swings, alcohol abuse, a lack of ability to deal with anger, and poor impulse control.
Further testing confirmed that Andrew Webb experienced his rapid and immediate mood swings, a high manic phase, characterized by excitability and explosive anger. “Then he would suddenly drop into a low phase, which looked a lot like depression,” said Comte. “I suspected a couple different diagnoses: a psychothymic disorder and a bipolar disorder. The psychothymic disorder means that the person emotionally swings in a cycle from high to low, from low to high and to low. Bipolar also relates to rapid mood swings. When I spoke to him in conversation, I brought up the topic of hallucinations, and he did start talking about responding to voices, but when I started probing that area, he backed off rather quickly.”
Andrew Webb backed off, his former wife theorized, “because he realized how stupid he sounded insisting that he held conversations with dead beavers. I'm not kidding. He had these dead beaver skulls which were very important to him. He told me that they communicated with him on a deep psychic level.”
Andrew Webb's young nephew Travis has vivid memories of his uncle's treasured beaver skulls. “Mom and Dad and I went over to Anne and Andrew's house one day, and I saw these weird skulls on the mantel. As I walked toward them, Uncle Andrew yelled, âTravis! Don't touch those skulls! They died a bad death!' What the hell was that about?”
“When I visited Andrew in jail,” recalled Anne, “he told me to go home and give the beaver skulls a Christian burial. I went home and threw the damn things in the garbage. Who gives a Christian burial to beaver skulls?”
“Uncle Andrew also told me that he yearned to eat human flesh,” remembered Travis Webb. “I just said, âOK, sure,' as if they had it on the menu at Burger Ranch. Oh, he also told me that Vikings followed him aroundâinvisible Vikings, of courseâand they gave him advice. If the advice was good, it must have been in Norwegian and he didn't understand it. Either that or the advice sucked, 'cause the best advice would have been to not hit, hurt, or kill people.”
Telepathic communication with dead beavers and an invisible advisory committee composed of disembodied Vikings were the more benign symptoms of Andrew Webb's thought disorders. Comte also suggested that there could be something physically wrong with Webb's brain.
“Maybe the fact that Mom ran over his head with the car when he was about eighteen months old has something to do with that,” offered his sister Gail. “Mom was getting ready to back out of the driveway, and she saw my sister waving hysterically at her in the rearview mirror. She couldn't figure out what that was all about until she felt the car run over a bump.”
The bump was Andrew Webb. The expression of horrified shock on her daughter's face was sufficient confirmation for the panic-stricken Mrs. Webb. “She ran over his head, but the tire wasn't still on him. She jumped out of the car, scooped him up, and ran screaming to the neighbors' house. The neighbor lady tried to calm her down, and agreed to take them both to the hospital.”
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