A Rage To Kill And Other True Cases

address. They found a listing for B. Palliser in the lobby of a run-down apartment house. She opened the door of her apartment only a crack, and wouldn’t let the detectives in until they pushed their cards under the door.
    “I saw it,” she finally admitted. “I saw that guy get stabbed. I’ve been afraid to go to work ever since.” Tearfully, she agreed to go to the homicide offices to make a statement.
    “I went to the Take 5 at 2 A.M. to meet a friend,” Barbara Palliser recalled. “I waited twenty minutes and she didn’t show so I went to walk around and look for her. I still didn’t find her, and I went back to the Take 5. I was standing just inside the front door when I saw a white male in his twenties and a black female impersonator just outside. It looked like he grabbed at her wig and pulled it off. ‘She’ grabbed it back and started swearing. They exchanged words, and ‘she’ threw her purse at someone and asked them to hold it. Then ‘she’ started fighting with him. The onlookers tried to tell them to take it easy. They calmed down and she took her purse back. Then the male grabbed her wig again, and the fight started again. She went inside to get a weapon. Then this car drove up. It looked like there were two black males and one black female—I’m not sure if she was a woman or not—inside. The two men tried to get this ‘Jackie’ in the car but she was really mad and stepped back and started fighting again. The man just kind of reached out toward her, and then he fell down. The car drove away fast with ‘her’ in it.”
    The girl known as “Chi-Chi” quickly selected the mug shot of Jonathan Emerson as the “woman” who had stabbed Brad Bass. She had no doubt at all that she was right.
    Jonathan Emerson, aka “Jackie” Collins, aka Jacqueline Collins, aka “Jackie” Blackshire had been picked by too many witnesses not to believe that he was the killer of Brad Bass. The King County Prosecutor’s Office filed second-degree murder charges against him on February 26, 1976.
    But the charges were filed in absentia. “Jackie” Emerson had gone underground. A flyer describing the five-foot eight-inch, now 160-pound fugitive was sent to California, Oregon and British Columbia as well as Washington State. Jackie’s disguises were perfect, and it was hard to tell
who
he would be next. The bulletin warned that Emerson would probably be dressed as a woman, wearing a wig, false eyelashes and makeup. “Suspect has needle tracks on both arms.”
    Every Seattle Police patrolman had been apprised of the urgency in locating “Jackie” Emerson at line-up briefings. The homicide detectives believed if he was still operating in Seattle, he would be spotted sooner or later—even if he didn’t have a permanent address. It was ten minutes to three A.M. on March 7 when two first-watch patrolmen observed a woman walking in the 1400 block of E. Yesler Street, not far from police headquarters. She drew their attention because she was very tall and had exceptionally broad shoulders for a woman. She wore a tight green sweater, slacks, and a blue coat. As they studied her more closely they agreed that her billowing hair could only be a wig.
    They pulled out the wanted bulletin on Jackie Emerson, and studied it with a flashlight.
    “It’s Jackie . . . No doubt about it.”
    Jonathan “Jackie” Emerson was arrested and advised of his rights before being transported to jail and booked. He refused to make any statements to detectives without the presence of his lawyer.
    With Emerson safely in jail, detectives located the driver of the car who had picked Jackie up at the stabbing scene. The driver admitted that it was his knife that was used to kill Bass. He said he had met Jackie that morning, and he, too, had thought that he was a woman. He said the knife had been in his jacket pocket when he drove up but he denied giving it to Jackie. When he jumped into the car after the attack, the driver said he realized that it
was
his knife, and it had blood on it. He was lying. Witnesses saw him toss it to Jackie.
    When Jonathan Emerson went on trial for the murder of Brad Bass, it took a while to get a jury. Prospective jurors viewed the defendant, who sat demurely beside “her” lawyer, as they were asked if they had prejudices or convictions that would make them unable to render a fair verdict. Many did. By Monday morning, May 24, 1976, four women and eight men and an alternate juror had been