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A Rage To Kill And Other True Cases

A Rage To Kill And Other True Cases

Titel: A Rage To Kill And Other True Cases Kostenlos Bücher Online Lesen
Autoren: Ann Rule
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shot.”
    Despite the saturation of patrol cars and foot patrolmen in the Queen Anne area immediately after the shooting, no suspect was caught. The investigators were convinced that he had to be holed up someplace. It was an unseasonably warm spring evening and there were lots of people out. A running man carrying a bag full of money would surely have been noticed by someone—yet no one remembered seeing anything. He could be hiding in a blackberry thicket in a vacant lot or he might even have gone into a nearby house. That would explain his disappearance.
    The night passed without any sightings of the shooter. It had happened so quickly. Except for the blood behind the counter and the scattered bullet casings, it might all have been a very bad dream. When the homicide detectives finished their work near dawn, Jay Samuels pulled down the shade in the front door and locked the store.

    Dr. Gale Wilson, the King County Medical Examiner, performed the postmortem on Blossom Braham. The fatal wound was, of course, the forehead shot; the bullet had transversed her brain, shattering as it hit the back of her skull. Wilson told the detectives observing the post that she would have lived only minutes after such a wound, and all brain function had ceased the moment she was shot. But then he detected another wound, a flesh wound in the right thigh, and the slug was still there. This bullet was retrieved intact, and it would be invaluable for ballistics tests if a suspect gun was ever located.
    The
Seattle Times
and the
Post-Intelligencer
both had the story of Blossom Braham’s murder on the front page. Blossom had been a lovely woman with high cheek bones, big brown eyes, and perfect features. Her picture stared back from newsstands. Her beauty drew most readers to the story. But it was the horror of her totally unforeseen death that gripped them. How many of them had run down to the neighborhood grocer for a last-minute purchase? Blossom Braham had gone to buy butterhorns for breakfast, followed the robber’s orders precisely, and had died. That was what frightened people.
    The Seattle Police Homicide Unit on the third floor of the Public Safety Building was deluged with tips from citizens who wanted to help, or who just wanted to get in on the notoriety of the case. None of them panned out. The killer had been swallowed up in the night and might well be thousands of miles away.

    On April 1, however, grocer Jay Samuels received a phone call that made the hairs stand up along his arms. If it was an April Fool’s joke, he didn’t find it funny.
    “I want $200,” a man’s voice breathed into the phone. “I killed Blossom Braham and I wouldn’t be afraid to kill again—”
    Even though the caller warned him not to, Samuels called the police at once. In a very short time, Detective Ed Ivey walked into the store as if he was a customer, and then he found a spot where he could act as a stakeout. If it was an April Fool’s gag, there wouldn’t be any more phone calls. It was a crazy thing for the real killer to have done—and the investigators didn’t really expect another call, but they had to be prepared.
    The phone rang shortly after Ivey was in place. Samuels picked it up nervously and the detective could sense his tension. “Tell me again what you want,” Samuels said, and then he signalled surreptitiously to Ivey to pick up the phone in the back room so he could listen.
    “You heard me,” the voice said impatiently. “Put two hundred dollars in a paper sack and leave it at Five Corners between five and seven P.M. tomorrow.”
    Stalling for time, Ivey asked for more specific directions.
    “Damn you! You know where it is. It’s at West McGraw and Third West!” The stake-out was working. The caller couldn’t tell Ivey’s voice from Samuels’.
    Ivey told the caller to relax; he just wanted to be sure he got everything right, and he didn’t want to chance going to the wrong spot.
    “I’m not nervous,” the caller said. “Not like I was when I shot the lady in the store, and I want the money.”
    A dummy package with cut-up newspapers between real bills was placed at the designated spot. A dozen officers hid nearby, waiting and watching. They waited until 9:00 P.M. , but the killer, if indeed he had made the call, never appeared.
    He did not call again.
    By April 5, tension was still thick on Queen Anne Hill. Extra patrol cars did little to alleviate the citizens’ concern. More than two hundred

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