A Rage To Kill And Other True Cases

Chief Ernie Dennis and a silent trio of his officers headed toward Sharon Mason’s apartment. Had it been any other woman, they would not have had the same sense of urgency; Sharon hadn’t even been missing for twenty-four hours. But Sharon Mason was a creature of habit and reliability.
    And the mud-covered car in her parking stall was hers, even though it was in a condition she never would have tolerated.
    The police knocked again and still no one answered. As the lock tumblers clicked—still with the original lock—and the door swung open, there wasn’t another sound. Sharon’s apartment looked as immaculate as it always did. The investigators moved down the hall, glancing into the bathroom, toward the living room with its drawn blinds, down to the bedroom.
    There, they found Sharon. The scene was as chilling as any of those she might have imagined during the dark nights that frightened her. She lay on her back on the carpet of her bedroom, mercifully oblivious to the blood-stained shambles around her.
    Someone had done terrible damage to the frail school teacher. The skin on her forehead had split where some manner of blunt instrument had crushed her skull, and her fractured teeth lay scattered around her. Her throat bore the marks of a knife. She had obviously been dead for many hours, possibly since the previous night.
    Sharon Mason still wore her car coat, sweater, and bra, but she was nude from the waist down. It would take a postmortem examination to say whether she had been raped, but certainly the scene before the investigators suggested that a sexual attack had been attempted.
    The investigators moved slowly through the victim’s apartment, finding it very neat except for the bedroom. It wasn’t difficult to deduce what had happened just prior to the murder. A sack of groceries sat on the counter next to the kitchen sink. The date on the sales slip was
2-23-76
and the time was
4:23 p.m.
    Sharon must have purchased the groceries after she left the school party. The tenant upstairs had heard three muffled cries at 4:55 P.M. Sharon still wore her coat. When the detectives learned that she had a habit of staying away from her apartment whenever she had reason to be afraid, it was apparent to them that she had intended to be there only briefly. Her neighbor gave the police the license number of the yellow car he’d seen parked in a temporary spot. It turned out to be Sharon’s.
    But now the car was filthy with mud and parked back in its assigned spot. No, Sharon Mason had not planned to stay in her apartment until she was sure the locks were changed. She had come upstairs, opened the door, and had probably been attacked right inside her front hallway. They believed that her killer had hidden in the front hall closet, waiting for her. The hangers there were askew and clothing was knocked to the floor. As she entered the door, the person waiting had probably grabbed her and dragged her into the bedroom.
    She had been only two steps from safety; all she had meant to do was pick up her overnight bag and leave.
    Although her murder was accomplished with excessive force and by several methods, it was quite possible that the slender school teacher was unconscious almost at once. The detectives hoped so.
    Sharon Mason’s murder was the first in Tumwater in a dozen years. Because the Tumwater Police Department had so little experience in homicide investigation, they turned to Thurston County Sheriff Don Redmond’s staff for help. Wes Barclift was the mayor of Tumwater, and his brother, Paul, was one of Redmond’s top detectives. Assisting were Chief of Detectives Dwight Caron and Detective Sergeant Dick Nelson.
    Sharon’s death sparked an all-out investigation, even though Redmond’s men sensed that her murder would go unsolved. Some homicide victims had a lifestyle that placed them in the path of homicidal violence. Sharon Mason had been a complete innocent. Any thread that linked her to her killer seemed to be so tenuous that it would be virtually impossible to detect.
    “You don’t make a whole lot of enemies teaching first grade, spending weekends with your aging parents, and staying at home watching television,” Redmond commented.
    And, of course, he was right. Sharon Mason was the least likely candidate for murder Redmond had ever encountered.
    Dr. Donald Nachoneckny, Assistant Medical Examiner of King County, was asked to perform the autopsy on Sharon. An autopsy, translated, means “to see