A Rage To Kill And Other True Cases

young mother, just a child herself, didn’t tell anyone what had happened to her in the alley—not until she realized that she was pregnant. When she finally confessed that she had been raped, her family was horrified. It was 1942 and good girls didn’t get pregnant, or if they did, their families hid them away from the neighbors. Michael’s mother was taken in at the Florence Crittendon home in Seattle. It was a good shelter, and she received excellent care while she waited to give birth, but she was lonesome and scared, one of the youngest girls who lived there behind shuttered windows and closed doors.
    She bore her red-haired baby boy in April 1943, after many hours of labor. She looked at the beautiful baby and longed to keep him with her, but she was still only fourteen years old and she had no one who would support her if she kept him. She gave him away; there was nothing else she could do under the circumstances.
    At some point, the baby was given the name Michael Andrew Olds. On some level, he seemed to sense that his birth had been a mistake, and that he wasn’t wanted. A succession of foster parents tried—and failed—to bond with him. He didn’t like to be cuddled and he cried constantly—either from temper or colic. He resisted all efforts at toilet-training; perhaps that was the only function where he had any control over his environment. He would have “accidents” until he was eight. He smashed his toys in anger and frustration and fought with other children in the homes where he was placed. Prospective adoptive parents and foster families alike threw up their hands in surrender. Michael
looked
adorable, with his mop of red curls and his freckles, but he was a prickly pear who seemed to dare anyone to love him.
    He wore out the first couple who took him in when he was just a baby. The second couple who brought him home had to give up; Michael had carried the family cat to the toilet, dumped him in, and had tried to flush the frantic creature down.
    Cruelty to animals is a red flag signal that shows up early in the background of many violent criminals. There was so much going on with Michael Olds that social workers barely had time to chart the latest fiasco.
    Attempts at counseling failed to change Michael’s behavior, and with each move, he must have felt more of an outcast. Sometimes there were other children in the homes and occasionally he was the only child. It didn’t matter; he never adjusted. He was a blur of red-headed fury.
    Social workers kept shuttling him around until 1959, when he was finally declared “incorrigible” after a terrifying incident in the tiny hamlet of Dayton, Washington. Given the circumstances, “incorrigible” was a mild determination. Michael, who was seventeen by then, enticed a four-year-old girl into an alley by offering her candy. There he choked and beat the toddler almost to death. She was saved only because a delivery man turned his truck into the alley and saw what was happening.
    He was horrified to see Olds straddling a child on the ground with his hands on her throat, as he bellowed, “Die, damn you, die!”
    When the man pulled Michael off the little girl, he was still enraged. “She called me a name,” he muttered.
    Michael Olds seemed to hate the whole world. During the same time period, police had caught him as he was plugging the exhaust pipes of cars with weeds and dirt and newspapers. He said he didn’t like the owners, and figured they would die after they were overcome with carbon monoxide from the exhaust gas.
    And so, at seventeen, Olds was placed in the Luther Burbank School, where emotionally disturbed teenagers were treated. One psychiatrist reported: “It is clear that Mike needs a placement with strong external controls. This episode, an assault on a four-year-old girl, came too close to homicide and the chances of another such occurrence are too great to consider any other disposition.”
    Somewhat surprisingly, Mike Olds did well at Luther Burbank; although he was there because he’d been
committed,
he at least knew where he would be for awhile. And he did do better with external controls. He stayed a year at Burbank. On May 20, 1960, despite his history, Olds was paroled and sent to a foster home on Seattle’s Queen Anne Hill.
    It didn’t work. He came and went as he pleased. He stayed out late, and he was consumed with gambling. He soon dropped out of school to take a job as a stock boy in a medical supply house,