Victim-Centered Advocacy 1
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CHAPTER ONE
“We’ll catch the guy”
“I’ll be driving my wife’s orange Jeep, you won’t be able to miss me.” Retired VPD Sgt. John Vaughan is a master of understatement.
I chose the Black Bear Diner because it seemed like the kind of place where cops eat. They serve all-day breakfast, steaks, and bottomless cups of coffee in their signature white mugs. I was afraid that if I suggested a place more suited for a vegan from Los Angeles, I might make an already awkward meeting totally unbearable for both of us.
The Jeep was the brightest thing in the parking lot, maybe in the entire county, now turned brown after years of endless drought. As I drove into town, the only color was the green from irrigated groves of citrus trees. Although it was still early, the day was quickly heading over 100 degrees. Visalia is a small city stuck in time. It prides itself on pretending that it is still 1950. The A&W brews its own homemade root beer, and sells it in jugs that you can take home. However, it was impossible to miss the racist graffiti scrawled on the wall of the Indian grocery store on the edge of the A&W parking lot.
I understood Visalia, and its power structure. My great-grandparents chased the American farming dream across the country at the turn of the 20th century, going from Kansas to North Dakota, then to the newly planted orange trees of Southern California. My great-grandfather was a pacifist, and they fled to Canada during WWI, finally returning to the apple and cherry trees of northeastern Washington State. My great-uncle, “Buck,” was the police chief of a small farming city a lot like Visalia. Rumors were that he ran the town as his own personal criminal empire. He took a cut of every illegal enterprise, and black and brown suspects ended up dead in the river, rather than in a jail cell or courtroom. According to my mother, the rumors were all true. As soon as she could, she left for Seattle, and never looked back. Her sister took the other path, became a police dispatcher, and married the son of a homicide detective in Spokane.
I never planned on becoming an attorney, but somehow my internal need for fairness found a practical profession. Handling criminal appeals immediately put me in direct conflict with law enforcement, prosecutors, and judges. It’s a specialized area of the law that requires endless hours of research on each case. The best appellate attorneys start at the beginning, with the events leading up to the crime, not the trial itself. That means digging into original police reports, witness statements, and forensic lab bench notes. Overworked and underfunded public defenders are rarely granted money for investigators and forensic experts, and critical details can easily be missed.
Although my office is staffed by licensed attorneys and private investigators, we each bring unique life experiences and skills. I spent summers on drilling rigs in the Arctic Circle and in Montana. Guns were a necessity in camps accessible only by helicopter, and stalked by grizzly bears and wolves. We have dirt bike riders, and a pilot who can conduct surveillance via small plane or drone. One of our attorneys is a forensics expert, who studied criminology at Oxford University, and can build a complete family tree for a subject while you wait in the field for the next address to check out or vehicle to follow. Two of us lost close friends to serial offenders, and we are guided by what we know they would want us to do if we were pursing their killers. Terri and Laurie would want the truth—no matter how long it takes, or how difficult it may be to accept.
My first phone call to John Vaughan went pretty much exactly as I expected. John had retired as a sergeant with VPD in 1996 after 35 years of service, and 20 years later, he had little interest in revisiting a 40-year-old unsolved crime spree. However, I wasn’t calling about just any case—it was the longest and most expensive investigation in VPD history, and Sgt. Vaughan had been the lead detective. I asked him if I could just email a few documents, and he finally agreed to let me mail him an envelope. The day he got the documents he called back, and asked if we could meet to discuss the information. Now here we were in the parking lot of the Black Bear Diner.
Even twenty years after retirement, John still looked like he could topple his wife’s Jeep with one hand, and the expression on his face as I pulled up made me think he was considering it. Walking into the restaurant together, we made small talk, and the mood hadn’t really improved by the time we were done ordering. John was a wall of skepticism, built over 40 long years of listening to an endless number of overly excited “theories” about his biggest case. Between March 1974 and December 1975, a man dubbed the “Visalia Ransacker” had terrorized his city. There had been over 150 residential burglaries with a very weird and specific MO.
The burglar ignored expensive jewelry and electronics, and instead stole Blue Chip trading stamps, piggy banks, food, coins, cameras, two dollar bills, knives, and single earrings from a pair. He took guns, but only if they were older or foreign, and therefore lacked traceable registration numbers. Immediately upon entering the home, he opened multiple escape routes, and placed the window screens in odd places, like on the bed. He also put chain locks across doors, or blocked them with chairs, to delay the homeowner should he return during the burglary. He displayed undergarments and jewelry boxes on beds and pillows, and stole photos of the attractive teen girls who lived in the rooms. All areas, including the kitchens, were heavily ransacked. Drawers were left pulled out, or contents dumped on the floor. Sometimes he placed stacks of undies and nightgowns in rows down the hallway.
The VR always struck in the early evening, while the residents were out to dinner, a movie, or the local football game. He confined his activities to a small area of single story homes, often on cul-de-sacs, owned by middle class professionals. The houses were usually locked, and the VR favored prying and chiseling locks on sliding glass doors or back doors to garages, then going into the kitchens. The VR traveled almost exclusively through backyards, ditches, open spaces, alleys, and greenbelts—always careful to avoid sidewalks and streets. The burglaries got little press attention or police investigation, and were treated like a nuisance, not a threat. Chapter One
“Oh, Men of Dark and Dismal Fate”
The audience rose to their feet with thunderous applause as the ensemble reached the crescendo at the end of Act I. Joan tapped her gray shoes still humming “Oh, Men of Dark and Dismal Fate.” She loved the theater and the exhilaration of New York City. The empty seat next to her in the heaving playhouse was the only blight on her otherwise perfect evening of Friday, November 27, 1981.
As the curtain rose for the second act of The Pirates of Penzance. Joan settled back into her seat next to her parents and her sister, Anne. Their older brother, Steve, was half a country away, living in Illinois with his pregnant wife, Eve. Joan smiled, not daring to show her disappointment. Family logistics nixed the planned visit of her friend over the Thanksgiving break. The Websters organized their calendars down to the smallest detail. The shift in the schedule was out of character, but the adjustment set the stage for the dramatic chain of events about to unfold.
Joan’s father George nodded to the songs of Gilbert and Sullivan as the actors belted out uncanny premonitions in Act II. The comedic constables on the stage voiced a logical notion. When criminals were not engaged in their enterprise, they did normal things anyone might do. The players’ lyrics warned of impending despair, keeping the audience on the edge of their seats. Joan’s mother Eleanor thumbed the pages of her Playbill. Subliminal messages, delivered in an entertaining performance, reassured her everything was prepared. A swashbuckling troupe challenged the young actor on stage with a paradox when he left the fold. The verses held more meaning than Joan could have foreseen. The librettos projected a dismal fate for the lamb straying from the flock and the contradictions of her guardian.
When the curtain came down on the musical comedy, George, Eleanor, Anne, and Joan walked out of the Minskoff Theatre on W. 45th Street in New York City’s theater district. George played the soundtrack cassette in the car as he drove to a favorite watering hole for a nightcap. Cosmos knew George by name and gladly entertained his requests on the piano. Joan’s father gulped down his Scotch and placed a folded bill in Cosmos’ gratuity snifter. The patriarch subtly signaled to his brood; it was time to leave. Docilely, his entourage took their positions in the blue Buick station wagon. George turned into the Lincoln Tunnel headed for home turf in New Jersey.
The family entered the house through the garage door by the pantry. The girls headed upstairs for the night, and Eleanor settled in the den to watch the late news. George opened the liquor cabinet and poured another two fingers of Scotch. He carried the bottle to the den and placed it on the mirrored table beside him. His body gradually slid to an uncomfortable, half-reclined posture on the loveseat: his head tilted back, bobbing unsupported, and his spectacles askew. The guttural tone of George’s voice resonated as he mumbled and snored in a semi-conscious stupor. The pattern was familiar. Eventually, Eleanor nudged and coaxed her husband to bed.
The girls were already in place at the small kitchen table the next morning. George walked through the front hall and tapped the turtle’s tail announcing his presence. The turtle was a whimsical dinner bell, a symbol of the privilege of George’s upbringing. Eleanor busied herself dutifully in the kitchen. She moved to the table with George’s first course and a hot cup of coffee. As she sashayed through the kitchen, the itinerary tacked on the refrigerator rustled and reminded George to coordinate the day with his fledglings. His upcoming trip was uncharacteristic. As a senior executive with International Telephone & Telegraph (ITT) in Nutley, New Jersey, George would normally delegate rather than interrupt his holiday. The impending agenda demanded his personal attention. None but the person in charge could know the full purpose of his mission.
George went to the cupboard to add some libation to his second course. The Bloody Mary began the daily ritual of numbing his senses. He pushed up his wire-rimmed glasses to peruse the news of the day in the paper. Only an occasional grunt suggested a story caught his attention. He pushed away from the table and headed back upstairs while Eleanor played the scullery maid, clearing the dishes. Dark, sullen eyes stared back at George from the bathroom mirror. He ran his fingers through his thick, wavy mane before splashing on the hair tonic to slick back the curves.
Joan retreated to her room to pack her belongings. She folded the essentials she had brought home for the long weekend and tucked them neatly in her Lark suitcase. She tossed a single green sock in her bag hoping its partner was back at the dorm. She carefully wrapped the folded clothes around a stack of photographs, memories from the family’s summer vacation in Nantucket. When Joan opened her bedroom door, she heard the door across the hall shut tightly. Her bedroom sat across the hallway from George’s upstairs small study. She could hear her father’s low guttural tones talking on his private line as she pulled bed linens out of the closet to take back to school. That second line into the house sat on George’s desk and was off limits. It was the rule of the house not to disturb George in his office.
The baby of the family, with two older siblings, Joan was a 25-year-old student at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Before returning to school, she lived in Manhattan for two years, working for Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. The independent student had even traveled alone through Europe. During her time in New York City, the petite young woman was the victim of a street crime when an assailant snatched her purse. She learned to be aware of her surroundings. As the dorm proctor at Perkins Hall, she passed along safety tips to the coeds she mentored. In her second year of graduate school, she was an excellent, award-winning student with a promising future.
On the Monday before the Thanksgiving break, Joan had presented an 11-week auditorium project to rave reviews before riding to New Jersey with her sister. It was disappointing her friend couldn’t come to visit as planned, but George’s trip over the weekend took precedence for the family. Rather than wait to ride back to Boston with Anne on Sunday, George made arrangements and scheduled a flight for Joan on Saturday night.
Eleanor announced that lunch was ready. George made his way back to the kitchen table, poured a glass of beef broth, and diluted the consommé with a shot of vodka. He confirmed that everyone knew the drill. The foursome would grab an early bite at the club before making the rounds and then drive Joan to Newark Airport. Everything was planned down to the minutest detail as if they had synchronized watches.
Joan collected a few last-minute items and stuck them in her leather carry-on tote bag. She added a few vinyl records from the musicals she enjoyed on Broadway, the Playbill from the night before, rolled up sketches and architectural pamphlets, and her pair of gray shoes.
The upper-middle-class family fit a finely tuned image. In public, the Websters embodied all the social graces to be on every guest list. Their credentials boasted all of the best schools and social connections. The charismatic men in the Webster family were engaging pied pipers. George and his son Steve often played the piano and entertained listeners with humorous tales. Irish wit and charm centered them in any gathering, and they relished the adulation. To the outside observer, they were a perfect family in complete harmony. Any hint of discord evaporated when the Websters opened the door from their inner sanctum.
Glen Ridge, New Jersey was a small hamlet near Manhattan. Families were close knit, and the children all grew up together. Vacations and holidays became community affairs. The Websters’ Georgian home was tastefully decorated, but a bit out of date. However, any connoisseur noticed the expensive paintings on the wall and the gold and silver trophies of prestigious regattas and thoroughbred victories at the track. A very large, round diamond on Eleanor’s finger fractured the light into a rainbow of color, brightening her otherwise bland attire. Wealth and status were an important part of the image but carefully displayed without being garish. George and his offspring all wore gold signet rings as if the circles identified exclusive membership in the clan.
George was the first to come down the curved staircase prepared for his upcoming trip. He double-checked his travel itinerary taped to the refrigerator. After loading the wagon, he headed straight back to the house to pour a distilled beverage over the cubes in his glass. He tapped his fingers to the beat of Gilbert and Sullivan tunes as he waited for his entourage to assemble. A sport coat, flannel trousers, and a Brooks Brothers tie completed the uniform George always wore to neighborhood fetes. The standard garb was a multipurpose wardrobe suitable for the theater, parties, or travel. Any acquaintance could anticipate the patriarch’s attire with certainty. George and Eleanor had developed their predictable patterns when they met working for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the early 1950s. Attention to detail, subdued outward behavior and dress to avoid drawing unwanted attention, planning to the point of obsession, contingencies, and secrecy were all part of the intelligence mindset. The ladies were ready to go. George slipped on his dark overcoat and loaded Joan’s suitcase and tote bag into the back end of the wagon.
“Fundador,” George announced with a single clap and then rubbed his hands. The buzzword was a call to attention.
Two family friends hosted small holiday gatherings that Saturday evening. The Joys and the Wittpenns warmly welcomed the Websters into their homes. By the time he hung his coat, the bartender had George’s beverage ready and handed him the tumbler. The scene repeated itself when the family moved on to the next party. These social gatherings were regular affairs, a chance to catch up with everyone before going off in their own directions. The younger generation clustered and exchanged their latest endeavors. Joan’s friends fully expected to hear good reports about her accomplishments at Harvard; things were going very well at school. Joan was upbeat and her normal, bubbly self. Her giggle was infectious, and her smile lit up the room. Anne was the quieter of the two sisters, but Joan’s enthusiasm buoyed them both. Joan held a warm cup of grog, a traditional holiday punch served by the Wittpenns.
Eleanor was in another gaggle of guests boasting about her offspring and dropping names to amplify the importance of her children’s successes. She was insecure. She had very humble beginnings; she was conceived out of wedlock. Her parents married, but the calendar was too short to disguise her inception. In her generation, the branding of illegitimate unfairly inflicted shame on a child, which Eleanor carried deeply within her soul. Her parents divorced when she was a young girl. The estrangement from her birth father lasted for the rest of her life. Her mother remarried, and the new husband adopted 14-year-old Eleanor and her younger sister as his own.
After graduating from Mount Holyoke College in 1948, Eleanor married Thomas Hardaway, a West Point Lieutenant. Thomas called his wife Terry, a nickname Eleanor embraced to distance herself from her shame. Her happiness didn’t last long. Thomas was killed in Korea in 1950. Loss became part of Eleanor’s existence. Soon after Thomas died, John Selsam, her stepfather, passed away.
Eleanor moved to Washington, D.C. to work for the CIA. She met George in the agency, a charismatic man raised in the circles Eleanor envied. He had attended Taft Boarding School, Yale, and had a brief stint at Harvard before joining the Merchant Marines during the war. George’s father was a wealthy, prominent businessman who raced thoroughbreds and wintered with the elite in Palm Beach, Florida. The young widow grasped her brass ring tightly. George and Eleanor married on May 16, 1952. Two lives, poles apart, merged into one and formed their foundation on intelligence training. Doors finally opened for Eleanor; she guarded her station.
George swallowed one final gulp of his cocktail and announced the family’s departure. He slipped on his coat and kept his flock on schedule. In the car, George strangely broke with his normal routine. It was customary for George to make airport runs himself, solo, but this journey was different. Their house was only minutes away, an easy stop to drop off Eleanor and Anne before driving Joan to Newark Airport. After all, Anne had a long drive back to Boston the next day. Instead, Eleanor and Anne rode along to bid farewell to Joan. On the cold November night, the heater fan circulated a strong whiff of alcohol through the car, but George didn’t relinquish the wheel. Eleanor didn’t drive after dark, but Anne could have obliged if that was the reason to bring them along. The Websters never did anything without planning or purpose. The most logical explanation for Eleanor and Anne to ride along to the airport was for the drive home if George was not in the car.
George tapped his fingers on the wheel replaying the performance the family had enjoyed last night. He pulled up to the curb for departures at the Eastern Airlines Terminal still humming “Oh, Men of Dark and Dismal Fate.” He unloaded Joan’s bags, placed them on the curb, handed her money for a cab, and kissed her on the forehead. Joan turned to her family with a broad smile and waved goodbye before clutching her assorted belongings. Unsuspecting, she turned and walked toward the gate.
In a dark mind, the task at hand was simple. Paula
I grew up hearing stories of my mother from my grandmother and aunts. They are just snapshots of a life, but they are all I have. Like one time, when Paula was about three years old, they took her to a park with a lake or a big pond (my grandmother Mary would change the details from time to time). Mary took her eyes off Paula for just a moment, and off she ran, right down the dock and straight into the water. “We simply had to jump in after her,” Mary said. “She was a real handful. You had to watch her all the time.”
Once when I was preparing this book, my grandmother told me, “Her dad went out the front door for something. It was after dark. He didn't shut the door tight. And I was in the kitchen. And so [Paula] went out the front door and was gone. I had no idea where she was. When I missed her, I went outside, but I couldn't see anything. I had to get in the car and drive around trying to find her. I had a sister, Jane, who lived nearby. You could go to her house if you went out my back kitchen door and across three or four yards to her backyard. Jane wasn’t home and here come Paula down Jane’s driveway. She was a handful.”
Paula was born April 4, 1956, the third of five children. Susy was the oldest. There was a brother, Michael, who died from a problem with his heart when he was only three months old. Paula came next, and she was about 18 months older than her sister Lisa. Since they were so close in age, Paula had a special bond with Lisa. The youngest was Molly.
Mary tells of the time that Paula, only about three years old, got into the candy jar, and of course she wanted to share the candy with her sister Lisa. So she jumped into 18-month-old Lisa’s bed and shared a chocolate bar. When Mary found them, Lisa was covered in chocolate, and Paula had a fair amount on her as well. I would say that was her age, but my grandma says it was her intelligence and her accompanying lack of sense.
This would play out with her and my father, Ronnie, and later with the man who would end her life.
“She adored her dad [Fred],” my grandmother tells me. “And he was never there. He finally left me there with four little girls. That was really hard on Paula.” When asked, Susy said that when Fred left, “It seemed to affect Paula a lot. She was a daddy’s girl, pretty much. But I don’t remember him being there.” Lisa said of her father, “We weren’t close. I don’t know if it was just how things were done back then. You divorced the wife and you divorced the family.” Fred was an alcoholic, the kind of guy who would just go off and do his own thing. He would leave and be gone for weeks at a time. Lisa added, “When the divorce and all that came [when I was] a young kid, it wasn’t that big of a difference because he wasn’t home much anyway. I only saw him once in a while. Him being gone all the time, I don’t remember it affecting me, which Mom says that it did. It was more of an impact for Paula and Susy.”
According to Mary, “Paula was scary smart. She excelled in almost every subject in every grade.” The way Mary tells it, Paula took Latin in middle school but struggled with calculus in tenth grade. However, as Paula’s teacher explained, “she was only a tenth grader and everyone else in the class were seniors. It was to be expected for her to have a bit of trouble.”
When asked if Paula was mature, Mary said, “Oh, yes, but, she didn’t have a lot of common sense. I’ve seen that so many times with kids who were smart.” My aunts Molly and Susy called her a “Brainiac, but not so smart when it came to men.” Years later, Paula met Ronnie Garrett in high school. He was two years older, and they dated for a while. By her senior year, she was pregnant with me. According to my aunts, being pregnant in school in the 1970s “wasn’t really that uncommon. So it wasn’t that much of a stigma.” Understandably, being pregnant in her senior year put a damper on her life. Paula attended the local “career center,” a kind of vocational or technical school, for her senior year. It was for students who weren’t going to go to college.
Paula and Ronnie got married right before I was born. According to Susy, she didn’t even know who Ronnie was before they got married. “I had never heard of him. It wasn’t as though he was coming to the house or anything.” Molly agreed. Ronnie “didn’t come around a lot. He worked second shift. Paula and Eric were always at [Mary’s] house. But I didn’t see him much and he was usually working or whatever. Drinking. He was a drinker. Causing trouble.” Ronnie was not a very nice person, particularly to Paula, and certainly with me growing up. He wasn’t abusive—at least, not with me and no one mentioned him hitting Paula—but one thing was clear: Ronnie spent much of his time somewhere else, drinking. My grandfather on Ronnie’s side was reportedly abusive to his family and children, which affected Ronnie. Susy knew very little about Ronnie, but she knew that “[Ronnie’s] father was horrible. There had been some abuse to Ronnie’s mother and him and her siblings. I don’t know the whole story, but Ronnie’s father might have been institutionalized for a mental breakdown. All of that affected Ronnie. He was not the nicest person to Paula. He would stay out and drink. He wasn’t abusive—but truthfully, she wouldn’t have told me if he was.”
Susy recalled something else. “There was a story about a telephone. One night when he was drunk, she hit him with that phone.” Paula was no stranger to violence, even just out of high school.
Ronnie and Paula were divorced by the time I was two and a half, when Paula was twenty.
Even though Susy said it, everyone agreed. “[Paula had] really terrible taste in men. When dad was gone permanently after our parents’ divorce, Paula was terribly hurt. She was the kind of girl who needed a strong male figure in her life. She would do what dad said, but not anyone else. [After Paula’s divorce], she saw a counselor. He agreed she was looking for a father figure.”
Susy said, “[Paula] had a very easygoing manner. She didn’t have a temper. But she would only listen to [her father]. Well, I think some kids as they’re growing up, they’re either closer to their mother or their dad. And she would listen to dad. She wasn’t disrespectful to our parents. She was a very good kid, she really was.”
Molly and Lisa had another memory of Paula. Molly said, “She was friendly, had lots of friends. She was [easy] to get along with. And she was smart, and protective of us [Lisa and Molly]. What I remember was that she was that she was fun loving and really funny. It’s hard not to miss that.”
I asked my family what Paula was like as a mom. Susy said, “She was a great mom. [You were] the first boy to be in our family. We were a house full of women. [Paula] was crazy over you.”
There was no question my mother adored me. My grandmother Mary, a former schoolteacher, even said so. But in the same breath, she said, “[Eric] was a handful. So was Paula, but for different reasons. We’re talking about a boy and a girl. There’s a difference. Paula excelled in every grade in every subject. Eric could have done a lot better than he did. Especially in the earlier grades. Maybe some boys do, but boys don’t like school and they don’t do as well. Paula was never like that.”
Paula started dating Richard Green around the time of her divorce. My family didn’t know exactly when she met him. However, Susy told me the story that one time, not long after Paula and Ronnie were separated, Fred went over to visit Paula and me, and Richard was there at the house, sitting at the kitchen table. This was a surprise to me. I had never heard that story before.
One thing that did become obvious, apart from Paula’s poor taste in men, was that she was secretive about her relationships as well, although that wasn’t how my family phrased it. Susy felt that Paula didn’t want to worry anyone.
Another thing that my family repeated consistently was that Paula would believe anything anyone told her, especially from men. Susy said, “There were things that she told me about Richard, and I’m thinking, are you sure that’s right? Are you sure he’s telling you the truth? So she would believe, especially men, she would believe everything that Richard told her, just about. I mean, she believed a lot of what he said.”
This combination of being a sweet, compassionate, intelligent person who was also a bit gullible and not very smart around men, I believe, was what led to her death at age 22.
“We’ll catch the guy”
“I’ll be driving my wife’s orange Jeep, you won’t be able to miss me.” Retired VPD Sgt. John Vaughan is a master of understatement.
I chose the Black Bear Diner because it seemed like the kind of place where cops eat. They serve all-day breakfast, steaks, and bottomless cups of coffee in their signature white mugs. I was afraid that if I suggested a place more suited for a vegan from Los Angeles, I might make an already awkward meeting totally unbearable for both of us.
The Jeep was the brightest thing in the parking lot, maybe in the entire county, now turned brown after years of endless drought. As I drove into town, the only color was the green from irrigated groves of citrus trees. Although it was still early, the day was quickly heading over 100 degrees. Visalia is a small city stuck in time. It prides itself on pretending that it is still 1950. The A&W brews its own homemade root beer, and sells it in jugs that you can take home. However, it was impossible to miss the racist graffiti scrawled on the wall of the Indian grocery store on the edge of the A&W parking lot.
I understood Visalia, and its power structure. My great-grandparents chased the American farming dream across the country at the turn of the 20th century, going from Kansas to North Dakota, then to the newly planted orange trees of Southern California. My great-grandfather was a pacifist, and they fled to Canada during WWI, finally returning to the apple and cherry trees of northeastern Washington State. My great-uncle, “Buck,” was the police chief of a small farming city a lot like Visalia. Rumors were that he ran the town as his own personal criminal empire. He took a cut of every illegal enterprise, and black and brown suspects ended up dead in the river, rather than in a jail cell or courtroom. According to my mother, the rumors were all true. As soon as she could, she left for Seattle, and never looked back. Her sister took the other path, became a police dispatcher, and married the son of a homicide detective in Spokane.
I never planned on becoming an attorney, but somehow my internal need for fairness found a practical profession. Handling criminal appeals immediately put me in direct conflict with law enforcement, prosecutors, and judges. It’s a specialized area of the law that requires endless hours of research on each case. The best appellate attorneys start at the beginning, with the events leading up to the crime, not the trial itself. That means digging into original police reports, witness statements, and forensic lab bench notes. Overworked and underfunded public defenders are rarely granted money for investigators and forensic experts, and critical details can easily be missed.
Although my office is staffed by licensed attorneys and private investigators, we each bring unique life experiences and skills. I spent summers on drilling rigs in the Arctic Circle and in Montana. Guns were a necessity in camps accessible only by helicopter, and stalked by grizzly bears and wolves. We have dirt bike riders, and a pilot who can conduct surveillance via small plane or drone. One of our attorneys is a forensics expert, who studied criminology at Oxford University, and can build a complete family tree for a subject while you wait in the field for the next address to check out or vehicle to follow. Two of us lost close friends to serial offenders, and we are guided by what we know they would want us to do if we were pursing their killers. Terri and Laurie would want the truth—no matter how long it takes, or how difficult it may be to accept.
My first phone call to John Vaughan went pretty much exactly as I expected. John had retired as a sergeant with VPD in 1996 after 35 years of service, and 20 years later, he had little interest in revisiting a 40-year-old unsolved crime spree. However, I wasn’t calling about just any case—it was the longest and most expensive investigation in VPD history, and Sgt. Vaughan had been the lead detective. I asked him if I could just email a few documents, and he finally agreed to let me mail him an envelope. The day he got the documents he called back, and asked if we could meet to discuss the information. Now here we were in the parking lot of the Black Bear Diner.
Even twenty years after retirement, John still looked like he could topple his wife’s Jeep with one hand, and the expression on his face as I pulled up made me think he was considering it. Walking into the restaurant together, we made small talk, and the mood hadn’t really improved by the time we were done ordering. John was a wall of skepticism, built over 40 long years of listening to an endless number of overly excited “theories” about his biggest case. Between March 1974 and December 1975, a man dubbed the “Visalia Ransacker” had terrorized his city. There had been over 150 residential burglaries with a very weird and specific MO.
The burglar ignored expensive jewelry and electronics, and instead stole Blue Chip trading stamps, piggy banks, food, coins, cameras, two dollar bills, knives, and single earrings from a pair. He took guns, but only if they were older or foreign, and therefore lacked traceable registration numbers. Immediately upon entering the home, he opened multiple escape routes, and placed the window screens in odd places, like on the bed. He also put chain locks across doors, or blocked them with chairs, to delay the homeowner should he return during the burglary. He displayed undergarments and jewelry boxes on beds and pillows, and stole photos of the attractive teen girls who lived in the rooms. All areas, including the kitchens, were heavily ransacked. Drawers were left pulled out, or contents dumped on the floor. Sometimes he placed stacks of undies and nightgowns in rows down the hallway.
The VR always struck in the early evening, while the residents were out to dinner, a movie, or the local football game. He confined his activities to a small area of single story homes, often on cul-de-sacs, owned by middle class professionals. The houses were usually locked, and the VR favored prying and chiseling locks on sliding glass doors or back doors to garages, then going into the kitchens. The VR traveled almost exclusively through backyards, ditches, open spaces, alleys, and greenbelts—always careful to avoid sidewalks and streets. The burglaries got little press attention or police investigation, and were treated like a nuisance, not a threat. Chapter One
“Oh, Men of Dark and Dismal Fate”
The audience rose to their feet with thunderous applause as the ensemble reached the crescendo at the end of Act I. Joan tapped her gray shoes still humming “Oh, Men of Dark and Dismal Fate.” She loved the theater and the exhilaration of New York City. The empty seat next to her in the heaving playhouse was the only blight on her otherwise perfect evening of Friday, November 27, 1981.
As the curtain rose for the second act of The Pirates of Penzance. Joan settled back into her seat next to her parents and her sister, Anne. Their older brother, Steve, was half a country away, living in Illinois with his pregnant wife, Eve. Joan smiled, not daring to show her disappointment. Family logistics nixed the planned visit of her friend over the Thanksgiving break. The Websters organized their calendars down to the smallest detail. The shift in the schedule was out of character, but the adjustment set the stage for the dramatic chain of events about to unfold.
Joan’s father George nodded to the songs of Gilbert and Sullivan as the actors belted out uncanny premonitions in Act II. The comedic constables on the stage voiced a logical notion. When criminals were not engaged in their enterprise, they did normal things anyone might do. The players’ lyrics warned of impending despair, keeping the audience on the edge of their seats. Joan’s mother Eleanor thumbed the pages of her Playbill. Subliminal messages, delivered in an entertaining performance, reassured her everything was prepared. A swashbuckling troupe challenged the young actor on stage with a paradox when he left the fold. The verses held more meaning than Joan could have foreseen. The librettos projected a dismal fate for the lamb straying from the flock and the contradictions of her guardian.
When the curtain came down on the musical comedy, George, Eleanor, Anne, and Joan walked out of the Minskoff Theatre on W. 45th Street in New York City’s theater district. George played the soundtrack cassette in the car as he drove to a favorite watering hole for a nightcap. Cosmos knew George by name and gladly entertained his requests on the piano. Joan’s father gulped down his Scotch and placed a folded bill in Cosmos’ gratuity snifter. The patriarch subtly signaled to his brood; it was time to leave. Docilely, his entourage took their positions in the blue Buick station wagon. George turned into the Lincoln Tunnel headed for home turf in New Jersey.
The family entered the house through the garage door by the pantry. The girls headed upstairs for the night, and Eleanor settled in the den to watch the late news. George opened the liquor cabinet and poured another two fingers of Scotch. He carried the bottle to the den and placed it on the mirrored table beside him. His body gradually slid to an uncomfortable, half-reclined posture on the loveseat: his head tilted back, bobbing unsupported, and his spectacles askew. The guttural tone of George’s voice resonated as he mumbled and snored in a semi-conscious stupor. The pattern was familiar. Eventually, Eleanor nudged and coaxed her husband to bed.
The girls were already in place at the small kitchen table the next morning. George walked through the front hall and tapped the turtle’s tail announcing his presence. The turtle was a whimsical dinner bell, a symbol of the privilege of George’s upbringing. Eleanor busied herself dutifully in the kitchen. She moved to the table with George’s first course and a hot cup of coffee. As she sashayed through the kitchen, the itinerary tacked on the refrigerator rustled and reminded George to coordinate the day with his fledglings. His upcoming trip was uncharacteristic. As a senior executive with International Telephone & Telegraph (ITT) in Nutley, New Jersey, George would normally delegate rather than interrupt his holiday. The impending agenda demanded his personal attention. None but the person in charge could know the full purpose of his mission.
George went to the cupboard to add some libation to his second course. The Bloody Mary began the daily ritual of numbing his senses. He pushed up his wire-rimmed glasses to peruse the news of the day in the paper. Only an occasional grunt suggested a story caught his attention. He pushed away from the table and headed back upstairs while Eleanor played the scullery maid, clearing the dishes. Dark, sullen eyes stared back at George from the bathroom mirror. He ran his fingers through his thick, wavy mane before splashing on the hair tonic to slick back the curves.
Joan retreated to her room to pack her belongings. She folded the essentials she had brought home for the long weekend and tucked them neatly in her Lark suitcase. She tossed a single green sock in her bag hoping its partner was back at the dorm. She carefully wrapped the folded clothes around a stack of photographs, memories from the family’s summer vacation in Nantucket. When Joan opened her bedroom door, she heard the door across the hall shut tightly. Her bedroom sat across the hallway from George’s upstairs small study. She could hear her father’s low guttural tones talking on his private line as she pulled bed linens out of the closet to take back to school. That second line into the house sat on George’s desk and was off limits. It was the rule of the house not to disturb George in his office.
The baby of the family, with two older siblings, Joan was a 25-year-old student at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Before returning to school, she lived in Manhattan for two years, working for Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. The independent student had even traveled alone through Europe. During her time in New York City, the petite young woman was the victim of a street crime when an assailant snatched her purse. She learned to be aware of her surroundings. As the dorm proctor at Perkins Hall, she passed along safety tips to the coeds she mentored. In her second year of graduate school, she was an excellent, award-winning student with a promising future.
On the Monday before the Thanksgiving break, Joan had presented an 11-week auditorium project to rave reviews before riding to New Jersey with her sister. It was disappointing her friend couldn’t come to visit as planned, but George’s trip over the weekend took precedence for the family. Rather than wait to ride back to Boston with Anne on Sunday, George made arrangements and scheduled a flight for Joan on Saturday night.
Eleanor announced that lunch was ready. George made his way back to the kitchen table, poured a glass of beef broth, and diluted the consommé with a shot of vodka. He confirmed that everyone knew the drill. The foursome would grab an early bite at the club before making the rounds and then drive Joan to Newark Airport. Everything was planned down to the minutest detail as if they had synchronized watches.
Joan collected a few last-minute items and stuck them in her leather carry-on tote bag. She added a few vinyl records from the musicals she enjoyed on Broadway, the Playbill from the night before, rolled up sketches and architectural pamphlets, and her pair of gray shoes.
The upper-middle-class family fit a finely tuned image. In public, the Websters embodied all the social graces to be on every guest list. Their credentials boasted all of the best schools and social connections. The charismatic men in the Webster family were engaging pied pipers. George and his son Steve often played the piano and entertained listeners with humorous tales. Irish wit and charm centered them in any gathering, and they relished the adulation. To the outside observer, they were a perfect family in complete harmony. Any hint of discord evaporated when the Websters opened the door from their inner sanctum.
Glen Ridge, New Jersey was a small hamlet near Manhattan. Families were close knit, and the children all grew up together. Vacations and holidays became community affairs. The Websters’ Georgian home was tastefully decorated, but a bit out of date. However, any connoisseur noticed the expensive paintings on the wall and the gold and silver trophies of prestigious regattas and thoroughbred victories at the track. A very large, round diamond on Eleanor’s finger fractured the light into a rainbow of color, brightening her otherwise bland attire. Wealth and status were an important part of the image but carefully displayed without being garish. George and his offspring all wore gold signet rings as if the circles identified exclusive membership in the clan.
George was the first to come down the curved staircase prepared for his upcoming trip. He double-checked his travel itinerary taped to the refrigerator. After loading the wagon, he headed straight back to the house to pour a distilled beverage over the cubes in his glass. He tapped his fingers to the beat of Gilbert and Sullivan tunes as he waited for his entourage to assemble. A sport coat, flannel trousers, and a Brooks Brothers tie completed the uniform George always wore to neighborhood fetes. The standard garb was a multipurpose wardrobe suitable for the theater, parties, or travel. Any acquaintance could anticipate the patriarch’s attire with certainty. George and Eleanor had developed their predictable patterns when they met working for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the early 1950s. Attention to detail, subdued outward behavior and dress to avoid drawing unwanted attention, planning to the point of obsession, contingencies, and secrecy were all part of the intelligence mindset. The ladies were ready to go. George slipped on his dark overcoat and loaded Joan’s suitcase and tote bag into the back end of the wagon.
“Fundador,” George announced with a single clap and then rubbed his hands. The buzzword was a call to attention.
Two family friends hosted small holiday gatherings that Saturday evening. The Joys and the Wittpenns warmly welcomed the Websters into their homes. By the time he hung his coat, the bartender had George’s beverage ready and handed him the tumbler. The scene repeated itself when the family moved on to the next party. These social gatherings were regular affairs, a chance to catch up with everyone before going off in their own directions. The younger generation clustered and exchanged their latest endeavors. Joan’s friends fully expected to hear good reports about her accomplishments at Harvard; things were going very well at school. Joan was upbeat and her normal, bubbly self. Her giggle was infectious, and her smile lit up the room. Anne was the quieter of the two sisters, but Joan’s enthusiasm buoyed them both. Joan held a warm cup of grog, a traditional holiday punch served by the Wittpenns.
Eleanor was in another gaggle of guests boasting about her offspring and dropping names to amplify the importance of her children’s successes. She was insecure. She had very humble beginnings; she was conceived out of wedlock. Her parents married, but the calendar was too short to disguise her inception. In her generation, the branding of illegitimate unfairly inflicted shame on a child, which Eleanor carried deeply within her soul. Her parents divorced when she was a young girl. The estrangement from her birth father lasted for the rest of her life. Her mother remarried, and the new husband adopted 14-year-old Eleanor and her younger sister as his own.
After graduating from Mount Holyoke College in 1948, Eleanor married Thomas Hardaway, a West Point Lieutenant. Thomas called his wife Terry, a nickname Eleanor embraced to distance herself from her shame. Her happiness didn’t last long. Thomas was killed in Korea in 1950. Loss became part of Eleanor’s existence. Soon after Thomas died, John Selsam, her stepfather, passed away.
Eleanor moved to Washington, D.C. to work for the CIA. She met George in the agency, a charismatic man raised in the circles Eleanor envied. He had attended Taft Boarding School, Yale, and had a brief stint at Harvard before joining the Merchant Marines during the war. George’s father was a wealthy, prominent businessman who raced thoroughbreds and wintered with the elite in Palm Beach, Florida. The young widow grasped her brass ring tightly. George and Eleanor married on May 16, 1952. Two lives, poles apart, merged into one and formed their foundation on intelligence training. Doors finally opened for Eleanor; she guarded her station.
George swallowed one final gulp of his cocktail and announced the family’s departure. He slipped on his coat and kept his flock on schedule. In the car, George strangely broke with his normal routine. It was customary for George to make airport runs himself, solo, but this journey was different. Their house was only minutes away, an easy stop to drop off Eleanor and Anne before driving Joan to Newark Airport. After all, Anne had a long drive back to Boston the next day. Instead, Eleanor and Anne rode along to bid farewell to Joan. On the cold November night, the heater fan circulated a strong whiff of alcohol through the car, but George didn’t relinquish the wheel. Eleanor didn’t drive after dark, but Anne could have obliged if that was the reason to bring them along. The Websters never did anything without planning or purpose. The most logical explanation for Eleanor and Anne to ride along to the airport was for the drive home if George was not in the car.
George tapped his fingers on the wheel replaying the performance the family had enjoyed last night. He pulled up to the curb for departures at the Eastern Airlines Terminal still humming “Oh, Men of Dark and Dismal Fate.” He unloaded Joan’s bags, placed them on the curb, handed her money for a cab, and kissed her on the forehead. Joan turned to her family with a broad smile and waved goodbye before clutching her assorted belongings. Unsuspecting, she turned and walked toward the gate.
In a dark mind, the task at hand was simple. Paula
I grew up hearing stories of my mother from my grandmother and aunts. They are just snapshots of a life, but they are all I have. Like one time, when Paula was about three years old, they took her to a park with a lake or a big pond (my grandmother Mary would change the details from time to time). Mary took her eyes off Paula for just a moment, and off she ran, right down the dock and straight into the water. “We simply had to jump in after her,” Mary said. “She was a real handful. You had to watch her all the time.”
Once when I was preparing this book, my grandmother told me, “Her dad went out the front door for something. It was after dark. He didn't shut the door tight. And I was in the kitchen. And so [Paula] went out the front door and was gone. I had no idea where she was. When I missed her, I went outside, but I couldn't see anything. I had to get in the car and drive around trying to find her. I had a sister, Jane, who lived nearby. You could go to her house if you went out my back kitchen door and across three or four yards to her backyard. Jane wasn’t home and here come Paula down Jane’s driveway. She was a handful.”
Paula was born April 4, 1956, the third of five children. Susy was the oldest. There was a brother, Michael, who died from a problem with his heart when he was only three months old. Paula came next, and she was about 18 months older than her sister Lisa. Since they were so close in age, Paula had a special bond with Lisa. The youngest was Molly.
Mary tells of the time that Paula, only about three years old, got into the candy jar, and of course she wanted to share the candy with her sister Lisa. So she jumped into 18-month-old Lisa’s bed and shared a chocolate bar. When Mary found them, Lisa was covered in chocolate, and Paula had a fair amount on her as well. I would say that was her age, but my grandma says it was her intelligence and her accompanying lack of sense.
This would play out with her and my father, Ronnie, and later with the man who would end her life.
“She adored her dad [Fred],” my grandmother tells me. “And he was never there. He finally left me there with four little girls. That was really hard on Paula.” When asked, Susy said that when Fred left, “It seemed to affect Paula a lot. She was a daddy’s girl, pretty much. But I don’t remember him being there.” Lisa said of her father, “We weren’t close. I don’t know if it was just how things were done back then. You divorced the wife and you divorced the family.” Fred was an alcoholic, the kind of guy who would just go off and do his own thing. He would leave and be gone for weeks at a time. Lisa added, “When the divorce and all that came [when I was] a young kid, it wasn’t that big of a difference because he wasn’t home much anyway. I only saw him once in a while. Him being gone all the time, I don’t remember it affecting me, which Mom says that it did. It was more of an impact for Paula and Susy.”
According to Mary, “Paula was scary smart. She excelled in almost every subject in every grade.” The way Mary tells it, Paula took Latin in middle school but struggled with calculus in tenth grade. However, as Paula’s teacher explained, “she was only a tenth grader and everyone else in the class were seniors. It was to be expected for her to have a bit of trouble.”
When asked if Paula was mature, Mary said, “Oh, yes, but, she didn’t have a lot of common sense. I’ve seen that so many times with kids who were smart.” My aunts Molly and Susy called her a “Brainiac, but not so smart when it came to men.” Years later, Paula met Ronnie Garrett in high school. He was two years older, and they dated for a while. By her senior year, she was pregnant with me. According to my aunts, being pregnant in school in the 1970s “wasn’t really that uncommon. So it wasn’t that much of a stigma.” Understandably, being pregnant in her senior year put a damper on her life. Paula attended the local “career center,” a kind of vocational or technical school, for her senior year. It was for students who weren’t going to go to college.
Paula and Ronnie got married right before I was born. According to Susy, she didn’t even know who Ronnie was before they got married. “I had never heard of him. It wasn’t as though he was coming to the house or anything.” Molly agreed. Ronnie “didn’t come around a lot. He worked second shift. Paula and Eric were always at [Mary’s] house. But I didn’t see him much and he was usually working or whatever. Drinking. He was a drinker. Causing trouble.” Ronnie was not a very nice person, particularly to Paula, and certainly with me growing up. He wasn’t abusive—at least, not with me and no one mentioned him hitting Paula—but one thing was clear: Ronnie spent much of his time somewhere else, drinking. My grandfather on Ronnie’s side was reportedly abusive to his family and children, which affected Ronnie. Susy knew very little about Ronnie, but she knew that “[Ronnie’s] father was horrible. There had been some abuse to Ronnie’s mother and him and her siblings. I don’t know the whole story, but Ronnie’s father might have been institutionalized for a mental breakdown. All of that affected Ronnie. He was not the nicest person to Paula. He would stay out and drink. He wasn’t abusive—but truthfully, she wouldn’t have told me if he was.”
Susy recalled something else. “There was a story about a telephone. One night when he was drunk, she hit him with that phone.” Paula was no stranger to violence, even just out of high school.
Ronnie and Paula were divorced by the time I was two and a half, when Paula was twenty.
Even though Susy said it, everyone agreed. “[Paula had] really terrible taste in men. When dad was gone permanently after our parents’ divorce, Paula was terribly hurt. She was the kind of girl who needed a strong male figure in her life. She would do what dad said, but not anyone else. [After Paula’s divorce], she saw a counselor. He agreed she was looking for a father figure.”
Susy said, “[Paula] had a very easygoing manner. She didn’t have a temper. But she would only listen to [her father]. Well, I think some kids as they’re growing up, they’re either closer to their mother or their dad. And she would listen to dad. She wasn’t disrespectful to our parents. She was a very good kid, she really was.”
Molly and Lisa had another memory of Paula. Molly said, “She was friendly, had lots of friends. She was [easy] to get along with. And she was smart, and protective of us [Lisa and Molly]. What I remember was that she was that she was fun loving and really funny. It’s hard not to miss that.”
I asked my family what Paula was like as a mom. Susy said, “She was a great mom. [You were] the first boy to be in our family. We were a house full of women. [Paula] was crazy over you.”
There was no question my mother adored me. My grandmother Mary, a former schoolteacher, even said so. But in the same breath, she said, “[Eric] was a handful. So was Paula, but for different reasons. We’re talking about a boy and a girl. There’s a difference. Paula excelled in every grade in every subject. Eric could have done a lot better than he did. Especially in the earlier grades. Maybe some boys do, but boys don’t like school and they don’t do as well. Paula was never like that.”
Paula started dating Richard Green around the time of her divorce. My family didn’t know exactly when she met him. However, Susy told me the story that one time, not long after Paula and Ronnie were separated, Fred went over to visit Paula and me, and Richard was there at the house, sitting at the kitchen table. This was a surprise to me. I had never heard that story before.
One thing that did become obvious, apart from Paula’s poor taste in men, was that she was secretive about her relationships as well, although that wasn’t how my family phrased it. Susy felt that Paula didn’t want to worry anyone.
Another thing that my family repeated consistently was that Paula would believe anything anyone told her, especially from men. Susy said, “There were things that she told me about Richard, and I’m thinking, are you sure that’s right? Are you sure he’s telling you the truth? So she would believe, especially men, she would believe everything that Richard told her, just about. I mean, she believed a lot of what he said.”
This combination of being a sweet, compassionate, intelligent person who was also a bit gullible and not very smart around men, I believe, was what led to her death at age 22.
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12/26/75 (Paperback)
“12/26/75” is more than a story about a murder. It is a case of wrongful conviction, prosecutorial misconduct, corruption, and a serial killer. For Tony Reid, this case began with a claim of innocence in the 1975 murder of Donna Jo Richmond. The original investigation and flawed trial resulted in a guilty verdict, but a reevaluation revealed that the defendant had been wrongly accused and railroaded. The question then shifted to who framed him. With a new team of investigators, including two original detectives, a startling possibility emerged: Could the real culprit be a serial offender?
Mr. Reid launched the "12/26/75" podcast, seeking information from the public. Based on primary evidence and new interviews related to Donna Jo's murder in Exeter, California, the team delved into every angle. What they found was more than a miscarriage of justice. They uncovered connections to the unsolved murders of Jennifer Armour and Claude Snelling, as well as links to The Visalia Ransacker/East Area Rapist. They exposed corruption by the lead investigator who destroyed trial evidence, and they investigated the mysterious death of the original defense attorney. This led them back to Exeter, where a new suspect emerged: Joseph DeAngelo, a sergeant with the local police department at the time, in charge of violent crimes and burglary investigations.
"12/26/75" goes beyond being a mere adaptation of the podcast. It offers fresh insights from the investigation, providing a firsthand view of the crimes and revealing the flawed evidence that led to the wrongful conviction. Most importantly, it highlights the grave consequences of letting a serial killer go free, compounded by mistakes, internal conflicts, and blame-shifting among different jurisdictions. The book makes it clear that reforms are urgently needed to prevent such tragedies from happening again, now that the truth of how it all unfolded is exposed.
$17.95
Why we chose this
12/26/75 asks readers to look closely at wrongful conviction, lost evidence, and the damage caused when the justice system gets the story wrong. It is for readers who want the case examined, not simplified.