Don’t Look Behind You

bathrobe belt. The intruder tied her hands behind her and bound her ankles loosely with the bathrobe sash. Leann held her breath and prayed he would not harm her still-screaming infant. Then she heard the front door close. Hobbling over to the phone, she managed to get one hand free to dial her sister-in-law who lived next door. She rushed over to untie Leann.
    The two frightened women called the Edmonds police and patrol officers responded, followed in minutes by Detective Marian McCann.
    Leann’s description of her assailant had a most familiar ring: white, male, thirty, six feet two, 210 pounds, medium brown curly hair, brown eyes, mustache, jeans and jean jacket. Possible witnesses on the street where Leann lived reported that they had noticed an orange van parked in front of the victim’s house. It was possibly a ten-year-old Dodge.
    Detective McCann immediately put out a teletype on the van and description of the rapist. Almost at once, she was deluged with reports of orange vans and/or unsolved rapes. She was appreciative of the response, but it meant checking out over a dozen orange vans and their drivers. Some were easy to eliminate; one spotted by a victim’s relative in a grocery store parking lot was driven by a skinny man with shoulder-length red hair who in no way matched the description of the rapist.
    Others weren’t so easy. McCann visited a rural farm in Snohomish County where three brothers were supposed toown an orange van. She spent hours staking out the place, even talking to some young women who were also waiting for their “suspects.” None of the brothers turned out to match the description of the man.
    Detective McCann conferred with departments as far away as Spokane County at the eastern end of the state, and Mason County many miles south of Edmonds, but nothing matched up. In the meantime, she dreaded the repeat that must surely come if the rapist was not found—and soon.
    McCann combed her files and surrounding departments’ files for mug shots of men with previous sex offenses. A fellow detective, Wally Tribuzio, recalled an incident in December 1976 when he had assisted the Lynn-wood Police Department in the arrest of a suspect in an alleged burglary-rape at the Bali Hai Sauna.
    “This guy supposedly went in there and shot up the place, and then stole a desk because he couldn’t get the drawers open to get the money out,” Tribuzio recalled. “He was driving a panel truck, only it was white then. We traced the license number they got to a Tom Barrington.* I went out to his residence to help out the Lynnwood officers. Anyway, just as I turned down the street, I saw the panel truck parked—the license was right—and I parked out of sight and waited. There was somebody in the van, and he seemed to be fooling around with what looked like a huge box. I called Snohomish County Dispatch and they told me that the man they were looking for had stolen a desk. Apparently, he was stashing the drawers in the bushes while I watched.”
    Tribuzio had moved in and arrested the man.
    “He fits the description to a T,” Tribuzio recalled to Marian McCann. “Big guy, two-day growth of beard, brown hair. We found a bunch of Bali Hai business cards in his glove box. He claimed to have thrown his gun away and we never found it.”
    Possible—although a rape in a massage parlor is a good deal harder to prove than a sexual attack on a housewife in her own home. McCann learned that Tom Barrington was awaiting trial on the Bali Hai case, and she obtained a mug shot of him from the Lynnwood police to include in the ten-mug laydown of pictures to show to Leann Cross.
    Unfortunately, she could not identify any of the mugs in the laydown as the man who had assaulted her and tied her up that harrowing day.
    Worse, the attacks continued. On April 26, a South Everett housewife was in her own home at two in the afternoon when a man suddenly appeared. A big man, white, around thirty, with stubble on his face, dark hair, a good-looking man. He wore jeans and a blue plaid shirt.
    The intruder forced Mrs. Lillian Mercer* into her bedroom, placed a pillowcase over her head, and raped her. He also told her he was “scared,” which was mild compared to the way the attractive housewife felt. When he left, he took her wallet containing $119 in cash, eight credit cards, and three bank savings books.
    Snohomish County detective Sedy listened to the description and felt it sounded much like the man who was now