A Rage To Kill And Other True Cases

“Jane Doe” in Grave Lower 6, Lot 122, Section J at Riverton Crest Cemetery. Somewhere, there was probably someone who loved her and who waited for some word from her. The detectives who had tried so hard to identify the lost woman did not forget her. “Someday, we’ll find out who she is,” Dick Reed commented, “And when we do, we’ll find her killer too.”
    Nine months after she was buried, on September 7, 1971, a report came in that tentatively linked the dead woman with a missing teenager from a small town east of the Cascade Mountains of Washington. Some weeks after the “Jane Doe” was buried, a Missing Persons report had come in from Mr. and Mrs. Murphy* of Cle Elum, Washington. Their daughter, Georgia*, eighteen, had disappeared while on a visit with relatives in Seattle during October and November of 1969.
    Georgia was five feet, two inches tall and weighed 110 pounds. She had brown hair and blue eyes. Tragically, but inevitably, neither Seattle nor King County police connected the missing Cle Elum girl with the unnamed woman pulled from the Duwamish. The physical characteristics given for Georgia Murphy and those charted during the “Jane Doe’s” autopsy were widely disparate. The dead woman was five feet five; the Murphy girl was said to be five feet two. Their weights were different and Dr. Wilson had estimated the victim’s age as from twenty-eight to thirty-five, while the Cle Elum girl was only eighteen. There was really no reason to link the two.
    At the time that Georgia Murphy was reported missing, Seattle Police Missing Persons detectives had done some routine checks: utilities companies, phone listings, unemployment records, to see if she had established residence in Seattle and had stayed in the city by choice. But they hadn’t gone further. Georgia was eighteen and considered legally to be an adult so it was impossible for the police department in a large city to spend their time and resources trying to find someone who had the legal right to leave home.
    Now, however, in 1971, King County Detective Ben Colwell and Detective Sergeant Ray Jenne had new information on Georgia Murphy. Georgia had gone missing not from the city, but from the county. Her parents had said in their missing report that she’d intended to stay with an uncle and his family who lived in a mobile home park in the south end, a park not far from the Duwamish River. But the uncle didn’t know where she was.
    Colwell perused the records of all the unidentified female bodies found since October of 1969. None of them came close to Georgia Murphy’s description—but the woman in the river had been found very close to the trailer park. He called for a conference with Don Cameron and Ted Fonis of the Seattle Homicide Unit.
    The four detectives studied the picture provided by Mrs. Murphy, and shook their heads. The missing girl smiled gently in what appeared to be a graduation photo. She was pretty in an elfin way, and she had short dark hair and light blue eyes. The handwritten description on the back of the picture described a petite girl.
    “I don’t think it’s Georgia. The location of the body is the only thing that fits,” Fonis commented. “But we’re willing to push it and see if we can find some positive identification. It’s remotely possible that the height and weight could be way off. Teenagers grow and parents aren’t always aware of just how tall they are. The eyes? That’s rougher. Without contacts, people’s eye color doesn’t change. But let’s see what we can turn up.”
    Detectives Fonis and Cameron drove to Cle Elum, a tiny hamlet on the other side of the Cascade Mountains some seventy-five miles from Seattle. Once a thriving mining town, it had become picturesque—but quiet. It was the kind of town kids often left behind as they set out for adventure in the world.
    The information they received from the worried parents was not promising. Georgia had always been a girl who trusted people—sometimes at her own peril. She had longed for love and new experiences, and laughed at her family’s concern for her. At eighteen, she believed that there was no situation she couldn’t handle.
    There were no dental records available for Georgia Murphy; she had always had perfect teeth. As far as her mother knew, Georgia wore pink nail polish—not platinum. Her eyes were definitely blue. There was no question about that. Georgia Murphy had had a very slight foot deformity on her left instep