Lust Killer

224 Pages·1983·0.64 MB·english

by  Ann Rule

LUST KILLER
Copyright © 2014, 1983, by Ann Rule
All rights reserved.
This edition published in 2014 by:
Planet Ann Rule, LLC
http://www.PlanetAnnRule.com
Seattle, WA
MOBI Edition ISBN 978-1-940018-55-3
Cover Art by Leslie Rule
This book is dedicated to the late Albert Govoni, editor of True Detective,
with gratitude for fourteen years of friendship and superior editing in crime
writing.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I wish to thank a number of people and organizations who have helped with
the research on this book, and who have shared their memories, reliving the
emotions they felt. Although the subject matter is horrific, the book is
presented in the hope that it may add to the psychiatric research that may
one day find a way to treat aberrant minds before they explode into
violence. Barring that, Lust Killer is written in the belief that the more we
learn about the serial killers who rove America, the more quickly we will
stop them from ever killing again.
My gratitude goes to: Lieutenant James Stovall, Salem, Oregon Police
Department; Detective Jerry Frazier, Salem Police Department; Lieutenant
Gene Daugherty, Oregon State Police Criminal Investigation Unit; Sergeant
Rod Englert, Multnomah County, Oregon Department of Public Safety;
Detectives B.J. Miller and "Frenchie" De Lamere, Corvallis, Oregon Police
Department; Archives Department of the Oregon State Supreme Court;
Special Agents John Henry Campbell, R. Roy Hazelwood, John Douglas,
and Robert Ressler, of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Behavioral
Science Unit, Quantico, Virginia.
Special thanks to Sharon Wood, who survived to relate a terrifying
encounter. Most of all, it is my profound hope that some intelligence gained
herein will mean that Linda Slawson, Jan Whitney, Karen Sprinker, and
Linda Salee —did not die in vain, and that understanding their tragedies
may save young women old enough to be the daughters they never had.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
AFTERWORD
PROLOGUE
She bent her head against the blast of rain-drenched wind and shifted the
heavy case she carried to her other hand. It was January 26, 1968. She was
nineteen years old, pretty, slender, and … discouraged. Selling
encyclopedias door-to-door was not the glorious career her area instructor
had promised. It was difficult and scarcely rewarding. Every morning she
left her home in Aloha, Oregon—a suburb of Portland—full of enthusiasm,
and every evening she returned with her sales book empty. She knew that if
she could sell just one set with the yearbooks and the atlas and all the frills
that went with it, she would be able to pay rent for a month, buy groceries,
and maybe even a few new clothes. That was what kept her going—
thinking that each day would be the day. She had listened to the enthusiastic
teachers who gave the indoctrination, and she'd memorized all their
suggested spiels. She'd even practiced in front of her bedroom mirror, but
her prospective customers hadn't reacted the way the roleplaying
"customers" had in class.
When she knocked on doors, people listened impatiently and then
shook their heads and shut the door in her face. When she was given a lead,
she usually found that the customer wasn't nearly as interested as she'd been
led to believe. Most of them didn't have one book of any kind displayed in
their homes, and she couldn't believe they were going to shell out several
hundred dollars for a whole set of genuine leather bound encyclopedias.
The best pitch was supposed to be that encyclopedias would make their
children succeed in school and grow up to be doctors and lawyers and
professors, but it always bothered her to stress the "guilt" approach. "Don't
you want your children to have all the advantages you never had?
Concerned parents all buy encyclopedias for their families, you know."
It bothered her to sit on couches so worn that their bare spots were
covered with quilts or towels and suggest that the answer to being poor was
to buy her product. She could see the people felt bad enough as it was. She
knew if they signed up, they'd be stuck with payments for her fancy books
for years. Well, nobody bought anyway, but she always left thinking she'd
made them feel worse about being low on money.
The well-to-do homes she approached already had encyclopedias. And
those people made her feel bad.
Linda Slawson had come from Rochester, Minnesota, to live in Aloha.
She had somehow expected warm, balmy weather in Aloha. She had
thought of Hawaii and California when she pictured the West Coast and
Oregon. Boy, had she been wrong. It rained so much in Portland that it
seemed like she never got dry. Sometimes it just drizzled and sometimes it
poured and sometimes it blew in soppy gusts—but it always rained. Locals
said it got better in the summer, and she should really go into Portland for
the Rose Festival in June, but …
Her feet hurt. She never should have worn high heels, but she had
figured she wouldn't have far to walk from the bus to the address the
company had given her near Forty-seventh and Hawthorne. She liked to
dress nicely; it made a better impression on customers. But high heels on a
darkening rainy night had been a really dumb choice.
Her hands felt numb from carrying the satchel full of heavy books, and
she thought the weight of it was what was bothering her neck. When she
finally got back to her apartment in Aloha, she was going to have a good
hot bath and just forget all about encyclopedias. She paused under the
streetlight, set her gear down, and reached into her purse for the slip of
paper with the address on it. The ink smeared instantly in the rain and she
couldn't tell if she was supposed to go to 1541 or 1551—or maybe it was
1451. She was tempted to just pack it in, wait for the next bus, and go
home.
Indecisive, she-started walking again. And then she saw a man in the
yard of a house a little way up the block. Maybe she was in luck. He was
looking at her, and he waved as if he was expecting someone.
She smiled at him. "I had an appointment to show some encyclopedias
to someone. Could this be the house?"
He smiled back and beckoned her in. He was a big man, pudgy but not
fat, and he had a moon face. "Come on in."
"Oh, that's good. I thought I was really lost." She moved toward the
front steps, but the man took her elbow and pulled her with him, heading to
the back.