Don’t Look Behind You

the bed. “Spread your legs!” he commanded.
    While she closed her eyes and bit her lips, her attacker attempted penetration. It wasn’t working, and he commented that she was “sure tight for being married.”
    As before, with Ashley Varner, the would-be rapist had lost his erection. After a matter of a few seconds, the man jumped up and said, “Forget this. Where’s your money?”
    “I’ll check and see if I have any,” she said, stalling. She threw on her clothes and produced her wallet, showing him it was empty. He walked toward her again and she cried, “Please don’t hurt me—I’m pregnant. Please don’t hurt my baby.”
    The big man studied her for a long moment and then walked toward the door. He turned to look at her and said, “I’m sick.”
    “Just go,” Jill cried. “Just go and I won’t tell anybody.”
    She didn’t mean that. She watched him walk past her neighbor’s home and then break into a run. When she wassure he was gone, she ran to the neighbor’s house, where she called the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office.
    Jill’s report to Snohomish County detective Ken Sedy was quite similar to the statement Ashley Varner had given after she was attacked in the Edmonds church two months earlier. In this assault, too, the rapist had not removed his own clothing, had only unzipped his fly. Both women were assaulted on a weekday in the afternoon. Their descriptions of the stranger were close. And each of the terrified young women mentioned the size of the man’s penis, so large that he had been unable to have intercourse with either of them.
    Similar attacks, yes, but there was really no sure pattern yet. The attacks were some distance apart, and the rapist’s MO matched several other unsolved cases just as closely as it did the Edmonds and the rural Snohomish County cases.
    Jill Whaley’s shorts, panties, and bedspread were sent to the lab for analysis, but, since no ejaculation had taken place—no semen or pre-ejaculatory fluid was detected—nothing of evidentiary value was found.
    Almost exactly two months later, on December 6—a Monday—a twenty-seven-year-old King County housewife, Dorian Bliss,* and her five-year-old daughter drove home after a trip to the grocery store. It was just before noon and the little girl was hungry, so Dorian hurried as she made several trips from her car into the house, carrying bags of groceries. She had left the front door open because her arms were full. Later, she couldn’t be sure if she had closed the front door on the last trip.
    She heard someone coming in the front door, assumed it was her husband, and looked up expectantly. Instead, shesaw a perfect stranger. Alarmed, she said, “Who are you, and what are you doing here?”
    The man responded by clapping his hands together and ordered, “Get rid of the kid!”
    That, of course, was her first thought: if there was danger—and there certainly appeared to be—she wanted her child safe. She led the little girl into the child’s bedroom and turned on her record player, warning the youngster to lock her door and not to come out—no matter what.
    The intruder, a very tall, husky young man, pushed Dorian into the family room. “Take your clothes off,” he snapped. She tried to dissuade him, protesting that she couldn’t do that, that what he was suggesting was crazy. Finally, she slowly started to take off her sweater.
    “No,” he said. “I want you to take
all
your clothes off.”
    The man knelt before her and lifted her skirt, rubbing her pubic area through her underclothing with his hand. “Damn, that’s beautiful,” he breathed, and then he bit her.
    She knew she couldn’t scream; her daughter might run out and be hurt. Instead Dorian pushed him away from her by kicking him. It didn’t seem to faze him. He stood up and methodically began to undress her.
    He kissed her mouth and breasts and he was furious because she would not respond. “Damn it … kiss me!” he ordered the trembling woman.
    She wouldn’t. She couldn’t.
    The huge man pulled her panties and panty hose over her shoes, and began to kiss her all over her now naked body. Finally, he mounted her. The rape itself lasted for a short time—only five or six thrusts—and she was quitesure he hadn’t climaxed when he suddenly withdrew and stood up.
    The man walked toward the kitchen, saying, “I didn’t plan for this to happen—I’m sick, you know.”
    She called him back, afraid he was going to her