Perfect Victim

PERFECT VICTIM by Christine Mcguire and Carla Norton

Copyright 1988 by Christine Mcguire and Carla Norton Quotes from The Collector by John Fowles used with permission of Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Massachusetts. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher. Inquiries should be addressed to Permissions Department, William Morrow and Company, Inc., 105 Madison Ave., New York, N.Y. 106.

was Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Mcguire, Christine.

their t Perfect victim. Thi 1. Hooker, Cameron-Trials, litigation,
etc.
McGu 2. Trials (Sex crimes)-California. 3. Yidnapping California. 1. Norton, Carla J. II. Title. KF224.H66M34 1988 345.73‘0254 88-6310 Hoolu ISBN 0-87795-957-9 347.305254 world Printed in the United States of America case. First Edition turban Hoi 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 umk BOOK DESIGN BY MARK STEW

DEDICATED TO COLLEEN JEAN STAN

Author’s Note: This story is a reconstruction of actual events. The information given and crimes depicted are based on legal evidence, on statements and testimony given by those involved, on individual research, and on facts and personal experience related by the prosecutor of People v. Hooker, Christine Mcguire. Given that the events occurred over such a long period, recollections of those involved sometimes varied, particularly in terms of chronology.

Where discrepancies arose, the most plausible version was presented, based on the fallible judgment of the authors.

To help protect the privacy of Colleen Stan and her family, her maiden name has been changed to a fictitious name, Martin.

Her mother’s current married name is fictitiously given as Grant.

And as a courtesy, the first names of Colleen’s youngest halfsister, and Cameron and Janice Hooker’s daughters and niece have also been changed.

CONTENTS Part One: Not Even a Scream 13 Part Two: The Chorus of Disbelief 53 Part Three: “K” 83 Part Four: Dangerous Precedents Part Five: Homecoming 121 Part Six: The Malleable Psyche 145 Part Seven: Return to Darkness 169 Part Eight: Scandal 183 Part Nine: Confession 205 Part Ten: The Machinery 237 Epilogue 375

Hear me, O God, as I voice my complaint; protect my life from the threat of the enemy.

Hide me from the conspiracy of the wicked, from that noisy crowd of evildoers, who sharpen their tongues like swords and aim their words like deadly arrows.

They shoot from ambush at the innocent man; they shoot at him suddenly, without fear.

They encourage each other in evil plans, they talk about hiding their snares; they say, “Who will see them?”

They plot injustice and say, “We have devised a perfect plan!”

Surely the mind and heart of man are cunning.

But God will shoot them with arrows; suddenly they will be struck down.

He will turn their own tongues against them and bring them to ruin; all who see them will shake their heads in scorn.

All mankind will fear; they will proclaim the works of God and ponder what he has done.

Psalm 64:1-9 As quoted from the Bible by Colleen Stan

I never let her see papers. I never let her have a radio or television. It happened one day before ever she came I was reading a book called Secrets of the Gestapo-all about the tortures and so on they had to do in the war, and how one of the first things to put up with if you were a prisoner was the not knowing what was going on outside the prison. I mean they didn’t let the prisoners know anything, they didn’t even let them talk to each other, so they were cut off from their old world. And that broke them down.

The Collector, by John Fowles

Nobody who has not lived in a dungeon could understand how absolute the silence down here is. No noise unless I make it. So I feel near death. Buried.

Miranda, The Collector, by John Fowles

Straddling the cool, green rush of the Sacramento River is a town too small and undistinguished to warrant a stop by most tourists. It’s a long way from postcard visions of the West Coast-no beach-front condos, few flashy sports cars, not even a whole lot of freeway.

This sleepy metropolis is the heart and capital of Tehama County, a bucolic expanse of olive, plum, walnut, and almond orchards; a few busy timber yards; and rolling cattle range.

Red Bluff got its name from the russet bluffs that plunge to the edge of the Sacramento River, cut there by time, glowing nearly iridescent in the afternoon sun. When early settlers steamed up from San Francisco on big paddle-wheelers in the 1850s, they spied those cliffs and christened this town after them-but most of today’s residents wouldn’t know that, so little time do they spend on that swift, dangerous river.

It must be the cattle ranchers that give that Southwestern twang to this place. Never mind the California address, chewing tobacco is more popular than alfalfa sprouts. Men in cowboy boots, denims, and an occasional Stetson stride up the sidewalks, and more than a few pickups rumble down the streets.

They say that Red Bluff’s annual Bull and Gelding Sale, held every January, is the biggest in the country. And Round-Up Week, a celebration of the “Best in the West,” tops off the silliness of a cowchip-throwing contest, a whisker-growing contest, and a roving jail for unlucky locals wearing non-Western garb, with what is billed as “America’s Biggest 2-Day Rodeo.”

With those new fastfood places and shopping centers sprouting up by the freeway, you’d think Red Bluff was booming, but in fact the population has only just crept past 10,500, and “going out of business” sales plague the older parts of town. The economy is depressed, the streets are quiet, the pace is slow. There’s not much to do here on a Saturday night.

Like other small towns, Red Bluff is a place with few secrets; broken marriages, accidents, and affairs are big news. But it’s a fine place to raise a family, a place where strangers still get a nod and a “hello” on the street, a place where old-fashioned values are upheld by the congregations of little churches that seem to stand on nearly every corner.

The heart of Red Bluff is still Main Street, a long, wide road with only two stoplights that lies on the edge of a downtown grid Col less than a mile square. The names of the streets running north and south are as all-American as a marching band: Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Lincoln. And those running east and west ring as honest as wood: Cedar, Hickory, Walnut, Pine, Oak, and Elm. The Tehama County Courthouse presides over it all.

Built in 1920, the impressive brick structure opens onto Washington Street, its front made appropriately solemn with massive columns and its entryway boasting trophies and ribbons from past rodeos, parades, and Little League championships.

A right turn on Oak leads away from the interstate to an older, quieter part of town, where shade trees have grown large and houses have settled deep into their shrubbery. It’s a comfortable, quiet neighborhood, if not especially prosperous. Modest homes from the forties and fifties watch children pop wheelies on bicycles while local dogs sniff about for news.

A few of the homes are rented, as is 1140 Oak Street, a small stucco structure painted an unlikely pink and edged in a brick was color that’s almost red. The owners of the home, an elderly couple by the name of Leddy, live next door. They’ve seen a lot of tenants in the past thirty-odd years, but they recall that in 1976 and ‘77 they were renting 1140 Oak Street to Cameron and Janice Hooker.

Mrs. Leddy remembers them as a nice couple.” They paid the rent on time, were hardworking and quiet.” Cameron struck them as the serious type. He piled the backyard high with young Cedar trees that he’d cut, then sold them in six-or seven-foot segments as fence posts. “He was all business, you might say,” Mr. Leddy says.

After sixty years of marriage, the Leddys seem to agree on almost everything, and they agree that Cameron’s thin young wife, Janice, was very nice. She sewed, crocheted, and used to come over and sit under the arbor to visit.

And the Leddys can’t recall anything at all about the Hookers that they would call strange. “They were no trouble whatsoever,” Mrs. Leddy recalls. “We liked them.”

To neighbors and onlookers, Cameron and Janice Hooker seemed simply average, another young couple just starting out.

At twenty-four, Cameron was tall and gangly. He worked as a millworker at Diamond International, a big lumber mill that at that time boasted of being Tehama County’s largest employer.

Janice, at nineteen, was still slim, despite having become a mother several months before. Both wore glasses, both had brown hair — hers wavy and long, his straight and shaggy.

They kept to themselves. They kept out of trouble. And none of their neighbors remember the slightest thing out of the ordinary, the smallest ripple of peculiarity about May 19, 1977.

There were probably dozens of reasons Colleen Stan shouldn’t have been hitchhiking that day, but this was a time when hitchhikers were plenty and those reasons seemed less important.

Thumbing rides on freeway on -ramps was almost a rite of passage for America’s youth. Whether it was prudent or not was hardly a consideration. It was cheap. It was easy. And you never could tell what interesting people you might meet out there on the road.

Colleen left Eugene, Oregon, that morning at about eleven, when her roommates, Alice and Bob, drove her to the freeway.

She stood at the side on the road under the gray Eugene sky looking virtually indistinguishable from any number of hitchhikers in a town nearly dominated by University of Oregon students.

She wore a plaid wool Pendleton, jeans, and Earthshoes. She was medium height, medium build, and had thick, tawny hair so long that it brushed against the small of her back. And at twenty, her eyes still held a hint of naivety.

Colleen’s destination was Westwood, a small town in Northern California where her friend Linda lived. The occasion was Linda’s birthday. This was Thursday. Colleen told Alice that she’d be back on Saturday.

Interstate 5, the long ribbon of concrete that snakes all the way from the Canadian border to San Diego, would be her route.

She made good time. After just two rides, she was all the way down to Red Bluff, and it was just four o’clock. Here she would exit the freeway and head east, with another hundred miles to go.

A carload of guys offered her a ride, but she turned them down — too risky. Another car stopped, but the couple said they were only going a short distance, so she turned them down, too.

Then a blue Dodge Colt pulled over, and Colleen saw a young couple in front, the woman holding a baby in her arms.

They looked about Colleen’s age, and not very different from her roommates, Alice and Bob — not wealthy, but not hippies either. From the looks of their faded clothes, they probably didn’t have much more than each other.

The man said they were headed toward Mineral, a giant step in the right direction, so Colleen tossed in her sleeping bag and backpack and climbed into the back seat.

Things started off badly. Colleen carried a jug of grape juice with her. She opened it to take a drink. As she raised it to her lips the driver accelerated, and purple juice spilled a stain down the front of her shirt.

But Colleen didn’t take this as a bad omen. Nor did she pay particular heed to the odd wooden box sitting on the seat beside her. Nor did she notice the secret marital exchange that took place in the front seat as the little car sped out of town: The driver Tgave his wife a meaningful look; she frowned and shook her head, but said nothing.

When you drive east on Highway 36, the fringes of Red Bluff soon fall behind. The road climbs past pastures into hills of oak strewn with chunks of lava as it heads toward Mt. Lassen, a dormant volcano that heaved off its mountaintop in 1914, leaving the black spores of that spectacular disaster scattered accross miles of terrain. At Dale’s Station, the road banks right and climbs into the beginning of the pine country. To the right lies a magnificent canyon…but no matter how stunning the scenery, Colleen could not help but notice that the driver of the car kept glancing at her in the rearview mirror. It began to make her nervous.

A few miles up the road they stopped for gas, and Colleen took this opportunity to go to the restroom and change her blouse.

Standing in the small, cool room, she had a strange feeling that she should escape, as if a voice were telling her: Run! Get away!

She noticed the restroom’s little window, and the voice insisted: Crawl out the window! Run! You can get away! But Colleen couldn’t understand why she was having such crazy notions; she shook off the impulse to flee and went back to the car.

The wife had bought some candy bars, and as they continued toward Lassen National Forest, she shared these with their backseat passenger. There was chitchat, and soon the conversation turned to the subject of ice caves.

The driver was saying: “My brother said there were some ice caves up around here. Wouldn’t that be something to see?” With another glance at Colleen in the rearview mirror, he asked, “You wouldn’t care if we turned off for a quick look, would ya?”